taczillabr: This is a bit awkward, indeed. They sold a load of the first game plus have been in humble bundle, would think they would do a sequel by themselves so I'm surprised in seeing a kickstarter. I would want to know what could be potentially included in that new engine before I pledge.
I loved Defense Grid, more than 150 hours into it and I got it for only $ 2.50 on a Steam Holiday Sale. I understand that it's unlikely it'll get to 1 million for the sequel, but I'm more than willing to back it out of love for the game and the possibility of at least an expansion and new features to the original game, like co-op.
Also, they included an explanation for this on a FAQ at their Kickstarter page:
"We put everything we had into Defense Grid; we wanted the game to be able to reach a lot of people, and looking back we probably sold the game at too low a price. It paid for it’s cost, but not enough for us to make DG2 on our own. It takes a lot of money to make games (especially ones with 3d art instead of 2d sprites). We've been pitching it for several years but it's not f2p social (where the money is now in small games), or AAA (where the money is in big games). We still think there's enough interest to be successful, but that's what we're finding out by doing a Kickstarter.
Since Defense Grid shipped, we’ve been working for other folks who look for people who make high quality games – most recently Valve for the Counter-Strike franchise – and that has been great work that helps our team gel even further and allows us to create great game experiences, but it also isn’t going to provide enough to fund a Defense Grid 2. "
And this on the comments page:
Hidden Path Entertainment, AMD & Razer about 15 hours ago
And, by the way, we plan on making DG2 someday even if we don't reach the full funding goal here. If we do reach it here, well then that's known, and we're making it and it will happen next year. Nice clean end of story.
If we just get 1/2 way through, say, and reach $500k, we're going to deliver DG:Containment to you, and we're going to deliver the remastered game on the new engine to you as we promise here - we'll work straight on them and deliver them as soon as possible.
And then after that, we'll keep at it, but at a slower pace on our own dime. It may take extra time, it may take us making other games for other people first, but we'll still eventually get to DG2, and when we do, we're not going to forget you. You helped get us there and we'd get you a copy then, but that's a different kind of promise, and we understand that.
Hidden Path Entertainment, AMD & Razer about 15 hours ago
Sorry, we're not trying to be misleading. The goal is to make DG2. We could then set the minimum funding goal to $1m, but we figured that would actually concern more people that way. So, we came up with a way that if we don't reach that goal, we're still going to deliver good new content to you. That was the thinking.
