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Utritum posted:Himalaya Studios, also known as AGD Interactive, the team behind the VGA fan-remakes of King's Quest I-III and Quest for Glory II, put up a Kickstarter for their second commercial project, Mage's Initiation, a "Sierra style Adventure/RPG", with actions that carries over to possible sequels. I haven't pledged for a KS in a long time, but this made me throw in $6. I only ever played QfG5, but it was very fun and I loved how the different classes can have access to different paths (and even get different girlfriends). Loved the humor too. It got almost $20000 more in the last 24 or so hours after I pledged, and Kotaku even features them in an article. I think this have a good chance of making it. Some funny/sad comment in the Kotaku article, though. Apparently, some people commenting there (including an indie developer) thinks Double Fine and Obsidian are misusing KS because they are not 'independent' enough.
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Feb 20, 2013 08:29
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The MSJ posted:I haven't pledged for a KS in a long time, but this made me throw in $6. I only ever played QfG5, but it was very fun and I loved how the different classes can have access to different paths (and even get different girlfriends). Loved the humor too. What I don't get is how they have a team of 13 people (granted, some of which may just be part-timers/volunteers), quality pixel graphics and backgrounds and still plan for a budget of only 65k. Looks a bit on the low side to me. They're probably banking on reaching a higher sum, with stretch goals running up to four times their starting goal. It's a good idea because the project will gain a lot more exposure with that percentage shooting up, I just hope it doesn't backfire on them. The MSJ posted:Some funny/sad comment in the Kotaku article, though. Apparently, some people commenting there (including an indie developer) thinks Double Fine and Obsidian are misusing KS because they are not 'independent' enough. You phrased it pretty candidly, but looking at certain KS projects I fully agree with that sentiment. I'd call it misusing KS because they could easily go find investors somewhere else, just that they'd actually need to show decent material instead of name-based hype. (Not referring to all big name cool-million KS projects here, just the usual black sheep.) Some companies don't need Kickstarter, and while this might be an arrogant statement, I'd consider it ethical to leave that site to the little guys with crazy niche projects instead of using it as a tap for free money, which you could get through regular channels with some effort. (I'm just gonna be a hypocrite here and say DFA was absolutely fine for me, simply because they went for something larger than a game - meaning the documentary, which is something I can't see any publisher shelling out money for.)
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Feb 20, 2013 10:46
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miguelito posted:You phrased it pretty candidly, but looking at certain KS projects I fully agree with that sentiment. Except that is exactly what they COULDN'T do. No publisher is willing to support these projects because it means having to invest far too much money for enough payback. Also, the documentary was only a fourth of the cost of what originally DFA wanted for their Kickstarter. I don't think it's fair to exclude professional developers from wanting to make a Kickstarter project simply because you feel it is an indie area or something. I do agree that not all companies need a Kickstarter, but I don't think all developers can develop the games they want to from publishers, because simply publishers refuse to take a risk and will decline the developers conditions for a project. Something Kickstarter allows them to circumvent.
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Feb 20, 2013 10:52
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The more dev outfits that can properly utilize KS, regardless of their size, so much the better as it takes the whole "Split IP" angle out of the equation. Looking back at the last Golden Era or so, seeing how many are lost in a stagnation of Rights' Hell such that we can't even hope for an aging old dev out of their attic to take another crack at it, and how prior to KS there was little chance of otherwise in the cycle repeating---real simple. I guess another way of looking at it is just the long view of hoping for a better distant future where GoG doesn't have to work nearly as hard ala the SS2 release of late in order to preserve and make timeless classics available for all to enjoy and continue stoking the embers.
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Feb 20, 2013 14:26
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So The Banner Saga came out today for backers and I'm hugely disappointed. I have never played a game with such stifling microtransactions, it takes money to do anything and upgrading units is a horrible grind.  It does have very nice art at least.
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Feb 20, 2013 18:53
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the black husserl posted:So The Banner Saga came out today for backers and I'm hugely disappointed. I have never played a game with such stifling microtransactions, it takes money to do anything and upgrading units is a horrible grind. That's only the weird free to play game. The actual game isn't out until the summer, and I presume that will have no microtransactions.
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Feb 20, 2013 19:01
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That's like the third person to talk about the micro transactions in the multiplayer game. Can someone give an example of the costs/benefits?
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Feb 20, 2013 19:05
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Whatever happened to that "Design your own Banner" reward?
