The Kickstarter/IndieGoGo Thread

[Sengir]

A place to talk about the latest and greatest games in crowdfunding.

[5:00:53 PM] Sengir: http://www.labzerogames.com/images/IGG/C...akdown.jpg
this is sickening
[5:01:38 PM] Sengir: which is probably why its on Indiegogo and not Kickstarter
[5:03:31 PM] Sengir: "$48,000: Staff Salaries - 8 people for 10 weeks
$30,000: Animation and Clean-up Contracting
$4,000: Voice recording
$2,000: Hit-box Contracting
$5,000: Audio Implementation Contracting
$20,000: QA Testing
$10,000: 1st Party Certification
$10,500: IndieGoGo and Payment Processing Fees
$20,500: Manufacturing and Shipping Physical Rewards"
[5:04:42 PM] Will/Tellis: they... want to pay their artists well? I'm missing something, I'm sure
[5:04:58 PM] Sengir: some of these make so little sense that either a) they dont know how to mange money or b) they're intentionally asking for extra
[5:05:30 PM] Sengir: no; they want /you/ to pay their artists well
[5:06:02 PM] Sengir: a company shouldnt have to hoist top-tier wages on its fans (especially when at least 8 of those people are apparently in-house)
[5:06:08 PM] Will/Tellis: yeah that's true
[5:06:11 PM] Sengir: and then expect pure profit back
[5:06:25 PM] Sengir: because all future sales will be 100% profit

[Omegajak]

A Contribuition.

[Sengir]

I got the earlybird for that, ehehe

I'm glad they reached all their stretch goals, it looks like it'll be a good game.

[Gors]

Crowdsourcing is interesting and good if done right, but it's kinda commonplace right now. Not that I don't like them, but personally I would like to do the games without using (and abusing) this method. Maybe it's my way of thinking, but I don't feel it's right to expect to get AAA-games-like budgets by leeching customers, even if they agree with it.

[Maxpphire]

I heard that the company basically disbanded and they have have to work their way back up from scratch.

[Omegajak]

Crowdsourcing is interesting and good if done right, but it's kinda commonplace right now. Not that I don't like them, but personally I would like to do the games without using (and abusing) this method. Maybe it's my way of thinking, but I don't feel it's right to expect to get AAA-games-like budgets by leeching customers, even if they agree with it.

I have no money and I want to make a decent game. Tell me how Gors.

[Gors]

This is probably me not having a business-oriented mind but you don't need to ask money to make a decent game. Quality does not come directly from money (money can make help things a lot, sure), but money is not synonymous with quality.

Maybe I see making games more like a passion and not business, therefore I have a more artistic feel about it. I don't need to care about 3D graphics, orchestral music, payment of co-workers so I am not fit to this type of stuff.

Also anyway if you want to make gaming a business so bad, then you should at least be smart enough to gather money first before setting up a studio or something. Or at least, enough to make a decent stuff (again, pointing that having no money does not equal to shit games). People nowadays are all 'omg i want to maek a gaem lets kickstart it' when it should be a secondary option. Kickstarter should not only be a 'quick way of getting money', but a way to 'grab the attention' of possible customers with your already decent game.

---

Finally, you can make games even if you have 'no money'. if you think about it, making games can be entirely free of charge, or something you can truck along in your own pace. See Cave Story. It's just that if you have not enough money you certainly shouldn't make huge-ass game projects too

tl;dr: open a programming book, study it, start writing lines of code

[Omegajak]

This is probably me not having a business-oriented mind but you don't need to ask money to make a decent game. Quality does not come directly from money (money can make help things a lot, sure), but money is not synonymous with quality.

Maybe I see making games more like a passion and not business, therefore I have a more artistic feel about it. I don't need to care about 3D graphics, orchestral music, payment of co-workers so I am not fit to this type of stuff.

Also anyway if you want to make gaming a business so bad, then you should at least be smart enough to gather money first before setting up a studio or something. Or at least, enough to make a decent stuff (again, pointing that having no money does not equal to shit games). People nowadays are all 'omg i want to maek a gaem lets kickstart it' when it should be a secondary option. Kickstarter should not only be a 'quick way of getting money', but a way to 'grab the attention' of possible customers with your already decent game.

