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[reality.auditor]

It's snowing. This might not seem impressive, but keep in mind I'm in Texas. It never, NEVER snows here. Granted it's not even a quarter inch of snow, but...STILL!

Ib4 someone will raise it as evidence against GLOBUL WRMNING!!11

[flame99]

It's snowing. This might not seem impressive, but keep in mind I'm in Texas. It never, NEVER snows here. Granted it's not even a quarter inch of snow, but...STILL!

Ib4 someone will raise it as evidence against GLOBUL WRMNING!!11

It's Texas. Of course it will be. I think it's an undiscovered law of physics. Any and all particles in the region known as the deep south of the United States will disbelieve Global Warming.

[GiglameshDespair]

It's snowing. This might not seem impressive, but keep in mind I'm in Texas. It never, NEVER snows here. Granted it's not even a quarter inch of snow, but...STILL!

Ib4 someone will raise it as evidence against GLOBUL WRMNING!!11

Applicable.

[Sirus]

It's snowing. This might not seem impressive, but keep in mind I'm in Texas. It never, NEVER snows here. Granted it's not even a quarter inch of snow, but...STILL!

Eh? I was in Dallas last year just after one snow storm (or maybe it was an ice storm) and left just before a second storm.

[Truean]

Have police officer friend, over 30 years on the force, was investigator for sex crimes.
Terrible job, atrocious working environment to say the least. Don't know how he didn't crack... sooner.
Now he's going through some bad shit mentally, and maritally. Has "embarrassed" court, allegedly.
Rather than set aside leave time and psychological therapy or anything, they demand he resign....

Spend years of yourself helping these bastards, and the minute you're not top of your game they toss you.

How wonderful.

[nenjin]

I have an acquaintance who is doing a Kickstarter for their game. They sought outside funding from the local university, various funding from other sources (the "lead dev" is a former professional fund raiser), for about the last two years. He's probably taken in $50K+ already just to get it off the ground.

It's...really not my kind of game. I won't go into it but the WTF the part is....

They asked for over $150k in funding on Kickstarter, for a three person team I'm pretty sure doesn't even pay rent on their space. This guy, who has been planning this Kickstarter for over a year....doesn't even have the faintest idea how far he overshot the mark. Indie games that are mindblowingly cool get that kind of money, AFTER posting a $40k or $50k funding goal. But $150k? What planet is he living on, where he thinks he can get that kind of money for what he has now. Granted, he has a playable demo which is more than most pie-in-the-sky Kickstarters have. But the funding amount is almost criminally overshooting the mark. He's either going to need to be the luckiest developer ever, or have to suck up to an angel investor to cover the last 50% to 75% of funding.

It's like....man, I wasn't exactly pumped to see them succeed for various reasons, but now I just feel bad for how far off the mark they really are. I'm sure his idea was to pay everyone a $40k salary and have some money left over but, given how so many better looking and sounding games have started at a way humbler number, it seems like the worst kind of fanciful wishing to go that high, and may end up being the death of his studio. It's been my experience the most successful Kickstarters start at a (relatively) small number because that entices people to pledged toward an achievable goal. And then you get crazy monies because people are far more willing to pledge to a Kickstarter that's already succeeded than one that's struggling. Kickstarters that set their goal to their wet dream #, instead of their survival #, almost never succeed.

[Truean]

The really sad thing is, if you do the numbers, $150,000 shouldn't be too much to ask for a game like that assuming it's good. Reality sucks though. Examples:

Price Point $10
$150,000 / $10 = 15,000 games, spread across 50 states is 300 games sold per state

Price Point $20
$150,000 / $20 = 7,500 games, spread across 50 states is 150 games sold per state.

If you look at those numbers alone and assume only US distribution with perhaps other countries to make up the difference, it makes perfect sense. The problem is, for whatever reason, it doesn't work out that way. If we look at $50,000 then you just divide it all by 1/3.

Sadly, you may be dead right. Sadder still, the stuff I said above SHOULD work, assuming it's a good game, $10 - $20 isn't unreasonable.

*Note: I'm assuming this is a board game? Is it a computer game? I dunno. If you look at freaking mobile phone and Freemium (isn't free) gaming, then the whole market collapses, because "$0...."

[KingofstarrySkies]

I have an acquaintance who is doing a Kickstarter for their game. They sought outside funding from the local university, various funding from other sources (the "lead dev" is a former professional fund raiser), for about the last two years. He's probably taken in $50K+ already just to get it off the ground.

It's...really not my kind of game. I won't go into it but the WTF the part is....

They asked for over $150k in funding on Kickstarter, for a three person team I'm pretty sure doesn't even pay rent on their space. This guy, who has been planning this Kickstarter for over a year....doesn't even have the faintest idea how far he overshot the mark. Indie games that are mindblowingly cool get that kind of money, AFTER posting a $40k or $50k funding goal. But $150k? What planet is he living on, where he thinks he can get that kind of money for what he has now. Granted, he has a playable demo which is more than most pie-in-the-sky Kickstarters have. But the funding amount is almost criminally overshooting the mark. He's either going to need to be the luckiest developer ever, or have to suck up to an angel investor to cover the last 50% to 75% of funding.

