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Consider that, in the realm of music, this dude essentially bilked 205 people out of +$25k (he eventually farted out a scrapbook and a bad live recording way over schedule, IIRC) and nothing really happened. The dude got his all-expenses paid trip to Africa, and he's still making music with a very high-profile band. I mean at what threshold does fraud go from being insignificant to something that the invisible hand of the free market cannot possibly allow? Because $25,000 is a lot of money. Granted, it seems unlikely that any of these people are actually con artists but it stands to reason that at some point along the line there might be a hitch or a hardware failure or something that will cause a delay and scuttle the best laid plans of the developer. So it's less a danger of people taking the money and running and more a danger of people not delivering exactly what they promise when they promise to do so. The question is then whether fan investors will be more lenient than publishers have historically been.
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Mar 21, 2012 04:28
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Looks like the Hardcore Tactical Shooter thing is on its way to failure. 10 days and ~75% left to be funded. They're proposing a new project pitch but I'm not sure it will do them any good. They didn't give themselves a lot of time and they might as well have named their project "Brown Cardboard Box"
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Mar 22, 2012 04:44
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Occupation posted:4) Companies who don't opt in will be bitched out for not opting in. I mean yeah, Brian Fargo has taken the success of W2 to let his freak flag fly and just run his mouth about all sorts of questionable stuff, but... We'll see if this is even a thing in the next six months. Basic Chunnel fucked around with this message at 09:33 on Mar 29, 2012 |
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Mar 29, 2012 09:25
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Cult tech demo's out. It's like Dwarf Fortress, unsurprisingly, except with mouse support (thank Jesus). Nothing really to see except some aspects of the world creation - the game itself is supposed to be in a playable state but it's not working for me. I'm not mad though - it is an early alpha. Now I just gotta figure out a cool civ to add 
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Jun 27, 2012 03:04
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Bieeardo posted:I'm really not sure what's going on with Cult's 'insert yourself' dealie. I imagine it's just adding your name to an internal database that's divided by backer level, but some of the people on the forums are writing extremely elaborate back-stories for their cults and realms. If you, for example, funded at the level where you can design your own civ, you'll send him your specs and he'll custom design it. He'll then give you a code that you enter into the game to force it to appear when you play. It's a bit unclear as to whether your civ will randomly show up in games without the code, but it sounds like it will.
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Jul 8, 2012 19:53
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Really I expect that, like what happens routinely in eBay jokes, PA has goaded fans into pledging huge sums of money that they never intend to collect. That's the best case scenario, at least. It's not even a particularly funny prank, especially not stretched out over a month. The punchline is... What, you can make a lot of money off of an ill-conceived project? That's like repeating a joke after it is just been made by several other people in quick succession. It's not clever, in fact it's probably been done by several people already who just didn't have the massive fan base to force the bad joke into the spotlight.
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Jul 10, 2012 18:50
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I mean I wouldn't put it past them necessarily, but it seems like a whole other level of shithead, like you'd think they would have a moment of self-reflection and realize what a bad idea this is On the other hand, they did theme a yearly convention after themselves.
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Jul 10, 2012 19:13
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TetsuoTW posted:Anyone dumb enough to actually donate money to that deserves to have it taken away from them, ironically or otherwise.
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Jul 10, 2012 20:20
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Driving an obvious joke into the ground is something the internet does with aplomb. I mean it would make more sense for them to put up the KS for 24 hours instead of a month. That way there's no ambiguity about their intentions to actually collect, and the joke doesn't get old. My guess is that they're keeping it up so they can use the update system for their lovely riffing
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Jul 10, 2012 20:31
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yah keep in mind that for the alpha screenshot they're mostly using prefab art assets poached via the Unity toolset. They haven't created much in the way of unique stuff yet.
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Jul 21, 2012 03:41
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It's either Wheel of Time (possible), Warhammer 40k (unlikely), or a new IP (possibly some form of the next-gen project killed by Microsoft, possibly something different). The only indication we have that it could be a Kickstarter project is the fact that Obsidian registered an account on the site and their "about" section makes it sound like they're going to be using it soon. Whatever the case, all will presumably be revealed the day after tomorrow. It has its own thread now, too, if you want to discuss it there.
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Sep 13, 2012 08:24
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The video they uploaded w/ their stretch goals indicates that they are going to pursue a DRM-free alternative to Steam. But yeah, as has been said, hosting a big game requires a lot of server power. It's no easy thing.
