Kickstarter Gaming - for $10.000,00 you get a "don't steal my money" emoji

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Kickstarter Gaming - for $10.000,00 you get a "don't steal my money" emoji

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coffeetable: Feb 5, 2006; TELL ME AGAIN HOW GREAT BRITAIN WOULD BE IF IT WAS RULED BY THE MERCILESS JACKBOOT OF PRINCE CHARLES

YES I DO TALK TO PLANTS ACTUALLY

echoMateria posted:

Flexible Funding is the sensible solution for all campaigns except the ones that need impossible amounts of money for things that you have no other hope to pay for, like someone who needs millions of dollars to pay for a surgery. If you look at IndieGoGo, you'll find the majority of all game projects use flexible funding these days, because you can start working on a game with a part of the funds needed and finish it later with alternate revenues instead of gambling on Fixed Funding.

Crowdfunding sites promise some kind of product in return for money. There is obviously a minimum amount of funding needed in order for the product to be completed. If you only get half that amount, you won't be able to make half a product, you won't be able to make a product at all.

This is why flexible funding is a stupid idea. It's a big fluorescent sign saying "we haven't budgeted this for poo poo!"

# ? Feb 15, 2013 14:42

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# ? May 16, 2024 08:19

Saoshyant: Oct 26, 2010

Hey, remember the Tactilol Shooter later renamed "Takedown"? The one that Kickstarted for money to pitch for a publisher? That one, they just got signed by 505 Games.

I guess we should expect more projects to try a similar approach in the future? Or maybe this one turning out terrible will be enough to prevent this sort of thing from becoming a fad in the first place. I sincerely have no idea, but these certainly are interesting times.

# ? Feb 15, 2013 15:36

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

echoMateria posted:

The video on the IndieGogo page is made entirely of gameplay and the game isn't text heavier than any other other JRPG. If you read the section of the IndieGoGo page that reads:

You will see that it explains how the game plays in detail. Afterwards It has a link to an earlier post in our forum that explain the combat in further detail:

All of these explanations have many screenshots to show you every detail of the game. That being said, we are working on more videos, but they take time due to the reasons I explained above.

When you get a solid wall of posts that nobody understands what the game is, the correct answer is not to say "well if you'd just read the indiegogo page, you'll see..."

It means there is something seriously off with how you are presenting the game. Between that, and your blinded stance on the nature of flexible funding, it doesn't present you or your funding drive in the best of lights. You're coming across like one of those egotistical idea men who must be always right, that assumes anyone who disagrees with them just didn't read/understand the material, and that's not a good way to appear.

# ? Feb 15, 2013 15:49

ReV VAdAUL: Oct 3, 2004; I'm WILD about
WILDMAN

echoMateria posted:

Flexible Funding is the sensible solution for all campaigns except the ones that need impossible amounts of money for things that you have no other hope to pay for, like someone who needs millions of dollars to pay for a surgery. If you look at IndieGoGo, you'll find the majority of all game projects use flexible funding these days, because you can start working on a game with a part of the funds needed and finish it later with alternate revenues instead of gambling on Fixed Funding.

You seem to have confused "sensible" with "most desirable for me".

You dismiss fixed funding as a gamble but the people you want to donate to you are gambling far more, not only do they have very few legal protections but the best possible outcome for their donation is receiving the product you want donations to complete. You getting their money but not enough to complete the project means they've thrown their cash away. You mention alternative revenues but if you're failing to raise enough money from crowdsourcing where is that money going to come from.

I've no idea if your self serving claim that the majority of projects on Indiegogo use flexible funding, which given that isn't available through kickstarter may be one of the main reasons they're there, but I'd be far more interested in the form the majority of fully funded projects on Indiegogo take.

# ? Feb 15, 2013 16:13

echoMateria: Aug 29, 2012; Fruitbat Factory

Lets agree to disagree on the merits and securities of Fixed and Flexible funding then, there is no point in arguing about it endlessly.

Shalinor posted:

When you get a solid wall of posts that nobody understands what the game is, the correct answer is not to say "well if you'd just read the indiegogo page, you'll see..."

