Arcen Games
General Category => AI War II => Topic started by: x4000 on September 07, 2016, 09:53:32 am
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Thanks to everyone for the great discussion in the other thread. Cinth has very kindly distilled that down for me to save me some time, and we've got a document set up now for you to look at with proposed tiers and all that: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HxAcl42XyqRyMf9mtU6ZgBw5XHoKao1jrYUgDMMS0no/edit#
Bear in mind that this is preliminary at the time of writing, and still something we need to edit a lot over the next couple of weeks.
A few rules of thumb:
1. No physical rewards that require shipping or whatnot! Loads of kickstarters crumple under the weight of that.
2. There are a variety of potential things that people could design (along the lines of AI plots or whatever), but the design document needs to be further along before I can actually be sure what those are and what the parameters would be. So for now those are simply omitted and on the TBD list down at the bottom.
3. Most likely a digital art book wouldn't be possible, since likely we won't have that much in the way of concept art.
4. With the soundtrack, we're also not sure to what degree we'll be able to afford one (that will be a stretch goal to expand that), so we don't want to accidentally give a backer tier that is for something smaller than you would hope for. The original AI War Classic soundtrack took about 2.5 straight years of work to compose, and new tracks take even longer due to the improved instrumentation and mastering and whatnot.
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Giving the game right off the bat in Early Access to even the lowest (past 1$) tier seems like a interesting move. Though many kickstarters usually put the "alpha" or whatever in the tier above the initial tier as a incentive to buy a higher tier.
I also have to wonder how many "human factions" you intend to include. Considering the amount of tiers and slots that let you design a human factions lore. The derelict message in the bottle is a nice idea.
Its clear the list is still a WIP (as noted) but the bonuses listed seem nice.
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Find out what the AI was focused on during AI War Classic (but shh don’t tell yet)
:0
Shouldn't that be in the $5000 tier as well as the $3000 one? Otherwise it seems like the $3000 one is a better ideal, unless you really like to be involved in music creation. (Not that I can afford either of these, sadly.)
KS exclusive alternative models for ships
That seems like a lot of work that not a lot of people would see.
Get game when it arrives in public Early Access
Will that be on Steam? I presume "earlier than early access" won't be. Should make sure it's clear. The later down ones that have multiplayer starter packs do mention it, but the early tiers don't.
Design a human faction’s lore (subject to approval)
Spoiler: Human factions are going to be doing something this time? :D
That said, there's quite a lot of those available. There's going to be potentially 64 people coming up with faction lore. There is a nice combination in some of the tiers, where you can name a planet, design faction lore (possibly related to the planet in some way), then add a message in a bottle related to that. Giving me some ideas.
If one of the tiers also lets you design a faction leader, then some person can do quite a lot to help shape how that faction exists in the Arcenverse.
Not mentioned anywhere: The amount to make the KS successful. You probably don't want to throw that around until you're ready, which makes perfect sense.
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Giving the game right off the bat in Early Access to even the lowest (past 1$) tier seems like a interesting move. Though many kickstarters usually put the "alpha" or whatever in the tier above the initial tier as a incentive to buy a higher tier.
They are doing that, though. The 15/20 tiers get it in early access. Every higher tier gets it *earlier* than early access (aka: alpha).
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e. Though many kickstarters usually put th
I was more stating that several prior Kickstarters don't even offer any form of early access or alpha access on the initial tiers.
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Get game when it arrives in public Early Access
Will that be on Steam? I presume "earlier than early access" won't be. Should make sure it's clear. The later down ones that have multiplayer starter packs do mention it, but the early tiers don't.
If recent history repeats itself, EA and prior versions would be through Steam.
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Now reading and commenting as an external person:
1) Spare change tier ($1) doesn't need an acknowledgement, I think, as a tier that's just designed to let people feel good and receive kickstarter updates (and you are supposed to write kickstarter updates semi-regularly).
It also cleans up the credits screen to start at Mark-I.
2) The $20 dollar tier is the first tier to give out the game. This creates the expectation that launch price will be $20 or a bit higher, and also creates the expectation that it's a $20 game. Note that you don't have to give out early access at this price, but it should be okay like this.
Consider offering more early-bird discount spots, or an explicit non early-access discount at slightly below launch price.
The posters are free give-aways as thanks indeed. If people really wanted them and the game is popular, someone would probably have uploaded a copy quasi-legally. *Shrug*
3) $30-50. Should be okay. I would be slightly more cautious with planet naming simply because they are more in your face without messing with mods, and also being extremely easy to mod. Derelict good - pleased specify in further information on the limits of backer messages and desired intent. A paragraph would be a sweet maximum.
4) 90-100 identical to 70-80??
5) The scope of 64 potential human factions is very, very large. Who will handle the vetting process, how will they appear in the game - presumably a random 1-4 will appear from the list?
6) Working with Blue tier should be justified by giving some idea of the final graphics style of the game, a few examples, and who will see it. If you don't have a final visual style decided yet, this is important to do by KS launch.
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First glance remarks:
1) $30-50. That's too large a gap IMO.
2) Could the OST be a reward ? :D
3) Planet "chosen" => what about the old names ? Named after proeminent forum trolls enthousiasts & devs ? I'd love to nuke Chrishold, or Keithdom.
4) Where is the arcen special credit card ?
5) Special forum badge (I personally don't care, but still some people find it cool).
6) In a "single" item:
- Get game earlier than Early Access
- “Multiplayer Starter Pack” + 1 Steam key (unlocks at start of early access)
So basically if I buy this pack I can't play with my friend. Not so sure it's a good idea.
7) Plans for a make-it-yourself flagship in origami.
8 ) Digital autographed photos of Chris and his workstation, and Keith and his workstation.
PS: (4 is a joke)
@Zharmad:
- you could have 8 different factions and 64 potential human "background" factions. I think care must be given so that the kickstarter does not imply that different factions have to be mechanically different in-game. Just in case of. People don't like broken promises.
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$3000 (Limit 2)
Work one on one with Chris to design a new, canonical alien race for the Arcenverse
Phytolian's Awakening (https://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,18961.0.html)
$3000? Within a week or two? That will be tough. :D
More seriously.
I would have been interested by the KS's goals. How many will be the minimum for releasing the base game? We spoke about space platforms or champions or whatnot being feasible if the KS would be successful. How are things shaping on that front?
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Oh, yes, what are the stretch goals ?
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Hey Chris, I don't think the base $15/20 should get the game in early access. You want to encourage people to go to higher tiers by offering better rewards, and Early Access is a reward that speaks to a lot of Kickstarter backers. It's an easy $30/35.
Also, my warning about ship design apply just as much to races and AI plots, if not more so. Each race represents a new paradigm in gameplay, and most game players are not game designers. Making it cost a lot could weed out the people who are less serious about the process, but it could make them feel extra stung if you don't implement their ideas exactly as envisioned.
