Yeah? Fargo's openly talked about that for months now. He wants to keep returning to Kickstarter regardless of how games sell, because he likes the crowd involvement and energy process. Of course it won't raise millions every time. It doesn't really need to. But it's not news that this is how he wants to operate. And it's not like it's free money, you're basically pre-selling your game at a much lower price, I have no idea how well the top tiers balance that out, especially with all the extra digital copies, plus KS and Amazon take a cut, Kevin's estimate of 2 million left from 3 isn't that far off. Say they sell it for $25, that's 80K copies (more copies if you factor in distribution cost), whereas they had 60K backers, and way, way more than 60K copies. Not exactly money in the bank. In an economic sense, Kickstarter money just isn't "free", no matter how you want to turn it, unless your reward tiers exclude copies of the product.
To be honest, he kinda does come over as a snake-oil salesman type of person, who will tell you absolutely everything you want to hear to sell his product, and while that is a very good ability to have in business it can come over as rather dishonest at times. I loved that anecdote he told at some point about him calling different computer shops and asking them if they've seen that cool new game from some "gaming magazine" to get them to stock his game, since it tells a lot about him as a person
And reading some Interviews he did for his Bard's Tale or Hunted in the past:
http://www.gamespot.com/news/the-bards-tale-qanda-brian-fargo-keeps-a-straight-face-6111481
BF: I could not be happier with the final product we created. I'm probably more pleased with this game than any I have worked on in my career. The game is incredibly rich with charm and personality. I don't think I could have made this game 10 years ago, since I didn't have enough real-world experience under my belt to draw upon.
We created a game that excels in several areas. The first are the traditional RPG areas like combat and inventory management, because the new game makes serious strides over its predecessors. It also breaks entirely new ground across all genres in the area of humor, because in our game it's pervasive, while in other games it's an afterthought, if it's there at all.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2010/03/15/hunted-brian-fargo-interview
IGN: It's interesting that when you were showing off Hunted: The Demon's Forge earlier, you were very much talking about the dungeon crawls of yore. The action itself is very modern though, very Gears of War. Are you trying to make a game that will appeal to modern action gamers as well as the older crowd?
Brian Fargo: Here's how I look at it. The dungeon crawls themselves had become action-orientated in the nineties. They really all had. Then it bifurcated: there was the Japanese RPG, and I wasn't going to make one of those, and then there was KOTOR and Mass Effect - which are cool but I didn't want to make one of those either. I loved the dungeon crawl. So, what's the best platform for that basically?
In Hunted there are elements that people will know, like secret doors and magic mouths [famous chattering lips found in The Bard's Tale and referenced in Hunted through vast talking faces hewn in rock], but you have to recognise that people playing games in the year 2010 have different tastes. We wanted to do something where it's a sensory experience, so that right away leads me towards something that's a little more action-orientated. Again, this generation is comfortable with that, so it didn't need to be a hardcore RPG.
At the beginning you're right, you'll see the cover system and you'll compare it to Gears of War – we're not shying away from it – but that's because we want you to get the controls and start playing right away. We then start slowly taking you somewhere else. With Gears you're running, you're running, you're running – but that's not what we want to do. We can do big set-pieces and all that, but there's the exploration, discovery and puzzles.
Now, we won't make you get stuck, that's another thing that's changed: in the nineties if you had a puzzle and you got stuck – you were stuck. You could only call customer service if you wanted to proceed! Now we can give you a puzzle, and we can make it hard, but there has to be a reward – we can't ever let you get stuck. We're just recognising the differences, philosophically speaking, of today.
Using the same kind of language of him obviously wanting to do it forever and ever kind of gives an example of how adaptable to any given situation he is. But for instance the "crowd involvement" so far hasn't been much to write home about. Double Fine did/do it the best with their Documentary every other month, Production Updates with art assets and details behind their methods and a "community" feel in their Backer forum. Obsidian and Shadowrun Returns seemed to also have done it better so far even though they haven't shown that much, but there's at least interaction. But the most backers got out of Fargo so far have been two Screenshots and a few words in a long time one would usually get from a gaming magazine article or similar for an upcoming game anyway, and he's trying to sell it as "community involvement" xD
Also it kind of is like it is free money, since it pays wages for most of the employees during the entire development, allows him to keep his IP and allows his company to pocket everything he gets from Sales from Release unto eternity. And let's be honest, the game will sell at least a few hundred thousand copies if it isn't reviewed as one of the worst broken pieces of shit ever created. Games like Terraria or Super Meat Boy sold over a million copies with the help of platforms like Steam and there was a lot less Hype behind them.
Compare that with some of the standard publisher deals and you'll feel like you are in heaven:
http://www.obscure.co.uk/blog/2007/02/26/the-myth-of-the-developer-royalty/
That said, I don't even have much against him dipping in the KickStarter pot once more, but I really don't like how he put it in some Interviews regarding "monetizing game features and communities" (like the Codex) and using them as an extended arm of marketing, for instance:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-10-29-fargo-succeed-or-fail-ill-return-to-kickstarter
"Yeah, I still would [return to crowd-funding]," Fargo said. "It allows us to give things to people that they can't get from just buying a product. Some people want to be an NPC, or they want a shrine in their honour in the game, or they want a boxed copy, or a novella. These things aren't just gimmicks; they add real value."
"It's also a great way of vetting the product in general. I like having that communication, because when people put their money down they're more invested emotionally. And when you have this army of people who are a part of it, when you do launch you don't need a big marketing campaign."
I really loathe RTwP. What's the point? Save the player some time by just letting it run in real-time while you're fighting a trash mob and content with your guys just auto-attacking? I'm happy we're getting cRPGs made again but why the hard-on for this shitty system? Has any RPG ever benefited from being RTwP over turn-based?
The point is that it fits to story/character-based games that are often mere inches away from being Adventures like Sanitarium or STASIS a lot better than a "turn based system".
I would be the first to argue for a turn-based system in games like Jagged Alliance, Heroes of Might & Magic, X-Com, Temple of Elemental Evil, King's Bounty, Civilization and similar where combat is mostly the focus of the game and there is often not much story to write home about whatsoever.
It doesn't however much fit a game that is trying to tell a good story and build up a few characters to take the player out of the action and concentrate solely on long-winded combat encounters that way, since that shifts the focus of the entire game to that instead of storytelling. If a game has a complex turn-based fighting system with lots of man-hours put into it like Jagged Alliance 2 with single combat encounters taking several minutes to finish it
can't put much focus on much else than that at that point and the developers will likely want to make use of it as much as possible. (which will also result in scaring away storyfags)
