Obsidian's doing a Kickstarter, what are your thoughts?

[Jason Rayes]

Fact, people want money for work they would be doing.

There are numerous publishers willing to fund potential money making projects if that's what Obsidian wants.

Fact, Obsidian would be doing work. Fact, if they collect money, they'll just pay themselves.

No, they won't "pay themselves". The money used for their necessities and luxuries comes out of investor's pockets. In this case, the investors are gullible young gamers and Obsidian took advantage of them.

What do their own merits or my belief in them have to do with it? They need to do trivial things like eat, pay rents (maybe) and those kinds of stuff. You know, the ones money provide.

It's their job to manage their funds in such a way that they can not only sustain their enterprise but also live a comfortable life. If they find themselves unable to do so then maybe they should consider an alternative line of work. Businesses are about taking risks. You start up a company, realize your idea and hope for the best. If it succeeds, you can either continue doing whatever it is that your company specialises or, if it fails, you try your best at damage control. That's the way capitalism works. Crowd funding is basically a way of passing the responsibility of investing onto the masses whilst also allowing the people asking for an investment to keep all the money made with that project.

If they don't get money for their work, well, they'll not be able to work for long, no matter how great they are.

I don't think you understand how a business works. If they find themselves unable to attract investors then they should either disband or take risks like for example taking out loans or using their own money. As an investor I am not going to pay them money to create a game but receive nothing in return.

For Kickstarter projects (a lot of them, at least) they do get something from investing - pay 25 bucks and you get the game.

But then it's not investing, it's more like preordering a concept of a game by paying full price for it. Why doesn't Obsidian make it clear that's the way this agreement works?

What Kickstarter does is equivalent to a limited liability. In fact it is limited liability - if the company, or the project in this case, goes bust, you only lose your initial investment, nothing more. This is how LLC works.

You have a very basic understanding of what LLC and "crowd funding" is.

You really hate Kickstarter don't you, have you got some sort of horror story about the website to share with us? Obsidian is not the first company to use it their service, others have done so to great success. Are we missing something?

 

[TeletubbiesGolfGun]

Again. Kickstarter trades in futures. You buy a product that will be delivered at a later time.

Really? Does it advertise itself as that?

The idea of futures have been around for centuries now, you might want to get with the program. Its the same thing as paying a farmer in advance for a field of cash crop that will be grown and harvested at a later date.

It would be more along the lines of a crop farmer saying he can grow the best crops ever but instead he makes a copy of those crops once they're done, gives them to you then starts selling those same crops and makes a fortune whilst you, the person who made it all possible, is left with nothing but a bunch of crops. If Obsidian had gotten actual investors on the line they would have been sued to hell and back.

Kickstarter doesn't work that way. People don't buy, they invest. There's a distinct difference between the two. If Obsidian made the game exclusively for the people who donated then yes, that analogy would make sense but they're not.

your nitpicking at a physical product vs a digital one, you DO get something in return for investing, you get the game for cheap, and you get the WHOLE game, not some publishers version of the game with DLC chopping the game into 10 pieces to charge you even more for it. I have no idea why you are such a corporate apologist, but this allows devs and customers to cut publishers right out of the equation to give them creative freedom and allows us to get what we want without paying an arm and a leg each time for the full game.

 

[Jason Rayes]

You really hate Kickstarter don't you, have you got some sort of horror story about the website to share with us? Obsidian is not the first company to use it their service, others have done so to great success. Are we missing something?

Read the reply again. I made my problems with Kickstarter clear.

Yes but that's not a solid reply. Businesses ask for outside investment all the time, it's common business practice. You make it sound like its some kind of alien concept. A kickstarter is no different than seeking investors, only the rather than rather than posting it on the stock exchange or asking financial institutions, they are asking the fans. When I laid my $25 down I knew what I was doing, with any investment there is risk, but I trust them.

According to your "Businesses must be utterly self sufficient or die" logic, a business could not even approach a bank for a loan because it's against the "rules". Yes they could get a publisher but then they are bound by their constraints and the publisher owns the IP.

Also, at 42, I am neither young nor gullible. It's my $25 and I consider no big loss to put that money towards a project I believe in. To me its an investment that will pay off in a game I want to play. I have seen kickstarters work before and I believe it will work in this case. You can believe it's some kind of scam if you wish, no-one is forcing you to contribute.

 

[YouShouldDeleteThisAccount]

Again. Kickstarter trades in futures. You buy a product that will be delivered at a later time.

Really? Does it advertise itself as that?

Yes, well sort of.

www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/kickstarter basics

Basically, all kickstarter does is offer a service for fund-raising for creative projects. Kickstarter themselves impose no further restrictions. So if you wanted to, you could have a project where the backers get nothing special for backing, you're just not likely to get backers.

The over-whelming majority of projects use it as a "preordering as funding" system. Wasteland 2, DoubleFine Adventure, IndieGame: The Movie, Faster Than Light, and all but one project I've ever seen on kickstarter all work this way. The exception was a fund-rasier for a Non-profit project.

While it is possible to use Kickstarter as an investment scheme (ie, give the backers some returns) I've never seen it happen, and doubt it will happen often if at all.

 

[Jason Rayes]

Percy, since all logic and reasonable argument seems unable to be seen by you, here is a cloak of invisibility. Go play in the street.

