[Unofficial P.E. Relationship/Romance Thread pt.2]

@Jarpie, well thank you. *awkward silence* Aaaand what part of that post was dealing with my arguments and statements ?

To take your arguments - well the ones I can see as arguments:

 

-

So I ask again since you brought it up, if writing romances would mean to disregard low-intelligence dialogue which they like to write for romances which they don't like to write, would you still want them to write them in and dropping something what they want to do?

First of all nobody said they hate writing romances. Secondly if ressorces really are your argument there is no way you can support something that takes this much more ressources than romances and is clearly optional as well even if they like writing it.. If you do not shoot against it, then it shows that your argument of ressources isn't that important to you.

 

Then what were you trying to say with this? "If you really worry about ressources in optional features go where a lot of ressources are needed - for example redoing whole dialog for low int or low charisma. probably 50 times more dialog affected, right?"

 

Low-intelligence dialogue actually adds to the whole game-experience from start to finish with all characters, story and the quests - unlike romances which only adds for the said companions if they are meant to be completely optional (it doesn't take anything else off from the game, such as anything from the quests, the story, the substories/-plots, interaction with other characters, interaction with other npcs etc. and wouldn't take any extra resources - the point which has been recountered before). Besides, people have asked low-intelligence dialogue a lot, and that's something what devs have said they love to do, devs also have said that they dislike to write romances.

 

Those were the points we have argued against romances and how they would take the unnecessary amount of the extra resources.

 

Alrighty then, let me broke this down for you:

 

- they have to plan it: sure they have to plan it just like any other kind of human relation it comes from the character of the npc if a romantic relation is something this person would tend to and if so under what circumstances. But that counts for every other thing the npc-pc-relation can include. If you want to make that npc argueing against your good deeds then u have to forsee that as well. How is that an argument again?

- it takes time and ressources: yes it does, like any other dialogue this also takes time. Like any npc dialogue, like main story dialogue, like low int and low charisma dialogue.

- It takes time and ressources because of .... : see above.

 

Those are different - arguing against you is an reaction from the companion against your action according to the personality they have created, the personality is already there - it's a given that certain types of characters would react to certain things. If they plan the romance route for the character, they have to write plan the whole new route for the said character.

 

Since it's pretty given that there will be friendship route if not for all, at least for vast majority of the companions, but if they add the romance to one companion, they have to plan and write that to be addentum for the the said character so they have have quite a bit more work to make both believable.

 

It's not just writing "couple optional lines for the companion", they also have to write completely new lines for the PC too, and make it seem believable.

 

There also would be lines for objecting those activities you gave which most probably would be unique for each branch, for romance, non-romance, rivalry etc, the characters should react to what you do depending on their relationship with the PC - so if there's both friendship route and romance route they would have to write double the lines.

 

There are of course branches in the dialogue trees which leads to different dialogue-parts but for every larger branch the amount of the written dialogue multiplies exponentially, for example (I'm throwing this out of the hat) there are twenty dialogue events/lines per every branch and when you add another one it multiplies with another twenty...and then another twenty etc.

 

So unless they add more lines per character which would increase the time and budget for the said companion they have to divide the lines between all the possible routes.

 

Why do you think devs havent put more than one or two routes tops for characters in RPGs, of if they do, their lines are almost copy-pasted for each route?

 

I also replied to low-int argument as unnecessary above.

[Unofficial P.E. Relationship/Romance Thread pt.2]

Well in the end Obsidian will have to see if it is worth it making the people happy that are pro-romance or not. If a decision against romances would make you "anti" guys happy (what it probably would), then I can just scratch my head and ask myself if you are not just against it because you want to do something against the people that like that kind of feature. It is like the (now probably sad) anti-paladin fraction, if you don't like it, don't play it, but if so many people like it, throw them their bone (that sounds wrong now but you know what I mean :D).

If you really worry about ressources in optional features go where a lot of ressources are needed - for example redoing whole dialog for low int or low charisma. probably 50 times more dialog affected, right?

 

I see it like Uomoz or Estelindis. Romances are just one possibility of human relations but not the only one. Most people here that I read just want the companions to behave believable and develop interesting dialogue and maybe emotions of all kind for each other rather than being a IWD-party of artificial robots. And I am fully on that side.

 

I'll make it easier for you than other previous two, I even provide my own quotes!

 

From me:

Read the Lurky's post in here and I agree with it, you have to devote almost everything you write for the character with the romance in mind if they decide to add it or it'll just feel tacked on artificially. You just can't go "Oh we have extra money to do something, let's write romance dialogues for one of the chacters" because then they would feel completely separate from the rest of the character and feel lacking without substance unless they would write most of the character again from the ground-up and I doubt they would do that.

 

From Lurky:

I see that there's been some discussion regarding the time it takes to write a romance, versus the time it takes to write a character. For this, remember that the process of writing a character is not just typing dialogue on the screen. There's a whole process that comes before that.

 

First, preproduction: you have to decide on the high level concept of the character, basic roles it will fulfill in the story and so on. Then you have to start designing the character, by fleshing out its personality, background, the interactions the PC will have with it, possible quests and so on. Only when you have all this nailed down you go into production, and start writing actual dialogues and actual game content, which also has to be iterated on and peer reviewed before it's considered finished.

 

Deciding whether a character will have a romance or not is a design decision, which comes before starting to write dialogues. But a well-done romance develops with time, which means that all the dialogue before the "hey, romance trigger here" moment has to accomodate for it, so that it doesn't come from nowhere. In other words, the romance cannot be isolated from the rest of the character interactions if it aims to be believable, just like a friendship or a hidden secret or other types of relationships need to have some basis to build on. This means that the decision of having romance dialogue permeates the entire character. And writing and designing all that takes much more time than the few romance-only lines would take to write.

 

Granted, the final game dialogues can be written subtly, so that if you don't choose to activate the romance the alternative route flows smoothly. I think that's the best way to go, because that way the impact of the romance can be ignored easily for those who don't want it. But saying that romances take little time to create because that small portion of romance-exclusive dialogue takes little time to create is simply not true. That's just the tip of the iceberg; everything before it has to account for the romance, and that takes much more time to write. Comparing the 2-3 months it takes to write a character to the time it takes to write a romance might be a much more accurate comparison than you think it is.

 

Rest are from me:

The point me and other "anti-romancers" has forgotten to make is that they also have to write the dialogue lines for the main character as well so it's not just the companion's dialogues.

 

 

The potential romance-route for main character would basicly double the written dialogue-lines for the PC and between the companion unless you want just sudden "Hey, let's be lovers!"-throwaway at some part of the dialogues.

 

As many have said, it's not just the case of "Hey, I'm going to quickly write these lines!", you have to take the whole backstory, which NPC the PC is discussing with, potentially who else is in the party if they chime in and if there are more than one potential companion you can romance, the lines from the PC to them would also double.

 

If there'd be for example three romanceable companions, they would have to write three times more dialogue for the PC than without romance-route.

 

You brought up low-intelligence dialogue which has been asked a lot by people and devs actually -likes- to write low-intelligence dialogue, and where did I agree that it's not just about time or budget? I asked about disregarding low-intelligence dialogue because you brought it up and devs have actually said that they like to write it.

 

 

So I ask again since you brought it up, if writing romances would mean to disregard low-intelligence dialogue which they like to write for romances which they don't like to write, would you still want them to write them in and dropping something what they want to do?

 

I expect counter arguments for those since you want to chime in on the debate, thank you in advance.

[Unofficial P.E. Relationship/Romance Thread pt.2]

@jarpie: Ehrrrrrrrrrrrrr, like Annah in PST? That was nice and it wasn't nor obstructive nor forced. And I think it wasn't that expensive (time\resource wise).

 

Not gonna argue vs the internet, I like keep my opinions simple.

 

So you dont have any arguments on how romances could be done well without sacrificing anything else, with small effort, and quickly.

[Unofficial P.E. Relationship/Romance Thread pt.2]

I find funny how so many people refers to romance as a minigame. It's not, essentially is a "normal" interpersonal relationship, like friendship. Like in PST, you have different relationships with different characters and that's it, no minigames involved.

 

This also for you if you really want to debate about romances:

http://forums.obsidi...40#entry1257224

http://forums.obsidi...60#entry1257453

http://forums.obsidi...80#entry1258212

http://forums.obsidi...80#entry1257519

http://forums.obsidi...80#entry1257566

http://forums.obsidi...00#entry1258255

 

Have fun reading and counter-arguing mine and others points from those with actual facts and solid arguments why romances wouldn't take much time, and how they could be well done with a small effort and time.

 

I expect counter arguments on all the points I've give in those posts. Enjoy!

[Unofficial P.E. Relationship/Romance Thread pt.2]

Haven't you really read the post? Please, where does one week come from?

 

It might be helpful to understand that when you write a romanceable character, you are writing at least 50-75% more. Why? To cater for the players who don't romance that character. Or do you think that if you don't romance a character they should be virtually mute? It's more or less like two separate story arcs, an either / or in many instances.

 

If you can do that in a week you need to get a resume together and send it in. Writing is a job just the same as putting together art assets or programming. It's not just drinking coffee and tapping away at the keyboard now and then. It's graft.

First just because you are in a relationship with somebody does not mean that you talk about nothing else. The relationship status can be easily expressed by changing a few lines, e.g. how the character responds, how he/she adresses the main character.

Second you definatly don´t need 50% more dialog for this. E.g. on the BioWare board a developer postet that cutting the four romances (dialog, cutscenes, dialog and banter by other characters bringing your relationship status up and more) would have not freed enough resources for an additional companion.

Seamingly you and all the other antiromancers don´t seem to realise that even without romance a character needs more then one dialog path.

Third why are posting on the Obsidian boards ? NWN2, AP, MotB, and FO:NV all had romantic content of some kiod (Ok FA:NV is a bit of a strech and I don´t know about DS)

 

http://forums.obsidi...40#entry1257224

http://forums.obsidi...60#entry1257453

http://forums.obsidi...80#entry1258212

http://forums.obsidi...80#entry1257519

http://forums.obsidi...80#entry1257566

http://forums.obsidi...00#entry1258255

 

Have fun reading and counter-arguing mine and others points from those with actual facts and solid arguments why romances wouldn't take much time, and how they could be well done with a small effort and time.

 

I expect counter arguments on all the points I've give in those posts. Enjoy!

[[Merged] Please make a console version!]

If they can make money, they'll do it.

 

If they can please fans, they'll do it.

 

I see them making a console version in 2015.

like it or not, thats the way things are.

you guys can only expect more demands for console version. as the development goes on bunch of big mainstream gaming sites & mags will write all sorts of articles about Eternity and more and more console only gamers will be interested in it. wouldt be surprised if this or any similar thread looks quite different in one year or so.

 

We'll be ready with the baseball bats and flamethrowers.

[Oversexualization of females in video games]

He is obvious troll, just ignore him.

[Dev Q: Project Eternity and "Mature Content"]

may I point that CUTTING out the "things like sex, rape, slavery, violence, grimdark "social issues", lot of cursing or harsh language" ,

yet allowing for endless bloodshed and killing doesn't make it very mature either

afterall violence is usualy represed sexuality

watch me the new freud !

 

Obvious troll is obvious. Move along, nothing to see here!

[Dev Q: Project Eternity and "Mature Content"]

Sigh... having anykind of violence, sex or controversial subjects doesn't make mature but more usually makes them just ridiculous or looking to cause surge in sales or audience ratings in TV.

 

Let me quote my own post from the first page of this topic:

When I think of mature, I don't think sex, violence or harsh language. When I think of mature it's that the fiction in subject whether it being film, book or game tackles on different kind of deeper/higher issues such as MCA said in the recent interview:

 

With this world I think it's going to be a little bit more subtle. The whole premise of the lore and the magic system is that souls get inherited, and then when you pass away the souls wait for a time and then come back to another body. The question is how much of your own behavior is being governed by your own free will or the influence of the soul inside you and all of its history? I think that can raise some interesting questions for both the player character and the companions.

 

When I think of mature film, I think of film like Blade Runner which tackles on with the issues "If we give conciousness and emotions to androids, are they still just androids?" even though that is somewhat under the surface but it's still there.

 

That's not to say I don't enjoy violent films such as Evil Dead 1 and 2 but I don't consider them as very mature even though they are great films.

 

For game, film/tv or book to be mature it doesn't have to have things like sex, rape, slavery, violence, grimdark "social issues", lot of cursing or harsh language.

 

Maturity has to do how it deals with different kind of things, which are not necessarely and not usually subjects I listed above - it can deal with the themes such as Planescape: Torment did, in which they partly tackled on the subject "Is a man just sum of their memories or is there something more" or what Obsidian wants to do with the souls: "The question is how much of your own behavior is being governed by your own free will or the influence of the soul inside you and all of its history? I think that can raise some interesting questions for both the player character and the companions."

 

Now, that is the -mature- subject I want to see in the game.

 

And rape? really? Do you really think that would be suitable for a game? Whenever I've seen games having rape, slavery or something else "serious social issues" they have just felt like artificially tacked into the game to give -impression- that it's supposedly mature.

 

What else can you do with the slavery what haven't been done in the last 50 years in everywhere else? I know devs said that there will be slavery but I really doubt it'll be anything anything more than to give more depthness into the difference of the cultures in the gameworld.

 

Fortunately I can trust OE to make a game which won't be ridiculously grimdark like Dragon Age: Origins or The Witcher with their overblown melodramacy and the way they tacked on the "serious issues" into the games just because they wanted to give impression of fake maturity.

[Unofficial P.E. Relationship/Romance Thread pt.2]

Since Baldur's Gate 2 romances have some lovers in here (pun intended :D), they are basicly exactly the same romances what Bioware has been doing ever since - just the execution is different. Back in the day they were basicly just written dialogue and written descriptions, now the descriptions have been replaced with the cut-scenes.

 

I can't understand how anyone would think Jaheira's romance isn't at least a bit of ridiculous - her husband has just died and she basicly starts new relationship after what...less than a week or two of mourning? Maybe she didn't love Khalid that much after all...

[Unofficial P.E. Relationship/Romance Thread pt.2]

There is also one another point to make since some in this topc have written that they want romances woven into the game deeper than just interaction with just PC and Companion:

 

if the romance would be woven either to the plot/story or sub-plot/sub-story, it just wouldn't need writing the lines etc between the PC and Companion but also the story/sub-story too - and lines for the other NPCs acknowledging and reacting to the said companion.

 

Since if there would be romance, there most probably would be at least second romance too because people demand for at least one straight and one gay options and if you want to do the reactivity well, you just can't go with the MS Word search feature "Replace NAME_A with NAME_B", you have to either write at least part of the story from the ground up to to react differently for different companion or write completely new sub-story/-plot.

 

Now tell me exactly how that wouldn't be crazy amount of work for romances?

[Re: RPGs, audiences, publishers, mass markets and everything between earth and sky.]

