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gently caress This Puzzle posted:More money than sense applies to the people donating.
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Apr 6, 2013 17:18
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Phlegmish posted:People get defensive about things they like, it's normal. Personally, I'm fairly optimistic about Torment and I'm glad they did well. If there's a KS you want to criticize, let it be Shroud of the Avatar for turning out to be yet another insipid semi-MMO instead of the 'return to Ultima VII' they were talking about. It's not even that, though. It's that comments like this: gently caress This Puzzle posted:I actually think they're both going to be good games, it's just weird to go back to the well before you've produced anything. display a massive amount of willful ignorance. It only takes the most cursory amount of attention to fully understand why they did this, and to get confirmation from a large number of sources that this is, indeed, a normal practice. If you think the game will be poo poo, that's perfectly reasonable. If you think the use of the name is a callous money grab, Ok. If you hate KS or think kickstarter as preorder is dumb, or ignoring all of the explanations so you can complain about a double-dip is just really aggressively dumb, to me. e: not that anyone, individually, is dumb to not kick in to this (or any) kickstarter. The safest bet is to wait, 100% of the time. Just, you know, of all the reasons in the universe, this is really the dumbest. Arnold of Soissons fucked around with this message at 17:23 on Apr 6, 2013 |
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Apr 6, 2013 17:18
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Arnold of Soissons posted:or ignoring all of the explanations so you can complain about a double-dip is just really aggressively dumb, to me. You can read explanations and not agree with them. It isn't a normal practice either, because kickstarter isn't how it's normally done in the business.
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Apr 6, 2013 17:19
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gently caress This Puzzle posted:You can read explanations and not agree with them. You can read them and still ignore them, too. And you could easily make the case that Kickstarter is becoming the way business is done for small market games. You could even argue that it already is SOP at this point.
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Apr 6, 2013 17:22
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Arnold of Soissons posted:display a massive amount of willful ignorance. Full stop. You can agree or disagree with whether that's a "good" mindset, but get off your soap box - customers are entitled to be customers. You don't need a PhD in business before you're allowed to buy a game. (EDIT: I realize not all customers are uninformed, but nitpicking others for not being as informed and enlightened as you when making a purchase is goony as gently caress. "willful ignorance," really?) Shalinor fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Apr 6, 2013 |
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Apr 6, 2013 17:24
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Arnold of Soissons posted:You can read them and still ignore them, too. And you could easily make the case that Kickstarter is becoming the way business is done for small market games. You could even argue that it already is SOP at this point. Have any other developers solicited a second Kickstarter? If so have any of them solicited that second kickstarter before the first game was released?
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Apr 6, 2013 17:27
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ReV VAdAUL posted:Have any other developers solicited a second Kickstarter? If so have any of them solicited that second kickstarter before the first game was released?
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Apr 6, 2013 17:42
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gently caress This Puzzle posted:More money than sense applies to the people donating. pro tip: The set of people donating to Torment is not necessarily the same set that donated to Wasteland 2. The overlap could be large, small, or nonexistent. Some of these people could potentially have not even known about the Wasteland 2 kickstarter, or know about it but not know it's the same company. Many could know but not care. Is it really fair to say a customer has more money than sense if they donate to two kickstarters by the same company? They could donate with full knowledge that their previous donation has yet to produce anything and they have no idea if the games will be good, but they understand why inXile ran two kickstarters right after one another and want to support someone creating sequels to games from their (possibly) childhood, with the realization that the games might be crap. They can do whatever they want with their money, and just because you wouldn't do the same doesn't mean they're stupid. For example, I bought Diablo 3 at launch with full expectation that it would be a worse game than Diablo 2. It was, I played it for a month or so, and never picked it up again, but I still enjoyed it for what it was and was satisfied with my purchase. I don't think I'm dumb for doing that. (also i didn't donate to wl2 and paid for the $45 tier in torment to get both games anyway, clearly the best choice  )
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Apr 6, 2013 17:46
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1-Up posted:http://www.starcommandgame.com and they haven't released anything so far.(Our very own SA-thread for android games has this even in the title). That is a grey area since the second KS was to fund a port of the unreleased initial project rather than a second game but still, nothing to give confidence to a potential donor or suggest this is SOP. Any others?
