KickStarter Kickstarter Watch.

[tuluse]

Jesus Christ, he looks like he's 16. How the fuck did he get put in charge of designing Civ 5? I realize I'm a horrible leech on society barely able to dress myself but how the shit did he get such a key role for such a high budget big name game.

Many of the classics were made by people who were around his age at the time....

Generally the classics aren't 5th games in a long running series with a large budget with a publisher and leading a team as large as Firaxis, too. Especially when that appears to be his first paid work on a game. Seriously, he went from Civ 3 mods in highschool, to "Beta testing" Civ 4, to lead designer on 5. It's not like he made a game with 5-10 other people that became a classic and was wildly popular, he somehow leap straight to lead designing a flagship game for a well established company.

Did you miss the part where it said he was co-designer on a Civ4 expansion? He must have done some decent work there since Firaxis trusted him with Civ5. Sure, he fucked up there but I see no particular reason to think that age/lack of experience was an important factor there.

Beyond the Sword was pretty awesome.

 

[Kz3r0]

Does anyone remember Zero Charisma?
They ran a successful campaign on Indiegogo, now they are running another for the final stages:
http://www.indiegogo.com/zerocharismathemovie

This time the trailer is made from actual footage, the problem is that semms sub par compared to the original mock up, that it's now unavailable:
http://www.indiegogo.com/zerocharismamovie

I saw that when they released the second campaing, and I went to the old one to compare it and was indeed very inferior (the "hipster" actor was way better in the old one), so apparently they got enough complains to hide the old one... not to mention some suspicious stuff like how apparently the DIRECTOR of the movie left the project, and that they originally asked for 15k, got 25k and now want more 30k...

Overfunded kickstarter/indiegogo are responsible for some massive ego-trips backfiring, sometimes I wish they would just close donations after reaching the goal.

The fact that they are asking for double the original sum is quite scammy.
About the differences between the mock up and the actual footage I think that are mostly the result of them going from parody in good spirit to human drama, and the change of director has really badly impacted the project, slower pace, depressing lighting, less funny scenes, it doesn't help either that the actors all worsened their performance, maybe the side effect of acting for 'real' instead of doing it for fun, and the hipster guy has become a total nerd, the killing stare was really embarrassing..
Really, seems that they have decided to go down the grimdark route:
Psycho, nerd edition.

 

[Kz3r0]

Oh my, this looks incredible, even if the set goal is very low in my opinion, seven hours to go:

WELCOME TO THE ANCIENT LAND OF REX
Features:
Immerse yourself in lush graphics and vivid scenes
Awesome Horse Combat
A large game world to explore[10+ real world miles]
Full character dialogue with FaceFX
Character Customization: You can become who YOU want to be
Totally Non-Linear story line: Go where you want, when you want
Dozens of quests to complete
Interact with interesting NPCs
Arena Combat

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1463653291/fortis-rex-rise-of-the-king-0/?ref=kicktraq

 

[Spectacle]

Oh my, this looks incredible, even if the set goal is very low in my opinion, seven hours to go:

WELCOME TO THE ANCIENT LAND OF REX
Features:
Immerse yourself in lush graphics and vivid scenes
Awesome Horse Combat
A large game world to explore[10+ real world miles]
Full character dialogue with FaceFX
Character Customization: You can become who YOU want to be
Totally Non-Linear story line: Go where you want, when you want
Dozens of quests to complete
Interact with interesting NPCs
Arena Combat

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1463653291/fortis-rex-rise-of-the-king-0/?ref=kicktraq

Lol. Extremely ambitious scope, unrealistically low funding goal and no programmer on the team.

 

[Destroid]

Spectacle, I think the guy talking is the programmer.

 

[Zed]

The Longest Journey Kickstarter
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/02/08/journeys-end-dreamfall-chapters-interview-part-one/
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/redthread/dreamfall-chapters-the-longest-journey

I never played the original games. Perhaps I should.

 

[Jaesun]

No don'd spend 1 fucking cent of this shitty 3d abomination.

 

[Ulminati]

I'd ask why you're so butthurt Jaesun, but I'm scared of the answer.

TLJ was good for what it was

 

[GaffQ]

I want a Lemmings kickstarter. Also Cyberia 3.

And Bioforge 2. And Ecstatica 3. And Crusader 3, and Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri 2, Crime Wave 2, and Outpost 3.

And Deep Fear 2.

 

[Gakkone]

The Longest Journey Kickstarter
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/02/08/journeys-end-dreamfall-chapters-interview-part-one/
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/redthread/dreamfall-chapters-the-longest-journey

I never played the original games. Perhaps I should.

This thing is so funded.

 

[JudasIscariot]

I want a Lemmings kickstarter. Also Cyberia 3.

And Bioforge 2. And Ecstatica 3. And Crusader 3, and Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri 2, Crime Wave 2, and Outpost 3.

And Deep Fear 2.

