HungryHungryOuroboros

There's a pretty strong difference between real people in real scenarios doing what's actually practical and a videogame developer using it as an excuse to put a female character into lacey underpants. There is absolutely no practical reason for those underpants to be lacey frilly sexualized things, and they're trying to treat this character like she's entirely practical. It's dumb. With the Twi'lek twin bounty hunters you got the idea that their character matched the fact that they were walking around showing massive cleavage, with the dancer outfit you have the usual Hutt slobbishness. With the Handmaiden Undies there really is no good reason for them to look the way they do and there are a couple good reasons for them to NOT look like that. One female companion in KOTOR2 wears slightly revealing underwear (nothing more scandalous that you'd see on a family beach), while the rest do not. Female Exile wears the same underwear as male Exile. Who cares? When it comes to the portrayal of women, the fact that Handmaiden wears bra + panties in what is admitted to be an Echani courtship ritual is so minute compared to the awesome female characters Obsidian wrote, like Kreia, Atris, and Visas. But hey, this is a PC game. You want equal underwear? There's a mod for that. 1. Mods are a moot point. A ****ty game that is released with a mod tool that is then used to make a far better game is not suddenly a good game. It is a ****ty game with a good mod. 2. It was a cross-platform game. Mods don't exist for the console audience. Granted, I'm not a console player and tend to disregard the console audience, but Obsidian was designing the game for them too. 3. Other characters being done well does not make badly-done characters suddenly great. Carth is not magically transmuted into a good character just because I like HK-47.

If there isn't a spell that makes people explode into marvelous gooey bits then there's a problem.

There's a pretty strong difference between real people in real scenarios doing what's actually practical and a videogame developer using it as an excuse to put a female character into lacey underpants. There is absolutely no practical reason for those underpants to be lacey frilly sexualized things, and they're trying to treat this character like she's entirely practical. It's dumb. With the Twi'lek twin bounty hunters you got the idea that their character matched the fact that they were walking around showing massive cleavage, with the dancer outfit you have the usual Hutt slobbishness. With the Handmaiden Undies there really is no good reason for them to look the way they do and there are a couple good reasons for them to NOT look like that.

I quite clearly remember the Handmaiden stripping down to her frilly lace underpants and using the usual "clothing is a cultural construct" excuse. So no nudists ever existed? Or is it "That character is attractive, so it MUST be shameless fanservice!"? The simple fact of the matter was that she was arguing from a practical movement perspective, and yet her undergarments emulated a very "form over function" style of Victoria's Secret bull****. The player character's underwear looked like this. Handmaiden's underwear looked like this. There is an obvious difference between what is considered "practical" for a male and what is considered "practical" for females under the same "Echani fighting ritual" cultural excuse. Yes. They didn't wear lacey Victoria's Secret underpants.

I quite clearly remember the Handmaiden stripping down to her frilly lace underpants and using the usual "clothing is a cultural construct" excuse.

Dudes, take it easy. I was more trying to convey my irritiation with so called industry "experts, analysts, insiders" hating on the crowdfunding concept more than me asking the question. I asked it more in a hypothetical conversation starting sense because I was interested in what the community forum had to say. If you read my final paragraph it communicated that I was content and had confidence with what Obsidian could do with $4M with realistic expectations. The industry experts and analysts were curbing the over-inflated journalistic reaction of "KICKSTARTER SUPER SUCCESSFUL TAKE THAT BYE BYE PUBLISHERS". The simple fact of the matter is that for mid-to-high-end budgeted video games released for major platforms, the sort of business niche that major publishers are actually interested in, Kickstarter is not a replacement nor is it set to be a replacement. A publisher looks at $4 million gained and let's say $10 million in profits and doesn't even notice it behind their tens of millions to make tens of millions budgets. Eternity is small-scale and entirely out of regular publisher notice, and the best they'll do is try and exploit the Kickstarter system for a few easy dollars(as they tried with Obsidian).

Seems fine. Avellone said in an interview that part of the issue with KOTOR II was too many companion characters, and that had 11. Granted this is a different sort of game and there's less voice acting and other costs that probably made companions a bigger deal time-wise in KOTOR II, but a concise cast isn't the worst thing in the world.

