AwesomeOcelot

Yeah, I meant the site not the client. I think the game has its own download manager. it was just unclear to me whether the Steam version already had the DLC installed, because normally with Steam games it would tell you this under the DLC tab, but for DA: O it only says you have the key for them.

Fallout 1 & 2, Diablo 1 & 2, Arcanum, countless other games look great with tile sets. Obsidian Entertainment don't have the artists to create 3D models of every background in the game, render them, and then hand paint over them. They can still do all that for tiles, that will look of the same quality, it just means there will be repetition. You're living in a fantasy world if you think that they can create a whole world in under 2 years by hand, how long did it take them to create part of one map? I think the solution is to have varying sizes of tiles that can be equivalent to a Infinity Engine background, a hall, a room, a part of a room. They've already created so many headaches for themselves with dynamic lighting by being 2.5D.

Every time Josh posts from that room I think he's broadcasting from the past, he's gone back to 2002 to really get into the Infinity Engine mood. Do not know the largest, but I believe Max Payne 3 was 30GB (or just under) download size on Steam, which is pretty friggin big. The word is that DA:O Ultimate Edition is over 30GB on Steam (but I do not have it to confirm), and of course it contains expansion/DLC. Witcher 2 on GOG is 16GB. I have DA: O Ultimate on Steam, when I select to download it, it says its over 24GB, but I don't know whether that's with the DLC as I've never installed it, and I got the impression you had to install it from Origin. From illegitimate sources the DLC Awakening and Witch Hunt is 3GB, but that's non-installed.

I was fine with sprite reuse in Fallout, you wouldn't go the same extremes of reuse because technology has advanced, but having a tile system where you can reuse a heck of a lot of content and layer it was what I was assuming they'd be doing anyway. Animating water in a style that matches the prerendered backgrounds on the other hand is going to be a problem.

What value would 3D add in isometric game which has 2D backgrounds with fixed perspective? Trine / Trine 2 are 2D games, ever tried to play those with 3D effects on? simply amazing, the whole "world" of the game comes to life. If it is well done, I would definately love this feature. People usualy get headaches if they play fast paced games like FPS with 3D on, but I suspect that this game would be even plesant with it. The game play is 2D, a lot of the graphics are 3D, unlike Project Eternity.

Some KickStarter projects have, in the interests of transparency and trust, given details of where the funding went. Even charities use auditors to establish their claims about 100% of donations to a project goes to that project without making the details publicly available. It would be interesting to look at the financials of any video game company, but it's also commercially sensitive. Double Fine released a rough break down of where the funding was going, I'm expecting that at least.

Giana Sisters: Twisted Dream This game is hard. I've completed Super Mario Brothers, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Super Meat Boy, but while this game has check points (which you can miss quite easily) it can be harder, especially with mechanics that aren't intuitive at all. I should probably use the right analogue stick to look around but I'm too busy speeding through the levels.The game doesn't look quite as good as Trine 2 but it's pretty. This game was partly funded by KickStarter and backers get a DRM-free version AND a Steam key, which is the way it should be.

It gives me a little hope that this thread just demonstrates that a lot of people have a screwy view of what game play is, and that they're discounting a lot of game play.

Otherwise known as game play.

As opposed to the number of "major publishers" of AAA titles? Not counting platform-specific publishers (since by previous argument that makes them automatically not AAA titles) that leaves us with what? EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard/Activision, Take-Two, Square? There are a few others in there that are "up there" but I'd say those are likely the publishers of the vast majority of AAA titles released... 1. EA 2. Ubisoft 3. Take Two 4. Activision Blizzard 5. ZeniMax Media(five fingers, hand #1) 6. THQ 7. Square Enix 8. Konami 9. Sega 10. Capcaom (10 fingers, hand #2) 11. Namco Bandai 12. Warner Bros. Interactive 13. Namco 14. Valve 15. Atlas(three hands) Nameco is on there twice? Atlus? No. Where's Sony and Microsoft? NCSoft?

Who actually plays through games with bad game play for the story? I think there's only one game I can think of where the game play is incredibly bad, but the story is good enough for me to go, "yeah I'd prefer to suffer through this bad game than watch a animated movie with better voice acting, animation, graphics, and way better pacing", and that's Grim Fandango. I want to know who are these people that don't like games, but think the best stories come from games. Seriously? It's like people who haven't heard about movies, books, TV shows, but have heard about games. Then there's the fact that the majority of games have terrible stories, and even worse voice acting. It's hard to wrap my head around people who think stories are more important than game play in games.

KickStarter isn't and doesn't have to compete with major publishers. Also, it will be interesting to see what happens when other developers see projects where the creator keeps the IP and the profits. People seem to think there's going to be an inevitable decline, and there will be, but there's also areas of growth when certain models are discovered. KickStarter works, and will continue to work for some games.

Seriously forum censor robot, you sensor male chicken?

Going have to disagree with you there, VtM: B and F: NV had buggy, clunky, unbalanced game play, but it also had great game play, and I'll take that over a highly polished game with mediocre game play.

Brains and body, both. Fallout, Arcanum, and VtM: Bloodlines, perfect examples of story and game play intertwined. Although it has to be game play led, if you just want a cinematic "game", just watch a movie or read a book, they're going to be significantly better than a game with no game play. Games can be as good a story telling medium as books and movies, through game play. Game play, game play. Sick of some developers making bad games because they can't make movies.