I want a kickstarter that would form a search party for lost games in the vein of Ultima VIII: The Lost Vale and other games that were ready to be sold but got canned at the last minute.

 

[skuphundaku]

I want... Bioforge 2... And Crusader 3, and Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri 2... and Outpost 3...

I would like there's no tomorrow if such games would get kickstarted.

 

[likaq]

I want ... Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri 2 ...

 

[almondblight]

Oh my, this looks incredible, even if the set goal is very low in my opinion, seven hours to go:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1463653291/fortis-rex-rise-of-the-king-0/?ref=kicktraq

Good chance that they put in their own money to get it funded:

http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/1463653291/fortis-rex-rise-of-the-king-0/#chart-daily

 

[Destroid]

Lulz. I guess this is a risk with the sub 10,000 kickstarters.

 

[JarlFrank]

Well, that looks kinda interesting. Like Mount and Blade with more gameplay elements outside of combat. Glad it got funded.

 

[kaizoku]

FTL clone
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ajtilley/spatial-flux-2
proof of concept (so little gameplay to call it a prototype): http://www.face2palm.com/spatialflux/index.html

what strikes me is he asking for such a small amount of cash

 

[Jaesun]

Begun the FTL clone war has.

 

[Spectacle]

It is such a pleasure to see people cloning good games instead of making CoD wannabee no. 231

 

[Kz3r0]

News from the Brownlands, the Ron Paul game seems to be a scam, who would have thought:

Kalina Anastassova on January 28

If you are reading this, it looks like Daniel split without refunding or doing any of the project. Please contact Kickstarter and we are looking for individuals who were in this funding round to come forward. Please alert Kickstarter and they should have a lawyer contact you. We unfortunatly will have to Sue Dainiel to recoup the monies owed.

Here is a reference of another failed Kickstarter Project. Please contact Kickstarter first.

http://www.inc.com/eric-markowitz/when-kickstarter-investors-want-their-money-back.html

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1339254269/ron-paul-road-to-revolution/comments

 

[Dexter]

Multi-headed Cow, we should probably invite him over to the Codex - I'm sure he has stories to tell of Sid's orgies and bathrooms full of rubber dildos.

If you want to read about Sids orgies and his penchant for young boys and "listening" to them in his office, here's a recent article for you: http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/1/31/3928710/making-of-xcoms-jake-solomon-firaxis-sid-meier

 

[CappenVarra]

Multi-headed Cow, we should probably invite him over to the Codex - I'm sure he has stories to tell of Sid's orgies and bathrooms full of rubber dildos.

If you want to read about Sids orgies and his penchant for young boys and "listening" to them in his office, here's a recent article for you: http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/1/31/3928710/making-of-xcoms-jake-solomon-firaxis-sid-meier

So...

"The design was pretty far off, in terms of the actual mechanics," Solomon says. "Design-wise, in my mind ... Enemy Unknown was going to be almost an exact remake of the original game."

In the pitch video, you can see the beginnings of a train wreck. Solomon's design adheres to the hardest of hardcore strategy components of the original XCOM and then adds more. There are tons of soldiers, shot modes and time units. But perhaps what would eventually cause the most drama and confusion over the next few years was the one thing Solomon wanted in the game more than anything else: random maps.

...

"In our vertical slice, we had eight to 10 soldiers," Solomon says. "We had time units; we had people disembarking from the Skyranger into a procedurally generated level ... it was very much like the original game."

The programmers believed they were already pushing the limits of what could be done in their game. XCOM would have a "fog of war" effect, revealing portions of the map only when the player had a unit that could see them. They were also building destructible environments, so that when players shot at parts of buildings or vehicles, those things would break apart in realistic ways. These were elements many players would expect, but they added complexity to the design. And they took time. Time everyone but Solomon believed they didn't have.

...

On the love side were hardcore fans of the original XCOM, who shared Solomon's affinity for the complexities of the game. On the hate side was everyone else, who couldn't understand what they were even looking at. The realization started to sink in that Solomon and his team had wasted more than a year designing a game that, outside of a small, core group of passionate fans, would be a complete failure.

What the hell is wrong with people?

 

[Minttunator]

Man, that 'train wreck' sounds like a great game. Oh well, at least there's Xenonauts - though it pains me to think what those guys could achieve if they had even half of Firaxis' budget.

 

[tuluse]

Re-posting what I wrote in the Unwritten thread.

It's making a really strong push to be funded in the last two days. It has got almost 10k so far today and need ~16k more to be funded.

Game looks cool, you guys should contribute.

Unrelated to Unwritten: wtf how do the civ programmers not know how to make randomly generated maps with fog of war?

 

[JudasIscariot]

Has anyone tried the demo for Malevolence: The Sword of Ahkranox yet?

http://www.malevolencegame.com/buythegame.html

There's a demo link at the top of the page. It's...it's not what I expected....