alanschu

Relative to what they were asking for, however, it is still quite the success.

No, it's not. "we were able to successfully negotiate an exception with Microsoft for us to provide our Backers with a DRM-free version of the Kickstarter rewards" - DLC is irrelevant, MS wanted DRM on everything. So either this negotiation happened before hand (and hence should have been stated in the Kickstarter pitch) or This negotiation happened after the kickstarter, to which they made promises they didn't know that they could keep, and only after the fact were they able to secure no DRM versions for the backers. (As such, Microsoft could have kyboshed this whole project by not allowing the DRM free stuff to be made, which would have led to an epic **** storm, or whatever negotiations occurred convinced Microsoft to make an exception in this regard.") Your quote is making it seem like #2 is what happened, which is not a flattering thing for HBS, nor does it do much to infuse confidence in something like Kickstarter.

A note to the lootable characters: So it sounds like those types of things (at least for now) are scripted.

Neither are particularly big issues for myself (since I did end up preordering this myself). Where is that listed, btw?

Because you're licensing an IP and you better darn well let the license holder know what your plans are to do with it! Especially your plans to make money with the license. It defies belief that they would assume that they'd have free reign to do whatever they wanted to do with the IP. Unless they were planning on giving away the DLC, no license holder is going to agree to let you use a license without knowing the various ways you plan on leveraging said license to make money for yourself. It's just as likely that they started talking DLC and MS said "Uh, you didn't mention anything about DLC in our initial talks" if we're just going to play the hypothetical game here. HBS plans on leveraging the license further in order to make more money. I cannot believe the supposition you make the HBS is so stupid to not even clue in that Microsoft might be interested in knowing stuff like this. Especially when the Shadowrun staff includes staff that once worked for Microsoft in senior roles! Microsoft has free reign to do whatever the hell they want with their IP and license it under any restrictions they may want. If Microsoft ended up letting HBS do the DRM free model AFTER the fact, they most certainly are the good guys here, because it's Microsoft making an allowance because HBS epically ****ed up and HBS would also be royally ****ed if Microsoft had stated that the DRM free version is not allowed after the Kickstarter was impacted. So under the context of me playing up MS as "the good guy," if that is the situation HBS better be eternally thankful to MS for making the concession.

Just finished up Dantooine. Killed my 3rd group of HKs and saw 47 torturing one. Mira is now a Jedi Sentinel as well. Off to Onderon now.

No, but they certainly were able to promise DRM free versions of the game during the Kickstarter, which gives an indication that they had probably discussed doing so sometime before the end of the Kickstarter. If they *didn't* ask for DRM free permission during the kickstarter, then promising it was a huge potential gaffe and when it later came to pass then Microsoft would have ended up doing HBS a favour! I like to think HBS wasn't this irresponsible.

Fair enough. I was just curious, and it's interesting that Steam exclusive is enough of a negative that you consider it negative value for what you otherwise are willing to pay.

@ShadySands Would you have still made the contribution you made, if there was never to be any sort of DLC?

Eh, it's possible. I think it's a bit easy to just lump the blame on big bad Microsoft. I'd be more willing to ascribe this to be an oversight due to enthusiasm that they seemed to be getting their opportunity, coupled with the idea that DLC aspects may have been overlooked as well.

For sure, this arrangement is definitely HBS giving MS money, rather than MS publishing the title themselves. I'd like to give it some benefit of the doubt that they misunderstood what level the DRM free would actually cover, but I am just guessing. I do agree that it's them dropping the ball here regardless.

Could be. Could not be. We'll never know.

It's not a Publisher getting involved with Kickstarter. It's a developer licensing some IP to make a game out of it. In fact, I doubt this could even remotely be considered a Publisher-Developer model, because I doubt that MS is offering any sort of compensation towards HBS.

Haha I read this on twitter, and this seemed like the best thread for it to show up in XD http://www.themarysue.com/rae-johnston-fake-geek-girl-gamer-tweet/

Could mean that, but it could just as well mean that the content must be covered by some level of DRM, and that Steam is sufficient. Has there been a GFWL that doesn't have GFWL integration in the main game itself?

