All of Double Fine’s success from Kickstarter has been inspiring.
I GUESS PEOPLE LOVE THOSE CLASSIC ADVENTURE GAMES AFTER ALL.*
The idea of player-supported funding is... well, it’s proof certain genres aren’t dead and sequels may have more legs than they seem. And the idea of not having to argue that with a publisher is appealing.
Out of curiosity, if Obsidian did Kickstart a project, what would you want to see funded? (You can respond in comments or to @ChrisAvellone on Twitter, whichever you prefer.)
* I only use all caps for sarcasm and shouting. And for the Think Tank in Old World Blues for comedy value.
Orogogus wrote on Feb 14, 2012, 00:43:Jerykk wrote on Feb 14, 2012, 00:09:I'd love to believe that the kickstarter fund would end up reaping a return to the 'investors' in terms of quality and adherence to some of the principles that made the classics of yesteryear, but I think mobs like Obsidian will still try to go for mass appeal etc rather than making a solid game.
I don't think they would. For one, customers would expect some details before investing their money. Things like the type of game being made and the estimated length of development, for example. I highly doubt Obsidian would just take all that money and use it to fund a prototype they can just show off to publishers.
Given the realistic funding that a Kickstart would provide (~$1 million), Obsidian would have no choice but to make a 2D, old-school, text-driven CRPG (like Planescape Torment). I sincerely believe that old-school developers like Avellone would love to do such a thing but the realities of business have made it unfeasible.
I kind of suspect it would be a very short CRPG, or more old school than initially supposed. Tim Schafer says DOTT cost almost half a million in today's dollars to make without including voices. So he can do better than that with his $1.7M+, but something like the Infinity Engine seems an order of magnitude or two more complex. Torment looks like something that took a lot of people a lot of time to put together. Grim Fandango comes out to $4.2M in today's money, and Tim Schafer implies that nearly all of that goes to developer salaries rather than something optional like voice actors.
Just as a back of the envelope calculation, if a group can get their game done in a year, and say the average salary is $50K, then 20 people is $1M. A game that takes 2 years would hit that with just 10 people. And if you go to Mobygames and click on a credits page, there are about 35 people even stopping at just the programmers, designers, scripting and artists. So I suspect that for $1M, old school might be less Infinity Engine and approaching more Ultima 6 or gussied-up Gold Box.