Camelot Unchained

[Mrbloodworth]

Sometimes bands make crappy songs. That still a far cry from someone who has never made a song, but talks about how crappy others songs are.

[Nebu]

Were you not involved in the Warhammer beta forum we had going here, Nebu?  To hear Mark talk at that time he was pretty directly involved in most of it.

I was.  I also remember how much we all enjoyed the game in beta.  

[trias_e]

Yeah, WAR was generally considered a good game by almost all of us until T3.  Even though RvR was pretty much non existent, and the game was basically public quests + battlegrounds.  After T3 the game devolved into a ghost town of public quests and terrible grind and utterly failed.

I'm willing to bet the game gets made if they get funding.  I'm also willing to bet that almost all of the crap Mark Jacobs is talking about in his videos doesn't make it in the game.

[Paelos]

It will get funded. They are too close, and one of the things was about Mark kicking in $2M of his own money if they matched it or some bullshit. He's not going to let it sit over $100k. Mystery funding will happen.

[JWIV]

In other news - apparently some of the supporters decided it was a good idea to mailbomb the game press to try and get them to cover and drum up interest in the Camelot kickstarter

http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/spam-and-kickstarter-how-fans-of-camelot-unchained-made-sure-the-press-woul

Which then led to this apology/update by Jacobs

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/13861848/camelot-unchained/posts

[Paelos]

Horny teens have more sense than some of these backers.

[Merusk]

Sometimes bands make crappy songs. That still a far cry from someone who has never made a song, but talks about how crappy others songs are.

Right, let's close down the site then. All a bunch of IT admins and other assorted professionals here.  It can be an engaging discussion between Stormwaltz, yourself, Schild and Margalis on all games, ever.  

Were you not involved in the Warhammer beta forum we had going here, Nebu?  To hear Mark talk at that time he was pretty directly involved in most of it.

I was.  I also remember how much we all enjoyed the game in beta.  

We also pointed out the problems with public quests being ghost towns once the rush moved on, too-focused testing and not getting to see the upper end.  Each of which were pretty well handwaved away.

[satael]

Average Pledge Per Backer: $158: I think that just about tells everything (since it's a computer game)

[Fabricated]

To be fair Ben Kuchera sucks.

[JWIV]

To be fair Ben Kuchera sucks.

This is also true.

[Paelos]

Average Pledge Per Backer: $158: I think that just about tells everything (since it's a computer game)

73% of the backers are under that average. It's the backing of about a quarter of the participants and the high dollar values. In fact, 65 pledges make up over 15% of their total funding.

[Hutch]

To be fair Ben Kuchera sucks.

To be fair, if CU was going to be anything other than a hustle cash grab warmed over attempt at recapturing past glories, the $2 million mark would have been hit late on day 1, and no one would have to know what Ben Kuchera thinks about spam.

[Mrbloodworth]

Sometimes bands make crappy songs. That still a far cry from someone who has never made a song, but talks about how crappy others songs are.

Right, let's close down the site then. All a bunch of IT admins and other assorted professionals here.  It can be an engaging discussion between Stormwaltz, yourself, Schild and Margalis on all games, ever.  

All I mean to say here, is the definition of "failure" used around here is off the mark by miles. Its as if "failure" means "not wow numbers" as a baseline.

[waffel]

Sometimes bands make crappy songs. That still a far cry from someone who has never made a song, but talks about how crappy others songs are.

Right, let's close down the site then. All a bunch of IT admins and other assorted professionals here.  It can be an engaging discussion between Stormwaltz, yourself, Schild and Margalis on all games, ever.  

All I mean to say here, is the definition of "failure" used around here is off the mark by miles. Its as if "failure" means "not wow numbers" as a baseline.

Mark Jacobs destroyed DAoC with 1 expansion and got fired from the Warhammer team after it bled a record amount of subscribers.

He may not be a failure in terms of raw profit, but he's a failure in terms of keeping a good thing going (DAoC) and creating a game with even a little bit of lasting content (Warhammer) after being fronted a $100 million dollar budget.

[Mrbloodworth]

Bands make bad songs from time to time.

