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JossiRossi posted:Yeah absolutely, but I feel like this in particular is a business mistep due to a misunderstanding of Kickstarter's strengths (Huge PC User Base) and weaknesses (People want Amplitude but why give money to apparent Industry Giants?). Had Harmonix said "Hey we're back to being small guys who make want they want and we're making a PC spiritual successor to Amplitude on our own!" then they'd likely have funded by now. Except they can't. They legally can't because Sony owns the name and pivotal elements of the mechanics, design and presentation. They'd love to have done that, they've said so... but it's this or nothing.
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May 20, 2014 03:43
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JossiRossi posted:Yeah absolutely, but I feel like this in particular is a business mistep due to a misunderstanding of Kickstarter's strengths (Huge PC User Base) and weaknesses (People want Amplitude but why give money to apparent Industry Giants?). Had Harmonix said "Hey we're back to being small guys who make want they want and we're making a PC spiritual successor to Amplitude on our own!" then they'd likely have funded by now. I don't think it's necessarily a misunderstanding so much as an experiment. And I don't see Sony's size as ultimately being of much relevance; they're a business like anything else (the fact that that it's Harmonix and not Sony asking for the money does make it a bit weird, though). This might be the only way for customers to signal that there's enough (or not) of an audience for a project to sustain itself. Which is important because Sony, or whoever, isn't going to greenlight a game with very uncertain prospects. If they asked, I'd jump on an opportunity to tell Sega I really want a Valkyria Chronicles 3 localization, and back it up with money upfront. Or if Bethesda was open to a small scale isometric Fallout spin-off. Or if Sony was thinking about porting Wild Arms 3-5 to the Vita. Or whatever. I don't see a problem with bigger companies (or, yeah, giants like Sony) attempting to mitigate risk through kickstarter screenings, if that risk was what was preventing them from making an attempt in the first place.
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May 20, 2014 03:51
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Gaspar Lewis posted:Except they can't. They legally can't because Sony owns the name and pivotal elements of the mechanics, design and presentation. Except thats bullshit. What pivotal elements are owned by Sony that aren't in Rock Band Blitz?
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May 20, 2014 04:30
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lizzyinthesky posted:Except thats bullshit. What pivotal elements are owned by Sony that aren't in Rock Band Blitz? I can't think of a good reason why they'd lie. They really like the Amplitude name? They are somehow at $430k atm.
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May 20, 2014 04:41
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There was a lot of talk in this very thread about how very very close to Magic Hex was, down to cards that were practically word-for-word. Last I looked I thought they pretty much *were* Magic, only with some fancier, online concepts. Still, pretty sure WOTC could easily not be dicks and issue an injunction mid-kickstarter rather than after they've collected all their pledges and are heavily into gamesmaking.
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May 20, 2014 05:04
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Have you guys seen Shards? https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1468280928/shards-online-a-customizable-sandbox-mmorpg/posts Its yet another game that claims to be the reincarnation of UO, but it actually has some gameplay footage. It looks surprisingly pretty fun. I decided to throw 20bux toward it.
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May 20, 2014 05:04
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graventy posted:There was a lot of talk in this very thread about how very very close to Magic Hex was, down to cards that were practically word-for-word. Last I looked I thought they pretty much *were* Magic, only with some fancier, online concepts. But now Hex can afford to settle, or pay for temporary rights or something. They couldn't do that if they didn't collect their Kickstarter money. And now that they've got even more work done on the project, it might be less expensive than redesigning things.
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May 20, 2014 05:10
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lizzyinthesky posted:Except thats bullshit. What pivotal elements are owned by Sony that aren't in Rock Band Blitz? That's just it. When you read the kickstarter, they're dead set on making an exact Amplitude successor, not just another Harmonix music game. And that's why they can't break away from Sony. That's exactly what I said. What's in Amplitude that's not in Guitar Hero or Rock Band? They really specifically want to do the tunnel of tracks and multiplayer and the little spaceships that shoot the notes with lasers and the dumb avatars and the whole shebang. They're convinced the changes from frequency to amplitude were GROUND BREAKING. Like everybody hated freq and loved amplitude, but you probably either liked both or didn't like either. Just give me another frequency on PC and I'd be perfectly happy, and I think most people would be too  I don't care about your laser spaceship IP
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May 20, 2014 05:16
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Witchmarsh looks rad as poo poo, guys. And the lead programmer was on Risk of Rain!
