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gently caress all yall I'd play the poo poo outta some погс. Tell ya what, dude, you make a sequel to Dance Dance Karnov and we'll talk.
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Jul 9, 2012 15:56
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nftyw posted:Oh poo poo, oh poo poo I checked out what the creator of Jetpack was up to last night, and I must have intercepted some sort of telepathic rays from the cosmos, because the kickstarter just started recently and I never knew he was making a second game. Thanks for posting, I'm a huge fan that spent my young years being a pro level creator. This is dream come true. Word really needs to get out if he wants to reach his goal in 20 days!
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Jul 9, 2012 18:48
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Oh look, Star Command is having a kickstarter for the release to PC/Apple computers! Take my god-damned money please! [edit] They went from 40 to 60 backers in the time it took me to watch the youtube video and then back the project.
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Jul 9, 2012 18:51
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LP0 ON FIRE posted:I checked out what the creator of Jetpack was up to last night, and I must have intercepted some sort of telepathic rays from the cosmos, because the kickstarter just started recently and I never knew he was making a second game. Thanks for posting, I'm a huge fan that spent my young years being a pro level creator. This is dream come true. Word really needs to get out if he wants to reach his goal in 20 days! A sequel to the shareware Jetpack game? I think I've found the first kickstarter I'm willing to donate to. It was a sad time in my youth, having such an awesome game and no way to buy the full version. Now someone just tell me that Jumpman is being remade and I'll have everything I need in life.
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Jul 9, 2012 18:57
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fondue posted:Oh look, Star Command is having a kickstarter for the release to PC/Apple computers! Wasn't this the game that made a post about how they squandered most of their kickstarter money from their first kickstarter on backer rewards and taxes and stuff?
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Jul 9, 2012 19:00
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fondue posted:Oh look, Star Command is having a kickstarter for the release to PC/Apple computers! quote:We are going to hire additional developer(s) and artist(s) to help us with the last stage of mobile, and more importantly work on the PC/MAC version. Also, $25 for a copy of the game? Yikes.
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Jul 9, 2012 19:00
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fondue posted:Oh look, Star Command is having a kickstarter for the release to PC/Apple computers! A 2nd kickstarter to release the game on other platforms, when the base game has been delayed and hasn't released yet? Talk about fishy. Not in the "this is a scam" kind of fishy, but why wouldn't they wait until the release of the iOS version to generate press and attention and draw more people to being interested in a PC/Mac version? Even more, why not see how sales go from the iOS version to explore porting it over from profit and not dishing out more cash in fees and rewards on the kickstarter? Not to mention they say some of the money is to fund additional help to release the iOS version, but that they're still on track to a summer release. What happens if they don't get the Kickstarter funded? Edit: quote:Also, $25 for a copy of the game? Yikes. nessin fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Jul 9, 2012 |
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Jul 9, 2012 19:03
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raditts posted:A sequel to the shareware Jetpack game? I think I've found the first kickstarter I'm willing to donate to. It was a sad time in my youth, having such an awesome game and no way to buy the full version. Why was there no way to buy the full version?
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Jul 9, 2012 19:03
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fondue posted:Oh look, Star Command is having a kickstarter for the release to PC/Apple computers! Why would they even need a kick-starter for it? I'm getting a little weary of these guys. I'm getting the impression they bit off a little more than they could chew with star command.
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Jul 9, 2012 19:04
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Harlock posted:Also, $25 for a copy of the game? Yikes. Yep, that's steep and kinda lovely. The whole thing is starting to reek a bit what with them having a second kickstarter before actually shipping anything. I held off from the first one due to the whole "you won't actually get the game so what's the point" thing, and I'm gonna hold off on this one. The finished game is surely going to be less than 25 bucks. EDIT: also holy gently caress 100 000 to convert your supposedly already existing game to PCs and Macs? I'm starting to suspect they blew too much of their budget on T-shirts and poo poo like that and now have to beg for more money to actually make the game.
