Enough money to "make the game" - Multiplayer, modding, language support "open-ended"

[Rostere]

I'm fairly neutral on the language options, but it's not terribly realistic to expect people whose English is poor to come here and complain. It would be hard to even navigate the site, and there'd be little expectation that anyone could reply to you in a way you could understand.

If they can't even navigate this forum, how are they supposed to use Kickstarter? How are they supposed to know about it?

[Monkcrab]

I'm fairly neutral on the language options, but it's not terribly realistic to expect people whose English is poor to come here and complain. It would be hard to even navigate the site, and there'd be little expectation that anyone could reply to you in a way you could understand.

If they can't even navigate this forum, how are they supposed to use Kickstarter? How are they supposed to know about it?

 

The point is, they're not supposed to know about it. They're supposed to be get interested and possibly buy the game later on, when it's actually been translated and marketed (perhaps fan-marketed/word of mouth trickling down from English-enabled communities in their countries) in their languages, which will help Obsidian to actually profit from the game. It is not something that our Kickstarter pledges are supposed to do, making profit, I mean.

Edited September 22, 2012 by Monkcrab

[Nivenus]

Results from the poll so far seem quite interesting. While according to this poll most people don't want multiplayer in PE, the majority of them do want modding tools to be present. That seems a little odd to me, considering the way modding tools in a game like NWN are used to create a great amount of multiplayer content. I've always thought of multiplayer and modding as going hand in hand, but the results so far seem to reject that hypothesis, at least for PE.

 

It's not actually that weird. Some of the biggest games in modding are the Elder Scrolls games, Fallout 3, and Fallout: New Vegas. Dragon Age: Origins also had a pretty big modding community as I recall. All four of those are exclusively singleplayer. So while NWN is a good example of modding being used for multiplayer purposes, its hardly the only purpose modding has. In fact, I think that SP modding usually gets higher priority since it doesn't require everyone to be running the same mods.

[Tlantl]

Thanks for the link to the interview.

 

Probably the only thing I really care about is the modding tools.

 

I don't like multi-player for these kinds of games, and as long as it's in English I don't care much about the languages it's translated into, but since the game will likely sell better overseas if there are more languages supported I'm sure the devs wold like to have as many languages supported as possible.

 

I'd really like for the game to be as expansive as possible so using the extra cash to add content is my first priority.

[horocaust]

Are you people serious about letting such big parts of the market as Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Ex-USSR and other countries where English is uncommon go? It's akin to throwing out money just because they're in Yen rather than dollars. Localization is a must.

As for the multiplayer: no way. Fan modules? Sure, but no co-op. It simply diminishes gameplay experience.

[Anaeme]

The truth is out...

 

NO MULTIPLAYER

 

NO Multiple language support

[Bill Gates' Son]

Are you people serious about letting such big parts of the market as Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Ex-USSR and other countries where English is uncommon go? It's akin to throwing out money just because they're in Yen rather than dollars. Localization is a must.

As for the multiplayer: no way. Fan modules? Sure, but no co-op. It simply diminishes gameplay experience.

 

Sadly, a lot of gaming communities seem to think that only Europe and North America(besides Mexico) are the only gaming communities worth catering too. When in fact, there are huge gaming communities around the world that like CRpgs. I have a few friends from Brazil that are very interested in this game, but they won't be able to play it if the game doesn't get any localization.

[Semper]

If it's not practical to add multilanguages *right now*, they could try to make it possible to patch it in later on.

 

while this works for modding tools you can't patch localizations later in. i mean technically that's possible but you'll lose a lot of potential buyers. they read a review and there it's mentioned that this awesome, text heavy game is only available in english - and basically that's it. the majority will now spend there money somewhere else and never come back. as much as i love modding tools, those can be financed later if the sales numbers justify it. but that's a double-edged sword: mod tools as a stretched goal attracts probably more interest than localizations, while the latter is more vital for turning in profit later on.

 

imo i would combine those two things as one stretched goal at the 2.6 or 2.8 mark.their regular funding stops at 2.4 and 400k should be enough to make the tools available and to do proper translations.

