TIGSource Forums

Apologies if this was posted elsewhere.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lagamespace/la-game-space-a-place-for-re-imagining-video-games

Does anyone know how far off it is from existence once funded? Are there details on how to apply for residencies/if there are stipends/etc.?

it looks neat.

boy you indies sure love a circlejerk

1. stop being a jerk on the internet, I doubt you'd say that in real life.

2. It just seems like a nice thing if there's a collaborative space in an area in LA, which is why i'm interested. if it could get funding then people would be able to focus on game making which would be neat, etc

I pledged for this, looks like it could be an interesting new space for creation plus the talks programme sounds like a fantastic resource, like the GDC vault but without half the content locked away.

Hope it picks up some more steam soon, still got a long way to go.

actually some people are superjerks through and through. honestly i find it more difficult and restricting to be a jerk on the internet because i have such a small audience and my rude words don't bug them for long. but outside these four walls i am much more powerful. i can knock over drinks without apologising and yell at dogs.

:facepalm:

it does sound pretty awesome. It's always great to be around others with similar interests in real life. More motivational.

insular echo chambers tend to create fucked up weird people though

I'm pretty sure it's possible to meet up with people of similar interests without having it need to cost a quarter of a million dollars...

qft
People tend to forget TIG forum and some meet-up. But i believe that this is more than about game developer meet-up. It's more like GDC, but just have it everyday in that place.

it's not my prob though, that place is like 9000 miles away from here.

Personally, I'll be waiting for the feature movie where evil housing promoter randolf Falcon (played by Max Wright) tries to have the center shut down in order to create a golf course on the site, provoking the ire of bandana wearing youths who will have to use their wits and the power of magic spray cans to graffiti their dreams to the real world (a time machine will be used to send this script to 1987, when the movie will be shot in state of the art fashion)

If there's one thing Kickstarter has ruined, it's definitely the classic Hollywood movie formula of a group of youngsters shedding their differences and joining forces in order to save their local barber/video store/arcade/whatever from bankruptcy. A feature film about a group of youngsters constantly refreshing their Kickstarter page just doesn't provide the same drama...

I watched the video and asked myself ``why the hell would I want to leave my house to go there when I can do most of that stuff at home''.

There's literally only one incentive I would have to ever visit that center, and that's gameplay testing. They mentioned stuff like pulse and eye tracking, and that kind of stuff I would consider to be extremely valuable. But definitely not worth a quarter mil.

I can't help but wonder whether or not they've tested this on a smaller scale before, and seen whether people would actually use the center to collaborate or attend the lectures, or if they would just stay home and watch them online.

Not to mention, if I was actually going to develop games there, I would be fucking surrounded by distractions. The entire building is chock full of distractions that would prevent me from getting any significant work done, so I would prefer to stay at home.

Completely disregarding my disgust with kickstarter, I still don't think I would be able to donate to these guys since it's pretty obvious they haven't planned everything out or have any idea what kind of usage each venue would see.

That's also what's rubbing me wrong with this kickstarter. Whatever happened to "start small and see where it goes from there"? Borrow/rent a room and some facilities somewhere cheap and maybe start it as a game jam combined with people giving talks? Set up a collaboration with a university nearby? Get in touch with some well-known game developers (or professors/teachers at game design colleges) and ask them if they'd be interested in giving a talk for free or a nominal fee? But no, right out of the gate they're asking for a quarter of a million dollars... sigh...

listen guys, If you don't like it, don't ruin it for other dum people. why don't you let these famous people exploit their sheeple in peace and live your own life.

Because -I- want to be the one to exploit them, not those stupid hicks from LA.

For every person these guys get to donate to them, that's one less person I can exploit when it comes time for me to make my own kickstarter scam project.

hahaha did anyone look at the tshirt designs?


I really want the games though

I suppose so but it's not like you have to only go to that space and nowhere else.

give me 250k and i'll let you sleep in my house for a while and talk about video games

Hey seagaia, I'm one of the directors of this project.

We are planning to open to the public in spring of next year if the Kickstarter is successfully funded.

We'll be putting a call out for residency applications before then. The Kickstarter goal was set at the absolute minimum amount of funds needed to launch, which does not include stipends. If we reach more than our funding goal, stipends are the first thing we are looking to add to the budget.

If you sign up for the mailing list (http://lagamespace.us6.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=e9743fc4937936d63d1d764c0&id=090b8ac6c0), you'll be notified as soon as the call goes out.

Let me know if you have any more questions, I'm more than happy to answer them. Thanks!

i have a question: when you see someone get socked in the nards these days do you still feel that swell of vicarious pain? i've not experienced it since childhood, and i'm wondering if my blunted affect is a sign of mental illness or if i've just been living the easy life, getting fat and not getting kicked in the nuts.

Hey Adam!  I absolutely adore the concept of your Kickstarter, and can't wait to see it brought to fruition if it reaches its funding goals.

Quick question though: You said the Kickstarter was just going to cover the bare minimum needed to launch. How are you planning on paying for the perks you're giving away?  Is that going to be out of pocket?  And how are you going to get funding for all of the equipment and pay for all of the renovation needed on the warehouse?

"Equipment and renovation" probably goes under "bare minimum".

Welp.  Guess it looked a little vague when I read it.

Hey! I'm glad you're into the concept!

Yep, the perks are included in the budget. The game creators, artists, and musicians that contributed rewards donated their work. We'll still have to pay for things like printing the t-shirts and shipping, but it's all included in the cost estimate. We're also thankful to be working with Fangamer who is handling all our fulfillment, since that can be a nightmare if not handled by pros like them.

