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TMG just started a kickstarter for Bomb Squad. It's a real-time cooperative game that uses the mechanics of Hanabi to disarm bombs with a robot.
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Sep 8, 2014 22:53
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Echophonic posted:I've only really been burned by Always/Never/Now, Axes and Anvils, the Machine Age projects, and the Kittens in a Blender expansion. Not too bad out of 93 projects. I'm also still waiting on my physical stuff for Inverse World, but I had a copy with notes and such, so that's still being worked on. My only real "burns" are Nightfall, Stab City and Far West (although Metamorposis Alpha is getting close) out of 138, so I think I'm doing pretty well.
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Sep 9, 2014 00:23
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Scyther posted:People actually wanted an expansion to Kittens in a Blender? I don't anymore! I didn't realize exactly how bad the game actually was until recently and the KS was in 2012. They STILL haven't shipped. Least it wasn't a lot of money. inklesspen posted:The Machine Age people basically got their entire lives upended by breakins and theft, as well as existing publishers declining to honor their contracts, IIRC. I'm sad, but not surprised that this has turned into delays. Yeah, I don't hold it against them. I had some contact with David last summer since my Flatpack book got lost in the mail and I still haven't gotten since. I guess they were waiting on the money for another run. I just gave up on it, honestly. On that topic, whatever happened with Apotheosis Drive X? Echophonic fucked around with this message at 00:49 on Sep 9, 2014 |
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Sep 9, 2014 00:41
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Same deal, really. Delayed from thefts, printers, and moving to Japan.
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Sep 9, 2014 00:50
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Evil Mastermind posted:Same deal, really. Delayed from thefts, printers, and moving to Japan. Man, David Hill must have pissed off some sort of elder god or something. That is some seriously poo poo luck. At least he's not Mike Nystul, I guess.
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Sep 9, 2014 01:01
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People actually wanted to keep Kittens In A Blender after playing it?  SageNytell posted:I'm angry because I already had a reason not to kick in; the creator admitted in a PM conversation that the FATE side of things was an afterthought despite getting shared billing with Dungeon World, and I'm really only playing FATE at this point, but I decided to fund it anyway. Welp. I have mixed feelings on Fate/*World conversions, because it is almost always offered as an afterthought or money grab, because they seem like easy systems but they're actually hard to do right if you're actually tweaking the rules to fit your game and not just half-assing it by pasting the base rules onto your setting fluff. On the other hand, I also wrote the Fate Accelerated conversion of Inverse World. That wasn't an afterthought, they'd checked out the game and thought it fit really well and hired someone who knew their Fate to do it properly. So I guess it's fine if you at least pay me to do it.  Echophonic posted:On that topic, whatever happened with Apotheosis Drive X? There's a mostly-complete version on DTRPG to tide you over, last I checked. David Hill is also doing a crossover with Breakfast Cult as part of one of the stretch goals. 
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Sep 9, 2014 01:20
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Evil Mastermind posted:My only real "burns" are Nightfall, Stab City and Far West (although Metamorposis Alpha is getting close) out of 138, so I think I'm doing pretty well. All the PC games I've backed are way late, though.
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Sep 9, 2014 02:15
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dwarf74 posted:I ducked out of Stab City, thank goodness. Now that I'm getting updates for both Deck of Legends and Project Dark, I'm pretty optimistic overall. Most videogames either ship late or aren't actually done (or both), in my experience. I've tempered my Kickstarter expectations accordingly.
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Sep 9, 2014 03:24
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Echophonic posted:Man, David Hill must have pissed off some sort of elder god or something. That is some seriously poo poo luck. I got the Cairn pdf which surprised the hell out of me.
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Sep 9, 2014 03:51
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:I got the Cairn pdf which surprised the hell out of me. You mean the one that Nystul let someone else finish because he was a 'travelling wizard' at the time. I still think that's hysterical. If I ever need to couch-surf, I'm totally calling it that.
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Sep 9, 2014 03:54
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malkav11 posted:Most videogames either ship late or aren't actually done (or both), in my experience. I've tempered my Kickstarter expectations accordingly. At least Enemy and Xing are updating regularly. I'm guessing Torment is still going on.
