Game News Publisher Exploiting An Obsidian Kickstarter

[tuluse]

I think you should seriously reconsider your wishes. A castle would be more awesome than any old school rgp. It would be made of real stone, heavy stone, that you could really touch and feel, an it would have a real dungeon beneath.
wtf
do you really not see that my point is people should not get money for things they promise to do from people who are not capable of overseeing their project? this is not about those who succeed in bringing a new old game on the market, even if they get rich on someone elses money but about those who will just promise to do it for the gain?

Infinitron

and

a 33% chance of return of your investment which in your case would be just to play a nice game, because you're to limited to see more potential in your money, is still not a smart investment.

@the nice person who loves me so passionately that he can't refrain from covering me with his love even if I didn't specifically ask for it

Obsidian has promised to make something I want. I find them trustworthy enough to trust with my $30 (not much money if you're counting at home).

You have not promised something similar, and I don't find you trustworthy.

I give you for your persistence and getting this many replies.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

Butthurt publisher detected.

It's donating, not investing, fucktard. Big difference. Not to say there aren't those who throw their money left and right, but still, it has nothing to do with investing.

You are investing in the future of gaming, duh.

 

[skuphundaku]

You people do realize kickstarter is evil, don't you?

Basically someone has an idea, tells you to finance it, you give him the money and maybe you'll someday get to play something good.
Outcome of the story has 3 possibilities:
1. The game never comes out - no money back, no interest (as an investor which you are or a shareholder which you should be since you've invested, you've been screwed) - you lose
2. The game comes out but it sucks - no money back, no interest (as an investor which you are or a shareholder which you should be since you've invested, you've been screwed) - you lose
3. The game comes out and it's good - still no money back, no interest (as an investor which you are or a shareholder which you should be since you've invested, you've been screwed) - you still lose

I might get stoned for this, but I have to say that the only reason why kickstarter is successful, is that somebody has found a way to shift the risk of an investment to those who are the least qualified to even realize they're risking something, to those who lack any overview over how finance works, to those who are gullible enough to think the win something by losing, which is you, the sheeple and not only not to share any of the sales' profits with the investors (you, the sheeple) but to not even return the investment in case of success.

So you see publishers as the daemons of capitalism when these daemons at least take the risk of failure from the developers and pay the developers for their work and you don't see the devil that takes everything, leaving the investors, you, the sheeple, without their money and without any profit from the investment.

It's like giving your money to a beggar who will build himself a castle founded on your ignorance.

Once again the stupidest kind of people is the masses and you can always rely on them not only to not see the whole picture but to not even see their own actions as wrong.

Wake up and smell the shit you're in!

Since i know I'll be criticized by people who can't read, I'll try to make things clearer by saying that I realize publishers may be bad, but kickstarter is worse.

DU, this is why we need the dumbfuck button.

 

[groke]

A castle would be more awesome than any old school rgp. It would be made of real stone, heavy stone, that you could really touch and feel, an it would have a real dungeon beneath.

LARPer detected.

 

[Executer]

also, just like me, people will promise you to try to get rich off your money - the games they make whether good or not is not the real goal. If it were, they'd sell it to some publisher, because as you've already stated, publishers have the capability to reach more people. As it has been quoted, the actual thread, never stated anything about the publisher wanting to change the game, just not wanting to share profits - so if you don't get it now, you probably never will - it's about profit, not about the game.

Is that you Bobby?

 

[Spectacle]

There is always some risk involved in spending money on games. Even if the game is finished, has received great reviews and you've played and liked the demo, there is no guarantee that you will enjoy the full game.
Donating to a game in development through kickstarter may come with higher risk of not getting your money's worth, but you also have a good chance of getting much more than your money's worth, so it's a fair deal.

 

[Spectacle]

I'd like to play a game with you:

Let's say i wanted to build a castle. How much money would you donate so i can realize my dream without having to work for it? Of course, you will be allowed to look at my castle once it's done, and it will be an awesome one with lots of very high towers. You will not be allowed to enter it and you will certainly not be allowed to live in it and i don't think I'll have the time to personally thank you for your contribution since I'll have to build it, then turn it into a hotel, then managing my business, then retiring and enjoying my profit. Then again, i just might lay a few stones and quit while I still have enough leftover from my donations to retire right away - who could blame me, when I never really promised anything and noone has any right to ask for his money back?

How much would I donate to you? Absolutely nothing, but that's not because there's anything inherently wrong with the idea of building a castle, but because you're a whiny nobody who probably couldn't build a sand castle on a beach if you tried.
Historically though, collecting donations from the public has been an important to fund monumental constructions, so it's not like there's anything new about what you're proposing, you just have to collect money for something people want instead of your personal castle.

Regarding your last point; no matter what the kickstarter terms say, deliberate misuse of donated funds is criminal fraud and will likely land you in prison.

 

[St. Toxic]

I'd like to play a game with you:

Let's say i wanted to build a castle. How much money would you donate so i can realize my dream without having to work for it? Of course, you will be allowed to look at my castle once it's done, and it will be an awesome one with lots of very high towers. You will not be allowed to enter it and you will certainly not be allowed to live in it and i don't think I'll have the time to personally thank you for your contribution since I'll have to build it, then turn it into a hotel, then managing my business, then retiring and enjoying my profit. Then again, i just might lay a few stones and quit while I still have enough leftover from my donations to retire right away - who could blame me, when I never really promised anything and noone has any right to ask for his money back?

Hi!

I represent a group of investors who've been interested in backing a "castle project" for quite some time. We're willing to fund your project, provided that you can show competence in managing it, over a series of monthly installments, varying in quantity in relation to the progress of construction. If you're interested, we've got our own castle experts who'll help you realize your dream-castle in a way that's more likely to be economically viable in the future. Naturally, the castle will primarily be ours, but the satisfaction of having built it is all yours, provided you do it the way we tell you to.

Maybe we could have lunch and talk about it? Our marketing department has some great insight on castle building, in fact there are some suggestions that taking it more into a night-club/fast-food direction may be the way to go.

Best regards,

St. Toxic
CEO
DreamSWAT (LTD)

 

[Reapa]

Dexter wrote:

but people aren't fucking stupid

then how do you explain publishers making so many shitty games and selling them to millions?

 

[Reapa]

Spectacle wrote:

Regarding your last point; no matter what the kickstarter terms say, deliberate misuse of donated funds is criminal fraud and will likely land you in prison.

define likely please
Devs want to do their job and get paid for it even in the process, so if a game doesn't come out they still lived on that money for as long as they were doing something for the project.
And that is where it gets complicated:
How much money should they be allowed to spend on their lifestyle? What car should they drive? Should they eat at home or be able to go to restaurants like serious business men? Should they be allowed to buy expensive equipment for the project or just some webcams and a mouse? How expensive should expensive equipment allowed to be?
How much progress should they make in how much time?
Who should overview their progress?
And if the progress is being overviewed, then where the fuck is your so called independence from "publishers"?
Please bear in mind that these are just a few of the questions publishers can and will answer if they invest their money in a game and pay the devs for their project. So how much thought do you think donators invest when what they want to see is just the final game and don't want to be bothered with financial management?

 

[Reapa]

St. Toxic wrote:

Hi!

I represent a group of investors who've been interested in backing a "castle project" for quite some time. We're willing to fund your project, provided that you can show competence in managing it, over a series of monthly installments, varying in quantity in relation to the progress of construction. If you're interested, we've got our own castle experts who'll help you realize your dream-castle in a way that's more likely to be economically viable in the future. Naturally, the castle will primarily be ours, but the satisfaction of having built it is all yours, provided you do it the way we tell you to.

Maybe we could have lunch and talk about it? Our marketing department has some great insight on castle building, in fact there are some suggestions that taking it more into a night-club/fast-food direction may be the way to go.

Best regards,

St. Toxic
CEO
DreamSWAT (LTD)

Hi,

It's nice of you to make me such an interesting offer, but i have to say, I'd rather rely on the masses to finance my castle for obvious reasons.

 

[felipepepe]

then how do you explain publishers making so many shitty games and selling them to millions?

Millions of people have shitty taste? Honestly, that's the best answer, they actually like and enjoy what you think it's shitty. And I don't blame then, it's entertaiment, they are free to have fun as they want, playing CoD, watching trash tv or listening to Justin Bieber.

My issue is that, unlike other industries where there's a nice mix of everything, game publishers are narrow-minded retards and created a market where "there can be only AAA", so games have to target the shitty taste of the masses to sell millions and no one is making niche game I like anymore. Thus, when talented artists ask for patronage to make games I want, I see what they propose and perhaps help to do so.

Why? Because I want to do so, I want to see what they can do unbounded, just like patrons did since the ancient era, helping bros like da Vinci & Michellangelo to make their art. And this is why we can have nice things, not everyone want to stockpile jewgold as a hobby.

Also, quit bothering people about how they spend their hard-earned money.

 

[St. Toxic]

interesting offer, but i have to say

Nice comeback. It's odd seeing someone miss the point of their own analogy. If people want castles, big impractical constructions made with obsolete technology and obviously no mass-market appeal, then, at the cost of a soda-pop, pitching in is neither gullible or altruistic. You either get what you want or you don't, but you certainly enable the possibility of getting what you want. A corporation wouldn't even consider it unless there was an angle on which they could profit, they ow that to their investors, to their employees. If it's a choice between paying towards a goal that you approve of or keeping your money in the hopes that your interests eventually intersect with those of a money-making machine, only non-human entities would opt for the latter. Money, after all, is merely a representation of effort, and if you're unwilling to put any effort towards things that you want, which always entails risk, then you are either not alive or not conscious to the degree where you can make active choices.

 

[Dexter]

then how do you explain publishers making so many shitty games and selling them to millions?

It's called marketing.
"Marketing is what you do when your product is no good"

If you keep screaming about it and spending 2-3x the money of the actual product and put it on large enough walls:

eventually it is going to stick, and if it becomes a "cultural teenage sensation" like Call of Doody it's even better since they can't not buy your game without being considered social outcasts.

Same thing with Justin Bieber, Twilight or any other such "sensation", the demand is created by marketing, the truly great singers and movies (that also become classics) won't really need that though, because in the time of the Internet they'll become known without it.

The actually good and creative games sell multiple millions with barely any marketing at all because people will talk about them and ask their friends "Have you tried this?, it's pretty cool." etc. and things like DayZ start selling a million ARMA2 copies or MineCraft suddenly becomes a 10 Million brand.

 

[Reapa]

Fascinating how people will answer to rhetorical questions. When I said "how do you explain big companies selling so much shit?" it was related to the thesis that people are not stupid and only to that. Any answer to a clear statement as if it were a question is clearly obsolete. But thanks for caring.

 

[Dexter]

Fascinating how people will answer to rhetorical questions. When I said "how do you explain big companies selling so much shit?" it was related to the thesis that people are not stupid and only to that. Any answer to a clear statement as if it were a question is clearly obsolete. But thanks for caring.

That's good for you, except it has a clear answer, most of these types of AAA ventures success in any field if they aren't revolutionary or great by themselves are proportionally dependent on the marketing budget spent, and the beautiful thing is nobody is immune to all forms of marketing and we all fall for it every now and then.

It's different when something has inherent quality but near to no marketing budget and devs etc. have to rely on that quality to spread word around and make people and "journalists" etc. want talk about it because they inherently think it's cool and not because of Advertisement budget or because it's the "Next Big Thing".

Maybe you should work on your arguments getting less shit and get back to us, so you can actually persuade people with your points and have a leg to stand on instead of going "WAGRGRGAHASAAAAABBAALAAAA!!!!!" all over the place.