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Apr 6, 2013 17:48
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ReV VAdAUL posted:Any others? The Guns of Icarus Online people are apparently on their third. Though, as far as I can tell, they always started their next one after the previous game had been released. CottonWolf fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Apr 6, 2013 |
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Apr 6, 2013 17:52
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ARACHNOTRON posted:pro tip: The set of people donating to Torment is not necessarily the same set that donated to Wasteland 2. The overlap could be large, small, or nonexistent. Some enterprising individual could scrape the backer lists of both projects and determine this.
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Apr 6, 2013 17:55
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gently caress This Puzzle posted:I'm also a bit bitter nobody's trying to kickstart FreeSpace 3 or something.
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Apr 6, 2013 18:21
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I didn't join the Torment kickstarter because I never thought the first one was as amazing as people claim. I have the same degree of criticism for games like Deus Ex and Bioshock, so call me the Russian judge. I do think a large part of that was having to wrestle with a hacked Infinity Engine and an equally (if interestingly) hacked AD&D ruleset. Liked the story, disliked the game parts. I also didn't join because I have no faith in Monte Cook's world-building chops. The guy's branded World of Darkness d20 conversion managed to turn the WoD with its PCs as creatures lurking in shadows into a cut-rate modern-day Shadowrun. I trust him with the concepts behind Torment about as much as I do that hack they got as a stretch goal dialogue writer. Starting a Kickstarter for Torment before Wasteland 2 was an issue as well, until someone pointed out the way studios function internally. Now I'm somewhere between curious and concerned for them as a company. Are they going to continue with this overlapping development schedule, coming up with a new game to put inactive people on? Are they going to keep getting millions of dollars in pledges for those titles, or what will happen if some kind of buyer fatigue sets in? How many copies do they expect to sell post-launch? I may not have pledged for it, but it's going to be interesting as Hell to watch unfold!
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Apr 6, 2013 18:22
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In terms of double Kickstarters, BIONITE: Origins had a Kickstarter and then later a flexible funding IndieGogo campaign and I swear they also had a Kickstarter or an IndieGogo for a single player campaign addon (or, according to my unfounded speculation, an "oh poo poo we're out of money" campaign) but I can't for the life of me find any link to it. edit: it was a Kickstarter the second (third?) time around too. So, yeah, hooray for these folks...
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Apr 6, 2013 18:46
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Bieeardo posted:Starting a Kickstarter for Torment before Wasteland 2 was an issue as well, until someone pointed out the way studios function internally. Now I'm somewhere between curious and concerned for them as a company. Are they going to continue with this overlapping development schedule, coming up with a new game to put inactive people on? Are they going to keep getting millions of dollars in pledges for those titles, or what will happen if some kind of buyer fatigue sets in? How many copies do they expect to sell post-launch? Likewise, Torment had about 74k backers. Presumably a really good RPG could sell several hundred thousand or a million copies over the course of the first few months, particularly if it is good and gets enough press. Again, since the game is (mostly) paid for by the Kickstarter campaign, this means that most of those sales would be profit. (I'm of course ignoring any sort of marketing costs they do for either game because we have no idea what those plans are) Isn't Shadowrun Returns the first >$1million Kickstarter game scheduled for release? Or is DoubleFine's going to be released first? Their quality may well color people's perceptions toward how these other huge Kickstarted games will be (even if in actuality they have no bearing at all)
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Apr 6, 2013 19:00
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Kenshin posted:Well, I think the assumption is that they will be able to fund the next game with the funds from Wasteland 2. Keep in mind that it had just over 61k backers, which should be a fairly small portion of the overall audience assuming the game is good and gets positive reviews. If Wasteland 2's development is really covered most of the way by the Kickstarter, that means that the vast majority of the sales post-release are profit.
