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Zoolooman posted:Valve is proving right now that mechanically faithful sequels are ridiculously valuable. Dota 2 and CS:GO are on their plate for a reason. I expect this to become a bigger trend, and yes, I think there's a large demand for this kind of "updating" of older games. Valve is a bit of an outlier for a big time game developer. They can pretty much make whatever the gently caress they want when they want it and have the balls and capital to make games, like Portal, or update the gently caress out of a game for years, like TF2, even before it goldmined with the cash-shop and F2P model. Jumping on the MOBA bandwagon with Dota 2 is just plain smart of them.
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Apr 4, 2012 20:51
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I wish there was a tier for the game and the book and none of the poo poo I don't care about.
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Apr 4, 2012 20:52
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Berk Berkly posted:At some point of donation the developers really can't give them more actual value and they are reduced to trying to show some form of gratitude for what is obviously a huge "I love you" written in dollar bills. To the point the best they can do is literally take you out on a dinner date and play games with you like old bros from highs school getting back together to hang like you used to. Or they could treat investors as investors if they're asking for investment from outside sources. nessin posted:I hate to sound like I'm defending publisher's, but exactly how do you know they're "ignoring" the market? I want games like Wasteland, Shadowrun, and the majority of the other kickstarter projects listed here. But I'm one person. Hell, I even know another person in my area who is right there with me. On the flip side, I know 5 other people in my area I've talked to who play games and want nothing to do with those games. When kickstarters explode into multimillions from people emptying their wallets for the mere chance that such a game could possibly actually exist one day, it's a very very very reasonable assumption that the same property given a decent marketing push--i.e. a a bare fraction of what Mass Effect and CoD get--would be hellaciously profitable on a modest investment of oh lets say fifteen million dollars. You're right that games forums in general have kind of a self-selection thing happening but there is an evident need in the market that isn't being met by AAA publishers and everyone who is or knows a gamer can see it but none of those people are publishing execs.
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Apr 4, 2012 20:55
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Zoolooman posted:Valve is proving right now that mechanically faithful sequels are ridiculously valuable. Dota 2 and CS:GO are on their plate for a reason. I expect this to become a bigger trend, and yes, I think there's a large demand for this kind of "updating" of older games. Okay, but military shooters on the middle of the arcade/sim continuum and DotA-likes are not dead genres, if anything they were already growing, thriving genres. Would I like new and innovative 2D turn-based RPGs better than rehashes? Well, yeah, sure. But given that the conventional market's stance on the subject is "your genre is dead, except maybe for DS games from Japan" even a rehash is cause for excitement.
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Apr 4, 2012 20:55
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Willie Tomg posted:Or they could treat investors as investors if they're asking for investment from outside sources. Not really sure what this means. They are pretty much putting up all the return on investment they offer objectively in print on the front page for your money already. I guess the could start offering profit sharing at certain tier levels but I don't see a problem with the system they have now either. Obviously, crowdsourcing implies you are going to to be looking to get a huge percentage to the majority of funding via of smaller donations but also you still want some room/tiers for the people with bigger wallets to pitch in. You don't want to start giving up creative/executive control to the really high donators because you will end back up in the Publisher-funding dilemma again. One of the biggest returns on the money here is the fact that you get to personally help insure a game you want to be made is actually created and/or improved with your funding. That is just something you have to want and be satisfied by. Berk Berkly fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Apr 4, 2012 |
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Apr 4, 2012 21:01
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Willie Tomg posted:When kickstarters explode into multimillions from people emptying their wallets for the mere chance that such a game could possibly actually exist one day, it's a very very very reasonable assumption that the same property given a decent marketing push--i.e. a a bare fraction of what Mass Effect and CoD get--would be hellaciously profitable on a modest investment of oh lets say fifteen million dollars. Have you even looked at a Kickstarter page? I'm assuming yes, but you do realize that incredibly large amounts of cash in the Kickstarter projects are being derived from sources other than the game they're selling? Tell me, if a game developer doesn't want to throw huge parties and play host to fans willing to pay thousands of dollars is it because they're jackasses and the publishers are right for forcing them (to match the kind of funding you can get out of kickstarter projects), or are the publisher's jackasses for forcing that on them? I get what you're saying, but you're ignoring a whole lot of middle ground to make that leap (like the fact that none of the kickstarter projects we're using as a baseline have gone on sale). I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I'm doing so from a wait and see position. The fact is that publisher's have gone down this road before, and we can only speculated as to why they stopped. Whereas we, both consumers and developers, are just now exploring high value games through crowdfunding and have no history to fall back on. Edit: Or, from another direction, how much money would those projects have raised if there wasn't an option for a separate soundtrack from a known composer? Or a poster signed by a legend in the gaming industry? So on and so forth... nessin fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Apr 4, 2012 |
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Apr 4, 2012 21:07
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signalnoise posted:I wish there was a tier for the game and the book and none of the poo poo I don't care about. Me too. Give me a hard copy of the game (which isn't even an option, sadly) and a hardcover of the book, and you've got my money. For now, 15$. I want hard copies of my nostalgia based sequels, dammit 
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Apr 4, 2012 21:09
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Dissapointed Owl posted:I want hard copies of my nostalgia based sequels, dammit Is it because you're a hoarder, or a luddite? 
