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KickStarter SR:HK one of Kickstarter's greatest successes, BT4 a dismal failure

Western

Arcane
Joined
Oct 25, 2007
Messages
5,934
Location
Australia
Codex 2012 Codex 2014 Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2
Oh really, let's look at what the big kickstarters have brought us (this is as far as I know based on Codex comments, with regards to the 3D games which I don't play):

1. Divinity Original Sin asked for money to complete and polish their game but still released a product completely unfinished beyond Cyseal.
2. Wasteland 2 promised a tactical RPG that turned out to have no other tactic than "shoot", but turned out to be a detailed container opener simulator.
3. Pillars of Shitternity promised an IE style game combining the best of BG, IWD and PST but turned out to be a hollow single player World of Warcraft clone made by interns.
4. Shadowrun Returns promised an old school RPG but turned out to be a simplistic tablet game.
5. Dead State turned out to be an incomplete, buggy mess.
6. Haven't really managed to comprehend why, but Banner Saga turned out to be disappointing for most too (possibly because the game implemented actual consequences which butthurt lots of people, but perhaps there were promises here too that were undelivered).

The only games that have underpromised but way overdelivered not only in terms of graphics and music but also in terms of systems and content (and even quality backer rewards) have been smaller projects like Lords of Xulima and Serpent in the Staglands. These are the sort of projects that should actually be on Kickstarter, not the sequence of farces launched by the big studios which have destroyed confidence in the system.

5 of those six games you mentioned are all still being worked on. HBS seems to keep incrementally improving with each release. I'll be interested to see the shape POE is in after 2 expansions and a simple mod to remove some of the backer NPCs. Both Wasteland 2 and Original Sin are getting enhanced editions. Dead State has had huge work on bugs and difficulty since release.

The biggest problem seems to be delivering a finished product for these Kickstarters.
 

mindx2

Codex Roaming East Coast Reporter
Patron
Joined
Feb 22, 2006
Messages
4,389
Location
Perusing his PC Museum shelves.
Codex 2012 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire RPG Wokedex Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I'm not saying they were bad games (except for POE) and in fact I enjoyed DMS and BS a lot, but it does remain true that all these games somehow or the other failed to meet promises and expectations. In the case of POE, they openly stuck the middle finger at their backers, the "grognards who don't know what fun is" and made a trash game for casuals instead. All these failed or abandoned promises have slowly discredited Kickstarter. Before these studios could blame everything on their publishers, now it's the exact opposite. They blame their backers instead. "Why did you implement X stupid feature (let's say engagement) at the cost of resources and huge detriment to gameplay?" "Oh, because the backers in the forum told us to do so." Yeah right you fucking bullshitters. In the age of information overload/asymmetry it's easy for them to blame all sorts of things on their backers instead of taking responsibility for shit design, while at the same time ignoring the wishes of the vast majority in order to pursue their own deranged "vision" (Combat XP).

Hence the illogical and unreasonable reminiscing for the ye olde days of big publishers.

It seems your biggest issue is with PoE. I understand that perspective but it seems your projecting those feelings onto the others and I just don't see the others "blam[ing] their backers" or failing to deliver good to great games (considering the last decade or so of mediocrity passing as cRPGs).

Western is correct that upon initial release these games fell somewhat short (but again I still believe they delivered fun and enjoyment) but all of them are getting improvements and getting even better. So perhaps they will fulfill their promise and become greater than they were......

KS has been the engine that has allowed many new cRPGs to be created and released compared to the desert that we suffered through for many a year. I believe the bigger players (InXile, Larian, etc.) have helped bring more attention to the smaller players by expanding KSers audience and potential pledgers by being as "visible" as they have been. Would Dead State, Xumila, Telepath Tactics, AntharioN, Legends of Eisenwald and many others have been as successful without the attention KS got from the bigger players...? I don't think so.
 
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roshan

Arcane
Joined
Apr 7, 2004
Messages
2,426
Well, like I said, I haven't actually played several of those games (Dead State, Wasteland 2, Divinity Original Sin) due to their being 3D games, I find 3D games fundamentally unplayable, but I also haven't heard much about these games on these forums that has actually made me interested in playing. Gathered my impressions that these were generally lackluster "good for what it is" releases based on the threads.