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May 20, 2014 05:54
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graventy posted:There was a lot of talk in this very thread about how very very close to Magic Hex was, down to cards that were practically word-for-word. Last I looked I thought they pretty much *were* Magic, only with some fancier, online concepts. Well, there are a number of subtle or significant differences ( most of which are covered here) but yes, the games are very similar in how they play, with some degree of card overlap. (I think a lot of these similarities get overstated because the differences are subtle -- a 2-cost, 2-diamond threshold hex card looks a lot like a 2-plains-cost Magic card, but might play very differently depending on the game situation, etc.) The bigger issue though is that traditionally you haven't been able to copyright a game; you could copyright, say, a particular rulebook for a game, but you couldn't copyright a game itself for the same reasons you can't copyright the idea of, say, "a book about elves and wizards and a magic ring." In video game terms, you can copyright Doom, but you can't copyright the concept of a 3d FPS with demons in it. When you look at the games industry as a whole there are a lot of very successful titles that were basically just new iterations of older concepts: Blizzard reiterating Battletech as World of Warcraft, Duke Nukem 3d (and every other FPS ever) as a retread of Doom, etc. If that kind of iterative development gets shut down by legal threats, it probably wouldn't be a good thing for the industry. Drifter posted:But now Hex can afford to settle, or pay for temporary rights or something. They couldn't do that if they didn't collect their Kickstarter money. And now that they've got even more work done on the project, it might be less expensive than redesigning things. Yeah, the timing here kinda reveals WotC's hand and shows this is more about pressuring a competitor than anything else. If they'd filed, say, right after the Kickstarter, Hex would've had much deeper pockets with which to fight the suit, or conversely had much more flexibility to settle claims by altering development. At this point Hex has pretty much finalized development and has presumably spent a lot of cash on development so has less to fight the suit. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 06:28 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 06:04
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In case anyone's wondering, the Hex team made an official statement here.
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May 20, 2014 06:26
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senrath posted:In case anyone's wondering, the Hex team made an official statement
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May 20, 2014 06:31
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lizzyinthesky posted:Except thats bullshit. What pivotal elements are owned by Sony that aren't in Rock Band Blitz? The scoring in Blitz is different and doesn't use the system where you're locking in tracks. Instead, the phrases are built where you're supposed to build your multipliers phrase to phrase instead of building the music track by track and locking it in piece by piece. So I'd say that's a pretty solid starting point as a guess for what Sony might own, and was actually kinda core enough to Frequency and Amplitude to explain why doing a game without those wouldn't really be the same.
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May 20, 2014 06:54
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lizzyinthesky posted:Except thats bullshit. What pivotal elements are owned by Sony that aren't in Rock Band Blitz? Potentially any combination of the following: the number of lanes, the number of notes in each lane, the connecting lines between the strings of notes, the fact that the lanes can represent different instruments between songs, the scoring system, the checkpoint system and its relation to the player's "health" meter, the moving phrase markers that turn a lane off, lanes that turn off at all, the functionality of the multiplayer power-ups, the head-to-head multiplayer functionality, the use of a crazy spaceship thing instead of an abstract geometric note window...
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May 20, 2014 06:55
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Cheekio posted:The Universim is cutting it pretty close. Hopefully 320 is actually enough for the team of 12 they've got working on the project, because that looks like all that they're getting. Looks like it'll get funded, but I'm pretty skeptical about how well this will turn out. It's basically promising to be Spore (the one everyone got hyped up for, not the actual game that came out) but on a much smaller budget with inexperienced devs. The video was very light on gameplay, and nothing they've talked about actually sounds very fun. They seem too obsessed with simulated systems, and there's nothing interesting left for the player to do (research trees, choose city placement, then move some wind around, wooo). At least in Black & White you had a pretty cool pet to help you do stuff.
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May 20, 2014 07:16
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Rinkles posted:I can't think of a good reason why they'd lie. They really like the Amplitude name? So there's hope.
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May 20, 2014 07:23
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Eonwe posted:Have you guys seen Shards? Don't MMOs cost millions to make and maintain? I wouldn't get my hopes up.
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May 20, 2014 09:40
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CommissarMega posted:Don't MMOs cost millions to make and maintain? I wouldn't get my hopes up. I think the whole pitch is that anyone can put up their own server and gently caress around with the ruleset. Kind of like Minecraft and the unofficial Ultima Online servers.
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May 20, 2014 09:46
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Rinkles posted:That's not really a thing, though. Numenera is a thing though.
