HungryHungryOuroboros

I disagree. Obsidian sets itself apart with its systems and how those systems are interwoven into the narrative. Take KOTOR II. They didn't just take KOTOR and tack a new story on it. They: -Added an Influence system, which tied into the narrative in a lot of ways -Made many companions play differently(Kreia's Jedi buff bond with the PC, Hanharr's rage mechanic, T3's moving meditation) -Added Lightsaber and Force Forms -Made the PC a Jedi from the start -Added Prestige classes -Added a far greater range of skill checks -Gave incentives to play differently(melee sparring with Handmaiden/Mandalorians, increase weakest skill) -Greatly enhanced the usefulness of skills -Removed the level cap -Added a penalty for forcing a lock -Included an easy switch between two sets of weapons(ranged/melee) -Added an indicator when a storage container was empty -Improved the balance of Pazaak And probably several others I'm forgetting. Obsidian doesn't make a game and go "Mechanics? Systems? PFFFT. Those just exist to serve my GLORIOUS STORY!"

Not necessarily? I think all the 8 should be not necessarily. Of course OE will allow solo play in PE. He means that they aren't necessarily available as companions. As in some of them may be regular ol' NPCs that can't join your party. =P

Gameplay IS story and vice-versa. If it's not, then something is broken. If there is no reason for the story to be represented in game form, if it gains nothing from being a game, then it's bad. If the story just exists to be an excuse to kill monsters, you're missing out on potenial. This mutually exclusive bull**** is what is leading people to make hand-holding narrative walking tours for videogames. "The story is all that matters, I want to get to the end without also ever dying or having to think". Ugh.

I'm kind of confused as to how wanting characters in a video game to be realistic and not pointlessly fetishized turned into supporting genital mutilation. I'm fond of my genitals. I'd like to keep them somewhere south of mutilated.

Yes, you do. That's what the entire conversation is about. When one person thinks crowdfunding CAN reach AAA budgets, and another person thinks that it CAN'T, what is being talked about is "What is the upper limit of a crowdfunded budget?" I am certain that we're a lot closer to that limit than you think we are. I think that once you get an idea that appeals to a wide enough set of people, it's suddenly not going to work on Kickstarter. Let's look at other Kickstarters. The only other one to o as well is Double Fine Adventure. Double Fine Adventure has very similar aspects to Project Eternity: -High concept based on a reviving a "dead" genre -New IP rather than revival of a 90s property(which came up in almost all big money post-DFA Kickstarters, Banner Saga excluded) -Big time name recognition -Strong cult following Simply put, we're running low on dead genres that haven't really had a proper installment in the past decade. We're running low on potential starpower. We're looking at a point where making the pitch appeal to a wider audience would cut the legs out from under it. They've talked about Kickstarting a sequel, but will that stir up the kind of support as this high-concept pitch would? Will as many people be stirred up and get truly excited? Or after Eternity is a PRODUCT, that EXISTS, that you can PLAY, how much narrower will peoples' conceptualization of what they're backing be? The scale doesn't work. The games capable of stirring up big budget levels of interest are also the ones that are already being made in 10-packs every year. There is a misconception among people that things that are good sell well, things that are bad don't. There's a sense of economic justice where people think that the things that make money deserve to make money, when really the things with the biggest marketing budgets that stick to tried and true formulas are always the most successful, and small plucky underdogs who make something truly intellectual and great will always falter in sales and reviews. As RPG fans, as people who have watched the fall of Troika, the stumbling of Obsidian, and the end of Black Isle, I thought this simple truth would be pretty much evident. Money is not a reward for quality, for greatness, for intellect. Money is a reward for appropriately playing the system, and crowdfunding simply is not a system that can ever fit the monetary needs of a big budget production. ....since when? Are journalists suddenly part of the pharmaceutical industry when they report on drugs? Are journalists part of damn near every industry if they happen to report on a wider range of topics? It's actually closer to the film industry "A/B movie", which derived from the higher-billed and more expensive of two films in a double feature, and later expanded to refer to all cheap second-tier studio films.

