FTL: Faster Than Light’s Kickstarter campaign was an uproarious success. Almost ludicrously so, in fact – developers Subset Games asked for $10,000, and wound up with more than $200,000. Nevertheless, Subset’s Justin Wa isn’t likely to be seen palms-upward in a pitch video again.
Unlike most of its kin, FTL’s Kickstarter campaign came into being towards the end of development. Wa reckons that developing an entire project in the public eye simply isn’t for him:
“I feel like I would not be able to work as freely or with such agility as we were with FTL,” he told Polygon. “We prefer to work from within a cave until we have something we feel is worth showing. I’m not sure how some developers are able to publicly show their progress at every stage of development; it just adds a whole new layer of stress.”
It seems Wa had a taste of that stress finishing off FTL, when the weight of public expectation increased by a factor of $190,000.
“Unlike some projects that could simply hire more people, we did not have the option to increase our scope greatly since we also committed ourselves to a deadline only a few months away,” explained Wa. “We tried to walk the thin line between using the extra funds to increase the quality of the final product while trying not to delay the release too long,” said Wa. “In the end I think we were reasonably successful.”
Don’t worry about it, Justin. FTL turned out great. Didn’t it?
Read our Tale of Two Shippies for the assembled exploits of the HMS Elephant and The Central Perk.
Thanks, Gameranx.