Quite true, if statistics are worth anything, they show us that most successful (and even unsuccessful) Kickstarter projects get the bulk of the funding at the start and at the end of the campaign. Pretty much every project goes through a period of slow funding, it just so happens that the slow funding period for Outcast HD is almost slow to a halt at just 5 days into the campaign, the initial funding boost wasn't nearly as huge as some near-miss successful projects and the backers, who are the ones that should keep their morale high and remain excited about this, seem to disbelieve the project they are trying to fund and sound like quitters when it's still a month to go.

@groze...well just speaking about the facts....right now there is no way in hell the game is going to achieve its $ 600 000 goal, there is no way the game is going to get enough new supporters if the development team doesnt get some-one with big influence to promote the project or really show gameplay content...Its hard to sound positive and have faith on the project right now when the game is so early in development phase that its simply not enough to attract new people or gain any additional attention from gaming media, which it would desperately need. Right now the funding it has gotten, mainly comes from the old fans or those who knew atleast something about the game, I just dont see how they could attract new people with what they have now.

I havent lost my hopes for this game seeing the light of day yet, even if this first Kickstarter attempt fails, like I said, there are many examples where the game has found another way, like Bugbear's "Next-car-game" that failed to gather its $350 000 goal in Kickstarter, was then voted by community in Steam's Greenlight and managed to get all the funding it needed and more through early-access campaing in Steam, with fully playable demo boosting the campaing significantly. If we would see that sort of campaing from these guys, I think it would have much better chance to succeed.

Enter PewDiePie... and the addition of 'brofists' and girlish screams & giggles among the newly featured in-game content.

Wow, they went up 10k in four hours, pretty cool.

edit: IIRC, they were around 183 when I checked around lunch time; I could be misremembering, but I don't think so.

$192,251 at the moment. After the third update, there is a huge rise, I hope it keeps going...

Those are both games that I felt were very good despite their consolizations, so I do agree that consolized games can still be good. They're just not trying to be their best. I thought XCOM EU was dumbed down (I don't use that pejoratively) but was still fun. Jagged Alliance 2 is still my favorite tactics game. When I play those games vanilla, even though I like them, I can't help but think how much better they would be if they were developed specifically for PC and then ported if possible.

It's kind of like when I listen to lossy audio. Yes, I can listen to it and enjoy it, but I know in my head that it can be better and I have the means and hardware to be able to hear a difference between lossy and lossless. The Witcher 2 was PC exclusive first, but a person can tell that it was being developed to be a multi-platform game eventually. It was good, but I think it could have been even better if it wasn't meant to be multi-platform.

When it makes sense and does not limit me, I often rebind many PC games keyboard keys (with a program like JoyToKey) to a gamepad that I use in my left hand and still use a gaming mouse in my right hand (with a few keys bound to some extra mouse buttons). If I need more buttons, I bind one button to switch to a different profile and then switch back to the main profile. I do this with even some old PC games. Even though I do this, I still would not have as many options available to me if a game is not developed for the amount of keys that a keyboard has. So even though I use a gamepad often, I still want the game to be complex (unless it's a platformer) instead of being designed for unchangeable gamepad controls so that I can pick and choose how to best implement it for my personal preference.

Making a game gamepad compatible is not the only issue that matters for me. The other issues besides the controls are designing a game so that it will perform well on old hardware. Some consoles are also difficult to develop for. This isn't just about being able to turn graphic details up or down, which is easy to do, but it also affects things like AI and being able to create a more complex world which is not easy to change with togglles. I'd rather devs focus on that kind of stuff than graphics. Take Fallout: New Vegas for example. A good game but there were some great ideas cut from it. Some of it was because of time constraints and Obsidian's wise decisions to focus on the most important things first to create a polished game, but some cuts were made because it was made to be multi-platform and the consoles wouldn't be able to handle the content.

Some of the cuts in F:NV were for more complex, random, emergent NPC dialogs and independent behaviors and more NPCs in general, more followers and more complex companion interactions/quests, etc. Those are things I like about my traditional PC desktop games. Some of the cut content can be restored but much of it is not able to be restored, and so some is lost forever because of console limitations. Also the AI is not very good when combat starts, but then again AI in Bethesda games with the Gamebryo engine have never been much more than enemies running straight at you.