[waffel]

And people make poor analogies from time to time.

[Paelos]

So Jacobs has a success with DAOC. He then messed it up and got taken over by EA.

He was going to do Imperator Online, and that never happened. He did WAR and that was a flop. Besides a success over a decade ago, he's had more failures of late. This is a what have you done for me lately business.

[Mrbloodworth]

And people make poor analogies from time to time.

And some people use a reality that only exists in the reality of form discussions. I also have like, zero interest in this title. I just find it odd, that a title no one in the thread seems to care about, is so cared about.

[Paelos]

People care about abuse of Kickstarter. Guess what this is?

[Mrbloodworth]

Right, save that Internets.

[Paelos]

It's more than that. When people ask for funding, they open the door early to detractors of the project. Now it's not just a choice of whether you play it and buy it, it becomes a gunpoint issue of pay up or it's never going to happen fanbois.

[Rendakor]

Bands make bad songs from time to time.

Some bands are one-hit-wonders.

[Falconeer]

Yeah, WAR was generally considered a good game by almost all of us until T3.

That happened with Age of Conan too. There was a honeymoon phase mostly due to Tortage and the first 20 levels being awesome. It took for the game to show the worst itemization ever dipped in terrible performance unless you had a rig from the future for people to start looking for the pitchfork. Still, some (me) will still tell you that was an absolutely great game, but that wouldn't help their design team to succesfully land any Kickstarter campaign I am afraid.

[Merusk]

Right, save that Internets.

I'm dubious of your cynicism about our cynicism.  We need to go deeper.

[Mrbloodworth]

Bands make bad songs from time to time.

Some bands are one-hit-wonders.

Indeed. Magestorm was awesome.

[satael]

Average Pledge Per Backer: $158: I think that just about tells everything (since it's a computer game)

73% of the backers are under that average. It's the backing of about a quarter of the participants and the high dollar values. In fact, 65 pledges make up over 15% of their total funding.

What I mean is compared to other games like Torment: Tides of Numenera (Average Pledge Per Backer: $56) and Wasteland 2 (Average Pledge Per Backer: $48)

[Nevermore]

When you have a track record of failure you can't use your one success (that you later trashed, pushing it towards the 'failure' pile) as 'proof' your next project will be awesome.  

Let's be objective here.  The guy developed a game in 2001 that is still up and running.  He developed a second game with a HUGE budget entrusted to him and later merged his company with BioWare (earning a pretty penny along the way, I'd assume). 

You don't like the guy's design choices.  I get it.  While the guy has made some questionable design decisions, I'd hardly call his career a track record of failure. 

Wait, are you talking about Richard Garriott now? 

[Paelos]

 

[HaemishM]

Bands make bad songs from time to time.

Bad songs don't cost companies MILLIONS 99% of the time either.

[Mrbloodworth]

Bands make bad songs from time to time.

Bad songs don't cost companies MILLIONS 99% of the time either.

You might just be wrong about that.

[palmer_eldritch]

$1,943,728 pledged of $2,000,000 goal with 20 hours to go!

I reckon they're going to make it past the finishing post just in time for the deadline, which is damned convenient!

[Ingmar]

I still can't believe people are backing this. Take my money, so you have the chance to ask other people for money and then MAYBE there might be a project. Insane.

[Falconeer]

I hate to sound like a "conspirationist", but I really don't think real people are, all of a sudden, backing this up big time.

[trias_e]

It's a pretty standard last-few-days jump for any kickstarter.  I'd guess that many people that are on the fence wait until the last second to decide.  I know a few of my hardcore DAOC playing friends have more or less done this, deciding to throw in $25 at the last moment.

Same jump can be seen in even very successful kickstarters.  Some examples.  

Double Fine:  http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure/#chart-daily
Torment: http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera/#chart-daily
Eternity: http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/#chart-daily  (really dramatic jump here)

Obviously much of this is stretch goal related, but regardless I'm not surprised at CU's trajectory.  Exactly what I expected a few days ago.

[trias_e]

Watch the celebration!  (well eventually) http://www.twitch.tv/citystategames