Torment: Tides of Numenera Burns Up Kickstarter - UPDATED

[sindremaster]

Never thought my name would be on a tomb stone this early

 

[SonOfMethuselah]

Just watched it break $1,000,000. I don't have the money to back it, but I'll be following the project with interest. I just grabbed Planescape: Torment from GoG (I think) a few months back because I'd never actually played it before, and now it looks like I'll have to set aside the time to start my playthrough. Ugh. Such a backlog to get through.

 

[Quellist]

And it broke a mil and keeps going, my Tier has already sold out man am i glad i got in at the ground floor. If this is even half as good as Planescape:Torment its going to be worth the wait.

My only regret is i cant afford the $5k to have an Obelisk, i would have loved some kind of Tomb of Fedmahn Kassad type deal in the game with my name on it but unless i win the lottery in the next month aint gonna happen.

 

[Summerstorm]

MAN, i would love to give them my money. Have they planned a Paypal-Donation-drive after the Kickstarter? (I don't have a credit card... and don't want one).

It's so HARD to give people money, i had luck with the Shadowrun guys that they did the paypal-thing after their kickstarter succeeded.

I wished i could load up an accound with kickstarter and use that money or let them give it back to me. So maybe i should kickstart a kickstarter-bank? *g*

Captcha: play again
Hm... perhaps, captcha

 

[tautologico]

And with that said, of course, there's a vast amount of different possible cases and as such I'm not saying this as a blanket, catch all thing, but as a rule of thumb, I'd at least start having reservations if after a great success not once, but twice in a row, a developer returns to Kickstarter. Because if we get to that, we'd be starting to lose sight of the point of Kickstarter.

Let's say the team finishes pre-production of Torment before Wasteland 2 is out. They'll want to keep the pre-production team working, so it's possible they will create a third project. Also, there are no guarantees that Wasteland 2, when it is out, will make enough profit to fund another game. Maybe most people who could want W2 already backed the Kickstarter project, so they won't buy it when it's out.

I think while they keep producing good games that I want I have no problems with backing their KS projects. It's a win-win situation, I get the game I want (after development) and they get the money to develop it they way they want it.

 

[tautologico]

MAN, i would love to give them my money. Have they planned a Paypal-Donation-drive after the Kickstarter? (I don't have a credit card... and don't want one).

It's so HARD to give people money, i had luck with the Shadowrun guys that they did the paypal-thing after their kickstarter succeeded.

I wished i could load up an accound with kickstarter and use that money or let them give it back to me. So maybe i should kickstart a kickstarter-bank? *g*

Captcha: play again
Hm... perhaps, captcha

It's already there in the FAQ:

We plan to make PayPal available once we?ve hit the minimum goal. Since we can?t promise a product until we hit our target funding, we won?t offer PayPal pledges until then.

 

[Arbi Trax]

Truly, ladies and gents, we are living in a golden age! An age where, within a matter of hours, people from all corners can be brought together to back a project they want to see happen, based on nothing but good will and a desire to see the games they like - that major players in the mainstream industry are not touching with a bargepole - crafted by people who care about the same things as their customers!

Welp, time to fire up my boxed copy of PS:T and ramp up the nostalgia.

Oh, and if it matters to anyone, Mark Morgan's doing the soundtrack. Mark. Morgan.


Now, excuse me while I cover my apartment in a liberal coating of fanboy squeepaste.

 

[lacktheknack]

All combat potentially avoidable?

SOLD.

SOLDSOLDSOLDSOLDSOLDSOLD WHY CAN'T I HAVE OVER 9000 DOLLARS TO THROW AT IT?

Not that it's hurting for money, though. This is actually kind of ridiculous. This has the potential to reach eight digits.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

For example, in the case of inXile and their relatively small return to old school RPGs followed by what looks to be a massive ramp up in terms of budget (as well as shoes to fill), I'm 100% behind them. I'm going to throw a 50 at them as soon as I have it. But if it turned out that their third game is going to be crowdfunded too, and then maybe the fourth one, I'd have a problem with it. Mainly because essentially, in that case, they'd already have money to throw around were Wasteland 2 and Torment to have any degree of success, and to ask their fans to back them upfront and essentially hold content ransom once you actually have a capital is at the very least questionable in terms of ethics and in terms of the quality of the game they were going to make.

I think they'll stay with crowdfunding while still reinvesting profits in new titles, so I'd expect fairly low funding targets and a shitpot of stretch goals.

With that said, from everything I've seen so far, they don't strike me as a money-first kind of developer, so it's less than probable that that would actually happen, but to that end I hope they simply abstain from using Kickstarter entirely for their future projects if budget isn't a concern, and avoid all the potential issues that might come with it.

Budget is always a concern.

Another thing worth mentioning to that extent is, for example, that you can't realistically expect any further RPG to make even remotely the same splash in Kickstarter as this one will undoubtedly have - so does that mean that their next games should have a smaller budget, even though ultimately they would still most likely make money (although potentially not as much)?

Well, no. That's where reinvesting profit from earlier titles comes in.

Let's say that at some point in the future they have Untitle Game Project (UGP) and figure it needs a dev budget of around $2m but they've been watching the funding trends on kickstarter at the time and know asking $2m is a losing proposition. So they crunch some numbers and figure that if they earmark $1.5m from their own previous profits on other games then $500,000 is a reaching funding target and if it goes, against current trends, totally gangbusters they can always add a shitpot of stretch goals.

 

[BrotherRool]

This is looking on track to possibly beat Project Eternity (selfishly, I sort of hope Project Eternity is the most funded project). Either way we are going to have a debate for the ages of Project Etnerity vs Torment: Tides.