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Jul 9, 2012 19:04
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LP0 ON FIRE posted:Why was there no way to buy the full version? Because I was 12 and my parents wouldn't buy it for me.
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Jul 9, 2012 19:06
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Der Shovel posted:EDIT: also holy gently caress 100 000 to convert your supposedly already existing game to PCs and Macs? I'm starting to suspect they blew too much of their budget on T-shirts and poo poo like that and now have to beg for more money to actually make the game. I was right, about this earlier, they pretty much blew through all the money they got from Kickstarter to make the ios version: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/starcommand/star-command-sci-fi-meets-gamedev-story-for-ios-an/posts/208395
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Jul 9, 2012 19:06
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I like jetpacks.
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Jul 9, 2012 19:10
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Der Shovel posted:Yep, that's steep and kinda lovely. The whole thing is starting to reek a bit what with them having a second kickstarter before actually shipping anything. I held off from the first one due to the whole "you won't actually get the game so what's the point" thing, and I'm gonna hold off on this one. The finished game is surely going to be less than 25 bucks. 100k isn't a crazy number. Gotta have the UI handle mouse and keyboard input, and a ton of different hardware configurations, not to mention installing, uninstalling, compatibility testing, translations, legal fees, QA, and so on and so forth. (I used to primarily work on PC versions of multi platform games, and do pc ports as well)
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Jul 9, 2012 19:12
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raditts posted:Because I was 12 and my parents wouldn't buy it for me. Oh.. sorry  I believe you can download it for free now on their website. I thought you didn't think it existed or you couldn't buy it where you lived.
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Jul 9, 2012 19:15
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Juc66 posted:100k isn't a crazy number. Yes it is. This is a two man crew not Activision. If they have enough overhead where implementing installing and uninstalling or mouse and keyboard inputs costs tens of thousands of dollars they've got some serious loving problems. EDIT: Al! posted:I was right, about this earlier, they pretty much blew through all the money they got from Kickstarter to make the ios version: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/starcommand/star-command-sci-fi-meets-gamedev-story-for-ios-an/posts/208395 Hahaha, holy loving poo poo. Their remaining iOS budget is 16,000 bucks and they need 100 000 to "convert" the game to PC? Pull the other one, it's got bells on. There is no game, they realized they can't get poo poo done with the money they have left and are now begging for as much as they can get away with. Hopefully not much. Shaman Tank Spec fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Jul 9, 2012 |
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Jul 9, 2012 19:22
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Wasteland 2, Double Fine Adventure, Dead State: $15 iOS port: $25 Looks kinda fun but come on.
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Jul 9, 2012 19:24
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Der Shovel posted:Hahaha, holy loving poo poo. Their remaining iOS budget is 16,000 bucks and they need 100 000 to "convert" the game to PC? Pull the other one, it's got bells on. There is no game, they realized they can't get poo poo done with the money they have left and are now begging for as much as they can get away with. Hopefully not much. You read that wrong. After start-up costs, Kickstarter rewards, PAX, and taxes their remaining iOS budget was 4000 bucks. They spent $16,000 on startup costs + music + poster art + PAX + iPads.
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Jul 9, 2012 19:28
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Icept posted:Wasteland 2, Double Fine Adventure, Dead State: $15 I love Star Command and have been excited for it since the first Kickstarter but they should have released the iOS game first. I guess they must have really hit a tight spot or they wouldn't be doing this, but it feels a little shady, especially since they're not really acknowledging the situation directly.
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Jul 9, 2012 19:33
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I wonder how many conventions they'll be able to attend on a $100,000 budget? They also said that they've taken on $50,000 in debt, given how they used the Kickstarter money before, I don't trust them to actually use what they raised on development.
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Jul 9, 2012 20:04
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I can't believe they're offering physical rewards again after having to spend over a quarter of the money they raised the first time on them.