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Pass #2:
1) At the top tiers, backers will essentially be commissioning Blue or Pablo for content to go in the game. If you haven't already, please confirm with them about linking their DeviantArt, Bandcamp, or equivalent.
2) If the Jenga-stack tier setup is intended, please reformat higher tiers to say: "all of the above plus..." Helps us to read.
3) Are there... alien minor factions?
4) You might want to consider more mechanics that are likely to make the cut and enable more supporter recognition:
- If you add human commanders attached to fleets, say, allow people to name them.
- If you decide to retain rescuable human colonies or mercenaries, add formation of mercenary fighters/bombers/corvettes that will draw from names of supporters (I think this is better than naming planets at low tiers). Custom design optional.
- If you allow planet-types to influence gameplay, allow supporters to specify, say, that they will name an asteroid belt (and move this to a higher tier, as leading a fleet of mercs is clearly less $rich$ than owning an entire planet).
- In the above vein, have starting units of alternate design and allow them to be named. Assign associated achievement as necessary. ;)
5) At a limited higher tier, ask Blue to make an image that will be found alongside the message.
6) Dream commission #1: Special AI-plot resulting in scripted mega-wave.
*When AI-plot successfully completes, slowly fade in supporter-commissioned music (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HUWUtTZvK4).*
* A set of carriers warp in with escorts and starts pumping out fleetships in-sync with beat.*
* The wave parades in formation towards your defenses until near engagement range.*
* Featuring capitals with barrels that make a good (https://youtu.be/3MKPcfmHGfQ?t=338), honest (https://youtu.be/3MKPcfmHGfQ?t=1305) thump, and raid starships doing airshow maneuvers over your command station*
@kasnavada: Well, I'm seen it done once before. Not sure about effectiveness. :P
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- If you decide to retain rescuable human colonies or mercenaries, add formation of mercenary fighters/bombers/corvettes that will draw from names of supporters (I think this is better than naming planets at low tiers). Custom design optional.
This sounds cool, "rescuables" based on kickbacker rewards !
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The thing I suggested in the other thread was a digital lore book that compiles all the lore entries already present in all the Arcenverse titles and just formats them nicely, arranging them in chronological order (which would likely be "by game title"). The goal would be for those of us (like myself) who haven't read every single entry, or in some cases, don't own one game or another.
I would like to see it include any "branching" lore as well (e.g. Spire missions) just for completeness, even if it isn't considered "canon" in the grander scheme.
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Lots of commentary! I'll do my best to respond to as much of it as possible, but if I miss you please let me know. :)
Giving the game right off the bat in Early Access to even the lowest (past 1$) tier seems like a interesting move.
That would be selling the game for $1, literally, since once you have a key it's yours forever. I've never seen a kickstarter do that before, personally, although I'm sure some must have.
I also have to wonder how many "human factions" you intend to include. Considering the amount of tiers and slots that let you design a human factions lore.
I'll be getting into this more soon, but I don't really see this as being too important. We'll want a number of them, but no number is particularly too high. Discovering specific ones organically would be the goal, rather than having these be lobby options. I need to write up more about these, but basically for the parts that I'm talking about here, these are not like the minor factions in AI War Classic. That sort of thing will exist as well, but these are more numerous and more... cough... expendable. ;)
Find out what the AI was focused on during AI War Classic (but shh don’t tell yet)
Shouldn't that be in the $5000 tier as well as the $3000 one? Otherwise it seems like the $3000 one is a better ideal, unless you really like to be involved in music creation. (Not that I can afford either of these, sadly.)
Fixed -- thanks! And yeah, I wouldn't be backing at those levels either.
KS exclusive alternative models for ships
That seems like a lot of work that not a lot of people would see.
Maybe. These are low-poly enough that it wouldn't be horrible. If it was just a couple of ships that we did in total, for backers above a certain amount, then it wouldn't be killer.
Get game when it arrives in public Early Access
Will that be on Steam? I presume "earlier than early access" won't be. Should make sure it's clear. The later down ones that have multiplayer starter packs do mention it, but the early tiers don't.
Maybe -- probably. But I'm not sure yet. Either way, it will be eventually at the worst case.
Not mentioned anywhere: The amount to make the KS successful. You probably don't want to throw that around until you're ready, which makes perfect sense.
I don't actually know the number yet, since I don't know the scope yet. Until that design document is complete, I can't give a real answer to that question at all. My gut says about $200k, but I could be quite off. I still have a lot of design doc work to do, and then Keith and I have various estimation work to respectively do, and then we'll have an actual number that means something.
1) Spare change tier ($1) doesn't need an acknowledgement, I think, as a tier that's just designed to let people feel good and receive kickstarter updates (and you are supposed to write kickstarter updates semi-regularly).
It also cleans up the credits screen to start at Mark-I.
Ah, that makes a lot of sense! I changed that to the standard "our gratitude" type thing that you often see on kickstarters.
2) The $20 dollar tier is the first tier to give out the game. This creates the expectation that launch price will be $20 or a bit higher, and also creates the expectation that it's a $20 game. Note that you don't have to give out early access at this price, but it should be okay like this.
Consider offering more early-bird discount spots, or an explicit non early-access discount at slightly below launch price.
The posters are free give-aways as thanks indeed. If people really wanted them and the game is popular, someone would probably have uploaded a copy quasi-legally. *Shrug*
AI War Classic was originally a $20 game, and I have been planning this to be the same. We didn't drop the price on AI War Classic for a couple of years there. I have increased the number of early bird backer slots on the $15 slot to 500, though, good call.
3) $30-50. Should be okay. I would be slightly more cautious with planet naming simply because they are more in your face without messing with mods, and also being extremely easy to mod.
Good point on that. I've moved that to the $60 tier and up only.
Derelict good - pleased specify in further information on the limits of backer messages and desired intent. A paragraph would be a sweet maximum.
Yep, updated that to note it is a paragraph. Good catch.
4) 90-100 identical to 70-80??
Oops! Good catch. I just removed those for now. I need something to put there.
5) The scope of 64 potential human factions is very, very large. Who will handle the vetting process, how will they appear in the game - presumably a random 1-4 will appear from the list?
I assure you, it is not. We're talking about text and lore here, not game mechanics. More is better for this sort of thing, and it's only the sort of thing that you can click into if you are curious. It's not in your face stuff you have to read at all. Either Jack or I will vet these.
Minor factions with game mechanics are a thing, don't get me wrong -- but these are not that. Further specs on these to come.
6) Working with Blue tier should be justified by giving some idea of the final graphics style of the game, a few examples, and who will see it. If you don't have a final visual style decided yet, this is important to do by KS launch.
Yep. Either way she'll be doing the actual work, but folks can put what they want on a cocktail napkin or however else they want to communicate with her, and she'll do her best to accommodate that within the theme and style of the game.
1) $30-50. That's too large a gap IMO.
