Hmm, if they have the rights to the Aden setting, I wonder if they know who has the distribution rights for the old PC games, Entomorph and Thunderscape. I should pop them a quick message.

Oh, good idea. Let me know what they say about that. I was wondering how they got clearance to publish new Aden material, since I didn't find an explanation in the pitch. I'm not into tabletop games nowadays, but it's pretty awesome that this is being developed, and that it easily met its funding goal.

I've been waiting for Thunderscape (so underrated) here on GOG since day one. I own the disc but I've had trouble getting it to run in Dosbox.

Here's what Shawn Carman just wrote back to me:

"Hello, Azilut! According to the contracts that I signed back in the last months of 2012, I own the copyrights to the PC games as well as literally everything else about Thunderscape, so that is something that would fall under my banner. My brother is our team's technical expert, and he's been looking into things like that. We'll let you know what we can when we can!"

10 days to go for CONSORTIUM, and it's at 90%.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/idgi/consortium-0

Awesome, I hope to see Entomorph and Thunderscape here. Please send this to GOG Support, they might not read this thread.

Wishlisted:

http://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/thunderscape

http://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/world_of_aden_thunderscape

http://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/entomorph_plague_of_the_darkfall

http://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/world_of_aden_entomorph_plague_of_the_darkfall

Good idea, though I get the impression GOG prefers to have the rights-holders approach them. Anyway, message sent.

Canada vs Bulgaria? That's new in a game :P

Well, to be fair, the first book is an option on the $5 reward tier, if you're interested in digital.

As for "giving it up front to anyone who pledges", there's an unfortunate problem with that.. If the Kickstarter doesn't fund, he'd end up giving out potentially a pretty high number of copies of the first book for absolutely no reason.

It's not "for no reason", it's for promotion. Many content creators are locked into the misconception that a free copy equals a lost sale, which is quite untrue. Very often it actually brings more sales. If a book has very few sales (which is presumably the case, or your father wouldn't have had a problem financing the next book off the first), and assuming it's actually a good book, giving away copies or having very low priced promotions would probably do only good, getting more people to know about the book and more people to want the sequel.

Actually dad has given away a fair number of copies already.. The problem is neither the quality of the book, nor the price point. The problem is the marketing and getting it actually in to the hands of more readers than just those in the immediate range.

The notion of "If I give this person a copy of the book, they'll tell their friends how good it is.." is all well and good, but the thing is.. in all reality, it doesn't hardly work.

Only a small fraction of the people who partake in any form of media will review it, and while more of them will talk about it to their friends... well, if someone says to you "Hey, this book is great, you should read it.", it will probably be added to your list of books to look in to.. and probably promptly forgotten about until you see/hear something that reminds you of it..

When that's a big name book, you may see it in a book store, or hear someone else talking about it, or any number of other things. If it's a little indie, you're probably never going to think about it again.

Now, further..

Most creators and artists I know (which is a lot), will actually disagree with your notion that giving shit away or taking a loss is good for business.. because they've all tried it, and found out the hard way that.. If you give your product away, or you sell it for super cheap, that's what people expect of you.. The person who "loved your CD" when they got it for $1, probably won't be $10 interested in your new album. Generally speaking undervaluing your work in order to "get out there" is a newbie move that miiight help short term, but hurts a lot more long term.


All that said though.. I am pestering my father to make a few changes to the Kickstarter, because on looking at it again.. I realize there are some .. major problem with the presentation. >.>

Odd questions.
With many of the KS projects being or saying they will be DRM free - two things come to mind

1) Will some of them be coming to GOG ? (do the devs have to reach out to GOG or the reverse?) ?

2) With those saying they will be DRM free but end up on Steam at some point - do those copies stay DRM free on steam or have Steam drm tacked onto them?

I've seen Kickstarter projects make a lot more than what your father is asking on completely free products, such as web comics. Take The Cucumber Quest project for example, which made $62,953 for creating a book of a web comic that's available for all. I pledged for it. Only $5, mind you, but that's $5 I paid just because I enjoyed the comic (which I didn't know of before that project). Not to mention the Homestuck adventure game, which brought in around $2.5m.

Also what I've read about limited time promotions is that they work. Another anecdotal evidence from me: I bought Faeries Solitaire for cheap, then bought another copy to gift because I liked the game and it was on another sale (that was before the creator gave away ton of keys), then I pre-ordered Faerie Solitaire 2. If the game stayed at $7, I probably wouldn't have ended paying anything even if it was promoted.

I'm also not sure what you mean by "taking a loss". A digital copy doesn't cost money, so you're not losing money by giving it. You do for giving away physical copies (which means that giving away physical copies makes less sense).

I think it's up to each project creator, as well as GOG, which needs to okay selling these games.

The promise of "DRM free" is basically to have a version of the game that's DRM free. That doesn't mean that all copies sold will have no DRM. While it doesn't make sense to have some versions DRM-free and other versions which have a draconic DRM, it's possible that some games will have Steam integration on Steam without taking care to run well when Steam isn't running.

'Street Fighter: Assassin's Fist' series