Kickstarter thread and what would you like to see kickstarted

[Nijo]

Interesting.

[Family Fry]

Mr Rab Florence had something to say about Braben and Molyneux's kickstarters on his tumblr blog.

http://effingarcade.tumblr.com/

To be honest I thought the same about Obsidian and even Double Fine to an extent, pulling on the heart strings of fans.

[Golgo]

Molyneux and Braben would find it easy to secure conventional funding/publishers for retro-new versions of Populous and Elite, would they? Florence is - to borrow his caps lock convention - TALKING THROUGH HIS ARSE.

[Brad]

Molyneux and Braben would find it easy to secure conventional funding/publishers for retro-new versions of Populous and Elite, would they? Florence is - to borrow his caps lock convention - TALKING THROUGH HIS ARSE.

This. He's got a right bee in his bonnet about this stuff.

"Hey. How about I make a new Elite!?"
"HMMM. Maybe. As long as we dispense with the ships, and space and that and set it in a modern - or future - warzone yeah? Like that Call of Duty game. Soldier Elite we could call it."

[MisterBubbles]

I'd have thought by now Peter Molyneux might by now have his own 500k to fund this.

[Golgo]

True, Mr. B, but he's a businessman, not some kind of charity. I don't get the argument that Kickstarter should be reserved for poor indies only.

[MisterBubbles]

But as Rab points out its the consumer that's taking all the risk.

[Golgo]

Scot allegiances aside, Mr. B, acknowledge that Rab is being petulant and unreasonable. It's a kind of investment, so you are an investor first and a consumer last. All investments are risks. And choices. If you don't want the risk, wait until game comes out and buy it then. People like Molyneux don't - and shouldn't be expected - to put their personal savings into business projects.

[MisterBubbles]

But he's unwilling to invest in his own project, then why should we? If he thinks it so great he gets all the profit, kinda like Lucas did with his merchandise on Star Wars. You see it all the time on Dragon's Den and most of the dragon's call out when it happens there, so it's the same here.

[Golgo]

How do you know or Florence know he hasn't invested in it?

[H-Man]

I must admit, I felt this way about backing Godus too. It never occurred to me with Project Eternity, not sure why - possibly because that kind of isometric rpg just doesn't get made any more - but Molyneux can seemingly get funding for any old crap these days and, in my mind anyways, needs to re-earn our custom.

Backed it regardless :/ God games need to come back.

[wakka]

Scot allegiances aside, Mr. B, acknowledge that Rab is being petulant and unreasonable. It's a kind of investment, so you are an investor first and a consumer last. All investments are risks. And choices. If you don't want the risk, wait until game comes out and buy it then. People like Molyneux don't - and shouldn't be expected - to put their personal savings into business projects.

Weeelllll...shouldn't they? If I started a business tomorrow, and I went to VCs for funding, they might find it rather strange during due diligence that I haven't invested any of my own personal cash at all. In fact they'd probably find it downright suspicious as it seems to show I've got no faith in my own business. As you rightly say we have no idea whether he has personally invested or not, but I certainly don't think we 'shouldn't expect' him to put his personal savings into something which he is appealing to his fans to fund.

The difference between being a VC or a publisher and being a 'kickstarter funder' of stuff is that with Kickstarter you get no stake, and therefore no divdend. You get a copy of the game or the product, and if you spunk enough cash you might get an NPC named after yourself or have lunch with the developers. But when VCs and publishers invest they get a stake in the profits of the game.

It's not really an investment. It's a donation.

[Golgo]

That's true Randicoot. 'Investor' is probably misleading, my fault. But you're not a 'consumer' either. Somewhere in between with lower stakes than investor and higher stakes than consumer. Personally I don't care whether people choose to invest in Kickstarting anything, but the idea that proven (but personally wealthy) developers shouldn't be allowed to try to use it to resurrect old and unfashionable games/genres seems just petty-minded, to me at least.

[Nijo]

For actually investing in a company, there's Seedrs (http://www.seedrs.com/).
It works Dragons Den style: money in for a % stake, and still plenty of risk that projects fail.

Nowhere near as big as Kickstarter.

[MisterBubbles]

So if im sticking a grand into invest in a game, im certainly wanting more than a NPC named after me.