Good point. I don't know what to pick, but I've put a note there that it needs to be filled at least.
2) Could the OST be a reward ?
See my note in the OP. :)
3) Planet "chosen" => what about the old names ? Named after proeminent forum trolls enthousiasts & devs ? I'd love to nuke Chrishold, or Keithdom.
I'm not sure that I follow? In terms of planet names, most likely there will be more than one pool, and different pools will go in different parts of the galaxy. All of the backer names might go into a specific pool that is very much there, but not right at the center of everything. Obviously that spot belongs to Murdoch. ;)
5) Special forum badge (I personally don't care, but still some people find it cool).
It's on the things to investigate. Personally I'm not aware of a way to do that in SMF or on the Steam forums, although I'm sure at least in the former case there is. If anyone wants to point me or Quinn to such a location, that would be appreciated. :)
6) In a "single" item:
- Get game earlier than Early Access
- “Multiplayer Starter Pack” + 1 Steam key (unlocks at start of early access)
So basically if I buy this pack I can't play with my friend. Not so sure it's a good idea.
The rationale there is that during "earlier than early access" you're not likely to be playing with friends recreationally anyway. Not in the sense of where you "play for playing," at least not fully. The idea with the earlier than early access is that it comes out pretty darn fast after the Kickstarter and is bleeding early, but something that you can give feedback on extra early if that is your desire. By the time it reaches Early Access it's something where you'd want to play with friends. Of course, multiplayer will be there from the start (it's there now), but if your friend is that big an enthusiast I hope that they back themselves directly. ;)
7) Plans for a make-it-yourself flagship in origami.
I'm certainly open to that if there is some guide somewhere about how to design origami!
- you could have 8 different factions and 64 potential human "background" factions. I think care must be given so that the kickstarter does not imply that different factions have to be mechanically different in-game. Just in case of. People don't like broken promises.
Okay, I've now clarified that the 64 things that get lore are now "background factions," so hopefully that will help at least (particularly once I give the specs for background factions). I like that term for them, because that clearly separates these from actual minor factions.
On the one working with Blue, I've reduced that from 10 to 8 because of scope reasons, and made it so that these also include the ability to design that full minor human faction's lore as well as the space station design there.
We spoke about space platforms or champions or whatnot being feasible if the KS would be successful. How are things shaping on that front?
I'm not really to the point of thinking about stretch goals too much just yet. I want to be cautious there. Some of those things could go to expansions, or if the kickstarter is going gangbusters I will have to spend some serious time during it working on a concrete design that I can pitch to people. I don't want to hang stretch goals on half-baked ideas, as that leads to disappointment.
Oh, yes, what are the stretch goals ?
The main one right now would be for a soundtrack by Pablo. Right now in the base game package I'm only budgeting for a couple of music tracks, because this already is going to be a hard enough target to hit.
Hey Chris, I don't think the base $15/20 should get the game in early access. You want to encourage people to go to higher tiers by offering better rewards, and Early Access is a reward that speaks to a lot of Kickstarter backers. It's an easy $30/35.
You know, I went in there to do that just now, and set the $15/$20 price to be for "at 1.0." But the EA launch price of the game is planned to be $20! So people who bought at this tier would have to wait until after others got the EA copy on Steam or wherever at the same price as them (early birds aside). That seems like it would really piss them off. ;) The alternative is making the game more pricey during EA on Steam and such, but then reducing its price when it hits 1.0 to that $20 price point. That seems like a really dangerous move, though, and potentially a lot of lost revenue.
Also, my warning about ship design apply just as much to races and AI plots, if not more so. Each race represents a new paradigm in gameplay, and most game players are not game designers. Making it cost a lot could weed out the people who are less serious about the process, but it could make them feel extra stung if you don't implement their ideas exactly as envisioned.
Right. Thus far there is nothing mechanics-based that is in here at all. We have some lore, and we have (essentially) commissioning some art and music. But nothing here ties into gameplay just yet. I do probably plan on adding stuff like that, but it will be at a higher price for the reasons you mention.
1) At the top tiers, backers will essentially be commissioning Blue or Pablo for content to go in the game. If you haven't already, please confirm with them about linking their DeviantArt, Bandcamp, or equivalent.
Hopefully the actual trailer for the kickstarter shows off both well enough, but we'll see.
1) At the top tiers, backers will essentially be commissioning Blue or Pablo for content to go in the game. If you haven't already, please confirm with them about linking their DeviantArt, Bandcamp, or equivalent.
It's not quite a jenga stack, which makes it harder. I've just put all of the ones that are a repeat in purple for now. During the actual KS I'll have it done with tiers named and it saying things like "with everything X tier" and so forth, since "from all prior tiers" is not correct in most cases.
Are there... alien minor factions?
I introduced confusion with the wording there. Yes there are alien minor factions. But what I was describing are now called "background factions," and those are all intended to be human. Minor and background are separate.
4) You might want to consider more mechanics that are likely to make the cut and enable more supporter recognition:
- If you add human commanders attached to fleets, say, allow people to name them.
- If you decide to retain rescuable human colonies or mercenaries, add formation of mercenary fighters/bombers/corvettes that will draw from names of supporters (I think this is better than naming planets at low tiers). Custom design optional.
- If you allow planet-types to influence gameplay, allow supporters to specify, say, that they will name an asteroid belt (and move this to a higher tier, as leading a fleet of mercs is clearly less $rich$ than owning an entire planet).
These are super good notes. I'm not going to do anything with them just now, but I've put them on the document and will be planning some things with this in mind. So the tiers will be adjusted a lot in the coming week or two in order to handle this. Thanks!
- In the above vein, have starting units of alternate design and allow them to be named. Assign associated achievement as necessary.
I don't follow this one. :)
5) At a limited higher tier, ask Blue to make an image that will be found alongside the message.
She's certainly capable of it, but that gets into a different style of art that can be extremely expensive and time consuming.
6) Dream commission #1: Special AI-plot resulting in scripted mega-wave.
*When AI-plot successfully completes, slowly fade in supporter-commissioned music.*
* A set of carriers warp in with escorts and starts pumping out fleetships in-sync with beat.*
* The wave parades in formation towards your defenses until near engagement range.*
* Featuring capitals with barrels that make a good, honest thump, and raid starships doing airshow maneuvers over your command station*
Hahaha, that would be expensive indeed.
The thing I suggested in the other thread was a digital lore book that compiles all the lore entries already present in all the Arcenverse titles and just formats them nicely, arranging them in chronological order (which would likely be "by game title"). The goal would be for those of us (like myself) who haven't read every single entry, or in some cases, don't own one game or another.
Oh, I missed the details of that.
Captain Jack, can you email me about this and come up with a cost proposal of what it would take to create this? I agree it could be cool to have, but I'd need you to create it, and I want to make sure that a) you want to; and b) I match the cost of you doing it with the tiers on backer rewards.
