alanschu

Haha, I might have to start avoiding this thread as I'm trying to go into this knowing as little as possible XD

Not as regularly, but I do enjoy them for the most part. I loved their two on Spec Ops (the non-spoiler version convinced me to pick it up in large part so I could watch the spoiler version).

Is it the industry, or the general gaming population, that wants this? I have been happy with graphics for a long time now but I feel like I am somewhat unique in this regard among my friends. To be fair, too, there are certainly "old classics" that I have a hard time going back to due to how dated they look. Nostalgia can help me look past it, but if it is a game I didn't play at the time, it can be hard sometimes.

I'm waffling on whether or not I'm offended.

Probably the idea that Gearbox didn't actually make the game, but rather outsourced it instead.

The real issue is "Why is it insulting to be called an Australian?" Perhaps it's the New Zealander that is the racist!

Septerra Core

You can just pledge the lower price via PayPal and still receive the reward?

My friend keeps backups of Steam "installs" on a hard drive to do just what you describe is impossible. His sister also uses steam, and typically copies the data files from her brother's computer onto her own to skip downloading the game from Steam. In fact, when I was having issues installing Saints Row 3 (was short about a GB, though Steam was telling me I was "finished"), I just uninstalled the game from my computer, he copied it onto a flash drive, and I copied it to the correct path. Ran it on Steam and it "downloaded" at gigabytes per second and I was good to go.

How does "KS failing to raise enough money" equate "you need to fire people"? Just put up a new, better planned and executed, Kickstarter campaign. Unlike "KS failing to raise enough money", "you making a sucky game and failing to get enough money from its sales" is what actually does equate "you need to fire people". Instead of spending your funds on making a video game and finding out that it sucks from it selling poorly, isn't it better to pass that "suckiness check" via a Kickstarter campaign, before you've started seriously investing into it? It's not at all uncommon for games to successfully pass their "suckiness check" until sometime later in development. Furthermore, if we're always going to wait for a "suckiness check" verification with Kickstarter, we're now running into the same situation with big publishers. Innovation will be compromised because there will be an inclination to appeal to what fans are familiar with (established games that they played before that they use as reference points). I wouldn't be surprised if the most common thing any fan cites as a game they want, from any developer, is a sequel. Regardless of whether or not it's an RPG fan, FPS fan, or what have you With no basis for comparison, imagine trying to kickstart a rather novel game idea like Sim City (Will Wright's original. It's pretty much impossible to describe this game and make it sound fun). Heck, imagine trying to Kickstart the original Torment without having Torment to fall back on!

For those who like grand strategy, I can also recommend "War in Russia" (also available from Matrix Games download page for free somewhere). It's been a favourite Gary Grigsby game of mine since dawn of time, running on my dos emulator on the Amiga. It was called "Second Front" then, but is essentially the same game. Now off to study that other thread with already funded games, still available for pre-order. I might just catch up on Shadowrun yet. Elaborate! Sell this game to me Commissar Gorth!

Is there actually the any sort of breakdown in how the kickstarter funds are being allocated for most of these games?

The other games had plenty of media exposure as well. I'm skeptical that this game has any additional media exposure based on its early success compared to other games. Eh, this is just a logical construct that may or may not have any actual bearing in reality (as is often the case when solely relying on logic). Yes, I agree that the points you describe could happen, but I think you're over thinking this at this point (I personally feel that the idea of people hoping to snatch limited lower tiers is overstated by you). There's another "basic psychology" point that, once a project is funded, people will feel less compelled to contribute. There's also "basic economics," in that people have already contributed to prior things and are waiting to see if this model is an effective use of their money. There's also "basic psychology" that the concept is no longer novel, and the enthusiasm for jumping onto stuff like this has lessened somewhat. There's also the exceptionally important "empirical data" of other similar projects and I think that it lends itself to being a stronger predictor than most of our logical deductions.