It means there is something seriously off with how you are presenting the game. Between that, and your blinded stance on the nature of flexible funding, it doesn't present you or your funding drive in the best of lights. You're coming across like one of those egotistical idea men who must be always right, that assumes anyone who disagrees with them just didn't read/understand the material, and that's not a good way to appear.

I just pointed out the two people, not "a solid wall of posts", who said that they haven't understand the gameplay well from the video, that they can get detailed explanations on the IndieGoGo page, I even added that we are working on further videos.

echoMateria fucked around with this message at 16:44 on Feb 15, 2013

# ? Feb 15, 2013 16:34

ReV VAdAUL: Oct 3, 2004; I'm WILD about
WILDMAN

echoMateria posted:

Lets agree to disagree on the merits and securities of Fixed and Flexible funding then, there is no point in arguing about it endlessly.

Given this is a central tenet of your request for funding that you have wholly failed to justify, how can we agree to disagree?

# ? Feb 15, 2013 16:37

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

echoMateria posted:

There is no need to take that tone either.

I am offering critical feedback, it has no tone. I don't especially care about your game one way or the other, and I can see the thrust of what you're trying to say - I'm just telling you how you're coming across.

Also, when the only three replies you get are critical of your gameplay, and no one steps in to defend it, etc, yes, that tends to speak to a shared sentiment. I can tell you that I had no clue what was going on either, for instance, but chose to say nothing because the game itself seems too dense for my tastes. This is coming from someone that enjoys obscure indie games that make zero sense.

# ? Feb 15, 2013 16:46

The Moon Monster: Dec 30, 2005

After looking at the indiegogo page I guess it's something like a jRPG crossed with Guess Who?

# ? Feb 15, 2013 16:50

macnbc: Dec 13, 2006; brb, time travelin'

TheCoon posted:

I don't see how I'm whining, but whatever.

I'm well aware of the point of stretch goals, I was just questioning why they didn't announce it as a multi-platform game if porting is so easy? It'll suck if they end up being less than 50k away from an actual good stretch goal to the majority of their backers because porting the game to Mac/Linux or some future stretch goal they've mentioned about porting the game to worthless garbage like the Ouya/Steambox came before it.

e: This isn't some windows fanboy thing either, I cancelled my pledge to Republique for the same reasons when they announced a non-iOS version of that game.

They're using Unity engine, which makes porting relatively easy, but it still costs resources in terms of manhours, QA, etc.

I see nothing wrong with saying that you need a bare minimum of X amount of money to make a game happen, and then saying "but if we had X amount more then we can afford to port it elsewhere."

I think this is a little different than Republique, because they made the additional port part of their original goal to begin with. Dreamfall is just asking for (ultimately very little) extra to make it happen.

# ? Feb 15, 2013 16:53

echoMateria: Aug 29, 2012; Fruitbat Factory

Shalinor posted:

I am offering critical feedback, it has no tone. I don't especially care about your game one way or the other, and I can see the thrust of what you're trying to say - I'm just telling you how you're coming across.

Also, when the only three replies you get are critical of your gameplay, and no one steps in to defend it, etc, yes, that tends to speak to a shared sentiment. I can tell you that I had no clue what was going on either, for instance, but chose to say nothing because the game itself seems too dense for my tastes. This is coming from someone that enjoys obscure indie games that make zero sense.

I didn't intend to take a negative tone in my replies either, though I might have sounded that way, if I offended anyone, I apologize.

ReV VAdAUL posted:

Given this is a central tenet of your request for funding that you have wholly failed to justify, how can we agree to disagree?

Alright then lets talk about it.

We picked Flexible Funding because it fits better to our project.

We don't need a fixed amount of money to release the 99 Spirits, the $3000 we are seeking with this campaign will not cover all our expenses for this project either. We will release the game eventually, but if we can get some support, we can release it faster and without putting a big strain on our budgets individual budgets, which might requite us to take on other jobs to make ends meet and delay it and our future projects.

So with this IndieGoGo project we are just seekingsupport from people who are interested in the type of games we release, the English localizations of Japanese indie games, and aiming to gauge the level of demand for them, so we can balance our releasing schedule accordingly.

Kickstarter is only available to US and UK based entities, which we are not, yet. So we went with IndieGoGo and seeing that they offer a flexible option, which suited us better we picked that one.