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May 20, 2014 09:48
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JossiRossi posted:That's using Kickstarter like the first round of venture capitalist money, except without the pesky issue of having to pay your funders a cut of the profits. Which as the Oculus Rift sale showed pisses people off big time. I mean, you're paying for a copy of the game. You're not an investor at all, they're basically taking a very early pre-order. Sometimes you pre-order a game based on hype and it turns out differently from what you thought.
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May 20, 2014 09:50
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CottonWolf posted:Numenera is a thing though. Well duh.
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May 20, 2014 09:54
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Gaspar Lewis posted:Potentially any combination of the following: the number of lanes, the number of notes in each lane, the connecting lines between the strings of notes, the fact that the lanes can represent different instruments between songs, the scoring system, the checkpoint system and its relation to the player's "health" meter, the moving phrase markers that turn a lane off, lanes that turn off at all, the functionality of the multiplayer power-ups, the head-to-head multiplayer functionality, the use of a crazy spaceship thing instead of an abstract geometric note window... Yeah, Rock Band Blitz was similar to Frequency/Amplitude, but it definitely wasn't the same. Playing Blitz somehow didn't feel as fun. I feel like something with the health meter has got to be involved, since in Blitz you didn't have one and couldn't die. Though I guess you did in Guitar Hero / Rock Band so I dunno! But I felt that Rock Band Blitz was trying to be like Amplitude as close as they legally could, but it was definitely different, yeah.
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May 20, 2014 16:00
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CottonWolf posted:Numenera is a thing though. The Numenera Torment game and the Planescape Torment game have completely different settings, so it's kind of weird to call it the Torment universe. It is more of a thematic connection than anything. Of course, it is also possible that Drifter meant something more like "The universe this new Torment game is taking place in" than "a shared canon between the two Torment games."
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May 20, 2014 16:09
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HJE-Cobra posted:Yeah, Rock Band Blitz was similar to Frequency/Amplitude, but it definitely wasn't the same. Playing Blitz somehow didn't feel as fun. The DS and PSP Rock Band games were also similar Amplitude clones, and they had health. Maybe people aren't excited for the 7th game like this.
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May 20, 2014 16:10
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Stele007 posted:Looks like it'll get funded, but I'm pretty skeptical about how well this will turn out. It's basically promising to be Spore (the one everyone got hyped up for, not the actual game that came out) but on a much smaller budget with inexperienced devs. The video was very light on gameplay, and nothing they've talked about actually sounds very fun. They seem too obsessed with simulated systems, and there's nothing interesting left for the player to do (research trees, choose city placement, then move some wind around, wooo). At least in Black & White you had a pretty cool pet to help you do stuff. The Universim's trailers and such have pre-alpha gameplay, so it looks to me like they have a pretty good start on it already, which is why I backed it. I have more faith in this vision because they don't have the vast creation suites that Spore featured. It's certainly a little ambitious, but I don't have an issue with that. In any case, according to Kicktraq they brought in 20k+ yesterday, and today have already brought in nearly as much already as they have on most days before. Projections have it at 100% to clear now, the only matter is will they get enough in 4 days to hit the first stretch goal (dinosaurs).
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May 20, 2014 16:13
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lizzyinthesky posted:Except thats bullshit. What pivotal elements are owned by Sony that aren't in Rock Band Blitz? Alex Rigopulos posted:Hey ThatsGoodJason, the deviations were many. There were some mechanical differences, largely related to the specifics of the power-up systems and subtleties of how the streak/combo mechanics were structured. But some of the biggest differences were related to the underlying music content. Electronic music (Freq/Amp) lends itself well to tracks turning on and off at arbitrary points, and to having an arbitrarily large number of active tracks. Rock music is far less versatile as it relates to when it sounds good to having tracks turn on and off, and we were also restricted to working with the number of instrumental tracks present in the original recordings. This led to several changes in the way that the sonic model worked. The multitrack RB games--while certainly fun!--never quite produced the sort of addictive "hypnotic flow state" that Freq/Amp did. John Drake posted:Alex can answer the second half about his personal desires for Rock Band tracks, but as for the first question: NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 16:19 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 16:16
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CommissarMega posted:Don't MMOs cost millions to make and maintain? I wouldn't get my hopes up. Megazver posted:I think the whole pitch is that anyone can put up their own server and gently caress around with the ruleset. Kind of like Minecraft and the unofficial Ultima Online servers. That doesn't fix the major problems though. That saves them the support and server maintenance costs. Sure. So that's like taking it from a 20M project to a 10M project, still way beyond the resources they have. Hosting isn't nearly the only problem with an MMO. Its the scale, the world, the players, the interactivity. In other kinds of multiplayer you have small discreet sessions, and with like 32 players tops. MMOs are a whole other beast, across the board. Not just technically, but mechanically, content-wise, etc. I mean gently caress they're promising player housing! On 300K!? At minimum this is Neverwinter Nights + The Sims. They do have an engine already but animations look pretty janky. Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 16:39 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 16:37
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Red Minjo posted:The Numenera Torment game and the Planescape Torment game have completely different settings, so it's kind of weird to call it the Torment universe. It is more of a thematic connection than anything. Of course, it is also possible that Drifter meant something more like "The universe this new Torment game is taking place in" than "a shared canon between the two Torment games." There's the Planescape universe that the first game (and everything else books, et al.) took place in. There's the Numenera universe, and then there's the current videogame that is titled 'Torment' universe. Red Minjo was absolutely right that I meant the latter. You guys are a little too pedantic in your spergantry sometimes.