I would like to see it include any "branching" lore as well (e.g. Spire missions) just for completeness, even if it isn't considered "canon" in the grander scheme.
I'm cool with that, although it's a lot of extra work for Jack potentially. I'm not really sure. Jack, that's a larger conversation we need to have, but the idea intrigues me for sure!
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I'm cool with that, although it's a lot of extra work for Jack potentially. I'm not really sure. Jack, that's a larger conversation we need to have, but the idea intrigues me for sure!
Oh of course, I'm just dreaming up pipe clouds (...or something), if it ends up not being feasible, oh well. It was just a thing that popped into my head and I thought, "You know, I'd pay for that."
Speaking of, I could probably recommend a designer to do layout and such. He worked with us for Velociraptor! Cannibalism! for a pretty reasonable price (assuming the help is needed).
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Awesome -- thanks on that. I'd definitely want to work with someone like that, unless Jack has that sort of experience (it hasn't come up in the past, so I don't know). I'll have to discuss that bit with Jack.
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The thing I suggested in the other thread was a digital lore book that compiles all the lore entries already present in all the Arcenverse titles and just formats them nicely, arranging them in chronological order (which would likely be "by game title"). The goal would be for those of us (like myself) who haven't read every single entry, or in some cases, don't own one game or another.
Oh, I missed the details of that.
Captain Jack, can you email me about this and come up with a cost proposal of what it would take to create this? I agree it could be cool to have, but I'd need you to create it, and I want to make sure that a) you want to; and b) I match the cost of you doing it with the tiers on backer rewards.
Eh sure, writing up Arcen's own akashic record sounds like fun, and like prime stretch goal material. Haha: we do that and we've created modular KS tiers. :P
I'd want to talk with you and Keith so I can contextualize some things/add flavor/not step on toes (until appropriate). And hey it'd be a way to get some of the SR stuff out there! orz
Awesome -- thanks on that. I'd definitely want to work with someone like that, unless Jack has that sort of experience (it hasn't come up in the past, so I don't know). I'll have to discuss that bit with Jack.
I've designed websites but never something like this. I have a (small) collection of artbooks for various videogame franchises, I'd probably model this on them. Definitely don't have that kind of experience though.
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3) Planet "chosen" => what about the old names ? Named after proeminent forum trolls enthousiasts & devs ? I'd love to nuke Chrishold, or Keithdom.
I'm not sure that I follow? In terms of planet names, most likely there will be more than one pool, and different pools will go in different parts of the galaxy. All of the backer names might go into a specific pool that is very much there, but not right at the center of everything. Obviously that spot belongs to Murdoch. ;)
I think he means things like there is a list of planets that take their names from prominent figures from the forum. So, basically, you have a kitchen part of the galaxy for instance.
5) Special forum badge (I personally don't care, but still some people find it cool).
It's on the things to investigate. Personally I'm not aware of a way to do that in SMF or on the Steam forums, although I'm sure at least in the former case there is. If anyone wants to point me or Quinn to such a location, that would be appreciated. :)
Done on the SMF side of things! If someone knows how to do that, or to grant exclusive emoticons or something similar on Steam, please shoot us an email!
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Quote from: x4000 on Today at 03:25:44 PM
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3) Planet "chosen" => what about the old names ? Named after proeminent forum trolls enthousiasts & devs ? I'd love to nuke Chrishold, or Keithdom.
I'm not sure that I follow? In terms of planet names, most likely there will be more than one pool, and different pools will go in different parts of the galaxy. All of the backer names might go into a specific pool that is very much there, but not right at the center of everything. Obviously that spot belongs to Murdoch. ;)
I think he means things like there is a list of planets that take their names from prominent figures from the forum. So, basically, you have a kitchen part of the galaxy for instance.
Well, that was jumbled on my part - sorry. Yes, I meant that I'd like a "name pool" with the old planet names, and possibly a pool with names from the forum / game history, more or less. The later would probably only appeal to people that have been there for a while... but would be another great way to show how you care about them.
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Got it, makes sense. In terms of the old names, some of them were hardcoded, but most were procedurally assembled from word parts. I could probably write up a thing to have it spit out all the possibilities it was able to create.
With those pools, we could name minor planets certain things, and even get into naming things like the derelicts something else, etc.
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Got it, makes sense. In terms of the old names, some of them were hardcoded, but most were procedurally assembled from word parts. I could probably write up a thing to have it spit out all the possibilities it was able to create.
Pretty sure Murdoch has to be in the new planet list. That planet was always such a pain!
With those pools, we could name minor planets certain things, and even get into naming things like the derelicts something else, etc.
Derelict ships named after forum members would be fun. "Here lies the EDS Kahuna, done in when he ran into his own minefield by accident and realized there was no way out...."
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Well, that was jumbled on my part - sorry. Yes, I meant that I'd like a "name pool" with the old planet names, and possibly a pool with names from the forum / game history, more or less. The later would probably only appeal to people that have been there for a while... but would be another great way to show how you care about them.
You can have a planet named after me only IF I can define a layout for it. Otherwise, it wouldn't be worthy of my name :D
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Hey Chris,
So generally I'm just a lurker here, but I figured I really want to see you guys succeed, so if ever is the time to post, now's the time to do it.
Mostly everything in the kickstarter tiers looks good now, but I had a couple of comments on it:
- As noted by you and zharmad above, make sure you just have a "And everything from Mark 1 backer and earlier" sentence when you're doing the rewards on the kickstarter. It helps make things legible and shows people exactly what they get for backing at that higher tier. Then you can have a graphic or list below that states everything included in each tier in detail.
- I know you're not thinking about stretch goals too much, but you might want to state which tiers get stretch goals. Right now it just looks like everything above the 1$ pledge will get the stretch goals, but say you fund an entire expansion: Do the people who bought multiplayer packs get multiple copies of the expansion? (Probably not. Which then leads to my next point...)
- Add ons: You may or may not want to do add ons. If you do want to do add ons, I would try and keep them as simple as possible to avoid confusion. (Ex: An extra copy of AI War 2 - Add 20$ to your existing pledge.) This also means you'll need to do extra work at the end of the campaign, or use a pledge manager, so be careful. If you don't do add ons, I think it would be wise to have a tier that is a "Just the games" bundle. (For backers who don't care about designing anything, but just want a bunch of copies of the game to play with their friends.)
- Make sure you carefully distinguish between background factions/minor factions/alien race factions. Otherwise people might get confused and think it's just a repeat of the earlier tier.
Finally, and this is a bit of a personal preference, but let's talk about Early Bird tiers:
- I despise early bird tiers. If I get to a kickstarter and I see there's loads of early bird tiers all taken up, the odds are good I just won't back. If I do really want to back the game, I'm likely to watch the early bird tiers like a hawk and swap down to one as soon as I get the chance. Basically what this means is that, even for those people that later on increase their pledge to a higher tier to help support the game, other people will swap down and you don't actually get as much of an increase in money.
