Gamasutra Expert Blogs: From Playtests To Failing Kickstarter Campaigns

[In highlights from Gamasutra's Expert Blogs,industry notables write about playtest failures, stalled kickstarter campaigns, steps to extend your MMO's lifespan, and going indie.] In our weekly Best of Expert Blogs column, we showcase notable pieces of writing from members of the game development community who maintain Expert Blogs on Gamasutra. Member Blogs -- also highlighted weekly -- can be maintained by any registered Gamasutra user, while the invitation-only Expert Blogs are written by development professionals with a wealth of experience to share. We hope that both sections can provide useful and interesting viewpoints on our industry. For more information about the blogs, check out the latest official posting guidelines. Here are the top blogs for the week: This Week's Standout Expert Blogs 3 Simple Steps To Extend Your MMO's Lifespan (Tony Celentano) Iron Realms' Tony Celentano believes that when evaluating a game's lifespan, many MMO developers overlook three key ways they can maintain and expand a player-base for years to come. Inside A Failing Kickstarter Campaign (Ted Brown) We've often seen success stories for indie games funded by Kickstarter donations, but what's it like for projects that can't drum up enough support? Ted Brown presents a mid-mortem on a Kickstarter campaign for a promising project that is lagging far behind. A Really Big Playtest Failure (Lewis Pulsipher) "Playtesting is sovereign", Dr. Lewis Pulsipher likes to say to students. But it has taken a long time for videogame companies to recognize this, and there're still examples of complete failures to do playtesting right even when they play test. What Made You Become An Indie? Or If Not, What Stopped You? (Daniel Fedor) What are the primary motivations for becoming an indie game developer? What are the major barriers? After reading several "going indie" stories, BioWare veteran Daniel Fedor wanted to learn more about what makes developers want to become indie.