Independent Funding With Kickstarter

[Shatterbrain]

http://www.kickstart...-fine-adventure

 

Have you guys had a look at this? What if the same thing could be done to bring back games in the style of Planescape Torment and Icewind Dale? The worst you can do is break even, and there is definitely a market out there for those types of games. Someone in another thread mentioned a a new Neverwinter Nights-type game... I'd put down at least 50$ in advance for that, with the Pathfinder ruleset.

 

EDIT: Just please give us a smooth engine and proper support for multiplayer! I don't care about graphics.

Edited February 9, 2012 by Shatterbrain

[C2B]

Already mentioned. Avellone has been typing fircely in his twitter about it (Also donated to Double Fine near the beginning)

 

https://twitter.com/...!/ChrisAvellone

 

Look at the "I'm down" tweet.

Edited February 9, 2012 by C2B

[PoetAndMadman]

I remember the interview where Feargus said that there's still a market for Infinity Engine-like RPGs. They really should make this happen!

[mkreku]

The problem is that they need to start a project like this quick, before everyone else and their dog does the same thing, and I'm not sure Obsidian has the same hype surrounding them as Tim Schafer does.

 

Schafer's Kickstarter project got a lot of help from the fact that almost every big gaming news site reported on Notch saying he wants to finance Psychonauts 2 a few days before this. Also, Tim Schafer is somewhat of a household name, more than almost any other game developer right now. Obsidian has Avellone, but I am not sure they can compare on the hype-o-meter.

 

Another thing is that I think the general public are happy to donate to one of these projects. But if ten more pop up? I don't think the general public will spend 10x more money. Instead it will dilute the resources and make it more difficult to get proper funding. So.. do it quick if you're going to do it!

[Flouride]

I guess it depends on which developers start these kind of projects. Some "never heard" developers surely won't make much money, but if you got Tim Schafer / Chris Avellone asking for money people will donate it. Also it depends a lot on the project, Obsidian promising to do old school crpg could raise money as well, there are still plenty of people around who enjoy that kinda games.

 

If both the project and the developer is "prestigious" enough to make it into the gaming site news, then I can see them raising enough money to make a game. Hitting million dollars though, might be difficult as things progress and more and more companies decide to try this. But still anything that helps out the companies is good.

[perkel]

The problem is that they need to start a project like this quick, before everyone else and their dog does the same thing, and I'm not sure Obsidian has the same hype surrounding them as Tim Schafer does.

 

Schafer's Kickstarter project got a lot of help from the fact that almost every big gaming news site reported on Notch saying he wants to finance Psychonauts 2 a few days before this. Also, Tim Schafer is somewhat of a household name, more than almost any other game developer right now. Obsidian has Avellone, but I am not sure they can compare on the hype-o-meter.

 

Another thing is that I think the general public are happy to donate to one of these projects. But if ten more pop up? I don't think the general public will spend 10x more money. Instead it will dilute the resources and make it more difficult to get proper funding. So.. do it quick if you're going to do it!

The problem is that they need to start a project like this quick, before everyone else and their dog does the same thing, and I'm not sure Obsidian has the same hype surrounding them as Tim Schafer does.

 

Schafer's Kickstarter project got a lot of help from the fact that almost every big gaming news site reported on Notch saying he wants to finance Psychonauts 2 a few days before this. Also, Tim Schafer is somewhat of a household name, more than almost any other game developer right now. Obsidian has Avellone, but I am not sure they can compare on the hype-o-meter.

 

Another thing is that I think the general public are happy to donate to one of these projects. But if ten more pop up? I don't think the general public will spend 10x more money. Instead it will dilute the resources and make it more difficult to get proper funding. So.. do it quick if you're going to do it!

 

I can't name any other developer who currently have RPG legends like Sawyer, Avalone or Cain. Not only them but also a strong RPG team who already are considered as spiritual succesor of Troika games which was spiritual succesor of Black Isle.

 

Also they proved that are great at making RPG. FNV is what F3 should be !

 

Also you must consider that even with double fine efort adventure games are niche games. Where RPGs are record breaking gengre like 20years alreadt with 100x more fans.

 

And now Fans of Black Isle, Troika, and Obsidian that is my friend thousands upon a thousand of devoted gamers.

 

I alone if this kickster goes will donate 100$.

 

10$ mln is my safe bet. Add now that they don't share it with anybody and that they double that when game will hit shelves. Crazy ?

[Pop]

The problem is that they need to start a project like this quick, before everyone else and their dog does the same thing, and I'm not sure Obsidian has the same hype surrounding them as Tim Schafer does.

It might seem that way but the degree to which Kickstarter funding is a zero sum game is probably more marginal than we realize. Geeks have deep pockets. Indeed, geek culture as it's currently understood is based almost entirely on consumption. All sorts of things get funded through Kickstarter and the most successful tend to be either nostalgia- or meme-based (see: Pomplamoose, any number of chiptune albums, a thousand "documentaries" about Nintendo games and short films about zombies, etc), and the amount of money that people can raise on the site is really surprising and frequently baffling given how vague their plans often are. There was a musician, for instance (Deakin of Animal Collective) who raised $25,000 for a benefit show / album to take place in Africa, only to basically just make it a vacation. The sky is the limit.