I doubt, because of the all the extra features they try to put in, to make it more connected with social media... add to that things with titles that involve H&M clothing, Kate Perry, and a lot of marketing expenses at the launch of the game. I'd say that it definitely is not a small to medium production cost game.

 

Hmh, you might be right there. Kate Perry license probably costs a lot, wouldn't be surprised if it's not millions. The games itself are probably cheap to make but all other expenses are very high.

[Unofficial P.E. Relationship/Romance Thread pt.2]

The point me and other "anti-romancers" has forgotten to make is that they also have to write the dialogue lines for the main character as well so it's not just the companion's dialogues.

 

The potential romance-route for main character would basicly double the written dialogue-lines for the PC and between the companion unless you want just sudden "Hey, let's be lovers!"-throwaway at some part of the dialogues.

 

As many have said, it's not just the case of "Hey, I'm going to quickly write these lines!", you have to take the whole backstory, which NPC the PC is discussing with, potentially who else is in the party if they chime in and if there are more than one potential companion you can romance, the lines from the PC to them would also double.

 

If there'd be for example three romanceable companions, they would have to write three times more dialogue for the PC than without romance-route.

[Re: RPGs, audiences, publishers, mass markets and everything between earth and sky.]

^^^ you forget about games like Sims in EA's portfolio

 

They are in the same category as rest of their cheaply made games with very little effort.

 

To be honest I am a bit amazed by the strategy that EA tries to follow. Their strongest points are within titles, which they created themselves...

 

All of EA sports... for me EA meant quality (got hooked up with NHL 93' and NFS (casual racing))

Sims - that was/is a phenomenon, which they should and are smartly expanding on.

FPS with Battlefield series being their flag ship

 

These three above are high budget genres, where they should stick to the formula.

 

On the other hand they are entering the world of application games for social media and handheld devices. It is also a good part, because they can sell tens of millions of copies of these, and their customer base is not consisting of gamers in a traditional sense of this word (i.e. PC / console)

 

What EA is doing wrong though is skipping the middle ground. They have great IPs in their possession and they are butchering them, while they could have made them small/medium budget games with high profitability return.

 

C&C - This IP was so well regarded that they could have been updating just graphics and they would be selling a lot of that... The biggest flaw in their design was not introduction of co-op, because that is actually a nice idea, but how they've tried to go into some sort of hybrid between Dawn of War and C&C with their last C&C... Keep the franchise true to what made it successful in the first place...

 

Syndicate - This... I will just put a veil of silence upon this IP...

 

Mass Effect - turning a great RPG into a space squad-shooter with more dialogs than CoD - no influence system, no non-combat skills, limited choices in dialog, etc.

 

Dragon Age - see above, it will be most likely action oriented hack&slash, but with more dialog than Diablo I guess. DA tries to become ME3 of fantasy setting - that's not what made the IP great in the first game..

 

Dead Space - They had a great title and with DS3 it seems that they are doing again a wrong step.

 

Ultima - no comment...

 

Now, apparently they also can get some titles right. I have some hope for the latest SimCity

 

Other publishers are more inclined to keep the franchise within its core... Blizzard got it right with SC2, but took something bad with Diablo 3 - if D2 is more playable and enjoyable now than D3 is, then something is wrong.

 

Look also at Beths' Fallout - it got criticized to no end, for being Oblivion with guns, and they turned to people who know how to make falloutish experience to scrap whatever they can from that formula, with Fallout:NV getting much better reception than Fallout 3.

 

It is true, that major publishers do not try to get into the middle ground, like RTS, TBS, core RPG, Simulators, Adventure games.

 

This was exactly the point I was making but I'd disagree with Sims, they are probably made with pretty little money and effort but they keep making them because they found its core audience in the early 2000s who just keeps buying them, very similar to their sport-games.

[Re: RPGs, audiences, publishers, mass markets and everything between earth and sky.]

Ok here it is. Some points, which one should take into consideration.

 

1) The biggest flaw of the industry, is that they drive into the direction of interactive, immersive movies... That's why they spend a LOT on graphics and physics, a LOT on full voice overs with talented voice actors, a LOT on high quality music. Now, where the cost cutting can go without hurting the "immersive" First Person experience in a very detailed graphical environment? Story and plot length... The less dialog, the less lines of text and the less environments and places to visit -> the less costly the game be, in an already huge production budget

 

That is an intentional flaw. Publishers desperately wanted control of the market a decade ago, so they successfully convinced Console gamers that Graphics > Gameplay. This was done so that they could insure that development houses could not develop and launch a competitive title without their help. Think Cold War Economics. This, combined with the expense of the 3D revolution, gave Publishers pretty much complete control over the entire market.

 

Remember, Activision got it's start by releasing Atari Games without Atari. It was an event Publishers did not want to see, they wanted to insure that anything sold on a Console Platform gave them a piece of the pie.

 

It's also a large part of the reason why the market shifted away from the PC to Consoles, if Publishers could successfully force the market to go in that direction, they could obtain complete control of the market. The PC is an open platform, nothing stops a developer from releasing a game on the PC without them. The Console OTOH is closed, and if they could position themselves as the Gatekeepers, they could dominate the market.

 

So, the campaign of massive budgets was born. The Publishers leveraged their bankrolls in Reganomics style warfare by successfully convincing the Gamers that if a game didn't have the very latest in graphics, physics, full orchestral music, and voice acting by celebrities it wasn't worth buying.

 

Now it'll bite them in the butt. It's a large part of the reason we're on the verge of collapse.

 

2) Designing games, that we want to hit the largest possible audience, because we need millions of copies sold at high price to even break even... That's why the marketing expenses are huge... They need to create a LOT of hype, so the game will sell in first week to break even, and in second and third week to reach the profit... After the first two-three weeks the sales decline. It is the same rule as with the film industry and cinemas... If we create a game with huge budget, we need to sell millions of copies in first two weeks, otherwise it is a flop...

 

This is a symptom of the above. They need millions of sales because they spend ridiculous amounts of money on things that don't improve gameplay, but they have no choice to do it because of their crusade for market dominance.

 

Marketing expenses are huge, because Quality and Gameplay are secondary. They don't care if the game is innovative, fun, or even bug free. They spend massive amounts of money on marketing, because for years Gamers would just buy into the PR and go preorder. If they can convince Gamers to do that, they don't need to make a good game, because by the time word of mouth spreads, they already have the first 3 weeks of sales.

 

It's also why they're going to fail in the next 18 months. They've created the situation where they have to spend tens of millions to make a game, and then a massive amount in marketing to convince ~3% of the installed base of 140 million to buy the game, just to break even.

 

So what happens when the next generation they think will save them has a first year installed base of only 10 to 20 million? When 3% is in the hudreds of thousands, and not millions?

 

Worse, how are they going to sell consoles when they're creatively bankrupt and the games will be the same things people are already so tired of that they won't buy them today?

 

It's going to be a really ugly 18 months.

 

3) Publishers are smart... they know the demographics, so they target the audience with the type of entertainment, which is easy, pleasing to eye, and not very mentally exercising. Same feature drives the film industry... Ambitious and artistic visions, with deep message, are niche... I personally do not like such movies, because I usually want to be a brain dead while watching some blockbuster with good action and cheap jokes. Games however I like to have more brain involving, because I get easily bored otherwise. Film is 1,5h long, game needs to keep me for far longer time.

 

Publishers are very, very, foolish.

 

They don't know the demographics. Kotaku has an article on Friday where an anonymous Publisher (Likely a suit who makes decisions) seems to indicate people in their 30's are old and not the target market. But if you reference the demographics breakdown from 2011, you'll find the average gamer is 37 and less than 15% of the market is in the under 18 demographic. (Using that breakdown because the 2012 one assumes that anyone who plays Angry Birds or Farmville is a gamer, which is pretty wrong.)

