Obsidian's doing a Kickstarter, what are your thoughts?
- Thread starter woodaba
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That's the beauty of it. If you have a reason to suspect that the project won't go through, you don't give them your money. And it is going to happen. But it also allows people to get their ideas off of the ground in ways that they never could before. I helped fund a CD a few months ago. And now I have a new CD to listen to by a band I love. But they're an a capella band that sings about fairies and pirates and death. What record label would have ever signed them? With Kickstarter, they can fund their own CDs, and have done so.KoudelkaMorgan said:
I honestly hope this works for them. I hope Obsidian makes a good, mostly bug-free game that people will love for years and years. All my experiences with them have been fairly negative, mostly the mess that was KotOR II. I really hope that this game comes out and is so good that I have to change my mind. I don't think it will, but I'd like it to.
"Look at the most recent one with those poor guys at Obsidian. They did Fallout: New Vegas, the ship date got moved up and, who does the QA on a project? The publisher is always in charge of QA. When a project goes out buggy, it?s not the developer. The developer never says, ?I refuse to fix the bug,? or, ?I don?t know how.? They never do that. It?s the publisher that does the QA, so if a product goes out buggy, it?s not the developer?s fault. So, (Fallout: New Vegas) goes out buggy and they didn?t do the QA, their ship date got moved up and they missed their metacritic rating by one point. Did they get a bonus? No. Do you think that?s fair? I tried to get some of my publisher friends, who I used to make a lot of money for, to donate. Do you think they donated? No. Their employees did."KoudelkaMorgan said:
-Brian Fargo, source
I'll also repeat what I said above in response to another poster in that I think it's fantastic that these developers have an alternative means of funding personal projects and niche market titles they really want to do. Indeed I hope more developers do it even, I want to see what happens when an experienced and equipped studio is given free reign on a project they want to do as opposed to the one they have to do because it's what the publishers will allow.
Yes, and April 2014 is one year and 7 months in the future. Way closer to 1 and a half than 2. Well, it will get delayed, though - I won't even pretend I was the first to call it.The_Lost_King said:no it will be @ years[sub]intentional that time[/sub]. Under the promotions it said that it was estimated to arrive a April 14 2014.DoPo said:It's not that much. More like ! and a half years.The_Lost_King said:Well, before the postponing, that is.
Oh, and the project has $469,968 at the time of writing. Not bad, I'd say. And by the time I finished this message, it received another 2k (I also updated the sum before I hit "Post").
And this happens, oh so often. Yeah, I mean, there are only the past successful kickstarters to show us that not everything is doom and gloom and not everybody runs off to the Bahamas, presumably giggling and presumably carrying large sacks of money with dollar signs painted on them.KoudelkaMorgan said:
Oh, and I'd actually pay (well, I paid, technically) to see Obsidian or another large-ish and established studio that raises some money from kickstarter and then all the devs there take their hats and leave. "Why do we need this "long term planning" stuff, and having people "not hate us", if we can just secure ourselves for a couple of years?" I'd love to actually see that. I'd laugh so hard.
Oh and
I'd love you to explain to me how the system is currently perfect and cannot be improved upon, since that seems to be an assumption you are making. I'll just dispell by pointing out Bloodlines.KoudelkaMorgan said:
Obsidian's one of the few companies that can take an existing working game engine and have it come out buggier than it came in.Anthraxus said:
I mean KOTOR2 could be a great game but it's hard to tell because it's constantly crashing on me. Sorry, some shit's just not acceptable when you pay good money for a game.
Love the idea (Kickstarter>publishers), but can't really bring myself to throw in my (financial) support (if I had a pile of disposable cash, I wouldn't think about it, but sadly it's not the case) without some, any idea of what the game will be like. It's made by Obsidian? Cool, I like those guys and I trust them to make a good game, I loved even their buggy titles, but I need something more to go on than "made by Obsidian".
Umm...what?ravenshrike said:Except publisher interference can EASILY add several months to a project. Or eat up several months of time if there is a hard deadline already in place.DoPo said:Yes, and April 2014 is one year and 7 months in the future. Way closer to 1 and a half than 2. Well, it will get delayed, though - I won't even pretend I was the first to call it.The_Lost_King said:no it will be @ years[sub]intentional that time[/sub]. Under the promotions it said that it was estimated to arrive a April 14 2014.DoPo said:It's not that much. More like ! and a half years.The_Lost_King said:
Oh, and the project has $469,968 at the time of writing. Not bad, I'd say. And by the time I finished this message, it received another 2k (I also updated the sum before I hit "Post").