"If you don't like then don't buy" is essentially a way of saying "Shut up". It's ESPECIALLY ridiculous in the case of Eternity, where MANY of us have already "bought" before release in excess of at least a year and a half, Obsidian has asked for iterative feedback. They don't retroactively cause any bad decision the developers make to no longer exist. It's still fair to say KOTOR II essentially shipped without an ending even though TSLRCM exists. It's still fair to say Oblivion's PC UI sucks even though mods exist for such a thing. It's still possible to talk about the merits of a game's balance even if that balance is "corrected" by various game mods. How developers make a game and how it ships matters and to pretend otherwise is being absolutely obtuse. It's a black push-up bra. It's ridiculous. Yes, I picked up that repeated sparring was an Echani courting ritual. I am not, as you seem to be implying, completely dense. I'm also not bent out of shape. It's one dumb thing in a video game I in general think of as excellent and extremely well-written. I can compartmentalize to the point where I can both think a thing in something I like is dumb, still like that thing, and not allow my emotional state to be drastically altered by thinking that thing is dumb. I'd never insult the writers. Many of the players, though? Definitely. The writers I think did something that was stupid. Some people think a certain character is stupid or badly implemented. Some people think story points are badly laid-out. Some people think lore bits are contradictory. And personally, I think the Handmaiden's Undies are a dumb bit of fanservice that doesn't support the major themes in the way you're implying they do. The Echani bond and create sexual tension through combat, not through strutting around in skimpy underwear. I don't know about you, but I don't put on a speedo when I'm engaging in my "courtship rituals"(as in, going on dates). What she wore wasn't important, it was what she was doing. Her emotions were expressed through her combat, NOT through her choice in underpants. Her choice in underpants(or rather, the developers' choice of underpants for her) does not support the excellent script. I've picked up KOTOR II and just finished a playthrough of KOTOR II with the most recent version of TSLRCM. A year ago I played through the game with the version of TSLRCM available then. I played the game many times when it first came out and in the following years. I'm well aware of and have analyzed the minute bits of dialog. The dialog I don't have a problem with. I think the undies are dumb. Because generally speaking Obsidian are better writers than that, and they don't need to allow stupid fanservice to completely consume a work down to its very core to have included stupid fanservice.

Not "imposes", if anything it "raises" the potential bar to ridiculous heights. Retail sales can't be considered potential Kickstarter dollars. There are people who would walk into a store, see KOTOR II on the shelf, see the LucasArts logo and go "Oh, this must be by the guys who made Force Unleashed. I liked that. I should get this." This person's dollars are not, and never will be, potential Kickstarter dollars. If you've ever worked in retail, you'd know that this kind of customer makes up a really big portion of retail sales. Look, consumer product sales may not be my area of focus, but I *am* an Economics major. There are, by necessity, far more dollars in the retail space than there are in the Kickstarter space. You're not going to see a Kickstarter reach $20 million+. You aren't going to see publishers disappear. Kickstarter only works at relatively smaller levels. The audience and inncentives are simply not there for $20 million+. It doesn't exist. It's not going to happen. There is a space between $4 million and $20 million and we don't know how much we can grow from here, but we simply are not going to make anywhere close to enough to make a Dragon Age or Mass Effect through Kickstarter. The concept that we will see a AAA budget come out of crowdfunding is simply ridiculous. It's not going to happen. When someone in the video game industry uses "AAA", they are *always* referring to production budget. It never has anything to do with whether or not the game is good or bad. If someone in the industry says a game is "AAA", they are are saying it's a big game with a large budget, probably across multiple platforms and backed by a major publisher. I've seen fans and gamers use the "really good" definition, but I've always thought that's entirely a fabrication by people who just lacked reading comprehension.

Depending on the kinds of games you like, you could find yourself very comfortable in indie game communities. There's a lot of really good works of passion in there, and it has been a big thing since....I'd say Darwinia in 2005, though a lot of people would say later. Buying from Best Buy really limits the kinds of games you have access to. It makes sense that you'd miss it, it was WAAAAY back on page 2: I've just realised another incredibly obvious reason why this argument makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. They're saying that you could never achieve a budget such as 20 million dollars via crowdfunding. On the other hand, they invest 20+ million dollars in the development of a game and expect to get more than that amount of money back from the sales of the game (and they usually do). Where does that money they get back come from? From the players, of course - those same ones who participate in crowdfunding. If they invest 20+ million dollars into a game and expect to get even MORE than that back from the players, how can they claim that those same players could never give that amount of money directly to the developer?

The core argument is just poor. It's one thing to say that crowdfunding has growth potential, it's another thing entirely to say that sales of finished games in major retail and digital outlets gives us any indication of the possible upper limits of that growth potential. It's conflating so many elements it's mind-boggling. They're not equivalent, they say nothing about each other, and the Kickstarter audience will always be by necessity significantly smaller than the retail/Steam audience.

Your view of the animation industry seems to be very limited(and very US-based).

If nothing else, if handled properly, this is a big benefit to crowdfunding campaigns. As much as gamers are educated about their games now, it's surprisingly common for gamers to have NO idea: -Who made their game -Who financed their game -How their game was financed -How their game was made -How much their game costs to make -How many people are needed to make their game Properly handled, Kickstarter campaigns with their more open approach to developer/fan relations(which is already common in the indie space with its 1 to 5-man teams) could really serve as a way to open people's eyes to how games are made. Side note: My degree actually IS in economics, though my specialization isn't in consumer-end products(it's in international trade).