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Apr 4, 2012 21:10
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Willie Tomg posted:When kickstarters explode into multimillions from people emptying their wallets for the mere chance that such a game could possibly actually exist one day, it's a very very very reasonable assumption that the same property given a decent marketing push--i.e. a a bare fraction of what Mass Effect and CoD get--would be hellaciously profitable on a modest investment of oh lets say fifteen million dollars. The kickstarters exploded into multimillions, but even the most successful one has less than 100,000 backers. I don't know if a publisher could justify dropping 15 mil to cater to a market that small.
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Apr 4, 2012 21:11
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Willie Tomg posted:Or they could treat investors as investors if they're asking for investment from outside sources. Basically I don't think Kickstarter believes that crowdfunding = investment, they're very careful not to use terms like invest or investment on their site other than language like "this is not a site for soliciting investments or lending". And for the majority of projects on their site I would agree. There are Kickstarter projects that don't even give you the item in question in their pledges. Like all of the Burning Man floats that get funded, or food trucks, or speaking/concert tours. It's so broad and sweeping of a site that it is not going to make special considerations and standards for a specific type of creative endeavour. The 7th Guest fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Apr 4, 2012 |
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Apr 4, 2012 21:13
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Lurdiak posted:Is it because you're a hoarder, or a luddite? Because I'm a sentimentalist who doesn't believe in paying money for just bits and bytes I gotta hold that poo poo.
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Apr 4, 2012 21:14
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Hey guys. I appreciate all you guys, whether you're into this project or not. I think this is an interesting subject matter and this is definitely something we don't want to exploit. So here, have a quick day 1 response thank you from Mitch. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1613260297/shadowrun-returns/posts/201968?ref=email&show_token=49c7999bda3968d3&play=1#video
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Apr 4, 2012 21:19
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Pushed that pledge button hard. Even if I end up not liking it it's still a game I wanted for SO LONG.
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Apr 4, 2012 21:23
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Willie Tomg posted:This is a funny little echo of film geeks arguing that Think more like slacker or any duplass brothers film if we're going to talk film. It is possible to make great games/film/music for less than a millie. The evidence is all around us. Willie Tomg posted:Its fun to talk about outliers but generally speaking in any collaborative effort people will expect a wage for their work. Frictional didn't get paid for months while they put out the best game of 2010. Sometimes producing great work is its own reward. the black husserl fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Apr 4, 2012 |
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Apr 4, 2012 21:23
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Quest For Glory II posted:AFAIK Kickstarter warns specifically to not solicit investments and I'm not even sure what the legalities of that are in the US. Crowdfunding is heavily restricted - there's legislation in the works to loosen those restrictions, but even that would cap annual total crowd-funded investment at $1 million a year.
