Crowdfunding a full scale MMORPG is an unfathomably
tall task.
By their very nature, making an MMO is always
expensive and time consuming.
But if a team at least has publisher funding
on day one, the process is going to be a lot
more straightforward than if they didn’t.
Because if you go the crowdfunding route,
you basically start off with no money.
Which means you have to actively market the
game to raise money while simultaneously also
building the game itself.
And that of course is going to take a bit
longer than if you already had the funding
to focus solely on building.
And this method is still a relatively new
concept in the game industry, at least for
large scale MMOs.
So from what I can tell, none of the development
teams that have attempted it so far seem to
have really nailed down a solid way to find
the right balance between fundraising and
development.
The developers of Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen
in particular very rarely talk about their
financial status.
This is to be expected to some degree because
what self respecting company would just put
their balance sheets out there for everyone
to see?
However, if we take a step back and look at
the big picture of how they’ve handled the
crowdfunding process, across all of the interviews,
streams, podcasts, etc. that they’ve done,
there are quite a few clues that can at least
give us a better idea of where things are at.
Let’s start at the very beginning.
It’s pretty well known that Pantheon first
came into the public view on Kickstarter in
January 2014.
Their crowdfunding goal was set at $800,000.
But at the end of the one month campaign,
they unfortunately came up short, raising
a total of $460,657.
And due to the way Kickstarter works, since
they did not meet their goal, Visionary Realms
did not receive any of that money.
But even still, There were 3,157 people already
willing to back the game at that point, with many more keeping
their eye on it.
So it served as a sort of proof of concept
that there was indeed an audience for this
type of MMO.
So with that in mind, they immediately launched
their own website where they could raise funds
for the game by selling pledge packages.
And those who pledged to the Kickstarter had
an opportunity to essentially transfer those
pledges to the new website, since Kickstarter
never actually took their money.
And to this day, Pantheon continues to raise
funds through their website with a package
available for pretty much any budget.
But that’s not the only way they get funds.
Because in 2015, it was announced that they
had secured an angel investor.
For those of you who don't know what an angel
investor is, an angel investor is “a high
net worth individual who provides financial
backing for small startups or entrepreneurs,
typically in exchange for ownership equity
in the company.”
So in other words, this is a person who is
very rich and believes in the game, and wants
it to succeed, so they invest a large amount
of money into it on the condition that once
it launches and is profitable, they will receive
a portion of those profits.
And I want to point out that there are a few
instances of the devs suggesting that this
angel investor from 2015 isn’t the only
one they have.
The most recent example being in the August
2020 developer roundtable.
"I mean it's no small secret
that Pantheon is
primarily crowdfunded. We say that on every stream and
pretty much any time we're interviewed.
And that is very much true.
So our primary source of funding is through crowdfunding.
Now we do have angel investors.
And when those angel investors come in,
we can use those funds
to reach our goals quicker.
And why I'm not gonna say just yet,
in the next week or two, maybe three,
We are going to be making another announcement.
It's not a huge announcement, so just keep your expectations for that.
But we do have a little bit of announcement to make on that.
That’s quite the tease at the end there. But we'll come back to that later.
Because note how he specifically said they have
angel investors, as in plural.
The first angel investment was definitely
newsworthy because it pretty much saved the
game from almost certain doom at the time.
But that was a while ago, and it seems like
VR may have quietly picked up at least one
other angel investment along the way.
Again, the details of this will almost certainly
never be known to the public due to NDAs and
and confidentiality agreements and such.
There’s all sorts of reasons why an angel
investor might want to keep it secret.
But the point here is that while crowdfunding
is the primary source of funding, angel investments
are very much a supplemental part of that.
And you’ll see more of that as we move along.
Because the next major financial milestone
they hit was in April 2017, when they announced
they had reached Series A funding.
For those of you who don’t know what Series
A means, it is “the second stage of startup
financing and the first stage of venture capital
financing.
This means that a company secures the required
capital from investors by selling the company’s
shares.
However, startups usually issue preferred
shares that do not provide their owners with
voting rights.”
And according to the official Visionary Realms
press release, what that means for Pantheon
is “Series A funding allows the company
to expand the team in almost every department
and bring the game into a semi-private pre-alpha
state where external testers and focus groups
can begin sampling the game...
As we start to raise support for Series B,
we are now in a position to empower our departments
with many of the resources they need.
It’s deeply encouraging to us to see this
kind of support for Pantheon from investors
and gamers.”
So again, there’s those investors mentioned.
And overall, this was a good sign that things
were moving along quite nicely.
And as far as I know, the community didn’t
really hear anything more about it until this
post in November 2018 on the official Pantheon
Facebook page which says: “Funding is not
a problem, no.
We have a set pace and current funding has
allowed us to build the game to this point
and can be continued through to launch.
But if we can speed the funding along periodically,
it allows us to speed along development, bringing
us to alpha, beta, and launch much sooner
than would otherwise be possible.”
Now the wording of that second sentence was
kinda vague and it was interpreted by the community
in a couple of different ways.
Like does that mean they already have enough
money to complete the game, in other words,
are they fully funded, or not?
And I must admit I myself misunderstood the
meaning of this when I first read it.
But that was over 2 years ago now, and I have
since gathered more information on it, so
I wanted to take a moment to try to clarify
what this means.
It does not mean that they currently have
a huge chunk of cash sitting in the bank that
guarantees that they can finish the game as
planned.
So no, they are not fully funded in that sense.