 

Publishers make decisions based upon what is "Safe", which really consists of "What game sold well last year?", and "What genre sold well last year?". Publishers do not make decisions based on anything even remotely resembling market reserach. In 30 years of gaming, no one has ever surveyed me, and I've never seen anyone say they've been surveyed. Then we're right back into the fact that the Publishers disregard the majority of the Industry and target the less than 15% part.

 

 

4) Blockbusters (films) usually have famous names on the roster and that alone can sell a movie... games... they rely on a franchise in the same way. It is difficult to establish a good name for a franchise, but you can easily try to milk it, if you also own the IP... Actors have more independence than an IP, so they can eventually quit working on some silly projects if a previous one hurt their image too much. The one IP that is always strong among the gaming industry is the Star Wars, just because George Lucas is the only one who can tarnish the franchise

 

The only name in film that can sell movie tickets today is Will Smith. Hollywood's been admitting that for years. Many years ago a name on the movie would sell tickets, but today movie goers aren't all that dedicated to any single name.

 

Publishers in gaming rely on franchises because it's safe. Publishers believe that if we bought Game X, we'll buy Game X+1, and for a long time they were right. Gamers have a core demographic that border on obsessive, whether it's the Japanophiles, or people dedicated to some specific IP (Star Wars, Star Trek are good examples), Gamers tended to include the same demographic as AD&D, Comic Book, and Sci-Fi. Demographics known for total dedication to an IP. So if an IP succeeded, there's a demographic in gaming that'll buy it sight unseen for many iterations.

 

New IP's aren't safe, because there's no installed fanbase. That means the game will have to succed on it's own quality, and that's something Publishers want to avoid, because they're not interested in quality. Quality costs alot of money, Quality means alot of tweaking and fine tuning. Publishers like nice safe existing IP's because they can just shove out the same game with a slightly different story and different maps and sell alot of units.

 

Problem is though, Publishers have forgotten the lesson of the Horror Genre of movies. Sure Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street sold alot of tickets, but over time, people became increasingly bored with it, and by the late 80's the entire genre tanked. You cannot release 10, 12, in one case 20, iterations of the same game and think it'll last forever, because at some point the bottom is going to drop out, and it'll likely happen *really* fast.

 

Expense type by categories:

 

Production:

 

Salaries and Social Security charges and taxes. - main bulk if the team consist of hundreds of people...

Outsourcing and external services (Cinematics, music) - if you want famous names involved, you gonna pay for that... a LOT...

Design tools associated solely to the project, which cannot contribute other projects.

Things associated with delivery of the product to the Point of Sales and usable condition.

 

Other expenses:

 

Marketing (not directly tied to production costs, but I assume it's measured against a total profitability of a project).

 

Licenses (depreciate over the life time of a license - for example Forgotten Realms license, Star Wars license, etc. or Engine license - if the engine license is over a life time, not per game title) - I would assume that licenses can be a tricky part, since with some right contract conditioning the expenses could be put below EBITDA lines, and EBITDA is basically one of the main factors that shareholders want to see as it usually builds value for transactions

 

Disclaimer: Please note that I do not have insiders knowledge on the industry's finance mechanics, but make some assumptions based on some general rules.

 

I would really want to see someone, who actually works on some more senior position in finance in the gaming industry to contact me, so I could get more knowledge on the rules here. I am all into tech industry, like mobile operators, marketing media and TV, but never touched gaming industry yet :D

 

The Publisher alone add 25%-30% to the cost of the game. Look through the credits of an AAA game and you'll find a large number of people listed who don't actually do anything towards making the game. They also introduce a high degree of inefficiency through over management. I'd be willing to bet that if you cut out the Publisher and the bloated marketing campaigns, you probably get a budget around 50% lower.

 

Bravo on the whole message but I have to disagree with one thing - the next console generation might be saved with one thing: 3D televisions and glasses. That might be gimmick they're gonna use to get people buying the next consoles.

[Re: RPGs, audiences, publishers, mass markets and everything between earth and sky.]

^^^ you forget about games like Sims in EA's portfolio

 

They are in the same category as rest of their cheaply made games with very little effort.

[Re: RPGs, audiences, publishers, mass markets and everything between earth and sky.]

Merin, would love to hear your counter-arguments to this.

 

My simplest response would be:

 

First, that the game industry, again, is at a different phase than the movie industry, and it is growing through it's phases in a different era. The film industry started roughly 1900, the video game one roughly 1970 (I'm not giving exact years the first moving picture was made, nor when the first electronic device for gaming entertainment was made, so roll with it instead of getting pedantic about 1860 or 1950). Each industry grow in vastly different cultures.

 

Second, that the game industry has always and continues to make smaller games. The shelves are lined with them. Before consoles, birth of consoles, pre world-wide-web, pre-Steam, today. Companies like Activision and EA gobbling up smaller competitors is like the big six for the movie industry. They are not exact analogues, but they are similar enough to draw comparisons.

 

So in conclusion, I will just state, again, that it is my firm opinion based on my analysis of the two models that there isn't a significant, noticeable difference between indie vs. tent pole, middle sized game vs. large sized game from big companies, from the film or the game industry...

with the noticeable exception of video games not having high-brow awards nor be considered, by many, an art form. Without a video-game equivalent of the Oscars, or at least Golden Globes, to chase (let alone Cannes or Independent Spirit or such) of any weight, big publishers have no impetus to make smaller, different games with a lot of focus on uniqueness and quality over marketability. What video games have for awards is, at best, the People's Choice Awards, but actually is much closer to a mix of the MTV Movie Awards and Nickelodeon Kid's Choice.

 

----

A more lengthy and boring ramble ---

 

You CAN pick out box office flops like Blade Runner, that later became cult classics and critical darlings, as an attempt at saying "look, high art" - but Ridley Scott is the same man who made Gladiator and Prometheus (Gladiator won at least one Oscar, too...) so I'd refrain a bit from quoting it as an example of anything.

 

 

Your list is not good examples beyond Blade Runner. Videodrome was a Canadian film - not a Hollywood film. Blue Velvet was by a film company that lasted two years (formed in 83, but only released films from 86-88) before going bankrupt (even if it brought us Evil Dead II!) Terminator was done by an independent film company as well - Hemdale. Dead Zone was made by a television production company in partnership with another corporation and...

 

you know what, the point is, the films you are talking about were done by small studios for the most part, not considered to be anything "big" at the time, and even the success of Terminator (moderate, as it were, if not considering the subject matter) just further illustrates it wasn't considered to be "good fair" - http://news.google.c...erminator&hl=en

 

Tons of games are released that aren't big budget games, and there are many genres of games out there. Just looking at the big budget ones and saying "bleh" is what people do to the movie industry as well. There are other options out there, yes even distributed by the big companies....

 

Here - a list of last years's EA Games - http://www.ea.com/past-year#9 - 116 of them. Looks to be a wide range of games in there, not all the same budget or genre.

Here - a list of last year's Disney movies - http://www.disneymov...sp?disyear=2011 - 15. Hrmmm. There is a little variety - but not as much range, or number.

and, in case you don't like Disney, here's Paramount - http://en.wikipedia....res_films#2010s - 16. One more than Disney, a little more variety... but nowhere near the number, nor range, that EA games have.

 

And this isn't me defending EA. It's me saying that you can't do an EXACT comparison, or a close numerical comparison, but only a very, very broad generalized comparison.