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May 20, 2014 16:41
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JossiRossi posted:That's using Kickstarter like the first round of venture capitalist money, except without the pesky issue of having to pay your funders a cut of the profits. Which as the Oculus Rift sale showed pisses people off big time. My response to this complaint is simply "Too bad." At no point does a Kickstarter pitch offer you equity, nor do any of them that I've seen stipulate that they won't solicit other funding or sell the company if they get offered billions of dollars. Just because nerds hate anything with a brand name doesn't mean they're right.
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May 20, 2014 17:05
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Inspector_666 posted:My response to this complaint is simply "Too bad." At no point does a Kickstarter pitch offer you equity, nor do any of them that I've seen stipulate that they won't solicit other funding or sell the company if they get offered billions of dollars. John Drake posted:Alex can answer the second half about his personal desires for Rock Band tracks, but as for the first question:
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May 20, 2014 17:21
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Red Goddess seems like a pretty decent action-puzzle-platformer: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/yanimstudio/red-goddess-inner-world 
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May 20, 2014 17:21
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Kenshin posted:
Yeah clearly HMX didn't try hard enough, nailed it businessman goon
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May 20, 2014 17:22
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E PLURIBUS ANUS posted:Yeah clearly HMX didn't try hard enough, nailed it businessman goon Yes that was totally what I meant because I just know if they had pleaded with Sony enough they'd totally have gotten permission 
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May 20, 2014 17:28
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They're totally going to make it now, though. A lot of devs/game journalists have been pimping it hard over the last 24 hours.
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May 20, 2014 17:30
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Yodzilla posted:Red Goddess seems like a pretty decent action-puzzle-platformer: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/yanimstudio/red-goddess-inner-world Hey that's pretty cool! Its Mario-Kirby-Metroid-Vania. The art looks pretty good, I like their style, and they have a playable demo already! Here's a kickstarter that's going places! And sure enough they're all but funded already 
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May 20, 2014 17:31
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Hakkesshu posted:They're totally going to make it now, though. A lot of devs/game journalists have been pimping it hard over the last 24 hours. With $300k to go over 3 days? I'll admit I was wrong about how much they could raise--quite wrong, I thought they'd struggle to break $200k!--but making it at this point seems extraordinarily difficult. I won't say impossible, but very, very unlikely.
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May 20, 2014 17:39
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Kenshin posted:With $300k to go over 3 days? They got around 100k over the past 24 hours. I don't think it'll slow down again after a jump like that. I actually kind of hope they don't make it since I think it's a terrible pitch, but I wouldn't be surprised either.
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May 20, 2014 17:45
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Zaphod42 posted:Hey that's pretty cool! Its Mario-Kirby-Metroid-Vania. The art looks pretty good, I like their style, and they have a playable demo already! That's because it's their second try at funding, this time with a lower goal ($30k instead of $50k). They really learned a lot from their first attempt, which was fairly close to being successful.
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May 20, 2014 17:49
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Hakkesshu posted:They got around 100k over the past 24 hours. I don't think it'll slow down again after a jump like that. I actually kind of hope they don't make it since I think it's a terrible pitch, but I wouldn't be surprised either. It just isn't a good idea.
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May 20, 2014 17:49
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Drifter posted:You guys are a little too pedantic in your spergantry sometimes. You have my spergantriest apology, Drifter.
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May 20, 2014 18:09
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