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KickStarter Fig - a new equity-based crowdfunding platform - shut down, RIP

Fairfax

Arcane
Joined
Jun 17, 2015
Messages
3,518
That's not really the issue. A Fallout: New Vegas style Wasteland game (especially if Obsidian and inXile collaborate) isn't exactly a huge gamble, it will easily make $60,000,000 dollars for a cost of $10-20,000,000.

The issue is that if a company like EA is going to drop $20,000,000 paying rank and file programmers $70,000 per year for 2-3 years they want $300,000,000 in profits.
FNV had a previous game to build upon, with a shitload of assets, code, systems, and so on. A FNV-style Wasteland game wouldn't have that, they'd have to build the first game from scratch. Can you imagine them doing that with Unity?
And I think InXine no longer cares about larger projects funded by publishers, they're probably going to try and keep working on multiple KS projects at a time. Feargus is probably the only one in that board who still wants to become some kind of BioWare or CDPR.
 

Mustawd

Guest
That's not really the issue. A Fallout: New Vegas style Wasteland game (especially if Obsidian and inXile collaborate) isn't exactly a huge gamble, it will easily make $60,000,000 dollars for a cost of $10-20,000,000.

The issue is that if a company like EA is going to drop $20,000,000 paying rank and file programmers $70,000 per year for 2-3 years they want $300,000,000 in profits.


Of course that's the issue. I mean you're making my argument for me. They want X% in profit margin. They can get that with XYZ risk. Games like Minecraft, which are new, break boundaries, and are high risk can go either of two ways: Do extremely well or not.

Companies like EA don't have that type of risk appetite. It's why companies like Microsoft buy games like Minecraft after the fact instead of before the fact. It's why big companies go for franchises like Dragon Age or Mass Effect. It's why they appeal to a wide audience instead of the hardcore. It's all to manage risk.

And that risk will vary across their game portfolio. Some will be riskier some will be extremely safe (i.e. Any Madden or FIFA game). But in the aggregate, the games will be a much lower threshold of risk than an indie game that breaks new ground and caters to a narrower audience.

I mean this is not a new concept. Tons of devs have said the same thing. If I had the time I'd go on Matt Chat and find at least 10 who have said similar things to this without breaking a sweat.
 
Joined
Sep 7, 2013
Messages
6,165
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FNV had a previous game to build upon, with a shitload of assets, code, systems, and so on. A FNV-style Wasteland game wouldn't have that, they'd have to build the first game from scratch. Can you imagine them doing that with Unity?
And I think InXine no longer cares about larger projects funded by publishers, they're probably going to try and keep working on multiple KS projects at a time. Feargus is probably the only one in that board who still wants to become some kind of BioWare or CDPR.

Well, they would probably use Unreal now that it is free until the sales take off.

Also Fargo wants to stick it to Bethesda and be a big time producer again. Guy would be happy making AA games but he'd been even happier making iii games.
 

Fairfax

Arcane
Joined
Jun 17, 2015
Messages
3,518
Well, they would probably use Unreal now that it is free until the sales take off.

Also Fargo wants to stick it to Bethesda and be a big time producer again. Guy would be happy making AA games but he'd been even happier making iii games.
Hah, Epic is not that generous, it's a free download, but commercial use means you have to pay 5% on gross revenue. Makes a considerable difference to smaller devs.
 
Joined
Sep 7, 2013
Messages
6,165
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Serpent in the Staglands Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Hah, Epic is not that generous, it's a free download, but commercial use means you have to pay 5% on gross revenue. Makes a considerable difference to smaller devs.

The situation we have here is that Bethesda is departing from cornerstone tenets of its old game design philosophy in order to become more cinematic because for whatever reason a company that sells 10-30,000,000 copies of their core franchises decides they are the ones who need to evolve to be like their next nearest competitors who sell maybe 4-5,000,000.

Since for millions of people Fallout 3/New Vegas + Elder Scrolls III --> V are literally like the Infinity Engine or the Gold Box or Ultima/Wizardry/M&M you-get-the-point, this really isn't something that can be done without consequence. Huge tracts of the gamer population are just patterned to associate first person open world exploration and highly reactive/interactive environment with greatness and Bioware-style cinematics with lameness.

I mean, sure, you'll probably 19,000,000 of 20,000,000 to buy the game, but 5-10% of people just won't go for it and at least as many more will regret that they didn't bargain bin it.

So now you have hip cool 'iii' New Vegas developer Obsidian and old skool Fargo swinging around with their 80s style hip cool New Vegas Unreal game with giant mechanical scorpions to fight. Probably releasing on PS3 and Xbox 360 too.

Million sales easy. Two million before the year is out. Four million lifetime. GOTY 10/10.
 

28.8bps Modem

Prophet
Joined
Jan 15, 2014
Messages
302
Location
The Internet, Circa 1993
The Outer Wilds project is fudging the numbers amazingly. There's now a 20K discrepancy between what has actually been pledged and the total shown which happened in the last couple of days.

Trying to rescue their obvious failure methinks.
 