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Feb 20, 2013 19:06
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the black husserl posted:So The Banner Saga came out today for backers and I'm hugely disappointed. I have never played a game with such stifling microtransactions, it takes money to do anything and upgrading units is a horrible grind. That's pretty sad/annoying. I was really only interested in the single player though, so hopefully that still winds up okay. FTP microtranactions games can all die in a fire. 
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Feb 20, 2013 19:06
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"Here you go, early adopters, something that will help you give us more money!" is slightly insulting.
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Feb 20, 2013 19:10
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That does suck that they would do that, but I'm willing to bet they just wanted to give their backers early access as best they could and weren't scheming to milk money out of their backers.
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Feb 20, 2013 19:21
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I stopped playing it entirely. I dunno if it's low sample size or what but matchmaking kept putting me against people that had two more upgraded units than me. Which put me at a major disadvantage in every game. Compounding that with me probably being bad at the game and I could never win, which means I'd get like 6 renown points per 35 minute game - this is WITH expert mode enabled. To upgrade one unit you need 50. I'm not trying to spend four-five hours to upgrade one unit of my six-man team, to say nothing of buying different unit types. Freemium always sucks but freemium sucks more with SALE banners plastered all over the place. Honestly I'd probably be way less salty if backers got $10 in Cyberbucks. Super No Vacancy fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Feb 20, 2013 |
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Feb 20, 2013 19:22
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miguelito posted:I'd consider it ethical to leave that site to the little guys with crazy niche projects instead of using it as a tap for free money This makes sense if there's a fixed amount of money coming into KS, and huge projects take money away from smaller ones. What actually seems to happen, though, is that huge successes expand Kickstarter's total audience. Because of that, smaller projects actually benefit from the huge ones because they increase the total amount of Kickstarter users, which increases the chance that a smaller project will get funded.
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Feb 20, 2013 19:35
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XboxPants posted:This makes sense if there's a fixed amount of money coming into KS, and huge projects take money away from smaller ones. What actually seems to happen, though, is that huge successes expand Kickstarter's total audience. Because of that, smaller projects actually benefit from the huge ones because they increase the total amount of Kickstarter users, which increases the chance that a smaller project will get funded. drat, you beat me to it! There was a huge surge in pledges after DFA because of the number of new Kickstarter users it brought to the site who then went on to pledge to even more things. This thread wouldn't even exist without DFA and WL2, and I imagine many people following it are looking at Kickstarter a hell of a lot more than they used to. There are certain things I think really are unethical to do on Kickstarter (setting your goal lower than you actually need to finish the product, for example), but "not being indie enough" isn't one of them. joneswt posted:Whatever happened to that "Design your own Banner" reward? It will be in-game when they release the actual single player game. The freemium thing is just their combat system, which they did both to polish it before sticking it into the single player game and to generate extra money that can go towards improving the game(s) we actually paid them for (not just the first, but the second and third as well). I'm not saying their freemium thing is great (I haven't played it and don't plan to, blegh), but anyone who backed is still going to get the game they paid for and then some. From a financial and technical standpoint, Factions will only make the real game better.
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Feb 20, 2013 21:00
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So I guess Project Awakened is doing another big push featuring lots of donor swag. Personally I think it's a little sad to see so many physical rewards being offered up. I guess nerds like that kinda stuff but does anyone really care about a signed art book for this game? All that's going to do it cost them money to manufacture and ship.
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Feb 20, 2013 21:31
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I didn't back Banner Saga, but reading a few things plus checking out the gameplay of the combat, I'm really really excited for the release of that game. The travel system, the dialogue, the branching plot, the RPG elements, the King of Dragon Pass styled events, the turn-based square-based action, the viking themes and story, the amazing artstyle, it just sounds like everything I love rolled into one.
SNARF SNARF SNARF fucked around with this message at 21:57 on Feb 20, 2013 |
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Feb 20, 2013 21:52
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Haxel looks pretty neat. It's a voxel-based shooter that is reminding me more of Doom, Marathon, Dark Forces, etc. It's a nice break from the hyper realistic sniper rifle blah blahs we've had lately.
Shalinor fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Feb 21, 2013 |
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Feb 21, 2013 18:10
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I backed the kickstarter for Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams back in the day, and the physical rewards for the tier I selected arrived a little while ago. I didn't get around to picking it up from the post office until today, and when I did I had to pay $32 in customs handling and VAT because it was declared as merchandise valued at €30 ($39)  Yep, last time I'm going for the higher tiers for Kickstarter projects (also, gently caress Norwegian customs). The art book looks nice though. Sadly the poster didn't survive the postal system, but the rest looks intact. AG3 fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Feb 21, 2013 |
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Feb 21, 2013 18:25
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Ithaka of the Clouds (fixed funding Indiegogo campaign) is the next game in the Lands of Dream series by Jonas and Verena Kyratzes. I haven't played the most recent one yet, but it's a wonderful series of games. They're a bit hard to explain, but it's basically text heavy fairytale-like adventure games set in a unique, magical world. Anyway, the pitch video explains it better than I could, so watch that. It's perhaps a bit long and meandering, but that's kinda in line with the games.