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Sep 9, 2014 03:57
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Evil Mastermind posted:My only real "burns" are Nightfall, Stab City and Far West (although Metamorposis Alpha is getting close) out of 138, so I think I'm doing pretty well. Well at least Metamorphosis Alpha isn't completely dark (assuming you're talking about the first KS for the new edition, and not the reprint of the first edition KS). But yeah, I need to stop backing stuff. I think Breakfast Cult and Spirit '77 are going to be the last ones I do for a good long while. I've never gotten completely burned yet, but so many slipped dates, so many long periods of silence.
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Sep 9, 2014 04:02
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Shovel Knight turned out fantastic. If I didn't know about the not-yet-implemented gameplay modes I'd assume it was done. I don't think I've seen a single project actually ship on time, though. I just sort of assume that the delivery date is actually "gently caress it whenever" unless it's something that's done-we-just-need-to-pay-for-a-manufacturing-run or something.
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Sep 9, 2014 04:08
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Zereth posted:Shovel Knight turned out fantastic. If I didn't know about the not-yet-implemented gameplay modes I'd assume it was done. I've had both Sentinels-related projects (Shattered Timelines and Tactics) ship -early-, but generally speaking I completely ignore the estimates on the KS page, yeah.
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Sep 9, 2014 06:48
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Ettin, since we'll never see a true Ntech game because of legal issues, what tier do I back at to inflict my special snowflake on the world?
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Sep 9, 2014 07:02
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I'm actually not too sure whether "Cthulhu plus anime and robots" is really a thing you can sue someone over. Tradgames is rife with "like that other game but different," otherwise there wouldn't be eleventy-billion fantasy games that are mostly like D&D with a few changes here and there. Like, clearly he probably wouldn't be able to straight-up use specific terms like "Tager" if he actually wanted to publish Cthulhutech But Not poo poo, but otherwise it doesn't really seem like the sort of thing you'd be setting yourself up for a lawsuit over. (Also the tier to inflict your special snowflake on Ettin's game is one of the $100 "create an NPC" tiers.)
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Sep 9, 2014 07:35
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dwarf74 posted:Yep, I have ceased backing PC games since. Only video games I've backed were Shadowrun and Carmegeddon. Both are doing fine.
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Sep 9, 2014 08:49
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I've been pretty fortunate with my Kickstarters so far, though admittedly I haven't backed nearly as many as other people here. So far I've successfully received rewards from the Reign Enchiridion KS (going way, way back), Bigger Bads for Monsters & Other Childish Things, Last Stand, Golden Sky Stories, Inverse World, and Tianxia. Part of this is largely due to the fact that I almost ever only pledge for digital tiers...hardcopy and swag rarely appeals to me. The exception so far has been the Deck of Legends KS which I pledged at the "get a copy of each deck plus an art commission level" and while that's yet to come through the creator is at least sending updates and working towards getting things out. My latest pledges are for Breakfast Cult, Spirit of '77, and Dungeons & Designers. I'm reasonably confident that those ones are also going to come through.
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Sep 9, 2014 09:42
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I just saw this kickstarter for a collection of 20 sci-fi minis that looks pretty cool in a retro Rogue Trader / Necromunda kind of way. The main pledge is $30 including shipping to the US for 20 minis and 5 drone minis as stretch goals. There's also a second $99 tier for a collection of 80 'road kill and corpse' minis which is weird but whatever floats your boat, I guess.   
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Sep 9, 2014 10:05
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malkav11 posted:I've had both Sentinels-related projects (Shattered Timelines and Tactics) ship -early-, but generally speaking I completely ignore the estimates on the KS page, yeah. I'll be interested to see if the later waves of kickstarters have more realistic release estimates. At a Feng Shui panel at GenCon, Robin Laws mentioned that they have a definite ship date in mind and are going to be avoiding stretch goals that push out the release of the final product. But those kinds of headaches have plagued a lot of actual publishing companies in addition to the much smaller scale indy products. I remember how surprised I was to get the Delta Green fiction collection within a couple months of the KS wrapping up; the stretch goal volume still isn't out, but I'm not too concerned because I already got to read one book and those stories had to be written after the KS finished. In general, backing at digital levels seems like a way to minimize frustration - basically every project I'm still waiting on is because of hold-ups with the physical production and distribution.
