The pledge rewards

[Kaldurenik]

I was going to make this topic yesterday but the the entire website blew up a few times. So i will make it now instead.

 

In my opinion the rewards that you get for when you back are very bad. Im a huge collector and i want to have a collectors edition of the game. My problem however is that if i go up to the level of a "CE box" i get... A cloth map, t-shirt, Cloth patch for 140$. But for that price i dont get a dvd with the music, no art book. So i went "oh well lets have a look at the next tier.

 

250$

Here you get a softcover (WTF?) book with art and stuff in it and some signatures.

 

500$

hardcover book with art and stuff + signatures.

 

So wait for the price of a "normal CE" at 140$ i get less things, no music, no art nothing just a large box with nothing in it.

For 250$ (around 40-50% more expensive then the average CE i own), i get... A soft cover book.

And for 500$ i get a hardcover one.

 

So in other words. The pledge rewards are like i said bad and they feel cheap. For prices higher then a normal CE you get less everything?

I want to pledge 250$ (+shipping) But it feels like im getting the very very very short end of the deal. For a higher price i get less things, no music, s softcover (wtf?) artbook.

Do anyone else see a problem with this?

[Droogle]

It says previous reward tier +. The plus meaning in addition to.

 

So at $250 you get everything from the previous tiers as well as the signed box and book and what have you.

[Kaldurenik]

It says previous reward tier +. The plus meaning in addition to.

 

So at $250 you get everything from the previous tiers as well as the signed box and book and what have you.

i know that the problem is that for 250$ i get a t-shirt, cloth map, cloth patch, a ce box (signed, a softcover artbook with general information). For like i said a higher price point then most CE's out there. And then it dont include a hardcover book (you get this for cheaper with some CE's), no dvd with music, no physical obects (beside a t-shirt that cost like 3$ to make) =/

[Audiocide]

I think having a game like this to play will be its own reward. Assuming, of course, that it turns out to be as good as I hope. But I seriously doubt these circumstances, and the team working on it will result in a failure.

 

I really don't care about the t-shirt or whatever.

[Humanoid]

To be fair, these days you'd probably get more people confused about how one would go about ripping music from a CD than the number of people confused about how to get the tracks onto CD or some other portable media. I'm still mostly CD-bound myself in terms of music listening, but all that an "official" printing of a CD would give is the art on the CD itself.

 

That said, the tiers above $140 are pretty sparse, not talking in terms of rewards for them (since at that point it's really not about value for money anymore), but in terms of granularity. A couple more options - say $200 and $350 would probably both be worth consideration.

Edited September 15, 2012 by Humanoid

[Kaldurenik]

To be fair, these days you'd probably get more people confused about how one would go about ripping music from a CD than the number of people confused about how to get the tracks onto CD or some other portable media.

 

That said, the tiers above $140 are pretty sparse, not talking in terms of rewards for them (since at that point it's really not about value for money anymore), but in terms of granularity. A couple more options - say $200 and $350 would probably both be worth consideration.

 

True true but still nothing saying that they give a physical one and a Digital one

 

And yes more options would be good.

[Morgoth]

Kickstarter made me realise again why one of the problems in financing games is the inflexible pricing model.

 

Some people aren't willing to spend more than the very minimum, others wouldn't hesitate to shell out [value] x 10 or more. This is very fascinating. Back in 1999 when I bought System Shock 2 I was so totally steamrolled by it's awseomeness that I also had to track down an English version for twice the price without any regrets, while at the same time, I still see myself hesitating buying something for

[Bos_hybrid]

In the end the reward for me is getting the game, the rest is while nice unimportant.

 

Still I won't discount the fact the having different unique goodie tiers can help with kickstarter.

[Audiocide]

but all that an "official" printing of a CD would give is the art on the CD itself.

 

And the sound quality. For audio obsessed people like me.

[WDeranged]

I'm up for more options, I'm pretty badly torn between the $140 and $250 tiers right now.

[Deraldin]

but all that an "official" printing of a CD would give is the art on the CD itself.

 

And the sound quality. For audio obsessed people like me.

 

If sound quality is the issue here, what if the download was provided in FLAC?

[Humanoid]

but all that an "official" printing of a CD would give is the art on the CD itself.

 

And the sound quality. For audio obsessed people like me.

 

FLAC

 

Though providing multiple other formats both lossless and lossy should probably be done for the less tech-savvy people.

[Kaldurenik]

It would be interesting to have more options when it come to the music.

[LadyCrimson]

I still pine for that dev. game party but outside of that I don't really care. However, it does feel a bit different (reward tiers), for those that do care about it - mostly compared to some others I've seen. Maybe a $200 pledge with something like that chest they did for the Borderlands2, or a small statue, or ... um ... I dunno, I'm not very creative and I'm sure you know what I mean. But I have no idea how costly it is to maybe have to hire a manufacturer to create those types of things, even if you limited it to 300 or something.

 

I'm fine with the rewards ... I'd rather more was spent on the game itself than on potentially giving me some more trinkets.

Edited September 15, 2012 by LadyCrimson

[Kaldurenik]

I still pine for that dev. game party but outside of that I don't really care. However, it does feel a bit different, for those that do care about it - mostly compared to some others I've seen. Maybe a $200 pledge with something like that chest they did for the Borderlands2, or a small statue, or ... um ... I dunno, I'm not very creative and I'm sure you know what I mean. But I have no idea how costly it is to maybe have to hire a manufacturer to create those types of things, even if you limited it to 300 or something.

 

I'm fine with the rewards ... I'd rather more was spent on the game itself than on potentially giving me some more trinkets.

