I'm not sure what I think of this yet.

I still wonder what happened to their last RTS they were developing, that medieval one King & Country or something I think it was called.

I guess doing Kickstarters are all the rage atm.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects...on-rpg?ref=live

Remember developers arent publishers. Crowd sourcing would be the only way for them to fund games they want to make if a publisher wont back it. Personally I'm all for it. If Ubi or EA or 2K tried it thats different, but dev wanting freedom from a publisher is great as far as I am concerned.

Will support purely because of gas powered games. Supcom 1, I will forgive you for the sequel and blame it mostly on Squenix. Dungeon Siege 1 and 2 were also pretty good, and do love some ARPG.

cryocore wrote: Remember developers arent publishers. Crowd sourcing would be the only way for them to fund games they want to make if a publisher wont back it. Personally I'm all for it. If Ubi or EA or 2K tried it thats different, but dev wanting freedom from a publisher is great as far as I am concerned.

Totally agree. There've been some pretty cool titles Kickstarted that never would have gotten off the ground if it wasn't for Kickstarter and Steam distribution. It's just a shame that I can't play them on console, but I totally understand that console are pretty prohibitive in this regard. Yet another reason for me to build that PC!

I still play Supcom 1.

Paragon + rapid fire arty = the rain of pain

Other than Peter Molyneux, Chris Taylor is one of the most condescending "celebrity" designers in the industry. He designs games under the assumption that players are mouth breathing, fickle morons who through in the towel at the first sign of even a slight challenge. Proof:- the Dungeon Siege 1 & 2, Space Siege. DS1 & 2 can literally play themselves to completion; SS has no consequence for death.

I will not be supporting this douchebag.

Chickenman wrote: It's just a shame that I can't play them on console, but I totally understand that console are pretty prohibitive in this regard. Yet another reason for me to build that PC!

Multiplatform development supporting consoles would restrict their creative freedom just as much as working with a big publisher, with both policy red tape and "patch tax". It's utterly not an ideal situation.

It might be worth the expenses if the consoles had an audience for the types of games that a dev might be making, but most of these "KS success stories" are nostalgia fuelled projects based on genres that had their home on PC platform anyway.

Anyway mobile is a far more attractive platform for these indie devs than consoles, especially Android with its near PC levels of platform openness.

EvaUnit02 wrote: the Dungeon Siege 1 & 2, Space Siege. DS1 & 2 can literally play themselves to completion;

I used to auto follow players with auto attack on and go to bed and let them level up my character I still really enjoyed the game though

This game doesn't really interest me though

EvaUnit02 wrote: Other than Peter Molyneux, Chris Taylor is one of the most condescending "celebrity" designers in the industry. He designs games under the assumption that players are mouth breathing, fickle morons who through in the towel at the first sign of even a slight challenge. Proof:- the Dungeon Siege 1 & 2, Space Siege. DS1 & 2 can literally play themselves to completion; SS has no consequence for death. I will not be supporting this douchebag.

I do not think you understand the meaning of literal

EvaUnit02 wrote: Multiplatform development supporting consoles would restrict their creative freedom just as much as working with a big publisher, with both policy red tape and "patch tax". It's utterly not an ideal situation. It might be worth the expenses if the consoles had an audience for the types of games that a dev might be making, but most of these "KS success stories" are nostalgia fuelled projects based on genres that had their home on PC platform anyway. Anyway mobile is a far more attractive platform for these indie devs than consoles, especially Android with its near PC levels of platform openness.

Yeah I know. I totally get that. However, despite being a console gamer now. I did in fact spend a number of years gaming on Apple //e and Macintosh. And then friends had early PC's that I used to muck around on too. So to a certain extent the nostalgia pitch does actually appeal to me also.

Like I say though I know console is very prohibitive compared to PC for a number of reasons. So as much as I'd love to see them released on console, I also know there's two shows that it'll happen: shit and no.

Lord_Montgomery wrote: I do not think you understand the meaning of literal

You can set GPG developed Dungeon Siege titles to be A.I. controlled and you then watch the game being played by the computer to completion.

EvaUnit02 wrote: Anyway mobile is a far more attractive platform for these indie devs than consoles, especially Android with its near PC levels of platform openness.

Not really. Touch-screens substantially decrease the types of games one can make. As someone who regularly develops for both I can tell you that Android isn't close to PC in terms of platform openness, I doubt anything will ever be as open as PC again (for good reason, tbh).

Dungeon Siege 3 was an abortion of a game.

Bobs wrote: Dungeon Siege 3 was an abortion of a game.

And it wasn't developed by Gas Powered Games.

EvaUnit02 wrote: You can set GPG developed Dungeon Siege titles to be A.I. controlled and you then watch the game being played by the computer to completion.

