Crowfall aka Play2Crush aka Shadowbane II aka Nostalgia Online

[Triforcer]

Crowfall Collector's Edition announced!  I already have in my Amber kickstarter.  Seems awfully early to put this out for a (supposedly) end of 2016 release.  Wish there was at least two or three in-game exclusives- only one coming.

[Falconeer]

150 dollars. 21 miniatures.

[Paelos]

Ah. Minis and a comic. The geek is strong with this one.

[Falconeer]

Did you know that you can now invest (2000$ up) on this?

 

[Merusk]

Nothing I can find about the % of ownership. Must be behind the investment application process, which since I don't make $200k/ year or have $1mil in assets I can't even bother with. Interesting, though.

[Threash]

I love those minis.  So that's 3 more months of vip on top of the six years i already had lol.

[shiznitz]

You are all crazy.

[Rasix]

You are all crazy.

This may be the first time we agree on anything. Jesus christ, you guys.. 

[Merusk]

You are all crazy.

I object. Investment isn't crazy if you can afford it and know what your return can be.

I'm sure as fuck not playing this game, but I'll gladly take a share of the sheep being fleeced if I can. Wouldn't you like a piece of that SC money? At least this has a chance of being shipped and giving returns.

[KallDrexx]

It doesn't matter what your return *can* be, what matters is what you realistically believe your return *will* be.

Investment is only not crazy if the game does extremely well that either
1) the company gets bought several years down the line and your (hopefully not diluted too badly) shares are worth more than what you originally paid for it
2) Game does amazingly well and they distribute profits among all owners

None of that is remotely likely.  They are trying to make a AAA priced MMO with only a few million that's going to try and be a rebel in the marketplace by refusing to be F2P for a competitive game that requires enough players constantly playing in order to make the competitive aspects enjoyable.  The likelyhood of this game actually succeeding long term is slim, and the likelyhood of them succeeding so amazingly well that your investment is worth tying up your money (even a few grand) for a good 3-5 years at least and doing better than it would if you just dumped it in the S&P 500 is just so slim that it's not worth it unless you just have shit tons of money to blow.  Even then I can think of many more startups that are probably less risk to invest your money in for a bigger reward.

[Merusk]

It doesn't matter what your return *can* be, what matters is what you realistically believe your return *will* be.

Investment is only not crazy if the game does extremely well that either
1) the company gets bought several years down the line and your (hopefully not diluted too badly) shares are worth more than what you originally paid for it
2) Game does amazingly well and they distribute profits among all owners

None of that is remotely likely.  They are trying to make a AAA priced MMO with only a few million that's going to try and be a rebel in the marketplace by refusing to be F2P for a competitive game that requires enough players constantly playing in order to make the competitive aspects enjoyable.  The likelyhood of this game actually succeeding long term is slim, and the likelyhood of them succeeding so amazingly well that your investment is worth tying up your money (even a few grand) for a good 3-5 years at least and doing better than it would if you just dumped it in the S&P 500 is just so slim that it's not worth it unless you just have shit tons of money to blow.  Even then I can think of many more startups that are probably less risk to invest your money in for a bigger reward.

Right, which is why I was trying to find the info. I wanted to see if it was a really bad deal or a so-so deal being offered. No way it's like, "Hey we got bought out and you own 1% for your 100k investment in the company, here's your slice!"

Game company investing is gambling without the silly cards and dice to mess with.

[Paelos]

My guess is they are selling minority shares and won't water down their own holdings. Meaning your $100,000 would probably only be worth half a percent.

So let's say they get bought out for $60M by somebody later. You'd get back triple your money. Huzzah! Except for the value on a per dollar basis for what they are raising, you paid a 2x premium for that percentage. You should have gotten 6x your money if they were selling equal shares.

[shiznitz]

Your example assumes a MMOG company has ever sold itself for anything more than the promise of hand jobs since Brad McQuaid got his Sony money. 

If investing in Crowfall was so great, Crowfall wouldn't be offering ownership to internet yahoos. 

[Paelos]

Your example assumes a MMOG company has ever sold itself for anything more than the promise of hand jobs since Brad McQuaid got his Sony money. 

If investing in Crowfall was so great, Crowfall wouldn't be offering ownership to internet yahoos. 

Sort of. If they offer it to private equity groups, they'd likely want a majority share for their money, and they'd lose control of the company. Internet yahoos wouldn't demand that.

If I'm putting up $5M of capital and you only put in $2.5, but you're doing the work, I want 51% of your company minimum. Because sweat equity is bullshit to me and I want the ability to demand updates and fire weak performers.

[shiznitz]

The fact that the team won't subject themselves to such a standard only proves that they view Crowfall as just another monthly paycheck machine.

[Paelos]

Nah it just proves to me they are game developers who don't understand real business. That's pretty normal.

I don't think it will keep them from releasing a product, simply because I don't think there's a ton of potential for feature creep here. On its face it's a game about PVP in a randomly generated set of worlds. If you can find tune that word building aspect of it? It's like reloading Minecraft over and over. Your design team has to do very little in terms of hand-crafting worlds, which leaves them room for combat and other additions.

I don't see them suddenly promising Tavernkeeper 2.0 along with the standard classes like SWTOR, or doing the ridiculous promises like Star Citizen.

[Draegan]

Not having to actually hand craft the vast majority of content and instead just making sure rulesets and systems work has to be a huge time saver. Only reason why I expect the game to launch in decent shape.