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Apr 4, 2012 21:28
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nessin posted:Have you even looked at a Kickstarter page? I'm assuming yes, but you do realize that incredibly large amounts of cash in the Kickstarter projects are being derived from sources other than the game they're selling? Yes, in seeing how kickstarters are investment without any of what makes traditional investment worthwhile for the investor I did notice the funding from kickstarters is from individual donors. Which is why that has been the cornerstone of pretty much every critique of the model. quote:The fact is that publisher's have gone down this road before, and we can only speculated as to why they stopped. Whereas we, both consumers and developers, are just now exploring high value games through crowdfunding and have no history to fall back on. I'm not talking about remakes in this tangent (except to say that all else removed, i'm STOKED for a new shadowrun game and ecstatic that it's a turn based RPG) and won't. For the purposes of this disussion I'm trying to treat all kickstarter projects as neutral commodities because I'm trying to point out what it is particular to the kickstarter model that makes it a literally non-sensical formulation of capitalism. If I took a game idea to an investor and said "please fund my idea, not so you can get your money back but so that in a few years you can spend about 20 hours of your life on a totally non-productive pursuit. I will give you a few copies of the game and name a character after you, oh and if the project folds for whatever reason I keep the money and you have no legal recourse" that investor would reach across the table and slap the poo poo out of me and they'd be right to do it. wanna reiterate an earlier post, briefly: Ludicrous G. Gibbs posted:It's an incredibly bizarre concept that I haven't seen happen in other industries. This is the kind of business model you'd expect from, well, non-profit organizations. The only reason--THE ONLY REASON--kickstarters work for games is because publishers put massive oomph behind mediocre titles sold through spectacle to gamers who are largely compulsive, irrational and addicted creatures kept playing through visceral reward mechanisms whether the genre is FPS, MOBA, or MMO. Kickstarters initiate that reward process before the game has a single line of code written. Instead of an impulse DLC microtransaction for content its an impulse transaction-transaction on the promise of extra poo poo in a game that doesn't yet exist. It's a model that can only succeed in an industry that's dysfunctional from balls to bones. You don't need the model to be in place for decades to see on its face how that's messed up.
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Apr 4, 2012 21:36
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You're confusing investors with consumers, though, and that's probably why you're having such a hard time with this. An investor is, above all else, concerned with their bottom-line. A consumer is, above all else, concerned/interested in receiving a product, to the point where they will put money into that project becoming a reality. This is not an investor relationship, this is an extension of a consumer relationship.
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Apr 4, 2012 21:39
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the black husserl posted:Frictional didn't get paid for months while they put out the best game of 2010. Sometimes producing great work is its own reward. True, but it gets gross once you start insinuating that people should get paid less for more work because the work should be its own reward. Or that it's okay Frictional didn't get paid for months (and presumably spent the time worrying about feeding their families and rent) or that everyone should follow their example. Developers have enough trouble getting loving paid fairly by publishers; I don't think the public needs to jump on that bandwagon.
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Apr 4, 2012 21:44
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NINbuntu 64 posted:This is not an investor relationship, this is an extension of a consumer relationship.
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Apr 4, 2012 21:45
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Quest For Glory II posted:AFAIK Kickstarter warns specifically to not solicit investments and I'm not even sure what the legalities of that are in the US. Kickstarter can call it "Susan" for all I care but if you're giving money on the promise that your money will be used to create a commodity that is then sold for for a profit that's an investment. An investment in the mere idea that you'll be playing a game you like in the future. A terrible financial investment with a return of -100% on your dollar, but an investment. emoticon posted:The kickstarters exploded into multimillions, but even the most successful one has less than 100,000 backers. I don't know if a publisher could justify dropping 15 mil to cater to a market that small. I agree it's a tough sell to publishers in 2012 but that's because publishers are stupid as hell. The general idea of marketing is to tell people who don't know or dont' care about your product that it exists and it rules and they're making a horrible mistake not buying it immediately. If an idea gets tens of thousands of people to donate millions then it should be a pretty trivial effort on the part of any Marketing creature to parlay that excitement into their publicity run. Even if its a reboot you can build market share outside of the hard core. Everyone who played Shadowrun played Shadowrun for a first time. 
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Apr 4, 2012 21:46
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homeless snail posted:The point is that those roles aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, but crowdfunding asks consumers to take on the role of investors without enjoying any of the benefits. Willie Tong is making some excellent points. For 99% of Kickstarter this stuff doesn't really matter; it's only because all of a sudden projects are making 6-7 figures because of the names attached that now there is more scrutiny. On the whole I don't think it's worth discussing because these huge projects are such an outlier and the average game project that gets funded on Kickstarter is a casual match-3 iphone game. The money involved in the average game project is really small potatoes compared to Wasteland or Shadowrun, and so are the donation levels, and the number of backers. I think the service is good for the little guy. The 7th Guest fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Apr 4, 2012 |
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Apr 4, 2012 21:49
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Ludicrous G. Gibs posted:It's an incredibly bizarre concept that I haven't seen happen in other industries. This is the kind of business model you'd expect from, well, non-profit organizations. How funny that you haven't seen this happen in other industries when at the same time you say you realise there are other types of kickstarter projects except for games - in every creative industry imaginable including movies, graphic design, music etc. etc. Most of those have nothing to show except for the very idea of what the final product might be. Architectural projects have been built via kickstarter method, fonts have been designed. It seems that suddenly kickstarter blew your mind just because it entered a field that is relevant to your interests (games) and for no other reason really which somehow made it suspicious.