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Feb 21, 2013 18:40
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Oh, the guys from The Sea Will Claim Everything. That will turn out good if they get funded.
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Feb 21, 2013 18:46
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This Banner Saga thing is kinda pissing me off. I understand that as their budget increased, they were able to set their sights higher than planned, but man. The game was originally supposed to come out in November of last year. They are just now putting out some loving poorly balanced multiplayer only F2P grindfest and saying they hope the single player comes out by "late this year". That's some abysmal project management right there, especially since their latest update indicates that Factions exists because they're broke and need money to stay afloat. That's not great. Honestly at this point I'm starting to wonder if Banner Saga is coming out at all: they got badly derailed from their original objectives, seem to be low on money and are approaching a year since their Kickstarter ended with no end in sight -- and they were apparently in production even before then! This just seems like the archtypical Kickstarter problem in a nutshell: devs ask for X moneys, claim they can make an amazing game with that money. Devs get 7X moneys, say they can suddenly make a game that's seven times better than the original, end up making GBS threads the bed. I think Andy Schatz was absolutely right: figure out what features you need to make your game, figure out how much money you need for those features and then do it. CottonWolf posted:That's only the weird free to play game. The actual game isn't out until the summer There's no loving way the single player is out by summer if you go by their latest update. It's full of "yeah maybe we spent too much time on this multiplayer but now we're 100% on the single player, honest!" which kinda indicates they've done gently caress all to the SP portion of the game. EDIT: I also don't get how they claim all the effort made with Factions will make the single player so much better. It doesn't have AI battles, right? So basically all they can take away from it are assets. Everything else would have to be rebalanced around the AI anyway. Shaman Tank Spec fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Feb 21, 2013 |
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Feb 21, 2013 19:32
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Der Shovel posted:This Banner Saga thing is kinda pissing me off. I understand that as their budget increased, they were able to set their sights higher than planned, but man. The game was originally supposed to come out in November of last year. They are just now putting out some loving poorly balanced multiplayer only F2P grindfest and saying they hope the single player comes out by "late this year". http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stoic/the-banner-saga/posts/410956?ref=activity quote:Will there be microtransactions in the single player game? Seriously though, what I got out of Factions was: * The art direction and voice acting is pretty darn great for an indy game. Seriously the art style is fantastic. * I see where they are going with the combat and I like it * I have absolutely zero interest in playing Factions multiplayer So, I can see that I'm pretty likely to get a good singleplayer game out of this. Yeah, it's late. Oh well. So is most software. Kenshin fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Feb 21, 2013 |
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Feb 21, 2013 19:35
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Kenshin posted:New studio makes big mistakes in estimating schedules, news at 11! "New studio blows 9 months on what was supposed to be a little side project" is more accurate. This isn't scheduling, this is completely derailing your project and losing focus on what you were doing. It's also a bit more serious than a little snafu when they're pretty much flat out saying they're broke and using whatever money they can get from Factions to stay afloat. If it took them 850k to get this thing made and stay in business this long, how the hell are they hoping to get the single player portion finished? EDIT: I'm not saying we should crucify them or anything, but I am starting to get seriously worried that this project will never come out. Shaman Tank Spec fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Feb 21, 2013 |
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Feb 21, 2013 19:45
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I think that's a bit of an overreaction. They didn't say they're out of money. In fact, they specifically said they have a buffer that would enable them to keep going longer if needed. Of course, everything runs out eventually, and the combat system is a pretty integral part of the game they're making, so they decided to polish up the combat system first and release it as a free-to-play game that will allow them to take personal incomes (which they haven't been thus far). That's the safe bet; it just happened to take much longer than they anticipated. Personally, I'm happy they went with the safe bet instead of having this same thing happen on the single player game, watching the money run out, and being unable to finish because of it. I don't see why this situation is supposedly so much worse for the single player game's eventual release.
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Feb 21, 2013 20:14
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Kenshin posted:New studio makes big mistakes in estimating schedules, news at 11! At the very least perhaps Kickstarter will give the average gamer the tiniest bit of sympathy for what publishers go through.
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Feb 21, 2013 20:23
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seorin posted:I don't see why this situation is supposedly so much worse for the single player game's eventual release. It sounds more like a time thing than anything else. That seems to be why people are more upset than anything else. And then that, somewhat understandable, frustration is allowing for hyperbole to run rampant within the situation, and frustration grows. It really seems they had a lot on their plate before, and with that extra money and additional design it makes things a lot more complicated to produce and manage, and in my opinion the iteration of development and design within some of the mechanics of combat will really help improve the overall experience of the SP campaign. When it comes down to it, Factions lets them iron away so many little things and a few big things, too. It sounds like basically a HUGE milestone that they've accomplished. That being said, I have no interest in Factions at all.
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Feb 21, 2013 20:27
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Der Shovel posted:"New studio blows 9 months on what was supposed to be a little side project" is more accurate. This isn't scheduling, this is completely derailing your project and losing focus on what you were doing. It's also a bit more serious than a little snafu when they're pretty much flat out saying they're broke and using whatever money they can get from Factions to stay afloat. If it took them 850k to get this thing made and stay in business this long, how the hell are they hoping to get the single player portion finished? Can you quote me the sections where they are saying they are broke? I just read through the whole update and I'm just not seeing it. Is this because they said they haven't been taking salaries? If they are broke, I can definitely see where you are coming from. I do agree about being mostly uninterested in Factions though. I'm looking forward to the single player game.
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Feb 21, 2013 20:28
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To tell the truth I'm kind of annoyed at how long The Banner Saga is taking. Cloudberry Kingdom ended up with big delays as well.
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Feb 21, 2013 20:29
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They're also adjusting a lot of the issues people have raised about the Factions game. If you don't care about Factions then obviously this means all of two shits, but they are fixing renown, lowering the cost of a lot of the extra crap, and fixing matchmaking bugs. The freemium stuff and microstransactions may hurt the public image of the game, but hopefully it means that the single-player game is very polished and very good. Maybe that's a false dichotomy, though, but at least they've quickly responded to a lot of the criticism and made adjustments in the multiplayer game, cause as it was, it wasn't very fun getting crushed by other people. Paired up against another team that is even though, I have to say that the combat is very, very fun. Factions at least gives you a taste of what the meat of the single-player game will be like. I'm not worried about delays because honestly every game that blows through its initial kickstarter goal seems to get delayed (except for board games like Battle for Alabaster). I understand why people are upset about it though. Dreylad fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Feb 21, 2013 |
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Feb 21, 2013 20:31
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King Burgundy posted:Can you quote me the sections where they are saying they are broke? I just read through the whole update and I'm just not seeing it. Well, "broke" is maybe an overstatement, but considering how flowery and smoothed over these statements always are, I don't think there's any way to read the thing below and not come to the conclusion that they've blown through at least a large chunk of their money. The devs posted:"Factions just looks like a cash grab to me." Note: "the $650k that we received [...] have gone into production", ie. at least a lot of the 650k is gone and the game is still months away. Now maybe they've accomplished what they needed to with that money and can coast to the finish line without spending more money and so are finally taking salaries, but my immediate reaction is "we blew through our budget so hard we couldn't even pay ourselves and now need more money". And again, I'm not saying they should starve to make our game or anything like that, so my problem isn't that they're paying themselves or whatever, but it just smacks of colossal mismanagement which might very well mean Factions is the only thing we're getting out of this. If they had been hard at work on the single player campaign (the thing we pledged for and they were promoting in the Kickstarter) all this time and it was just taking longer than anticipated, hey: that's cool. Things happen. But right now it just seems like they blew their load on something that was supposed to be a side thing and may now end up being the only thing. Or maybe everything's fine and I'm just reading way too much into it. Hope I am! EDIT: seorin posted:Personally, I'm happy they went with the safe bet instead of having this same thing happen on the single player game, watching the money run out, and being unable to finish because of it. I don't see why this situation is supposedly so much worse for the single player game's eventual release. I don't see how that's the "safe bet". Right now all they have is a F2P multiplayer thing which has been pretty negatively received. As things stand right now they don't have a single player game to release in and apparently are in some financial difficulties. It's a pretty big stretch to say this negatively received F2P multiplayer game will somehow be a big enough success to pay for the development of the rest of the game. Shaman Tank Spec fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Feb 21, 2013 |
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Feb 21, 2013 21:54
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The conundrum for these massively overfunded projects is whether to just stick with what you've planned and budgetted for and know you can do hoping to use the rest of the money later and get accused of pocketing it and not delivering your stretch goals or do you scramble in a short period of time to considerably expand your game and face the near certainty of delays and risk running out of money on your new found ambitions?
