They just posted a link to an interview with Madoc on Forbes.

The most worrisome statement from Bare Mettle Entertainment is Really?

Was considering a pledge, but this interview convinced me it's best to wait and see what they'll deliver in 2014.

To be fair, in-context what I think he's saying is that they don't know yet how the game will be distributed. Madoc has said elsewhere that he's considering using GOG, Steam, or other digital distributors, but that they haven't arrived at any handshakes yet. But yeah, I can't say I was wild about that comment either.

The Kickstarter craze could be good in two ways. 1) There is a market for some of the games the developers badly want to make but can't convince investors on them 2) That a lot of these creative people realize that they aren't good at business and need help in that area.

Maybe there can be a reconciliation (generally speaking).

I tossed the minimum at it (10 pounds). I'm not impressed with the 'no business plan' statement either, but I figure I can spare ~ 20 bucks to take a chance on this one. If they pull it off, it will be pretty sweet.

"If we provide online services and need to cover costs then we’ll probably charge a very reasonable subscription fee."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/11/28/an-interview-with-sui-generis-developer-madoc-evans/


discouraging...

heres an explanation for that feee.. quoted from comments

Hey guys and gals,
Very late here now and need a little sleep, but just wanted to say a massive thanks to everyone today you've been more than amazing!!
On the subscription fees thing, please don't worry! Our focus here is on making an awesome single player/LAN experience, *hopefully* with some online play too and that will definitely all be free. We wouldn't even charge for matchmaking servers, they're cheap to run.
We plan on developing the game for quite some time after release and providing tons of free extra content. This is in fact how we plan to combat piracy, simply by offering a superior service in the form of regular, free, super convenient (yet entirely optional, with no DRM) updates to our customers.
All Madoc meant in that interview was that *if* (which probably wouldn't be for at least another year after release!) we do ever introduce (again, entirely optional) massively multiplayer elements with persistent storage etc. (which would be cool!) we may need to charge something to cover the costs. A paid expansion followed by a free unlimited service is a perfectly viable alternative though, and we'd discuss our options with the community before doing anything like that.
Hope this clarifies things, thanks again and good night! :D

I still honestly feel that for a kickstarter project, there are too many "hopefully"s and "if"s. I am considering to cancel my pledge rather than calculating the possibility of that happening.

They do have solid tech, but I doubt they are able to do THE game they try ty describe. For that they'd need much, much more money. I do think though, if their engine will be good enough, they can turn a decent business by licensing it.

Of course they'll make it.

Think about it. You're a developer. You _want_ to make this game. You've invested a good deal of time into it already. You've started a kickstarter, and it may just fall short by a bit and fail.

Now, you have two options:

a) You leave it be, write off all the work you did so far as a failed attempt to fund the project, and start to look for something else to do.

b) You tell your bank "Hey guys, if you can give me 15,000 pound right now, I can pay it back tomorrow. Because tomorrow I'll receive ten times as much money." You pay for your own kickstarter with a second account (or several, to make it less obvious), and have (nearly) the money that you wanted to create the game you wanted. You'll have a bit less money than planned, but there will be more money coming in over time - and you can always just make the game a little bit cheaper, no one will notice.

Which option do you take?

Yeah, surprising that they had to go to Kickstarter to fund this, considering the awesome tech they already have.

But then again, this is the same video games industry in which every major publisher turned down Brian Fargo, a man who clearly knows his way around the business, for a sequel that spawned the Fallout franchise. If he couldn't get funding via the traditional method, who could?

Sorry for the tangent, but it seems to me that the video games industry is currently in a lot of financial chaos, and nothing but the most derivative risk-free kind of games have a chance of getting published.

I think the biggest problem at the moment in the game biz is, that games are too expensive to make in contrast to profits, that's why big companies try to make "sure bets" in order to get the biggest revenue possible.

I do hope that this current Kickstarter trend changes things a bit.

17 hours to make 15K

Sui Generis just reached its funding goal with 6 hours to go:

£150,315 pledged of £150,000 goal

I think it's more that most publishers only recognize a few successful genres and don't want to step outside that comfort zone.
Many of them are also apparently quite bad at risk assessment or even basic common sense.
I mean look at SW: TOR, any gamer could have told EA that spending 250 million dollars on a MMO, even one with the Star Wards licence, would likely end badly. They did it anyway.

I'm sure there are plenty more examples, big publishers seem to prefer high-budget games that can potentially make a huge amount of money, over small-budget ones that are almost certain to make a small to middling profit.

Edit: Also congrats to the game backers and the dev team for making it. I'll admit I didn't think it could reach the goal a few days ago.