Some of the equipment we already have. The tech for the game research lab, for example, was already created by my co-founder Daniel Rehn at UCSD a few years ago. (More info here (http://danielrehn.com/projekt/regame/)) The equipment that we don't have and the renovations are also included in the budget.

Excellent!  Chipped in $25 to you guys.  Wish you much luck!

How about 6 bux and cold wendys

are the janitors salaries included in the budget? I mean if it's a public space it will need janitors and security teams, and toilets, what about the water bill? you wouldn't want to see this dream ruined because the toilets can't be flushed anymore...

Backed because I want the games and a place like this in Chicago.

i'd kill for it in chicago.

well, something close to that extreme.

although i'm not sure what we'd do once we had it - who would be able to organize and maintain. kind of a scary problem.

maybe we need more hacker spaces. hyde park is getting one in the next few months. not quite a game space with residencies and talks, but...

I was so flabbergasted when I first heard about this project. I will be doing my final bachelor paper early next year and the first thing that I thought was that I wanted to fly over the atlantic ocean (european) and do my research in the LA Game Space. I was quite saddened when I realized it hasn't been built yet. But I did chip in a couple of dollars and I will be keeping my eye on that in the future. I would love to spend some time there in the future for some research and fun.

Makes me wish there were more of these places!

Good luck with this beyond awesome project!  :beer:

hey la game space

if you want to get funded

you'd better

put on your la game face

Thanks, Jóhannes!

We're going to be completely transparent about our structure/methods. We're hoping that will be helpful for others who want to replicate the model in other cities.

Got it.

8)

could you please answer my question, i am irascible and irresponsible, and together with your tardiness it looks like you're booking a romantic cruise to fiji (i thought the cruise/bruise rhyme too trite so i am waiting in fiji to do wrestling moves to you and your loved ones)

What I want to know is whether or not you've tried this before on a smaller scale.

Do you know how many developers would actually be interested in regularly attending this game space? You can't just count the number of people who make nice comments about it.

Being a los angeles native, it never struck me as the kind of place where many indie devs would reside, aside of a handful of shovelware developers and former westwood studios. I had no idea that there was any serious gamedev activity in LA, so providing some real solid numbers on this stuff would be great.

Although I really like what you're trying to do (which may seem contrary compared to my previous posts), I really think that what you're doing is just on way too large of a scale. There's no way in hell I can imagine those facilities being used as often as implied in the video, especially stuff like residencies.

I think you should expand the play-testing stuff, since thats the number one reason I can see any game developer leaving their house to come visit. You could do stuff like game-test nights where you post a community announcement that people can come and play free, experimental games in exchange for test data. If you had a really nice setup, like maybe 2 or 3 stations with pulse monitor and eye tracking, you could provide extremely useful data that an independent developer would never have the resources to do.

That's the real key to what youre doing, in my opnion. You have to shape your program to provide resources that would hard for a single developer to obtain. They sign up with you to test their game on day X, maybe in payment for cash, then you hand out fliers or contact people to come test the game on day X.

You could provide AAA-contacts, local job listings, all sorts of stuff that wouldn't really be easy to do over the internet. All that stuff about lectures is complete garbage if you ask me, and to be quite frank I would be surprised if you even had a retention rate after the newness of the game space rubbed off.


If your kickstarter doesn't reach funding goal, you could definately try this on a smaller scale in a startup-style scenario. Blow a few grand setting up some advanced game testing stations, buy a little office somewhere, then offer services to local indie developers to host test nights where you get a certain number of testers and get them to test the game for the developer, providing the developer with loads of test data that may have taken weeks to gather, and providng you with a bit of extra cash. You might even be able to get some of the local corporated gamedev companies to buy some time with you.

But then again, all of this revolves around how many gamedevs are actually in and around LA, and the accessibility of your game space.

Thats my 2 cents.

I'm curious about sanitation as well.

I like to imagine the typical LA native as either a rich cocaine-snorting socialite regularly leasing his hillside mansion to porno directors, a tatooed gang member with a really bad temper pendejo, a breakdacing/bodybuilding amateur who engage in the occasional prostitution on venice beach, or a stylish suburban blonde couple with a kinky fetishist double life, all of them with a dark past and at least one body dumped behind coyote hills at dusk.
I don't see a future for a refuge of pale bearded "indie game devellopers", it would be like one of those mad maxian pacifist towns under siege from the end-of-world gangs.
Canada seems more like it.

I hope that by now, everybody has realized that "indie game develloper" is the modern version of the "hippie" of the 1970s.
-Doesn't want to do a real job
-unabashed hope in the future
-artistic and/or philosophical pretense
-psychedelism pixel nostalgia
-hitch hiking kickstarter
-tends to regroup in communes
-everybody under 50 wants to be a part of it
-destroys society

i have no hope in the future

being a los angeles native means i have a profound sense of self loathing and spend at least 3 hours a day driving, of which half the time is required to be spent stuck in traffic on the 405 or the 5.

You have no hope? What about me?
I am studying game developing hoping to become an indie and before that I studied visual arts and worked as an artist and a niche musician (noise, drone, ambient and soundscapes). To top that all off, I'm a sheep farmer's son. (from Iceland, where sheep farmers' income usually is below the minimum wage in the country)

I feel like I've picked the worst combination ever, and the worst thing is, I love it!

no haha i'm being sarcastic. i have some hope in the future, i mean otherwise i wouldn't be spending thousands of hours on games and music , right..

 i was mostly commenting on the slightly funny nature of moi's post

Pretty much the same here. :)
Cheers to doing what we love  :beer: