Information Thorvalla Kickstarter goes online

[PosledniKovboj]

Creator G3 Studios 33 minutes ago

Thank you all for your support and your words of encouragement. We are well aware, of course, that we are trying to raise a pretty hefty amount of money, but we are hopeful that we can make it. I understand fully that many of you are starving for more information and details, I wager, most of you would even love to play the actual game, but alas, it is not to be yet. We are in the early stages of the project and much of the material we are working on is still in limbo. I do not want to put entirely incomplete material out there or talk about game elements that have not even been fully decided upon. It would only create confusion and expectations that we might not be able to fulfill further down the line.
I am absolutely determined to fill you guys in as we go along and there are some elements of the game I will be able to talk about in the coming days. I've also been working on a bunch of interviews, so make sure to check around the web on gaming websites for these to pop up. I will try my best to create regular updates that also contain links to the relevant press coverage to save you guys some time and get to the meat quickly.
Please make sure to help us spread the word and tell others about this Kickstarter campaign so we can grow the momentum in the coming weeks. Again, thank you so much for you show of support. We are all stoked and excited about this project and can't wait to throw our full energy behind it.
Guido

We can't tell you what kind of game we're making, because we don't know yet. Well good fucking luck to you then. Jesus.

 

[Kz3r0]

We can't tell you what kind of game we're making, because we don't know yet. Well good fucking luck to you then. Jesus.

The worst problems of this project, lack of vision and lack of focus, disappointing.

 

[Hobo Elf]

We can't tell you what kind of game we're making, because we don't know yet. Well good fucking luck to you then. Jesus.

The worst problems of this project, lack of vision and lack of focus, disappointing.

Pretty much the same reason why the KS for Bratwursts game failed.

 

[Charles-cgr]

Too many people expect small teams with no budget to have a working demo to show for a kickstarter. Publishers have little to fear, the crowdfunding era may be very short-lived after all.

 

[Zed]

I think this is the problem in a nutshell:

We are all stoked and excited about this project and can't wait to throw our full energy behind it.

They should already have their full energy behind it.

If this is all developers are gonna muster... if they can't commit before the money comes in... well, then the million-dollar crowdfunded CRPG ship has sailed. Especially if your project isn't something like BG3.

Hero-U struggling is kinda understandable because at a first glance it looks like a kids' puzzle game. But Shaker, and this... it's entirely the creator's fault for not thinking things through.

 

[PosledniKovboj]

Nah, the crowdfunding era is alive and well, it's just this half-assed attempt to get 1 mil and then do SOMETHING with it

 

[Kz3r0]

Too many people expect small teams with no budget to have a working demo to show for a kickstarter. Publishers have little to fear, the crowdfunding era may be very short-lived after all.

Fargo had vision and focus, Obsidian stumbled all over the place but could count on mainstream fame and lots of good will from backers because in the end we all know that they will deliver, oh, and they didn't have any demo.

 

[Zed]

Too many people expect small teams with no budget to have a working demo to show for a kickstarter. Publishers have little to fear, the crowdfunding era may be very short-lived after all.

Not necessarily a demo.
But for an RPG to have a design down for combat and game systems... you only need a pen and paper for that.

And yes, it's not totally unreasonable for people to expect a little more from the initial pitch. After all you have all these preceding kickstarters and their updates to draw inspiration and ideas from.

 

[skuphundaku]

Too many people expect small teams with no budget to have a working demo to show for a kickstarter. Publishers have little to fear, the crowdfunding era may be very short-lived after all.

But a lot of teams had working code. Some of them made it (FleetCOMM, Legends of Eisenwald, Xenonauts, Dead State, Expeditions: Conquistador, Blackspace) and some of them didn't (Skyjacker, Ground Branch, Sui Generis[most likely]). Working code is not a guarantee of success, even if the working code is really good (Skyjacker, Ground Branch, Sui Generis) and a lack of working code can be compensated by other things, especially by reputation (DFA, WL2, P:E). Giving money to people that have no working code and no reputation is foolhardy, to say the least. If a group can't be assed to create a working prototype and have no previous relevant experience, why would anyone fund them? On a promise alone? Ideas are a dime a dozen, the implementation is the litmus test. People expecting working code is just separating wheat from the chaff, which, in the long term is going to prove beneficial for crowd-funded game development, not the other way around.