- Regardless of my distaste for early bird tiers, they are really good at doing one thing: Providing a huge surge in the number of early backers. Normally you'll see all but the highest limited tiers vanish early on. This doesn't necessarily translate to the kickstarter doing well, because backers can still cancel their pledge before the end of the campaign, but it can help build hype. Here's what I mean:
1) Kickstarter launches. Limited tiers disappear. The backer mentality is, "HEY, I SHOULD GRAB THIS NOW IT'S LIMITED. I can always cancel later". Kicktraq (a website that tracks what value a kickstarter is heading too) reads like you're going to 2 million dollars.
2) Middle of the campaign. Small to average amounts of growth, with usually some people cancelling their limited tiers as updates come out because they change their mind, bills, whatever reason. This leads to other people swapping to the early bird tiers for a better deal and you actually losing money if you're not gaining that many new backers.
3) Then there's usually a spike at the end as the 48 hours left reminder hits and everyone who was on the fence decides if they're backing you or not.
- If you do end up doing early bird tiers anyways, I would suggest having a minimal difference between the tiers. (Like, 5$) That way people who come late don't feel like they're missing out on a great deal.
When you actually do launch, I highly recommend doing daily updates. You can talk about small sections of the game you have planned, lore bits, the history of AI WAR, design segments on certain parts of the game, show art from the game. All of this generally just serves to build trust (you're actively communicating) and to build hype (OMG this game is going to be so good).
Finally, be careful when you put your release date. Be generous, and give yourself a couple extra months. That way, if things work out as you plan you can tell people you're releasing early and people will be happy instead of being bitter that you're two months late.
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What's the Multiplayer Starter Pack? That you can try out Multiplayer in Early Access?
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Finally, be careful when you put your release date. Be generous, and give yourself a couple extra months. That way, if things work out as you plan you can tell people you're releasing early and people will be happy instead of being bitter that you're two months late.
Unfortunately, the timing seems to be much tight than a couple months.
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What's the Multiplayer Starter Pack? That you can try out Multiplayer in Early Access?
It's just an extra key or 3a so you can play with a friend or 3.
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Ah, okay, that makes sense.
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In the above vein, have starting units of alternate design and allow them to be named. Assign associated achievement as necessary.
I don't follow this one. :)
So context: when we start the game, we always spend a few minutes to build ships, defenders, etc. This initial lag can be shortened by simply giving players a fleet of triangle ships and a capital, since most people will build them anyway.
Now that we have a starting fleet, they could be a little bit special if we so wish. This places the player faction on similar footing as other minor factions with customisations. A backer can start with his own flagship, essentially the horse he rode into Home Command with, and try to keep "himself" alive. It doesn't have to have special stats either.
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Incidentally, renaming or rebranding ships in general also allows, say, streamers to represent their viewers in game. Helps Viewership retention. Food for thought.
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Personally not a lot of these tiers mean much to me.
I've never been a fan of these "name a system" or whatever tiers, but I know they are really popular.
What I'd really like to see is tiers which unlock expansions in the future (even if it was broken up into tiers offering 1 expansion, 2 expansions...), I'd consider throwing a fair bit of money at the campaign if I knew I was getting X expansions and the base game, even for a small discount.
Also maybe a tier/addon to offer a DRM free copy of the game? That's not a big deal though.
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What I'd really like to see is tiers which unlock expansions in the future (even if it was broken up into tiers offering 1 expansion, 2 expansions...), I'd consider throwing a fair bit of money at the campaign if I knew I was getting X expansions and the base game, even for a small discount.
The problem with this is that it would then tie Arcen down into making X expansions, which they may not end up wanting to. In addition, what if they do another mini-expansion like CoN? Would it count? Offering people things that you've barely even thought about just has too many problems.
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Just out of curiosity, what specifically is the sticking point for physical rewards? For custom apparel, it seems like there are quite a few sites that do that now, so I would expect you could find at least one where all you have to do is design the clothing and send them the shipping list.
For the record, I would easily donate an extra $50 if I could get a "Make Arcen Great Again" baseball cap. ;)
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Just out of curiosity, what specifically is the sticking point for physical rewards? For custom apparel, it seems like there are quite a few sites that do that now, so I would expect you could find at least one where all you have to do is design the clothing and send them the shipping list.
For the record, I would easily donate an extra $50 if I could get a "Make Arcen Great Again" baseball cap. ;)
Fulfilment is massively expensive. Shipping costs are complicated to sort out. Making any kind of profit on it requires very high pledge numbers, and it tends to draw staff time away from the game part. There's sites that help with this, but there's no way to get around the costs involved.
You're seeing a lot less of it these days because of that. A lot of early kickstarters promised tons of physical stuff and *lost* money trying to get it all delivered, not to mention all the effort that was devoted to that instead of to the game.
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For a point of reference, making a custom Tshirt would cost the Kickstarter $10 to $12 a shirt. Say it's attached to a given pledge level +$20 (would you pay more than $20 for a t-shirt?). That leaves $8 for shipping, which in the US for a t-shirt is easily $4. International will vary between $10 and $30.
So you ship the shirt in the US for $4, leaving $4 minus Kickstarter fees (for a +$20 pledge that works out to $2), for additional project funds.
Wow. $2.
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For a point of reference, making a custom Tshirt would cost the Kickstarter $10 to $12 a shirt. Say it's attached to a given pledge level +$20 (would you pay more than $20 for a t-shirt?). That leaves $8 for shipping, which in the US for a t-shirt is easily $4. International will vary between $10 and $30.
So you ship the shirt in the US for $4, leaving $4 minus Kickstarter fees (for a +$20 pledge that works out to $2), for additional project funds.
Wow. $2.
Plus a 12$ shirt will NOT look good in the small run that the kick starter will use.
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(Also, yes, custom printed shirts really are that expensive. When we KS'd Velociraptor! Cannibalism! we looked into it)
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For a point of reference, making a custom Tshirt would cost the Kickstarter $10 to $12 a shirt. Say it's attached to a given pledge level +$20 (would you pay more than $20 for a t-shirt?). That leaves $8 for shipping, which in the US for a t-shirt is easily $4. International will vary between $10 and $30.
So you ship the shirt in the US for $4, leaving $4 minus Kickstarter fees (for a +$20 pledge that works out to $2), for additional project funds.
Wow. $2.
Plus a 12$ shirt will NOT look good in the small run that the kick starter will use.
Also, the manpower to get everyone's addresses, to care for the wrongly written addresses, to care for returns, to call the distributor and arrange everything. All of that takes time during which Arcen's not paid. If you want to make money out of making t-shirts, you'd need a "profit" per t-shirt of at least 5 dollars, possibly more if there is few t-shirts. Given the small timeframe that Arcen set itself to make AI war 2, that would mean an additional person, probably, to care for t-shirts.
It's certainly doable, but worth it ?