AN4RCHID

Arcane
Joined
Jan 24, 2013
Messages
4,728
:? dunno what they were thinking picking Outer Wilds as the premiere/only campaign for this thing. I played the alpha when it was first going around, and it's Unity shovelware garbage. Even if they polish it up a lot, there isn't any good game idea there to build off. The dev team seems like obnoxious and untalented hipsters. Would not back.

They should at least have had a few different campaigns running at the start so all the eggs weren't in this one low-quality basket.
 

Mustawd

Guest
I wonder what happens to an investor's monies if the game doesn't reach a specific funding goal? Is it like Kickstarter where no money goes out? Or does it get pooled into a common set of funds?

EDIT: I say this because some investment funds have lockout periods where you can't access funds/pull out of the investment, even if there are enough funds available to be distributed back to the investor.
 

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
19,882
The situation we have here is that Bethesda is departing from cornerstone tenets of its old game design philosophy in order to become more cinematic because for whatever reason a company that sells 10-30,000,000 copies of their core franchises decides they are the ones who need to evolve to be like their next nearest competitors who sell maybe 4-5,000,000.

Since for millions of people Fallout 3/New Vegas + Elder Scrolls III --> V are literally like the Infinity Engine or the Gold Box or Ultima/Wizardry/M&M you-get-the-point, this really isn't something that can be done without consequence. Huge tracts of the gamer population are just patterned to associate first person open world exploration and highly reactive/interactive environment with greatness and Bioware-style cinematics with lameness.

I mean, sure, you'll probably 19,000,000 of 20,000,000 to buy the game, but 5-10% of people just won't go for it and at least as many more will regret that they didn't bargain bin it.

So now you have hip cool 'iii' New Vegas developer Obsidian and old skool Fargo swinging around with their 80s style hip cool New Vegas Unreal game with giant mechanical scorpions to fight. Probably releasing on PS3 and Xbox 360 too.

Million sales easy. Two million before the year is out. Four million lifetime. GOTY 10/10.
Are we talking about same Bethesda games?
 

HanoverF

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Nov 23, 2002
Messages
6,083
MCA Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Codex USB, 2014 Divinity: Original Sin 2
The Outer Wilds project is fudging the numbers amazingly. There's now a 20K discrepancy between what has actually been pledged and the total shown which happened in the last couple of days.

Trying to rescue their obvious failure methinks.

I'm guessing realizing no one wants their shitty game they spread their legs for more dirty dirty investor money. The fact there isn't more transparency for this shit though is mind-boggling. Oh wait...

Tim-Schaffer.jpg
 

vonAchdorf

Arcane
Joined
Sep 20, 2014
Messages
13,465

Mustawd

Guest
Harmonix announced that they will fund their next project on Fig.
Click to expand...

In addition, Harmonix chief creative officer Alex Rigopulos will join Fig's advisory board


:hmmm:




Harmonix is perhaps best known as being the developer of Dance Central, Rock Band and Fantasia: Music Evolved, as well as being the original developer of the Guitar Hero series before development moved to Neversoft and Vicarious Visions.


will join Fig's advisory board

will join Fig's advisory board

will join Fig's advisory board




:hmmm:


Clearly this is a front for laundering meth sales
 

Crooked Bee

(no longer) a wide-wandering bee
Patron
Joined
Jan 27, 2010
Messages
15,048
Location
In quarantine
Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire MCA Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire

28.8bps Modem

Prophet
Joined
Jan 15, 2014
Messages
302
Location
The Internet, Circa 1993
Oh hey, they mysteriously added another 5000 dollars to the total over night.

This is a great way to get your kickstarter funded. Just add random sums of money to it until you go over the goal. It's genius, I don't know why no one ever thought of it before.
 

vonAchdorf

Arcane
Joined
Sep 20, 2014
Messages
13,465
They said that they are serious about the project which means, it wouldn't be smart to let the first funding fail. If the donations aren't enough, they'll be able to fund it themselves via some proxy investors. It's not like Fargo will have to use a Kia in his next Kickstarter video if he donates 10k.
 

Immortal

Arcane
In My Safe Space
Joined
Sep 13, 2014
Messages
5,062
Location
Safe Space - Don't Bulli
They said that they are serious about the project which means, it wouldn't be smart to let the first funding fail. If the donations aren't enough, they'll be able to fund it themselves via some proxy investors. It's not like Fargo will have to use a Kia in his next Kickstarter video if he donates 10k.

Depends.. if they are investing only to drum up interest then plan on pulling their investments right before the project closes, that can be very unfair to others who invested under the assumption the project had X budget.
 
Self-Ejected

Bubbles

I'm forever blowing
Joined
Aug 7, 2013
Messages
7,817
More damning is that there's virtually no movement with actual, real donations. The project has gained over 36k in "secret" investments over the last few days, but less than 2k in backer funds. If the pace doesn't radically pick up, they'll end up paying 50k of their 125k goal out of their own pockets. I assume Fig may just waive its fee if they self-invest, or even let them fudge the numbers a bit; it would be embarassing for all involved parties if the first project failed.
 

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