Edited September 22, 2012 by Semper

[True_Spike]

For God's sake, I don't want another multiplayer game! Enough with this crap already. RPGs are a form of escapism, not a social media. A good RPG is about immersion first and foremost. Publishers push multiplayer down the throats of developers and even tie it to the single player portion of a game (ME3, future EA titles). No multiplayer in RPGs is the only thing Bethesda does good.

 

I have nothing against multiplayer games, I played Starcraft for more than a decade, but this system just doesn't fit in RPGs, it makes the entire struggle to make the world believable completely pointless, void.

Edited September 22, 2012 by True_Spike

[Vatdim]

For God's sake, I don't want another multiplayer game! Enough with this crap already. RPGs are a form of escapism, not a social media. A good RPG is about immersion first and foremost. Publishers push multiplayer down the throats of developers and even tie it to the single player portion of a game (ME3, future EA titles). No multiplayer in RPGs is the only thing Bethesda does good.

 

I have nothing against multiplayer games, I played Starcraft for more than a decade, but this system just doesn't fit in RPGs, it makes the entire struggle to make the world believable completely pointless, void.

 

You have never played a classic old-school RPG with like-minded friends, have you? RPGs are indeed a form of escapism but that doesn't mean this escapism cannot be achieved while playing together with a group of people who share your ideas about escaping the world. Actually, if you think about the original pen and paper RPGs, they were all invented as an exclusively multiplayer experience.

 

Playing a game like Baldur's Gate together with a few friends is almost the same as playing it on your own, but you have real people who you can rely on for helping you make choices and survive encounters and who will also have their own desires and thoughts about where your journey should take you next (a lot like NPC companions, only real). In games like Neverwinter Nights this experience is taken to a whole new level - with the help of a toolset and a dungeon master client you can create your own unique story and this is probably the closest thing to what a true PnP session feels like.

 

I know that a DM client and toolset a la NWN are probably too much to ask. However, I feel that even just the co-op type of multiplayer (akin to BG) will add immensely to this game's replay value. Also, the appeal for this game will still be alive in many years, just as it is now for games like BG and IWD.

[Ashram]

Saying that multiplayer addition somehow takes away from the single player game is pretty short sighted. Where are we in the 80's playing pitfall? A good story and game can flow with multiplayer since in reality the single player game is multiplayer...its just that you happen to control ALL of the other players. It shouldn't be a big deal. Put in a system like the Old Republic where you roll to see who gets to speak as dialogue progresses. Make it so you can have a party of 1-4 PCs and keep the rest as NPCs for story.

 

Is it a challenge yes...is it overly difficult...probably not. Especially if its a stretch goal...aka that means you are allocating money towards that goal...which means it does not take away from the core...its an addition. Thats what a stretch add on is. With the attitude I see about Multiplayer ruining single player, we might as well have no stretch goals. No one is asking for an MMO, but cooperative play is fun and its been done before numerous times.

[BSoda]

No to any form of mp/coop. Resources are very limited as they are -the sp campaign needs every little shred of them to be more awesome.

[descalabro]

No, screw multiplayer, why does every single thing nowadays must have multiplayer, jesus...

 

Eh, actually too many things today lack multiplayer, unless you are counting the multiplayer only games, such as WOW, SWTOR, etc.

 

For example, KOTOR 1&2, DA 1&2, as well as ME 1&2 did not have multiplayer. On the other hand, in the past more things used to have multiplayer: BG 1&2, IWD 1&2, Arcanum and NWN all had multiplayer.

 

Still I think he's right on this one: there are A LOT of multiplayer oriented RPGs already.

[Undecaf]

No for multiplayer.

 

Don't care for the rest.

[Rostere]

Are you people serious about letting such big parts of the market as Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Ex-USSR and other countries where English is uncommon go? It's akin to throwing out money just because they're in Yen rather than dollars. Localization is a must.

