Woot another kickstarter! <3 This time a successor to Populous! It's not as clear cut as the recent space games though, because this Peter Molyneaux guy, for every fan he has, there's someone who hates him. I don't really know why this is because I don't play his games anymore, although maybe that explains something. But back in the day, he made games like Syndicate and Populous and they were a big deal. Whether he is a safe bet to return to those glory days, I have no idea, but i'll watch and see what happens with interest. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/22cans/project-godus
I have never felt so much WANT in my life!! EDIT: Antfield: Hope you refering to those games as the "good" games. True that Fable wasn't a "God game", just a normal RPG, but still. I found both game series to be massive fun.
Lol well I never liked the more recent stuff but Syndicate and Populous were great! Don't know if he can return to that kind of thing though.
Although I will never forgive him for dropping BC (probably one of the greatest games never released!) to concentrate on Fable, I did love Populous and this looks like it will rock my boat in that direction!
I'll c&p my thoughts from the article discussion: I don't have a problem with Molyneux pretending he's going to make yet another world-changing game, an event that will revolutionise the gaming industry and possibly push humanity as a whole towards our next stage of evolution. His choice of funding, on the other hand, is reprehensible IMO.
Why the hate? The most successful projects are probably due to the fact they have a 'name' behind them (Chris Roberts, Tim Scahfer, Jon Mavor and Steve Thompson, Christian Allen to name a few). OK, PM may not have always hit the mark, but it's not as though he is still with Microsoft. I am not so sure that a game like this could be funded any other way in the current climate. In the next couple of years if the Kickstarter stuff is successful then I can very much see the big publishers using it - it would make no business sense not to. It is too early to tell at the moment as none of the 'big' games have been finished yet. You can bet the the big publishers will be looking very closely at the sales of these games - if they sell as well as they have been funded then they will be all over it like a cheap suit! KS should not just be about back-room developers or small indie outfits, it should be a way of getting games made that people want regardless of who it is that makes them.
Had someone else made them I would refer to them as great games, but with that name attached the standards kind of change, he'll always be measured against the standards set by games like Syndicate or Populous. Anyway, kind of odd that people like Tim Schafer, Chris Roberts or Peter Molyneux resort to crowd funding, I mean I can understand it if small indie devs no one ever heard of do so as its obvious that EA and such wouldn't fund them, but why they let projects like Star Citizen or Godius slip through their greedy fingers... you'd think the big publishers would engage in a throw money contest if Peter Molyneux or Chris Roberts show up with an idea.
As probably the biggest name in the UK industry and the former head of Microsoft studios I doubt he has issues getting funding. Look at his 21 cans studio and the curiosity cube. They seem to be doing some pretty out there projects and he has said that the prize in the cube will be "genuinely life changing". I wait to see what that will be.
He's also incredibly rich, and if he had faith that this game was going to revolutionise the universe he could easily fund it himself. IIRC he funded Black & White himself.
I would think that even PM would have to justify the cost case for a project both to MS and himself. It's irrelevant if he has a billions quid in the bank or a penny - game making is a business. This is why Kickstarting is potentially great as it covers both the business case (no interest = no funding = no project = minimised risk) and the consumer need/desire. With the current 'purely publisher' funded model, only games that executives think will sell well get made - as we all know this doesn't always mean the games we want get made. With funding secured up front by the consumers themselves then it stands to reason that the games the consumers want get made. It doesn't matter who is running the Kickstart or how much money they have or don't have, the important thing is the type of game that gets made. This is not purely about 'small guy Vs big guy', it's about getting the products we, as consumers want.
Well the over promise under deliver thing I think is largely due to publishers. They have such strict control over the developers, withholding money unless they make exactly what the publisher insists will be profitable etc. And if things run over budget, sometimes publishers say tough tits, you have to release it anyway and patch it later. Basically, publishers are teh evilz. That doesn't mean to say molynolyneouaioux wont under-deliver again though, but I'm interested in kickstarter projects because they get to make the game that they want and not what the publishers insist on. It's all up to him now, if it fails there's no excuse
Exactly and as his backers are the people that buy his games then it is a huge 'reputational' risk rather than financial which in a lot of ways is worse.
Oh yeah they are really exposed like this because they get everything their own way. If it ends up crap it could destroy reputations. The only other thing I think about kickstarters is that the budgets are never actually that big, in gaming terms. That Star Citizen is getting closer to a decent budget, but even with 5 or 6 million or whatever, they are still putting in at least the same again from other sources. The average game though is lucky to get 3 million in total, which is tiny compared to most big games these days. (GTA4 was $100 million, god knows what GTA 5 is lol). So I just hope people don't expect too much from kickstarter projects. For now at least, they are still indie style.
I suspect that a lot of these huge development costs are down to advertising costs, paying all the research firms (plus other associated partners) and also due to 'bloat'. These organisations are huge and will take a lot of funding just to run themselves. If EA or Activision were to run a project the kickstarter way then their costs would be significantly less. It will be interesting to see how many sales the kickstarter projects actually get. I haven;t checked but I imaging that most people are pledging at least to the level they secure a copy of the game - the question is have they already reached their total install base before the game is even released?
Yeah interesting. And the cool thing about digital distribution is that it doesn't cost much, only the hosting, no actual boxes or manuals need printing and packaging. So even if they have to 'ship' 100,000 games, it's just a download link It could be pretty profitable, and judging by a lot of these games, they keep the teams small too. Just one or two programmers, one or two artists, etc. It's a long way from the 100+ staff some games have.
