alanschu

Reply here.

Just to be clear, I don't consider niche to be a pejorative. I actually consider myself very optimistic about stuff like Kickstarter, specifically because it, in conjunction with things like digital distribution, can help various gaming niches get games that they otherwise wouldn't get. I agree that big publishers likely see the market as too insignificant, but because of kickstarters that market insignificance is less relevant. If Kickstarter can help make a game that only satisfies its contributors, but the developers and supports are both happy with the arrangement, then it's viable and will allow more variety in games to hit the market. It may help niche games become less niche (simply due to increased exposure to those types of games), what's awesome about Kickstarter is that it is less important that a game type is niche. It's becoming less of a barrier to entry for a developer to create something. That is awesome.

Yes. But I don't consider niche to be a pejorative. When you compare that a game like Baldur's Gate sold well over a million copies (as did the second one), back in the late 90s, and these games are attempting to mimic a game Baldur's Gate 1/2, if the game sales cap out at a couple hundred thousand (at a much lower price point, both on the box and adjusted for inflation), it will probably be very lucrative for Obsidian/inXile, but doesn't change that the game appeals to a fairly specific subset of gamers. Also, you cannot say that "it makes $10 million when combined with kickstarter" since the bulk (and presumably the entirety, based on stretch goals) of the kickstarter money is used to actually develop the game (and satisfy backer rewards). If we're going to get on the case of publishers exploiting developers motivating kickstarter games, it should be noted that we certainly aren't saying that the developers made tens of millions of dollars from the publisher in the form of the publisher financing the game's actual development.

That is true. The irony being that the more successful a game is, the more issues it'll have at launch, ultimately undermining how successful it can be! By the same token, EA/Maxis needs to make sure the infrastructure is in place to support it in order to go with this. I do find it interesting that they are suspending marketing. Nice of them to still offer the affiliate referral compensation though. As an EA employee I can get the game for free, but even then I still haven't installed it yet since I expected always online server issues (there always seems to be).

I appreciate Maxis accepting that it's fair for the reviews to be adjusted. I'm not a fan of always online DRM, especially for a game with such a strong legacy of single player experiences. I know they want to push the social aspect of the game, which is fine, but hopefully this sort of stuff continues to serve as a disincentive to continue doing things like this. The irony is that it's compromising people from playing a game that they would otherwise, from what it seems, really enjoy playing!

Luxury! In my day a bloody millionaire was lucky if he made $2.90/hr and wasn't mired in debt. If he had a shoebox to live in, he was probably a billionaire!

Still early, but looks pretty promising. Definitely gives me some level of Jagged Alliance/XCOM type combat, with a bit more RPG goodness on top of it to boot. How dare they combine my favourite genres!!

I don't know if I'd say that. In general I'd still consider myself Canadian first. I don't always agree with my federal government's decisions, but I recognize that not all the citizens of the country will want the same things as I do and that's part of what it means living in a democracy. An important observation I made, reading your recent response to Hurlshot, is that I don't consider anyone that has a different political preference to be an enemy of me. The thing is, I get the impression that your perspective is much more common than I would like it to be. Even then, from the little that I have looked into American politics, I find it interesting because the Democrats still come across to most Canadians as being firmly right of center, but in speaking with people like yourself, it's one step away from total socialism haha. But still, that someone feels NDP (Canada's leftist party) is the way to go just means they see things differently. I know some very successful and affluent people that still support that party, and whenever asked "How do you support all the expenses?" they pretty matter of factly state "You'll have to raise taxes, and I don't have any problem paying those taxes." At least they aren't living in an ideal world where stuff comes from magic. I suppose, due to my wavering on "hardcore" libertarianism, it's probably fairest to say that in many ways I'm pragmatic. Despite considering myself right of center, there are things that I think government funding for is not a bad thing: primary and secondary education, as well as health. The reasons for doing so, in my opinion, is because those types of things represent some level of investment into the future of the country. It's easy to imagine the situations where people "take advantage" of the circumstances, but after doing a bit of research on it, those are things that I still support government support, even though they may not be specifically under the realm of traditional fiscal conservatism.