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Apr 6, 2013 19:22
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http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnyegriffiths/2013/04/03/brian-fargo-interview-torment-tides-of-numenera-kickstarter/ Brian Fargo had an interview with Forbes a few days ago getting into some of that. It's a short four pages.
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Apr 6, 2013 19:23
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Drifter posted:http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnyegriffiths/2013/04/03/brian-fargo-interview-torment-tides-of-numenera-kickstarter/ Yeah, the key quote out of this is here: quote:Very much so! For us to sell 200,000 pieces would mean that we can carry on making games like this for five years. If its more, maybe thats 10 years. The way I look at it, I get to make another RPG.
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Apr 6, 2013 19:51
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Kenshin posted:We can presume that Wasteland 2 is going to come out before they need to start staffing a third game, which means they likely won't have to use Kickstarter again if Wasteland 2 is successful. I could see them shifting to something like what Larian is doing: fund most of the game with internal money, but do a Kickstarter to raise additional cash to make the game bigger and deeper than what they could do with just their own money. That way, they're not as dependent on Kickstarter, but they still get to retain fan participation and early interest. But all that is many months away, November at the very earliest.
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Apr 6, 2013 20:18
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I backed wasteland 2 and torment because it was $20 each and if they end up being terrible its less money than a AAA turning out to be poo poo. Kickstarter!
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Apr 6, 2013 20:42
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gently caress This Puzzle posted:You can read explanations and not agree with them. It's a perfectly normal business practice. The only weird part is that the money is coming from a Kickstarter, not a publisher. Once a team is done with whatever's necessary for one game, you start them working on another one, or DLC. The fact that you want to keep people employed during different parts of a game's development cycle is one of the advantages of DLC - you can have your content producers churning out stuff that will make you money while the designers are working on the higher level building blocks for the next game. In this case they're starting from scratch so have no DLC to produce, and they're doing another crowdfunding effort instead. I don't see how this is any different from going after another publisher for you next project before the first is finished -- it might be a bit of a gamble, but if it pays off you have a much more solid future. How would you propose they keep people on staff and paid if they don't have a particular project to work on, once the aspect of Wasteland that they were responsible for is finished? E: From that Forbes interview: quote:The reason why we did it is that when I used to do the role-playing games at Interplay, wed always have staggered development. Youre going to get a better product if you have the pre-production for the next game for the team to start on right when theyre done. That way we can spend the time while everyone (sc. on the production team) is working on Wasteland, theyll (sc. the pre-production team on Torment:Tides of Numenera) be questioning every word of the design for Torment, and every nuance and every piece of reactivity, and making pass after pass, honing it in so that when the team from Wasteland gets done, theyll be ready to go. That certainly works better than if you finish Wasteland, and then say now what will we do? What part of this is silly? It seems pretty reasonable to me. NmareBfly fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Apr 6, 2013 |
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Apr 6, 2013 21:00
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NmareBfly posted:It's a perfectly normal business practice. The only weird part is that the money is coming from a Kickstarter, not a publisher. Once a team is done with whatever's necessary for one game, you start them working on another one, or DLC. The fact that you want to keep people employed during different parts of a game's development cycle is one of the advantages of DLC - you can have your content producers churning out stuff that will make you money while the designers are working on the higher level building blocks for the next game. In this case they're starting from scratch so have no DLC to produce, and they're doing another crowdfunding effort instead. I don't see how this is any different from going after another publisher for you next project before the first is finished -- it might be a bit of a gamble, but if it pays off you have a much more solid future. Personally, I appreciate where they came from in this explanation, and I don't begrudge them or the people who funded both their projects, but as the one putting their own money down, I want to know the company that brought us Choplifter HD and Super Stacker can make one passable RPG before I give them money for a second one. It's not like I can't buy Torment post release if everything's good, but they've got as much of my money on faith as they're getting.