Nah, your'e just not this specific kind of nerd. I don't follow figurine wargames or Magic cards or whatever, but I do follow really niche video game releases. It's not a matter of being better/cooler, it's just a matter of having a different kind of interest. In this conversation, actually having watched the entire development of this thing lets me have a relevant perspective, so I brought it up. Sorry if that came off as braggy or pretentious.

If you were following the right independent news sources, you'd know a couple of things. First, that they weren't working on the game full-time. Second, they were contracting out a second programmer. The costs were really low because the bulk was really funding the contract work for one guy. Contract guy used up his part of the money, another programmer didn't want to keep working on it. That's what caused the issue here. But yeah, they were working on the game pre-Kickstarter. If you were in the right circles, you might have seen it a few months before the campaign started.

If you don't want to be allowed to discuss games, only consume/not consume, then why are you even here? I mean the vanilla game as shipped. Mods don't change the shipped game. You can't nullify any criticism of any game because somebody else changed it. If a game crashed every time combat started, but the was a fan patch to fix the issue, that wouldn't change the fact that the game shipped broken and that should be criticized. Someone could try and mod Big Rigs to be functional, but that wouldn't make Big Rigs a better game. The reality is that characters are running around in their underwear for no good reason. Characters are running around in their underwear to give teenage boys boners. The REALITY is laughable. It's equally as stupid. It's equally dumb. I'ts more shallow. It's more cynical. It's no smarter, no better, no more acceptable than having every character run about nude. You're just USED to it. Yes. That. Exactly. She says her frilly underpants are "practical" and "efficient". They aren't. A push-up bra is not, cannot, and never will be considered practical for hand-to-hand combat without being stupid and laughable. That stupid push-up lace bra seemed pretty ****ing encumbering to me. I never said anything about her character or character arc. I'm fine with those. The way she is written, for the msot part, fits into the core themes(I disagree about those, by the way*). I think it's incredibly stupid that she strips down to lacey underpants and says it's a matter of ****ing practicality. I should be able to say "This aspect is dumb" without putting a damn disclaimer on it and expect that people won't then go and assume a whole laundry list of things that were never said. *I've always seen the core themes of KOTOR II having to do with it's intrinsically "broken" cast, with the light and dark sides each being a means by which people deal with their internal struggles. Bao-Dur either learns to let go of his anger or realizes that he must utilize his anger to crush mandalorians. Etc and so forth. Identity, defiance, and betrayal were big themes, but I felt like the story of KOTOR II was written to be far more personal-level than that.

They're INDIE gamers. People in the indie game community tend to actually have some sort of conceptualization of how the sausage gets made(so to speak), so they don't tend to treat developers like some wretched slave caste. Eventually there will have to be a crowdfunded video game project which fails. Let's just hope it happens as late as possible and that the current "big three" - Double Fine Adventure, Wasteland 2 and Project Eternity - will do great and garner a nice reputation for Kickstarter and crowdfunding in general. http://www.rockpaper...kstarters-fail/ Am I completely abusing hindsight or does that project look completely unrealistic and not particularly appealing? They already spent twice the amount they're asking for but their pitch hardly shows anything. Even if I was interested in that game, and I wasn't really because the pitch didn't really contain a lot of information about the gameplay, it's a bit sketchy. It's multiplayer turned based defence-attack asymmetrical where you have equipment and abilities based on horror games. Yet it was a three person team where they knew one person was leaving that was the most risk, having a small team in the first place is risky, one of them could have fallen ill, had an minor accident, they had a 4 month window. Yet I'm sure the 700 people or so that pledged $5 are absolutely mortified with this turn of events. Hindsight and lack of perspective. I assure you, the pitch was very persuasive and intriguing for its target audience. That audience doesn't directly include me personally, though I'm adjacent enough to it that I'm well aware of why people latched onto and backed it.

Everyone who worked on Haunted had prior experience in games, both P&P and videogames, with the main guy being one of the founders of Cryptic which launched City of Heroes.

I've been funding Kickstarters for more than a year and a half now. If you're actually the sort of person that would be a part of Kickstarter's audience pre-DFA, you knew exactly what you were getting into and probably wouldn't feel too bad about something falling apart. With post-DFA backers treating it like an extended pre-order system, there's bound to be a ****storm. I funded a game back in March 2011 that was supposed to come out seven months ago, and it's obviously far from finished. The people who donated to that seem to mostly be scientists in the fields of neurobiology and genetics, and they've been extremely supportive and understanding. Would a major Kickstarter's audience be equally supportive of a long delay? I'm not sure. I frankly don't think these new people realize what goes into making games. The big issue I'm seeing is watching people make business and money decisions when they really don't have a clue as to what they're really doing, what Kickstarter really is, what the risks are, etc. This new set of backers is acting like they're buying a product, and the conflating of "early product pre-order" and what Kickstarter actually does are leading to some serious problems. We're building a house of cards and it's only going to take one big flop to cause it to come crashing down.