 

[Reapa]

minecraft is not good, arma2 doesn't ring any bell - i just know that morrowind was good and it got changed to oblivion, why? because the masses were unable to find caius cosades based only on text, which they obviously couldn't read. And arcanum was good, but it sold so few copies that the company went bankrupt, why? because good games won't sell millions! It's just your dream that there are any millions of people out there with the capacity to think during a game. And that is why big companies won't invest in good games, because they're not profitable. Wow and Diablo 3 sold millions, but if you analyse how they did that, it's the same story. Wow was good in the beginning, when you had to do quests relevant to a nice story and get to play with your friends to achieve some of the goals, but it only sold millions about the time addons like questhelper came out so idiots could find the fish in the river without any thinking process. And diablo3? Marketing, franchise and the promise that "it will be good". Well, it wasn't. Why? Because the idea of the game was to look for good items and find some once in a while, but there were none to find in the whole fucking game. And what was the response of the community? Not that the items stink, but that the game was too hard to play. So as a company, what will you do to satisfy not only your shareholders but also your buyers at the same time? They didn't improve the items, they gave people nerfs so that they could run through inferno like it were normal and they gave them magic find, to make them able to find even more useless shit. And the people loved it. At least most of those that were still playing after the whole mess.
Did any of the disappointed people get their money back? No. Even though their money went away in a binding contract that was supposed to ensure they will receive what they pay for. And that the project will be overviewed by people who should know what they're doing. And you want to tell me that totally independent devs will care more for the money you give them? Some, but very few at all.
I give you that ftl was a good game, but if you thing about the effort put in it and you compare it to some big game than since the cost for 10gb code is about 50€ and the cost for 100mb in this case at about 5€ (these are just estimate no real numbers, but should be close enough), then you pay about 10 times more since 100mb should only cost about 0.5€. You could say that ftl is such a good game that it's worth the money even if you were to pay 100 times more - true. But what if ftl had 10gb? well then it wouldn't only be good but also last about forever. And big companies could do that, there is just not enough demand.
The problem is not the system - the problem is the people.

 

[skuphundaku]

^This is some next-gen Wyrmlord/Skyway shit right here. Bro, if you don't burn out quickly (you being a newfag and all), you have the potential to enter the hallowed grounds of the RPG Codex Shitposters Pantheon™. You will join such titans like Skyway, Andhaira, Wyrmlord, Volourn and Prosper. You will be able to have a spot in future polls discussing the topic of which retards should represent the Codex and torment the world at large at the behest of the Codex Hivemind.

Much potential in you I sense!

 

[tuluse]

According to Tim Cain, all Troika's games sold enough copies to make money, and they still couldn't get a publisher to fund them.

That's why kickstarter exists.

 

[laclongquan]

The smell of trolls are heavy in this patch of ground.

 

[Reapa]

tuluse, if they sold enough to make money, why would they need any help from any publisher any more? try to think at least one step further.
the statement stands as it is: the people are the problem and that is not going to be changed by any other system

 

[Jarpie]

^This is some next-gen Wyrmlord/Skyway shit right here. Bro, if you don't burn out quickly (you being a newfag and all), you have the potential to enter the hallowed grounds of the RPG Codex Shitposters Pantheon™. You will join such titans like Skyway, Andhaira, Wyrmlord, Volourn and Prosper. You will be able to have a spot in future polls discussing the topic of which retards should represent the Codex and torment the world at large at the behest of the Codex Hivemind.

Much potential in you I sense!

He is already shitposter.

 

[Infinitron]

tuluse, if they sold enough to make money, why would they need any help from any publisher any more? try to think at least one step further.

Oh, the irony.

Do you know what publishers receive in exchange for funding developers' games?

 

[felipepepe]

the statement stands as it is: the people are the problem and that is not going to be changed by any other system

Problem to who? Publishers and regular gamers are happy with the AAA market; Codex's monocled gentlemen and developers are happy with crowdfunding... only you stand butthurted on both cases.

 

[Black]

Damn, Germans are stupid. In 1939 they weren't as dumb.