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Topic: Kickstarter? (Read 23292 times)
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dathinvaderzim
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Oh yeah because people are definitely going to a store to buy an out-dated looking game.
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CelticMinstrel
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I think you'd be surprised...
Another thing to keep in mind is gog.com downloads.
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hano
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I think this is a no brainer.
Toys for Bob, make it happen!
Wasteland 2 a sequel to even an older game collected 800,000 $ in 2 days for even an older game than SC.
There's nothing to lose, and much to gain, namely get the franchise out of the hands of the evil clutches of Activision.
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« Last Edit: March 15, 2012, 03:58:14 am by hano »
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dathinvaderzim
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Actually, there is something to lose, which is that if he publicly announces the idea, another company or person could steal it, and they have way more resources.
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CelticMinstrel
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..."evil clutches of Activision"? Isn't that going a bit too far?
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Draxas
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No, no it's not. This is a company whose president wants to "take the fun out of videogames," if you recall.
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Arne
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I'm more worried about companies which want to put "fun" in video games at the expense of all else. There's fun and there's fun, you know. One of them displaces certain features which makes a game like SC enjoyable.
TfB owns everything but the SC Trademark, if I understand it correctly. Skylanders seems to be doing well. Perhaps if TfB decides to pursue the Kickstarter route, it could result in... financial insecurity much further down the road. Maybe Activision will get miffed.
It takes quite a bit of time and money to set up a Kickstarter project in a way which teases the prospective backers. The Double Fine Adv. and Wasteland 2 guys hired film makers, got some concept art made, set up peripheral project pages and social networking stuff, and probably had to juggle a lot of numbers to see if they could do it. While the money is pouring in, they have to stay active and engage the backers, produce more material. It's weeks of work. They were also lucky to get good PR on /. and Reddit, and after a while I suspect people will be fed up with backing sequels to old games.
While Kickstarter is great for these kind of projects, I feel a bit uneasy about the fact that up to 10% of the money goes into other pockets. It seems feasible to run that kind of service for under 1-2 million per year, but it's possible that they have a lot of lawyer/accounting costs for fraud cases and yadda yadda. Also, brand recognition and trust have kicked in so it's probably hard for others to set up a competing service. Maybe one could think of Kickstarter as a sort of retailer rather than a donation service.
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« Last Edit: March 15, 2012, 07:09:56 pm by Arne »
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dathinvaderzim
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Maybe if the description could be vague enough but awesome you could get people to do it, bu if you make it too vague no one is going to really know what it is, so no one will support it, and if you make it too obvious you risk getting the idea stolen.
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dathinvaderzim
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So change the names and images a little bit.
Besides, mods have been made for a little while now, if they really cared something would have happened. Celtic just can't make money by selling the game or claim everything is originally his, but there's nothing against random people donating money so someone can work on something. The company that made sc2 isn't even a real company anymore.
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« Last Edit: March 16, 2012, 01:14:42 am by dathinvaderzim »
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onpon4
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Besides, mods have been made for a little while now, if they really cared something would have happened.
Mods of The Ur-Quan Masters are not illegal. The source code was released under the GNU General Public License by TFB, meaning (in a nutshell) anyone is free to use, modify, and redistribute the program as they wish provided that they license their distributions under the GPL (give everyone else the same freedom they had). The content is under the a noncommercial license (CC-BY-NC, I think), which is nonfree, but it still allows reuse of the content as well as derivative works provided that it is for non-commercial use (which is the case for all relavent mods).
So change the names and images a little bit.
That wouldn't be a Star Control game, then, would it? It would be a completely separate space game with similar gameplay. This happens all the time in the game industry: older ideas are refined and put into new games. But last time I checked, even though there were plenty of other platformers available (many of them for free, no less!), the Mario games were still successful, even up to the most recent Mario platformer, New Super Mario Bros Wii.
The company that made sc2 isn't even a real company anymore.
Erm, yes, it is? Toys For Bob is definitely still around. It's owned by Activision.