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Jul 9, 2012 20:26
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Al! posted:You read that wrong. After start-up costs, Kickstarter rewards, PAX, and taxes their remaining iOS budget was 4000 bucks. They spent $16,000 on startup costs + music + poster art + PAX + iPads. Haha, you're right, I did! That is even more hilarious and pathetically transparent. "So we squandered all your money. If you want the game you paid for, give us 100 000 more!"
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Jul 9, 2012 20:36
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I saw Star Command at PAX in a playable state, so apparently it is not totally vaporware.
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Jul 9, 2012 20:38
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Well, it's not as if they really wasted the money. I'll do a similar breakdown to what they did, based on how it looks to me. (I'll sum it up at the end since I tend to write like a crazy person) Now, on their checklist they claim they only ended up with $4k for game development. Wait, what about the other $16,000?? How could they raise $37,000 and only spend $4000 on the game itself?! What the gently caress?! Calm down, calm down. Let's look at their numbers. Subtracting what it cost to run the Kickstarter (fees, prizes, tax, etc), they only actually pulled in $20,000. You can criticize them for handling the prizes sloppily, and it seems like that's a valid point, and it's one they owned up to themselves. Another mis-step on their part was apparently getting overly cautions with legal matters, which led them to spend another $4000 just in that area. They owned up to this as well, but again, as with the prizes, it's not all wasted money. They just spent more then they probably needed to. Hardware purchases are basically a "business expense", too, so let's lump in the iPads here for $5000 spent on business stuff. So, if you take the $20,000 they raised, and subtract the $5000 in business expenses, you're left with $15,000. However, since they claimed they only spent $4000 on game development, that still leaves another $11,000 unaccounted for. Where'd it all end up? Well, problem number one is that $4000 number is only accounting for the money they spent on internal development. They also put $6000 into outsourced music. It's absurd not to count asset development as money that was "spent on the game". So take that money and add it back into their estimation of how much they were left with to develop the game, and now you're at a $10,000 total. Still low, but much less insane. And the rest? PR expenses. $2K spent on ads, and $3K spent on going to a con to promote the game. $5K total. And, hell, with how much buzz this game has going for it at this point, I can't say I think that was money poorly spent. Conclusion: Not much money was actually wasted. They raised $37,000 total, but had to give $7000 away on various fees - Amazon, Kickstarter, and Uncle Sam all want their cut. Of the remaining $30,000, they put the vast majority, two thirds of it, straight into their project, and used the remaining third on prize fulfillment. Could they have produced those prizes for less money? Almost certainly, they say so themselves. But did they just "squander all the money"? Nah, that's a really skewed view of lovely situation. They only spent $10,000 on prizes, with the majority of the money, the other $20,000, going into the project. $10,000 went into development, $5000 into PR, and another $5000 on business expenses. Doesn't seem that irresponsible to me. XboxPants fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Jul 9, 2012 |
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Jul 9, 2012 21:01
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http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/w21/super-techno-kitten-adventure 21st Street Games are trying to do crowd funding for the upgraded version of Techno Kitten Adventure they want to put out. I'm not entirely sure how into the concept the people around here are, but I thought I'd mention it anyway. Didn't see anything for the last few days on it and it just started up. 
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Jul 9, 2012 21:13
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XboxPants posted:Well, it's not as if they really wasted the money. I'm not going to go into that, but again: the amount of money they are asking to "port the game" from iOS to PC and Mac is 3x higher than the amount of money they got initially, which included all the startup costs, lawyers and all that poo poo. It's 25x higher than the 4000 they spent on pure development. That figure is so inflated it's almost funny.
