Game News Bard's Tale IV Kickstarter Funded

[Harold]

Wake me up when Fargo announces the Descent to Undermountain 2 Kickstarter, with MCA as a stretch goal.

 

[Burning Bridges]

They should have gone with something like the original style, not this first person 3D. I liked Bard's Tale when I was a kid (hardly able to figure out what was going on ..) but what they show does nothing to me. In fact, it looks more like Wizardry than Bards Tale.

 

[Beautiful Clown Painting]

McComb and Avellone as stretch goals was an insult to the backers (we'll get good writers if you give us more more more, if not you'll get bland boring writing) and also to the writers already on the team.
What the fuck ? How can good writers be a stretch goal ? That's nonsense. It's like if someone did a kickstarter for a record and said: for 2 millions you'll get John Coltrane, if not, my nephew is great at the saxophone ! But trust me, it will be a great record ! The brass band from the local high school rules !

 

[Athelas]

McComb and Avellone as stretch goals was an insult to the backers (we'll get good writers if you give us more more more, if not you'll get bland boring writing) and also to the writers already on the team.
What the fuck ? How can good writers be a stretch goal ? That's nonsense. It's like if someone did a kickstarter for a record and said: for 2 millions you'll get John Coltrane, if not, my nephew is great at the saxophone ! But trust me, it will be a great record ! The brass band from the local high school rules !

The stretch goals were for them designing a dungeon/area.

 

[Beautiful Clown Painting]

Well, the writers already on the team are not good enough to design great dungeons ?

I would have understood if the stretch goals were just: two more great dungeons.
Name dropping two great designers and writers as stretch goals make the rest of the game feel like a hack job.

 

[Athelas]

Their own designers/writers are not famous.

 

[Beautiful Clown Painting]

Yes, fame. All right. STAR POWAH. Fargo shouldn't be surprised then that his game is considered and financed as a B movie (nothing against B movies, Samuel Fuller rules).

 

[Dorateen]

This is a quote from Infinitron back in November of 2013, during the Deathfire campaign.

Plenty of people want to play blobbers. They don't seem particularly interested in crowdfunding them, however.

I still think it is applicable to the case here, and also explains the marketing audience differences among crowdfunding projects. Kickstarter is not the best platform to reach people who enjoyed cRPGs in the '80's and early '90's. The disconnect extends to stretchgoals where writers who built their fame on a distaste for fantasy, subverting RPG conventions, and deconstructing the genre, is probably not going to appeal to veterans who appreciate The Bard's Tale and its heritage.

 

[Shevek]

This was a terribly run campaign. They did very little to really inform people what they game was about and even less to make people care about their silly celebrity developer stretch goals. Each of of those celeb goals should have been used as an opportunity to show off what they planned for the game. So when they said MCA for 1.9 mil, they should have had MCA himself pitch his dungeon idea and describe how gameplay in his dungeon would be substantively different thanks to his particular input. Failing that, its just a name. To most folks, thats a big so what. Similary, more should have been throughout to discuss the structure of the game world (how does one go to diff dungeons, is there an overland map, one town or multiple, etc), the kinds of gameplay expected in dungeons (traps, teleport tiles, etc), the narrative structure, the character development system, etc. Stretch goals connected to those things once people knew more about the game would have generated way more cash.

I mentioned this in the KS comments sections a while back but all we get from the campaign is that this will be a pretty blobber made by famous people. That is not enough to generate the interest needed to get the cashflow going.

 

[Infinitron]

This is a quote from Infinitron back in November of 2013, during the Deathfire campaign.

Plenty of people want to play blobbers. They don't seem particularly interested in crowdfunding them, however.

I still think it is applicable to the case here, and also explains the marketing audience differences. Kickstarter is not the best platform to reach people who enjoyed cRPGs in the '80's and early '90's. The disconnect extends to stretchgoals where writers who built their fame on a distaste for fantasy, subverting RPG conventions, and deconstructing the genre, is probably not going to appeal to veterans who appreciate The Bard's Tale and its heritage.

Since I posted that, I've become unsure whether plenty of people want to play them as well. :S

 

[Dorateen]

Plenty is a subjective term.

 

[stony3k]

Part of the problem is that a turn-based "blobber" is pretty well defined, and it's really hard to give more details without actually iterating through the game itself. You can talk about the story/setting for storyfag games, but those are not important in most blobbers. InXile should have talked about dungeon design or at least their philosophy behind it (since they actually won't know the dungeon design until they start iterating), they should have talked about the kinds of puzzles (again just throw out some ideas), etc. I don't think character development and narrative are very important for blobbers.

The Deathfire KS was very similar (and Guido didn't have Fargo's name recognition), which is striking.

 

[ROARRR]

Yeah the Kickstarter felt like: "Hello I am a rooky! I do Kickstarter the first time, but actually I don´t care if it is good as long my game is funded! Bye."

 

[Infinitron]

Part of the problem is that a turn-based "blobber" is pretty well defined, and it's really hard to give more details without actually iterating through the game itself. You can talk about the story/setting for storyfag games, but those are not important in most blobbers. InXile should have talked about dungeon design or at least their philosophy behind it (since they actually won't know the dungeon design until they start iterating), they should have talked about the kinds of puzzles (again just throw out some ideas), etc. I don't think character development and narrative are very important for blobbers.

