Theory

[icycalm]

So this appears to be turning into a legitimate funding scheme for really cool stuff. So far I note that Oculus Rift and Planetary Annihilation were funded through it, which are two of the coolest hardware and software products in the videogame pipeline by far. The Oculus is THE coolest hardware thing on the horizon, bar none, and PA, though not the coolest videogame, is certainly up there in top 5 territory. I am only miffed I found out about them after their kickstarters were over. In the Oculus' case that's not too big of a deal, since I can still preorder a dev kit with Doom III: BFG off the company's site, but with PA I feel really screwed, since you could get $20 off your day-1 purchase if you bought the game from the Kickstarter page, or get LE editions and even beta or alpha access for reasonable sums. I don't care about all the other "pay us 1000 bucks and we'll name a robot after you" bullshit, but day-1 half-price deals would be very cool for me since I almost never buy games on day 1 anymore precisely to avoid paying full price. (Just the other day for example I ordered a good 20 current-gen games from Amazon for like around $250, which would have cost me upwards of $1,000 on day one.)

So this is a thread to let people know of cool kickstarters as soon as possible, so we can get in to the fun. You can also link mediocre-looking stuff, or even "indie" shit to make fun of it if you wish, but the main goal here is to keep track of and get into good deals.

[icycalm]

Note also, by the way, that Kickstarter does not mark "the end of corporashuns" or any such retarded shit. Oculus is still a corporashun, Uber Games is still a corporashun, the only difference being that instead of putting their own money on the line, or borrowing from banks, they are borrowing from customers in the expectation of the finished product (which makes you wonder what happens if they never deliver it, but that's another issue). In some ways this is worse than what we had before, since instead of having to satisfy a bank's managers or a board of executives or some shit, you now have to satisfy tens of thousands or millions of players, whose lowest common denominator demands will, believe it or not, usually lie BELOW those of the executives (especially when the game belongs to one of the more popular genres...). So it's not all sunshine and rainbows, especially considering that both the Oculus and Planetary Annihilation could have been easily funded by traditional means, which makes you wonder why their developers chose Kickstarter. In the case of the Oculus there is widespread agreement that they did it merely for the popularity, because Kickstarter is "hip" and shit -- but perhaps in PA's case there were indeed more legitimate reasons. Either way I do believe it is a good funding method, but just want to caution people against the euphoric utopian nonsense that's doubtless floating about.

[ingolfr]

MEGA64 "SAKRED DIAMONDZ" KICKSTARTER!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-QYqet8Sok

[icycalm]

I split off all game-specific posts from this thread into their own threads a long time ago, and I'll be moving this thread to the Games forum for general crowdfunding discussion, so start a new thread about the game and don't just throw up a lazy link and think you are done.

[ingolfr]

Sorry, I should have given details. Mega64 aren't actually making a game, it's a video making fun of the kickstarter craze.

[icycalm]

Nah, I should have clicked on the link. Decided to move the thread to the Theory forum instead, since this sort of finance model appears to have a wide impact on the design of the games that are funded with it. Might even write an article about it at some point.

[icycalm]

http://www.learntocounter.com/forums/in ... 7#msg67797

I think the best thing to do is have big visible public forums, invite everyone's opinion, pay some guy to pretend to be you and post on them a lot, and never look at them once. It'll help keep you insulated from the opinions of the masses if they have an obvious visible place where they can go to be "heard" by you, you won't be as likely to get random emails or whatever shot your way. Obviously this is outwardly indistinguishable from what these guys are doing, but I think it's a pretty safe bet that those guys aren't doing this.

Sounds about right to me.

Watch the Ghetto moron completely misinterpret the only smart comment posted in his shitty little thread. The dude is saying that this hypocritical behavior is a GOOD thing, and the Ghetto moron replies "Yes, it is indeed a deplorable practice."

And then he keeps going with his asinine bullshit.

I think that ray guy might be the same ray that we have in this forum. He subscribed for a year or two, but I guess he now thinks that "Learn to Counter" is a better value for his money lol.