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Sep 9, 2014 18:52
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Sionak posted:I'll be interested to see if the later waves of kickstarters have more realistic release estimates. At a Feng Shui panel at GenCon, Robin Laws mentioned that they have a definite ship date in mind and are going to be avoiding stretch goals that push out the release of the final product. But those kinds of headaches have plagued a lot of actual publishing companies in addition to the much smaller scale indy products. It can get especially bad with RPG products; writing some extra content may not seem like it'll have a lot of overhead, but it's more time and can increase the cost of printing a physical book. But then people start doing custom dice, t-shirts, buttons, bumper stickers, and beer mugs and you have to wonder if they remember what they were funding in the first place.
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Sep 9, 2014 19:19
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Germ's terrain KS did not have stretch goals and it did just fine I'd say.
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Sep 10, 2014 02:26
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Given the recent discussion on the subject, I thought this was interesting insight coming from the games manager for Kickstarter:Luke Crane posted:Don't offer early bird rewards for games. You're devaluing your good work and you're making it harder for your project to fund.
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Sep 11, 2014 01:27
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Yes, but isn't this the man who refuses to release his products in PDF?
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Sep 11, 2014 01:34
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Leperflesh posted:Germ's terrain KS did not have stretch goals and it did just fine I'd say. Yup - it did better than I had hoped. I still had folks asking for stretch goals, but I stuck to my "I'm sticking to my original production plan so I can get rewards out in as timely a manner as possible" guns, and folks seemed pretty understanding. I reckon it would have funded higher if I had stretch goals, but I'm thrilled with what I got.
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Sep 11, 2014 01:34
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neongrey posted:Yes, but isn't this the man who refuses to release his products in PDF? Everything for Torchbearer and Mouse Guard is out in PDF. It's just Burning Wheel that's not, I think. I could be wrong, though.
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Sep 11, 2014 01:35
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Germ posted:Yup - it did better than I had hoped. I still had folks asking for stretch goals, but I stuck to my "I'm sticking to my original production plan so I can get rewards out in as timely a manner as possible" guns, and folks seemed pretty understanding. I reckon it would have funded higher if I had stretch goals, but I'm thrilled with what I got. You haven't done a pledge manager thing yet, right? I get nervous when I have backed four or five KSes and I can't remember which of them I've PMed and which I haven't.
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Sep 11, 2014 01:37
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I'm pretty sure I've got Torchbearer in PDF anyway. But I feel like he's made some questionable decisions in re value of his product already, and 'discounts devalue your product' is an argument that steam sales disprove constantly.
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Sep 11, 2014 01:38
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There is this whole line of Business Thought surrounding discounting. It's like the Austrian school of economics kind of thing. There are retailers who firmly believe, to the degree that it's a religion, that if you have sales, customers will adjust their valuation of your products downward to the sale price and thence forward will never pay your nondiscounted prices and you will effectively have just cut your prices forever. This flies in the face of literal centuries of massively, phenomenally successful multibillion dollar companies' experience with marketing tactics that take advantage of promotional discounts, sales, and use of pricing to manage inventory. But what can you do, there are some people who just prefer their hidebound beliefs over actual evidence. Now that doesn't mean that just blindly discounting poo poo is the right thing to do. And it's entirely possible that some game kickstarters hosed up their KSes... or at least left money on the table... due to how they managed discounted tiers. But on its own, the idea of "discounts devalue your product" is provably false, a thousand times over.
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Sep 11, 2014 01:46
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neongrey posted:I'm pretty sure I've got Torchbearer in PDF anyway. But I feel like he's made some questionable decisions in re value of his product already, and 'discounts devalue your product' is an argument that steam sales disprove constantly. Even if there's not an overall decrease in sales, there are a LOT of people who refuse to buy anything on Steam that's not on huge discount. Steam has a large enough audience that it can make up for a lower price with a huge increase in number of buyers, the smaller trad games market may not work quite that well though.