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Apr 6, 2013 21:58
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Shalinor posted:Crowd funding means funding from the crowd, your customers. Customers aren't aware of, nor should they be aware of, business realities. They insert money, and expect a game in return. Kickstarter is not a shop, though. People pledging on KS are hardly normal customers (hardly even customers, in fact, more like patrons). If anyone pledges uninformed and then just expects a game to fall out of the machine they're simply dumb, not even going to sugarcoat it. I understand the concern of some, but I accept inXile's explanation, understand it, and also accept the risk of having nothing in my hands should something go sideways. Kickstarter is, as all of you probably know by now, a chance for us to put our money where our mouth is, it's purely faith-based. It doesn't matter if the faith runs on nostalgia, innovativeness or actual working prototype. Also, to the people saying they have nothing to show, they actually provided a demo video of one of the locations, and it was pretty good. Sure, it might fail even in spite of that, but assuming such pessimistic position is pointless.
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Apr 6, 2013 22:01
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I'm totally cool with their explanation, although I think they'd have been better served making DLC / addons for wasteland 2 (as it'd make them more money, and I'd probably buy them) but that said, until they deliver a game via kickstarter I won't give them any money, I don't really have enough to spend that I can give money without a guarantee of getting something for it.
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Apr 6, 2013 22:06
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More to the point, it's okay to be skeptical, regardless of realities. I fully realize why inxile needs a more constant flow of money to keep everyone on board, but since I still haven't gotten my hands on Wasteland 2, the level of trust needed for me to fund yet another project hasn't yet been established. I don't want to take a risk on two different projects from the same team, I'd rather see the results of the first before committing to the second. We just don't know yet if they're capable of releasing great old school style RPGs yet.
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Apr 6, 2013 22:10
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:More to the point, it's okay to be skeptical, regardless of realities. I fully realize why inxile needs a more constant flow of money to keep everyone on board, but since I still haven't gotten my hands on Wasteland 2, the level of trust needed for me to fund yet another project hasn't yet been established. I don't want to take a risk on two different projects from the same team, I'd rather see the results of the first before committing to the second. We just don't know yet if they're capable of releasing great old school style RPGs yet. Exactly this for me. By comparison, I gave the Project Eternity kickstarter a pledge for the game and an addon for the expansion pack, which is a way worse proposition than pledging for two separate projects, but it's because Obsidian has a better track record, bugs aside, of producing RPGs over the last 10 years: KOTOR 2, New Vegas, NWN 2, and Alpha Protocol. They also did Dungeon Siege 3, which some people like.
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Apr 6, 2013 22:22
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Poe posted:... KOTOR 2 ... Woh oh oh oh, don't be saying things you can't take back. That's not exactly a stellar example of a finnished RPG.
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Apr 6, 2013 22:25
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Juc66 posted:Woh oh oh oh, don't be saying things you can't take back. It is a stellar example of an RPG, though. Chickpea Roar fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Apr 6, 2013 |
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Apr 6, 2013 22:30
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Nightblade posted:It is a a stellar example of an RPG, though. I agree. Aside from being really dated, it's a really enjoyable game, especially with the Content restored mod. I may have to go back and check out Dungeon Siege 3, but from the few hours I played of it I really thought it wasn't up to par with Obsidian's other games, however incomplete they may have been. I think the impression I have of DS3 was a resounding 'meh'.
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Apr 6, 2013 22:50
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TyrsHTML posted:I backed wasteland 2 and torment because it was $20 each and if they end up being terrible its less money than a AAA turning out to be poo poo. Kickstarter! Pretty much this. Plus, I like the little feeling I get from letting the company (and others) know, yes, this is the kind of game I want to see made. If the game is awful and is a flop, it still tells the next studio there's an audience for their better idea which builds off that. Juc66 posted:although I think they'd have been better served making DLC / addons for wasteland 2 See now that would leave a bad taste in my mouth. We funded that game, and our level of funding determined the amount of content, and then sight unseen they go back to the well for more content in the game? Not a fan of that approach.