Depends. If big publishers were to go to Obsidian and let them do more of what Obsidian did to make PE so successful (assuming it was), it could still be good for us. I do get the impression that the RPG crowd would certainly be less vindictive towards many PST sequels as opposed to COD sequels. More likely, however, I would expect that huge success from the kickstarters would start seeing a shift of the features RPG fans consider important being brought into the forefront more definitively. This would mean more games from big publishers and the like, but I vote we wait until any hypothetical "RPG market saturation" actually occurs before we complain about having the genre be watered down! Haha Not sure. I appreciate Feargus' desires to not want to have to rely on Kickstarter for future projects, but by the same token if I were in Fargo's shoes, there's a heavy degree of risk mitigation by continuing to get some level of funding (even if it's not all of it) through kickstarter even if it wasn't "necessary." It may make sense for a company to still bring in that $1-$4 million via kickstarter even if it's not explicitly required. Although it's certainly more of a "selfish" move, but I don't have any issue with a company wanting to take care of its employees and mitigate risk.

I actually do have a bias for voting for politicians that keep smear campaigns to a minimum (preferably completely non-existent) but that's more a reflection of my jaded perspective of politics than any sort of political affiliation.

Response Here

From: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63262-torment-tides-of-numenera/?p=1314609 Yes I know. But people still frequently use the numbers of kickstarter crowd as evidence that it's not niche (because apparently being niche is bad?). At best you can't conclude anything. It's also important to note that based on the kickstarter numbers alone, that's an immediate 70 thousand sales that won't show up post release, without even counting that some of the higher tiers end up receiving multiple copies of games. Which is fine, but it's easy to let one's enthusiasm for a project conclude that the project itself will be exceptionally successful as well. Even if the games sell a couple hundred thousand (which I would consider a pretty great success), I'd still consider the target audience to be quite niche.

How large was it presumed to be? It's a myth that big publishers assume there's no market for games like these. I suppose it also helps to define "niche." 80 thousand people is niche to me, and none of the RPG kickstarters have even broached that number. It's also important to consider that people that contribute to one may also contribute to another (I'd consider the level of overlap to actually be very high, but have no data to support that position). Another fact about kickstarter is that, like free to play games, big fish carry the little fish. The average for Torment 2 right now is $55 per person. The median contribution is $25 (the median for Project Eternity is also $25). In order to ramp up to exponential values, you're going to need to ramp up the number of contributors exponentially too. I'm skeptical that that will happen. I feel most consumers for these games will continue to be traditional consumers (paying for a product once it's released).

I've probably become more libertarian as well, although as with all "factions" the "crazies" typically make me not want to associate with them either haha. Fiscal policy drives 90% of my voting tendencies, although some things like excessive/adamant stupidity that a candidate may say regarding other aspects is not completely ignored. Having said that, I have also learned that many of my right-wing assumptions have been more fueled by propaganda than me actually carefully examining the details, especially from a pure economics perspective. As you say, it's important to still acknowledge that different opinions can exist and be viable.

It's too early, in my opinion, to start saying things like this. Budgets may increase, but we're going to need to see the games. An exponential increase in budget means we're going to start seeing 12, 20, 40 million dollar kickstarters very quickly, which just isn't going to happen in my opinion. There's was a lot of people that were pretty thrilled because of the total amount of money Eternity brought in, and all the talks about how much money it was, when it's a small slice compared to a lot of games today. The strength of Kickstarter is to appeal to a niche. It's easy to get caught up in the enthusiasm. If these games aren't all quite stellar (and they won't be), fans will be guarded. No one is going to be happy contributing $100+ to Torment 2 if the game ends up being mediocre.

The level of permutations for the party is just staggering. It's unbelievably well done when you pull back and look behind the scenes. It's exceptionally complex. I didn't have Zaeed, for example, so they nestled Garrus in to some other aspect of the party and it just worked so well.

My issue with Limbaugh is he undermines the entire right. His presence and blowhardness, and general buffoonery is rivaled only by Glenn Beck. Together, they do so much harm to politics in general by being antagonistic, fueling partisanship and outright hatred, while being complete shock jocks that only serve as examples for moderates to not vote right. I stated my political affiliation to straight up make it clear: despite being a right-wing conservative (more specifically, from a fiscal perspective as fiscal policy is the principal grounds by which I place my vote), Limbaugh is a blight to right-wing conservatism and until the right gets ambassadors that aren't complete tools, they'll continue to fight the uphill battles simply because the left comes across as less outright insane. He's a blowhard. How anyone can enjoy that show is beyond me, but to each his/her own. Since you also seem unaware, the term conservative is an indication towards retaining social and political institutions. So by stating I'm a right-wing conservative, it means that I seek to preserve the political institutions (and as I further clarified clarified, the fiscal ones specifically) that are considered right wing. It is in fact possible to be a left-wing conservative, especially if a country has a history of left-wing dominance (being conservative in the nordic countries is most definitely left-wing). It's just that blowhards like Limbaugh are so focused on political labeling, that he seems to think that conservatism is the same as being right-wing, which technically isn't true. This is, perhaps, an excellent example about how listening to a show like Limbaugh's has in fact decreased your political understanding. That, and your innate defensive stance that since I'm criticizing Rush, I must be a Liberal in sheep's clothing! If you'd like, try something like this as a reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism Perhaps you and Rush are unaware, but the application of words is not static. For example, liberal (a curse word to you I imagine) was most closely associated with small government and laissez-faire economics and small scale government. But now, most people in North America equate Liberal politics with socialistic perspectives.

