I striked that first sentence, because it was unfair, but did not want to edit it out, so that people would not assume I was hiding what I said. I apologize again for it.
Surprisingly valid points, man. Though I did answer them partly, but I can explain them more in detail. These risks were focused only on what it's like without a publisher. The normal risks in game development will still be there only they will be bourne by the developer. Anyway.
What if the game they produce is not up to the standard and is wrecked by reviews therefore reducing the sales? This has happened before to Obsidian, which granted is probably partly due to publisher pressure, but has a relatively high chance of happening to all developers.
What if the games requires more money than originally in the budget and they're required to take on debt to finish it? This would mean that they would have to sell a lot more to actually break-even. If they make say 2 million on kickstarter, and the game is extremely hard to make and requires 4 million, this would mean that they would still have to sell the game worth of atleast 1 million(more because money now is worth more than money later + interest + inflation). And this is with about 60k-70k people already owning the game.
While normally a publisher would hand them 4 million and a year or two to make it, and then hope it makes them(the publisher) money. If that would happen not only would Obsidian sit with 4 million of publisher money, they would probably have atleast 2 million worth of people willing to buy the game based on the kickstarter result with little risk to themselves + those that would not have funded them on kickstarter.
Above example is fairly optimistic(I think). My guess is that the real cost of development lies probably somewhere around 6 million dollars atleast, since it's a fairly modest project for PC/Linux/Mac.
An average development budget for a multiplatform game is US$18-28M, with high-profile games often exceeding more than $40M.
They would have to sell quite a lot more to break even and to develop the game they will most likely have to take a debt regardless.
Granted, they do have a large fanbase, then again a bunch of current RPG gamers and old-ish RPG gamers are not interested in their games, because they only know them from games such as KotOR II, Alpha Protocol, NWN II and Fallout: New Vegas. All of which suffered incredibly buggy launches and according to many were worse than their predecessors(except AP which was just bad). Some go as far as to blame obsidian for ruining entire series. I admit this, though I always preferred their stories over Bioware or Bethesda, and the bugs were never game-breaking for me. This is all that Obsidian in its current form has produced. The old-school titles that they bring up were either made by Troika or Black Isle(over a decade ago), which later turned in to Obsidian. I believe that the fans newfound respect for Obsidian stems from the destruction of Bioware
(latest news on that) and the perceived hope that this game brings to old-school RPGers.
Limiting themselves to PC only, of course limits sales, since a huge chunk are console players and it may well be that the old-school RPGers are the only ones funding. Older gamers are also arguably more often against digital publishing which is why it play a larger factor in this game rather than in other games targeted for younger people.
Making Mass Effect DLC or Elder Scrolls: New Vegas would be guaranteed profits to them(assuming they can get these projects).
Making their own game is riskier than making one for a publisher. This is what I've been trying to say, but let me try and condence it:
Niche product + PC only + No publisher(traders in risk management) = Heightened risk
The more money they receive on kickstarter the less risky it becomes. And the more money they receive the less debt they will have to take and the less interest they will be charged due to banks offering fairer interest rates due to lower risk which further decreases their risk. <-- epic sentence.
Also, I highly doubt this will fail and I pray to baby Jesus it doesn't. But from a economic perspective, this is a higher risk investment for higher profits(+all the fuzzy nostalgia stuff the devs want), but not too much higher risk, I believe to make this an unbearable risk.
If you people wonder why I take this so seriously, it's because it's a nice thought experiment for me which also helps with my current studies. I major in Financial Management primarily specializing in investments and funding but also accounting. It's interesting to me. Fun even.