Ummm ... you realize that they have to build the environment in 3D and then "bake it" into an isometric 2D perspective right? Just because your computer isn't rendering the environment in real-time 3D doesn't mean that are creation is done in 2D I think he's referring to his original post, saying that because "it's 2D", then "it's IE tech but prettier". This is, of course, ignoring(or just being completely ignorant of) the massive underlying differences that can exist between two techologies that produce "2D" images. Obviously, the core techology behind Eternity is completely different than the core technology behind the Infinity Engine games. They're just both being used to achieve a similar end-result.

I'm going to tell you right now, Double Fine has an audience just as big and just as dedicated as Obsidian's audience. Double Fine's designers have just as much clout in the hardcore "PC Adventure Game" niche as Obsidian do in the "PC RPG" niche, if not more. Tim Schafer is many, many things, but he's NOT lacking in name recognition, I assure you.

No, it is not foolish. It's foolish to say otherwise. That kind of money does not go directly to the devs in that kind of timeframe in any instance. Ever. If a game doesn't get distributed by Wal-Mart or Steam, it is not recouping a $20 million budget. Blizzard doesn't sell copies of DIablo 3 in Wal-Mart and Gamestop just for fun. They do it because tons of people WOULD NOT buy it if it wasn't on a shelf at Gamestop and Wal-Mart. Not ONLY does it not follow that money that goes into major retail outlets can suddenly go direct You're talking about people who don't realize that Call of Duty is made by two alternating developers, that Bethesda didn't make New Vegas, that Sony doesn't make Final Fantasy. That is NOT money that is even remotely close to being available through direct channels and to pretend it is would be ridiculous. There is not a single game which, selling only direct through the developer, was able to make $20 million in a single month(or even two). Prove me wrong. THAT is the money that could feasibly *pretend* to be available for a Kickstarter without sounding ludicrous.

Your words not mine.

I don't understand what you're trying to say. -People making profit on $20 million games "proves that you can make $20 million for a game" -It's easier to sell people crap when it's done, selling future crap is, as you say, damn near "impossible" -If it's so much easier to sell crap after it's been made, then the amount of money spent on finished crap(that is, the profit made on $20 million+ games) says absolutely nothing about the kind of potential cashflow Kickstarters can make. Your logic is now self-contradictory, and not just highly impractical.

How the hell is that "holding the developer hostage"? What is "hostageous" about this situation? You make good stuff -> you get money and can make more good stuff. You make bad stuff -> you don't get money and can't keep making bad stuff. It only seems fair to me, as opposed to the way most of the current gaming market operates where you can just keep making pretty much the same crap over and over - it's easier to persuade a bunch of people to buy your crap when it's done, but to persuade a bunch of people to invest in the crap you plan to make... that's darn near impossible (developers invest in crap because it sells, as I said - it's easier to persuade a bunch of people to buy your crap when it's done). If it's easier to sell crap when it's done, why would the amount of money being spent on finished crap have anything at all to do with the amount of money available as an upper limit for Kickstarters?

$4.1 million is before Amazon/Kickstarter/Paypal take a cut, and before the cost of physical prizes. Here's how Double Fine split up their $3.3 million.

If games are doing stupid, impractical things to pander to the overactive libidos and misogynistic tendencies of teenage boys, then I figure video games SHOULD change. Doing stupid and impractical things just to show some skin is not a virtue. It is not a virtue for a character to excuse their clothing with "It's entirely practical and your western ways are so ridiculous" when that kind of underwear is silly and impractical in the context of close quarters hand-to-hand combat. Mods don't change the core game. You seem to act as though THIS topic is, for some reason, entirely off-limits. And yet, somehow, here you are, on a forum meant for discussing video games. Somewhere along the line you consider certain topics worth discussing, rather than sitting around and saying "Well, that's certainly a developer vision". Where's the line about what people can and can't criticize? So if every single character walked around entirely nude for no apparent reason in the standard release but fans made a clothing mod, everything would be fine and there'd be no issue? It wouldn't be if the same character didn't act as though the underwear was entirely practical, specifically for close quarters hand-to-hand combat. It isn't. And that doesn't nullify that fact that you're using OTHER characters like Kreia to justify Handmaiden's Undies. Other characters don't factor in or make her undies any better.