Author Topic: Kickstarter And Op3  (Read 3742 times)

Offline lordpalandus

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Kickstarter And Op3
« on: September 28, 2012, 02:59:11 PM »
Has anyone ever considered using Kickstarter to fund an Outpost 3 game? Reason I ask is after the success of Planetary Annihilation (a spiritual successor to Total Annihilation and/or Supreme Commander) at over-exceeding its financial stretch goals, I was wondering if the people here who initially were interested in doing it would be interested in doing it again, if they were able to get the funding and hire on additional people to get it done.

Thoughts?
« Last Edit: September 28, 2012, 03:00:00 PM by lordpalandus »
Currently working on Cataclysm of Chaos, Remade.
Link to OPU page = http://forum.outpost2.net/index.php/topic,6073.0.html

Offline Flashy

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Kickstarter And Op3
« Reply #1 on: September 28, 2012, 03:46:22 PM »
I'm not exactly sure how many active or semi-active Outpost 2 Players are available, but I really doubt that it's simply going to get enough donations, expecially since most of them only show up every few months. Even then, Planetary Annihilation seemed to have a pretty big fanbase, 2,000,000 Dollars donated of 900,000 total, did I get that right? We don't seem to have nearly as many people here.
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Offline TH300

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Kickstarter And Op3
« Reply #2 on: September 28, 2012, 04:11:05 PM »
kickstarter won't work for us, since:

1) the Outpost series isn't as popular as other games

2) even if it was more popular, we'd still need a team of capable and popular developers. No one will give money to totally unknown people (this is probably the best argument)

3) even if we had those kind of people here, they'd have to be interested in working on an op3. And, although earning money for that work can make it less problematic, people would still have to invest a lot of time which can conflict with different plans that people made for their lifes.

4) we'd need to get the rights from VU (or whoever owns them, now), first

I'm not the one who likes to discourage people, but this idea is just too unlikely to be succesful.
« Last Edit: September 28, 2012, 04:13:05 PM by TH300 »

Offline lordpalandus

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Kickstarter And Op3
« Reply #3 on: September 28, 2012, 07:08:50 PM »
Not necessarily TH300; though you probably would know better than I as you've been around OPU longer than I have.

1) It wasn't as popular for several main reasons:

A) Very little or no advertising for Outpost 1 or Outpost 2.
-> With a budget produced by kickstarter this could be rectified.
B) Outpost 1 is fundamentally different from Outpost 2.
-> Nuff said.
C) The internet wasn't as powerful back then (Believe OP2 was released in '96) so internet multiplayer playing was very limited.
-> A strong point about OP2 is the replayability has come from multiplayer. With technology today Multiplayer play is a lot easier to setup.
D) As I haven't played OP1 I can't comment, but OP2 was heavily a micro-management kind of RTS. This could be rectified with additional scripting and automatization, but as it stands is heavily micromanagement
-> All things that could be rectified in the full game.
E) It is a different kind of RTS that forces you to think very carefully about your decisions before you do them. Its not like other games where it is sololy a tech race; it is in OP2, but at the same time you also have to focus on colony demands as well.
-> This I would think would help to sell the game as in this day and age, the RTS market is flooded with Dawn of War II esque clones, or Red Alert clones (ya I know that isn't a word used much today, but its true)

2) Yes and no. If a case is made well enough people will throw money at just about anything whether you have a good reputation or none at all. Like if I wasn't broke I would have supported Planetary Annihilation, simply because the game looked cool... never heard of Uber Entertainment or anyone that worked there before I saw that trailer. But you are right about the fact that we would need a dedicated development team.

3) True enough. But IF we did...

4) Vivendi Universal probably wouldn't care too much as it is a long dead series. However, they may be interested in partnering with OPU development team if they saw an interest thru kickstarter.