All that said, I do realize devs are following markets and some are doing the best they can with what is available to them. I have my own personal reasons for why I don't buy many PC games anymore and my own speculations about why so many other people quit gaming on PC and started on consoles.

Maybe you've already noticed it, but you don't need to do any "quick cocktail-napkin math". In the link I gave you, just click on the Mini-Chart tab and you get to see the daily average required to succeed - I think that it's pulling data and adjusting the needed average in real time.

Looking at the numbers, they're doing really poorly today in contrast to yesterday, not even $5K. Probably what caused the projection for the minimum to drop by $50K.

But I like doing cocktail-napkin math. It's about all the math that computers let me do on my own anymore. :)

However one arrives at the numbers, though, it's looking not so good for them now.

By cocktail napkin you probably mean the calculator on your phone, those days are long gone when my dad used to like to test my math skills every chance he got by giving me math problems even when we went out to a restaurant or something. Thanks for the info though lets just hope there is another huge surge at the end and they make for it if the average per day dips sometimes to eventually reach their goal.

Well I for one won't donate until they reach their Linux stretch goal and I am sure I am not the only one and I would LOVE to support a Outcast remake otherwise. Adding Linux support to the main goal I one thing they could do. It may not save the campaign on its own but it would probably help.

Generally speaking I like to do calculations purely in my head, to keep my low-level idiot savantism in practice. I'm often quite good at getting fourth or fifth decimal precision, provided I'm not thinking too hard about it and letting my instincts flow.

In this particular case I did use the Windows calculator, but mostly because people are quick to pounce on math errors here. That, and my allergies have me somewhat dense-headed at the moment. :)

I agree, pitching the project as Windows-only on the base tier seems unwise, especially at the funding goal asking price. Seems no reason they couldn't leverage the many cross-platform development environments to support all the major OSes right from the start.

Well, I think people who start with the assumptions that streamlined = less complex, less strategic, or less thoughtful, are always going to under-appreciate the inherent complexity of streamlined games; it's more subtle, i.e. not flashing in your face, and unfortunately it seems that you need obvious "markers of complexity" to convince some people that a game is complex. It's saddening, tbh.

It's true that keyboards have more buttons than gamepads, but I don't think fitting what one wants on a lesser number of keys means that a game is less complex. The basic idea of any game is to define a range of actions which you can perform to do X, and the challenge is to use what's given to navigate the environment to whatever end.

That's why, I don't think complaints about being able to perform less actions are meaningful- first, it depends on the action you want to perform instead of what's available, and secondly, you have to consider the impact that including such action would have on game balance. More often than not, less is more.

But all of that is a separate discussion from being able to bind keys, which is a useful functionality, I agree- every game should let you do that, and even if it doesn't makes sense because people are going to complain about "consolization" if you don't. As long as it's easy to do, and not error prone, it should be fine.

Though really, TW2 is an action-rpg, so as far ARPGs go, it's fine with having streamlined controls.

As to a game not being "well optimized", well it sucks to have to accept it, but some games are just not going to work on less powerful machines because they require more labour; unless there's some marvel of engineering which will allow otherwise, the hardware of PCs are their limiting factors.

I do agree that it's more fun in an RPG, or action-adv game etc., when there are options for complex dialogue, complex NPC behaviour etc. For your specific example, though, the DLCs for Fallout NV certainly checked that box. I don't like it either that it took them till the DLC to make it better, but the fact is that they did, and I can appreciate that.

Also, contrary to what people will have you believe, PC gaming is actually booming. It's understandable if you have your preferences, but I just don't think more = better in all cases.

I quite often do math by hand, just to test myself that I haven't forgotten my stuff.

Regarding the campaign - the projection's on a steady decline and given that the minimum never crossed or at least got close to the funding goal, it sure doesn't look promising at the moment. They'll need several spikes like yesterday's if they're to make it.

IIRC, Fresh3D has been an engine provider, making and selling their own engine's license. This Outcast HD Reboot isn't made in Unity3D or another very popular and multiplatform engine (like CryEngine or UDK) actually.

They should obviously master their engine, but it wasn't made for Linux since the beginning, so I understand (for once) why they made Linux port a stretchgoal.