Hot damn, loving this oldschool CRPG and point n' click adventure game revival we are in the middle of. Crowdfunding has done a lot of good by me. I wonder if inXile will return to kickstarter for all of it's future projects? I don't think anyone would mind that.

Honestly, I would. I don't really mind Kickstarter as a starter, but as a long-term sort of business strategy I think it can get really sticky, for a variety of reasons.

For example, in the case of inXile and their relatively small return to old school RPGs followed by what looks to be a massive ramp up in terms of budget (as well as shoes to fill), I'm 100% behind them. I'm going to throw a 50 at them as soon as I have it. But if it turned out that their third game is going to be crowdfunded too, and then maybe the fourth one, I'd have a problem with it. Mainly because essentially, in that case, they'd already have money to throw around were Wasteland 2 and Torment to have any degree of success, and to ask their fans to back them upfront and essentially hold content ransom once you actually have a capital is at the very least questionable in terms of ethics and in terms of the quality of the game they were going to make.

With that said, from everything I've seen so far, they don't strike me as a money-first kind of developer, so it's less than probable that that would actually happen, but to that end I hope they simply abstain from using Kickstarter entirely for their future projects if budget isn't a concern, and avoid all the potential issues that might come with it. Another thing worth mentioning to that extent is, for example, that you can't realistically expect any further RPG to make even remotely the same splash in Kickstarter as this one will undoubtedly have - so does that mean that their next games should have a smaller budget, even though ultimately they would still most likely make money (although potentially not as much)?

And with that said, of course, there's a vast amount of different possible cases and as such I'm not saying this as a blanket, catch all thing, but as a rule of thumb, I'd at least start having reservations if after a great success not once, but twice in a row, a developer returns to Kickstarter. Because if we get to that, we'd be starting to lose sight of the point of Kickstarter.

It's an interesting question. From the updates it seems clear the inXile views Kickstarter as way for the fans to publish their own games (although I guess without making money off it) so I could see this becoming a permanent plan for them (unless Wasteland 2 makes enough money for them to make their own game. But thats by no means guaranteed because the people who really want to play the game are, for the most part, the people who bought into it already).

It's unfortunate that we have to wait till Wasteland 2 comes out before we can know if they're a company to put trust in, but they gave their reasons and the reasons are good enough that I think it's okay they're kickstartering this now. but if Wasteland 2 is good and their games continue to be good, I'm not sure if I'd be bothered by the model continuing. Maybe they should tone down the charity tiers a lot and rely essentially on insanely early pre-orders, but if they produce quality products I wouldn't mind taking the risk continually to keep them employed and together.

It's not keeping content at ransom because the content doesn't and can't exist without the money. I have settled on my thoughts yet and the rest of what you said I feel like I may possibly come into line with a bit further down the road, but I think that description is far too harsh. Keeping content to ransom would be refusing to publish a game unless people kickstarted it. This is them suggesting creative ideas they'd like to pursue and asking people who like the sound of those ideas to pay for them to make it.

And I originally thought the idea of Kickstarter originally was to kickstart new businesses and it was being co-opted for other means, but I don't think that was ever the purpose when I looked into it more. It bills itself as "a fund-raising platform for a variety of creative endeavors" so I think the idea has always been that you donate to someone to produce a creative work and then they produce that creative work. Many projects involve a creative work that will be distributed for free and the idea of gaining enough money for that work to start others never comes into question.

I think it's also quite flexible in its aims, for example, it's normal for webcomics to use it as a way of organising pre-orders for hardcopies. So I don't think if inXile went down the crowdpublisher route it would really be losing sight of what Kickstarters for

 

[james.sponge]

Well that was quick, didn't they beat some kind of record with this one?

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

now to wait and see if it'll beat Project Eternity in funding. Very interesting few years we're up for what with this, Project Eternity, Wasteland 2, and Shadowrun Returns coming out.

 

[Ishal]

They just broke the record for any Kickstarter. One million in one day. Absolutely incredible... this better not suck arse now.

 

[CrazyCapnMorgan]

Am I the only one who pbfpfbfbttt-*SLAPSLAPSLAP*-no, of course not.

But where is the 18 wheeler loads of money gif that I could post to pretty much sum up my feelings on the matter?

Nevertheless, congrats to inXile and all involved. I do hope that it becomes a great game. Having never played Planescape: Torment and Wasteland, I may have to check it out once it's done, as I'm normally a huge RPG nut.

Just listened to the soundtrack posted by Arbi Trax. Damn, that's good music. Haven't heard game music like that since Secret of Mana.

 

[Ishal]

They just broke the record for any Kickstarter. One million in one day. Absolutely incredible... this better not suck arse now.

One million in half a day is more like it; It started this morning and is at 1.2Mil$ as of 6:30PM

yeah thats true. I wonder what's the take away message here?

People want a good RPG because stuff like DA2 left a bad taste in our mouths? hehe

But seriously, all kidding aside I think lots of the Planescape fans just want another decent RPG to play, and I don't blame them. All these awesome games that I would love to have played in their prime... but alas I was too young. I backed it since Chris Avellone made a plug mentioning how they were a bunch of good dudes, thats good enough for me. I don't want RPG's to fade away like RTS is starting to, and it seems I'm not alone in that.

Oh, and that line about doing stuff to make games accessible... and he doesn't care? Music to my ears.

 

[weirdee]

As of this time, the total donation mark is at $1,267,722.

 

[Little Gray]

That pitch was incredible. I can't imagine that any gamer could listen to a pitch that eloquent, that compelling, and not become immediately excited about this game.

He could be selling chocolate teapots, and if he'd put across the pitch as good as that, I'd now own one.

Really you dont think anybody could be put off by the massive douchebaggery that was just dripping off him the entire video? I will admit though that he knows exactly how to appeal to a certain group of people who I will not mention.