Beamdog, what about a crowdfunding on Kickstarter?

DevilTyphoon

Hi, yesterday on Steam i bought the game for 3,49 €. So, i thought that is an intention to "scrape up" money to buy IP from Atari. So. Why don't you open a crowdfunding on Kickstarter? Many projects in these months was successfully funded. I will be happy to support Beamdog and his objective to acquire the IP.

BJMJD

Trent Oster on twitter 1st july :

"We can't Kickstarter, we've asked and Our partners have expressed a desire not to go that route."

So it seems they will going on a Kickstarter finance

Cheesebelly

Unless they decide to buy all rights and get rid of their "partners"? I dunno, just spreading my thoughts

mlnevese

If they buy the game rights they get rid of Atari but not Hasbro and we don't know which one objected to a kickstarter...

Dee

mlnevese said:

If they buy the game rights they get rid of Atari but not Hasbro and we don't know which one objected to a kickstarter...

It's Wizards of the Coast. But we're okay without the kickstarter, at least for now.

In any case, you can't use Kickstarter just to buy an IP; you have to have an actual project you plan to fund with the Kickstarter campaign.

Kitteh_On_A_Cloud

Goddamned partners getting into the way...Especially Hasbro are greedy capitalist fuckers. They even went so far as to completely screw up the most recent My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic series with their idiotic spin-off 'Equestria Girls'. It's like taking a dump on Lauren Faust's original concepts, hoping to reach a gender neutral audience. But nope, those dolls gotta get sold, you know. Sorry, just some frustrated ramblings...

Dee

To be clear, we do enjoy working with Wizards of the Coast, and we're not to the point of desperation. Kickstarter is great for projects that don't already have a backer: Obsidian can make Project Eternity without having to go through a publisher, for instance, and that's awesome because it lets them take more time and gives them greater freedom to create the game they want. A writer can fund a novel without having to go through editors and publishers, and can just spend time writing the book instead of catering to executives.

If you already have a publisher, though, crowdfunding the project on the side is an ethical gray area. It's kind of like saying, "I've got a hundred dollars my parents gave me to buy groceries. Who wants to give me a hundred more so that I can buy groceries AND video games?"

That's not to say that working with a publisher can't be good, though. A publisher typically has the resources to not only make your product a success (with advertising and the like), but to also help you make it the best product it can be. Usually products that fail do so because the publisher gave bad advice (or because the contractor didn't execute the ideas effectively), but there are plenty of publishers that give really good advice; a publisher gives you feedback based on how they think the players will respond, and that's incredibly valuable for an artist. Suddenly you can take that feedback and focus your efforts on meeting those goals, instead of wondering if you're going in the wrong direction on something.

There are a lot of bad publishers out there, and all publishers are out to make money, but when it comes to Wizards of the Coast I'm fairly confident that they care a lot about their products, enough to either trust their contractors to make their own decisions or to offer insight where it's needed. We could have an entirely different discussion about the inflating prices of D&D sourcebooks, but that's part of a much broader issue (i.e. the cost of gaming as a whole), and it doesn't bear much relevance here.

Jalily

Dee said:

If you already have a publisher, though, crowdfunding the project on the side is an ethical gray area. It's kind of like saying, "I've got a hundred dollars my parents gave me to buy groceries. Who wants to give me a hundred more so that I can buy groceries AND video games?"

I don't see the problem in that analogy... :P

Dee

Just tossing this disclaimer up, that everything I just said was largely my own thoughts and speculation and doesn't reflect any opinions or official stances of Beamdog or its subsidiaries, blah blah blah, you know the drill.

Also, if anyone does want to send me a hundred dollars with which to buy video games, I'm totally in favor of that.

Kitteh_On_A_Cloud

I'd send you a chocolate cake instead if I could, @Dee.

Klonoa

lol It must be annoying to have to keep adding a disclaimer to every opinion on the subject

I would be really interested to see if BD/Overhaul would use crowd funding for an original project further down the road when this project is done. I love the potential it offers and I purchased Expeditions - Conquistador just to see how it turns out.

Cheesebelly

But the question remains - what would make that fund raising successful? I mean, aside from using Indie gogo thingy which is *always* successful, as any amount of money given is... given.

What is it that people look into when going to Kickstarter or IGG? Is it world-famed names, acclaimed authors and/or developers? Is it the setting, the information given? Is it the good will or is it the extent of how good the game will be if the funds get over the roof?

I myself look for good names - partly the reason why I look forward to Eternity and Wasteland 2 after all!
I know I'd help Beam Dog/Overhaul achieve that success if it happened because these people are genuine and are awesome, unlike some that are "Gimme moneyz MONEY MONEY MONEY MORE MONEY!!!", if you get my meaning. But would just good will make it successful? I dunno, that remains to be seen...

DevilTyphoon

Very sad for this situation....uff.. so...we can only hope and stop...