Obviously the only solution is to have a cast stuffed with highly sexualized male characters who run around in codpieces while all female characters can wear full, practical armor. No see, codpieces are in a shape that in this universe gives them a special magical resonance that allows armor to be the less effective of the options from a practical perspective, so it's okay.

I'm sorry but we're well beyond that point now. If my actions aren't recognized on an internet discussion forum, I may as well be dead. You know what they say, "Eye for an eye leaves the whole world in peace because finally everything is fair", and if I might as well be dead then true justice can only be achieved through blood.

Personally this whole snafu with Badgegate has me wanting my pledge back. I'll be contacting Amazon and my credit card company to see if they can get me a refund. If they can't get my money back, I'll have to go the route of hiring a private assassin. This may cost more than my actual pledge, but dammit it's the principle of the thing. >:[

No, I'm not. I'm not presuming anything at all about the two groups. I'm just saying that the fact that these people obviously have the money required for the publishers to get back their invested 20+ million dollars, it is POSSIBLE for that money to get from these people to the game developer directly. That is perfectly sound logical reasoning. The only problem here is that your perception of the term "possible" is loaded with more meaning than that term actually possesses. "Possible" only means "not impossible" (duh), nothing more and nothing less. I've already explained that and I don't see further arguments about it going anywhere. Possible in the same sense that it's possible for a Kickstarter to reach $1 trillion, as that much money exists in the world. It's not "possible" in a practical sense. People buying finished games says NOTHING AT ALL about the money available to Kickstarters for games and to say otherwise is the stuff of fairytales.

Basically. It's the method to achieve this that differs. Our "nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure" is not exactly compatible with the other side's "invest more manhours". Ah, alright. Good to know we're at least not really a fan of those then, so we'll probably get a passing attempt at trying not to do that. I'm probably in an obnoxious position for either set though, I'm pretty indifferent. It's definitely hard to do romance "well" though, because the easiest thing to do is to have a bar that fills up if you're "nice" and allows you to "deserve" sexytimes. This seems to mesh well with a large portion of the videogame audience's viewpoints on romantic relationships, but it doesn't really fit if you actually have access to something called empathy and the ability to think of other human beings as people.

And that's basically all I'm saying. Veeno's assertion that Money Made By Finished Mainstream Games=Money Potentially Available for Kickstarter Campaigns just doesn't fit with the reality that the two scenarios(giving to Kickstarter v buying a retail product) are extremely different propositions. The difference between the two isn't just that more people know about Wal-Mart, and people aren't equally likely to pledge as they are to pick sommething up off a shelf. That's just not a plausible thing to say.

Yes, and in two years, those customers will be paying attention when the next big Kickstarter comes around. Because they'll know what great things it can create! Yeah, there's growth potential there. It will just never make the same kind of money as a finished AAA game will, because finished AAA games are finished products with wide appeal. You're not going to reach Joe Average with Kickstarter, you will reach Joe Average with Wal-Mart. Idiots will accidentally buy good games because "this one lets you fight dragons" or "I heard this one had boobs in it". Instant gratification will beat out philanthropy every time. Always does, always will.

So wait, are both sides at least agreeing that we don't want to parrot a girl's opinions back at her for 60 hours so we can fade to black and imagine we saw her ****, or is that a point of contention?

What's your point? Yes, those low-budget games have been made, and one can reasonably conclude that their success increased confidence in the system and led to the higher budgets we have today. And budgets may rise higher still if the games being made now are successes. Let me remind you that Baldur's Gate sold two million copies. Project Eternity has less than 100,000 backers. The customers are out there, man. Customers for the finished game are out there, yes. My point wasn't very concisely put, actually, so let me try to remedy that: -The system HAS proven itself, BUT -This probably doesn't affect most backers, since it seems the vast majority of them clicked a link from Kotaku or IGN or wherever, because if there wasn't such a big media fuss about Kickstarter they'd be making sub-100k numbers like every game pre-Double Fine

