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I don't know, do you guys think it would be in bad taste for them to try to build up a fan-campaign to ask Kickstarter to let someone pay the remaining $28? I mean, it is technically a violation of the spirit of Kickstarter. One of the reason people don't mind pledging is they know they'll only have to shell out if the project actually meets funding. Would it set a bad precedent to let the Alpha Colony people have a chance to save their campaign?
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Dec 2, 2012 11:14
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:Absolutely. Personally, I feel like that's the morally right thing to do, anyways. Ah, right, the legal issues would be pretty horrific, I'd imagine. Well, it sucks for them to have to run a third Kickstarter, but hopefully they can get some press off of this and get it funded without too much difficulty.
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Dec 2, 2012 11:24
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Lordy posted:Not to be rude or anything but how do you expect to get 200,000 dollars for a free to play card game that seems to digital cards and the first reward to actually have one booster pack is 25§? Hahaha what the hell. Yes, please, I'd love to buy a single booster pack of digital cards for $25. Thank you very much. Also, am I the only one who feels like that art style just looks, like... half-finished? Maybe it's the lack of inking, or it just needs to be colored in a different style, I dunno, but it just comes off looking really rough. I don't even think it's a bad looking style, but they all look really unpolished.
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Dec 3, 2012 22:28
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Shalinor posted:The plot thickens. Apparently, they have already spent all their money. The game continues to be made, but on a purely voluntary / I guess side project'y basis. Man, I really hope they don't do another funding drive. They need to just throw what they have up on Desura and Alpha-Fund it. Not that I'm even a huge fan of the alpha-funding strategy, but I think it might be their best bet right now, other than making another game and funding it with that. Speaking of their Alpha, they were supposed to upload that yesterday. And they didn't. But I don't even take that as a particularly bad sign. The guy's first response to this issue was "chill out guys I'll put up an Alpha tomorrow". Now he said: quote:Alex Peake about 7 hours ago The biggest issue seems to be that they're absolutely terrible at communication. They have a twitter but the last tweet was sent out September 6th. Meanwhile, twitter was exploding with paranoia. He could have just sent out a single sentence and calmed things down by a massive amount, but he probably forgot that account even exists. It's a real shame that indies have such a hard time with PR. Maybe "indie-PR guy" will become a job, soon. Either that, or if a crowdfunding site dedicated to games like GameLaunched comes out and offers some decent PR tools, that could be a huge success.
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Dec 14, 2012 20:06
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Rakthar posted:How is it reasonable? That's kinda where I was going. I don't think they did have an alpha build ready. All I was saying was that if someone doesn't have a ready-made alpha build, it's reasonable to think it might take a couple days to put one together for public consumption - just in general, not even relating to him. I think when he said "I'll have an alpha for you guys tomorrow!", that was the unreasonable thing. If he just happened to have an alpha ready, that would have been weird. Needing a couple days to polish it seems more like reality to me. Now, if he doesn't have anything to release after a few more days, then I would start to give up hope for the project. Right now, I'd offer about even odds that some time over the next week, he'll either release an alpha (good end), or show off some random media. Screens, videos. Ostensibly showing development progress. That would be the "bad end" scenario. It would be just as likely it's old media from months ago before he stopped progress. And, yeah, the NeoGAF thing sounds good, post it. edit: Rakthar posted:Tactical Corsets stunt XboxPants fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Dec 14, 2012 |
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Dec 14, 2012 20:51
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ten dollar bitcoin posted:At a glance it just looks generic so chances are people aren't even really reading the description. I feel like the video pacing really hurts it. You should check out the discussion of game trailer pacing that just went on in the Greenlight thread. There's over a minute of mostly just spaceships flying from one side of the screen to the other with music that, while good, is something that I'd play to help fall asleep, rather than something that would get me excited. Glamour shots are cool, but unless your graphics are amazing, showcasing gameplay is better. For instance, it looks like you have a really in-depth combat micromanagement system. Basically, the total opposite of what Endless Space has. But you show that off for a total of, like 10 seconds. I feel like you really could have hyped that up and shown it off a little more. Same thing with the open, no-loading screen system. Could have used a little more focus there, too. Remember, you don't need to go over every feature of the game. Rather than mention everything, it's better to pick and choose the best, most interesting ones, the ones you're most excited about, and hyperfocus on them.