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Jul 9, 2012 21:17
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The irresponsible part seems to be asking for more money when they haven't delivered on the original investment yet. Especially since they note that funds coming from this next wave of investments will go towards the completion of the previous project. That sounds like poor economics on their part. That just brings up the question of how the first product will turn out if this Kickstarter fails (it most likely won't). Will it push back the release date? Will it still be as polished? At least the language says 'to help the final stage of mobile development' so it doesn't sound like it's being held hostage. Compared to other Kickstarter games, the cost of entry seems ridiculous for a port as opposed to something being created from scratch. I really don't see why they could have waited until the game officially launched to unveil plans to expand. That just makes me believe that development is already in trouble if they need a cash infusion right before the game's actual soft release (August).
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Jul 9, 2012 21:22
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Der Shovel posted:I'm not going to go into that, but again: the amount of money they are asking to "port the game" from iOS to PC and Mac is 3x higher than the amount of money they got initially, which included all the startup costs, lawyers and all that poo poo. It's 25x higher than the 4000 they spent on pure development. That figure is so inflated it's almost funny. 10,000, not 4000. So 10x, not 25x. But yeah I got no idea why they need that much money for a mobile->PC port. That... no idea. Harlock posted:I really don't see why they could have waited until the game officially launched to unveil plans to expand. That just makes me believe that development is already in trouble if they need a cash infusion right before the game's actual soft release (August). It is weird. I mean, aren't they planning on making any money on the actual launch of the game?
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Jul 9, 2012 21:24
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Caitlin posted:http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/w21/super-techno-kitten-adventure It does look fun, don't get me wrong, but TKA wasn't exactly a complicated game to begin with. Shalinor fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Jul 9, 2012 |
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Jul 9, 2012 21:26
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XboxPants posted:10,000, not 4000. So 10x, not 25x. But yeah I got no idea why they need that much money for a mobile->PC port. That... no idea. $6000 for music is absurd, especially for a small iOS game. All of the sounds in Kinetic Void, and music are being done for a quarter of that, and are much higher quality, including a 30 minute soundtrack. I hate to be down on another developer but they do not know how to manage money at all. \/\/ It should only be 10%. 5% Each, Kickstarter and Amazon LumberingTroll fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Jul 9, 2012 |
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Jul 9, 2012 21:34
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Just thought of something else, they're not gonna get that full 100k. They payed $7000 on their earlier $37,000 project, if you use the same ratio, they'll collect less than $80,000 from this one if they hit that goal. Also consider the "we've already sunk $50,000 into this" statement. In the end, they've put $60,000 into the mobile version. They're asking for $80,000 to port it. Now, instead of asking 25x how much they spent before, they're asking just 1.3x. Also they're gonna have to pay for prizes, some of the money is going into finishing development of the mobile game, and it might even be closer to an equal amount for the port as for creation. Which still seems absurd. But not crazypants absurd.
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Jul 9, 2012 21:38
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XboxPants posted:10,000, not 4000. So 10x, not 25x. But yeah I got no idea why they need that much money for a mobile->PC port. That... no idea. Because they blew their money elsewhere and now desperately need more money, but they can't very well just come out and say it so they have to hope people buy that they need 100 000 to convert an iPad game to PCs and Macs. Which is just loving ludicrous. EDIT: XboxPants posted:But not crazypants absurd. No it is crazypants absurd. It really is, and either they have been colossal fuckwits with their project so far (which I would believe considering they spent 6000 dollars on their loving music) and they have to effectively redo the whole thing for PC and Mac, or they've run out of money and are trying to cover up. Shaman Tank Spec fucked around with this message at 21:45 on Jul 9, 2012 |
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Jul 9, 2012 21:41
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XboxPants posted:Stuff The issue is not that the money wasn't spent "on the game" it's that it clearly wasn't budgeted with the least bit of foresight. Let's go back to that $20k figure. Now we all should know that isn't a lot of money to develop a game of any degree of scale, let alone one that is supposed to be "epic" to borrow a word off of their Kickstarter. 20k is practically starvation wages for one person for one year's work. So, clearly, they are running on a shoestring budget. I understand why they had to purchase the iPads, and even why they wanted to have complete legal coverage (although you can spend much, much less money registering an LLC; it feels like they called the first lawyer they found in the phone book), so I'm taking those costs off of the table. However, those things taken in makes the budget look even thinner than when they started. First of all there's the $5000 they spent on "PR." Why do they need to spend a quarter of their budget on PR right at the outset? Of course advertising helps sell a game but they already have a built-in player base from their Kickstarter backers, given that they aren't giving any of them the game. Maybe from that revenue they can start looking into stuff like PAX but since money is going to be tight from the outset why are they spending so much right away? Then there's the $6000 they spent on music. I agree that music can be important, but in terms of iOS games a lot of people prefer to listen to their own. So why didn't they look for low-cost or royalty-free music to put into their game. I can understand having an artistic vision but there is so much out there but you spending another quarter of your budget on the music when that leaves you only 4k for the rest of the game's assets, programming, design etc. seems insane.