I did get a lot of enjoyment out of Shadowrun Returns (well done linear romp) and Banner Saga (pretty great), but then I didn't fork out thousands of KS dollars in the hopes my dream games would get made. I'm not anti-kickstarter, I'm glad these games are out, but I'm explaining why others are suddenly romanticizing the publisher model. It isn't that I agree, and like I said earlier, it is illogical and unreasonable, but I do see the underlying cause behind that line of thinking.
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
1) Given there's no consistency in how devs have set their funding goals, the metric in the OP is entirely meaningless.
2) And now you're talking about how meh the KS games are, but you haven't played half of them.

Now, if you're asking people whether they think the KS 'revolution' failed to deliver top notch games, then sure, I'd say that none of the games are true classics. SR games are increasingly well done but extremely limited in scope (basically set piece fights interspersed with humdrum "next please" story). Banner Saga is again very stylish but on-rails in just about every imaginable way (and resource conservation is borked). POE is hard to one-line due to its love/hate thing on Codex, but as someone who really likes it, I think there's no way it can displace IE games from anyone's replay list. WL2 is probably the one that tries to do all the "big RPG things" in one go, but the result is the most mediocre and unpolished out of the lot. D:OS is fantastic and charming, but the broken difficulty and imited character customisation harms replayability. So I wouldn't rank any of them alongside FO, Arcanum, etc.

Despite that, I'd say the KS have been a big success and I don't regret the several hundred I spent. I never expected any of these games to be the new Arcanum, and I don't expect the new Torment to beat the old (though I think it might be the best out of all the KS games in this generation). I expected them to be decent-to-good flawed experiences with their heart in the right place, and games which inspire even a few individuals - in publishers, developers, indie scenes - to make more games that at least try to be good RPGs. I think that's happening, more or less.
 

naossano

Cipher
Joined
Aug 26, 2014
Messages
1,232
Location
Marseilles, France
I dont think KS was intended to replace the entire funding model, it was more for people that had troubles in securing funding for their projects because they we too low key.

Having established studios doing it is a God damn disgrace and they only start doing it when KS started to pull millions on funding, suddenly they could fund their entire game and still get publisher funding at the same time, any excess would be in their pockets ... this got worst when Star Citizen come and pulled millions, now you could get AAA budgets with crowdfunding ... and also irresponsibility since you no longer had to answer for the funds, you got a nice lump sum you could burn and then keep asking for more and more.

I am sorry but KS was never to replace the old system, its completely irresponsible to allow studios to get millions without having to answer for it, its should never replace the old funding system and certainly not for studios that could get tradional funding to get a source of funding they would not be accounted for (you know who I am talking about Tim Schafer) because for then its just "better" to not be held accountable on how to run their budgets.

While i agree that KS should be used first and foremost to save or start a company, there are several other aspect to take into account.

- Without KS, we simply wouldn't have some genre that the publisher refuse to fund. But as players, we want to play those genres.
- Without WL2 campaign (and a few others than not only blew records and got huge press coverage), some smaller indies wouldn't dare kickstart or wouldn't have the same coverage.
- Before that WL2, InXile wasn't much bigger than other indies. Same for HBS and a few others. The problem isn't that they use KS, but that they keep using it when they have enough money to fund their next games. KS is not for totally disregard budget, but allow you to work if you don't have any initial budget.
- Few are the publishers that allow devellopper to keep the IP they work on or get their legitimate royalties, while most of the time the develloper is the one actually making the game while the publisher just threw money he got from spoiling other develloppers. You can't defend the "old system" while allowing that thing to continue. It seems to me that, with all its flaws, the KS is the lesser of two evils.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,653
Troika's Jason Anderson, who served as the game's Creative Director, among other things, laid the blame squarely on publisher Activision, saying that Activision took the game out of Troika's hands without ever giving them the time to test and polish it.

I'd put at least half the blame on Troika for trying to do too much with the budget they were given. :M
 

Caconym

Savant
Joined
Apr 18, 2015
Messages
189
Well, like I said, I haven't actually played several of those games (Dead State, Wasteland 2, Divinity Original Sin) due to their being 3D games, I find 3D games fundamentally unplayable
In what way? I swear I don't know what you mean. Is it the camera? Or, like, your PC is too weak and the performance crappy?
 