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Sep 16, 2012 22:16
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Rope Kid just posted some foundational details about what Eternity will entail, if that brings anyone off the fence (in either direction)
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Sep 18, 2012 00:22
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They need a meme, the way it's going. Shame that they don't have any cult hero developers or nostalgia factor to draw on. I'm gonna be sad when it fails because creating my own X-Man was a childhood dream of mine, and no game has really delivered on the promise. Freedom Force was probably the closest but it felt limited in its stats-y powers and extremely limited models. I suppose you could argue there are tons of superhero games by another name (Dishonored,etc) but what I want is this. I've pledged as much as I can.
Basic Chunnel fucked around with this message at 11:48 on Feb 16, 2013 |
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Feb 16, 2013 11:44
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Kickstarter sort of presents a problem in that, if you're not being really smart about initial planning you could end up with significant mission creep and promises to include things that turn out to be barely or not feasible. Here's a video by goon Rope Kid, the project director of Obsidian't Project Eternity, that goes into feature dilemmas in development (relevant part starts probably at 3:00 but if you're into game development the whole thing is good): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjH4s06XXQY The stuff he's talking about is a lot more granular than the broad features that tend to be promised in Kickstarter stretch goals and the like, but the principle is probably similar, at least. You have to be careful what you promise because in game development you have to be able to cut things that won't work, and at some point a KS is going to promise something specific that's not feasible (not necessarily because of something foreseeable). At that point they can either cut it, risk pissing off the backers who were specifically into that feature and deflate enthusiasm in a public that conceives of competent game development as being smooth / Kickstarter as being a pre-order store, or you could hunker down and extend your development time and expense to deliver on what you promised. It will be interesting to see. To my knowledge most of the scuttled KS game projects fell because of rescinded personnel commitments in small teams. But if you go over to Gamasutra to check the postmortems of any number of beloved games (Deus Ex, Bioshock, etc), and conjure a hypothetical in which the original conceptions of said games were presented and funded on Kickstarter, then what resulted from them would be considered at least a partial failure. Rigidity in concept and mechanics can be disastrous, which is why making hard promises (or being too transparent with development in general) can be really dangerous. I'd like to think that something like P:E, which was obviously an extremely considered Kickstarter drive by a veteran developer (that is nonetheless known, as most great developers are, for turbulent productions), was conceived with these things in mind, but for a lot of less experienced indie devs there could definitely be either an overabundance of public assurances or a resistance to making needed amputations. Like look at Cults, which, even if the guy making it was a programming genius it's hard to believe he could deliver the game even a year after the stated deadline. I'm waiting for some econ grad student to publish a study on how developers change their behavior when they receive project funding as a bulk sum vs. receiving it in increments upon successful publisher-mandated milestones (although maybe KS doesn't deliver all at once? I should look that up). The initial assumption would probably be that the latter is more conducive to actually good games because of the incentivization that piecemeal funding provides, what with the lesser breathing room. That said consumers in these cases are probably willing to face inefficiencies in exchange for the elimination of publisher interference. Basic Chunnel fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Feb 21, 2013 |
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Feb 21, 2013 22:56
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An RPG where your repertoire of scrotal forms grows as you level. Sort of like Prototype but with balls
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Feb 24, 2013 03:57
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Zilkin posted:So what's there left to resurrect now? Wasteland 2, P:E and Torment tap the old RPG nerds segment and DFA and few other games are filling the lack of adventure games void. I guess something like BG3 could be huge, but I'm not sure WotC is too keen on Kickstarter.
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Mar 6, 2013 22:33
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Yeah, the right to make a new series iteration (or even re-release older games) hinges on the consent of that insurance group, who rather famously demanded ridiculous amounts of money for the privilege. Dead Space became a new IP game when EA couldn't get a deal on making it System Shock 3. When System Shock 2 hit GOG it was a huge deal in part because a lot of sober, realistic people assumed it would probably never see the light of day again. It's still somewhat unclear how it happened.
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Mar 6, 2013 22:57
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Yeah, R&D overhead on a first project reduces costs for subsequent projects but that hardly counts as dispersal of funds, that's a positive production externality. It'll be interesting to see if the Kickstarter boom leads to some cynicism toward economic forecasting in general Basic Chunnel fucked around with this message at 00:07 on Mar 7, 2013 |
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Mar 6, 2013 23:56
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fermun posted:Wasteland 2 and Torment are both using the Unity engine, not some engine they are developing for themselves. This is also the engine being used by Project Eternity, Shadowrun Returns, and many others. Even Kerbal Space Program, something vastly different from the big Kickstarter RPGs there uses Unity.
