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[Tuba]

The campaign just got cancelled.

They'll make a playable demo and restart it after it's done:


That's nice.

[swordofkings128]

I haven't been following this too closely but I'm glad people are starting to wisen up to these fundstarter campaigns. Before, there was no way I'd donate to that campaign, but if the gameplay demo is good, I will certainly reconsider donating!

Glad John Romero and company decided on this. They most likely would have recieved enough funding at the end of the original campaign, but to say "hey we'll be back with gameplay!" is pretty nice.

[joseph ¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

nobody on tigsource has any idea how money works episode 100000

edit: okay, so, you need to make a 'demo' of the game that's useful for marketing to a mass audience, and also to AAA publishers.

So you need AAA quality, you need a complete 'slice' of the game so it's playable and doesnt sour your game to a large portion of your audience -- which means you need a small AAA qualified team. And you need to be able to hire the people who make this on good enough terms that they'll go along with the deal -- ie, either pay expensive freelance rates, or be willing to hire them fulltime (and therefor be able to keep paying them salary and keep them working while you wait for further funding to come through, publishing deals to clear, etc.) Shipping a low quality product isn't really an option here (since it will make the game appeal less to the market and investors, and lose you way more money than the alternatives) so you have to budget for delays.

How much money does this cost? How big of a loan do you have to get to finance this? How long will it take to hire those people? (((hint its way too much to pay out of pocket on whim before you do ur kickstarter)))

[s0]

Romero seems to be able to afford it at least, judging by the above post.

[joseph ¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

Romero seems to be able to afford it at least, judging by the above post.

yes hi i'd like to mortgage my house to play Publisher, because putting the risk of a multimillion dollar failure on my own personal finances is exactly the same as having a publisher, who can distribute that risk over hundreds of millions, do it for me.

[Superb Joe]

yeah well equally nobody has any moral obligation to fund the terror of the romanian countryside, Dad the Teen Impaler, for his vague and poorly explained ideas.

[Superb Joe]

the fact is that having at least a mockup or a prototype has become a necessary part of the kickstarter process, and that's when you're funding people who aren't the platonic ideal and perhaps single best known example of an unrestrained wastrel dot com era fuckhead genetically engineered to waste both time and other peoples money

[s0]

Romero seems to be able to afford it at least, judging by the above post.

yes hi i'd like to mortgage my house to play Publisher, because putting the risk of a multimillion dollar failure on my own personal finances is exactly the same as having a publisher, who can distribute that risk over hundreds of millions, do it for me.

And you need to be able to hire the people who make this on good enough terms that they'll go along with the deal -- ie, either pay expensive freelance rates, or be willing to hire them fulltime (and therefor be able to keep paying them salary and keep them working while you wait for further funding to come through, publishing deals to clear, etc.)

my impression is that he already HAD a team from the start (the post says "the team are hard at work") so this point is kind of moot.

idk what you're even arguing here tbh, i'm pretty sure the developers have a better idea of the finances of their own project than you do. and apparently they think it's financially viable to throw together a demo before they launch the KS.

Edit: also ur assuming that this is going to be AAA. it being on ks at all kinda points against that.

[Superb Joe]

reminder that last time people gave john romero money he spent 2 million dollars on an office then a further 1.8 million dollars buying a game from another developer which then also went over schedule and budget and was released onto the market, where it immediately sank without trace

[Tuba]

Edit: also ur assuming that this is going to be AAA. it being on ks at all kinda points against that.

Not really. Just look at Psychonauts 2, Shenmue 3 and others. Like those projects, it's very likely that Blackroom has other investors and even a publisher. The Kickstarter campaign is mostly just a way to prove to investors that there are people out there willing to buy the game and so they can invest their money on it without fear. 700k for an AAA game is a pretty low budget.

That being said, I don't think that they even need a playable demo but at least some videos of a quick proof of concept render or of an early prototype would help the project to get more credibility.