Athelas

Arcane
Joined
Jun 24, 2013
Messages
4,502
All these failed or abandoned promises have slowly discredited Kickstarter.
Last I checked, Torment's record as most successful Kickstarter video game campaign was broken twice - in the last month. The idea that the majority of Kickstarter backers are Codexers is fairly absurd. Most of the Kickstarrter 'flops' you listed have Steam userscores of at least 90%.
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
D:OS is a solid game and Swen already said in public he isn't happy with quite a few things with it that they are fixing on the Enhanced Edition. Larian seems to shaping up as being one RPG making house we will have to pay attention to, exactly what we need when Bioware and Bethesda are empty husks and Obsidian is too busy making russian shovelware.

Shadowrun Dragonfall is solid too, they admitted that they sort of fucked up with Shadowrun Returns and had to throw away 75% of the content of the game for lack of focus, they hired a producer exactly to avoid that again. Hong Kong looks sweet, they have almost the same budget as Shadowrun Returns (they did alot less physical rewards on their KS) but are alot more organized. They hinted that they are going to try reviving another IP from Microsoft's IP graveyard, probably BattleTech.

Torment seems to be on good hands despite InXile fucking up on Wasteland 2, at least, Fargo was smart to grab the talent Obsidian lost because their obcession with the AAA market. Despite my disappointment with Wasteland 2, I want to see what Colin, Zeits, Kevin and the crew are going to make up.

On the adventure gamming front, we have Quest for Infamy with Infamous Quests actually making money with adventure games instead instead of dying on vapourware land. There is Mage's Initiation that will be released this year too, if they keep the quality of their Quest for Glory 2 VGA remake we will have a pretty good game. Ron Gilbert finaly decided to get out of his semi retirement and do a truly old school Lucas Arts RPG instead of that fagottry Schafer released.

We will have STASIS from Pyke and probably more 2d awesomeness on adventure and RPG form in the future.

There are the smaller Indie guys like the Conquistator, Legend of Einsewald and SitS that released solid games and seem to be interested on keep making incline games.

Dead State isn't that bad after all the patches, it was more entertaining than PoE and Wasteland 2 for sure.

We have Grim Dawn that seems to be a great game for people who like Diablo II style games.

There are others too like The Mandate, Daniel Vavra's walking simulator and the new Ultima Underworld but its still uncertain if they are going to be good games.

That is a pretty good list of codexian relevant games so kickstarter wasn't a terrible disaster. I'm only disappointed with Obsidian and the ex-Sierra guys, Obsidian for forgetting why people care about their games in the first place and losing most of their talented people (really hope that Obsidian did a good contract with the russian mob for all this trouble, if they end with no money like they did with Bethesda it will be a double face palm moment.) and the Ex-Sierra guys for trying to reinvent the wheel and failing hard instead of making 2d adventure games that we wanted from them.
 

gestalt11

Arbiter
Joined
Apr 4, 2015
Messages
629
So the people with the worst estimate of what backers are willing to put in are the most "successful".

Obviously that is not the only factor, but it is one of them and an important one. This metric is almost useless. Getting more than you asked can mean a lot of things.
 

Darkzone

Arcane
Joined
Sep 4, 2013
Messages
2,323
While the metric in this style is nonsense, the core idea behind the metric is that what is important. And in that core is the fear that BTIV will be a problem for inXile. This problem divides into two branches, one states that the production will cost many ressources that will never pay off, and the second states that inXile will produce shit that will cost them potential buyer / backers. I think that due to WL2 DC and T:ToN we can securely state that the first one can be avoided, because even if they invest 4 million into the production, the expected revenues from their previous two games should cover any losses. But the second branch is there and will remain and it is high enough to bind a rope for inXile to hung them self. As long as Torment is not out and WL2 does not elevate to a better combat in the DC, this concerns will remain. And if T:ToN does not deliver what it promises then the shit hits the fan.

About KS: I think that this is an success, because a game genre that has been declared for dead has its small revival.
And SR.DF has been very good and from there it can get better, if HBS does not decide to make nonsense. I have high expectations from SR:HK after SR.DF, and i even dislike overall Shadowrun, and due to SR.DF i have also high hopes for Mechwarrior.
 