 

Big game publisher release way more games than big movie studios release movies. But there are many factors that go into that.

 

....

 

long story short, I still say Hollywood is a better example of what the game industry is going through (as what the movie industry went through) but NOT a role-model for what the game industry should do. And that it's a very, very bad way to try and judge the game industry. Big companies making products for millions of consumers want big returns, especially if they are publicly traded companies.

 

Of course world is different now but the progress is similar in the games with the films for about 40 years in the both idustries as a storytelling medium, as I explain just below:

 

Films started to show up in the early 20th century; 1910s were mostly simple silent movies with pretty little sophistication on them with couple noticeable exceptions such as The Birth of a Nation but when 1910s turned into 1920s there started to be more and more ambitious films which were more sophisticated than the films in the late 1910s.

 

When 1920s became to the end, sound films appeared and after short phase of transition when the sound equipment was heavy and cumbersome, the visual storytelling of the film started to flourish again and with the combination of the sound the storytelling in films "grew up" quite considerably with the films of the late 30s and early 40s, the visual style really flourished with the film noir and colour films which both started to appear in the late 30s and early 40s.

 

Now let's compare to the games; very early games from the 1970s were very simple games, such as numerous Pong-clones or Atari 2600 games (compare to the 1910s of the films), but in the early 1980s computers such as Commodore 64 appeared and games started to get much more sophisticated, such as early Ultimas, Sierra's adventure games or LucasArts Maniac Mansion by mid 80s. Think of those games comparable to the early 1920s and the later games of the 80s to the early sound films.

 

When the PC got VGA-graphics and became much more powerful from the CPU, memory etc standpoint and harddisks became the norm, games started to really flourish - we got such a titles such as Ultima 7, Ultima Underworld, Monkey Island 1+2, Civilization, Wing Commander 1+2, Day of the Tentacle, Doom and later we got Fallout 1+2, The Dig, Mission Critical, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 and so on - those times are comparable to the 1940s with such films as Lost Weekend, Sam Fuller's films, Film noir films and so on.

 

Edit: Widescreen films started to appear in the early-/mid 1950s, and so did bigger and bigger epics such as Ben-Hur or The Ten Commandments, but there were still smaller films like Samuel Fuller's Hell and High Water which was widescreen film - those can be somewhat compared to the 3D-games.

 

But just when when the century became to an end and turned into 21st century, multi-platform titles started to appear and more sophisticated games became fewer and fewer even if they got technologically grandeur. The Last of the Golden Age of RPGs was released in 2005 - Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines. That's when middle-class of the games basicly disappeared with the notable exceptions from Obsidian who has been one last Shining Beacon of Light in the Night, or odd Civilization or two.

 

Now tell me exactly how development of both industries are not compareable and even though they were in very different eras and cultures you can clearly draw lot of similarities on how both mediums grew more sophisticated? People haven't changed that much, they still go to see big blockbuster films as they were going before and some still go to see the smaller films.

 

Sure small games has been done always but like I said before; Middle-class games were done but those average budgeted (which would nowdays be from couple million to ten million) vanished, now there are only games which are made with very small budget for handheld devices/webbrowsers/MMOs or huge blockbusters made with 20-100 millions.

 

Edit: MMOs are not usually cheap to make but have very different business model than the single-player games.

 

None of the games in EA's page was other than either for handheld-devices/webbrowsers/MMOs/Sims-games or then sport games and big blockbusters - where are those averagely budgeted games?

 

Indies are publishes like Paradox Interactive and their grand strategy games, or Matrix Games and their strategy games which both makes very niche games - always have been and always will be.

 

Ridley Scott getting Oscars has nothing to do with the finances for films he made in the 70s and 80s - of course Oscars help somewhat but he hadn't won oscar when he made Blade Runner and even though it wasn't financial success it still made back its budget: 27 million vs. 33 million but there are always flops.

 

Look at the Paramount's films made in the 2010s - there are films like The Fighter (budget 25 million) and How to train your Dragon (budget 165 million), same with the 80s with such films like The Witness (budget 8 million), The 48 hours (1 million), April Fool's Day (5 million), etc. and now show me from the EA's webpage any games which are made with comparable budget (from 1-10 million) and not big blockbusters or small games either for webbrosers or handheld devices but games like Project Eternity which will have about 3,7 million budget.

 

What about profit? That's not impetus enough? Game with budget like Project Eternity has to sell 500 000 copies to make 15 million if they get 30 dollars profit per game, that's 11,7 million profit. If big publisher would make say...five games with budgets of about that and all would sell about 500 000 copies, they'd get about 50-55 million profits on them and most of them would probably sell between about 500 000 and 5 million copies, depending on if they are surprise hits or not.

 

But this is better example:

Now let's say they make eight games with budget of five million which all would most probably sell about on average 1 million copies (probably from about 500 000 to 5 million copies per game, depending on odd surprise hit) which all would make profit 30 dollars per game - so that's 30 million per game, now multiply that with eight, it's 240 million minus the production costs 40 million, now that's 200 million profit. Games like those would need much much smaller marketing costs too because they don't have to sell 8-10 million copies.

 

As I said game with smaller budgets also would need smaller marketing costs, Battlefield 3 probably cost something around 25-50 million (can't be sure because those aren't published) to make and marketing budget was according to google over the whopping 100 million, so EA spent at least 130 million on game, but probably more. Battlefield 3 sold 8 million copies according to Wiki and they probably make 30 dollars profit per game so that's 240 million so EA probably made 110 million profit tops.

 

Also if those games would be different genres (rpg, adventure, somekind of action with smaller budget etc.) then their overall target audience would be wider and not just either sport-fans or mass-audiences who buy Battlefield-games, also there most probably would be cross-movement between them since people tend to play different kind of games.

[Unofficial P.E. Relationship/Romance Thread pt.2]

Actually loot can take quite a long time, depending on how they tackle it. If you want to talk about different variations of the same weapon/armor, different textures, etc etc. I think you'd be surprised with the amount of time it can actually take to make items, unlike the massive trash Diablo 3 threw at us. I'm expecting a more refined approach from Obsidian.

 

From the screenshot we've seen from PE it will be much closer to IE games where the actual items on ground were small like I said than Diablo 3. Even if every weapon would have different look they still wouldn't be very big and the changes on existing models wouldn't be huge.

 

Keeping in mind that once again we have no idea how much of that money went where. Seeing as it was published by interplay and black isle studios who knows what 'stupid' demands they made for the game. A lot of that money could have went towards advertising, or anything else. (Fun fact; black isle studios just recently revived itself after being shut down for 9 years, Chris Taylor is now head of the team. Being one of the two remaining members from the past.)

 

Brennecke wrote in this very forum that advertisement and marketing expenses are not counted as the budget for the game and they are separate so marketing probably wasn't counted for those, and what is your point again?

 

T&A Hollywood/Bioware style. You see it a lot in tv shows as well, random sex scenes for nothing other than eye candy enjoyment. Though I will admit it doesn't bother me while watching a movie or tv series, to see the random flash of T&A. With that being said, I'd prefer they kept that filth out of my rpgs, and leave it on the big screen.

 

I wasn't talking about sex- or nudescenes, I was talking about written dialogue, scenes and characters which are usually lacking in the films like I mentioned where the romances are usually just unnecessary fluff without substance.

 

There's always a possibility that it wouldn't cut anything from the main game either. They already stated several times it won't be added if it's not in the budget. Looking past the main game and the amount of money that's left, it would depend on what they'd decide not do to add it in. Of course we'll never know, because that decision is up to them. It would be interesting if they did post something like 'after the main game is completed we have budget left over to do a few other things, would you guys prefer x, y, or z.'