 

[Charles-cgr]

Kz3r0 My point is that the first few benefited from a certain leniency from the backers. Fargo's pitch was in great part directed against publishers (remember that video with the kid that got it all started) and up until the end an 8-bit version was still a possibility (hard to be any more vague than that).

Zed My comment was directed at the people that require screenshots or mockups, which require quite a bit of investment already. I doubt that a few pencil diagrams detailing mechanics would do any better.

PosledniKovboj It isn't doing SOMETHING, it is putting some proven minds in the industry to work to create a traditional RPG, free from publisher intervention. That was appealing 6 months ago. Now it isn't even mentioned anymore, even though no matter what comes out of it, it'll almost certainly be worth more than $60 worth of... Anything. It took six months for that magic pitch to go stale. That is why I think the whole crowdfunding thing is deflating.

Like I said previously, either you show too much and fail by dividing your potential audience or not enough and fail by getting them to call you lazy and unfocused. There doesn't seem to be any way left to win. KS is becoming a way to get the capital already invested back on pre-orders for a near completed game or large investments in fancy cinematics (Star Citizen) and a marketing medium. It is completely deviating.

EDIT - skuphundaku I am referring to projects by proven minds, as specified above. Beginners need working code and can only hope for token budgets. I'm fine with that, it's called paying your dues.

 

[skuphundaku]

Like I said previously, either you show too much and fail by dividing your potential evidence or not enough and fail by getting them to call you lazy and unfocused. There doesn't seem to be any way left to win. KS is becoming a way to get the capital already invested back on pre-orders for a near completed game or large investments in fancy cinematics (Star Citizen) and a marketing medium. It is completely deviating.

Kickstarter fatigue is not just a fable anymore. I have 80+ projects that I pledged to and I don't even want to talk about how much money that means. If latecomers can't realize that there's only so much people can give to Kickstarter projects and that their projects don't just happen in a vacuum, then all I can say is "Fuck those losers!". It's not about some sad death of the anti-publisher spirit, it's about the fact that a lot of developers are showing very little sense and intelligence when deciding about how and when to run their campaigns.

I am referring to projects by proven minds, as specified above. Beginners need working code and can only hope for token budgets. I'm fine with that, it's called paying your dues.

What is proven and what isn't is in the eye of the beholder. If you're familiar with a certain developer and his work, then you can make an informed decision whether to consider him proven or not, but if you've never heard about him, then all his experience is meaningless. This is one of the problem of this pitch: outside of a few small communities, nobody even heard about these guys and their games. For most people, for all intents and purposes, Henkel could be fresh off the benches of DigiPen or some other game developer mill somewhere.

All in all, unless you have a massive reputation, what you do (showing running code) is much more important than what you say (telling stories in front of a camera).

 

[Moribund]

no they don't - their economy is slowing down and soon if things won't change spain + italy+portugal+france will drag them into recession.

I would love real life rpg where you controll greek people.

Great idea for an RPG. A perfect real reason to go into adventuring - economic collapse.

 

[Charles-cgr]

I am referring to projects by proven minds, as specified above. Beginners need working code and can only hope for token budgets. I'm fine with that, it's called paying your dues.

All in all, unless you have a massive reputation, what you do (showing running code) is much more important than what you say (telling stories in front of a camera).

Consider the alternative. Relying on what publishers put in awesum trailers. Even if you do not know these people, reading what people that do know them have to say about them, or seeing a gameplay video of what they worked on, or buying those games on Gog, all seem to me like better grounds for making a decision than EA / Ubisoft trailers.

Crowdfunding will always be a leap of faith (unless deviated and the product is already there to show).

The world is what we make it.

 

[UnusuallyRuthless]

Every sentence on their kickstarter page relating to classics seems to have a follow up sentence on innovation. What innovation? What, specifically, are they going to do different? The only hint seems to be the trading cards, and that is vague as fuck. At the same time, they are adamant that they haven't decided on anything yet. Except, clearly, that something must be innovated with regards to classics and that "we need them trading cards, god damn it". I don't know who they want to entice with their pitch. People who want a classic game will be put off by their ambiguous (and disturbing, think Molyneux and British for a moment) innovation claims, and the rest will be put off by the mention of classic games. Good job, plus potato minus potato equals zero fucks given.