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Doktor Best

Arcane
Joined
Feb 2, 2015
Messages
2,849
Harebrained got showered with gold because they fucking delivered with Dragonfall. It is the best, because most flawless and focused kickstarter related crpg to date, and people recognize that ofcourse.

But i am also somehow optimistic about the other kickstarter companies.

Inxile will dish out a vastly improved Directors Cut of Wasteland2 and finally deliver on the character progression and combat aspect (which would fix a BIG portion of the game since it is heavily combat focused)

Larian will fix the silly writing in D:OS and cut out a big annoyance of the current game and let its merrits shine

Obsidian will be able to focus on the actual game with their expansion, fix the combat and be able to focus on some decent encounterdesign. They will also profit from a ripened setting that doesnt need to loredump every 3 seconds because we already know a bit about the world.



I want to believe.
 

Diggfinger

Arcane
Joined
Jan 6, 2014
Messages
1,200
Location
Belgium
Looking at Kickstarted RPG's based on how much they got as a % of their funding goal seems to be more interesting than how much they actually got. SR:HK asked for a very small amount, telling backers that they didn't really need much more to make a better game. Towards the end of their campaign, they actually refused to add more stretch goals, telling backers that from that point onwards, the funds donated to the Kickstarter were effectively just discounter preorders. Yet, they got much more than they expected to. In fact, in terms of meeting their funding goals, they are the second highest performing RPG on the list, narrowly beaten by Unrest which asked for only 3K USD.

On the other hand, Fargo asked for a large amount, while actually expecting to get about thrice as much. Instead, he just ended up with lots of Facebook likes and Twitter followers, but just took in slightly more than his funding goal. In fact, comparing to other RPGs that have gotten attention on the Codex, Bard's Tale 4 is one of the worst 5 in terms of making it's funding goal.



BTW, not saying that the $$$ don't matter, just wanted to bring up an alternative way of looking at things that hasn't really seen much discussion on these forums.

Hairebraided asked for only 100.000 bucks, which of course inflates your statistics. Don't really see the interest of your table; Fargo could have asked for 50.000 and got 1400% times his goal.

Anyway, I find InXile did quite a good job considering a) they already pulled off two hugely successfully campaigns b) they were selling a game in a relatively unknown series in a niche RPG genre.

Fuck it. Hataz gonna hate.

- Digg.
 
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gestalt11

Arbiter
Joined
Apr 4, 2015
Messages
629
Harebrained got showered with gold because they fucking delivered with Dragonfall. It is the best, because most flawless and focused kickstarter related crpg to date, and people recognize that ofcourse.

But i am also somehow optimistic about the other kickstarter companies.

Inxile will dish out a vastly improved Directors Cut of Wasteland2 and finally deliver on the character progression and combat aspect (which would fix a BIG portion of the game since it is heavily combat focused)

Larian will fix the silly writing in D:OS and cut out a big annoyance of the current game and let its merrits shine

Obsidian will be able to focus on the actual game with their expansion, fix the combat and be able to focus on some decent encounterdesign. They will also profit from a ripened setting that doesnt need to loredump every 3 seconds because we already know a bit about the world.



I want to believe.

This is the only take home point I would take from any of this. Dragonfall provided long term "success" even if it was short term perhaps only modest. Harebrained offered a lower asking to be cautious because they can't judge how much goodwill Dragonfall would get them from a monetary standpoint.

A second release which addresses most people's concerns well, even if not perfectly, can raise your asking price or alternately increase your number of bidders. IMO Harebrained was smart to have a modest price on DR:HK. That way they break no promises to anyone if the goodwill from Dragonfall didn't turn out in a monetary sense. They gave a fairly barebones goal of what it would take to make a "good" but perhaps not "excellent and hugely feature rich" campaign. The difference between that and what was pledge shows the good will from Dragonfall both in deserving of remuneration and in an ability to deliver. It is also to some extent shows that people are willing to go extra for more features/higher quality this bleeds into a faith that they can deliver.
 

roshan

Arcane
Joined
Apr 7, 2004
Messages
2,426
In what way? I swear I don't know what you mean. Is it the camera? Or, like, your PC is too weak and the performance crappy?