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Jul 9, 2012 21:46
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This is the price Star Command pays for besmirching the name of the amazing 1988 Star Command  raditts posted:Now someone just tell me that Jumpman is being remade and I'll have everything I need in life.
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Jul 9, 2012 22:01
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LumberingTroll posted:$6000 for music is absurd, especially for a small iOS game. All of the sounds in Kinetic Void, and music are being done for a quarter of that, and are much higher quality, including a 30 minute soundtrack. (I have since made friends on audio-side and can get fitting music, even original stuff, quite a bit cheaper... but just saying - the expenses they're posting are kind of par for the course for "we have no idea what anything should cost so let's just trust the first contractor we talk to and ask for 'really good music'")
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Jul 9, 2012 22:02
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I don't find the music cost that objectionable - it's hard out there for a musician, so I'm glad one was well-paid. They got $50,000 into debt making Star Command, apparently, so I can believe the $100,000 budget for finishing it and expanding the PC version to support high resolutions and more content. The first Kickstarter was also pre-Doublefine, so surely they're looking to tap into the new Kickstarter market. All that said, I don't feel entirely comfortable backing this new one until they're a little more transparent about what's going on with them. I can guess why they need to do a second Kickstarter, but they really should break it down. I know it's not a scam, but if I'm going to back a second Kickstarter from them I'd like some transparency about what exactly the money is going to be used for, besides the vague "more developers". Right now it feels like they're trying to downplay that they need more money to finish the iOS version. Star Guarded fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Jul 9, 2012 |
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Jul 9, 2012 22:16
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Al! posted:You read that wrong. After start-up costs, Kickstarter rewards, PAX, and taxes their remaining iOS budget was 4000 bucks. They spent $16,000 on startup costs + music + poster art + PAX + iPads. So their original goal was $20,000 to fund the iOS game, and they underestimated how much all the ancillary stuff would cost them so they came in underfunded for the actual project. That can happen, understandably. Sucks really bad for the people who donated and still don't have a game for their cash. The thing that smells is that they haven't even delivered on their original project yet and now they're asking for five times as much to do a supposedly ambitious port/upgrade of their original game(which they have not finished or released yet). Edit: gently caress me, this moves faster than I thought. Harlock said it better. Kanos fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Jul 9, 2012 |
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Jul 9, 2012 22:17
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Hey, its not crazy, they are going to have to get a lot of top of the line computers with different chips and operating systems to make sure the game works on all them. Also, a new ipad is probably going to be coming out soon. They will need to get several of it. They probably need a few iphones and those cost several hundred per phone plus like a hundred each month. Plus blow and hookers are expensive. You can't make an ios(pc mac port) game without blow and hookers.