 

Once again I don't think any of the main game will be disregarded, I believe that if it's added into the game it will take place of things that would have been added after the main game was completed.

 

Read the Lurky's post in here and I agree with it, you have to devote almost everything you write for the character with the romance in mind if they decide to add it or it'll just feel tacked on artificially. You just can't go "Oh we have extra money to do something, let's write romance dialogues for one of the chacters" because then they would feel completely separate from the rest of the character and feel lacking without substance unless they would write most of the character again from the ground-up and I doubt they would do that.

[Unofficial P.E. Relationship/Romance Thread pt.2]

I've pulled it out from my behind basically. But really, let's take NWN2 and MotB for examples. Both had romances. Can you seriously tell me romance dialogues there took more than 10% from the whole pool of dialogues with romanceable characters? I bet you can't.

 

Well 30-50% of dialogues written specifically for romance routes is a dream come true, I would totally love it, but it is not necessary at all.

See my examples with NWN2 and MotB.

 

Give me my 10% of unique romance dialogue + 30% of darling-modified friendship lines and I'm a happy person. Seriously.

 

I have already answered this in my previous post where I've told 10% + some more with darling-modified lines is enougth.

 

If you pulled the 10% out of your behind and then again argue the same percentage? I remember there being more romance-dialogue than 10% but I guess we have to believe you since you just threw the percentage out of your behind...oh wait, we don't.

 

10% of the dialogue between you and the companion would usually mean in games maybe 2-3 or 5-6 conversations tops. Since you loved BG2, let's take Aerie for example, there were first what, 15 or 16 friendly-conversations and after that you become lovers - with the whole two or three conversations after that, and those conversations were all short with only couple lines for each.

 

Wow, you sure are happy for little content, you can really make deep romance with that.

 

You assume I was talking about loot descriptions solely. I was talking about project budget money management. Let's cut loot not only in terms of descriptions, but in terms of quantity: less models, less textures. Than we can use our spare money to hire an extra writer!

 

The actual loot in game like PE is actually a very very small part of what modelers do since the items won't be very large in the gameworld or in the inventory and certainly wont take one modeler to make them - they would have to remove helluva lot of models from the game to pay salary for one extra writer.

 

I would sacrifice loot. I like companion's quests, so I would rather sacrifice a non-companion's quest if needed. Or a bunch of combat spell.

 

Kenup already answered this well enough but I'll reiterate this; on one quest you can add depth to the whole game world, all your companions, antagonist, your own character and give him to do some real choices and consequences, you know things what actually makes the difference in the plot or sub-plots and actually lets you choose how your characters behave vs. different moral dilemmas or ideologies. How many quests would you willing to sacrifice for truly well written and deep romance? one fourth? one third? maybe half?

 

Quests wont have to be just stand-alone quests, they can be used to tell over-arching subplot/-story where you can make before mentioned Choices and Consequences, you know things in which RPG can truly excell on giving you chances to build up your own role in single-player RPG.

 

Ok, you are absolutely right here, thanks for the clarification.

So it is less from 4M. Still a lot of money.

 

True but still not excessive amount, it's been reported that Baldur's Gate 1 cost 3-4 million and Baldur's Gate 2 cost 5-7 million, and that was when salaries and expenses were lower.

 

Not true. You can't dismiss a poll merely by saying that the sample taken is actually small compared to the whole population which opinion is involved. That contradicts to statistical science in it's basics. For example, US National exit poll samples usually consist of 8,000 to 20,000 people while there are 314 million people live in USA overall. So 8,000 constitutes only 0.00254%. So our poll is pretty damn good from this standpoint.

 

Those polls are made by professionals who excell in doing actual polls - They combine them from different demographies so that they can get the fairly balanced view on the poll. They go to actually ask from the people (either from the street or calling them) and not just put poll into some corner on the street.

 

There's a big difference in forum poll and the actual political polls made by professionals.

 

 

 

Point is, 2001: A Space Odyssey is not a party-based RPG. It's an absolutely different medium. With 2001: A Space Odyssey you are a passive viewer, not an active participant. You don't have to do any choices. You are not supposed to live in their fictional world, just to watch it as things unfold before your eyes on their own.

You can't really compare the two only because both have a plot involved to some extent.

 

 

Actually in single-player RPG you are put into the situation the game developer decides to write you in, and you choose what you do as well as game developer can write the different alternatives how you act - these are usually called Choices & Consequences - you watch things unfold as the writers have written them and sometimes but rarely the world reacts to what you do.

 

Second edit: I have to add this too; You still have story (or stories) in RPG what the writer wants to tell even if it's not linear and if there are alternate paths or choices you can make and you still play a character what the writer has written - it's not just character in same vein as in films but still character - the difference is that you get to choose how your character behaves, reacts, what routes he takes, and what happens to him as the writer has written to his ability.

 

You do not play the role you want to play, you play the role/roles what writer has decided to written for you to choose from so it's not a given that there should be every possiblity conceivable - the roles the writer has chosen to write might not have anything to do with possible romances if he so chooses, same as the writers who writes films, tv-shows and books.

 

"Living in their fictional world" would be much more akin to the MMO roleplaying server or RP server in Neverwinter Nights - in which I played for 3-4 years playing different kind of characters with different kind of personalities with different kind of players who had their own different kind of characters with different kind of personalities and our characters interacted as we played the roles as well as we could.

 

Bah third edit: As I said and implied below is that if the romance is just tacked on to the characters the writer has written, they feel forced, and will be without any proper substance, would you be happy with that? With the romance which would feel pretty much seprate entity from the rest of the character that the writer has decided to write just because they were added to the game even though they dislike to write them (as Avellone has said)?

 

Well, I'll clerify. Romantic love is special among specials. You compare how much there are movies about parental love and about romantic love, you'll see for youself. There is a reason behind it.

 

 

Sure, there is actual genre for romantic films, they are called romantic films, I presume you know them but you know why they are called romantic films? could it be because the whole films are devoted to the romance.

 

Better comparison would be...let's say some actiony film or somekind of suspense or something and tell me how many of those films have some romance tacked onto them and it's either been just a unnecessary addition which had been felt forced, and sometimes very forced, and how many times it has felt very lacking without any substance?

 

 

So you are basically saying the poll should be discarded not because there are too few people who had voted (as you've suggested earlier), but because the poll itself is a magnet for certain kind of people, hense biased? Well, actually that is a much better strategy, it makes sence (in contrast to your first argument) and there may be some truth to it.

Also I can counterplea that romance topics are a magnet for anty romance people just as well.

 

 

 

Both are solid arguments as I replied to you earlier in this message about the polls, but as you just admitted that the poll is biased. Better way to ask about romances would be to ask from all pledgers if people wants romances if it means for cutting quests, choices & consequences, loot, other dialogue and sub-plots or branches from the main story.

 

So you've basically agreed it's not about a budget or time anymore, but about Obsidian's preferences. Am I right?

 

You brought up low-intelligence dialogue which has been asked a lot by people and devs actually -likes- to write low-intelligence dialogue, and where did I agree that it's not just about time or budget? I asked about disregarding low-intelligence dialogue because you brought it up and devs have actually said that they like to write it.

 

So I ask again since you brought it up, if writing romances would mean to disregard low-intelligence dialogue which they like to write for romances which they don't like to write, would you still want them to write them in and dropping something what they want to do?

[Unofficial P.E. Relationship/Romance Thread pt.2]

 

I've pulled it out from my behind basically. But really, let's take NWN2 and MotB for examples. Both had romances. Can you seriously tell me romance dialogues there took more than 10% from the whole pool of dialogues with romanceable characters? I bet you can't.

