Update #96: The Road to Eternity

[Bryy]

 

 

what exactly cost so much to make the game??

Around $10k/month for developer (salary, equipment, taxes...).

You must also count the kickstarter/amazon/paypal fees, taxes, and backers rewards fulfilling.

 

 

I don't think so, I used to work with some game developers and I was pretty shocked that most of them didn't have bleeding edge computers at work. Most machines had 8gb of ram or less, they had kind of average video cards with only a couple high end machines for the whole office. 

 

Even if you were generous with the taxes of the whole kickstarter at 10% across the board that's about $450k, they still had $4M left over. Fergus mentioned at one point with paypal and slacker backers they were at $4.5M, not sure what the final was. The original bunch of developers were about a baker's dozen for about a yr and a half. It looked like they added some extra body's onto the project after South park went gold ~ march last yr or later. So for about a yr and a half there were only a small handful of people on the project. All said and total probably about 50 people, but not all at once for like a yr + I'm sure there were legit costs along the way, but most of the time they were stretching their budget as min manned as possible. I know the salary range for naughty dog lead producers and programmers and no disrespect for obsidian, but they're not quite on their level and I doubt they're making as much as them. They make a good living, but not as much as you would think.

 

Also, I'm not saying we got screwed over or anything, it was a legitimate question because I'm also going to be creating a kickstarter game this year and I need to know how to budget my funds. They initially asked for just over a million $ and projected with that budget the game would come out April 2014. I'm assuming they expected to keep the same 12-15 man team the whole time. So that tells me they're not on a $10K+/ man budget, in fact it would be half that.

 

I know you don't mean to, but you are coming off as strongly backseat deving.

 

As far as budgeting for your KS, try the Dev Corner subforum? Obsidian won't be able to ipso facto tell you how to budget for your project, and the forums won't either, but we can give suggestions.

[Falkon Swiftblade]

I'll take my inquiry to the other sub forum, and I think Nakia and others are reading my comment as 10k a month total, when I was using that as a base per dev. Indeed the monthly cost for the whole team would be more than 10k a month. But they initially allotted 18 months for the original kickstarter at $1.1M I can do simple math for 10-15 people and realize they were not going to be making much of anything after taxes. It sounded like the door was all but shut on them so I don't know why they'd only ask for $1.1M if they really were in dire straights like Adam made it sound like. That sounded like a legit amount of money to fund their game based upon their experience and risk involved. Other similar games started out asking for $800k. I really want to know how to budget my project. I have 8 people on my team now waiting for me to go live. I'm not the accountant, but I have some basic understanding of how to make a budget because I do freelance design for multiple industry's. 

[Nakia]

@ Falkon Swiftblade, you did not make clear that you meant per dev.  The top 10% of USA programmers do make over 120K  a year.

 

Why 1.1 Mil instead of 1 mil to start.  Because they were gambling and  felt that they could make a game for that amount.  They did say they hoped for more.  The game would be smaller, less complicated but the important thing was to survive past D day, get back in action, lift morale and get a feel for what market there was.  We came through for them.  I saw a video right after they achieved their goal and I believe they were honestly shocked about how quickly they did achieve the start goal.    The 1.1 mil goal was realistic.  A 4 mil goal might have backfired.  I have many Online friends who cut their game teeth on IE games so we were sure we could back a 1.1 mil goal.  That success I think drew others in and the word kept spreading.   I do not think that mainstream game makers or journalists realized how hungry we were for IE type games and those started in their teens and twenties with the IE games were now money earners themselves and could afford to lay out some cash for what they wanted.  

 

I have a friend whose family business involves table top games and they did a Kickstarter that raised 1 mil.  You need a base market and they had that.  They did offer bonuses so you have to figure those into your budget.  Those also take time to prepare and ship if physical.  

 

I am proud that I backed this game, backed Obsidian, very proud.

[Tibs]

 

Edit-found my answer. Those books are going on my wish list on Amazon.

 

I wonder if obsidian has any plans for writing novels based on the game world of pillars of eternity by chance in the future?

Anything is possible. I am currently talking things over with folks about ways to expand the brand. One of the ideas that came up involved lots of short stories about PoE.

 

I think it should work to build short-story modules that plug-in to the game. Building around short stories using primarily existing assets would combine the best of both worlds as well as reduce expense and build time. Short stories are usually jam packed with content because so much has to be said in a short framework, sorta like the original tweets for aspiring novelists. These could both expand the brand, and service and maintain the ever-hungry existing customer base, while we await the next major novella-length or novel-length installment expanding the main game.

[Dereck3o3]

 

Will there be subtitle for the documentary? I guess I am not the only person with hearing impairment...

Currently no, but we are going to look into how much it would cost to get it subtitled.

 

 

Hi Badler,

 

You have news about the documentary subtitles, please?

[Trilip]

Pas de sous-titres pour les non-anglophone... Merci Obsidian. Ces dommages, car ce documentaire m'aurait surement très intéressé. Un fichier .srt anglais aurait déjà permis de faire plus facilement une traduction.

 

Google trad:

 

No subtitles for non-English speaking ... Thanks Obsidian. This damage because this documentary would surely me very interested. An English .srt file has already helped to more easily translated.

[mungomunk]

The documentary seems to be no longer on vimeo. Is there any other way to watch it as a non-backer?

[RemusL]

Is there any way to download the Making Of documentary from the products page? I got the Complete Kickstarter Obsidian Pack which is basically the Collector's Edition with everything. I installed the DVD version rather than Steam or GOG. Do I have to install the game on Steam or GOG just to download the documentary?