 

[DoPo]

Another project update

Spoiler: Text

Project Update #6: Choosing the Best Tool for the Job



At Obsidian, we have always tried to choose the engine and toolset most suited to the game we are making. When making a sequel to an existing game, we use the engine from the original game so that we don?t waste time recreating the inner workings and gameplay behavior in a new engine before we can even start developing new content. When creating a new game from scratch, we evaluate the options available to us and choose the one we think fits best. In the case of Project Eternity, we feel the best fit is Unity.

Unity enables small teams to be very productive. Unity has an amazing development environment that makes it very easy for programmers, artists and designers to work together to build great games. In a very short time we have already made great progress prototyping some of the core functionality for Project Eternity.

We do intend to use some of our in-house tools in conjunction with Unity where it makes sense, such as in the case of creating conversations and editing some of the RPG-specific game data. Unity makes it very easy to extend not only the game engine but the development tools as well, and we feel integrating some of the tools that have already proven effective on previous Obsidian games will get us off to a great start on the development of Project Eternity.

Unity also supports a wide range of target platforms. We knew that a likely request from the community was going to be support for Mac and Linux versions of the game, and we wanted to make sure we were in the best position to do that. While we could have ported Onyx, our internal engine technology, to those platforms, the time and effort required to do so would reduce the budget we have to make the game and result in less of the awesome gameplay and content our fans desire. Mac and Linux will still require time and effort from us to test, maintain and support but Unity gets us most of the way there. In fact, our experience with Unity so far has made us confident enough that we have decided to remove Linux support from the stretch goals and just commit to providing a Linux version right here and now! Of course, we can?t take something away from our stretch goals without putting something else in its place, so what is that going to be?

The $2.2 million stretch goal will still include a new Region, a new Faction, a new Companion and all the hours of additional gameplay, quests, NPCs and items that go along with those things. But we?ve also got something new coming to this stretch goal, and it?s big enough that it?s deserving of its own update to talk about it! So tune in this coming Monday, September 24th where we will reveal our new stretch goals, unveil a fun new tracker for them, and announce our schedule of guest stars for the week!

Thank you for supporting Obsidian and Project Eternity!

Chris Jones
CTO, Obsidian

So, in short, Obsidian are announcing that they'll be using Unity to build their game and that would enable them to release a Linux version as well as the Windows and Mac ones. Because of this they are changing the stretch goal that advertised a Linux version ($2.2 million) to a new region, faction and companion. Also something else they'll reveal on Monday.

 

[Thoric485]

Spoiler

Made my day.

 

[DoPo]

Another project update

So, in short, Obsidian are announcing that they'll be using Unity to build their game and that would enable them to release a Linux version as well as the Windows and Mac ones. Because of this they are changing the stretch goal that advertised a Linux version ($2.2 million) to a new region, faction and companion. Also something else they'll reveal on Monday.

Just like Wasteland 2. I wonder what we can take from this.

Unity is the engine for old school games?

 

[Greni]

Percy, since all logic and reasonable argument seems unable to be seen by you, here is a cloak of invisibility. Go play in the street.

Thank you for that. Kid was giving me a headache with his trolling/stupidity/both.

OT:

Spoiler

Damn son! That's one mighty fine project you've got going there.

Also; one million eight hundred thousand US dollars, and still twenty five days to go!

I'm feeling black today.

 

[TeletubbiesGolfGun]

For those who may of missed it...

Update #3 - Your Party, Your Characters, and Races - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts/310512

Update #4 - Digital Tiers, DRM, and Add-Ons Update - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts/311594

Update #5 - Souls, Technology, and Adventuring Companies - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts/312639

And a little Avellone interview - Pitching Publisher-Friendly RPGs 'Makes Me Want to Slit My Wrists'- http://techland.time.com/2012/09/21/project-eternity-chris-avellone-interview/

good post, and overall i'm quite impressed with their enthusiasm and passion to work with customers/fans to make sure we get the game that works for us, but through their vision. how shit should be..fuck publishers.

 

[Jimmy T. Malice]

This game seems like a great way to head back towards the RPGs of old. Just the fact that it's going to be made by Obsidian is good enough for me, since I loved New Vegas and I'm confident in their ability to write a great story. Since Project Eternity is isometric, one and a half years should be plenty of time to polish it and get rid of the standard game-breaking bugs.

 

[Something Amyss]

The publishers probably changed their tune recently after they saw that there is actually a demand for RPGs now.

Fuck em'. Much better off without their meddling anyways.

Pretty sure the "positive responses" came before the Kickstarter. Couldn't swear to it, though.

 

[veloper]

The publishers probably changed their tune recently after they saw that there is actually a demand for RPGs now.

Fuck em'. Much better off without their meddling anyways.

Pretty sure the "positive responses" came before the Kickstarter. Couldn't swear to it, though.

There's always been a small market for tactical, oldschool CRPGs and tiny indies like Jeff Vogel have been making a niche for themselves there for a very long time.
This smaller stuff is completely off the radar for major publishers who cannot bother with anything less than multimillion dollar profits.

What kickstarter has done for this genre is make intermediate budgets possible, but I still can't see publishers funding such games the traditional way.
The publisher model is expensive marketing campaigns and games with great presentation, to create an as broad as possible appeal. Dropping a couple million on a game that may also make a couple million isn't interesting for them. One little game doesn't make any noticeable difference for them and churning out alot of low budget RPGs would probably just cause many flops.