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Dec 15, 2012 23:53
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With as many goons as there are doing game Kickstarters at this point, maybe we should put a link The Big List of Indie Game Marketing or another similar resource. A bunch of people have put together some good guides this year, and that site I posted has a pretty drat good list of them. Ben Kuchera's talk (first link) and "Indie PR on Shoestring" (fourth link) are both great links. Regardless, check out that link, Animal Mother, and read as many of those as you can. Another great resource is Kickstarter post-mortems. You can get some fantastic advice from them. This one by Stoic, the group behind The Banner Saga, is very good: http://www.gamesbrief.com/2012/07/kickstarter-after-the-kick-but-before-the-start/ XboxPants fucked around with this message at 03:40 on Dec 16, 2012 |
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Dec 16, 2012 03:33
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Bigup DJ posted:This looks pretty cool! It's a giant monster fighting game in same vein as War of the Monsters and Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee. Holy crap, Kaiju Combat actually got funded! Side note, some of these guys actually worked on some of those older Godzilla fighter-brawler games. I thought their first Kickstarter looked really cool, but they only raised 35k out of their $350,000 goal. Way too huge. It was a bit of a disappointment... I didn't really expect them to get this level of support for their second run campaign! Hell, at this point maybe I'll even jump onboard and back a copy, too.  Concept art from game: 
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Dec 18, 2012 20:42
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GODUS put out a prototype video yesterday: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/22cans/project-godus/posts/370768 They should have just included that from the drat beginning and started two weeks later. drat, what is wrong with people? The video makes a fun comparison with the Amnesia Fortnight games. They were both made in the same period of time, but this thing looks like a barely playable "proof of concept", whereas the AF games are largely pretty cool.
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Dec 18, 2012 21:04
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Hahaha, oh wow. I can literally play as my own fursona for only $500! Surprisingly, I'm not even able to drum up any contempt for this. I can only laugh.
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Dec 18, 2012 21:28
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Yodzilla posted:Banner Saga and Valdis Story are due for a release in the near future so there will be two (hopefully). Giana Sisters falls into the "mostly finished" category though and I'm not sure about Ravaged. You sure about Valdis? Last I read they had been hit really hard by Sandy and things were pretty up in the air.
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Dec 21, 2012 00:21
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Mirthless posted:They're trying to make an ambitious 3d post-apocalypse game for 100,000 dollars? That's an odd position to take. Plenty of games get funded for less than that - less than $50,000, even - and manage to make it to mark it. Indie games are a special beast. But besides that, an important thing to keep in mind is that the funding goal for a Kickstarter is a tricky number. Just because it represents how much money they need, doesn't mean that it represents the budget for the game. Many Kickstarters are already pretty far along in progress. Other campaigns may already have funding from other sources. Or combinations of both of those. For instance, take Ravaged and Tales of Fallen London. Both asked for $10K-$15K, and ended up getting about $40K. And they were both able to finish and release their game with that money. Except, Tales of Fallen London is a text-based browser game, and Ravaged is a full-3D multiplayer, vehicular FPS. You can't judge the scope of a game solely based on how much money they're asking for. Like I said, don't confuse the funding goal with the game's budget. In other words, even if a studio is asking for $100000 on KS, that is in no way the same as saying that they're trying to make the game for $100000. Kickstarter isn't just about being the sole funding source for a project. For reference, I put together a list of some non-mobile games that got funded, came out, and what they raised/asked for: TRIP - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/axelshokk/trip-an-abstract-surreal-exploration-experience - $2200/$500 Phantasmaburbia - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1655502920/phantasmaburbia - $2600/$1000 OutReach - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/766808121/outreach-the-search-for-mankind - $2700/$2500 Warbarons - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1499327409/warbarons-a-classic-turn-based-strategy-game - $6000/$6000 Paranormal - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mattcohen/paranormal - $8000/$800 Saturday Morning RPG - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mightyjosh/saturday-morning-rpg - $10000/$6000 Guncraft - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/exatogames/guncraft-voxel-based-first-person-shooter - $16000/$16000 Party of Sin - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2080742704/party-of-sin - $16000/$8000 No Time For Questions - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1296948465/no-time-to-explain-indie-game - $26000/$7000 Cognition - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/postudios/cognition-an-erica-reed-thriller - $34000/$25000 Guns of Icarus Online - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/musegames/guns-of-icarus-online - $35000/$10000 Ravaged - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2dawngames/ravaged - $38000/$15000 Tales of Fallen London: The Silver Tree - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/elizabethsampat/tales-of-fallen-london-the-silver-tree - $45000/$10000 Chivalry - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1711512107/chivalry-medieval-warfare - $85000/$50000 Diamond Trust of London - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1443658586/diamond-trust-of-london - $90000/$78000 Project Giana - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/project-giana/project-giana - $186000/$150000 FTL - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/64409699/ftl-faster-than-light - $200000/$10000
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Dec 21, 2012 20:58
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Lucid Dream posted:If someone was making iPhone cases I would be pissed if they didn't ask for enough to do an initial manufacturing run of the cases, because they'd be asking for less than they need to kicktart their project to profitability. Thanks to digital distribution, indie games' primary cost is simply living expenses for the duration of the development, so if an indie game is asking for less than they need to support development until the game becomes profitable then in my opinion they are not using Kickstarter as it was originally intended If you're really worried about "original intent", the first Kickstarter, by one of their founders, was used primarily as something more like a market research tool, rather than directly to get money. He was having a hard time finding a place to hold a concert. He put up the original Kickstarter and used it to determine whether there was an audience large enough to support his concert. Kickstarter is a tool that can be used to actualize a concept based on latent market demand.