A simpler idea would have to strike a deal with those websites that sell t-shirts directly. You give them images, they sell the stuff, and make it so it's completely unrelated to the kickstarter.
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Has there been any talk about stretch goals? That could be a place to put some popular game modes or plots that can't make the base design but also don't have a technical reason why they should wait for 2.0 (unlike say space platforms, which are a good idea but a major departure in how stuff works at the core, rather than an optional addition).
Stuf like Astro trains and fallen spire are what I'm thinking of, that people like but that probably won't make the cut for the base goal.
I know more music was mentioned, that's a good one too.
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Stretch goals for new features would all be post-1.0 to avoid having to push the release date out and to reduce risk. They'd either be DLC or ongoing updates.
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Yeah, I don't think that's a problem if it's said up front. We don't need a Bloodstsined style "hey thinks for the money, now we are a year behind schedule" announce,net.
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Stretch goals for new features would all be post-1.0 to avoid having to push the release date out and to reduce risk. They'd either be DLC or ongoing updates.
Or hire another guy to work fulltime on the project. It could be an issue on a bigger studio because the difference on mappower wouldn't change much when you've got a 50 person team, but here it's a 4 man team. A 5th guy / gal could accelerate the release by a lot.
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A 5th guy / gal could accelerate the release by a lot.
Not really. I'll point out my involvement with Raptor here and remind you that the game was still delayed due to other things at the time. Adding me helped relieve some of the bottleneck but there was still a bottleneck.
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That's about what I expected the price to be, maybe a little higher. I suppose the question that changes things for me is "would you pay more than $20 to buy a t-shirt?", and in some situations, the answer is yes. As an example, life is currently going good enough where I was planning on giving $150. Last time I checked, the closest tier was $100, but oh well. I briefly looked at the $250 tier (next one up), but nothing there really excited me, so I didn't think any more about it. But now, thinking 'would I go to $250 if it had a t-shirt', the answer is a possible yes.
Of course, typing it out, paying $100 for a t-shirt sounds ridiculous. But that's how people shop! If you look at the two situations separately, 'would I pay $$$ for a thing I really like' and 'would I pay $$$ for multiple things I sort of like', the answer to both could be no; but evaluated together, 'would I pay $$$ for a thing I really like and multiple things I sort of like, the answer may be yes.
All that being said, it still might not be worth it. The group of people like me who both are really excited by physical rewards, and have the money to pay the higher price could be pretty small. It would take someone with a head for business to figure out the number of people expected in tier w/o shirt, the number of people expected in tier w/ shirt, the profit form every person who moves from 'w/o' to 'w/', and the losses from everyone who were already going to donate to 'w/' even if it didn't come with a shirt, to figure out if it would be viable. My only thought is, in some situations it might be.
TL/DR: Never underestimate people's ability to rationalize throwing money away :)
PS: Is there a tutorial for posting? Once I was done typing my lengthy response the first time, I tried to quote Draco18s and ended up deleting everything I had written, which was more than I have now (maybe that's intentional to keep posts from getting too long :P)
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PS: Is there a tutorial for posting? Once I was done typing my lengthy response the first time, I tried to quote Draco18s and ended up deleting everything I had written, which was more than I have now (maybe that's intentional to keep posts from getting too long :P)
Thanks for typing it up again, even after that. 8) I don't think written text is deleted when you quote from the reply screen, unless you highlighted your own post. I make a point of writing longer responses in word but I was messing around with the "Quote selected" function in this reply and didn't see it happen.
You actually made a good point about tiers though: we want to match up backers willingness to donate to our tiers, which means we should have regularly spaced out tiers from $20 to $300-$400 or so, and then start the larger jumps for big spenders. What do you think could go into those tiers?
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It wasn't directly >hit 'quote selected' >delete everything, more like >hit 'quote selected' >nothing seems to happen >see if copy/pasting comment in makes it quote >see it doesn't >highlight pasted comment >hit backspace >delete everything. I'm sure it was just noobness on my part, not a bug.
The problem with the tiers is, there's already trouble finding stuff to fill the low tiers; how then can the upper tiers be filled with meaningful, unique rewards? That's another reason physical rewards are nice: they allow for a lot more variability. Once again, I get that in most situations they wouldn't be profitable, just saying.
Maybe there could be two separate groups of Mk I-V forum badges/whatever? Like how steam badges separate between normal and foil, you could have tiers with Mk I/II/III/IV/V, then Shiny Mk I/II/III/IV/V. The 'Shiny' would probably be replaced with something more interesting. It's not much, but if we really can't think of anything else to create extra tiers with . . .
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PS: Is there a tutorial for posting? Once I was done typing my lengthy response the first time, I tried to quote Draco18s and ended up deleting everything I had written, which was more than I have now (maybe that's intentional to keep posts from getting too long :P)
Thanks for typing it up again, even after that. 8) I don't think written text is deleted when you quote from the reply screen, unless you highlighted your own post. I make a point of writing longer responses in word but I was messing around with the "Quote selected" function in this reply and didn't see it happen.
You actually made a good point about tiers though: we want to match up backers willingness to donate to our tiers, which means we should have regularly spaced out tiers from $20 to $300-$400 or so, and then start the larger jumps for big spenders. What do you think could go into those tiers?
Not sure anything needs to, but that would indeed be a cool idea.
If I recall well, Chris stated that sales figures where in the millions for AI war. Which I imagine is the sum of individual expansion sales + base game sales - still makes for hundred of thousands. So 10 thousands backer ain't out of reach, at least I hope.
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Suggestions:
Early access needs to be a carrot beyond the $20 sell.
$15/$20 for the base game, early bird special. Totally agree.
$30 public early access (let's call it beta, since people understand that terminology)
$50 Earlier than early access (let's call it alpha)
$60 and $70, I can't spot the difference.
Please keep in mind that most KS tiers are cumulative. You are typing all this out including rewards from previous tiers, which makes it hard to understand the difference between them.
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Looking at the document again, it seems if most of the TBD stuff became real there would probably be enough variety. Also, why are the limits so low? I get that to some extent you can't let 100 people donate $5000 and bog the game down for 15 years while Pablo writes all of the music, but surely if 10 people wanted to donate that much and we get a full soundtrack that would be fine? Just as one example.
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A 5th guy / gal could accelerate the release by a lot.
Not really. I'll point out my involvement with Raptor here and remind you that the game was still delayed due to other things at the time. Adding me helped relieve some of the bottleneck but there was still a bottleneck.
As I know nothing of your involvement, capabilities, role on the project or anything, then no clue why this particular situation didn't help, nor why you're pointing to it. From what I've read and seen you do (SBR and AI war 2), we have very different values when stuff needs to be done. Not that it matters.
However, what I said came from 10 years of working in development in different roles... and yes, adding someone else to reduce workload, and time, works. However, I'll agree that not always : there are conditions for it to work.