I hate rotatable 3D cameras, hate it when random shit pops out at me or blocks my view, hate the constant tedium of rotating and adjusting the viewing angle. It's just a way to pad out games with useless busywork, without adding any real content.

Last I checked, Torment's record as most successful Kickstarter video game campaign was broken twice - in the last month. The idea that the majority of Kickstarter backers are Codexers is fairly absurd. Most of the Kickstarrter 'flops' you listed have Steam userscores of at least 90%.

I'm discussing here solely about the RPG market. I really don't care about anything that isn't an RPG. To me if it isn't an RPG, it doesn't exist.
 

Caconym

Savant
Joined
Apr 18, 2015
Messages
189
I hate rotatable 3D cameras, hate it when random shit pops out at me or blocks my view, hate the constant tedium of rotating and adjusting the viewing angle. It's just a way to pad out games with useless busywork, without adding any real content.
There are games with positively insufferable camera controls – looking at you, NWN2, you asshole –, but the majority of them, to me, are not amongst them. Doesn't take much to adjust the angle if needed, I mean your hand's already on the mouse the whole time. Struggling with idiotically designed menus and quests are the real source of tedium and frustration.

I really don't care about anything that isn't an RPG. To me if it isn't an RPG, it doesn't exist.
Kinda explains your othodox views on camera control. I'm wondering what would your opinion be about "free mouselook" FPS games vs. rail shooters. :cheeky:
 

Telengard

Arcane
Joined
Nov 27, 2011
Messages
1,621
Location
The end of every place
When one engages in magical thinking*, one has to go much much bigger than the original post did. It's got to be layered on so thick that when someone starts to pull the web apart with logic and facts (VD), it takes so long to unwind it all that all the idiots get bored reading all the corrections. And then, when the idiots start to get bored, you can claim that all of your detractors are just making personal attacks, and the idiots will all agree that those long-winded unravelings really were all too much (after all, they got bored and didn't even get a quarter of the way through), and thus it must indeed be a personal attack. Then when your attackers ask you to refute any of their claims against your arguments, you can claim you don't involve yourself in gotcha politics.

And then, there you are with a bunch of idiots defending your magical thinking. That's the way to do it. The relentless mess of a web of magical thinking is what makes magical thinking work. Go big or go home.


* It's actually a thing. Google it.
 

Turjan

Arcane
Joined
Mar 31, 2008
Messages
5,047
Hairebraided asked for only 100.000 bucks, which of course inflates your statistics. Don't really see the interest of your table; Fargo could have asked for 50.000 and got 1400% times his goal.
Yeah, the premise of the first post doesn't make much sense. Also, I would like to add that Harebrained's last Kickstarter campaign was just a thinly veiled preorder campaign, which puts it into a different category of was supposed to be achieved here. Game mechanics and everything is in place, there isn't much to be done on that front. The big pointer is that it sold for $20/€18+ as preorder during the summer sale, which is only slightly above the Kickstarter price.

BT4 is simply an unknown entity. I'm not sure what the game is supposed to be, which is the biggest issue for me personally. I don't know whether assets from their other games will be recycled here, but the video made it look as if this at least was not the plan. This project certainly needs much more money than Shadowrun: HK. I don't know enough else though to draw any meaningful conclusion other than that.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
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Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
Huh? Campaigns ask for more money when they think they can get more, less when they think they'll get less. If you want evidence of this, check out how companies act after successful campaigns vs. how they act after failed campaigns (for example, compare DFA -> Massive Chalice with Thorvalla -> Deathfire).
How they act has nothing to do with it. KS gives you what you can get not what you need or ask for, so might as well ask for less and then milk your success for all it's worth because it does make good headlines and gives you extra media coverage.

For example, I think we can get 150-200k on KS. I can ask for 200k because it's a realistic amount and then struggle to hit it or I can ask for 30k, hit it early, get "OMG! AoD2 Kickstarter is a smashing success, funded in 24 hours!" free media coverage, then hit 150k and get "OMG!!! AoD2 campaign is on FIRE! Iron Tower gets 5 times (!) the asking amount! Looks like Bethesda Softworks will have some serious competition in year 2050!"

If anything, I respect Fargo for not playing these games.