What it does mean however is that with the
average rate that new pledges are coming in,
if that continues as projected, then they
will be able to finish the game eventually.
The keyword is eventually because if funding
slows down for some reason, so does progress.
But of course the flip side of that is any
additional influx of pledges, angel investments,
or help from a publisher would accelerate
that pace and allow them to launch the finished
product sooner.
And if you’ve been following Pantheon’s
development at all, you’ve probably seen
countless comments from fans asking when is
alpha, when is beta, when is launch, etc.
And VR’s answer is always that they can’t
share that yet.
They can’t even really give a good estimate,
because unlike a traditional game development
process where funding is more predictable
coming from a large corporation, the timeline
of crowdfunded development is heavily dependent
on the rate of funds that come in from fans
and investors.
In a Q&A with the Fires of Heaven guild in
2018, Producer Ben Dean said:
“Pantheon has been a very unique project
for all of us.
It’s unlike anything we’ve worked on before
in many regards.
One of these is its development cycle.
All that said, yes, we are on target for getting
the game done in a state that we are happy with.
We do have goals and dates in mind, but those
are subject to change as the resources do.
Particularly when we complete Series B funding
it will mean a substantial increase to our velocity.
It doesn’t mean the quality of the product
will change, only the velocity.
We are uncompromising in the quality of the
product we will launch with and we have several
scenario plans on how to get there, based
on where the production resources are coming
from and at what cadence.”
Now that of course begs the big question,
which I'm sure is already on everyone's mind and that is, what if their funding goals aren’t reached?
Well fortunately there’s an answer to that
too.
In this interview with MassivelyOP, Visionary
Realms stated “Additional rounds of funding
will allow us to more rapidly grow our development
team.
That said, however unlikely, the team we have
currently assembled can finish this game.
In a worst case scenario, it would take us
longer to complete Pantheon without the funding
we’re looking to attain, but we will indeed
ship this game, come hell or high water.”
And you may be thinking that was a long time
ago, and it was, but even more recently in
a Reddit post in September 2019, Community
Manager Ben “Kilsin” Walters reaffirmed
that by saying: “We have always stated that
we will release the game, money just decides
how much content, features, systems and mechanics
go into it and how fast we are able to test
it and release it.”
So if for some unfortunate reason, incoming
donations and investments were to dry up,
the devs would still release the game - it
would just of course take longer and probably
be lacking some of the less essential features
and systems that they’ve been talking about,
which would be a bit sad - but certainly a
lot better than nothing at all.
Because at least fans will have something
to play along with the peace of mind that
their donations at least helped it get that
much closer to complete.
So it’s entirely possible that Visionary
Realms will still need a publisher to come
in and really speed things along to give them that boost and help the
game reach its maximum potential.
"Are we still talking to
publishers and other partners?
The answer to that is yes, we are. Very actively.
We have quite a few discussions going on right now.
That's about all I can say about that. So hopefully that
answers a lot of your questions.
That's about the extent I can go on it anyway
without breaching any confidentiality."
"Yeah nice man, and just to add to that...
the negotiations that are ongoing,
we are actively picking and choosing.
We don't just jump into bed with anybody.
We want to make sure it's a perfect fit for us, for our game, for our community."
"That's a really good point and something that isn't
really well known, but our biz dev team
is fantastic. Because they
really want to, like all of us, conserve the culture at Visionary Realms.
We don't want to just sell.
And sometimes there
might be opportunities to make a quick buck.
And if it doesn't fit, we don't go for it.
I can't give any examples due to confidentiality,
but that sort of thing does happen.
When we do find a partner, it's for the right reasons. It's the right partner
who wants the same goals, who's aligned with where we want to go with the game,
with the vision, and everything else."
And I should quickly mention there is actually one other form of funding that the game
receives, which many people might know about.
In November 2019, VR announced that there
is a third party investment syndicate backing Pantheon.
"So most of the funding for Pantheon has been done through crowdfunding, as you guys know. We talk about that all the time.
We've gotten some angel investors as well.
We also have an investor that recently started up a syndicate.
What that means is
he takes smaller investments to put as a syndicate into Pantheon.
On the syndicate stuff, that's not run by us.
But we can certainly get you in touch with the proper parties there.
You can just e-mail contact@visionaryrealms.com
Basically, an investment syndicate lowers
the barrier to investing by allowing individuals
who might not have a high enough net worth
to be accredited angel investors on their own to still
invest in smaller amounts.
And all those smaller investments are then handled
by a syndicate manager, who is usually an
accredited investor themselves, and they take those
collective funds are then invest them into the company.
And by the way, if you’re wondering who’s
managing all this money on the Visionary Realms
side, that would be Tim Sullivan.
He’s never made any public appearances for
Pantheon, but what we do know about him is
that he has over 25 years of financial and
operations experience in companies ranging
from small startups to large multinational
organizations, which certainly qualified him
to take the position of Chief Financial Officer
at Visionary Realms, where he has been since
2015.
So that’s the backstory, which then brings
us to that upcoming mystery announcement that
Ben Dean was alluding to in that clip from
the latest roundtable.
That was recorded only about a week ago now and
I’m curious as to what the announcement will be.
With the new website they just unveiled and
Pre-Alpha 5 starting this weekend, they seem
to be in pretty good shape.
But whatever it is, I'm sure you know that
I will definitely be keeping you all posted when
that does happen. So make sure you’re following
me on Twitter and hit the Subscribe button
below if you haven’t already, so that you don’t
miss any future updates.
But that's all I have for now. So thanks for watching, and I will see you in
the next video.