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Feb 21, 2013 22:04
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ReV VAdAUL posted:The conundrum for these massively overfunded projects is whether to just stick with what you've planned and budgetted for and know you can do hoping to use the rest of the money later and get accused of pocketing it and not delivering your stretch goals or do you scramble in a short period of time to considerably expand your game and face the near certainty of delays and risk running out of money on your new found ambitions? Yeah, absolutely. It's not easy. I don't envy them (well I kinda do, I'd love to have $650k to develop a game with, even though I'd blow it all on board games and candy, probably) and I'm not even blaming them. I'm just saying "it looks like they hosed up big time and now we may never get the game".
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Feb 21, 2013 22:07
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I think stretch goals are kind of terrible and I wish that it was just understood that more cash meant more stuff instead of specific benchmarks that often don't really make a whole lot of sense for the amount of cash they receive. Best one I can think of right now is 900k for mac and linux ports but only an extra 100 for a much more expanded game? I understand their use as a marketing tool, however.
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Feb 21, 2013 22:15
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Did Banner Saga even have any stretch goals? I'm looking through the pitch and don't even see something like that mentioned. Funded six times over (after prizes/fees) for their original proposal.
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Feb 21, 2013 22:16
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Harlock posted:Did Banner Saga even have any stretch goals? I'm looking through the pitch and don't even see something like that mentioned. Funded six times over (after prizes/fees) for their original proposal. This is all I could find in my quick search... http://stoicstudio.com/uploaded/graph3.jpg quote:The Orchestra (at $600k)
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Feb 21, 2013 22:22
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Fergus Mac Roich posted:To tell the truth I'm kind of annoyed at how long The Banner Saga is taking. Cloudberry Kingdom ended up with big delays as well. It was really embarassing when they posted their "singleplayer update" and it was just a couple of sketches that could have been made in an hour. They said Chapter One would be out in November. At this rate, we'll be playing Wasteland 2 long before we get even the first chapter of The Banner Saga.
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Feb 21, 2013 22:23
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Al! posted:I think stretch goals are kind of terrible and I wish that it was just understood that more cash meant more stuff instead of specific benchmarks that often don't really make a whole lot of sense for the amount of cash they receive. Best one I can think of right now is 900k for mac and linux ports but only an extra 100 for a much more expanded game? I understand their use as a marketing tool, however. They had an effect on whether or not I pledged. I was interested in Planetary Annihilation but the stretch goals were what convinced me to pledge. There are projects that probably didn't really need them though and used them for marketing like you said. It's not just Kickstarter games that see this kind of stuff though where things get complicated and dates get missed. I'm still waiting for Project Zomboid .
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Feb 21, 2013 22:26
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Remember Grimoire on IndieGoGo by everyone's favorite neanderthal Cleveland Blakemore? Fresh after a two-month campaign that raised $10,000, he's created a new and nearly-identical fundraiser. Surprisingly enough, he has actually released a demo. Use at your own risk and all that, remember the type of guy who programed this thing.Cleve posted:One important thing about the demo is not to run too much in the background on Windows. Grimoire does not play nicely with other apps. It is intended to seize the screen, keyboard and mouse and only release them on exit. I have had people complain of frequent freezes and it turned out they were running a torrent server in the background with fifty clients connected while trying to run Grimoire in the foreground as a full screen application. This is not a good idea. On another former kickstarter, the developers of Expeditions: Conquistador have announced a release date of February 28. They say it will be on GOG, along with other digital distributors like Desura, and have a Steam Greenlight entry. There is also this 20 minute gameplay video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFbaOTaFC1Y Rebel Blob fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Feb 21, 2013 |
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Feb 21, 2013 22:27
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mjau posted:Ithaka of the Clouds (fixed funding Indiegogo campaign) is the next game in the Lands of Dream series by Jonas and Verena Kyratzes. I haven't played the most recent one yet, but it's a wonderful series of games. They're a bit hard to explain, but it's basically text heavy fairytale-like adventure games set in a unique, magical world. And now I've contributed to my second Indiegogo campaign. Always meant to buy "The Sea..." and now I have. Thanks for posting the link!
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Feb 21, 2013 22:29
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the black husserl posted:It was really embarassing when they posted their "singleplayer update" and it was just a couple of sketches that could have been made in an hour. They said Chapter One would be out in November. Man, I don't even read the updates. I just assume that I chose wisely when I backed any given project and that it'll come out eventually. I guess I'm too trusting.
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Feb 21, 2013 22:32
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