HBS had a successful campaign during the height of the KS craze, but their next campaign (miniature board game thing) struggled to hit it's $500k goal.
I don't know enough about miniature board games and how well they do on KS, but I think that 500k is pretty good.

The lukewarm reception to SRR as well as the under-performance of Dragonfall (at least initially - I think it's had good legs) forced HBS to reevaluate their plans.
My point is that 100k isn't a real goal. You can't make a game or even a sequel for 100k as after dedications it would be barely enough to pay 2 people for a year.

The $100k goal was probably set because it seemed achievable. I don't think they expected to make as much as they did, and the stretch goals and low target suggests this.
Why wouldn't they expect to do well?

The first game got 36,276 backers. It went to sell 828,588 ± 21,288 copies and got 76% rating. Are you saying HBS weren't sure that they could get 3-4% to back their next KS and buy the next game (game they knew they'd like and had full confidence in) at a discount?
 

roshan

Arcane
Joined
Apr 7, 2004
Messages
2,426
For example, I think we can get 150-200k on KS. I can ask for 200k because it's a realistic amount and then struggle to hit it or I can ask for 30k, hit it early, get "OMG! AoD2 Kickstarter is a smashing success, funded in 24 hours!" free media coverage, then hit 150k and get "OMG!!! AoD2 campaign is on FIRE! Iron Tower gets 5 times (!) the asking amount! Looks like Bethesda Softworks will have some serious competition in year 2050!"

If anything, I respect Fargo for not playing these games.

That's exactly the game Fargo has played.

"I hope we will raise something around the score of Torment: Tides of Numenera"

Had Fargo not been fooling around, he should have asked for the complete budget he needed to make the game, up to the standards of graphics and sound shown in the promo video. In order to do that, Fargo would have ideally needed to raise 4-5M, which is the funding range for Torment. However, now that the Kickstarter has effectively failed to meet his hopes, we already know the excuse we will get:

"Basically, I make games for the budget I can get."

My point is that 100k isn't a real goal. You can't make a game or even a sequel for 100k as after dedications it would be barely enough to pay 2 people for a year.

LOL, it's funny to see your absolute cognitive dissonance. You are pulling claims out of thin air with regards to Harebrained while at the same time ignoring direct quotes from Fargo himself. Shadowrun Hong Kong isn't a real "sequel" by any means, it's a glorified mod/expansion pack promising an astounding 12 hours of additional gameplay. They already produced another game of roughly twice-thrice the scale (Dragonfall Director's Cut - which you mistakenly thought was another Kickstarter - has a playtime of roughly 25-30 hours) without any additional crowdfunding. They could have easily made a much shorter campaign without crowdfunding.

Let's look at the reality of the situation. This was Harebrained's pitch:

"We're totally committed to making Shadowrun: Hong Kong and we're already several months into development. The project is budgeted, fully staffed, and on-schedule for a mid-2015 release. At our current budget, it's going to be 12+ hours long and at the quality level of Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut."

But this is Harebrained Schemes and, as always, we have more ideas than we have budget.

That's where you come in.

By backing the project, you'll increase our production budget and get more features, more improvements, and more game."

They asked for 100,000 as an initial goal because they really didn't need the money for the base game, all they needed was additional funds to expand the scope and add in new engine features, which they met with the stretch goals.
 

Duraframe300

Arcane
Joined
Dec 21, 2010
Messages
6,395
D:OS is a solid game and Swen already said in public he isn't happy with quite a few things with it that they are fixing on the Enhanced Edition. Larian seems to shaping up as being one RPG making house we will have to pay attention to, exactly what we need when Bioware and Bethesda are empty husks and Obsidian is too busy making russian shovelware.

Shadowrun Dragonfall is solid too, they admitted that they sort of fucked up with Shadowrun Returns and had to throw away 75% of the content of the game for lack of focus, they hired a producer exactly to avoid that again. Hong Kong looks sweet, they have almost the same budget as Shadowrun Returns (they did alot less physical rewards on their KS) but are alot more organized. They hinted that they are going to try reviving another IP from Microsoft's IP graveyard, probably BattleTech.