 

Well it come down to this for me:

 

Artbook / lorebook (need to be hardcover), Music, Something else. But one main problem is that its softcover... It feel so cheap =/ I could even have a reward at around 300 or so if it include hardcover book but without the signatures on it.

[mrmud]

The rewards are just that, rewards as thanks for your generous contribution.

If they end up splurging to much on fancy rewards that means that there is less money left over for the actual development.

[Assirra]

Honestly, I went for the $140 because of the cloth map and collectors edition game. >__> That was enough for me and I felt like it was an awesome buy. [ Not to mention all the other awesome thingies! ]

[Kaldurenik]

The rewards are just that, rewards as thanks for your generous contribution.

If they end up splurging to much on fancy rewards that means that there is less money left over for the actual development.

 

True but that dont change that what you get for the money is very very very weak even compared to some of the worst CE's out there.

[Djole]

I agree that some reward tiers need to be updated with extra stuff so that the backers will have a greater incentive of supporting the project. Wasteland 2 had better organized tiers in my opinion.

 

$5 - add wallpapers, it's something

 

$65 - this one is the most problematic in my opinion, and the low number of backers proves it. New game in store costs around 60 bucks and when you add 15 more for shipping that's 80 dollars for a boxed version. The way this could be rectified is adding a $45 dollar early bird tier with 20.000 backers max for these rewards. Also, add beta access for this tier (but not an early bird $45 that I proposed) and above. You get your fans weeding out the bugs for an early sneak peek of the game. Add more stuff, like a cool poster, they're cheap and people love posters. Hell, add two posters and a bunch of guitar and computer stickers. Stuff like that. Maybe a mini version of an art book would be nice. Concept art book, I dunno, instruction manual if it's not the size of encyclopedia.

 

Make an early bird tier for $35 pledge at $30. 20.000 max, watch the pledges skyrocket.

 

Make a $750 tier. Same as $500 but with more digital copies. Also, every tier above should have an abundance of digital copies for people to brag around. Never underestimate how much people love to give gifts to others, especially to those who don't like a particular genre of games.

 

That's all. Love you guys @Obsidian.

[Sensuki]

but all that an "official" printing of a CD would give is the art on the CD itself.

 

And the sound quality. For audio obsessed people like me.

 

They could just give you the source wav files in FLAC format, I bought Dead Can Dance - Anastasis via Digital Download recently in FLAC and it sounds amazing.

[Humanoid]

I agree that some reward tiers need to be updated with extra stuff so that the backers will have a greater incentive of supporting the project. Wasteland 2 had better organized tiers in my opinion.

 

$5 - add wallpapers, it's something

 

$65 - this one is the most problematic in my opinion, and the low number of backers proves it. New game in store costs around 60 bucks and when you add 15 more for shipping that's 80 dollars for a boxed version. The way this could be rectified is adding a $45 dollar early bird tier with 20.000 backers max for these rewards. Also, add beta access for this tier (but not an early bird $45 that I proposed) and above. You get your fans weeding out the bugs for an early sneak peek of the game. Add more stuff, like a cool poster, they're cheap and people love posters. Hell, add two posters and a bunch of guitar and computer stickers. Stuff like that. Maybe a mini version of an art book would be nice. Concept art book, I dunno, instruction manual if it's not the size of encyclopedia.

 

Make an early bird tier for $35 pledge at $30. 20.000 max, watch the pledges skyrocket.

 

Make a $750 tier. Same as $500 but with more digital copies. Also, every tier above should have an abundance of digital copies for people to brag around. Never underestimate how much people love to give gifts to others, especially to those who don't like a particular genre of games.

 

That's all. Love you guys @Obsidian.

 

To be fair, the $65 tier is actually two copies of the game, and therefore domestically would be outright the better choice for two people making a joint pledge, and for the internationals, it's effectively $10 more to get the physical copy.

 

Somewhat too late to add early bird tiers now, I don't imagine there's any system to allow for automatically downgrading previous pledges from the corresponding full tier, so just unilaterally adding one is just asking for problems.

Edited September 15, 2012 by Humanoid

[Highwinter]

Kickstarter made me realise again why one of the problems in financing games is the inflexible pricing model.

 

Some people aren't willing to spend more than the very minimum, others wouldn't hesitate to shell out [value] x 10 or more. This is very fascinating. Back in 1999 when I bought System Shock 2 I was so totally steamrolled by it's awseomeness that I also had to track down an English version for twice the price without any regrets, while at the same time, I still see myself hesitating buying something for

[Humanoid]

Volume affects it I guess, but a lot of it is directly related to how much a country's postal service charges for exports in the first place. I shop online extensively, and buying stuff from the US always involves larger shipping costs than say, the UK (which not uncommonly ships free to Australia). I imagine it's just US Postal charging more than Royal Mail.

 

At any rate, $10-15 is roughly in line with what I pay for the average order from Amazon US, and $20 is what I'd expect for the CE given Obs wouldn't have near the volume discount I imagine Amazon has. I admit the $30 charge on the $250 tier hurts a bit though, especially combined with the large gap from the previous tier.

 

I've seen some other projects roll in the delivery charge for higher contribution tiers, which may have been worth considering, even if the net result is largely a psychological one.

[Waywocket]

I expect it's more likely that UK sellers more commonly factor in the postal cost while deciding how much to charge, whereas US sellers have a large enough domestic market that they can assume the majority of their customers are in the same country.

[Kaldurenik]

Yeah the shipping cost are abit high + the 65$ dont help that much. At the same time i guess it cant be helped without starting to cut into how much money they make.