Author Topic: Pillars of Eternity, formerly Project Eternity  (Read 19906 times)

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Offline cmp

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Re: Project Eternity - kickstarter
« Reply #45 on: September 18, 2012, 02:30:07 pm »
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In essence, from a purely money making perspective, using a publisher can be safer and less risky for a developer, but does not necessarily lead to a better product.
Not using one, can lead to more profits or losses for the developer, and may lead to a better product.

Agree, except for the last part. I'd say it will almost always lead to a better product. :)

Offline Ninja_Khorin

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Re: Project Eternity - kickstarter
« Reply #46 on: September 18, 2012, 02:34:47 pm »
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I can agree to that. :wink:

Offline SeQuel

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Re: Project Eternity - kickstarter
« Reply #47 on: September 18, 2012, 03:49:59 pm »
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It does? Doesn't happen on my end.

Shoulda clarified on that.

Where your Game nicks: Khorin/Qhorin/Quorin/Corin/Chorin/Keyoke/Lujan/Hokanu

is since it's so long if you write a long post those names span into the body message and over laps with like a sentence and makes it hard to read lol.

Offline Ninja_Khorin

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Re: Project Eternity - kickstarter
« Reply #48 on: September 18, 2012, 04:16:59 pm »
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I can remove them, though that still doesn't happen on my end.

Offline Zlisch_The_Butcher

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Re: Project Eternity - kickstarter
« Reply #49 on: September 18, 2012, 09:57:05 pm »
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I can remove them, though that still doesn't happen on my end.
Thanks, it was quite annoying to read your long posts before.
1H stab is the fastest, strongest and longest 1H animation. There's no reason NOT to use it in all instances. I don't know if it's OP, but it's boring. 1H used to be fun because you had a fast (left), long (right) and the most devastating attack (stab) and had to choose the best attack for each occasion.

Offline Zlisch_The_Butcher

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Re: Project Eternity - kickstarter
« Reply #50 on: September 18, 2012, 10:13:30 pm »
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This would take you about 5 minutes of thinking if you really cared, Zlisch. Somehow I doubt you can concentrate for that long so
Really hurt my feelings bro. :cry:
Sorry, this assumed that you have ever studied or read about economy in any form, which you may not have done.

here is what I came up with:

1. New business model.
2. Niche product. May not sell aswell as predicted. - Let's be honest here, Obsidian got tons of fans, I mean, they got that 1mil in what? A day? Sure it could fail, but if that many people are willing to back them up just like that without even the tinniest bit of info about the game being about it's quite a bit unlikely that it'll fail.
3. No publisher to handle the possible losses. If the game fails, Obsidian takes all the losses and not the publisher. - And if the game succeeds Obsidian earns quite a profit that would've gone to the publisher, and odds are it's gonna succeed, while it may not leave them filthy rich I highly doubt all these 'legendary' game designers aren't at least gonna break even selling this.
4. No publisher. They handle all the finances personally, something which they have not had to do.
5. No publisher -> no marketer. Marketing done by Obsidian themselves.
6. No publisher -> distribution of physical copies is problematic.
7. Potential increases in cost of game production in the future may require additional funding and with no publisher that will again be trickier.

The more they earn in kickstarter, the less the potential risks.

I could probably think of a few more risks, but I have another risk assessment and management assignment for Uni which I should be doing instead.
While the other ones are actual issues and it'll be quite a bit of work I'd still hardly call this project a risk with my very limited knowledge of the state of shit at Obsidian, and about physical copies, with the ever increasing % of the market selling digitally I highly doubt they'd lose out on a big amount of the market by going 100% digital, and most people who'd buy this title would likely be excited enough to go over their hatred of digital marketing and buy it anyway.
Also, I can concentrate and be halfserious about shit if I want to, but honestly, it's a lot more fun just being an asshole.
1H stab is the fastest, strongest and longest 1H animation. There's no reason NOT to use it in all instances. I don't know if it's OP, but it's boring. 1H used to be fun because you had a fast (left), long (right) and the most devastating attack (stab) and had to choose the best attack for each occasion.

Offline Ninja_Khorin

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Re: Project Eternity - kickstarter
« Reply #51 on: September 18, 2012, 11:33:19 pm »
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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.
(click to show/hide)
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.

(click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: September 18, 2012, 11:47:26 pm by Ninja_Khorin »

Offline Zlisch_The_Butcher

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Re: Project Eternity - kickstarter
« Reply #52 on: September 19, 2012, 12:36:57 am »
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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.
Yeah, it's cruel to make fun of my ADHD man, shame on you.  :cry:
But seriously, it wasn't really unfair, even though you may or may not have an education regarding economy of any form you only have yourself to blame for not trying to look up enough info to at least have a rough idea of shit.
1H stab is the fastest, strongest and longest 1H animation. There's no reason NOT to use it in all instances. I don't know if it's OP, but it's boring. 1H used to be fun because you had a fast (left), long (right) and the most devastating attack (stab) and had to choose the best attack for each occasion.

Offline Ninja_Khorin

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Offline Ninja_Khorin

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Re: Project Eternity - kickstarter
« Reply #54 on: September 19, 2012, 08:54:11 pm »
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Huge Q&A thing: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60336-feargus-urquharts-qa-on-kickstarter-comment-thread/

My favourite and I literally laughed:
Quote
Steven Cameron
@ Feargus
With the popularity of Project Eternity, Wasteland 2, Double-Fine, etc. Do you think Publishers might look at making games like these or are they too far gone? :p
It seems the publishers aim at multi-platform games which includes the console market. These Kickstarter projects show there's a huge interest with PC gaming. Or is this market just too niche for the Publishers to look at, so they're not concerned at losing money with these games?

Obsidian Entertainment
@Steven We were actually contacted by some publishers over the last few months that wanted to use us to do a Kickstarter. I said to them "So, you want us to do a Kickstarter for, using our name, we then get the Kickstarter money to make the game, you then publish the game, but we then don't get to keep the brand we make and we only get a portion of the profits" They said, "Yes".

Offline Kafein

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Re: Project Eternity - kickstarter
« Reply #55 on: September 19, 2012, 10:09:49 pm »
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Lmao these guys


That's called honesty.

Offline Ninja_Khorin

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Offline BlindGuy

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Re: Project Eternity - kickstarter
« Reply #57 on: September 20, 2012, 12:17:20 am »
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Obsidian Entertainment using kickstarter. Disgusting.
Next step is EA and Ubisoft using it.


This is what I thought.
I don't know enough

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Offline Kafein

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Offline Banok

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Re: Project Eternity - kickstarter
« Reply #59 on: September 24, 2012, 09:07:05 pm »
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I really liked kotor 2 and new vegas too, but I dont think you can really judge obsidian by those games. It cant be that hard to make a decent sequel to another developers already stellar game, using the exact same engine/assets.