In my experience, main points are that the right profile has to be found (the newbie must be able to take over, or liberate, someone working on the bottleneck), workload prevision need to be are adequately defined, scope must not change from start to finish, or only "minor-ly" (a point on which video gaming as a whole has issues) and whatever project you're working on needs to be cut and cuttable into independant pieces, so work can be divided properly, and small size of team. More people mean more communication channels and lost time - again "cutting" scopes into independant pieces must be done.
Hence why I said "A 5th guy / gal could". Because sometimes, that's the solution. Other times, it's a waste of time.
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What, no "pay to help out with fixing bugs" tier?
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What, no "pay to help out with fixing bugs" tier?
I guess pre-release is basically that.
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Early access, and earlier than early access. There's no tier without that.
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You may want to combine the kickstarter tiers with the earlier games.
I remember, from a very long time ago, introversion software sold packages of Prison Architect alpha access with their earlier games included.
If you want to be devious put ai war: fleet command in the $5 tier. If newcomers to the game like it enough they may just buy the dlc pack.
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You may want to combine the kickstarter tiers with the earlier games.
I remember, from a very long time ago, introversion software sold packages of Prison Architect alpha access with their earlier games included.
If you want to be devious put ai war: fleet command in the $5 tier. If newcomers to the game like it enough they may just buy the dlc pack.
That is a very good idea. Seconding.
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You may want to combine the kickstarter tiers with the earlier games.
I remember, from a very long time ago, introversion software sold packages of Prison Architect alpha access with their earlier games included.
If you want to be devious put ai war: fleet command in the $5 tier. If newcomers to the game like it enough they may just buy the dlc pack.
That is a very good idea. Seconding.
I actually just took out the AI War Classic stuff from the tiers in general, because I realized that I'd be basically giving those away without any royalties going to folks that are owed them for that game. It makes giving away copies of older games a real challenge, unless the only people pulling royalties on them are also pulling royalties on the new game, which is not the case.
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If you did it as an addon ("$5 gets you AI War 1!" or however much) you could calculate it when doing Backerkit rewards. The $5 would be the portion that'd be subject to royalties and you'd have an accurate count.
But yeah, totally understandable.
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This may be just me, but I personally dislike the idea of paying extra for early access. As a rule, I don't do it. This kind of locks me into the $15-20 tier.
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If you did it as an addon ("$5 gets you AI War 1!" or however much) you could calculate it when doing Backerkit rewards. The $5 would be the portion that'd be subject to royalties and you'd have an accurate count.
But yeah, totally understandable.
Backerkit would be the place to do that instead of Kickstarter, specifically because you can do addons seperate from the main tier so easily. Good call.
I'm not sure it's really necessary, though. It's pretty easy to just go buy AI War Classic if you want to.
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Backerkit would be the place to do that instead of Kickstarter, specifically because you can do addons seperate from the main tier so easily. Good call.
I'm not sure it's really necessary, though. It's pretty easy to just go buy AI War Classic if you want to.
If my knowledge of how it all works is correct, BackerKit is essentially just an addon to Kickstarter. So you host your project on KickStarter, then use BackerKit to process backers and all that.
Anyways, the point is to make it as easy for the end customer as possible. Which, in this case, would be offering AIWC from the KS menu so that they don't have to go to some other site and deal with another payment screen and get frustrated at how annoying it all is just to get a game.
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$30 public early access (let's call it beta, since people understand that terminology)
People do not understand what beta means at this point. They'll assume its anywhere from 'working but not finished (an actual beta)' to 'prerelease version, but pretty much the same thing' (a AAA beta) to 'not actually a beta but we haven't removed the word from it yet'.
Early access isn't much better, but it at least still has a distinction from full releases.
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$30 public early access (let's call it beta, since people understand that terminology)
People do not understand what beta means at this point. They'll assume its anywhere from 'working but not finished (an actual beta)' to 'prerelease version, but pretty much the same thing' (a AAA beta) to 'not actually a beta but we haven't removed the word from it yet'.
Early access isn't much better, but it at least still has a distinction from full releases.
A lot of people are starting to expect beta or early access to be a complete bugless balanced working game too... sigh. Basically anything that ain't a closed beta has to be finished. Due to the early access & stuff being abused so much. :-[
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Hrm, after seeing the LOVELY sprite art Blue's putting together, I had an idea for another backer reward or stretch goal:
* Pick a ship from AI War Classic for Blue to visually update to AI War 2's art style.
This art would *not* be present in the game directly, but would be available for modders to use.
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I think the mid-to-high backer tiers (starting maybe somewhere in the $30-$50 range?) should include an AI War Classic key.
Lots of good things come out of this:
- Players new to the AI War series would have a fully finished game to play immediately, if AI War 2 is too rough around the edges for their taste.
- Players who already have a copy can give it to one of their friends which may spread the AI War 2 news and grow the Arcen community by word-of-mouth.
- Doesn't take much time for Arcen staff to distribute this reward.
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I think the mid-to-high backer tiers (starting maybe somewhere in the $30-$50 range?) should include an AI War Classic key.
Lots of good things come out of this:
- Players new to the AI War series would have a fully finished game to play immediately, if AI War 2 is too rough around the edges for their taste.
- Players who already have a copy can give it to one of their friends which may spread the AI War 2 news and grow the Arcen community by word-of-mouth.
- Doesn't take much time for Arcen staff to distribute this reward.
The problem with that is Arcen owes royalties to people for each sale, which would essentially cheat those people out of their money if we gave the game away at those tiers. The only way we could do it so that wouldn't be a problem would be for us to eat the cost of the game, which would cut into our AI War 2 budget pretty substantially and not be fair to AI War 2 backers. Chris used to have it for them, but pulled it down for those reasons. Right now, myself and one (maybe more?) other person has brought up using BackerKit to sell AIWC as an add-on, which would let us keep track of the royalties and keep the payment all "in the KS" to make it easier on the end user.
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Right now, myself and one (maybe more?) other person has brought up using BackerKit to sell AIWC as an add-on, which would let us keep track of the royalties and keep the payment all "in the KS" to make it easier on the end user.
Me, probably.
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Yup, I found the post. It was on the previous page lol.
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Just making that for deaf people like me. That Sound track would be an optional addon as opposite to baked into tiers.
It always irritate me that I could have gotten something else instead more useful. Not a huge deal breaker just something to think about.
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I don't know how to feel about the current trend where Early Access and Alpha/Beta are sold at a higher price than retail release. On one hand, you had Bohemia Interactive going into EA with ArmA 3 where the earlier you bought into it, the more you saved until it hit the price of $60 at retail release which felt nice as an early adopter. On the other hand, you have...well, almost every single Kickstarted game that sold early access for more money.
Anyways, I think you should add a few more tiers for multiple copies of the final release of the game. Since it's $20 for a copy(as per the unlimited KS tier), then maybe $36 for 2 copies, $52 for 3 copies, $68 for 4 copies, $84 for 5 copies, $100 for 6 copies, and so on.