You guys need to think about how this game is sold. If we were talking about an AAA game that's sold on the shelves of stores, you would have gained from localizations of the game. This game is being distributed through gog.com and through Steam. gog.com, probably the preferred supplier of these two, usually only offers their games in English. If you don't know one iota of English you won't even know about the game. This is NOT some AAA game release which can afford marketing in several languages. Take a good long look at the "Where is everyone from?" poll. It's obvious that non- English speakers are a negligible force on the Internet. Non- English speakers will probably read their gaming magazines and look at the shelves in their stores, and they won't ever even hear about Project Eternity. Why should the game then be translated?

[Semper]

You guys need to think about how this game is sold. If we were talking about an AAA game that's sold on the shelves of stores, you would have gained from localizations of the game. This game is being distributed through gog.com and through Steam. gog.com, probably the preferred supplier of these two, usually only offers their games in English. If you don't know one iota of English you won't even know about the game. This is NOT some AAA game release which can afford marketing in several languages. Take a good long look at the "Where is everyone from?" poll. It's obvious that non- English speakers are a negligible force on the Internet. Non- English speakers will probably read their gaming magazines and look at the shelves in their stores, and they won't ever even hear about Project Eternity. Why should the game then be translated?

 

you have no clue how business works, do you? they're digitally sending review samples all around the world so (online) game mags can score what they've done, not talking about buzz marketing. if there are no proper translations this will eventually result in worse sales numbers. we are talking about a text heavy game with tons of stuff to read and the majority of people, whose mother tongue ain't english, simply won't buy such a product because they would feel uncomfortable. you can't deny this... and it would be suicide to ignore those markets.

 

while gog.com only offers just a few games with native language support, steam offers even translated clients and easy to use language switching.

 

btw the only thing you do is ranting about localization without using arguments. why this hatred? if it's a stretched goal this won't burn budget which could have used somewhere else. if they don't reach the goal, fine - if they do, even better.

[incubus9]

I believe we can tell by the results of the poll what the priority of work should be.

 

1. The Modding support should be first. This seems to be the most important thing to most people. Honestly if they don't add additional language support or multiplayer, this is where a dedicated fan group could make it.

 

2. Additional language support. Honestly, I don't need it as a native English speaker, but that doesn't mean that everyone else should be deprived of an awesome game.

 

3. Multiplayer or Co-op support. True multiplayer is not needed in this game, but the co-op modes available in some of the earlier IE games would be awesome. I never did get a chance to play any of those with a friend since most of mine played FPS games.

 

This is just my interpretation of the data from the poll and comments so far.

[the proctophantasmist]

Take a good long look at the "Where is everyone from?" poll. It's obvious that non- English speakers are a negligible force on the Internet. Non- English speakers will probably read their gaming magazines and look at the shelves in their stores, and they won't ever even hear about Project Eternity. Why should the game then be translated?

 

There are plenty of articles right now on the internet about Project Eternity in Spanish, German, French… From the demographics on an English only forum, you infer that all the Internet is in English? Don't you think your argument is slightly flawed? It doesn't take the same competency in English to play through a text heavy game, to discuss a game on English boards, and to click on two buttons to make a donation.

 

One thing right now slowing European funders is the absence of a paypal option. Kickstarter is in dollars, and Europeans pay high conversion fees to their bank when giving there (I'm among them).

[Rostere]

You guys need to think about how this game is sold. If we were talking about an AAA game that's sold on the shelves of stores, you would have gained from localizations of the game. This game is being distributed through gog.com and through Steam. gog.com, probably the preferred supplier of these two, usually only offers their games in English. If you don't know one iota of English you won't even know about the game. This is NOT some AAA game release which can afford marketing in several languages. Take a good long look at the "Where is everyone from?" poll. It's obvious that non- English speakers are a negligible force on the Internet. Non- English speakers will probably read their gaming magazines and look at the shelves in their stores, and they won't ever even hear about Project Eternity. Why should the game then be translated?