I think talking about that sort of stuff might have pleased the Codex, but it wouldn't helped much for funding. Story actually would have helped. Lore, characters, atmosphere. And cool stuff that you can do in the game (You can do this! You can meet this guy and do that! You can use this item to do that! You can go to this cool place and do that!). Connected together, these things provide context and a sense of an already formed game. These are the things that generate excitement.

There is no huge audience of blobber nerds out there waiting to dump tons of money on a blobber Kickstarter with long treatises on dungeon and puzzle design. You gotta hook people with the fluff.

 

[Shevek]

i dunno, I think he could have connected with console gamers since blobber combat is similar to what they have experienced in SMT, Dragon Warrior, Japanese Wizardries, Shining the Holy Ark/Darkness, etc (both nostalgia jrpgers and modern ones). Not to mention the PC audience that has been reintroduced to these games thanks to Grim Rock and MMX.

I think theres a market out there but you dont reach it by giving no meaningful info, dropping a bunch of names and then walking away.

 

[Infinitron]

i dunno, I think he could have connected with console gamers since blobber combat is similar to what they have experienced in SMT, Dragon Warrior, Japanese Wizardries, Shining the Holy Ark/Darkness, etc (both nostalgia jrpgers and modern ones). Not to mention the PC audience that has been reintroduced to these games thanks to Grim Rock and MMX.

I think theres a market out there but you dont reach it by giving no meaningful info, dropping a bunch of names and then walking away.

I didn't say no meaningful info. I said the meaningful info shouldn't be grognardy treatises on "dungeon design philosophy". Few people care about that stuff. They want to hear about the cool stuff you can do in the game, and the cool things you can find in it. They want the fantasy.

 

[Shevek]

I agree for the most part but, well, I think even the uninitiated like to hear some of that grognardy stuff since it lends legitimacy to the developer. So, they showed a pic of an Ogre, for example. To me, I was like, so what? If this had been in the context of describing a slate of monsters and telling me how they all act differently, that would have been more interesting. Perhaps the Ogre charges, the Kobold Scout calls for reinforcements, the Necromancer raises slain allies, etc. All of the sudden, the info could be far more interesting and I have a sense that these guys know what they are doing and that this could turn out well.

 

[Infinitron]

If this had been in the context of describing a slate of monsters and telling me how they all act differently, that would have been more interesting. Perhaps the Ogre charges, the Kobold Scout calls for reinforcements, the Necromancer raises slain allies, etc.

Sure, that's not grognardy. That's concrete, in-world stuff that sounds cool. But even better would be to it connect it with lore, so each monster gets a description as well. And we know that the lore was there. Read the dungeon story, it's actually pretty awesome: http://thebardstalerpg.tumblr.com/fairy-host-dungeon

They just didn't do enough with that stuff. Like I said in the OP, it's not that one thing was missing from the campaign, it's that there wasn't enough of everything. They had to rev up all their cylinders. But I guess they were just too busy or distracted or something.

 

[Shevek]

I think Fargo kept getting a bunch of folks asking him if he would ever do a follow up to Bard's Tale (half of them probably refering to the crappy one). He must convinced himself there was some massive/hidden audience just chomping at the bit for BT4. He probably thought that he could sell it on name recognition alone.

 

[Infinitron]

I think Fargo kept getting a bunch of folks asking him if he would ever do a follow up to Bard's Tale (half of them probably refering to the crappy one). He must convinced himself there was some massive/hidden audience just chomping at the bit for BT4. He probably thought that he could sell it on name recognition alone.

I can tell you for sure that nobody at inXile thought this Kickstarter was going to be on par with their previous ones. The way this campaign was run wasn't a result of delusion. It may have been a result of neglect.

 

[stony3k]

I can tell you for sure that nobody at inXile thought this Kickstarter was going to be on par with their previous ones. The way this campaign was run wasn't a result of delusion. It may have been a result of neglect.

Why neglect though? They actually started very well, with the free stuff as well as the engine video. It seems they just couldn't figure out what to do next. If the reason is that the team was still busy with Wasteland 2, then they should have waited until they were free.

 

[Morality Games]

I can tell you for sure that nobody at inXile thought this Kickstarter was going to be on par with their previous ones. The way this campaign was run wasn't a result of delusion. It may have been a result of neglect.

Why neglect though? They actually started very well, with the free stuff as well as the engine video. It seems they just couldn't figure out what to do next. If the reason is that the team was still busy with Wasteland 2, then they should have waited until they were free.

They couldn't wait until they free because then we would be pushing into the Year of the AAA.

 

[Brayko]

Wahwah who gives a crap project is funded and if Fargo leaves the development to a few programmers and designers who know what they're doing and given enough time on a first person dungeon blobber I can imagine hours of fun like Grimrock. Plot premise already sounds promising enough. Ill check back in 2 years.

 

[Lady_Error]

They should have gone with something like the original style, not this first person 3D. I liked Bard's Tale when I was a kid (hardly able to figure out what was going on ..) but what they show does nothing to me. In fact, it looks more like Wizardry than Bards Tale.

Bard's Tale was always first person and it is in fact a Wizardry clone.

 

[Apexeon]

They pulled in 1.5 million to make a blobber.
Plenty of money to make a blobber.