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Apr 6, 2013 22:58
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Poe posted:as the one putting their own money down, I want to know the company that brought us Choplifter HD and Super Stacker can make one passable RPG before I give them money for a second one. See, this is a perfectly reasonable reason not to throw money down. I was mostly just pointing out that the second Kickstarter isn't just a cash grab assuming it's in good faith, and a pretty reasonable decision from a business standpoint. Well, I hope it isn't, because if so they grabbed some of mine. I suppose I've flushed money down toilets for worse odds. quote:See now that would leave a bad taste in my mouth. We funded that game, and our level of funding determined the amount of content, and then sight unseen they go back to the well for more content in the game? Not a fan of that approach This really depends on the DLC they end up with. I don't have a problem with throwing them a few more bucks for another chapter or whatever. If it's microtransaction '$5 for a better gun!!!' then yeah that would be crappy, but I don't feel like I'm entitled to more than the original offer. It would be nice if it were free to anyone who kickstartered originally, but that's the sort of decision they should only make after seeing sales numbers.
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Apr 6, 2013 23:22
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Drifter posted:I agree. Aside from being really dated, it's a really enjoyable game, especially with the Content restored mod. DS3 is okay if you put it on Hard mode but your expectations will probably be more in line for what you're getting if you just forget Obsidian made it at all, for better for worse.
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Apr 6, 2013 23:50
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Also, while InXile may not have done much as a company, (no, I'm not counting the Bard's Tale remake thing as indicative of their ability to make a good RPG) a lot of the individual people involved in this game have.
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Apr 7, 2013 01:05
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NmareBfly posted:I don't feel like I'm entitled to more than the original offer. It would be nice if it were free to anyone who kickstartered originally, but that's the sort of decision they should only make after seeing sales numbers. Oh, sure, I don't mean after the game ships. I meant with the game unfinished, starting a KS for DLC as a way of keeping the company afloat (instead of a KS for a new property, as they did).
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Apr 7, 2013 02:32
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Humans Must Answer, the 2D space shooter by ex-S.T.A.L.K.E.R. devs, is in its final fundraiser week and needs a cash infusion to make it!
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Apr 7, 2013 12:24
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Zenith Nadir posted:Humans Must Answer, the 2D space shooter by ex-S.T.A.L.K.E.R. devs, is in its final fundraiser week and needs a cash infusion to make it! Edit: The music is pretty great too. Orzo fucked around with this message at 16:04 on Apr 7, 2013 |
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Apr 7, 2013 16:01
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Whoever is writing the update copy for Divinity: Original Sin needs to put down the meme dictionary. In a casual glance over the latest update email, I saw "Over 9000", "1.21 Gigawatts" and "Objection!". It's like they don't know how to start a section without a meme header. That aside, they went into great depth on the co-op vs single player stuff, and how it works. For those of you that were concerned/curious, the latest update is very worth reading. Shalinor fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Apr 7, 2013 |
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Apr 7, 2013 17:03
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Orzo posted:I am honestly surprised that such a polished, already-functional game like this hasn't met such a modest goal. The graphics are really great. Is the genre something people just aren't interested in? The genre is the sole reason I didn't donate. I just know I won't play that game.
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Apr 7, 2013 18:04
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ReV VAdAUL posted:Have any other developers solicited a second Kickstarter? If so have any of them solicited that second kickstarter before the first game was released? Stone Blade Entertainment solicited funds for Ascension Online while still working on their first kickstarted project, but Ascension already exists in paper form and on the iPad so backers had a good idea of what they were funding. SolForge: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1965800643/solforge-digital-trading-card-game Ascension Online: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1965800643/ascension-online
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Apr 7, 2013 18:35
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Orzo posted:I am honestly surprised that such a polished, already-functional game like this hasn't met such a modest goal. The graphics are really great. Is the genre something people just aren't interested in? It really seems like they just haven't managed to tap their audience. The game is cheap and pretty, but it only has 200ish backers. I imagine the British pounds things makes people more wary too 
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Apr 7, 2013 18:51
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