 

you have no clue how business works, do you? they're digitally sending review samples all around the world so (online) game mags can score what they've done, not talking about buzz marketing. if there are no proper translations this will eventually result in worse sales numbers. we are talking about a text heavy game with tons of stuff to read and the majority of people, whose mother tongue ain't english, simply won't buy such a product because they would feel uncomfortable. you can't deny this... and it would be suicide to ignore those markets.

 

while gog.com only offers just a few games with native language support, steam offers even translated clients and easy to use language switching.

 

btw the only thing you do is ranting about localization without using arguments. why this hatred? if it's a stretched goal this won't burn budget which could have used somewhere else. if they don't reach the goal, fine - if they do, even better.

As I would have preferred it, localization would be made possible through officially sanctioned fan translations. Also, we're talking about an indie game project. I'm not so sure who's going to write about it. Besides, my guess is that the sales after the release will only be an afterthought to the amount of money gained though Kickstarter. How are they supposed to buy the game if they don't know English? Essentially, we're only talking about translations for whoever would buy the game from Steam. Unless we have solid evidence of there being a demand for the game from people who don't know English (and therefore, can't use Kickstarter or post on these boards) I can't say translations would be worth the investment. So far, I've seen zero (0) interviews with any of the Obsidian team from non- English gaming sites or magazines regarding Project Eternity. As far as I know, the hype for this game is zero outside the English web.

 

Are you sure you know how stretch goals work? Most of the people pledging money are probably not even looking at the stretch goals. Adding translations as a stretch goal would neccesarily deprive other areas of resources and there is no way to check which amount of money was actually "earmarked" towards translations - unless you make a new Kickstarter project.

 

Just look at this topic: http://wasteland.inx...22a157e377b2c9. Why should Obsidian devote money towards translating the game when us fans can do it just as well?

 

There are plenty of articles right now on the internet about Project Eternity in Spanish, German, French… From the demographics on an English only forum, you infer that all the Internet is in English? Don't you think your argument is slightly flawed? It doesn't take the same competency in English to play through a text heavy game, to discuss a game on English boards, and to click on two buttons to make a donation.

 

One thing right now slowing European funders is the absence of a paypal option. Kickstarter is in dollars, and Europeans pay high conversion fees to their bank when giving there (I'm among them).

 

EDIT: Yeah OK, so there are some articles. Sorry! But most arguments for translations are still along the lines of "it would be suicide to ignore the market of Taiwan" and do not talk about how this would immidiately raise funds for the Kickstarter. Why not crowdsource the translations? I agree that playing a text- heavy game and posting on a forum requires different levels of English competency, however I believe those levels are closer to each other than you think.

 

The Paypal option is by far superior to most people in Europe, but where I live, the conversion rates are not that horrible.

Edited September 22, 2012 by Rostere

[Semper]

@rostere... god, you're so restricted in your thoughts that it really hurts.

[Badmojo]

I am heavily into the NO multiplayer because that will take away resources, time, and money that could be spent on the singleplayer experience. People who want it, have no idea how hard adding multiplayer to a game is. It is very time consuming and stressful, not only do they have to worry about the coding, they have to rewrite the game story to support multiplayer/coop, then more time/money/resources to test the code. So no, no multiplayer at all. As for modding tools, I said yes because mod tools can keep a game alive for a very long time, creating new and interesting mods. However, only if its feasable, I would rather they do the tools seperate, perhaps what bethesda does, release a game, then later release modding tools instead of trying to do both at once. As for language, I could go either way, although giving the ok for a fan translation group to do it, or perhaps after the game is released, they can put another kickstarter up for translating the game into other languages to see if there is demand for it.

Edited September 22, 2012 by Badmojo

[Perderabo]

It is good to know that a modding toolset is a real option as that is one thing i would love to see ingame even if it is only released a bit after the game

[Vatdim]

I believe it's really not helpful and rather selfish to say "no" to one of the features being discussed here just because you don't plan on using it yourself. Also, it's a bit misguided to believe that these extra features may somehow harm the core experience of the game. Feargus said they've enough money to make the game. What I gathered from his words is that they're looking at other possible extras. I don't see why adding any one of the items being discussed here as a stretch goal would be bad, since they will all have a positive effect towards the replay value of the game and/or the possible customer base for this title. Ultimately, all features will add to the quality of the final product.