It's like....man, I wasn't exactly pumped to see them succeed for various reasons, but now I just feel bad for how far off the mark they really are. I'm sure his idea was to pay everyone a $40k salary and have some money left over but, given how so many better looking and sounding games have started at a way humbler number, it seems like the worst kind of fanciful wishing to go that high, and may end up being the death of his studio. It's been my experience the most successful Kickstarters start at a (relatively) small number because that entices people to pledged toward an achievable goal. And then you get crazy monies because people are far more willing to pledge to a Kickstarter that's already succeeded than one that's struggling. Kickstarters that set their goal to their wet dream #, instead of their survival #, almost never succeed.

Can we get a link?

[nenjin]

It's a PC game.

The issue is that the market is so glutted, there are so many people putting their projects out there, that competition is fierce. It's not like one person's dollars can only go to one Kickstarter. But when you have that much on offer, comparisons become inescapable. A game like Darkest Dungeon asked for half of what they're asking, and earned double it. BECAUSE it was an amazing concept, well-executed, that captured people's imaginations and eventually their wallets.

In lieu of being that cool or that interesting or that revolutionary, you have to be at least appealing to experiment with, and the feasibility of your campaign is a big part of that. You need people willing to commit with big dollars, that's how you meet then exceed your goal. If you just get the $1 or $5 pledges, and you're not pulling those in by the thousands...you're not going to make it.

I'd be happy to be wrong but I don't think I am on this, I've gotten a pretty good sense for when Kickstarters are dead right out of the gate. The first couple days represent the biggest funding usually, when the hype is the freshest....and they don't have the exposure, or the hype really, to meet the goal they've set for themselves. The first core of the money they've gotten is literally from all their local acquaintances they've been hyping up. From here on out is the real test of whether it's appealing outside of people just trying to help them out and be nice.

I'm just going WTF because I know, deep down, if they'd stuck with a $50k price point or something pretty reasonable, they'd have had relatively little trouble meeting it, and could say "We did it!" But I don't think they can make that number without serious, non-crowd funded help (which they've received plenty of already....) And partly I guess I'm worried that he'll talk my boss into angel investing (our company money) into a project which may be bound to fail anyways regardless of how many dollars it brings in.

Can we get a link?

Mmmm, I think I'm going to keep this one anonymous. If you really dig you'll figure out what I'm talking about, anyways.

[Truean]

Yeah, angel investing the company money would be bad.

You're sadly right. All the numbers I posted above are perfectly reasonable, except the world isn't. $10 for a game? People look at that as murder for some reason. You've got a glut of mobile phone stuff (as indicated before in my last post), and it's completely killed the market. They have "Freemium" games where essentially a few pay for the extras (sometimes to an insane amount) to pay for everybody else (taking advantage children and compulsive gambler types).  Freemium isn't free.... [sigh].

There are cell phone games that are free or $1. How the hell can you compete against that? There's no value viewed as attached to the work needed to make that stuff anymore. The market has pretty much straight up collapsed.

If you wanna get stuff done with the numbers I posted and plugging in today's crap at $1 a pop then you need to sell $150,000 at 150,000 releases..... [sigh]. That's a tall order for a new development. I mean it's theoretically possible, but ..... You really have to make it up on tonnage, which is possible but ... hard.

The sad thing, is that even that'd be possible if you knew how and were aiming at that while knowing how to get the publicity, but then you've got the $0 free to play freemium pay for extra stuff. Broken, market.

[4maskwolf]

Weeeeeeeeeelp.

King Kravoka got banned.

Can't say I didn't see that coming after the Nexus incident.

[pisskop]

If I say who would you indulge me?
  Is it that guy who had the  . . .odd avatar that looked like a smokey cartoon face?

Made a thread about Nexus and then apologized here?

[Tawa]

No, the Nexus guy was redirected here by Kravoka, who then apologized. [Kravoka's] avatar was... I think it was a heart.

He was then banned after redirecting trolls from Kongregate here and then warning us about it, seemingly attempting to cause inter-forum drama. An internet turf war, if you will. The redirection on Kongregate, which one of the "trolls" linked to, also contained fanfiction about Putnam and I and referred to us as "autistic hugboxers".

[Lagslayer]

People keep mentioning "the Nexus thread" and I have no idea what it was. Can someone provide a link, or has it been scrubbed from existence all together? If it's the latter, what is it about?

No, the Nexus guy was redirected here by Kravoka, who then apologized. [Kravoka's] avatar was... I think it was a heart.

He was then banned after redirecting trolls from Kongregate here and then warning us about it, seemingly attempting to cause inter-forum drama. An internet turf war, if you will. The redirection on Kongregate, which one of the "trolls" linked to, also contained fanfiction about Putnam and I and referred to us as "autistic hugboxers".

Partial ninja, but still doesn't quite address all my curiosities.

[4maskwolf]

No, the Nexus guy was redirected here by Kravoka, who then apologized. [Kravoka's] avatar was... I think it was a heart.

He was then banned after redirecting trolls from Kongregate here and then warning us about it, seemingly attempting to cause inter-forum drama. An internet turf war, if you will. The redirection on Kongregate, which one of the "trolls" linked to, also contained fanfiction about Putnam and I and referred to us as "autistic hugboxers".

Wow umm...

Wow.

King Kravoka really needs to get over his problems with there being liberals on this forum.