This is the first crowd funding campaign that we have run so we have a lot to learn about them. So I appreciate the insights you provide, but I still do not understand the trust towards the Fixed campaigns and distrust towards the Flexible ones. Especially when people say that they'll never support a campaign only because it chose the flexible option.

Edit: My partner was discussing the funding with another developer friend of ours and they come up with some improvements to our description on where the funds will go topic on the IndieGoGo page. We think it describes our goal clearer now.

echoMateria fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Feb 15, 2013

# ? Feb 15, 2013 17:16

BattleMaster: Aug 14, 2000

It would look a lot less sketchy if you just picked $3000 as a goal, without flexible funding. Even if it won't cover everything, you already said it will cover some licensing fees or whatever. That's definitely better than saying "throw some cash at us, or don't, I don't care."

# ? Feb 15, 2013 17:32

OJ MIST 2 THE DICK: Sep 11, 2008; Anytime I need to see your face I just close my eyes
And I am taken to a place
Where your crystal minds and magenta feelings
Take up shelter in the base of my spine
Sweet like a chica cherry cola
-Cheap Trick; Nap Ghost

I now have no faith in your ability to budget.

I was thinking about giving you some money, but I think I'll find a better place for it.

# ? Feb 15, 2013 18:11

seorin: May 23, 2005; 2 Sun's Dusk (Day 78)
Of the Seven Visions of Seven Trials of the Incarnate, I have now fulfilled the Fifth Trial.

echoMateria posted:

We picked Flexible Funding because it fits better to our project.

We don't need a fixed amount of money to release the 99 Spirits,

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of crowdfunding. Maybe the idea of flexible funding fits your goals better, but actually using it is a critical marketing failure. People have, for various reasons, a lot of trust issues with flexible funding campaigns. It's a significant enough sentiment that folks in this thread have suggested it harms the IndieGoGo platform as a whole because people won't take it seriously as long as that's even an option. Maybe you disagree, and that's fine, but that's completely irrelevant to marketing. You're not going to successfully market your (unreleased) product by failing to consider how potential customers actually feel and telling people they're wrong if they disagree with you.

If you are taking the standpoint that the extra money is simply nice to have rather than required, you should be even more accepting of an all or nothing "gamble". The fact is you'd easily get significantly more money via fixed funding than flexible due to the trust issues mentioned above. You know how companies that don't even really need the money are running Kickstarter campaigns because it's like getting paid to advertise and conduct market research instead of paying for those things? That's smart. That's good marketing. They're riding the current wave of public support. Flexible funding is the opposite. It's a red flag that communicates a wealth of negative messages about your project. It's not doing you any favors.

It also might be worth your while to try and look into a way to get a true Kickstarter campaign going anyway. There are plenty of non-US, non-UK companies that have managed it, presumably through a trusted friend. Kickstarter is to crowdfunding what Steam is to digital distribution. IndieGoGo is more like Desura - it's not bad at all, but you'd rather have your game on Steam than Desura, right? If you go this route, though, get your friend to help you with PR, because (and I mean this as sincere advice, not an insult) you are kind of bad at it.

# ? Feb 15, 2013 18:20

DMW45: Oct 29, 2011; Come into my parlor~
Said the spider to the fly~

New video for Awakened,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrK25p64ndM

# ? Feb 15, 2013 18:53

ReV VAdAUL: Oct 3, 2004; I'm WILD about
WILDMAN

This excellent writeup by JackmMnn http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=3492577&perpage=40&pagenumber=69#post412552462 in the TG Crowd sourced thread is required reading for anyone seeking to launch a crowd sourced project and well worth reading for everyone else.

# ? Feb 15, 2013 18:58

funakupo: May 9, 2006; the ultimate longterm partner; Oven Wrangler

Shalinor posted:

When you get a solid wall of posts that nobody understands what the game is, the correct answer is not to say "well if you'd just read the indiegogo page, you'll see..."

It means there is something seriously off with how you are presenting the game. Between that, and your blinded stance on the nature of flexible funding, it doesn't present you or your funding drive in the best of lights. You're coming across like one of those egotistical idea men who must be always right, that assumes anyone who disagrees with them just didn't read/understand the material, and that's not a good way to appear.