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Mar 7, 2013 00:21
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I was under the impression that 2K keeps Irrational on a tight leash. They would presumably see a Kickstarter as a waste. The opportunity cost of placing employees on a small project rather than Bioshock X would probably far outstrip Kickstarter profits.
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Mar 7, 2013 00:52
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Man, Brian Fargo was just made for Kickstarter, wasn't he? The first footage of WL2 looked really good but still, as much as Fargo is an honest-to-God trailblazer and a consummate salesman (look up the origins of Interplay if you haven't), it feels like half the reason he's so into the Kickstarter thing is that he's been more than happy to burn bridges with his past publishers. He spins it as freedom from restrictive money men but I'm not honestly not entirely sure his past troubles weren't due at least in part to his own failings as a manager. I'm glad these projects are being funded (and I chipped in at a low tier for Torment after a higher pledge for WL2) but I'm skeptical as well. I was actually rather doubtful that the new Torment would be as successful as WL2 was, given its spiritual predecessor's synonymous reputation with Chris Avellone's and the lack of his involvement. Fargo was really smart to hook up with Monte Cook, since then Fargo gets to tie his proposal to another KS that's already been massively successful and looks really cool (Numenera earned over 25x its asking amount), allay the fears of hardcore fans of the Planescape setting, and more importantly put more force behind his Kickstarter evangelism. He's building a company that's thriving completely on crowdsourced funding, using crowdsourced IPs, being all organic about it. Of course, his success is more than likely dependent on capturing smaller markets that AAA publishers aren't interested in (in less generous terms, name recognition and nostalgia), so his loud boosterism of KS feels a lot like hucksterism to me.
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Mar 7, 2013 04:58
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Planescape: Torment has the reputation, rightly or wrongly, of being the best-written game ever made (and it is pretty well written overall), so it's mostly that. I really wasn't expecting it to do THIS well.
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Mar 7, 2013 05:28
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I keep hearing a lot of claims as to the zero-sum nature of KS drives (that is, the idea that a pledge here necessarily precludes a pledge there) but I haven't seen any sort of evidence to that effect, common sense notions aside. I imagine it's a lot less pronounced a phenomenon than people assume, especially given that You're making a pledge for future payment rather than an immediate transaction. Downturns in performance could just as easily be attributed to the progressive difficulty of courting media exposure.Lord Lambeth posted:I thought the male PC was gonna look like that statue they have in the $2000 reward tier. Basic Chunnel fucked around with this message at 03:50 on Mar 9, 2013 |
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Mar 9, 2013 03:46
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The Torment kickstarter added Brian Mitsoda as a $2.75 mil stretch goal, so that's going to happen.
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Mar 13, 2013 21:43
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Wezlar posted:I don't really know how videogames are written but I don't really understand why adding more writers is a goal? Like if I was crowdfunding a novel I wouldn't want chapters written by someone completely different. Speaking of PS:T, check out how baller the voice cast was. I wonder how much they had to pay to get fuckin' Homer Simpson in the studio. Basic Chunnel fucked around with this message at 04:16 on Mar 22, 2013 |
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Mar 22, 2013 04:14
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miguelito posted:But eh, this stretch goal sounds like his involvement won't be too deep anyway - more like an additional writer for one companion, one sidequest, and for the rest just walking between desks, glancing at scripts and sipping coffee. Mozi posted:Avellone might as well retire and charge for Kickstarter appearances. Basic Chunnel fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Mar 22, 2013 |
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Mar 22, 2013 21:43
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:I think (but am not positive) that George Ziets was rehired by Obsidian after the P:E kickstarter, and that's not just a one-off freelance job. The Torment thing can be seen as a side-gig while Eternity is his main job. I think.
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Mar 23, 2013 02:57
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:Mektek are the guys who modded the gently caress out of Mechwarrior 4 Mercenaries. I'm still unclear how they transitioned to fan modder group to an actual game studio with paid positions and all while not releasing anything for money ever.
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Mar 26, 2013 23:31
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call me when I can pledge in bitcoins. They won't know how much I've put up and neither will I.
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Apr 8, 2013 20:11
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Yeah, Ray Muzyka sunk $1,000 of his personal wealth into Project Eternity, but I think at that point he'd left Bioware.
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Apr 9, 2013 11:35
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Of the 14 different things that Brutal Legend tried to be, "strategy game" was by far the weakest. Tho I suppose it would be easier to go deeper with a turn-based system. IDK.