---

Finally, you can make games even if you have 'no money'. if you think about it, making games can be entirely free of charge, or something you can truck along in your own pace. See Cave Story. It's just that if you have not enough money you certainly shouldn't make huge-ass game projects too

tl;dr: open a programming book, study it, start writing lines of code

Are we talking about Lab Zero or NostalgiaCO? Either way, it's not about making it a business I thought getting money was a means for paying for stuff like you know you're house which could very well be your studio? If you can't afford to live there how would you keep making your game? I'm not saying we need to turn everything into a model of 'a great game can only be made if you have the money', because that's not true. Cannabalt, That basketball RPG maker game, etc. There are lots of games that have gotten zero funding, I'm just sensitive to a person with as much talent as you can't connect the logic of what some people pour into a game that they can't do anything else but their assigned task into creating it that they'd need money to support themselves so they can do it. That's all. Plus Skull Girls is already a completed game that they want to make better they just need financial help to spend the time to do it. It's a commercial game they need to pay fees to even create DLC and Cryamore isn't some bare bones half-assed game there's lots of work in the Kickstarter page that shows they came to Kickstarter to help them get to where they want to be instead of where they are.

[Gors]

Yes, by 'studio' I meant anywhere to settle your game making duty.

I am not against Kickstart in any way. It works wonders when done right. It's just that the way you worded this:

I have no money and I want to make a decent game. Tell me how Gors.

Sounded a poor reason to me. As I said before, money =/= decent games, and you know it. As long as your idea is great, and your starting project is solid enough, you can then Kickstart it to help funding it and adding extra contents, while getting feedback from people. Kickstart of already established games such as Skull Girls and Cryamore obviously fits in this description so there is no problem with it. I don't know what Indie devs are thinking right now, or the new trends in gaming, but if you don't have enough money to do something, then don't do it. Aim lower, do something less costly. People usually want to 'reinvent the genre' and create a unique experience, but like the old saying, you shall not bite more than you can chew. You can do something nice without having a crapload of money in hand.

In case I didn't make myself clear (I tend to talk a lot of separate shit and poorly fuse them together later), I'm just against people who use Kickstarter like the example Sengir cited above.

[Maxpphire]

They also want to make sure that their artists and anyone else working on the project gets paid.

Whats that? Most people tend to ignore, or "scold", if you will, newer people who put in requests on these forums that are unpaid or paid after they get the work?

I mean you could pull a ZUN and make the game all by yourself regardless on how bad your skills are, but that in no way means that you'll make a game that will get popular enough to make money off of.

This is a well recognized game that already exist, the people who made it basically disbanded, lost ANY and ALL funding they might have as well as ANY and ALL resources they might have had at one point too. They have to code all of her moves from scratch, make all of her sprites from scratch, her story from scratch, pretty much make everything from scratch.

They also want to make sure the people who are donating to help them out with this are getting incentives to want to donate other then "Oh hey new character"

Also the BIGGEST thing is that they want to make sure everyone working on the project is properly paid, Artists, coders, everyone. But since they don't have the money for that, they are asking for help.

[Sengir]

Also the BIGGEST thing is that they want to make sure everyone working on the project is properly paid, Artists, coders, everyone. But since they don't have the money for that, they are asking for help.

As someone who was involved with Techstars Boulder and actual start-ups, I can say that this is not how entrepreneurship works. Almost always do people in this situation have to take a pay cut or work for free (unless you're not part of the company and just a contractor).

Mocavo (a genealogical search engine), for instance, had a group of 3 people working full-time with only enough money to pay rent and eat cheaply for 3 months.

It's really their fault the price is so high; what are the 8 employees even doing? Some coding and XML? They're contracting almost everything else out!

[Vipershark]

I agree.

Considering that this is just an extra character and not a full game (or even an expansion/extra mode), there's no way that it should cost anwhere near that much.
Much of the base code is most likely already complete and it's as simple as plugging in new content into an already-existing template. Especially considering that it's for a fighting game, and there are multiple other characters working off the same basic framework.

I can understand needing cash to hire animators and testers and stuff, but the actual coding shouldn't take that many resources at all unless the character has some sort of radical new playstyle that they have to basically add entirely new parts to the game engine for.

[Maxpphire]

Actually they don't have the base code for the characters for the game anymore, They are rebuilding that. As I mentioned they pretty much lost all of their resources and have to start building things over again from scratch.

[Vipershark]

wait, they're remaking the entire game from scratch...?

because if not, that makes no sense
if it's just a new character, that would imply that they're adding the new character to a pre-existing game
not, like
remaking the entire game using all new code (but adding a new character too)

[Sengir]

Actually with a budget like that they might really be remaking the entire game from the ground up.

We shall see...