My immediate thought was the scene from Brain Candy about the pill that gives worms to ex-girlfriends---so definitely a shared impression of him. Good to see he's trying to clarify further but it's still confusing...

# ? Feb 15, 2013 19:38

TheCoon: Mar 3, 2009

macnbc posted:

I think this is a little different than Republique, because they made the additional port part of their original goal to begin with. Dreamfall is just asking for (ultimately very little) extra to make it happen.

I actually mentioned Republique because they were pretty clear in the fact that they weren't making a Windows version because it would compromise their iOS game to have to design it around mouse controls or something. They only changed their mind once they were clearly not going to make the goal.

Typing it out actually makes me think it wasn't a very good comparison. I do still think it's kind of crappy to have your first stretch goal be ports to platforms the vast majority of backers don't care about (Mac/Linux/Ouya/Steambox) instead of "new locations, characters and side stories, adding great depth to the world, additional gameplay and new dialogue, lore, magical creatures...and some cool surprises!" which would apparently cost the same amount of money.

# ? Feb 15, 2013 20:55

macnbc: Dec 13, 2006; brb, time travelin'

TheCoon posted:

I actually mentioned Republique because they were pretty clear in the fact that they weren't making a Windows version because it would compromise their iOS game to have to design it around mouse controls or something. They only changed their mind once they were clearly not going to make the goal.

Typing it out actually makes me think it wasn't a very good comparison. I do still think it's kind of crappy to have your first stretch goal be ports to platforms the vast majority of backers don't care about (Mac/Linux/Ouya/Steambox) instead of "new locations, characters and side stories, adding great depth to the world, additional gameplay and new dialogue, lore, magical creatures...and some cool surprises!" which would apparently cost the same amount of money.

There's always going to be features in games that not everybody uses but that a small percentage of people find extremely useful. Do you get upset when developers put subtitles in games if you're not deaf? That they put a colorblind mode in if you can see color perfectly fine? Those use dev resources that could be used to make additional gameplay as well.

If Mac/Linux users want to collectively contribute $50k to make it happen, how does it hurt the overall product? You're sounding kinda sour grapes about the whole thing.

macnbc fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Feb 15, 2013

# ? Feb 15, 2013 21:29

TheCoon: Mar 3, 2009

macnbc posted:

There's always going to be features in games that not everybody uses but that a small percentage of people find extremely useful. Do you get upset when developers put subtitles in games if you're not deaf? That they put a colorblind mode in if you can see color perfectly fine? Those use dev resources that could be used to make additional gameplay as well.

If Mac/Linux users want to collectively contribute $50k to make it happen, how does it hurt the overall product? You're sounding kinda sour grapes about the whole thing.

Plenty of people who aren't deaf use subtitles and I can't think of many games that even offer colourblind modes.

It really isn't my intention to come off as sour about the topic, I haven't cancelled my pledge or anything.

I guess my overall point is that I wish there was a way for people to specify which stretch goals they wanted if/when the project was funded. Xenonauts did something like that by offering a poll and then arranging stretch goals based on the way voting ended.

# ? Feb 15, 2013 21:46

InShaneee: Aug 11, 2006; Cleanse them. Cleanse the world of their ignorance and sin. Bathe them in the crimson of ... am I on speakerphone?; Fun Shoe

echoMateria posted:

We don't need a fixed amount of money to release the 99 Spirits

Bottom line with Flexible Funding is that there is really no way to make "We don't strictly need the money" and "The game is coming out regardless" not sound like "We might end up blowing your donations on booze". No matter how much you try to claim Flexible is a better 'fit' for your project, the fact is that many people in this thread (myself included) wouldn't have batted an eye if you'd just made it Fixed and said "Here's our expenses, here's our goal to cover them". Because if what you really, actually want is money to cover your expenses, then you really should just shoot for that, up front.

# ? Feb 15, 2013 23:44

DMW45: Oct 29, 2011; Come into my parlor~
Said the spider to the fly~

Huh. The Kicktraq Projection for Awakened is going back up, it dipped as low as 200-300k over the past week, now it's climbed back up around 270k-450k projection. With some luck, and alot of hard work in spreading the word, maybe it could make the goal after all.