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Dec 22, 2012 06:56
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NeonCowboy posted:Well, the rules told me that it's fair game to post this here, so I'd like to proudly announce a little campaign I'm doing to raise money for art and music in an interactive game / story thing I did: That looks cool, but your post here should tell us more about the game. It looks like it's in a similar vein as something like To The Moon?
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Dec 28, 2012 08:40
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Shalinor posted:Luna went up today - it's a project from another Colorado indie, that I've been watching over the last year or so. Oh, sweet! These guys post a lot of pictures for screenshot saturday and, besides a little bit of a deviant art-looking character designs, it's always looked like a really good game at the core. Of course, I'm a huge fan of action-RPG metroidvania type games. Hot drat do I have a hardon for last April's Valdis Story and wish I knew what was in that Dec 15th update.
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Jan 2, 2013 17:32
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Install Gentoo posted:Yeah it's a dude who is probably ordering any of a number of pre existing android sticks and controllers off Alibaba or the like, with his own branding. Wouldn't it be cheaper to buy the components individually and make their own rather than buying pre-made ones? Anyway, it seems like a pretty competent project that's already pretty far along. Looks like the new stricter hardware policies are working, which is nice to see. The portability aspect is kinda cool; though I don't know how often anyone would actually go over to someone else's house and play games there. I suppose if it was multiplayer it would be a cool feature. In my mind, anything that gets more Android games that don't only use touch input, whether it's this, bluetooth gamepads like MOGA, or whatever, is a good thing. Touch may be great for some games - even great games, like World of Goo - but it sure isn't the best option for everything.
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Jan 2, 2013 23:06
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Orzo posted:This seems so arbitrary, why does it matter if a game is an Android game or not? In my mind, anything that facilitates good games to be developed should be encouraged. Well, I have an Android phone, so I've got a bit of investment on good games being made for that platform.  But, yes, of course you're right.Install Gentoo posted:Absolutely not. These are proven products that they're making in large numbers so it saves a lot of money and is honestly more reliable. That's rather interesting, didn't know there were companies that did that for Android sticks. Makes complete sense, though.
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Jan 3, 2013 01:15
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TychoCelchuuu posted:Freedom Force is not a stinker Looks like it needs more animation (i.e., enemies don't react at all when hit) but overall I like the graphics... at least in comparison to that drawn art. They would have been way better not including that at all, especially not using it for their splash image.
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Jan 3, 2013 20:24
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Dreadline, however, does look sort of dreadful, at least when it comes to the graphics. If it's anything like Freedom Force though it should be a lot of fun and since it has some Freedom Force devs there's a chance it will recapture that magic. I remember reading about this a few months ago and it's interesting to see it pop up on Kickstarter. I wonder if they've run out of money or just want to do the whole "get some preorders, milk people for more money, potentially extend development time and improve the game" thing that Kickstarter can help do.
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 (from wired) If there's a better way to give the impression that your hardware is real, and not vaporware, then sir, I do not know it. ... 
