Unsung Story, Spirital Successor to Final Fantasy Tactics

[Eric]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/482 ... -guardians



Actually glad a few Japanese devs are embracing the kickstarter method. Every Tactics after the first was aimed at children, and Matsuno is writing the story, so I'm kind of on board there.

[Zeus]

I'm really curious how a lot of these Kickstarter games turn out. Broken Age from Double Fine was just released and Might No. 9 had an insane Kickstarter.

Do you know of any others that I can look up? I'm really curious to look at the numbers.

[Julius Seeker]

I was hoping he would get back onboard with Ogre Battle and complete that storyline.

I suppose a spiritual successor to Ogre Battle is also fairly good.

[Blotus]

I'm really curious how a lot of these Kickstarter games turn out.
Do you know of any others that I can look up? I'm really curious to look at the numbers.

I can tell you that The Banner Saga is great so far (more than half through, I imagine).

http://store.steampowered.com/app/237990/
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sto ... anner-saga

[Zeus]

I'm really curious how a lot of these Kickstarter games turn out.
Do you know of any others that I can look up? I'm really curious to look at the numbers.

I can tell you that The Banner Saga is great so far (more than half through, I imagine).

http://store.steampowered.com/app/237990/
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sto ... anner-saga

Yeah, just saw that review on Edge today. Both that and Broken Age got 8s which is a good score from that site.

The curiosity is how well they do beyond the people who pledged and get the game for free. A lot of these developers are gonna burn the Kickstarter money to make the game and add "features", increasing their development time. How much is gonna be left over if the game only sells to those who pledge?

Mighty No. 9 is the one with the biggest danger there IMO. If you raise 800k like Banner Saga, there's likely a lot of fence-sitters. When it's over $4M, there can't be that much. Although wide release on all consoles instead of just PC opens up the other 90%+ of the market, that may help it significantly.

[Eric]

Well it depends really. Like Platinum Games gets paid up front for Wonderful 101, Bayonetta 2, etc, sales don't really matter after the service is rendered. The same with Gearbox & Aliens: Colonial Marines. They don't get a slice of the sales pie I don't think(And those fuckers used their Aliens budget on Borderlands 2). Infinite Ward did get a slice of the sales pie with Modern Warfare 2, which of course caused a controversy and Activision getting sued(rightfully so).

On the Indie side, they're doing the former. So even if the game doesn't sell well, they've already been paid via kickstarter. Anything they sell after that point is pure profit, so if they only sell 10,000 that's fine. The whole point of Kickstarter is to just get the game made and pay your developers, everything after the initial goal is extra. So let's say Might No 9 tanks horribly, NOBODY buys it. It doesn't matter everyone who's worked on the game has already been paid. They can put up another kickstarter for Mighty No. 9 2, and if they get 1/4 of those original Kickstarter people to back the game the developers will be taken care of.

The whole problem with the industry atm is that the big publishers don't want to make small games, it's AAA all day, $20,000,000 min budget or gtfo, they don't want to make video games that cost too little because they want to control the market and make these big expensive games that other devs/publishers can't compete with, it's the reason we've lost over 400 studios/publishers over just the past 5 years.

[Blotus]

The curiosity is how well they do beyond the people who pledged and get the game for free. A lot of these developers are gonna burn the Kickstarter money to make the game and add "features", increasing their development time. How much is gonna be left over if the game only sells to those who pledge?

If it's any indication, the game has been on Steam's best sellers panel since it's release Tuesday. And that's a bit of a surprise given the asking price of $25 seems high for an independent, Kickstarter game (never mind that it seems to be a very replayable ~10 hour game). The first thing I did when I looked at the steam page for the game was to add it to my wish list so that I would know when it went on sale... and then I ended up buying it anyway. I'm sure The Banner Saga will continue to sell on word of mouth and favorable reviews for now, and will later sell even more when it inevitably goes on sale multiple times in the next couple of years.

[Zeus]

Yeah, Eric, I can see what you're sayin'. But I can't imagine them considering the games a success, especially one like Mighty No. 9, if it sells only 10k above the pledges. And that's what's gonna be the real measure of success of these games, whether or not they can get past their pledges. Otherwise, it'll remain very niche.

And Blotus, I hope we start hearing about the sell-through on those games. I'm really curious. I don't care if they sell for just a week then die off if they sell 300k. That's considered a success IMO for games like this. If they start getting ported to the consoles then we know for a fact they're successful.

[Don]

I saw an article from Kotaku that has budget of games and they're always like measured in millions sometimes tens of millions. However this thing reminds me of the airline industry. It's said that as a whole the airline industry never turned a profit based on its history, but that doesn't mean people didn't get paid a lot doing something that didn't turn a profit. I got the feeling most of these games that turn out to flop and cry about not enough money is because they paid way too much money for people who aren't really worth it. The programming expertise to make a game certainly isn't that rare, and unless you're sure the guy really has some kind of insight that nobody else does, most of the time you found out the lead designer you have is probably no better than an average guy on the Internet.

I'm betting if you see Mighty No. 9 flop they'd still cry about how they were barely making enough money for food or something.

[Eric]

Otherwise, it'll remain very niche.

Who cares if a game is niche if it's good? More for me and my ilk that enjoy it!

