Shadowrun Returns: an old-school turn-based RPG on Kickstarter
kickstarter.com
kickstarter.com
While the investors/publishers don't think its worth it monetarily, users are demanding higher quality games and putting their money where their mouth is.
Its also a huge shift. Instead of guessing what gamers might want, putting money in, and seeing how the game does- this enables developers to get their idea fully vetted monetarily and demand-wise upfront, then take the time to develop the game.
I chuckled at this as one of the kickstarter levels on this project gets you enhanced abilities.
Really, though, does everything have to be so binary? Isn't HN above this "stereotype the worst of the worst and cast it as the only alternative" false dichotomy?
There are plenty of incredible games that publishers have supported. And in this case these guys are claiming that they're going to create a PC and a Mac version for $400,000? Really? Most "real" game cost many millions of dollars to bring to fruition.
for $400,000 you could easily retain 4 people to work on it full time for a year.
I got the impression that they were making the game anyway (for PC and tablets), and are going to use the kickstarter money to provide a Mac version, level editor, translations, additional character types, and possibly an additional city. Could be wrong though, it's not 100% clear and I agree that $400,000 can't possibly be enough to make a whole game of this magnitude.
And arguably it isn't. There's little doubt there's money in it, but not enough money to make it worth a large publisher's time.
That may be a success in their eyes - they got to make a new game, and the backers got a copy - but breaking even isn't "showing publishers what's what."
Kickstarter has no guarantees. As soon as one of these projects falls through / doesn't meet expectations the idea is going to start having problems. All it takes is one company to take $250,000 then not deliver and they undermine the entire idea.
Publishers take risks and publish games that might not be successful and if they're not successful the publisher takes the hit, not the consumer, the consumer is never made to care about failures but if consumers are the ones funding these games failures will start to matter.
That doesn't mean it's bad, though. It's like a protection shield against the scenario that you outlined.
Traditional publishers, in contrast, try to aim for a huge market, and then also need to market to that huge market. The broader the market, the simpler the game has to be. Angry birds is a good example of that.
Disclaimer: I'm currently working with friends on a game too that, much like Angry Birds, is a easy to understand simple game idea that tries to appeal a big and broad market. I'm a huge fan of insanely complex games like dwarf fortress, minecraft, or (hopefully) the upcoming notch game, though.
If the guy who makes Dwarf Fortress pitched that to EA, he'd be laughed out of the room. ASCII graphics? A super complex game? They wouldn't get it. Probably the same with Minecraft. EA would be asking for DLC's, achievements posting via some proprietary Facebook app, and micro-transaction purchases to buy more blocks. Plus super heavy DRM. They wouldn't have thought it would sell and wouldn't have touched it as a publisher. Their loss.
If you have a people who are willing to pledge enough for you to make a game that they enjoy and leaves you net positive in the bank, I think that's a worthwhile enough cause. There are plenty of creative people who are just as happy (if not happier) making things for a smaller but more passionate fanbase.
The traditional AAA game industry is build based on the idea that targeting the mass market is the only viable business strategy; Kickstarter's been getting so much buzz lately because it's one of the few examples in modern gaming history that suggests there might be a commercially viable alternative for those who would prefer, for whatever reason, to not operate within the AAA model.
There is a downside to this, which is the respective author might not be motivated anymore for the project and thus would do a poor job. Or worse, the company owning the rights to the projects, may decide it's not worth selling it back to the original author and therefore create their own version that's not up to par with the author's vision. Perhaps this could be avoided by specifically targeting the original author so that only s/he could receive the funding.
But ultimately, I guess the problem is that if it's proven there's a huge interest in a project, then the current rights owner may be more reluctant to give up the rights or only at a much higher cost.
The biggest benefit to the developer here is that they have paid for initial development up front AND they get to sell this game on Steam and other market places once it releases.
Even with a moderate PR push from any one of these companies if they sell 100K copies at 10 dollars a piece (or even less) they have come out WAY ahead on this project.
Obviously a big publisher like Activision or EA is going to scoff at something like a 10 Million dollar profit when they need to fund the rest of their operations + split that revenue with the developer. They take risks but only when they know the chances of meeting their return percentage is higher than a certain threshold.
What was the last game you can remember from a big publisher that took a huge risk?
According to the video other games were made based on the same RPG (I never played any of them) but the video hints that these were not so popular with the "true" fans of the original RPG and this game aims to right those wrongs.
At least that's the impression I got.
wonder why there never was a movie or tv series in such a setting, seems way cooler than vampires.
kickstarter seems to become the ycombinator for gaming, which is awesome in its own. will be interesting if they'll ever compete.
I do however understand their reasoning. Their cold, realistic and undoubtedly true reasoning.
So excited..
No Linux or multiplayer in the first version though.. But I'd rather have a solid and detailed core product, and get MP in v2, if v1 works out..
I have to wonder, if you create a Mac version of a game how difficult would it be to port it to Linux?
I understand that games designed specifically around Windows (and therefor DirectX) are going to be a pain to port over to a platform without DirectX.
Surely though Mac versions of games are all based on OpenGL and most Linux distributions have OpenGL support too (as well as both being Unix type OSes) so surely the port is not that difficult?
It almost seems justified to have some project that aims to make it easy to port Mac games to Linux, if that was the case then you would see a massive increase in the number of Linux games available.
Even if they get more funding, the "Stretch goals" are all around more content and more tools, not new features or new ports..
I'm really glad this kickstarter got funded, the Shadowrun universe has always been one of my favorites.