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Apr 4, 2012 21:52
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homeless snail posted:The point is that those roles aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, but crowdfunding asks consumers to take on the role of investors without enjoying any of the benefits. Willie Tong is making some excellent points. Isn't most of the money coming from the lower tiers anyway? There is no way of translating the traditional return on investment when most of the investors are paying a pittance and the projects are only expected to make modest returns.
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Apr 4, 2012 21:56
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If a Kickstarter project can take my $15 and turn it into a future additional profit of $60, or 1:4 on my money, great! That means technically I didn't just donate $15, my initial donation ended up generating four times that amount for their future endeavors, which I probably want to happen anyway. I don't see how this is in anyway a downside. You can say this is a horrible financial investment on my part but making money off of this was never my goal in the first place. I'm giving them money to make a game I want and to stay profitable so they can keep doing it.
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Apr 4, 2012 21:56
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emoticon posted:True, but it gets gross once you start insinuating that people should get paid less for more work because the work should be its own reward. Or that it's okay Frictional didn't get paid for months (and presumably spent the time worrying about feeding their families and rent) or that everyone should follow their example. Developers have enough trouble getting loving paid fairly by publishers; I don't think the public needs to jump on that bandwagon. It's not insulting, it's loving creative work. Artists starve to make genius. If making a game is truly something people care about, the money doesn't matter. That's why Nehrim is better than Oblivion and New Vegas is better than Fallout 3. Thus, I'm not expecting $15 dollar work from these kickstarters. I'm expecting something made with incredible passion, with 12 hour days, and eating ramen.
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Apr 4, 2012 21:59
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Palpek posted:How funny that you haven't seen this happen in other industries when at the same time you say you realise there are other types of kickstarter projects except for games - in every creative industry imaginable including movies, graphic design, music etc. etc. Most of those have nothing to show except for the very idea of what the final product might be. Architectural projects have been built via kickstarter method, fonts have been designed. It seems that suddenly kickstarter blew your mind just because it entered a field that is relevant to your interests (games) and for no other reason really which somehow made it suspicious. They even kickstarted a loving restaurant. I've eaten there and it rules. http://littleneckbrooklyn.com/ http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/littleneck/littleneck-a-clam-shack-coming-soon-to-gowanus
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Apr 4, 2012 22:00
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the black husserl posted:It's not insulting, it's loving creative work. Artists starve to make genius. If making a game is truly something people care about, the money doesn't matter. That's why Nehrim is better than Oblivion and New Vegas is better than Fallout 3. The people making games like Shadowrun Returns, are already well off financially. They are not going to be eating ramen for the next 2 years while making their game. And honestly your assumption about artists, while i'm sure is well meant, ends up being insulting to artists.
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Apr 4, 2012 22:03
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the black husserl posted:They even kickstarted a loving restaurant. I've eaten there and it rules. There are actually a lot of those projects (not sure how often they get funded though). Check out the "Food" section and it's mostly those or books/videos about food.
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Apr 4, 2012 22:03
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I said come in! posted:The people making games like Shadowrun Returns, are already well off financially. They are not going to be eating ramen for the next 2 years while making their game. And honestly your assumption about artists, while i'm sure is well meant, ends up being insulting to artists. I will say though that for some people they get something else out of it. Like indie games, a boatload of freeware games are released every year, and I play them and I think "this idiot should have sold this, why did he give it away?" But I obviously don't speak for everyone.
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Apr 4, 2012 22:08
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I said come in! posted:The people making games like Shadowrun Returns, are already well off financially. They are not going to be eating ramen for the next 2 years while making their game. And honestly your assumption about artists, while i'm sure is well meant, ends up being insulting to artists.
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Apr 4, 2012 22:08
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the black husserl posted:They even kickstarted a loving restaurant. I've eaten there and it rules. That's loving insulting - I hope the kickstarter investor community at least got to vote on what's on the menu, I mean they only got to eat actual food after they dropped at least $150, how sick is that?