You can also set it all to manual and play through it that way, like I did. I don't see how having the option is a hugely terrible thing for a single player game, with no competitive aspects at all.

EvaUnit02 wrote: He designs games under the assumption that players are mouth breathing, fickle morons

You're not doing a great job of discrediting that.

Eagle32 wrote: And it wasn't developed by Gas Powered Games.

You can blame Obsidian for that.

The only argument you can muster up is ad hominem? Poor you.

EvaUnit02 wrote: You can set GPG developed Dungeon Siege titles to be A.I. controlled and you then watch the game being played by the computer to completion.

Wait how do you do this? First I've heard of it... Even then I doubt it would have beeen able to beat anything but the easiest difficulty. Which in most cases is laughable anyway.

Quote: and Blizzard, who iterate on as many ideas as possible before settling on the "right" features.

Nope.avi

EvaUnit02 wrote: Other than Peter Molyneux, Chris Taylor is one of the most condescending "celebrity" designers in the industry. He designs games under the assumption that players are mouth breathing, fickle morons who through in the towel at the first sign of even a slight challenge. Proof:- the Dungeon Siege 1 & 2, Space Siege. DS1 & 2 can literally play themselves to completion; SS has no consequence for death. I will not be supporting this douchebag.

Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander are proof that you are wrong. Everyone gets projects where they have to "sell-out" on their ideal vision.

I'd say you've presented yourself as a far bigger douchebag by somehow pretending you "know" these guys enough to really judge them.

I'll be supporting this project, looks really cool.

Kickstarter is turning out great!

Folcan wrote: I guess doing Kickstarters are all the rage atm.

Wtb list of Kickstarter projects, with figures on which ones have actually been released, and how much has been invested on failed projects vs successful ones

Gwarden wrote: Wtb list of Kickstarter projects, with figures on which ones have actually been released, and how much has been invested on failed projects vs successful ones

The vast majority of Gaming Kickstarters are still mid production and there can not be an accurate measure of release vs failures for at least another full year. All of the projects that were seeking funding at the pre-production stage still have a full dev cycle to go through, so it wont be until the latter part of 2014 before anyone can say with any confidence that crowd sourcing has been a success or failure as far as Gaming goes.

Part of the concern regarding KS or IGG is that there is no way to gauge just how effective/reliable the new model is and wont be for a very long time. Crowd funding wont live or die if games are released but if they are actually successful as commercial products.

cryocore wrote: it wont be until the latter part of 2014 before anyone can say with any confidence that crowd sourcing has been a success or failure as far as Gaming goes.

Ah k, cheers for clearing that up for me. Something about the whole thing makes me dubious but time will tell I suppose.

Gwarden wrote: Ah k, cheers for clearing that up for me. Something about the whole thing makes me dubious but time will tell I suppose.

I think dubious is overstating it, but being cautious is smart. The projects I have backed are all by well known devs with a solid reputation and some high quality releases behind them. Thats not to say that means their games will be good, or even released but for me at least it does make them a more viable option and far more likely to meet my expectations. I've been having a pretty good conversation with Darren from Obsidian for the last month about P.E and I am confident the game will be exceptional, but the fear of commercial failure is still there. He admits there is a lot of risk here. Failure to produce the game the backers want could cause significant damage to the brand that a publisher backed title never would. A failure here could be seen as a personal failure to the people who now feel they have a stake not only in the game, but the company making it. The fallout could be far reaching and irreversible should it fail to meet expectations.

The thing some people dont grasp though is that crowd sourced dev teams are not sustainable long term. They cant exist, or more accurately subsist on that model. As they will be operating project to project with no safety net should something go wrong. Unlike publisher backed projects there is no avenue for extra funds, and a delay could cause the game to fail and that would essentially destroy the company.

The game needs to be successful enough outside of the initial backers to make enough money to act as a buffer/safety net for their next project, or even better be enough to fund at least a majority of it. Then they could crowd source for extra funds, or seek publisher money but still have enough freedom to keep to their "vision".

The small indies and passion projects will continue regardless, but for the likes of inXile, Double Fine and Obsidian, or Cloud Imperium they will require fairly significant commercial success if they want to continue to produce games of the scope they are known/aiming for. Personally I think they will, but gamers are fickle and making a great game does not equate to game sales (Planescape, Grim Fandango, Psychonauts, Vampire - Bloodlines, etc).

Still though for me at least I think crowd sourcing is the single best thing to happen to game development in a long time. The potential to open up the market here is huge. It could bring back real diversity and reinvigorate niche genres and even expand genres in to new areas not yet explored. When creators are allowed to create without needing to cow to corporate expectations a whole world of possibilities opens up. We could see the diversity of indy gaming entering the mainstream and that imo is good for everyone.

Kickstarter gave us FTL, so it'll always be a positive in my book!