 

[Sacred_Path]

Pledge your 15$ already faggots.

I don't want this brilliant piece of propaganda to end up being the Größter Fail Aller Zeiten

 

[skuphundaku]

Crowdfunding will always be a leap of faith ... The world is what we make it.

Yeah, that's, pretty much, it.

Starting from this simple idea, a wise person intending to start a KS campaign can carefully plan how and when to run the campaign. The problem is that many of these latecomers are neither wise nor have they carefully planned how and when to run their campaign.

 

[Dexter]

-1 Point for Intro narrator, sounds like a movie Trailer a few years ago
-1 Point for huge Mac thing on his table
-1 Point for only showing a few drawings and Animu

Also he didn't really "drop out of the games industry", he instead opted to do these instead: http://www.g3studios.com/games/

Anyway, will wait and see, but $1 Million seems rather courageous.

 

[PosledniKovboj]

Pledge your 15$ already faggots.

I don't want this brilliant piece of propaganda to end up being the Größter Fail Aller Zeiten

not that it matters, but I pledged the moment I saw this.

 

[skuphundaku]

Pledge your 15$ already faggots.

I don't want this brilliant piece of propaganda to end up being the Größter Fail Aller Zeiten

If you'll read the thread from the start, you'll notice that I already said that I pledged $100. Unfortunately, the way this is going, Amazon won't get to draw that sum from my account.

 

[PosledniKovboj]

Also he didn't really "drop out of the games industry", he instead opted to do these instead: http://www.g3studios.com/games/

holy horror

 

[UnusuallyRuthless]

Also he didn't really "drop out of the games industry", he instead opted to do these instead: http://www.g3studios.com/games/

From that site:

SAS: Commando is the latest addition to our ever-expanding mobile games catalog.
Get ready for some heart-pounding action in this commando-style infiltration game based on the SAS, the British "Special Air Service," a commando squad comparable to the American Marines, as you infiltrate enemy territory all by yourself. Will you make it back out alive?

?????????????

 

[tuluse]

This is a much stronger pitch than Shaker, which was insulting and completely devoid of any information.

They did a pretty solid job describing the setting, a poor job describing the character system (at least we know it has classes), a poor job describing the game systems (we know turn based, and overhead view, and trading card inspired and that's it).

That's about average for a kickstarter pitch, unfortunately to get 1 million, average doesn't cut it.

Also, with RPGs most customers expect interesting writing in their game. Your pitch video is a chance to show off your writing chops. This is one thing Wasteland did really well. It's something P:E did poorly but they later rectified with their updates.

Also also, their concept art kind of sucks. When you're trying to get a million bucks, it's probably worth it to shell out a few hundred to get some really high quality colored art work to show people what art style you're trying to accomplish.

All these issues range somewhere in between nit picks and legitimate criticism, and I'm actually surprised how slowly this is going. Even Shaker pulled in a cool 200k on their first day. Hopefully it means that word hasn't got out and it's real first day hasn't happened yet.

 

[Charles-cgr]

tuluse Well if you look around the gaming press there's absolutely nothing. Hopefully that'll change. I'm wondering if this is due to them not doing the PR groundwork or due to the press ignoring them...

 

[mikaelis]

Hmmm, interesting. Looks like Europe is yet to find the way to push 1M$ game through kickstarter. Or even 500K.

All the big successes were entirely associated with KWA game heroes: Eternity, W2, Schaffer game, Shadowrun, Wing Commander, Banner Saga...

Braben is the first one to be reaching these numbers, but he is UK, so not really Europe.

I would love to see Molyneux vague kickstarter about "be who you are, do what you want in the greatest computer game ever". I am 200% sure he would get more money than Guido

 

[Pope Amole II]

Hmmm, interesting. Looks like Europe is yet to find the way to push 1M$ game through kickstarter. Or even 500K.

New Elite, no?



And I don't fucking understand why is it so hard to make a decent kickstarter presentation - really, if you aim for the million you oughtta show something more than a meager bunch of lineart sketches. I'm not even asking for a decently planned game concept (though I should be, but I'm being generous to the guy who was the face of the Nameless One), just a bunch of decently drawn & detailed pieces of fucking art. But no, let's just ask public for million without telling them anything significant, fuck yeah...