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Jan 3, 2013 22:30
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Mojo Jojo posted:He's not even offering in-game currency to anybody that backs. There's no incentive here. At $10 and up you get a $3 "Karma" pack. As well as mobile beta access, though honestly I'm pretty tired of indie betas. There are way, way more than enough complete indie games that I need to play before I'm going to play the typical indie beta. Often they're just so... not... fun. Like, I'm sure Survivors of Ragnarok (2D dwarf fortress) might be a great game eventually, but it ain't there yet.
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Jan 4, 2013 20:09
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Install Gentoo posted:The whole concept of Code Hero is like if Guitar Hero was played through a Typing of the Dead interface. It's simply not going to teach you about what you're supposed to be trying to learn. Not like Guitar Hero really teaches you to play guitar either but at least the motions were somewhat related. I don't think it was as far off as all that. You were directly interacting with javascript. I mean, it wasn't anything like creating an entire program from scratch, but you were learning about the basic concepts, commands, functions, data types, if-then constructs, etc. I guess I would say that it wouldn't really teach how how to code, but you'd at least learn something about what code is, and give you a good place to start. Of course it was still an absurd idea for a first game project.
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Jan 10, 2013 02:51
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Was that video before or after the Amnesia Fortnight Humble Bundle? They didn't promise to use that money for anything in particular, right? Does anyone know how many bundles it sold? It's really annoying that Humble Bundle makes the sales data super open during the sale, but very difficult to find afterwards. I managed to find this page: http://support.humblebundle.com/customer/portal/articles/281031-prior-bundle-statistics but it has stats for every bundle except the Fortnight. 
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Jan 11, 2013 02:30
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Huh, didn't realize that only the demo was done for Freedom Planet, I thought they had the whole game put together. I think it's a really cool project; it has some Sparkster influence and that's enough for me right there. Yeah, it's mostly derivative, but it's derivative of things that I love and it's pretty well done.
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Jan 16, 2013 05:25
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Hakkesshu posted:I don't understand how continuing is even an option at this point. Let's say it reaches 1.2 million or something; that clearly isn't enough to keep the studio running at full capacity, so what's he trying to accomplish? Maybe it's enough to keep it running at reduced capacity, or to try to keep it running a little longer and keep shopping it around to a publisher. Or maybe he's hoping he can get the 2 or 3 or 4 or whatever million and hire everyone back. I can't hold it against him for holding onto that hope.
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Jan 19, 2013 16:25
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the black husserl posted:There is nothing open and honest about what Taylor is doing. He lied about the goal for the project, he would have lied about the layoffs if Kotaku hadn't broken the story, and he's told 3 different news outlets 3 different stories about the state of the company. What's this about different stories to different outlets? Haven't heard about that.
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Jan 21, 2013 00:23
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ReV VAdAUL posted:If someone asks for sponsorship money for running a marathon, and then it turns out they're bedbound they have lied. I'm not sure how you don't understand this. He claimed he could make Wildman with a $1.1m donation and then the next day he laid off most or all of his workforce. £1.1m was unlikely to cover the costs of making the game at a healthy company let alone one that pre-emptively has to lay off staff. Do we know how far along the game is? That prototype looks pretty decent but who knows how much of a non-representative vertical that is. Do you think there's any chance that it's far enough along that $1.1 million could get the game to some kind of releasable state? And, if it is, do you think it's possible that the company is still in a state that enough staff could be rehired to actually do that? I feel like I don't really know enough about the industry to make these calls myself. I mean, what is shown in the prototype looks decent enough, but there's not really much shown and he said they've only been working on this game for three months. Is there any chance it's $1.1m away from a releasable version? But then, even if the budget is feasible, it doesn't even matter without a staff. How do we know whether or not team members are going to be willing to return if it were to get funding? Is there any way to figure out whether any of them are loyal enough to come back? Don't get me wrong, even if there's a chance that some staff members would return, I still wouldn't put money into it - I'm just wondering whether we have enough info to be sure that he's being deceitful about the chances for this game. (and, really, the English language has such a wonderful variety of words. There's no reason not to use ones that more accurately convey our meaning. He's not twisting the definition of "lie", you are. Sure, whether you wanna say he "lied" or just "deceived", it's effectively the same. You're not really "wrong" to say he lied, and saying that you are would be petty and semantic. But "lie" and "deceive", despite being effectively the same in many ways, are not identical words, and treating them as such leads to confused discussion such as the one you're having right now)
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Jan 21, 2013 22:10