Its fine for being the realist in the room. Its needed to prevent really stupid ideas being put into practice. I just thought I'd add my two cents. Plus, the other thing is that most people don't play anymore is because their machines can't play the game anymore (yes I know that the game re-released here can be used on newer machines)
« Last Edit: September 28, 2012, 07:11:15 PM by lordpalandus »
Currently working on Cataclysm of Chaos, Remade.
Link to OPU page = http://forum.outpost2.net/index.php/topic,6073.0.html

Offline Spikerocks101

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Kickstarter And Op3
« Reply #4 on: September 28, 2012, 10:53:17 PM »
Ignoring all that, I thought of that before, and the main thing is people on OPU don't have the time for making OP3 as is, so we'd likely have to higher some (if not all) outside help in it's creation. On that note, we'd have to offer the game in full for it to be on Kickstarter (ie, we can't just saying "fund this game" and not offer it to them, it's not donations). So, if we didn't get enough funding to make the game, and had to return everyone's money, one of us would have to pay for the entire thing (finished or not finished) and obviously non of us have that much money, so yeah... that won't happen UNLESS we get a game first, and use Kickstarter to "put the icing on the cake".
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Offline Arklon

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« Reply #5 on: September 29, 2012, 01:06:26 AM »
Quote
2) Yes and no. If a case is made well enough people will throw money at just about anything whether you have a good reputation or none at all. Like if I wasn't broke I would have supported Planetary Annihilation, simply because the game looked cool... never heard of Uber Entertainment or anyone that worked there before I saw that trailer. But you are right about the fact that we would need a dedicated development team.
While Uber is a newer company, the guys working there are not new to the industry; they have credentials, having previously worked on TA, SupCom 1, etc. People are skeptical when the guys behind the Kickstarter don't have a reputation, not only for the reason of the quality of the resulting product but also whether they can actually manage the Kickstarted funds properly or not; clusterf***s of mismanaged money have happened to Kickstarters before because the people behind them didn't know what they were doing. Properly budgeting a game, not to mention tier rewards for backers on top of that, is by no means trivial, especially when Kickstarter funds are relatively limited (as compared to publisher funding) as they are.
And before you ask, don't even try asking publishers. You'd have a hard time finding one that's interested in an RTS game at all, let alone one made with an IP that was used to make games that didn't sell terribly well. There is a reason why the market is flooded with COD clones and other BS, and that is because publishers are only interested in games that are "likely" to become blockbusters, which RTS games usually are not, Starcraft being a notable exception. This is the whole reason why developers are turning to Kickstarter instead.

Quote
4) Vivendi Universal probably wouldn't care too much as it is a long dead series. However, they may be interested in partnering with OPU development team if they saw an interest thru kickstarter.
Wrong. Especially because there'd be actual money involved. Also, even before considering getting the money to acquire the rights to Outpost 3, good luck finding who to go to get them, because they are somewhere in limbo right now. All we know is Stellarwave got the rights to produce OP3, then they got bought out by another company, which got bought out by yet another company, and nobody knows what happened with the rights after that. If you want the rights, you have no choice but to track down whoever ended up with them, which isn't going to happen (if it were possible, somebody here would have figured it out years ago). This is similar to an "orphaned work" situation, which is a massive flaw in copyright law. The best you can realistically do is to make a "Not Outpost 3" and avoid the Outpost IP altogether.
« Last Edit: September 29, 2012, 01:34:48 AM by Arklon »

Offline lordpalandus

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Kickstarter And Op3
« Reply #6 on: October 04, 2012, 11:10:12 AM »
Many good points but... if this was true then why is the forums flooded with New Game ideas or Outpost 3 projects. If Kickstarter wouldn't work because of copyrights and licencing issues, what would have been the point of completing those other projects? Like if Outpost 3 was built by the guys here several years ago, wouldn't it have been shutdown due to licensing and copyright infringement by Vivendi Universal (or Sierra as it was around in 2009)?

 
Currently working on Cataclysm of Chaos, Remade.
Link to OPU page = http://forum.outpost2.net/index.php/topic,6073.0.html

Offline Spikerocks101

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Kickstarter And Op3
« Reply #7 on: October 04, 2012, 02:59:16 PM »
Most companies wouldn't have a problem with a free game "inspired" by a game of theirs. We would probably not sell the game if we made it. Kickstarter pretty much forces you to sell it. They aren't a charity, they are another means for money.
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