Kickstarter J-RPG

[Argeus_the_Paladin]

Well, Kickstarter does work well, considering the quality of projects funded. Feels like you could slap together a hasty RPGMaker game, ask for $500 to produce it, then stick that money elsewhere and create a very basic RPGMaker game.

(judging from the screenshots, the quality of this Unemployment Quest! isn't high either... most is default graphics.)

That is either the best or the worst idea I've heard of today. Considering how well the world's doing in this day and age, it's prolly more like the latter.

[fischer22]

In exchange for money, I get .001% of the profits from the game. US law* just changed to make that possible, so I expect to see sites supporting that model popping up in the next few months.

This would really be great! Hope it happens!

[Sapphi]

The NPR model (pledge $100 and get a "free" tote bag) is pretty time-honored, and it does work - especially if you want to encourage people to donate more than the minimum. Also, realize that for some of this swag, the wholesale price is a lot less than the retail price. (A teddy bear might sell for $10 retail, but I can get 1000 of them for $2000, as an example. So each one only costs me $2 + shipping.)

Oh, that makes more sense... I didn't think about the wholesale angle. I'm not in business so I always think of products at their marked-up consumer prices.

[DragoonHP]

Someone alreaddy tried to scam people on Kickstarter.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201205 ... scam.shtml

[Blue Lemma]

Just saw this and am floored. Just floored.

$43,196? They raised $43,196 for a game that basically doesn't exist, sounds generic and hackneyed as hell, and who knows how fun it will be? And WHO are these guys? I haven't heard of any of them.

[redeyesblackpanda]

I'd say the last panel of this explains the situation pretty well.

[Blue Lemma]

edit 2: I think I'm giving it a go. I could make some kick-butt things if I actually had a decent budget, so why not try?

[redeyesblackpanda]

meanwhile, I bet some of the people donating probably pirate games and won't pay for things that already exist...!

I think my indie game-dev spirit just decreased 95%.

*mind blown* My goodness, you're probably right...

Humans are really crazy animals sometimes...

[Argeus_the_Paladin]

I would chalk it down to humanity's arguably inherent slant towards hipsterism. Sure, supporting and buying mainstream projects is surefire and all, but that's like, so mainstream! Everyone knows that indie gaming is the future of the PC gamer master race, so good monies should go to PC indie devs, right? Right?

/endsarcasm.

Point is, these days in the wake of Minecraft, Terraria and - in the OELVN environment - Magical Diary and Katawa Shoujo, indie development is enjoying some significant bias in consumer mind. The fact that the big players in the gaming market have been churning out low-quality games all those years (CoD. Dragon Age II. Fable from II onward. Heroes VI - seriously, Ubisoft has no idea how to make a HoMM game. And to a lesser extent, Diablo III and Skyrim) does not help their cause.

It is only natural to see this trust exploited. It's, IMO, up to consumers to tell the good from the bad.

[Showsni]

Wow, that Unemployment game... $10,500 raised for a 2 and a bit hour RPG Maker game using almost purely the stock graphics and stock coding (battle system and so on)? He's added custom music, but still... For a commercial game, I'd really expect to see at least a custom tileset and sprites... And probably a bit of coding to set the battle system and interface apart from generic RPGMaker fare...

(Why am I using so many ellipses?)

Well, I guess people will pay for what they want to. I wonder if I could convinvce Kickstarter to "fund" a novel? (Ie pay for me to not have to work whilst writing it.)

[Argeus_the_Paladin]

Wow, that Unemployment game... $10,500 raised for a 2 and a bit hour RPG Maker game using almost purely the stock graphics and stock coding (battle system and so on)? He's added custom music, but still... For a commercial game, I'd really expect to see at least a custom tileset and sprites... And probably a bit of coding to set the battle system and interface apart from generic RPGMaker fare...

(Why am I using so many ellipses?)

Well, I guess people will pay for what they want to. I wonder if I could convinvce Kickstarter to "fund" a novel? (Ie pay for me to not have to work whilst writing it.)

I'd take a gander and say that it's an entirely different thing for literature. For starter, literature is a hell lot harder to sell than games and music, if only because as a form of entertainment it requires a lot more effort to enjoy than a comic or a game with the same quality, generally speaking. Not everyone can appreciate a good read, while most people can sit back and read a comic or play a game easily. Secondly, the literature market is already over-saturated as is, what with publishers worldwide getting neck-deep in slush every single day of the year. It is also a field where literally everyone not in the pay of a large publishing house is an 'indie' - read: 99% of everyone who is, or like to call themselves an author.

On the other hand, writing a novel requires much less teamworking effort compared to a game - you're writing alone, for yourself, at your own pace, and unless you have sky-high work ethics and/or your livelihood depends on it (at which point I'd say you have done it wrong) you have absolutely zero pressure.

In a nutshell, kickstarters isn't meant for and probably won't work for literature. Ever.