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Sep 11, 2014 01:48
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Also a kickstarter is not an ongoing store where you can discount something, and then end the sale, and then put it on sale again later. And you don't have like, new games that sell full price and then old games that are discounted to capture the market segment that was priced out when you sold the game new, and then double-extra-discounted to capture the final market segment that was disinterested but willing to gamble two bucks on almost anything on a whim. Really it's a completely different kind of ballgame so it's not a good comparison. But kickstarter is a form of presales in most cases, in which you are offering a discount on a product in exchange for the customer's buy in months or years before they get the product, plus their risk that you never produce the product at all or it turns out to not be the product they wanted in the end. It makes complete sense to offer a discount in that situation to overcome the customer's reluctance. An early bird then, is a discount on top of a discount in exchange for buying in to a KS early on, to help it gain attention and "momentum." In some cases it makes sense to get customers on board for a core product that will expand with a bunch of stretch goals, because you're asking them to pledge for a product that might not reach those stretch goals. Then again, once you DO hit those stretch goals, they're still keeping that discount-on-a-discount, which could just be giving money away. It's a tough call. I think early bird *can* make sense, but has to be done delicately (to avoid pissing off customers), and with very careful attention to the affect on the budget. And the early bird discount should never be large. A buck or two is fine.
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Sep 11, 2014 02:04
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It also helps keep your early backers on-board through rough times, since they'll be paying that six bucks or whatever to leave and come back. I know that's kept me from walking away from at least one KS I was on the fence about.
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Sep 11, 2014 02:30
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Leperflesh posted:You haven't done a pledge manager thing yet, right? I get nervous when I have backed four or five KSes and I can't remember which of them I've PMed and which I haven't. Nope. Just asked Backerkit for the final green light, though so hopefully soon!
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Sep 11, 2014 03:14
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Echophonic posted:Everything for Torchbearer and Mouse Guard is out in PDF. It's just Burning Wheel that's not, I think. I could be wrong, though. No, you are correct. All of his games other than Burning Wheel are sold as PDFs. A couple are out of stock in any other format.
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Sep 11, 2014 04:55
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malkav11 posted:No, you are correct. All of his games other than Burning Wheel are sold as PDFs. A couple are out of stock in any other format. I'd accept that whole thing if he didn't give the stupidly poncey "Burning Wheel is meant to be experienced as a book" answer when asked about why BW isn't in PDF.
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Sep 11, 2014 04:57
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jivjov posted:I'd accept that whole thing if he didn't give the stupidly poncey "Burning Wheel is meant to be experienced as a book" answer when asked about why BW isn't in PDF. Yeah, considering that "as a PDF" is how I experience books these days (or a MOBI/EPUB)...
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Sep 11, 2014 05:22
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jivjov posted:I'd accept that whole thing if he didn't give the stupidly poncey "Burning Wheel is meant to be experienced as a book" answer when asked about why BW isn't in PDF. Meanwhile, he also doesn't want to provide any out of publication material (either selling or for free) as he doesn't want to "diminish" the current state of Burning Wheel with it. So you have a lot of excellent material that's unavailable (like the Heian Japan book) because he just doesn't want to provide it, and when pushed he'll tell you to either search for it second hand or try and pirate it, which he will judge you for.
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Sep 11, 2014 05:43
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He's not a bad designer, but you guys are just reminding me of the various reasons I haven't purchased a Luke Crane game aside from Mouse Guard. ... should have sold that at GenCon, I now realize.
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Sep 11, 2014 06:17
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Alien Rope Burn posted:He's not a bad designer, but you guys are just reminding me of the various reasons I haven't purchased a Luke Crane game aside from Mouse Guard. Why is it that *every* RPG designer has something weird going on with them? Anyway, to contribute to the topic, I pretty much only go for early birds if I know that I'm going to go in for that Kickstarter anyway. Like for the 13th Age in Glorantha book, I hopped onto the early bird there. What I think they did right is that the early bird tier is only for the basic PDF. The physical books just have the one price point, so nobody is going to feel cheated there. I think early birds in general are a fine idea, but there are certainly KS's that have abused them. Like the Shadows of Brimstone KS that had something like 10 early bird tiers, all in increments of $5. That's ridiculous to me. One early bird tier for $5 off (or something extra, like the sleeves that TMG gave away with Harbor) is just fine for me.
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Sep 11, 2014 06:24
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jivjov posted:I'd accept that whole thing if he didn't give the stupidly poncey "Burning Wheel is meant to be experienced as a book" answer when asked about why BW isn't in PDF. Some context on why he might have more insight than most is that Luke Crane also works for Kickstarter as his full time job, managing their games section. If anyone has access to the stats on whether this is a good or bad thing to do, it'd probably be him.
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Sep 11, 2014 08:41
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