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« Last Edit: March 16, 2012, 02:27:49 am by onpon4 »
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dathinvaderzim
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Even if it looks different you can say it was based off the plot of sc2, and the coding can be re-used by the public as you stated, so there shouldn't be too much of problem making a new version. The game was originally for sega which was published by whatever division or company that created segas, which doesn't exist anymore. Don't say nintento because sega was made to compete with nintendo.
If you don't want to rename it then I suppose you can ask toys-for-bob for permission, and they might be lenient if it's not being sold to make money and say a max of 100,000 dollars to legally license it to celtic or whoever runs the project, which is where kick-starter might come in. Though even to do things like altering the coding for a play-station to make a game, you need to pay over 200,000 dollars, i.e before you even make a game, you need to pay to have permission to use its coding for over $200,000.
The best step right now would be to ask toys-for-bob for the licensing, it's best to tell them everything you've done with this project so they can see specifically what's needing to be licensed. There's a fair chance it will be a lot of money which is where kick-starter comes in.
What helps with kick-starter is offering rewards. So if someone donates a dollar, what do they get out of it? How about $10 or $50 or $100?
Things like that video where there's just a vague description with no reward for donation rarely work out, you have to carefully give a bit of information out or offer some rewards.
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« Last Edit: March 16, 2012, 03:46:47 am by dathinvaderzim »
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onpon4
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Even if it looks different you can say it was based off the plot of sc2, and the coding can be re-used by the public as you stated, so there shouldn't be too much of problem making a new version.
The races, the very thing that makes Star Control Star Control, are intellectual property of TFB, as far as I understand. There's a HUGE difference between a game based off of another game, not featuring any of the same characters, and a sequel to the same other game, continuing the same story and making use of established characters.
The game was originally for sega which was published by whatever division or company that created segas, which doesn't exist anymore. Don't say nintento because sega was made to compete with nintendo.
What game are you talking about? SEGA never had anything to do with anything Star Control. Star Control had a (crappy) port for the Mega Drive/Genesis, but that's the only connection. Star Control and Star Control II were both for DOS, and both were published by Accolade.
If you don't want to rename it then I suppose you can ask toys-for-bob for permission, and they might be lenient if it's not being sold to make money and say a max of 100,000 dollars to legally license it to celtic or whoever runs the project, which is where kick-starter might come in. Though even to do things like altering the coding for a play-station to make a game, you need to pay over 200,000 dollars, i.e before you even make a game, you need to pay to have permission to use its coding for over $200,000.
The best step right now would be to ask toys-for-bob for the licensing, it's best to tell them everything you've done with this project so they can see specifically what's needing to be licensed. There's a fair chance it will be a lot of money which is where kick-starter comes in.
What helps with kick-starter is offering rewards. So if someone donates a dollar, what do they get out of it? How about $10 or $50 or $100?
Things like that video where there's just a vague description with no reward for donation rarely work out, you have to carefully give a bit of information out or offer some rewards.
You were talking about "[risking] getting the idea stolen" before. I assumed you were making a case that it would be difficult for TFB to do a Kickstarter properly, but now you seem to be talking about how best for people other than TFB to do the sequel for TFB? I'm lost, I'm afraid.
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dathinvaderzim
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If they want a "sequal" that avoids any possible legal issues, change the look but keep the mechanics and just say its based off of the plot of sc2, if not ask toys for bob and use kickstarter if they want a lot of money for licensing, it's that simple. As I originally said, there is a risk that the idea could get stolen, so try not to be too obvious, but don't be too vague either or people won't know what it is. Not many people have heard of the game so if you don't be descriptive in some way or make an awesome intro, it likely won't get many donations. Rewards help with donations too.
Also, didn't accolade go under? Even human-head makes cool games like Prey (1-2) and not many people have heard of them and they almost went under just a little while ago. It's hard to imagine a company like accolade still surviving. I'd just ask toys if you think it's a big deal to make a random fan mod that isn't even being sold to make money, which is really where the problems would come in. If your not selling it, then most likely its fine.
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« Last Edit: March 16, 2012, 01:28:14 pm by dathinvaderzim »
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