Cheers folks. Boy I step out a bit and things catch on fire.
I guess I shouldn't be tossing around flaming torches. Various notes:
1. By all conventional metrics, the kickstarter campaign will fail. Therefore it's up to us to talk about what we do in that event, and as much as possible what we're doing to prevent it from following the conventional path.
2. I am absolutely all about transparency, and hence talking about some of that stuff even when it's considered to be a bad idea in terms of PR. I abhor the campaigns that "clearly" have no chance of success but are plugging away with random updates and such and seemingly not doing anything about their situation.
3. That said, as much as I value transparency, there are certain things that I simply can't tell you about. Various promotions or deals with partners both existing and potential, various contacts we're trying to leverage amongst both other developers and the press, and so on. In some cases I'm literally under NDA to not talk about those things, and in other cases it's just really, really not cool and a breach of trust to some extent to talk about them with any specifics.
4. So why mention the stuff from #3 at all? Because, frankly, people come to their own conclusions about kickstarters based on percentage funded by x number of days left, so the assumption in general with backers or potential backers is that there is going to be a failure unless something happens. Rather than pretending ignorance of that, I prefer to address it, and insofar as I can, explain the vague shape of what we're trying, at least.
5. Further, I am constantly getting the question of "what happens if the kickstarter fails," and there are a couple of options for that, which I feel it's more responsible to lay out. If this kickstarter fails, we can't afford to have both Keith and I working on AI War, for one thing. Not at first, anyway, unless we get a publisher or whatnot. So taking a chance to explain a bit about what I'd be doing to fund myself is I think relevant.
6.
Further further, if we reach our kickstarter goal, I've wanted it to be clear from the start that the budget there doesn't cover Blue and myself for the same duration as Keith. Stretch goals, sales during or after early access, and expansions post-1.0 will all be things that are able to bring us back in. But making games is expensive when you actually pay people reasonable amounts, and I've wanted to be really clear from the start of the kickstarter that I'd be working on something else with Blue -- not with the KS funds -- a while after we get into EA if this thing funds at the basic level. Because, planning for success but not wild extra success, I don't want people getting mad 6 months from now when I'm working on another project to support myself. To keep the budget reasonable, that was always part of the plan. With that in mind, particularly combined with the things above, it only makes sense to me to address it now.
7. Going even one more step, the idea of offering this as a backer tier reward so that it's even more palatable to potential backers is something that seems reasonable at the moment given that we're in a pickle.
8. As to the riskiness of this project, it's something that has a straightforward vertical slice that is either fun or not. It can then be developed out further from there, but it's not a big investment in terms of my time to get an initial prototype together, and it helps to focus on more than one thing at a time.