[swordofkings128]

Romero seems to be able to afford it at least, judging by the above post.

yes hi i'd like to mortgage my house to play Publisher, because putting the risk of a multimillion dollar failure on my own personal finances is exactly the same as having a publisher, who can distribute that risk over hundreds of millions, do it for me.

First of all, I'd like to point John Romero doesn't have to make games to continue living a decent lifestyle. Seems to me he wants to make games again because he has a passion for it. He could just as easily do nothing for the rest of his life and be content living of his own personal wealth. It's not as if Romero is broke! What you describe is something that a crazy person with normal amounts of money would do. The second or third(fourth maybe?) post in this thread was me linking to an iffy website saying he's worth 18 million.
http://www.youbrite.com/net-worth/john-romero/

Once again, not sure how credible that is, but I don't think it's unreasonable to assume John Romero is worth at least half that. I'm not saying dump all of you money into something that might make you broke forever, but is it really that crazy to expect the creator of a project to put up some of there own money too? Invest in their own creation? Put together a demo that is at least KIND OF representative of what they want to achieve? And as Silbereisen pointed out, this is assuming this is going to be a AAA title. Or that it has to be. But does it really?

I said it before, but there is absolutely no way this would fly if it didn't have Romero and Carmack attached to it. If it were a couple of no name indies, there is no way they would get any sort of money or positive attention. For me, the same standards apply, no matter what your name is.

Pretty sure they would love to make Blackroom with millions of dollars to spend(that's the vibe the video gave me at least), but I think the safer route to go would be to make Blackroom through successful kickstarter campaign($700,000) with a small team(a couple artists, programmers, Romero himself does some of the grunt work as well. In fact, I think Romero has the advantage here, perhaps he has connections or a network of people he knows who can refer him to great artists and programmers) and prove that people want this product. If it's a smash hit, you're probably going to get attention from publishers, or have enough money to fund the next game on your own. Then the next game can be the AAA masterpiece they really want to make.

[s0]

Edit: also ur assuming that this is going to be AAA. it being on ks at all kinda points against that.

Not really. Just look at Psychonauts 2, Shenmue 3 and others. Like those projects, it's very likely that Blackroom has other investors and even a publisher. The Kickstarter campaign is mostly just a way to prove to investors that there are people out there willing to buy the game and so they can invest their money on it without fear. 700k for an AAA game is a pretty low budget.

That being said, I don't think that they even need a playable demo but at least some videos of a quick proof of concept render or of an early prototype would help the project to get more credibility.

shenmue 3 isn't really AAA either tho. and kickstarter projects having to secure additional funding is basically par for the course. virtually all the big KS successes had to do that.

[JWK5]

Honestly it doesn't matter to me what the label is we slap on the project, in the end it boils down to is it worth it to have faith in the project enough to want to support it (financially or socially)?

To me at least, it feels that right now there just isn't enough solid information about the project to get excited about. I'll just wait and see where it goes.

[Superb Joe]

i am just a humble genius beyond compare, but i live by the warriors code: don't give your fucking money to john romero

[JWK5]

Save your fucking money for lube, sex toys, and prostitutes.

[ProgramGamer]

Save your fucking money for lube, sex toys, and prostitutes respectable ladies that are willing to trade money for sexual favors while also having boundaries.

fify

[JWK5]

Why do you assume the prostitutes by default have to be women?

BAM! Take that!

[Manuel Magalhães]

Don't forget about protection. 

[JWK5]

Don't worry, I always wear knee pads.

[Dragonmaw]

reminder that last time people gave john romero money he spent 2 million dollars on an office then a further 1.8 million dollars buying a game from another developer which then also went over schedule and budget and was released onto the market, where it immediately sank without trace

reminder that this was almost two decades ago and immediately after he left id. different time.

having all his dreams crushed and then being ruthlessly mocked for making one of the worst shooters ever seems to have humbled romero a lot.

i dunno, it seems awfully petty to drag a man for mistake he made half a lifetime ago given that he's spent the time in-between to mentoring other developers and helping out the development community.