Pyrian on 26/2/2015 at 00:38
Quote Posted by Starker
That said, there are very few games and even less developers I'd do it for.
Agh! My nefarious plans are ruined! ;) Today (
http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2015/02/25/proclivities) Penny Arcade described Kickstarter as that "which manages - in the manner of the ancient alchemist - to convert social media momentum into cash". In other words, it helps to be famous
first. :erg:
Neb on 26/2/2015 at 01:15
Was watching Otherside's (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_Rwz5gLp0E) System Shock 2 stream earlier and they were randomly giving out free SS2 keys. Ken Levine was in the chat under an alias and won one without them realising. :p (I know it's not that interesting, but it amused me.)
Shadowcat on 26/2/2015 at 07:19
I guess this comment belongs in the GenGaming thread, because British Open Championship Golf: we don't even have a classics forum for it (which, on the rare occasions that it comes up, I tend to think is a shame as it's a fine game).
Anyway! This may be my favourite quote from Tim Stellmach in the (
http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=9788) RPG Codex interview:
Quote:
It’s just as important to think how this system communicates itself to the player which gets to things like... like the guards in Thief. Half of that game was not what is their alertness model but what is their blathering chat model. So they're constantly talking about what their AI state is. So we make sure the player knows what’s going on in their head. Actually, that’s a fun story. That stuff came out of what we did for the color commentary in British Open Championship Golf. The guard chatter in Thief is a color commentary.
I think that not nearly enough people played BOCG; but I'm kinda delighted to learn that Thief benefited from its development :)
icemann on 26/2/2015 at 10:43
Quote Posted by Pyrian
Interesting. I don't particularly care for playing prototypes, or alphas, or betas. Heck, I like to wait for a few good patches after release. For my own little project, the notion that I might be able to let people playtest my crappy pre-alpha and pay me through the nose for the privilege is alluring yet hilarious.
I had 1 person offer me money to play test one of the games I was remaking several years ago. So not a totally ridiculous concept.
faetal on 26/2/2015 at 10:55
It's pretty basic economics - if you have exclusive possession of something which people want, you can charge for it.
No supply without demand. Asking whether or not it is right to do so seems to be irrelevant to the desires of those who want it.
Thirith on 26/2/2015 at 10:59
Quote Posted by Neb
Was watching Otherside's (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_Rwz5gLp0E) System Shock 2 stream earlier and they were randomly giving out free SS2 keys. Ken Levine was in the chat under an alias and won one without them realising. :p (I know it's not that interesting, but it amused me.)
Heh. I like it. :p
Ages ago I took part in the public alpha/beta tests of
Ultima Online and
Star Wars Galaxies; since those were the (relatively) early days of MMORPGs I found the process interesting, but I ended up not playing either of these. I have an abstract interest in playing early versions of games I'm expecting to be up my street, but in practice I simply don't have enough time to play both the games I want to play and the prototypes of games I'm expecting to play, added to which that since I'm very much into story-heavy games I don't particularly want to have seen much of the story already in a more buggy version of the final product. I could've beta tested a fair number of games I supported on Kickstarter, but I don't think I did check out more than a few and never for longer than half an hour or so.
I'm a bit surprised that this particular Kickstarter hasn't been more immediately successful, compared for instance to the recent
Shadowrun KS. Is it that while the
Underworld games led up to
System Shock people really only got interested once the developers dropped their fantasy/
Ultima roots?
Rolander on 27/2/2015 at 17:14
$600,000 reached! :cheeky:
icemann on 1/3/2015 at 04:52
Which is fantastic news. To see Looking Glass reborn.
Never thought I'd see the day.
Nameless Voice on 4/3/2015 at 02:38
I can't help but find the $700,000 goal/reward that was just hit a bit strange: a novel about the game world.
I'd much rather that they focused on making the game itself as good as possible before spending money developing side-projects like this.
Other, later goals (implying that they are less important) include things like deeper lore and backstory, better sound, cooperative multiplayer, even localisation - things that make the game itself better.
Shadowcat on 4/3/2015 at 08:00
Quote Posted by Nameless Voice
I can't help but find the $700,000 goal/reward that was just hit a bit strange: a novel about the game world.
I'd much rather that they [...] include things like deeper lore and backstory [...]
Would you not agree that the writing of a
complete novel of backstory will assist the developers in providing deeper lore and backstory?
You might not be interested in reading the novel, but the work
will feed back into the game.
The novel wasn't initially intended to be a stretch goal on its own, mind. The original goals were bundled at $150K increments, and they felt a bit more like "something for everyone"; but they have since split them up into individual $50K goals in an effort to meet more of them than might otherwise have happened -- but that does also increase the chances of an individual stretch goal not appealing to some of the backers.