Fair enough. The only real issue I have here is that they could have (and maybe should have) disclosed the terms of the license arrangement. I wonder if there's an oversight on their part where they either felt that they'd be able to convince MS that DRM wasn't necessary, or that they didn't fully realize that the DRM free option only applied to backers. Though more generally, as far as DRM-free people are concerned it sounds like the product is roughly equivalent to "a game that gets made and released, and has no post release content."

Oh I'm not a big fan of Unions, whom (today) I feel don't really do too much to support many of their employees by any means. I just see allegations that she closed down the only industry in town (one that perhaps wasn't even working, which muddies things up even worse). Should the government have kept it open and running even if it wasn't doing anything (and costing the government money)? I'm not a huge fan of governments owning businesses, but in the events that they do it's the responsibility of the government to run it responsibly. Keeping it open simply for the sake of paying the workers employed is not responsible. It should not be run to lose money either. Occasionally an essential good may be run "at a loss" but due to its essential nature (i.e. basic utilities) it could be subsidized via taxes - although I'd prefer it to not be run that way as it complicates accountability for that division. Had the mine been privately owned and some chap just decided to close up shop because of workers that aren't working, the people of that town would still be pretty screwed.

I am not sure that that video is really from a game. It says it's a previsualization, which gives me the impression that it's some sort of concept video a guy made.

You'd probably be better served contacting Microsoft, as by the sounds of it there is nothing that HBS can do about it. I suppose they can forward your email on. The only other real recourse is "what constitutes acceptable DRM for Microsoft" since one could argue a CD Key is DRM.

Just to be clear, were the mines owned by the government? I'm just catching up now, and need some additional infos before I start posting my thoughts.

Yeah the PnP stuff doesn't appeal to me in the slightest. Similar to PST, I expect my only exposure to the setting will be through this video game (and potential later games)

I had posted a couple of questions on your message board (I went there FROM here, actually), but I was getting more of a D&D vibe from the topics than a Master of Magic vibe. As such it's a game that ended up moving more onto my "I'll wait and see how it goes" While I understand that the mechanics are d20, when I saw discussions about leveraging other aspects related to the D&D influences that d20 has, such as the Dark Elves becoming the Drow with all their affinity for spiders and the like, as well as the discussion about Hero classes and so forth tying into the specific d20 classes, which ended up leading to me having reservations once I realized that the spells being discussed that what I didn't mind about d20 was the method of rules mechanics for combat (determining damage and combat resolution), but influencing things like what the Heroes, Spells, and Units will actually be left me feeling that part of that unique vibe that Master of Magic provided was being obfuscated with a level of D&D familiarity that I wasn't super comfortable with. I understand nothing is set in stone, but if many are gravitating towards the game because of its d20 background (something I wasn't aware of, but was told on the forum), it means people will be lobbying for those aspects based on their familiarity in many ways. I know one of the posters was starting to feel frustrated with my perspective and general "lack of comfort" though so I ended up taking my leave, as I didn't want to be a buzzkill around your forums. It might seem nitpicky (especially as I was reminded on several occasions, it was all going to be "behind the scenes" but with the information being spread throughout the forums, it didn't seem like it was behind the scenes enough and it felt reinforced based on the conversations being discussed. I play d20 modern and am a big fan of both KOTOR games (am replaying the second one now) so the d20 combat mechanics (i.e. how to determine resistances, damage, and hit chance) seemed fine, but the influence over the units, heroes/classes, as well as the spells, is where I felt shaky. Balance was often cited by one poster, but the best I could discern from the forum was that that necessitated leveraging the D&D aspects in order to take advantage of the balance provided. EDIT: tl;dr I'm evidently not as comfortable with the d20 aspects as I first thought, as it seems to be exerting greater influence in the spell/unit/hero/class selections rather than purely a way to resolve combat. I do wish you luck with the project, however, and hope that you are able to knock it out of the park. If it does I will definitely pick it up.

Ah fair point, I didn't really fully think through the "burned through the money" aspect. I do agree that it's being done because there a significant enough financial reason for doing so, beyond the obvious benefits of having a storefront for DLC on a common platform like Steam. That they are releasing the game with Berlin as post release content would also support this perspective.

Do you think Valve paid for the access? As you suggest, outsourcing it would probably be cheaper, so what do you think motivates HBS to do something like this?

Don't know if this one was shared... but is an interesting take: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/teampixelpi/pulse-reveal-the-world-through-sound