 

Well 30-50% of dialogues written specifically for romance routes is a dream come true, I would totally love it, but it is not necessary at all.

See my examples with NWN2 and MotB.

 

Give me my 10% of unique romance dialogue + 30% of darling-modified friendship lines and I'm a happy person. Seriously.

 

You assume I was talking about loot descriptions solely. I was talking about project budget money management. Let's cut loot not only in terms of descriptions, but in terms of quantity: less models, less textures. Than we can use our spare money to hire an extra writer!

 

I would sacrifice loot. I like companion's quests, so I would rather sacrifice a non-companion's quest if needed. Or a bunch of combat spell.

 

Ok, you are absolutely right here, thanks for the clarification.

So it is less from 4M. Still a lot of money.

 

Point is, 2001: A Space Odyssey is not a party-based RPG. It's an absolutely different medium. With 2001: A Space Odyssey you are a passive viewer, not an active participant. You don't have to do any choices. You are not supposed to live in their fictional world, just to watch it as things unfold before your eyes on their own.

You can't really compare the two only because both have a plot involved to some extent.

 

 

I'm going to let you give counter-arguments for rest of my message before answering yours, only fair.

[Re: RPGs, audiences, publishers, mass markets and everything between earth and sky.]

If you read my post you would know that film studios also makes films with average budgets which potentially won't sell that much alone but when you combine their profits they make as much as one huge film and that's where game publishers are doing wrong; They are only concentrating on huge AAA+++ titles and not doing what film studios do.

 

Games haven't gotten there yet. The movie industry went through a "crash" and adjusting to the burgeoning indie film movie, creating "indie studios" and funding such films to try and control that market as well. Largely because they want Oscar bait, but that's beside the point.

 

When the game industry creates an award show that doesn't pick best sellers but picks things that at least pretend to be avant garde and sell less but get huge critical acclaim, don't expect there to be too much impetus for the game industry to follow Hollywood in this just yet.

 

See, that's where you're wrong. Film industry has always been making films with small or average budgets, even when they did the huge epics in the late 50s and early 60s. Sure couple studios took huge risks with some films which flopped gloriously almost bringing them down but even then they were doing the smaller films but publishers aren't doing that almost at all.

 

The indie film movement basicly started to flower in the 80s and 90s with the rise of the vhs and couple film festivals such as Sundance but I'm not talking about indie films, I'm talking about studio films which are done with moderate budgets - which they have always done.

 

You are missing much about the history of film. The film industry is over a hundred years old, the video game industry is just about forty or so. Hollywood went through the studio system and all those problems, and then the rise of the big six, and the decline of movie sales in the 80's and 90's that, because of the growing focus on blockbusters and mainstream markets, caused the explosion of the indie film movement. Which went from truly indie to truly corporate by the mid 2000's... with the newest wave of innovation and breaking from the control of the big studios happening due to the internet and growth of platforms like YouTube and Kickstarter.

 

If you think the game industry is where complaints about formulas and sequels is bad, but the movie industry is a beacon of originality and diversity....

 

you must not spend a lot of time talking to groups about movies.

 

Actually no, and yes film indrustry went through a studio-phase but there still were such people as Samuel Fuller who made such a films like I Shot Jesse James, The Steel Helmet and Pickup on South Street in studio system, where are games like those made by the big studios on average budget? Or such a films like Gone With The Wind which is huge studio film but it is still masterpiece artistically?

 

If you look at the 40 first years of film industry there a lot of formulaic films which are obviously made for mass audiences, but then there are films like Sunset Boulevard by Billy Wilder or Night of the Hunter by Charles Laughton, or Sunrise by Murnau made in 1927, which has been said to be the most beautiful film of all time?

 

Studio System of Hollywood gets lots of flack and most of is well-earned such as horrible treatment of Orson Welles (who is my favourite director by the way) but they never stopped doing films with small or average budget which weren't meant for mass audiences.

 

Yes, in the 80s film industry did lot of formulaic crap and numerous sequels but they just didn't do those. They also made such a films like The Terminator, Blade Runner, Full Metal Jacket, The Dead Zone, Videodrome, Platoon, Blue Velvet and numerous others.

 

Blade Runner, Videodrome and Blue Velvet are not exactly mainstream films and they still found an audience.

 

My point still stands that nowdays game publishers do not publish games which would've been made with approximately equivalent budget.

 

Merin, would love to hear your counter-arguments to this.

[Unofficial P.E. Relationship/Romance Thread pt.2]

I'm really interested on how you came up with the "week to write romance", especially if you want it to be substansial.

Here.

 

Where did you get that 10%? Almost all interactions have always been in RPGs just between the PC and the companion which is mostly just talking about their background or interaction dialogue which is mostly friendship or romance. There's always been very little of dialogue with the companions during quests since the main character handles the conversations on 90% of the time.

 

For romance being at least remotely substansial it would have to be 30-50% of the all dialogue between the main character and the said companion. For those who don't want the romance there would have to be friendship route which uses different dialogues and dialogue trees.

 

Or would you be happy with friendship dialogues just copy-pasted and just "darling" added in the end of them with maybe line or two added in the end of the romance?

 

No. Throwing more dialog into X doesn't automatically means throwing less dialogue into Y. Something else might be sacrificed instead. Like doing less loot. I personally don't care 'bout loot.

 

The loot is very small part of what writer does for the companion and that is usually the item descriptions, as for example if companion has his own family sword. The actual loot itself (such as statistics) is done by the game-/system designer who has to balance it with the encounters and other loot/equipment. Would you sacrifice companion's quest for romance?

 

Companions usually have their own sub-quests which have interaction between the PC and the companion, and there would have to be at least some of those dialogues for romance and non-romance, unless as I said before, people would be happy with just "darling" added in the end of the lines.

 

Because polls on this very forums show 75% of people are pro-romance. Here. So you are in fact a vocal minority as cliche as it sound nowadays. And don't say polls are not an indicator. They are the closest thing to an indicator that we have.

 

530 voters from 73986 backers is 0,72 percent so that's not indicative at all. Let's say that you go to the deep south to ask if they want Obama or Romney as president, what do you think will be the result?

 

Kickstarter, Amazon and Paypal will take 5% at most. $4,163,208 - 5% = 3,955,047. So it's 4M basically. But, yeah, there are also phisical revards to make.

 

Wrong, Kickstarter takes 5% and Amazon takes another 5% so that's 10% there, and paypal takes 2,9% + 0,30 dollars per transaction, so let's calculate.

 

This might be complicated so try to keep up.

Kickstarter:

3,986,929 * 0,10 = 396 692,90

3,986,929 - 396 692,90 = 358 823 6,10

 

Paypal:

176,279 * 0,029 = 5112,09 so 176,279 - 5112,09 = 171,166.61

3 681 Paypal backers so 0,30 * 3681 = 1104,30 thus 171,166.61 - 1104,30 = 170 062,31

 

So we get now can calculate both together:

358 823 6,10 + 170 062,31 = 3 758 298,41

 

Since obliviously there are going to be failed pledges it will lower the final sum but it wouldn't surprise if it would be 10% of the pledges, depends on which pledges will fail payment.

 

I was a little off with my calculations made in the head but I was right about how much Kickstarter, Amazon and Paypal takes but with failed pledge payments the final sum would be around 3,5 - 3,7 million.

 

http://www.kickstart...ter basics#Kick

 

"If a project is successfully funded, Kickstarter applies a 5% fee to the funds collected.