Case-in-point, La Mulana just started a kickstarter for a sequel asking for $200,000.

[Eric]

Looks like this one is going to BARELY make it. Was dead until 2 days ago @ 475k, and it's been averaging about $3,000 an hour since then.

[Shrinweck]

The companies that are funding games through Kickstarters don't have the overhead that normal developers usually have. The money goes towards paying actual developers as opposed to marketing execs and other leeches that don't particularly add anything real to the game. A game doesn't have to sell five million copies in three months to be a success. If chaining Kickstarters is how a company wants to develop their games then one project feeds into another without the constant need to fire basically everyone at the end of each development cycle. This idea is epitomized by inXile Kickstarting/developing Wasteland 2 and when the art department/concept developers were finished with that game, they started a new Kickstarter for Torment: Tides of Numenera (a spirital successor to Planescape: Torment). Both of these games are pretty big and even the overpriced beta for Wasteland 2(I think the finished game is going to retail $25 cheaper) was on the top ten list on Steam for two weeks. Torment was (is?) the new #1 most funded video game (during a Kickstarter campaign), so there's a clear demand there.

Star Citizen is the game to watch with crowdfunding though. While not pulling in as much as Torment during the Kickstarter phase, it has since pulled $38,544,192, proving that these games can rake it in. They claim that the entire budget is split between something like four studios in different countries working on all the crazy shit they've been promising (first person planet-side and space-side combat, a single player campaign, a persistent multiplayer universe, etc.). While it's probably not going to be vaporware it's definitely a contender for "Why would we work really hard on this when we've already made tens of millions of dollars?" Seriously, people are paying $10s and $100s of dollars for microtransaction spaceships in a game that doesn't even fucking exist yet. I'm all for supporting game developers doing new things with more carrot (crowdfunded money) than stick (internet comment hate), but seriously let them finish the five million dollar carrot before throwing 35 million more at them.

These games aren't only being sold to people who are pledging and even if they were you could conceivable keep a company alive by chaining crowdfunded games together. They aren't trying to make games that are blockbuster successes (although in the case of games like FTL when you only have like 2-3 people developing something, you're basically an overnight millionaire). God only knows where I read the quote, but one of the inXile/Obsidian Entertainment guys just straight out side that they aren't trying to make big games that sell to millions of people. He wants to make the games he wants to play and he's flattered as all hell that people are willing to pay him to do that. Because the publishers sure didn't and when they did they wanted to change things and fuck it all up.

I think this stuff shines when you've got a smallish team of people who don't mind toiling in obscurity in order to make a game that probably won't make a big splash. These are people making cult classics. While I Kickstarted the shit out of stuff like Wasteland 2, Torment, and Project Eternity a lot of these games (Banner Saga, Broken Age) make my "Must buy when it goes on sale" list. A lot of these games fall into the "This was... pretty good" opinion in games (see: Shadowrun Returns, another Kickstarter game that has since been released to reviews that all seem to agree "It's okay") where if you don't already fall into the particular niche the game belongs in, then the game isn't going to knock your socks off.

Also I went ahead and threw my hat into the ring for this particular Kickstarter for $20. Good luck. But they probably don't need it since it went up $2,000 as I typed this post.

[Zeus]

Otherwise, it'll remain very niche.

Who cares if a game is niche if it's good? More for me and my ilk that enjoy it!

Case-in-point, La Mulana just started a kickstarter for a sequel asking for $200,000.

You care because you want to see more of that team and that franchise. If it's niche, it's a crapshoot. If it's successful on a mass scale, it's a guarantee.

[Shrinweck]

A guarantee wouldn't need to be crowd funded. That's why, in the main stream, we see so many sequels and only one to two new franchises a year that are worth a damn. Crowdfunding is about making something new or reviving a dead franchise.

[Zeus]

That's right. And if that new one sells good, we'll see more. If it only sells it's pledges and nothing else, we likely won't

[Eric]

That's right. And if that new one sells good, we'll see more. If it only sells it's pledges and nothing else, we likely won't

Zeus, it's not about that, it's about them making what they want to make.

If they want to make a sequel they'll make it, and they can get the funding via another kickstarter.

[Shrinweck]

A Kickstarter that hits its goal is almost certainly not going to sell merely its pledges unless the developers severely drop the ball. There tends to be a huge market for Kickstarters that hit their goal once there's an actual product out there to buy, rather than a gamble that things might turn into vaporware/garbage. It's like pulling from the market that's willing to pre-order. Except there's far less people willing to crowdfund.

[Shrinweck]

Mention of Final Fantasy Tactics reminded me that this game was still in development. And it does not look good. It was slated for release July 2015 and at this point the devs don't even plan beta release until June 2016.

The last combat video preview update post looks pretty shit. And the developer promised another update the next month. Which would have been like 40 days ago at this point. They apparently had a 'financial crunch' and had to have lay offs last year. And not even being reliable enough to post a few paragraphs isn't exactly a good sign.

So, yeah, this is probably going to be terrible.

[Eric]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1029 ... ung_Story/

Got my steam key 7 years later lmao.

Honestly I'm shocked this one happened. Apparently the original people that pitched it took the money and ran, for some reason this other studio decided to step in and make the game for reasons that aren't entirely clear, and now we have an early access version that's still being worked on.