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Jun 5, 2013 06:57
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Re: Double Fine, it's probably worth revisiting the Escapist's postmortem of Troika, who were befallen by many things but foremost among them was the lack of anything approaching a money man (well, that, the startlingly small teams, and the habit of only selling pitches once previous games had wrapped). Obsidian's survived as long as it has largely because Feargus capably runs a tight ship, even as design processes have gotten away from them from time to time. By all accounts Dungeon Siege 3 was considered a (modest) success because it came out untroubled and at (or even possibly below) budget. The project manager (the production lead to Rope Kid's creative lead) for that game is on the same beat for PE. I wouldn't worry overmuch. One thing that Obsidian is in the habit of doing, and is currently doing for PE, is producing a "vertical slice", a small portion of the game that is developed to finished-product standard. This allows them to both test systems and set benchmarks and expectations for production pipelines. Once they complete it they'll have a pretty good idea of how much they should be able to accomplish given their budget and time constraints. From the PE thread: rope kid posted:We extended the VS a bit because we still needed to answer some questions about environment art/rendering pipelines. The creation of environment art is, by far, our most time-consuming process. The IE games also set a standard for overall scope that sets a high bar for us, so it's what we've been focusing most of our attention on.
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Jul 3, 2013 16:39
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I think it's a bit unprofessional to specifically and vociferously poo poo all over a named game when you're talking about how playing flawed games makes you a better designer. Even Brian Fargo had the good sense to not name names on his anti-publisher screeds even when we all knew exactly who he was talking about. He sounds like the dudes who came to RPG Codex because they liked Fallout and then started hating it when they got it in their heads that their brilliant ideas about RPG design were being deliberately ignored by developers. It's a bad look. The exceptions to this are when critiquing games you yourself have made or making games specifically in critique of other games, but when you're just an upstart you don't point out a relatively well-received (and pretty adventurous) game like Mirror's Edge and say "wow those guys really hosed up, I would have done better", you look like a dick with a chip on your shoulder. If you're going to do it, do it. Don't talk about it. Basic Chunnel fucked around with this message at 10:07 on Oct 19, 2013 |
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Oct 19, 2013 10:02
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Anybody else played the Dead State early access? Definitely giving me those stilted Arcanum vibes at this point but it looks pretty promising. Elevator pitch is State of Decay with turn-based Fallout-style combat, world map exploration and ~plot reactivity~ (very little of which is currently present in the game). It's definitely rough around the edges right now - most melee weapons can't currently attack on diagonal and there's no transparency implemented, so the only way to check buildings and and tight spaces is to blindly rush into them. The mechanics of detection are opaque, generally. But it's worth a look.
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Feb 15, 2014 12:21
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Arnold of Soissons posted:so in Dead State what obvious thing am I missing to make the game playable? I can't leave to go get supplies on day 1, no one shows up as being in my party, nothing I say to them gets them into my party, and walking to the exit zone alone does nothing. The school is home base, so you don't have a party there. Find the bat-wielding trucker mom and next to her there will be a whiteboard allowing you to assign roles, such as "be in the party" and "fix the fence" - though I don't believe this is possible in the first mission, where you only have one goal. For the first mission you'll get the cop, and either the mom / daughter depending on who you chose in dialogue. To leave, go to the highlighted ground and click the Map button at the bottom of the screen (I think 'M' works too). It's not automatic. Other things to know going in - XP is calculated from goal completion instead of kills, so avoid zombies when you can. Gunfire (yours and enemies') draws zombies, one-handed weapons attack on two axes instead of four, and if you get gridlocked in tight spaces during combat you can right click on a teammate in your way til the arrows show up and you can switch places with them. I didn't know this and ended up with several wasted turns fighting in hallways. Basic Chunnel fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Feb 15, 2014 |
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Feb 15, 2014 21:39
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Was there ever a Dead State thread? Did it fall into the archives or something?
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Apr 30, 2014 10:07
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Sheltered is well on its way to full funding, and they've released their stretch goals, which solely consist of ports to other platforms. Not spectacular but there's something to be said for outright resisting the feature creep that stretch goals naturally lend themselves to, especially when you're a small studio. Their real issue is that the first stretch goal is an Ouya port :|
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Jun 21, 2014 19:02
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MikeJF posted:And they have an Ouya port - so it's pretty much compiling for Android - and an iPad port - so it's touch capable - but no Android port.
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Jun 22, 2014 11:53
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Dead State just released their public beta on Steam, the backer beta had been around for awhile and showed a lot of promise but was lacking in content. The new version's a lot beefier. +75 locations, +500 dialogue trees, +30 possible party members, etc etc. http://store.steampowered.com/app/239840/
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Aug 28, 2014 00:41
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