 

I like incubus9's comment and I agree with him: the poll results can be interpreted as showing the order in which the community wants these features to be added as potential stretch goals. Of course, the features will all help the game become better, but a choice between which goes in first is needed, since there is the possibility that the available funding won't be sufficient for all of them.

[Badmojo]

I believe it's really not helpful and rather selfish to say "no" to one of the features being discussed here just because you don't plan on using it yourself. Also, it's a bit misguided to believe that these extra features may somehow harm the core experience of the game. Feargus said they've enough money to make the game. What I gathered from his words is that they're looking at other possible extras. I don't see why adding any one of the items being discussed here as a stretch goal would be bad, since they will all have a positive effect towards the replay value of the game and/or the possible customer base for this title. Ultimately, all features will add to the quality of the final product.

 

I like incubus9's comment and I agree with him: the poll results can be interpreted as showing the order in which the community wants these features to be added as potential stretch goals. Of course, the features will all help the game become better, but a choice between which goes in first is needed, since there is the possibility that the available funding won't be sufficient for all of them.

 

um no, it clearly states that the majority does NOT want multiplayer, they do want modding tools, however language support is about even, so its debatable.

[Vatdim]

um no, it clearly states that the majority does NOT want multiplayer, they do want modding tools, however language support is about even, so its debatable.

 

Let me ask you this: If a poll was held to ask if Linux support for PE should be developed as a stretch goal, wouldn't there have been many people voting "no" just because they'd think resources for this kind of thing are going to waste? After all, probably less than 10% of the world's PC users use Linux. So, what use is such a port, right?

 

It's good that Obsidian know better than to listen to the crowd in cases where it's vital to go against the most obvious and most repeated piece of street wisdom. Why? Because Linux support, for example, provides more than enough gains to offset the losses associated by such a port. In the long run, Linux support generates significantly higher pledges from the Linux users, gains the support and trust of their community and all the good things that come with them (increased publicity, increased sales after launch, etc.).

 

In the case of modding tools, multiplayer and multiple language support, things are very much the same. While for some reason modding tools do gather increased support here, on this board, most such features are not intended for the average player to tap into for many hours. Instead, they're almost always made especially for the minority of players. Yes, a minority of BG2 players use the co-op feature in their playthroughs. Yes, a minority of NWN 1&2 players have actually created one half-working area with the incredible toolset provided by BioWare/Obsidian. Yes, a minority of the players of all these games actually depend on a localized version to play.

 

All these minorities add up, though, and it turns out it's not bad at all to supply minorities with optional features that are well liked by them.

 

The addition of modding tools means more content and replay value added to the game (and this extra value is added mostly by people who are not paid for by Obsidian, which is also a win).

 

The addition of multiplayer means again more replay value added to the game, which means increased sales throughout the coming years, because of people inviting their friends who don't own PE to come play together, etc. Multiplayer also adds to the attractiveness of modding tools and more modding work gets done in order to meet the demand for multiplayer-oriented adventures. What is learned from the development of such adventures can often be applied to new single player content made by modders.

 

The translation of the game into multiple languages may now not make much sense to people who are perfectly comfortable with English and may also seem like a waste because of the obviously high costs and perceived small returns. However, people don't seem to take into account the fact that the returns of such an investment far outweigh the costs. Translating the game in the right languages may only help it enter new markets which were previously off-limits or poorly exploited because of language barriers. This brings in not only increased revenue for Obsidian, but also widens their fan base into previously "uncharted" regions, which means increased support for and sales of their future titles in the respective regions.

 

All the suggestions are good and need to be carefully considered. They all deserve to be included in the game, but it's questionable as to which one should be included at what funding level. While these "extras" target mostly minorities (at least on this board), this is not necessarily a bad thing or a waste.

 

Keep in mind that PE as a whole wouldn't exist if Obsidian had only catered to the interests of the majority of today's gamers.