# ? Feb 16, 2013 07:48

Sankis: Mar 8, 2004; But I remember the fella who told me. Big lad. Arms as thick as oak trees, a stunning collection of scars, nice eye patch. A REAL therapist he was. Er wait. Maybe it was rapist?

Saoshyant posted:

Hey, remember the Tactilol Shooter later renamed "Takedown"? The one that Kickstarted for money to pitch for a publisher? That one, they just got signed by 505 Games.

I guess we should expect more projects to try a similar approach in the future? Or maybe this one turning out terrible will be enough to prevent this sort of thing from becoming a fad in the first place. I sincerely have no idea, but these certainly are interesting times.

Huh. I guess those guys knew what they were doing after all.

At least I'd hope that's the case. Despite backing it, I sorta wrote it off after most of their updates related to forum stuff. I'm glad I was apparently wrong.

# ? Feb 16, 2013 08:04

TychoCelchuuu: Jan 2, 2012; This space for Rent.

505 Games is the publisher behind quality games like "Blackwater Kinect" and "Naughty Bear: Panic in Paradise" so I think it's safe to say that being published by them is not necessarily a sign that you've got your poo poo together.

# ? Feb 16, 2013 08:22

Tommy 2.0: Apr 26, 2008; My fabulous CoX shall live forever!

BenRGamer posted:

New video for Awakened,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrK25p64ndM

My god. I hate memes, but this may just be the best application of one I have ever seen.

# ? Feb 16, 2013 10:27

Basic Chunnel: Sep 21, 2010; Jesus! Jesus Christ! Say his name! Jesus! Jesus! Come down now!

They need a meme, the way it's going. Shame that they don't have any cult hero developers or nostalgia factor to draw on. I'm gonna be sad when it fails because creating my own X-Man was a childhood dream of mine, and no game has really delivered on the promise. Freedom Force was probably the closest but it felt limited in its stats-y powers and extremely limited models. I suppose you could argue there are tons of superhero games by another name (Dishonored,etc) but what I want is this. I've pledged as much as I can.

Basic Chunnel fucked around with this message at 11:48 on Feb 16, 2013

# ? Feb 16, 2013 11:44

BizarroAzrael: Apr 6, 2006; "That must weigh heavily on your soul. Let me purge it for you."

Basic Chunnel posted:

They need a meme, the way it's going. Shame that they don't have any cult hero developers or nostalgia factor to draw on. I'm gonna be sad when it fails because creating my own X-Man was a childhood dream of mine, and no game has really delivered on the promise. Freedom Force was probably the closest but it felt limited in its stats-y powers and extremely limited models. I suppose you could argue there are tons of superhero games by another name (Dishonored,etc) but what I want is this. I've pledged as much as I can.

Pretty sure there was an X-Men game a couple of years ago that was supposed to offer you that, but, eh, Activision.

# ? Feb 16, 2013 12:21

Tommy 2.0: Apr 26, 2008; My fabulous CoX shall live forever!

Basic Chunnel posted:

They need a meme, the way it's going. Shame that they don't have any cult hero developers or nostalgia factor to draw on. I'm gonna be sad when it fails because creating my own X-Man was a childhood dream of mine, and no game has really delivered on the promise. Freedom Force was probably the closest but it felt limited in its stats-y powers and extremely limited models. I suppose you could argue there are tons of superhero games by another name (Dishonored,etc) but what I want is this. I've pledged as much as I can.

I wanted the same, City of Heroes scratched that itch AMAZINGLY well. To bad NCSoft is gently caress chuckles. I did up my pledge to this game by an amount 5x my original though. They are at around 150k right now.

# ? Feb 16, 2013 12:59

Gonzo McFee: Jun 19, 2010

So I just found out that "War for the Overworld" is a thing about two months too late. One quick question, what's keeping EA from suing the pants off of these guys for ripping off their intellectual property?

# ? Feb 16, 2013 13:06

Megazver: Jan 13, 2006

Gonzo McFee posted:

So I just found out that "War for the Overworld" is a thing about two months too late. One quick question, what's keeping EA from suing the pants off of these guys for ripping off their intellectual property?

You can't patent gameplay.

# ? Feb 16, 2013 13:24

Maluco Marinero: Jan 18, 2001; Damn that's a
fine elephant.