I appreciate the update, but I preorder games so rarely that this is still kind of in the boat (aside from the kickstarters, the only games I have ever preordered are Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Alpha Protocol, Hearts of Iron 3, XCOM, and CIv 5). I hope the game is awesome (since I hope all games are awesome), but it's very rare for me to agree to pay for a product before actually receiving the product. I'm an Obsidian fanboy, and Avellone's involvement in Wasteland 2 is what convinced me to contribute, Project Eternity is a no brainer, and Torment 2 is a game I suspect I'll feel I just have to play as well (and given I get a discount, it makes sense). So in those cases I receive a very obvious benefit for contributing to something that I know I will pretty much buy at release. Unfortunately for Shadowrun, it just didn't grab me, so I will look more closely after it is released.

As a right-wing conservative myself, I'd actually encourage you to listen to him less.

That's kind of Fargo's idea. He's trying to create a franchise out of Torment. And the games within the franchise can be in different settings, but they are all like PS:T. I understand that. I just don't like leveraging the Torment name for a lot of personal reasons. Fargo could still do the same thing without calling the game Torment. Heck, the games don't actually need to be related in order to contain the bullet list of points he has included in the pitch. The unfortunate thing about franchising is that it creates expectations. M. Night's movies continually attempt to be thematically similar, but eventually they started to become predictable and less interesting because of that expectation of what is going to be in the movie. The Sixth Sense was highly regarded, but by later movies it's more "So what's the twist going to be?"

I actually do not even want Chris Avellone (nor Obsidian) to make a Torment sequel. I'd prefer he/they try something new. For myself, I feel that, for me, there's a greater chance of a game exceeding PST. Part of what I loved about Torment was that it was new with limited expectation aside from the fact that "It's an Infinity Engine game so it'll play like Baldur's Gate." Call Planescape: Torment "Baldur's Gate 3" and it's probably less well received simply because it's relation to the original is suspect, even though the game itself is unchanged. I'd love games like Torment to come out (well written, deep RPGs with strong characters), though I don't think those things must be uniquely "Torment" in their existence.

I agree. I find it interesting because I read so much about how people actually do wish this upon me because they don't like the game I made. I absolutely don't want inXile to fail.

My issue is that, as a gamer, there's a greater chance that I will be more critical of the game simply because, for myself, Torment is on such a pedestal. In the same vein that I didn't care as much for BioShock (a spiritual successor to System Shock 2), simply because despite it being a good game, in my mind it was always "This isn't as good as System Shock." By contrast, if I were to play a new IP, and then organically conclude "This game reminds me a lot of Torment" while playing the game, it'll likely resonate with me more strongly. I recognize that this view is personal, however, and may not apply to anyone else. I also acknowledge that this makes the assumption that the game is the same except for the name, which may not be the case (since Torment 2 will likely receive more funding being called Torment 2) I do agree with this. I don't buy into "taint the legacy" either. Nothing will make PST any less of a game, even if inXile were to put Atari's ET on a DVD and call it Torment 2.

As someone following him on Twitter since Wasteland 2's kickstarter, I find the "us vs them" is a rather frequently occurring perspective that comes up from his twitter feed. I also don't consider it simply tongue in cheek. It's a specific tweet done to rally those that (for whatever reason) are hostile towards DLC and microtransactions, and presents it in a way that such things must be mutually exclusive to a strong single player narrative. We both know it'd be an epic field day if a Frank Gibeau made a silly tongue in cheek tweet that in some way could be perceived as a slight against Kickstarter or one of the projects that used it. What if it isn't true?

$1,854,372