http://www.vg247.com/2013/02/07/skullgi ... anese-psn/Skullgirls is coming to PlayStation 3 in Japan, Famitsu reports. This is good news for fans in the west; developer Lab Zero Games says it has the greenlight on a sequel but publisher Autumn Games is a little tight on cash right now. Some extra sales and a good reception from one of the largest and most skilled populations of 2D fighter fans in the world will certainly give the indie franchise the boost it deserves. Skullgirls has a vocal fanbase, is finally headed to PC, and is even going to EVO this year.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013- ... o-campaignSkullgirls developer Lab Zero Games will be adding a new fighter, Squigly, to its roster following a record-setting Indiegogo campaign that raised over $150,000 in a day. Currently the total comes to $183,292 with 29 days to go before the 27th March deadline.
Lab Zero - formerly Reverge Labs - was put in a precarious position as it was laid off from publisher Autumn Games last June. This left the team with its Squigly DLC a third complete and it really wanted to release it to the public, not to mention keep the team together. And thus the Indiegogo campaign was born.
Squigly will be a free download across all platforms for three months. After that, the price will increase to $5.
$150K might sound like a lot of money for one character, but Lab Zero listed a detailed breakdown of how much it would cost and assured everyone that this is actually cheap for adding in a new characters as the entire game only cost $1.7 million and Filia was already complete before it received that funding. Over half of the budget would go towards employing eight people for 10 weeks and contracting animators.
"The only reason it's even this cheap is because she's already partially complete, and our staff have volunteered to take pay cuts to try and increase the odds of meeting our goal," wrote Lab Zero on its Indiegogo page.
The campaign has already sailed past its first stretch goal at $175K, ensuring a story campaign and new stage for Squigly. At $375K the bloated fighter Big Band will join the roster, and at $600K a new character will be added that backers will vote on. All future DLC will follow the free launch model of Squigly that will increase to a modest price after a set period of time.
Curiously, Lab Zero already has two sequels worth of character designs planned and for every $20,000 the campaign raises, a new design will be unveiled and added to the candidate list players can vote on.
Those who pledge $5 will receive a Skullgirls desktop background and $10 donations will grant backers a digital soundtrack too. Interestingly, all 24 $1000 rewards for the chance to work with the developer to put themselves in the game - along with a bunch of other swag - have been claimed. It look like Skullgirls fans are a really dedicated crew.
Elsewhere, Lab Zero is still working on a Skullgirls PC port courtesy of publisher Marvelous AQL
http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/the-l ... 1100-4587/The Indiegogo campaign went live on Monday morning, but articles were up on websites ahead of time. This included a Joystiq story with the headline “Skullgirls dev wants $150,000 in crowdfunding for new character,” which prompted a series of comments from users shocked at the sticker price.
“$150k Christ on a bike. I've overseen whole projects that cost less than that," said one commenter.
“Its just a character........" said one reader. "how the fuck can making a character for a video game cost more then my house??? 0_o”
“Building is what they can jump off of," said another commenter. "For one character? Even CAPCOM isn't that greedy, they only sell you the same game 3x”
Trying to raise at least $150,000 was picked for a very specific reason: it was the money Lab Zero Games needed. Often, crowdfunding projects will ask for roughly half of what it actually needs to complete what it’s really promising. There is a psychological effect to crowdfunding, and people want to back a winner. A winner is likely to exceed its funding goal, and get closer to its real goal. The Skullgirls developers actually broke down development costs, hoping to persuade people this was reality:
$48,000: Staff Salaries - 8 people for 10 weeks
$30,000: Animation and Clean-up Contracting
$4,000: Voice recording
$2,000: Hit-box Contracting
$5,000: Audio Implementation Contracting
$20,000: QA Testing
$10,000: 1st Party Certification
$10,500: IndieGoGo and Payment Processing Fees
$20,500: Manufacturing and Shipping Physical Rewards
“We’ve always tried to be really transparent,” said Bartholow. “ [...] We’ve always taken a kind of Game Dev 101 approach to all of this. People don’t know anything about game development, and the people that you think might know something, know shockingly little.”
Other developers I’ve talked to back up Lab Zero Games’ claims.
“I think a lot of things in game production tend to be a lot more expensive than many people realize,” said former Capcom special advisor Seth Killian, now lead game designer at Sony Santa Monica. “The Skullgirls team has done a great job breaking out some of their costs, and I can certainly attest that a good fighting game character costs a lot more to develop and implement than developing virtually any other similar asset in games. [...] The characters are the game in fighters, and adding more involves a huge amount of intricate assets and one of the most difficult ‘but how does it fit into the rest of the game’ challenges anywhere in development.”
Indiegogo Campaign:
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/keep- ... ls-growingCampaign Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdSIDK_HA-4