Torment seems to be on good hands despite InXile fucking up on Wasteland 2, at least, Fargo was smart to grab the talent Obsidian lost because their obcession with the AAA market. Despite my disappointment with Wasteland 2, I want to see what Colin, Zeits, Kevin and the crew are going to make up.

On the adventure gamming front, we have Quest for Infamy with Infamous Quests actually making money with adventure games instead instead of dying on vapourware land. There is Mage's Initiation that will be released this year too, if they keep the quality of their Quest for Glory 2 VGA remake we will have a pretty good game. Ron Gilbert finaly decided to get out of his semi retirement and do a truly old school Lucas Arts RPG instead of that fagottry Schafer released.

We will have STASIS from Pyke and probably more 2d awesomeness on adventure and RPG form in the future.

There are the smaller Indie guys like the Conquistator, Legend of Einsewald and SitS that released solid games and seem to be interested on keep making incline games.

Dead State isn't that bad after all the patches, it was more entertaining than PoE and Wasteland 2 for sure.

We have Grim Dawn that seems to be a great game for people who like Diablo II style games.

There are others too like The Mandate, Daniel Vavra's walking simulator and the new Ultima Underworld but its still uncertain if they are going to be good games.

That is a pretty good list of codexian relevant games so kickstarter wasn't a terrible disaster. I'm only disappointed with Obsidian and the ex-Sierra guys, Obsidian for forgetting why people care about their games in the first place and losing most of their talented people (really hope that Obsidian did a good contract with the russian mob for all this trouble, if they end with no money like they did with Bethesda it will be a double face palm moment.) and the Ex-Sierra guys for trying to reinvent the wheel and failing hard instead of making 2d adventure games that we wanted from them.

I don't really think either Ziets departure or Kevin Saunders had anything to do with Armored Warfare. (Well indirectly Ziets)
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
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That's exactly the game Fargo has played.

"I hope we will raise something around the score of Torment: Tides of Numenera"

Had Fargo not been fooling around, he should have asked for the complete budget he needed to make the game, up to the standards of graphics and sound shown in the promo video. In order to do that, Fargo would have ideally needed to raise 4-5M, which is the funding range for Torment. However, now that the Kickstarter has effectively failed to meet his hopes, we already know the excuse we will get:

"Basically, I make games for the budget I can get."

LOL, it's funny to see your absolute cognitive dissonance. You are pulling claims out of thin air with regards to Harebrained while at the same time ignoring direct quotes from Fargo himself.
Let's start with the second quote. It's a simple yet meaningless fact because we don't know what budget Fargo's working with. He has significant personal funds, Bard's Tale (350,000 copies on Steam plus mobile), WL2 that probably generated 9-10 mil in sales, future Torment sales, etc.

As for the first quote, the breakdown above makes it equally meaningless. He hoped to get more but didn't. It doesn't mean that he needed 3-4 mil but got a lousy 1.5 and now the game will be shit.

Shadowrun Hong Kong isn't a real "sequel" by any means, it's a glorified mod/expansion pack promising an astounding 12 hours of additional gameplay. They already produced another game of roughly twice-thrice the scale (Dragonfall Director's Cut - which you mistakenly thought was another Kickstarter - has a playtime of roughly 25-30 hours) without any additional crowdfunding. They could have easily made a much shorter campaign without crowdfunding.
I've never said they couldn't. My point was that the asking price was too low, no matter how you look at it, because all it does is buy you 2 people for a year.

Mind you, I'm not attacking HBS. Even though I didn't like the first game, they did a much better job with Dragonfall and overall the three games are one of the best KS success stories and an example of how to manage projects and funds and do more with less.

I just don't understand why you're fixated on the "goal" when it has absolutely nothing to do with anything. So far, the top, most hyped projects get 3-4 mil, second best get 1-2 mil (that's what both SR:HK and BT4 got), then 700-800k, then 400-500k, then 200-300, then the bottom-feeders. Getting into the second best category is still an achievement, especially considering that inXile already collected 7 mil.

I don't know what Fargo hoped for and whether or not he actually meant what he said or knew from day 1 that BT4 would never get as much as Torment, but it is the weakest of all IPs currently at play. It can't be compared to WL, Torment/Numenera, or Shadowrun. People are excited because it's a blobber not because it's a BT game.
 

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