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I don't know how to feel about the current trend where Early Access and Alpha/Beta are sold at a higher price than retail release. On one hand, you had Bohemia Interactive going into EA with ArmA 3 where the earlier you bought into it, the more you saved until it hit the price of $60 at retail release which felt nice as an early adopter. On the other hand, you have...well, almost every single Kickstarted game that sold early access for more money.
Why sell it cheaper up front when the people willing to buy in Early Access are also willing to pay more for it? That's just leaving money on the table.
Games get cheaper over time because the market at $X gets exhausted, but there's people who might pay $X/2. Selling the Early Access copy for less just gives you less revenue.
Plus, making Early Access cheaper than release encourages people to buy the Early Access version who really *shouldn't* be playing a pre-release version and will just get annoyed that it's not polished yet. You don't want that.
Anyways, I think you should add a few more tiers for multiple copies of the final release of the game. Since it's $20 for a copy(as per the unlimited KS tier), then maybe $36 for 2 copies, $52 for 3 copies, $68 for 4 copies, $84 for 5 copies, $100 for 6 copies, and so on.
This just clutters up the tiers and makes it confusing for people who don't want six copies. If they're going to do that, make an addon on backerkit to add additional copies for $15 per, or whatever.
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You could also throw in AI War Classic and/or some of your other games as add-ons. If you did them as add-ons for somewhat less than they normally sell for, it would effectively be a way to drum up sales for some of them and that way, there are no royalty issues, since you can pay them out of those add-on amounts. (Though, you'd have to add extra to the total needed funds for that, I suppose. Might not be a great idea).
Is there a way to have certain optional add-ons/bonus costs in Kickstarter that don't contribute to the total? Perhaps set up for shipping? If so, the royalty amounts of add-on games could come out of that. If not there probably should be.
That said, it is a common enough thing to do and I'm sure the royalties issue's come up before. It might be worth seeing what other studios have done.
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You could also throw in AI War Classic and/or some of your other games as add-ons. If you did them as add-ons for somewhat less than they normally sell for, it would effectively be a way to drum up sales for some of them and that way, there are no royalty issues, since you can pay them out of those add-on amounts. (Though, you'd have to add extra to the total needed funds for that, I suppose. Might not be a great idea).
Last I heard the royalty issues were making calculations difficult since there's no way to tell how many units of Classic we'd sell and thus what percent of the funds would be available for AI War 2.
Is there a way to have certain optional add-ons/bonus costs in Kickstarter that don't contribute to the total? Perhaps set up for shipping? If so, the royalty amounts of add-on games could come out of that. If not there probably should be.
We're not doing any physical rewards. We do have a buffer budgeted, but taking money out of the buffer always gets you in trouble.
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You could also throw in AI War Classic and/or some of your other games as add-ons. If you did them as add-ons for somewhat less than they normally sell for, it would effectively be a way to drum up sales for some of them and that way, there are no royalty issues, since you can pay them out of those add-on amounts. (Though, you'd have to add extra to the total needed funds for that, I suppose. Might not be a great idea).
Last I heard the royalty issues were making calculations difficult since there's no way to tell how many units of Classic we'd sell and thus what percent of the funds would be available for AI War 2.
I think what he is suggesting it to make the AIWC an add-on, which people can say "Hey, I want this" and throw some extra cash to it, while still keeping the amount of AIWC sold easily recorded. The biggest problem with that is that last I heard, we don't really want to drum up sales for the old games. We would rather you throw an extra $5 towards the KS than buy a game, since we get more of the money from the KS and it helps ensure we reach our goal.
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Why is there no design your own ship tier? This is definitely an option that I personally think a lot of people would love a lot. Those plots and faction stuff is probably not so interesting for people who come to Ai War for the first time but shipbuilding option is something else.
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No news Kstarter today ?
:D :D :D
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Why is there no design your own ship tier?
There is, Fleet Engineer,but it's very limit at only 3 backers available, is for designing an AI only fleetship visually and mechanically using existing mechanics and goes for $1500 or more.
Given there are fewer ships at least on the player side of things with more emphasis tech upgrades for customization this time around I'm not too surprised. If the background human factions had made it into the 1.0 budget it would have been perfect choice for a good tier reward of this type though.
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Release Raptor is canceled, and yet this is the first thing I see when I open arcengames.com . It proudly occupies the first featured spot.
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Good point. I'll poke D/A about that.
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Fixed! Thanks for pointing it out!
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So I talked with a friend about the kickstarter and he was genuinely interested until it came to his wish to have the game + OS and then he saw the minimum price for that aka 100$ and he said bye since in his words generaly OS is offered on kickstarter at a lot lower tier (20-30$). But what do I know this is my third Kickstarter. So my point is if its possible to get OS + version 1.0 of the game at a lower price point tier. Could bring more people in that don't wan't the more sofisticated stuff like plots, design subfaction,etc. Might be worth to think about it.
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So I talked with a friend about the kickstarter and he was genuinely interested until it came to his wish to have the game + OS and then he saw the minimum price for that aka 100$ and he said bye since in his words generaly OS is offered on kickstarter at a lot lower tier (20-30$). But what do I know this is my third Kickstarter. So my point is if its possible to get OS + version 1.0 of the game at a lower price point tier. Could bring more people in that don't wan't the more sofisticated stuff like plots, design subfaction,etc. Might be worth to think about it.
The soundtrack would be a good place for an addon. Something like this:
"Add $10 to any tier to add OST to it."
You'd need to use Backerkit to manage that later and figure out who gets what, so it ups the complexity on the other end some, but it does let you do it without adding more tiers.
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So I talked with a friend about the kickstarter and he was genuinely interested until it came to his wish to have the game + OS and then he saw the minimum price for that aka 100$ and he said bye since in his words generaly OS is offered on kickstarter at a lot lower tier (20-30$). But what do I know this is my third Kickstarter. So my point is if its possible to get OS + version 1.0 of the game at a lower price point tier. Could bring more people in that don't wan't the more sofisticated stuff like plots, design subfaction,etc. Might be worth to think about it.
The soundtrack would be a good place for an addon. Something like this:
"Add $10 to any tier to add OST to it."
You'd need to use Backerkit to manage that later and figure out who gets what, so it ups the complexity on the other end some, but it does let you do it without adding more tiers.
I, for one, would happily pay for an OST addon :).
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Addons in general is something that the Kickstarter probably could benefit from. I understand wanting to avoid external management sites and that overhead, and the admin overhead at the end of the campaign, but there's a few low-hanging addon fruit that can easily be picked up with just the end-of-campaign survey. Additional game copies (either alpha/early-release/release at respective prices), the OST, and maybe buy-a-forum-badge-upgrade for $5/$10 a tier. It also saves the clutter in the rewards list from all the 1/2/4 etc copies.