Megazver posted:

You can't patent gameplay.

Yeah, just look at the issues iOS indie developers have had from clone shops. If they steal assets it's easy to have a case, but if it's just mechanics you'll be pretty stuck.

# ? Feb 16, 2013 13:26

DMW45: Oct 29, 2011; Come into my parlor~
Said the spider to the fly~

Here's another attempt at publicity for Project Awakened,

quote:

Mass Twitter:
https://twitter.com/CynicalBrit

Goal: A "WTF is Project Awakened!" review by Total Biscuit! It's gonna happen in 28 mins... get on twitter, or create one... we'll do this!

Denmark
GMT+0100, and 08:00 PM! (27 mins from now)

Let's show him that we mean it! All those in favor, please do it!

/Casper

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ? Feb 16, 2013 19:43

echoMateria: Aug 29, 2012; Fruitbat Factory

seorin posted:

It also might be worth your while to try and look into a way to get a true Kickstarter campaign going anyway. There are plenty of non-US, non-UK companies that have managed it, presumably through a trusted friend.

We've had offers to help with a Kickstarter venture, so we'll attempt that next time.

BattleMaster posted:

It would look a lot less sketchy if you just picked $3000 as a goal, without flexible funding.

InShaneee posted:

Bottom line with Flexible Funding is that there is really no way to make "We don't strictly need the money" and "The game is coming out regardless" not sound like "We might end up blowing your donations on booze". No matter how much you try to claim Flexible is a better 'fit' for your project, the fact is that many people in this thread (myself included) wouldn't have batted an eye if you'd just made it Fixed and said "Here's our expenses, here's our goal to cover them". Because if what you really, actually want is money to cover your expenses, then you really should just shoot for that, up front.

When we were planning this IndieGoGo we looked at countless IndieGoGo and Kickstarter projects, discussed all kinds of details with people who hosted some of the well known successful ones and planned it through. One thing we weren't sure was the amount of money we could manage to raise from this venture. As a one year old company that works on a niche market of localizing Japanese games preparing to release their second game we had very low expectations on what we can manage in the crowd funding arena. So we decided to play it safe and pick the Flexible Funding. No one ever told us that some consider it fishy, it never even occurred to us, and as my earlier comments showed, we were confident that it was the smart choice. If only we knew how much negativity that would bring, we never would have went that way.

Please tell me more if you have any other ideas on how to improve our current campaign, and any other recommendations for any future ones we might have, aside calculating a final Fixed Funding goal that covers all the expenses for the project. That we will do for certain. We read that article about Reaper Miniatures, we already knew about them, we will keep in mind the parts of that story that we can apply to our practice. We can't change the current campaign's Flexible one though, it is not allowed.

# ? Feb 16, 2013 23:07

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Ether One looks neat - it's kina Amnesia meets Inception.

# ? Feb 16, 2013 23:24

ReV VAdAUL: Oct 3, 2004; I'm WILD about
WILDMAN

Shalinor posted:

Ether One looks neat - it's kina Amnesia meets Inception.

This looks good however the bullet point:

quote:

Navigate a hand-painted world where science-fiction meets the English coastline.

Makes me dream an impossible dream of a cyberpunk Neo-Blackpool.

# ? Feb 16, 2013 23:31

Macaluso: Sep 23, 2005; I HATE THAT HEDGEHOG, BROTHER!

Shalinor posted:

Ether One looks neat - it's kina Amnesia meets Inception.

Oh this looks awesome.

I hope it's not like. super creepy/scary like Amnesia though. I loved the part where he went through the door and ended up on a small island in the ocean. Basically more Inception less Amnesia

# ? Feb 16, 2013 23:37

XboxPants: Jan 30, 2006; Steven doesn't want me watching him sleep anymore.

echoMateria posted:

Please tell me more if you have any other ideas on how to improve our current campaign, and any other recommendations for any future ones we might have, aside calculating a final Fixed Funding goal that covers all the expenses for the project. That we will do for certain. We read that article about Reaper Miniatures, we already knew about them, we will keep in mind the parts of that story that we can apply to our practice. We can't change the current campaign's Flexible one though, it is not allowed.