 

 

 

Schafer's Kickstarter project got a lot of help from the fact that almost every big gaming news site reported on Notch saying he wants to finance Psychonauts 2 a few days before this.

That's true, but

 

 

 

Also, Tim Schafer is somewhat of a household name, more than almost any other game developer right now. Obsidian has Avellone, but I am not sure they can compare on the hype-o-meter.

This is not really true, not the part about Tim Schafer being a household name. There are a number of factors at play here, the greatest of which is probably the rise of social media that is heavily populated by upper-middle class geeks who have a lot of walking around money and deep investment in the memories of media they consumed as children. I would bet you hard cash that what kicked off Schafer's meteoric Kickstarter success was a front-page feature on Reddit. Raising that kind of money with that celerity, it's a near-certainty.

 

And it's not like the cult of Schafer is all that huge. Not a lot of people played Psychonauts, at least, not a lot of people paid for it. Schafer's epoch was the Lucasarts era (in fact a lot of folks probably associate adventure games he wasn't involved in with his name, similar to the ways in which the Obsidz guys still get credit for Baldur's Gate every once in awhile). The thing with Reddit is that what they commit to in their ending-of-It's a Wonderful Life way is often arbitrarily decided and based on knee-jerk sentiment (which can be both good and very, very bad), of which nostalgia is the most obvious. It doesn't take much beyond "visionary 90's game maker starts Kickstarter campaign" to whip folks into a frenzy. And if that doesn't work, the watchword for Kickstarter is novelty. Novelty novelty novelty. slap the word "steampunk" on it and watch your pledges bump.

 

 

 

Another thing is that I think the general public are happy to donate to one of these projects. But if ten more pop up? I don't think the general public will spend 10x more money. Instead it will dilute the resources and make it more difficult to get proper funding. So.. do it quick if you're going to do it!

Again, not necessarily the case. The market might be diluted to a certain extent but if Obsidian were to differentiate itself well enough it would have no problem raising money from its cult. From outside that demographic, who knows (add some novelty! Iso-90's design is a start). But Kickstarter is purely speculative (a big part of what makes it such a blessing for artists and a font of gauche spectacles like some youtube video schmuck raising $150,000), so if they set a goal and don't get enough pledges, they haven't wasted anything but the time they put into making and submitting the proposal. And I suppose whatever effort on other projects they could have used with that time. But in all likelihood if Avellone does put up a kickstarter it will be on his own time, because it's not really a huge undertaking.

Edited February 11, 2012 by Pop

[TheTuninator]

Yeah, I think the whole idea is that you don't necessarily have to appeal to the general public; you can go right to your target demographic.

Granted, there will likely be considerable overlap, but there'll also be plenty of people who would drop money on an isometric RPG and not an adventure game, I'd wager.

[Shaggy84]

Hey guys, check this new game project on kickstarter:

<link>

I think kickstarter is a great platform for indie game developers..

Edited February 17, 2012 by Gorth
Link removed

[Gorth]

Hey guys, check this new game project on kickstarter:

I think kickstarter is a great platform for indie game developers..

Nice try at advertising, but I think it said Indie developer, not Indian developers

[Zack Fair]

And it's not like the cult of Schafer is all that huge. Not a lot of people played Psychonauts, at least, not a lot of people paid for it. Schafer's epoch was the Lucasarts era (in fact a lot of folks probably associate adventure games he wasn't involved in with his name, similar to the ways in which the Obsidz guys still get credit for Baldur's Gate every once in awhile). The thing with Reddit is that what they commit to in their ending-of-It's a Wonderful Life way is often arbitrarily decided and based on knee-jerk sentiment (which can be both good and very, very bad), of which nostalgia is the most obvious. It doesn't take much beyond "visionary 90's game maker starts Kickstarter campaign" to whip folks into a frenzy. And if that doesn't work, the watchword for Kickstarter is novelty. Novelty novelty novelty. slap the word "steampunk" on it and watch your pledges bump.

 

I think you are underestimating Tim Schafer's name. He IS one of the highest regarded dev in the industry whether or not he made a financially successful game. His games are always loved by critics, and the oldschool gamers trust his name. You say that his cult is not that huge. Define huge. It is not a million member "cult" certainly, the kickstarter project has 50.000 backers, but as you can see it, it is just enough to fund a 2 million dollar project. And of coures Reddit and other media sites also helped to rally the people to fund the project.

 

As for not a lot of people playing Psychonauts, that was true at the release, but Tim himself said that over the years the game sold a LOT (there were days on Steam during sales when it beat Call of Duty in terms of revenue). Of course they didn't make a lot of money of that, but at least a lot of people played the game.

[WorstUsernameEver]

The fact that Psychonauts sorta bombed at release is one of the reasons Tim Schafer is so well-regarded, similarly to Avellone with Torment and Mitsoda with Bloodlines, with the difference that he also has a track record prior to that and after that (Double Fine has been doing just fine with small projects, both critically and commercially). On top of that, Ron Gilbert is going to be on board for this project. There's just a huge amount of goodwill involved there that I don't think should be underestimated, and it's very difficult to match.

 

That's not to say that the model doesn't have potential, but I don't think what mkreku said can be dismissed, it actually seems pretty reasonable to me.