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Apr 4, 2012 22:09
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physeter posted:This is the thing I'm curious about. I assumed Weisman definitely wasn't poor. So why ask on Kickstarter in the first place? And why for just $400k? He had to know he could get alot more than that.
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Apr 4, 2012 22:10
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Willie Tomg posted:I agree it's a tough sell to publishers in 2012 but that's because publishers are stupid as hell. I don't doubt marketing can do some amazing things, but there's a limit to how far you can market something outside the target demographic before you have to start putting in more money to make the product more appealing. Could, say, Activision pour COD levels of marketing money into Shadowrun and convince enough people to buy an old school top down game with slow and complicated board game derived rules and likely low quality graphics? I don't know. the black husserl posted:Thus, I'm not expecting $15 dollar work from these kickstarters. I'm expecting something made with incredible passion, with 12 hour days, and eating ramen. We're going to have to agree to disagree then. If any of those guys have kids or lives, I would prefer that they not spend 12 hour days in front of a computer making GBS threads in a sock and eating only ramen just so I can have an entertainment product.
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Apr 4, 2012 22:10
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physeter posted:This is the thing I'm curious about. I assumed Weisman definitely wasn't poor. So why ask on Kickstarter in the first place? And why for just $400k? He had to know he could get alot more than that. Because just because you aren't poor doesn't mean you have the means to immediately support the development of a several hundred thousand dollar budget game that may or may not even have an audience anymore, both things that Kickstarter is able to assist with.
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Apr 4, 2012 22:11
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I like the people that are like "People just giving money to other people to do cool things?! NOT ON MY INTERNET!"
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Apr 4, 2012 22:11
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emoticon posted:We're going to have to agree to disagree then. If any of those guys have kids or lives, I would prefer that they not spend 12 hour days in front of a computer making GBS threads in a sock and eating only ramen just so I can have an entertainment product. Yeah - not that I want them eating caviar with my money, but I'd thought part of the point of funding games like this was that they'd have some financial security for the project and not develop the whole thing on the verge of starvation.
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Apr 4, 2012 22:13
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Palpek posted:That's loving insulting - I hope the kickstarter investor community at least got to vote on what's on the menu, I mean they only got to eat actual food after they dropped at least $150, how sick is that? Ok, I'm out. It's a great restaurant that people gave to support and they managed to make their dream work and they didnt rip people off and the food is delicious and you still hate it.
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Apr 4, 2012 22:13
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Rinkles posted:Isn't most of the money coming from the lower tiers anyway? There is no way of translating the traditional return on investment when most of the investors are paying a pittance and the projects are only expected to make modest returns. Even penny stocks still return if they're solvent. The preponderance of small amounts don't detract from my point, and the ease of soliciting funds from gamers desperate for a shred of quality in their games by canvassing a bunch of impulse $15 donations is actually a pretty critical part of my argument! Berk Berkly posted:If a Kickstarter project can take my $15 and turn it into a future additional profit of $60, or 1:4 on my money, great! That means technically I didn't just donate $15, my initial donation ended up generating four times that amount for their future endeavors, which I probably want to happen anyway. I agree 100% because your post is literally the individual internal dialogue when this happens; quote:Kickstarters initiate that reward process before the game has a single line of code written. Instead of an impulse DLC microtransaction for content its an impulse transaction-transaction on the promise of extra poo poo in a game that doesn't yet exist. It's a model that can only succeed in an industry that's dysfunctional from balls to bones. You impulse invested in the completion of a project that wouldn't have happened any other way because you're that desperate for a company who makes good games to make money using the money that's yours. A perfectly rationally irrational financial decision. It's a pretty malignant way to do business but I guess there are enough gamers with enough money to pull it off for gaming's old guard.
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Apr 4, 2012 22:15
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the black husserl posted:Ok, I'm out. It's a great restaurant that people gave to support and they managed to make their dream work and they didnt rip people off and the food is delicious and you still hate it. Hey man, you quoted my own post supporting kickstarter just a second ago. You gotta turn your sarcasm detector on. It was a tongue-in-cheek comparison to the outrage about gaming kickstarters.
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Apr 4, 2012 22:17
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mutata posted:I like the people that are like "People just giving money to other people to do cool things?! NOT ON MY INTERNET!" yeah bro that's definitely it. You nailed it. Fuckin' a. High five, hit the showers (no gay poo poo tia)
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Apr 4, 2012 22:17
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