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Wezlar posted:Maybe it should have read "We will have to lay off the entire staff of the company next week. We will try to make the game despite this." Yeah that did cross my mind. That was his biggest deceit and most unforgivable deceit, in my opinion. The only way I can possibly imagine that it wouldn't totally blow his credibility, is if he had some outside deal for money going on that suddenly fell through when he didn't expect it and that he's now contractually obligated not to talk about it. Which, I mean, I suppose is possible, but really isn't any more worth considering than the possibility that there was a cosmic teapot filled with bitcoins orbiting the sun that Taylor was hoping to hack into, but it suddenly got hit by a comet. (though I do rather like that idea) seorin posted:3: The project was trending towards success from the beginning, and based on comments in this thread, there were/are plans to keep it building up steam by feeding out more information as the kickstarter goes on. Despite the project's extremely likely success, he still laid off his staff. This suggests that the required amount to actually keep his staff and make the game properly was well in excess of the amount he's asking for. I certainly agree that this is pretty likely. But it's also possible that the alternative scenario is true, the one he described. Basically, what he said is that he has enough money for one of two options:
But, not both. So, even if he is pretty sure the KS is going to succeed, by not laying off his staff he would be risking seriously loving them over at the end of the month. And that wouldn't really have anything to do with the feasibility of Wildman.
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Jan 21, 2013 22:24
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Gamespot has an interview up with Chris Taylor from right before the Wildman Kickstarter went live. Pretty interesting to go back and read what his state of mind was pre-launch. Specifically:Gamespot posted:On the possibility of failure:
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Jan 22, 2013 23:18
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Strenuous Manflurry posted:The OP hasn't been updated since August, and I've caught up with the last few pages, but are there any Kickstarters currently going or primed to start that people here are excited about? Obviously the Torment sequel/spiritual sequel is looming, but what else is coming? There's one called Energy Hook where you swing through a city like Spiderman that looks poetry cool. Got a nice cell shaded look going in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou7XOiKw7iFA&feature=youtube_gdata_player
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Jan 23, 2013 20:08
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Cassielle posted:Alrighty, I'm back guys! For anyone who missed my prior post, I'm Cassy Cade, a moderator for Shanghai-based independent games studio Spicy Horse. I think your expectations are a bit off. On somewhere like reddit, with an AMA, you can send a developer or CEO or whatnot there, and even if they're only posting there for a few hours, it works out pretty well. The posting pace is really fast, so even just a short time like that works great. But here, everything is way slower. I don't think it's going to work as well to have a staff person come in and be a poster for just a couple hours; you kinda need to actually embed into the community for the best results. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's a bad idea. It's probably still worth doing. Just don't have the expectation that you're going to get the same type of response as you get on an AMA on reddit. edit: You could also consider posting a thread in the Ask/Tell forum, instead. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3390702 But, keep in mind, "Ask me about Akaneiro" would probably be sorta frowned upon, because it seems like such blatant, open marketing, rather than a genuine discussion. Instead, something like "Ask me about being the CEO of a Chinese Game Development Studio" or something would be a lot better. Either way, though, don't just take my word for it, you probably want to PM a mod (FROM THAT FORUM) first and ask. XboxPants fucked around with this message at 12:04 on Jan 25, 2013 |
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Jan 25, 2013 11:58
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Orzo posted:http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/967946252/rainfall-the-sojourn/posts Well, it's really close like Rainfall, but the Kickstarter for Cryamore is apparently starting tomorrow.  It's not super SoM-esque, but it is generally like a Japanese Action RPG and it looks pretty cool. website
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Jan 25, 2013 20:23
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Orzo posted:I'm not sure how I feel about that. I think they're way underestimating the amount of work and money that'll need to get that to completion. I've seen the alpha footage of the game, and it looked like something that could be thrown together in a few days (the programming, not the art). They give their programmer almost no recognition at all in their video, which makes me think they don't understand just how difficult making games is. There's just way too much emphasis on fancy concept art and story for my tastes. I was surprised by that success; then I clicked play and immediately thought, "Oh." Well, good on them for shamelessly appealing to an audience that's willing to pay. I can respect skilled, ruthless mercantilism. Can't imagine that video's gonna win a lot of hearts on this board, though. I like a lot of anime, and I was getting annoyed. (oh god the voice acting on the prissy chick). And seriously, they really bury the lead that they have the lead animator of Skullgirls on board . I guess she's not the head artist or anything, but even so, flout that poo poo. I wish they would have showed more gameplay. What they have looks cool, most of the art looks pretty good, but I don't really want to toss $10 towards it when all they've shown is a character moving around on a background with some basic "can't move here" collision detection.
