Fighting game Skullgirls reaches crowdfunding goal in less than 24 hours
venturebeat.com
venturebeat.com
I thought this was for the full game.
Raise tens of thousands of dollars for charity = get kicked out of conventions? I have no idea how Evo works, but I assume I must be reading that wrong...
For comparison, Skullgirls' budget was around $1.7
million and, since Filia was complete at the time
of signing, that covered production of the last
seven characters.
EDIT: also, what is "Hit-box Contracting"?
I was a designer on the game, and while it's hard to look back and tell you exactly how much time was spent on character specific stuff vs. general features since people's time was often split awkwardly, I'd say the clear majority of resources were spent on character specific stuff. Art was by far the largest team, and worked almost exclusively on character specific stuff. Design was more evenly split, but definitely leaned towards characters. Tech was unsurprisingly mostly other features, but was a small, small team (poor Ben and Rick )= )
And there's also the more mundane possibility that a fair chunk on the money is submission costs for Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network.
In all likelihood, it's going to be done by hand, with someone going over every frame of animation, defining the hitbox. Even if there was an automatic way to generate a hit-box, they would likely have to go through at least move by move to make sure there are no balance issues.
Showing a large budget just for hitboxes communicates to the fighting game community that they know what they're doing. Yeah, hitboxes are extremely important to the feel of the game. They need to get it done right.
This is not your typical venture. The team at Skullgirls has proven themselves already. Before even starting this game, the lead designer was a top player in the fighting game scene (Mike Z). He was around as the American Fighting game scene began, and taught many how to play fighting games at an interstate level (Puny Americans lose to Gigantic Tager!!). One can argue that they are community leaders in some respects.
Ask anyone in the scene, they know what Skullgirls is: the only "real" American hyper-fighter. They are very tightly integrated into the community in levels that few startups can even imagine. This isn't some sort of Mortal Kombat newbie piece of trash, this is a game with an actual skill ceiling.
If you're in the fighting game scene, supporting this project is a must. Its not even a matter of getting value out of this, its about supporting players you respect... highly skilled players who have ventured out of their way to develop a fighting game.
This is more to a testament to the Fighting Game community, than it is to Skullgirls itself. We're freaks, and proud of it, and proud to support our brethren. There are only so many people who can consistently execute combos with 1/60th of a second accuracy (aka: 1-frame links), while simultaneously setting you up for a standing reset. There are only so many people who even understand what that means... and the Skullgirls team is one of the few that not only understands this stuff... but also designs the game at that level and improves around it. (Skullgirls is the only 2d fighter with Anti High/low unblockable setups recognition for example)
I dare say, they are the only ones in America who can balance the game at this level. The other companies who understand this sort of stuff are all in Japan, and even compared to them Skullgirls has pushed the envelope. Supporting Skullgirls is supporting the Fighting Game Scene, the only real Fighting Game company in America, and bringing top tier gameplay into the American Game Design world.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/127524225/The-Educated-Gentleperso...
I uploaded it to scribd without the writer's permission, because insert credit hasn't solved their recurrent problem with malware on wordpress. The original article is at:
http://insertcredit.com/2013/01/14/the-educated-gentleperson...
Hell, notice that the most expensive slots, the $1000 donation level and $500 donation level, are sold out. People are lining up to support Skullgirls. They probably should open up more $1000 donation level slots to get more money.
The $250 donation level is also sold out, correlating with another common cost of fighting game aficionados: a full custom stick. Fighting game players see the price and think: "Am I willing to donate a custom stick to the Skullgirls cause"?? Yeah, why not?
Speaking of which, no custom stick from the Skullgirls team? Son, I am disappoint. They probably can raise a good $500 per stick if they just scribbled their names on a custom stick (Sanwa parts, etc. etc.) and put it up as a reward.
1. for a limited time
I feel sick.
None of this is public good. It is 100% pure gravy for them. It's "give me money with a modest kickback". I wouldn't even of cared that much if not for that video, shouting at the audience "She's free! Free! She's completely free! And she's free! Also she's free"
for a limited time only, then we're riding this gravy train straight to las vegas.
Normally, the publisher would have fronted this money. The publisher is out of the picture, and they're now self-publishing, so they turned to their rabid fan base for the dough.
People who participate in the campaign get the character for free. People who don't participate in the fundraising campaign can still get the character for free for 3 months because of the previous generosity of the campaign participants.
As others have said, their budget doesn't add up, and their pre-amble reeks of marketing. Those two factors, taken with the amount of people who have donated after seeing those two factors... It's not OK.
Have you ever developed a fighting game before? A fighting game balanced for a dozen or more unique fighting styles, sizes, and speeds? No? Then you have no idea how much effort it takes to design, code, test, and tweak a character design to make it fair. Skullgirls isn't your yearly Battlefield Whatever; it's a tournament-caliber game intended for a hardcore audience of gamers which thinks absolutely nothing about dropping hundreds of dollars for a customized video game pad.
Custom Sticks are generally offered to the fighting game community. If they had the signatures of the dev team on them, they'd be able to sell them for a pretty penny for fundraising. It'd be a great "reward" for indiegogo. (especially since the $1000 and $500 tiers are "sold out", they probably should offer something on the high end... like a signed custom stick with commissioned artwork)
If a publisher had funded the project, the publisher would get a cut of the proceeds. instead, the public is funding the project, and they're using it to re-market the game, then sell the character at 100% profit.
Let me ask you a question: Have you ever developed a fighting game before? A fighting game balanced for a dozen or mode unique fighting styles, sies, and speed? No? Then you have no idea how much effort it takes to design, code, test, and tweak a character design to make it fair. So you shouldn't babble about it to other people to defend a game, that in your mind, could do no wrong.
The Skullgirls team is highly respected in the fighting game community. They not only are catering to their niche, they are the only company in the USA who is catering to their niche.
Just because their budget is small doesn't mean that they're a non-serious company, or part of a crowdfunding fad. They are the real deal to fighting game players, especially those who specialize in "Hyper-fighters". (MvC, BlazBlue, and Skullgirls)
This game has been big news in the fighting game community, mostly because it's seriously high quality and the developers have lots of community credentials. Great. However, their publisher dropped them following a legal spat, and as a result, they aren't getting paid anymore, despite having a PC port to finish up and some new characters that they'd like to implement.
This money is not just to finish a character; it's also an indicator that the community likes this game enough to continue to support its creators. More practically, it's salary for them for a few months.
> $48,000: Staff Salaries - 8 people for 10 weeks
Am I underestimating the job or this manpower is ridiculous? Game is already there, they are adding a new character.
We're talking on the order of thousands (if not tens of thousands) of animation frames, typically partially or completely hand-drawn for a 2D game (or hand-animated in a 3D app for a 3D game), along with sound effects and game balance and programming to implement the character's ability set. Then there's testing...