alanschu

Haha that part was a bit worthy of an eye roll, but I unfortunately found myself having to stop following Fargo on Twitter. Much like how I don't care for political smear campaigns (promote yourself, don't attempt to drag the other guy through mud), Fargo had a tweet that just rubbed me the wrong way. I'm fundamentally indifferent towards microtransactions, have liked all the DLC I have ever purchased (Especially Fallout: New Vegas' - I should probably also note that I don't buy many DLC), and like strong single player stories. So Torment isn't for me? I can understand calling out that it's difficult to get funding for the game you want to make, and that kickstarter is an exciting way of doing so. I'd prefer he focus more on that rather than fostering an "us vs. them" environment which is not healthy for the gaming community in general. There's already enough petty hate because people like and prefer different things, and I'd rather (admittedly naively) not solicit additional hostility in a community that is already infamous for being quite hostile. Fargo's actions actually have me reconsidering supporting inXile.

As a slight aside, in general I'm becoming increasingly more jaded towards adversarial marketing.

I have heard rumors of an Ultima spiritual successor too.

Haha Citadel is pure camp but I'm loving it.

He did it for Wasteland 2 as well. (The original pitch was asking for $900k, with Fargo putting in $100k of his own money). On some fundamental level, any company (especially private) is going to be the result of a non-trivial amount of investment of both money and man hours to be successful, so it's very difficult to quantify that him putting up the $100k is much different than however much money the likes of Feargus and company have invested into Obsidian to found it and keep it afloat. I also don't expect Fargo's contribution to just be a straight up gift. I wouldn't be surprised for him to see return on his investment should the game's post release success warrant it (which is a perfectly reasonable and warranted thing for him to do as well).

I do understand that since it's a physical good, there's some intrinsic value to it. I suppose I shouldn't have added "commodities" as it's really more towards precious metals. As you say, precious metals are deemed valuable at this point for really no other reason than because they always have been. I can see food (if it wasn't perishable) and things like land being "more valuable" if the economy completely utterly tanks. Although since the value of precious metals is basically just a reflection of supply and demand, I'm curious if the economy outright tanking will ultimately result in precious metals tanking shortly thereafter. Is it worth continuing to own that piece of gold if the alternative is getting some actual food?

It helped that it was McComb that delivered the pitch in the video IMO. For myself, I can understand Fargo's desire for Wasteland 2. With the pitch being delivered by McComb, it's easier to make the association for myself that this really is a game that he's wanted to make. I still (and always will) have reservations about the name, but that's mostly because of my own understanding about how my own expectations will work. That is, the exact same game with no expectation from me is almost always received better than one that I have a stronger reference point for. However, from a fundraising perspective it's hard to argue with the success of the kickstarter drive. With more funding the ability to apply those resources can certainly help make a superior game than otherwise. In other words, it's very unlikely that the exact same game could be made under a different title.

I never understood the reliance on precious metals/commodities as being the stable investments in down times. Their value is as arbitrarily decided as the value for anything else.

I understand that. And I agree that Brian is very smart. He founded a large corporation that was dedicated to making video games which is no small feat. The problem I find is that there's a lot of assumptions that people have about the way business works, so when you see something that is in progress, it often doesn't look very good at all. Heck, I'm in QA and that leads people to all sorts of assumptions about what my everyday job is like for no other reason than their imaginations.

I'm probably not the best person to ask this to, because my answer to most of these questions is actually yes (it wasn't always). It's one thing to pick your battles, but I really appreciate it when someone is straight up honest with me since I know it's not easy for us to do.

Depends. BioWare owned the Mass Effect IP even though Microsoft published the game. It's likely a negotiating point, however. Being specifically technical, if Microsoft gives you $3 million, then you get $3 million (and whatever terms with that). When kickstarter gives you $3 million, you get $3 million less the deductions that Amazon/Kickstarter will take (and any obligation to fulfill physical product manufacturing for the various tiers)

I actually skipped on Shadowrun. Not familiar enough with the setting, the dev, or any of the like. Only PE, WL2, and now Torment 2 for me.

I'm very curious to see how successful they are post launch. Torment is still "and counting" but overall numbers aren't all that gigantic (for the big publishers) if you just base it on kickstarter contributors. Though the saving grace of Kickstarter is that the game can sell zero copies post release, but as long as the contributors were happy they will contribute again. If the games are clearly stupidly successful, however, people will start to take notice. I would love for one of these to clearly push a million copies. I'm also looking forward to stronger initiatives to reduce DRM that these games will also (hopefully) provide.

This is a principle reason why I want this game to be awesome. The bigger publishers don't do it because of the perception that the opportunity cost is too high. If they are successful, it'll help spur a resurgence across the board.