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Jul 9, 2012 23:59
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So the Retrovirus kickstarter failed pretty hard. I wanted to give you guys some details, because even in failure we fall into a pretty interesting group. According to Kickstarter's internal data, 82% of projects that raise at least 20% of their goal amount succeed in funding. Being part of the 18% sucks, but there's knowledge to be gained from this that might help us (and other teams) make it over the hump that we stalled at. First, the data: 29% of all funding came from sources internal to Kickstarter. This includes referrals from other projects, being featured in "staff picks," and otherwise being visible to people already browsing Kickstarter. 71% of all funding came from sources external to Kickstarter. This includes media, youtubers and forums to which members of our team belong like Reddit, SA and EJ. This is of interest because, prior to this drive, almost all of our publicity has come via storefront presence on Steam. This is the first time we've had to use the media as the primary engine for PR, and we did manage to get some traction. Top 5 Funding Sources by Number of Pledges (Minimum $15): Youtube.com (Via TotalBiscuit's "WTF Is.." video): 187 Direct Traffic (Word of Mouth link, via messenger or bookmark): 141 RockPaperShotgun.com (Kickstarter Katchup once weekly on Saturday): 129 Kickstarter Internal "Discover Video Games": 110 Reddit.com (3 threads over two weeks that made the front of r/gaming): 105 Top 5 Funding Sources by Dollars Pledged: Direct Traffic: $4,826.82 Youtube.com: $4,400 RockPaperShotgun.com: $3,541 Kickstarter Internal "Search": $3,541 Reddit.com: $2,659.51 If you exclude Kickstarter internal sources, our top four pledge sources totaled 51.9% of all dollars pledged. All of our other "long tail" external sources were worth only around 19.1%; only a few percent behind what TotalBiscuit's youtube video did by itself. Rock Paper Shotgun was the only "traditional" games journalism outlet that posted on us that drove significant funding our way, and they summed their opinion up this past Saturday by saying they were: quote:"Completely bemused by this one. By both how little money it raised, and how little coverage it received from the rest of the oblivious gaming press." We are bad at PR, so we were coming into this campaign with a very low profile. We received a ton of press for a team of our size, and we've established a lot of new press relationships for the future. With that said, $75k was ambitious. Our team and our game lack the clout at present to get the coverage needed to succeed at that high of a goal total. If we look at the sources that funded us as large percentages of our total, Youtube (via TotalBiscuit), Rock Paper Shotgun and Reddit all funded us fairly well, but the other two dozen or so media sources that picked us up generally struggled to generate more than $100 each. This is, though, commensurate with their readership/viewership. We needed to get the attention of three or four more audiences roughly the size of TotalBiscuit's to succeed. One good story on any of the "major" news outlets might have done it, but again, we lack the clout to land such an article. Looking at Kickstarter as a metagame, we failed to adequately explain the differences between a successful funding drive and a failed one, and we also failed to provide the urgency that so many other projects thrive on. Truthfully, there wasn't a financial knife to our necks, and I think that made people waver some in pledging to us. Obsurveyor pointed that out here a week or so ago, and was correct in doing so. We needed to be more clear about what our funding was going to do for us, and for the players funding us. So that's that. Doing it over again, I'd Kickstart for somewhere around $30k. I'd have focused that Kickstarter on the game itself, separating out the tools, with a demo available day one. I'd then finish the game, and prepare a tools Kickstarter for after release. It was ambitious of us to assume we could get the public and media support necessary to do everything in one lump. As for the game itself, you can consider this a pre-announcement that we're targeting a Desura alpha release with some consistent single and multiplayer updates through the rest of development. We have secured some friends and family funding for the next couple of months, and we're reducing the scope of the release to finish sometime in September. Thanks to you lot for the support! If you have any questions on the whole process, ask away.
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Jul 9, 2012 23:59
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cydereal posted:Obsurveyor pointed that out here a week or so ago, and was correct in doing so. We needed to be more clear about what our funding was going to do for us, and for the players funding us. quote:So that's that. Doing it over again, I'd Kickstart for somewhere around $30k. I'd have focused that Kickstarter on the game itself, separating out the tools, with a demo available day one. I'd then finish the game, and prepare a tools Kickstarter for after release. It was ambitious of us to assume we could get the public and media support necessary to do everything in one lump.
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