We'll finally be back to the glory days of isometric topdown view. And I'll like that, to be honest.Anthraxus said:
I'm interested. Very. Interested. Waiting to see if they'll release a Linux version. [footnote]Not that I won't support them if they don't and I'm not demanding it, but I've had such a pain with trying to run windows games lately.[/footnote]
Definitely interested in the companions they mentioned since the companions in FO:NV were some of (if not) the best parts of that game.
Definitely interested in the companions they mentioned since the companions in FO:NV were some of (if not) the best parts of that game.
They raise funds for the project. The same way you'll fund a startup business. Kickstarter projects have various rewards for depending on how much you pledge. Higher pledges give you all the lower stuff plus something bigger, so for example, if you pledge 25 bucks, you will get a digital copy of the game when it comes out, if you pay $65, you will also get a boxed copy, if you pay $100, they'll throw in a T-shirt, a thank you card from the team and thanks in the credits. And so on and so forth. Different projects usually offer different rewards. In effect, you can can consider it a pre-order - a pre-started game pre-order.Odbarc said:
I am well aware of how software development works and what potential hiccups will there be. I am not sure what made you mention it in the first place, though.ravenshrike said:When making a game for a publisher, and frequency can depend on the publisher in question, the publisher will demand "milestones" for showing progress. These milestones may or may not make sense from the developers perspective to be at in that part of the development stage, but that is what the publishers will demand. So making sure the milestone is met causes work to stop on other parts of the project, and then there is time setting up whatever presentation it is. Then, at these milestones, the publisher will generally demand changes. These changes may be minor or they may be major, it depends on the publisher. A rather CLEAR example of this would be the change from Overstrike to Fuse which is almost certainly at the insistence of EA. So at that point they have to go back and make changes, which eats up more time, especially if the changes require any major tinkering with the game engine. So, depending on just what the publisher wants, the time eaten up can indeed be months.DoPo said:Umm...what?ravenshrike said:Except publisher interference can EASILY add several months to a project. Or eat up several months of time if there is a hard deadline already in place.DoPo said:Yes, and April 2014 is one year and 7 months in the future. Way closer to 1 and a half than 2. Well, it will get delayed, though - I won't even pretend I was the first to call it.The_Lost_King said:no it will be @ years[sub]intentional that time[/sub]. Under the promotions it said that it was estimated to arrive a April 14 2014.DoPo said:It's not that much. More like ! and a half years.The_Lost_King said:
Oh, and the project has $469,968 at the time of writing. Not bad, I'd say. And by the time I finished this message, it received another 2k (I also updated the sum before I hit "Post").
Yeah, I was pretty stoked when the Kickstarter Page came up this morning. Even though I'm not a huge fan of traditional fantasy settings or of the Infinity Engine's pause and play system (what with having Tim Cain on board I was sort of hoping they'd take the Temple of Elemental Evil approach to combat but oh well), I do love story driven games with branching dialogue trees and memorable companions, so I backed the project without hesitation. After all, no one makes story-driven RPGs better than Obsidian.
I think this is AWESOME news, and with any luck this will free Obsidian from the publisher pressure that has probably contributed to if not outright created their bug/unfinished game problem!
I hope contributors go on their forums and make it VERY CLEAR that REASONABLE DELAYS in the release date will be acceptable but THERE ARE LIMITS. Obsidian does some AMAZING stuff but it also tends to come along with some AMAZING screwups.
In any case, I expect this to be fully-funded before tomorrow. No kidding.
I hope contributors go on their forums and make it VERY CLEAR that REASONABLE DELAYS in the release date will be acceptable but THERE ARE LIMITS. Obsidian does some AMAZING stuff but it also tends to come along with some AMAZING screwups.
In any case, I expect this to be fully-funded before tomorrow. No kidding.
Temple of Elemental Evil had the *most accurate* 3.5 combat by far. Too bad the rest of the game was so utterly whack.eimatshya said:
They're creating their own system though, aren't they?