He's really selling it on his twitter is all. I have no expectation for what he would say. Would be interesting for him to say "I had a feeling this would happen" but then I guess it'd come across as overly arrogant? I guess the thing is, is this the only thing he should say? I know devs talk up kickstarter for allowing them to communicate directly with the fans, but even then it still seems the fans want to eat up the PR type commentary and announces. GAF had a whole thread about Obsidian's "weak" (work in progress) concept art and were quite critical, stating they wanted to see more (marketing like) concept arts that Wasteland 2 had. There were many here that echoed the same (though more came to the defense here too). Besides, all I asked was if Fargo is blown away by how quickly it's gone, how quickly was he expecting it to take? This starts to go beyond just this thread, but how much honest discussion do fans really want? Or are they more satisfied with relatively constant updates, but for them to still have a marketing/PR/promotional perspective added to them.

Yes. "Lazy" is definitely how I describe pretty much every game developer.

I'm a bit surprised that Fargo is surprised at the speed by which it is going up. I guess it is the fastest, so maybe they weren't expecting it to be this fast, but with PE blasting through at a breakneck speed itself, and even coupled with something of a "prekickstarter marketing" buildup, I'm curious what kind of velocity he was expecting.

Ended up contributing. Good luck to inXile!

I expect it will beat Project: Eternity as it has a stronger name behind it. Sorry Alan but you can't claim to want to support this project now or say you "knew" it would succeed. We all know how critical you were about it in its marketing and pitching stage Errr, WHAT? I disliked it's usage of the name Torment, but I never once said it wouldn't succeed. Furthermore, no where in my post did I say "I want to support this project." Although I did earlier in the thread talk about how there's a good chance I'll contribute because I'll likely have to see how well it compares to the Torment name. In fact, I thought I was pretty open about how the usage of the name Torment would garner them more funding than otherwise. That, combined with the higher expectations that come with using the name, formed the crux of my reservation for using the name. In fact, looking at the webpage I still don't agree that a game must be a Torment game in order to have a deep, thematically engaging story, a world unlike any other, a rich, personal narrative, nor reactivity, choice, and real consequences. I hope inXile feels the same way. I straight up told Brother None that I hope the game knocks it out of the park and is awesome (since more awesome games is never bad). It's just huge shoes to step into to state that you're picking up Torment's legacy. With that expectation comes greater risk. Hopefully the greater funding will mitigate that.

I expect it will beat Project: Eternity as it has a stronger name behind it.

Enough buzz around this one I decided to pick it up too (which made me figure I might as well pick up the others as well)

I'm in kind of the same boat. I have fundamental reservations about the project, though I also know that part of me will just have to see how it compares (part of my reservation...) to the original. The unfortunate thing is I have no basis for how expensive these games will be upon release, and if it is the difference between $25 and $40+ I'd likely contribute just to save a bit of money. I'll have to play the pledge game by ear, however.

If there's enough people that dislike this (and it seems like there is), then that means there's a market for games that don't treat games as a service. Look at Kickstarter and so forth. When I leave a game for some time and come back to it, it's very different. Especially if I don't get much of an opportunity to play it for some time. Even a decade ago, when I had to stop playing Morrowind for a month, when I came back I was disinterested in trying to figure out what exactly I was doing and so forth, and that's when I had more time for games. I just stopped playing Morrowind. I knew how long it took for me to get where I was, and wasn't really interested in going through all that again (which i suppose is a testament to what I thought of the game) I have had several games of War in the Pacific (a hardcore strategy game) peter out before I have won (or lost) because it's a game that effectively takes months of time to complete (fortunately it's an awesome game so I can keep coming back). An advantage it has, however, over a story based RPG is I don't need to remember the story. I can load the game up a long time later and, even if I don't remember my plans months ago, I can at least formulate a new plan. It should be noted, however, that I was drawing an analogue. I don't buy MTX to speed my way through games, so your critique is a bit off. For someone that has much less time than I, but loves the story of the game they are playing, if they want to MTX their way to getting through the content faster, I don't really care. It'd be the same as me chastising someone for using a cheat code to get past content they weren't finding interesting. And before people talk about how the addition to MTX games will just encourage developers to add more grind, in my opinion grind has already existed *a lot* for years and decades even. Especially in RPGs. So if a game has "grinding" in it, I'm skeptical that it's sole existence is attributed to the presence of MTX. Grinding in large part exists because gamers have already been quite vocal in stating how important length is for their game.

I just find it an unusual thing to be proud of. I'm proud of getting a University degree, proud of myself for exceeding my fundraising goals, becoming financially independent from my family, buying my own home, and so forth. But fair enough, it's not my place to pass such judgments. I'm not convincing people to not buy Ubisoft products though. In fact, I hated that groups DDoS'd other people to prove a point.

The trouble comes when people are "pleased" by different things. I love Steam, and probably wouldn't mind if Steam became more prevalent and certainly don't care when a game is Steam exclusive. I like their services and Valve certainly pleases me with their product. Someone that hates Steam (which is perfectly valid), is decidedly less pleased with the proliferation of Steam. So is Valve just doing things to spite what "pleases" their customers?