I agree with mst of these post, though Tom Hall is certainly a legend. (Commander Keen, Doom, Anarchranox) The problem I see is that he probably isn't that much for rpg fans as Anarchranox (while fantastic) still seems to be that title a lot of people just never heard about/didn't try out. Possible because of Daikatana. Yeah, that's my point. I don't think even I would have backed Obsidian making a flight sim or RTS. I haven't played Anarchranox and from reading the wikipedia page it had problems.

Kickstarter is a bubble. A temporal abnormality that will either burst or fade. Right now it is still a novelty but in a few months when the sensation of newness fades and the first mayor setbacks, like failed and disappointing projects, have occurred the readiness to trade money for glass baubles will fade. Even today you really need big names or tons of luck to get enough money together and this will not improve with the years. It's not a bubble, and it's only going to fade through saturation and competition for resources, you're not going be able to fund 3 multi-million dollar PC RPGs every 6 months, but then neither does the industry. Of course only names can get large amounts of money without showing anything. There's no luck in this, pitches are trading on ideas (infinity engine games, an open console, a spiritual successor to Rainbow 6 and SWAT 4), franchises (Shadowrun, Wasteland), work already done (Project Giana, FTL), and names (Project Eternity, Star Citizen), some of these obviously contain more than one of these. Are names, ideas, franchises, and prototypes going to run out? No. If you actually look at how KickStarter is functioning, it's functioning as expected and pretty well. You can't compare KickStarter to a utopian vision of what game funding should be like, compare it how publishers fund games. There's going to be more failures, and some websites are going to make a much bigger deal out of them than they are because they've been setting up the "I told you so", but KickStarter is not going to stop. I don't know of a single video game Kickstarter campaign where a copy of the game wasn't included in the tiers. Yeah, this person seems to have neglected to even look at a KickStarter campaign page.

That's a service, not digital rights management. GOG makes you login to download, GOG wraps their own installer around the games, GOG even has a download manager, none of that makes it any less DRM-free. It is DRM though, not because of the client but because you need to be logged into the client to install. It's still a login/register once (or everytime you install) DRM system. Steam checks you own a game before you can download like GOG, but also before you install, unlike GOG, that makes it DRM. Also GOG has an open platform, anyone could make a client for GOG, and Steam is a closed platform, only Valve's software works.

Since when getting additional funding = betrayal of fans? Fans want great game, and for me doesn't matter how Obsidian will get funding for this game if needed. Reason #1 They said the exact opposite. Obsidian said that they had been approached to start a KickStarter by a publisher, and said they didn't think that made sense to use their reputation to get crowd funding, and then give royalties to a publisher. Reason #2 They said that the game would be better without publishers. Reason #3 Most publishers are full of jerks. There's stories of constant meddling, but quick time events exist, therefore we must assume publishers are evil. I call it "The gaming problem of evil". Reason #4 I believe IP should be controlled by the creators, and royalties should go to the creators, that's why I pledged so that could happen.

I'm selfish and lazy, I demand there be some sort of rule where it's mandatory to have a cat in your avatar.

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.

I'm a bit disappointed because they started to do a much better job with their pitch. This was the 6th RPG in 6 months to come on KickStarter that I was interested in, and there's 6 more that look like good projects that just aren't for me. I think crowd funding fatigue, competition (saturation really), and a poor starting pitch doomed this. I never played any of the developers RPGs either, although I had been following Brenda on twitter for a few months before the KickStarter, although I have never played Wasteland, I know who Fargo, Stackpole, and Anderson are, they're legends. If you're not TIm Schafer, Obsidian, or Brian Fargo, you're not going to be able to ask for $400,000 or more, and you're going to have to come to the table with a lot more than they did.

It's a bit like dogs and grapes or chocolate, they can be toxic to some dogs, but then there's other dogs that are fine with them.. There was a time when the majority of humans couldn't drink cows milk. And of course, the true inheritors of human destiny, such as myself, who still can't ingest the foul dairy milk. Well at least you still have human milk.

It's a bit like dogs and grapes or chocolate, they can be toxic to some dogs, but then there's other dogs that are fine with them.. There was a time when the majority of humans couldn't drink cows milk.

The only big game that I'd fear imploding is Shadow Run Returns, but that's mainly because I don't know anything about the developer Harebrained Schemes (I liked the pitch, I like Shadowrun, the concept art, and one of the characters in the art looked like CliffyB, totally worth $15). If Tim Schafer, Ron Gilbert, Brian Fargo, Tim Cain, Feargus Urquhart, Chris Avellone, and Josh Sawyer don't know how to deliver games in their prospective genres I don't know who does. Other projects I've backed: Dead State, Grim Dawn, Broken Sword the SCA, and Project Giana I think brought enough to their campaign to say "yeah, this is already a strong project". Defense Grid 2 and SHAKER I wasn't so sure about, looks like I won't have to worry about them now. Just pledged to Star Citizen, this is probably poor judgement on my part. Oh, there's some projects I won't name that I thought "NOPE" straight away, and some of them to my surprise have been funded, but I don't think any were asking for more than $500K.