Torment kind of had some level of hype/advertising for their kickstarter, which could very well explain the early jump and a bit faster leveling out than the other games. I agree it'll be somewhere in the mix. EDIT: TSBasilisk mentioned this before I read his post.

What exactly are you referring to? I haven't really looked at the tiers (since I just jumped in at $20), but I have noticed a lot of bizarre numbers for tiers and weird top up sort of thing, but didn't really investigate much further as I have little plans on upping my contribution.

Yeah, that's a big strawman, because Fargo couldn't afford to fund W2 or Torment by himself without risking his financial future, whereas Garriott could (and if he can't, then he's wasted a lot of money). Unless Fargo has more than $5 million in the bank... I wouldn't be surprised if Fargo was filthy rich himself. He and Garriott are both somewhat cut from the same ilk in terms of timing and contribution to gaming. Also note that Fargo only asked for $900,000 for both games. (And with Wasteland 2, was agreeing to put up $100,000 towards the project right out of the gate).

Your relativism is kind of sucky, Mr Garriot. Out of the chute, you'd expect them not to get a cent, because their audience is already saturated. Also, does anyone else slowly get the creeps from his Lord British persona? It was ok in the goofy 80s, maybe the early 90s, but I don't enjoy hearing an old man talk about how he's lord of the realm and we are his good subjects. Saturated with ONE game?

It's mostly just opportunity cost. When dealing with a lot of fixed costs and other stuff like that, and in terms of dealing with investor perspective and other things, it makes more sense to spend $40 million on a game that brings in $70 million in sales, than to spend $4 million on a game that will bring in $8 million in sales, even though the return on investment is higher with the cheaper game. (numbers purely hypothetical to illustrate the point) It's, unfortunately, not as easy as ramping up ten projects at $4 million a pop and your potential risk goes up quite a bit. Risk is something that makes investors uneasy, and can also compromise the employment of people. Feargus himself has admitted that he has gone for "slam dunk" projects with Black Isle because part of his responsibility was to keep the people he employed... in some cases friends... further employed. Which is why Kickstarter and digital distribution is exciting, because we're starting to see avenues that open up opportunities for game developers to make games on a smaller scale as funding can be achieved in other ways.

This is a thread asking for released games that were made/funded in some way via Kickstarter.

Well, I suppose that depends on what you mean by classic. Going back to the original games, yeah that's pretty much what they were. If you are a fan of Ultima Online (which has a stupidly devout following, which Richard Garriott himself was super enthused to work on) it'd probably still work quite well as well. Ultima games are a lot of things and depending on the type of player you are at the time, it could appeal to you. For me in 1993, Ultima 6/7 were awesome because they resembled open, living worlds. I sucked at the game itself, and didn't finish the actual story until I played Exult over a decade later (at a time when story narrative was my primary reason for playing RPGs). I replayed through Ultima 6 recently thanks to GoG, which I also never finished and wasn't very good at either, to conclude the game itself was actually pretty easy and not even all that long (beat it in a weekend of not even that intense sessions). I think it's tough to label what a "classic" Ultima fan really is, given the games are pretty diverse among the primary trilogy of trilogies, never mind the spinoffs (UO, UU, etc)

Eh, Fargo is an affluent individual as well. If we're going to slag on Garriott for asking for outside investment (a common thing for rich folk to do), we'd have to drag Brian through the coals as well. I have zero interest in contributing to this product, but I have no qualms about Garriott using Kickstarter to fund it regardless of how rich he is.

What if a hack'n'slash MMO in this vein is what one wants, however?

Yeah I have noticed that. It's why I haven't picked them up. A Bridge Too Far was my favourite as well, with a fantastic dynamic campaign that was a ton of fun in a one vs one match. Russian Front tidied some things up mechanically, but it's campaign wasn't interesting (if you broke it down into operations it worked much better).

It's still early for sure. That they called out how stupid the AI can be is a reflection that it's probably still in progress as well.

I was a huge fan of the Close Combat games, which it seems have actually been redone for more modern computers....