Gamers want more details on the game mechanics. Phrases like "Your actions give you hints towards the essence of the enemy" and "Use the powers of five gems to draw out clues and unmask the enemy" don't really give a clear idea of what you're doing. I would suggest reading as many reviews of RPGs and puzzle games as possible so you can refine your ability to talk about these kinds of games.

Like, "strengthen the gems on your sword to gain a decisive edge" doesn't mean anything to me if I don't understand what the gems do to begin with. My best guess would be that it helps me do more powerful attacks except now that I've looked at the blog it seems the gems aren't for attacks at all.

I think your biggest problem is your video. The video is the most important part of your campaign. For many, many visitors, it's the only part of your project they'll see. If someone isn't intrigued by the video, they won't go looking for stuff to read about this project they don't care about, they'll just leave. So while it's good to give more details about gameplay on the description, it's futile if the video isn't converting people.

You need to get the word "puzzle" in the video. Now that I've read some of your other stuff, I see that you are actually using it in various places - even in your project description. But I'm never going to read any of that if I watch the video and then close the website.

It's true that the gameplay in your video isn't really more text-heavy than a typical jRPG. But, for one thing, companies typically don't use all-Japanese videos as promotional material. And even if they do, it's sort of okay for a jRPG. You can look at a jRPG battle screen and sorta get an idea of what the text is - "oh, those are attacks that I can select, those are names of enemies, those are items I guess". Etc.

In your video, there's text that comes up in the middle of the screen and we have absolutely no way of realizing that's the word for "sharp" and it's giving us a 20-questions-esque hint to the identity of the enemy that we then have to guess by typing in its name. Honestly the video of gameplay adds so much confusion that it almost causes harm. You should lay out a battle in at least as much detail as you give in that blog post.

# ? Feb 16, 2013 23:58

macnbc: Dec 13, 2006; brb, time travelin'

Dreamfall Chapters hit their $850k goal today.

Their first stretch goal at $900k will be Linux/Mac versions, followed by additional game material at $950k and $1M. Their top stretch goal is some sort of secondary project called The Longest Journey Home, at $2 Million. They say they'll give more details on that at $1 million.

# ? Feb 16, 2013 23:59

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

XboxPants posted:

Gamers want more details on the game mechanics. Phrases like "Your actions give you hints towards the essence of the enemy" and "Use the powers of five gems to draw out clues and unmask the enemy" don't really give a clear idea of what you're doing. I would suggest reading as many reviews of RPGs and puzzle games as possible so you can refine your ability to talk about these kinds of games.

What I gathered was "Anime skinned Mastermind" and stopped caring enough to investigate further. :shrug:

# ? Feb 17, 2013 00:08

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Macaluso posted:

Oh this looks awesome.

I hope it's not like. super creepy/scary like Amnesia though. I loved the part where he went through the door and ended up on a small island in the ocean. Basically more Inception less Amnesia

Yeah, this is what I'm hoping too. I am kind of too much of a horror game coward to play Amnesia, so it would be nice to have a game "like that" but more weird than scary :unsmith:

_{(I handle myself well in actual crises, but fake ghosts in fake games apparently make me fake lose my poo poo, and then I just get angry and turn the game off.)}

Also, inlined trailer for the lazy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av9iZ8m3BY4

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Feb 17, 2013

# ? Feb 17, 2013 00:09

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# ? May 16, 2024 08:19

echoMateria: Aug 29, 2012; Fruitbat Factory

XboxPants posted:

I think your biggest problem is your video. The video is the most important part of your campaign. For many, many visitors, it's the only part of your project they'll see. If someone isn't intrigued by the video, they won't go looking for stuff to read about this project they don't care about, they'll just leave. So while it's good to give more details about gameplay on the description, it's futile if the video isn't converting people.

Thanks for the detailed explanation, I'll have my partner read your suggestions on improving his descriptions.

We got some good progress with the gameplay trailer. We haven't put it up on IndieGoGo and Greenlight yet, will do so tomorrow if it passes the final evaluation.

Please take the first look and tell us what you think about its current state:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZniPLudYGdw

# ? Feb 17, 2013 00:47

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Kickstarter Gaming - for $10.000,00 you get a "don't steal my money" emoji

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