My point still stands. Them getting 20+ millions of dollars from sales proves that it's far from impossible to achieve the same amount of budget through crowdfunding. No, it doesn't. It doesn't even come close to even implying that, let alone proving it. It proves that the gamers have the ability to give that amount of money. As a direct logical consequence, it is possible for them to give that amount of money directly to the developer. You seem to have difficulties grasping the meaning of "possible". It does not imply "easy" or "simple" or "it will happen tomorrow", just pure "possible" - nothing more, nothing less. You're acting as though these groups are the same. They're not. If we did a mental experiment in which crowdfunding was as well-known as Wal-Mart, a crowdfunded game would still make a LOT less than a finished game because the finished game is finished. People who give money to get a thing in their hands two seconds later are a different set of people than those who give possibly even more money to get a thing in two years are simply not the same sets of people. To get the kind of money major titles make, you'd need major title appeal. To have major title appeal, you have to have a design that appeals to regular non-gamer people. To have a design that appeals to non-gamer people, you need to sacrifice the niche appeal. If your game doesn't have niche appeal, there's no reason to pay 2 years in advance when there's finished non-niche games on shelves RIGHT NOW. Tons of games have been made. Most people don't know about them because they were pre-Double Fine and very small scale. I remember when I funded the game by Creatures creator Steve Grand* a year before Double Fine, the $70,000 he raised seemed like such a big deal. *By the way, the creatures in that project are currently unable to move anything below their necks. The project is trying to make truly artificial life, though, building a brain out of neurons and actual muscle systems rather than animating rigs, so these things sort of take longer.

Wikipedia is saying it sold 140,000 copies just on Xbox Live for $10-15 in a period of about 2 months and 10 days. Four months after that it had sold well over triple that. This is an incredibly hard game for people not familiar with 2D platformers, that's about 6 hours long, it's really niche. Thanks for that, this was my bad. I meant to say 1 million sales, not $1 million in sales. Also remember that that 1 million only came after the Humble Indie Bundle in which people paid as little as $0.01 for a copy of Super Meat Boy plus four other games. Before that they were at roughly 600,000 sales, half a year after release, many of those sales being made for $3.50.

My point still stands. Them getting 20+ millions of dollars from sales proves that it's far from impossible to achieve the same amount of budget through crowdfunding. No, it doesn't. It doesn't even come close to even implying that, let alone proving it. Being able to make more than $20 million by selling a finished, mainstream product through major retail channels only proves that you can make more than $20 million by selling a completed, mainstream product through major retail channels. It does NOT prove, or imply, or even hint that these same people would give anything close to that under entirely different circumstances. All it lets us know is that they are willing to buy finished games at Wal-Mart. Risk reduction on a finished game is a lot easier. The modern gamer has: -Professional Reviews -Review Aggregators -Customer reviews from either aggregators or online outlets -Rentals -Playing the game at a friend's place -Screenshots -Lets Plays -Forum threads dissecting every little issue from the perspective of whatever niche you belong to -Word of mouth from people who are actually playing the game right now -The knowledge that the game is sitting on a shelf in Wal-Marts everywhere and as such has no chance of not being made if the company goes under financially

Of course not. This is the sort of thing that worries me about Kickstarters, in that I worry a lot of backers really have no idea what they're putting money into. Kickstarter's usual audience is generally fully aware of the risks, but when you put links up on Kotaku and IGN and everywhere else...how many people give money without really knowing what they're being promised? Because the number of people willing to give $60 now on a pipe dream and wait for a AAA dev cycle(2-4 years) is MUCH smaller than the number of people willing to: -Pre order up to maybe a couple months ahead, after being able to see finished game footage -Buy on release day -Buy after professional reviews -Buy after customer reviews -Buy after renting -Buy when the price goes down a few months later -Buy as part of a package deal 2 years later Also, you're conflating two sets of people. $20 million games are being sold to "Joe Walmart". Joe Walmart doesn't follow game blogs, he doesn't follow publishers or developers, he doesn't know what a Kickstarter is, and he looks at the video game aisle and picks up a game because "this one looks cool I guess". There is nothing wrong with this kind of consumerism, but you won't see this person pay the same $60 for some weird high-concept thing two years out as he is for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. $20 million games are $20 million games because that many people are willing to play them. Kickstarter works because there is a smaller niche of people who are dedicated to certain ideas who are NOT getting something they want and so they're willing to pay for it because they believe on a high-concept level. These are not "the same" players as those of the $20 million game. SOME of them will buy the $20 million game, and they'll make up a small dedicated portion of that fanbase, but there's far less overlap than you're giving it credit for. If a Kickstarter game stops being high concept niche stuff and actually is wide market enough to bring in $20 million..... ...it's no longer a small niche thing, and the small dedicated audience aspect that makes Kickstarters work just sort of fall apart. Joe Walmart has dozens of games made for him every single year. He has no incentive whatsoever to pay now for something in two years when EA, Activision, and THQ just released 15 games he can't wait to pick up NOW. Another example: Super Meat Boy was considered a huge success in the Indie space. It took until over a year after its release to make $1 million dollars. We're talking completely different scales here.