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Jan 26, 2013 21:48
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ReV VAdAUL posted:Jeez that is shady. Doesn't seem any worse than having a "Donate!" Paypal button on your website. Better, even.
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Jan 29, 2013 00:54
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Maluco Marinero posted:Most projects, before asking for donations, get together a fair bit to show for their efforts. They don't ask for donations cause they have an idea, whereas crowdfunding campaigns are often about marketing an 'idea', and the premise that you are capable of delivering that idea. I suppose I can see where you are coming from. I was thinking that someone could just as well make a website with a Paypal button as they could put up an IGG flex funding campaign. But that's not quite right. While they could put up their own website, a service like IGG certainly makes it easier. Yeah, if someone wanted to run a low-effort scam, IGG would probably be on the list of possible avenues. From that perspective, I think I can agree with you.
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Jan 29, 2013 01:48
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Oh hey so it's a thing http://vimeo.com/59292662 Fargooooooooo 
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Feb 9, 2013 13:49
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Orzo posted:- Too many physics notes that at best people won't care about and at worst will impact the funness of the game. Like you said, the character movement already looks 'floaty' in a bad way. They list 'Acceleration, mass, momentum, grip, destructibility, elasticity, etc affect movement' in their dev log, not sure any of that stuff has ever added anything to any game that wasn't explicitely a physics game. Sounds like a case of a programmer forgetting that they were making a game, not a tech demo. Could be something that's less for the player and more for the developer. Physics stuff like that can make it easier to put together a more flexible puzzle, or a puzzle that includes systems interacting in a way that you haven't specifically programmed into the game already... just, like you say, the gameplay ends up being a little less exacting.
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Feb 13, 2013 20:27
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echoMateria posted:A couple of days ago we added our second game 99 Spirits to Steam Greenlight and started an IndieGoGo campaign. I'm curious, what made you think flexible funding was the better move? From everything I've seen and heard, flexible campaigns are enormously less possible than fixed fundings. You may think fixed is a risk, but I'm not sure that I've ever seen a successful flexible campaign. I was ready to chew you out for launching a crowdfunding campaign without any real gameplay footage, but I think I finally understand... there is a good deal of gameplay in that video, but it's completely impossible to tell what's going on in such a text-heavy, non-standard game. If it was a standard Square-Enix jRPG of some sort, it would be different, but that grid is so abstract that we have no idea what's happening. There's a field, with a character, and, some... colored floating shapes? What? Now I get why you always reply to requests for more gameplay footage by saying the localization is still a work in progress. That's understandable; it's hard for you guys to show off the game when it's so text-based and it's all in Japanese. But gamers need to know what the game is. That is more important than any other element of the video. The less you know about how a game plays, the harder it is to be interested in it, much less excited. I know the translation is a work in progress, and that kind of work isn't trivial in the least. But there doesn't appear to be any translated text in any of the images or video from the game. Would it be possible for you to just translate a few screens for the video? Even if it was just a mock-up. I don't think it would be a problem if you had to use WIP translations, either; I'm sure your audience would forgive you if things changed between the indiegogo video and the final release. Though I guess if it's just a contract issue where the Japanese rights holders won't let you show any images of the game without final, complete translations, I guess you're just hosed and this probably isn't a good time to hold a crowdfunding campaign.
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Feb 15, 2013 03:17
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Falcon2001 posted:That being said, I love weird rear end japanese games so if you do end up with a gameplay video so I can tell what's happening, I might back it. I should also say that I'm interested in this game, too; that's the only reason I wrote such a long post. It looks like it might be the kind of game I'd actually be into if I could figure out what was actually going on! I truly hope you guys can get up a video that shows off what the game has to offer and can see some success, since we don't get a lot of indie PC games from Japan brought over to the west.
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Feb 15, 2013 04:00
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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.  Ahahahaha you don't have even the tiniest idea of how crowdfunding sites work, do you?
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Feb 15, 2013 13:38
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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.
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Feb 16, 2013 23:58
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