Additionally, payment processing fees work out roughly to 3-5%."

 

And here's about Paypal fees:

https://www.paypal.c...mpp/paypal-fees

 

A game about choice should have a choice for as much people as possible. We don't want it to be lenear. We want it to be an epic advanture as personal as humanly possible. No romances = not perfect for me. When we are talking about a party based RPG that is. Still may be great and awesome, but not perfect, no.

For the record, so far there are some great and awesome RPGs for me I love to bits out there, yet the perfect one is still to be made.

 

Well, if you don't see how love is a special kind of feeling yourself, I don't think I can fix it with words.

 

I put these together so I'll answer both once:

 

I didn't say about love, I talked about romances and those two are separate. There are many kind of love; between friends, siblings, parents and children, mentor and apprentice etc etc. Romantic love is powerful one sure but it's not any more powerful than other kind of love.

 

Friendship-, sibling-/parental-, mentorship-love etc are as special as romantic love but it's different; case-in-point Miles O'Brien and Julian Bashir in DS9 when Miles' wife asks from Julian in the series to tell her that her husband loves her more than Julian, he can't say so.

 

Would've film like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Predator, The Treasure of Sierra Madre or The Thing been any better stories if they would've had romances in them? I know films and games are different medium but they both still tell a story.

 

No, not true. I would not be happy with only one rout per character at all. So you basically want them to be as streamlined and nonreactive as possible? So the player character is running around robbing people, excavating graveyards, kicking puppies and eating babies, still a lawful good paladin from the party is a PC's best buddy simply because the only rout he has is a rout of friendship? Not good!

 

Those are different - if you say romance the said paladin there would be lines for objecting those activities which most probably would be unique for each branch, for romance, non-romance, rivalry etc, the characters should react to what you do depending on their relationship with the PC.

 

There are of course branches in the dialogue trees which leads to different dialogue-parts but for every larger branch the amount of the written dialogue multiplies exponentially, for example (I'm throwing this out of the hat) there are twenty dialogue events/lines per every branch and when you add another one it multiplies with another twenty...and then another twenty etc.

 

So unless they add more lines per character which would increase the time and budget for the said companion they have to divide the lines between all the possible routes.

 

Why do you think devs havent put more than one or two routes tops for characters in RPGs, of if they do, their lines are almost copy-pasted for each route?

 

Not so much fewer as you think according to the the polls.

 

See my answer from the before about the polls and how many backers there are. Those who are passionate about specific cause, tends to rally behind it so they are bound to come to forums and want or demand romances in if they really really want them in.

 

Goddamit, they have already confirmed low intelligent player character dialogues will be included in the game!! It is not something most of the players are gonna see in the end and it will take 90% more time to wright than the all theoretical romance dialogues put together! Something everyone here seems to miss.

 

Avellone and Cain loves to write low-intelligent dialogue, but they have said that they dislike romances. You wouldn't force them to disregard something they like to write for something they hate or dislike, would you?

 

We've asked this before: If the story of the game doesn't concern romances at all, then they would be separate from it, should they write the romances in if they don't like to write them just to pander players who wants romances?

[BlackBerry PlayBook port or Unity Union]

First console ports and now mobile/tablet ports? What next...port for Commodore 64 or Amiga?

[Re: RPGs, audiences, publishers, mass markets and everything between earth and sky.]

If you read my post you would know that film studios also makes films with average budgets which potentially won't sell that much alone but when you combine their profits they make as much as one huge film and that's where game publishers are doing wrong; They are only concentrating on huge AAA+++ titles and not doing what film studios do.

 

Games haven't gotten there yet. The movie industry went through a "crash" and adjusting to the burgeoning indie film movie, creating "indie studios" and funding such films to try and control that market as well. Largely because they want Oscar bait, but that's beside the point.

 

When the game industry creates an award show that doesn't pick best sellers but picks things that at least pretend to be avant garde and sell less but get huge critical acclaim, don't expect there to be too much impetus for the game industry to follow Hollywood in this just yet.

 

See, that's where you're wrong. Film industry has always been making films with small or average budgets, even when they did the huge epics in the late 50s and early 60s. Sure couple studios took huge risks with some films which flopped gloriously almost bringing them down but even then they were doing the smaller films but publishers aren't doing that almost at all.

 

The indie film movement basicly started to flower in the 80s and 90s with the rise of the vhs and couple film festivals such as Sundance but I'm not talking about indie films, I'm talking about studio films which are done with moderate budgets - which they have always done.

 

You are missing much about the history of film. The film industry is over a hundred years old, the video game industry is just about forty or so. Hollywood went through the studio system and all those problems, and then the rise of the big six, and the decline of movie sales in the 80's and 90's that, because of the growing focus on blockbusters and mainstream markets, caused the explosion of the indie film movement. Which went from truly indie to truly corporate by the mid 2000's... with the newest wave of innovation and breaking from the control of the big studios happening due to the internet and growth of platforms like YouTube and Kickstarter.

 

If you think the game industry is where complaints about formulas and sequels is bad, but the movie industry is a beacon of originality and diversity....

 

you must not spend a lot of time talking to groups about movies.

 

Actually no, and yes film indrustry went through a studio-phase but there still were such people as Samuel Fuller who made such a films like I Shot Jesse James, The Steel Helmet and Pickup on South Street in studio system, where are games like those made by the big studios on average budget? Or such a films like Gone With The Wind which is huge studio film but it is still masterpiece artistically?

 

If you look at the 40 first years of film industry there a lot of formulaic films which are obviously made for mass audiences, but then there are films like Sunset Boulevard by Billy Wilder or Night of the Hunter by Charles Laughton, or Sunrise by Murnau made in 1927, which has been said to be the most beautiful film of all time?

 

Studio System of Hollywood gets lots of flack and most of is well-earned such as horrible treatment of Orson Welles (who is my favourite director by the way) but they never stopped doing films with small or average budget which weren't meant for mass audiences.

 

Yes, in the 80s film industry did lot of formulaic crap and numerous sequels but they just didn't do those. They also made such a films like The Terminator, Blade Runner, Full Metal Jacket, The Dead Zone, Videodrome, Platoon, Blue Velvet and numerous others.

 

Blade Runner, Videodrome and Blue Velvet are not exactly mainstream films and they still found an audience.

 

My point still stands that nowdays game publishers do not publish games which would've been made with approximately equivalent budget.

[Re: RPGs, audiences, publishers, mass markets and everything between earth and sky.]

If you read my post you would know that film studios also makes films with average budgets which potentially won't sell that much alone but when you combine their profits they make as much as one huge film and that's where game publishers are doing wrong; They are only concentrating on huge AAA+++ titles and not doing what film studios do.

 

Games haven't gotten there yet. The movie industry went through a "crash" and adjusting to the burgeoning indie film movie, creating "indie studios" and funding such films to try and control that market as well. Largely because they want Oscar bait, but that's beside the point.

 

When the game industry creates an award show that doesn't pick best sellers but picks things that at least pretend to be avant garde and sell less but get huge critical acclaim, don't expect there to be too much impetus for the game industry to follow Hollywood in this just yet.

 

See, that's where you're wrong. Film industry has always been making films with small or average budgets, even when they did the huge epics in the late 50s and early 60s. Sure couple studios took huge risks with some films which flopped gloriously almost bringing them down but even then they were doing the smaller films but publishers aren't doing that almost at all.

 

The indie film movement basicly started to flower in the 80s and 90s with the rise of the vhs and couple film festivals such as Sundance but I'm not talking about indie films, I'm talking about studio films which are done with moderate budgets - which they have always done.