I don't know where I am on the shortcuts or not approach. But people on the side of shortcuts to the surface? I'm sorry, but "You don't want shortcuts? Don't use them!" is bull****. If a dungeon has exits at every level, they are not going to design it like an endurance run. That easy exit doesn't just affect whether or not there is an exit, it affects whether or not the designers KNOW the player has an easy exit. Obsidian is going to design and balance the dungeon entirely differently depending on how many exits there are, and Now, I think my preference is closer to "easy exit so you don't have to trudge through empty dungeon, but you have to start over and fight through again if you come back". It wouldn't be a wash, you'd have however many levels' worth of treasure in your pockets, but next time through you gotta try harder and prepare better. I'm not sure how mega a dungeon can be if it's not really distinct, in *any way*, from entering in the front door of 14 1-level dungeons, and I'm afraid super easy access out and a teleport back to the level you were on previously would create that effect. The "argument" goes both ways, in that if you don't want to play through an endurance dungeon....don't go into the endurance dungeon.

I ended up at the 140 tier. $110 more was more than I could muster in this period, but if I had been given until the 21st $250 would have been mine. So yeah Obsidian, if you give us a pledge manager like Wasteland 2 did, at least an extra $110 is in it for you.

All I want to know is if I can upgrade my Kickstarter pledge(either to another tier or buy getting add-ons) through PayPal. Otherwise it's kind of silly that someone who donated through PayPal can now upgrade their pledge while someone who didn't can't, but I can understand if it's too much of a hassle. EDIT: Oh wait, end of business on Wednesday, as in TODAY? Nevermind then!

Pretty much this. I've been giving to Kickstarter campaigns since April 2011. I've given as low as $5 and as much as $250 to various projects depending on a lot of factors. I know what it's like to go "Ooh! Just $10 for that? I really *should* do that!" I know what it's like to do that all the way from $20 to $150. And I know how that phenomenon across a wider base of backers can really surge a campaign. It's their campaign. I'm owed nothing other than the game they've chosen to promise and the rewards they've chosen to associate with my chosen tier. I also know how dangerous it can be to UNDER-price physical goods, and I would hate to see them set up a situation that would bleed money and hurt the game. I'm just worried that they're being overly conservative, moreso than any other Kickstarter I've ever backed, and their dollar amount per backer has obviously suffered relative to similar projects. Project Eternity: 45$ Broken Sword: 55$ Double Fine: 38$ Wasteland 2: 48$ ofc this dont take into account pay pal. And the information (for PE) is abit old. I was actually looking at: Project Eternity Average $45 Wasteland 2 Average $48 Project Fedora Average $86 Shadowrun Returns Average $51 Grandroids Average $98 Doing a more comprehensive search, it seems Obsidian IS doing better per-backer than Double Fine Adventure, Banner Saga, Dead State, and(as you mentioned it) Broken Sword.

Pretty much this. I've been giving to Kickstarter campaigns since April 2011. I've given as low as $5 and as much as $250 to various projects depending on a lot of factors. I know what it's like to go "Ooh! Just $10 for that? I really *should* do that!" I know what it's like to do that all the way from $20 to $150. And I know how that phenomenon across a wider base of backers can really surge a campaign. It's their campaign. I'm owed nothing other than the game they've chosen to promise and the rewards they've chosen to associate with my chosen tier. I also know how dangerous it can be to UNDER-price physical goods, and I would hate to see them set up a situation that would bleed money and hurt the game. I'm just worried that they're being overly conservative, moreso than any other Kickstarter I've ever backed, and their dollar amount per backer has obviously suffered relative to similar projects.