[Soulflame]

Games require 160%.

I had to laugh, because it's clear Nija is in software development.

Basically, The last y% (where y% = 100%-x%) takes x% of time.  It actually holds pretty true in software development.

Although I usually see it as "the last 10% will take 90% of the time required."

[WayAbvPar]

Games require 160%.

I had to laugh, because it's clear Nija is in software development.

Basically, The last y% (where y% = 100%-x%) takes x% of time.  It actually holds pretty true in software development.

Although I usually see it as "the last 10% will take 90% of the time required."

I am not directly involved in the process (apart from helping out with testing), but I work in a dev house and hammering out the last few bugs to make things stable and useful is generally a bitch. Since if they were easy to fix, they would have been solved long before.

[slog]

Nah it just proves to me they are game developers who don't understand real business. That's pretty normal.

I don't think it will keep them from releasing a product, simply because I don't think there's a ton of potential for feature creep here. On its face it's a game about PVP in a randomly generated set of worlds. If you can find tune that word building aspect of it? It's like reloading Minecraft over and over. Your design team has to do very little in terms of hand-crafting worlds, which leaves them room for combat and other additions.

I don't see them suddenly promising Tavernkeeper 2.0 along with the standard classes like SWTOR, or doing the ridiculous promises like Star Citizen.

Doesn't it prove that they do understand real business?  Why do it the hard way when there are players trying to give you money?

[tmp]

So, the long ass trailer said there'd be alpha in summer 2015 without any NDA, and the summer is now over. Someone spill here what the alpha is like

edit: went to official forums and found some footage from recent combat test, apparently. action starts at 5:30 or so.

[Draegan]

Testing has been going on for a month and no NDA is attached. There are plenty of streams out there.

[Threash]

They are about to shut down the alpha 1 beta to go back to work, next one should be in a couple months with some extra classes.  As far as i can tell from the videos they'd made some solid progress in the short time they've had.

[Draegan]

Alpha 1 hasn't started. They are technically calling this pre alpha.

[Triforcer]

Alpha 1 hasn't started. They are technically calling this pre alpha.

Everybody does this, but I hate that "clever" little tactic.  It will be pre alpha for two years, alpha for a week, beta for a week, then release!

[Threash]

Doesn't matter what they call it, i'm going by what level pledge they are letting on and they let on everyone who had an alpha 1 included pledge.

[Gimfain]

While battleground videos that only includes three classes might not be a fair representation of the game, it seemed like people just ran together and didn't really work together apart from hitting the target with the best they could. I really missed support classes, so if I play a PvP-style mmorpg I will probably play camelot unchained instead.

[Draegan]

Alpha 1 hasn't started. They are technically calling this pre alpha.

Everybody does this, but I hate that "clever" little tactic.  It will be pre alpha for two years, alpha for a week, beta for a week, then release!

I understand where you're coming from, but these guys are being very transparent with their development. If you're into that sort of thing, they had a cool video where they snapshotted progress in 2 week clips a few weeks ago. When they say Pre-Alpha, they really mean it. They have a clear set of goals and milestones for each section and it seems they are sticking with it.

Doesn't matter what they call it, i'm going by what level pledge they are letting on and they let on everyone who had an alpha 1 included pledge.

Sure I guess it really doesn't matter if you want to play that game. They just needed more bodies in testing. Testing ends at the end of the month and they will go down for a month and testing will start up again in November. They just need bodies which is why they invited more people. Shrug.

Semantics I guess?

[Draegan]

While battleground videos that only includes three classes might not be a fair representation of the game, it seemed like people just ran together and didn't really work together apart from hitting the target with the best they could. I really missed support classes, so if I play a PvP-style mmorpg I will probably play camelot unchained instead.

When I got time to play, the latency was horrific and it made the game really unplayable for a lot of people. Those that did well played way too much and just got better at lag prediction. The Legionnaire is the support class which I played several times. It's got a lot of displacement in it's kit and an actual AOE heal.

[Falconeer]

Not sure what is going on here...

At least they are having fun.

For those who don't know, the guy is the owner of the company.

[Threash]

That video is amazing.

[MahrinSkel]

I'm beginning to think I should open a consultancy for investors to tell them when a video game project is a bad fucking idea.

That might be my "million dollar idea."

No, there's not much money in that. Ultimately, the question they really want answered is not 'will this game make money?', but 'will it look good on paper long enough to let us dump it on someone else?' with a side order of 'we did our due diligence, look at these consultant reports.'

--Dave

EDIT: Sorry for the pseudo-necro, didn't realize I was on page 2 of a 30+ page thread. Going to leave it, though.

[Threash]

P.S. about Stretch Goals - As some of you have already noted, we are quickly approaching the completion of our “Hire a QA Champion” stretch goal (well-timed for the 1.1 playtest!) That begs the question, “What’s Next?”

The answer is that we want to try holding off on any new stretch goals for a bit.  While we are as excited as you guys are about growing our vision, the simple truth is that we have a lot on our plate already…. A lot!

Rather than promising a new feature, adding more content or recruiting a new person to our team, we’re going to focus on building the game that we’ve already promised.

Does this mean we won’t do any more stretch goals going forward?  We’re not sure.  Stretch goals are fun! But they’re also more work (and cost).  Our priority has to be delivering what we’ve already promised – and it’s hard to hit a target that won’t stop moving.

I know some of you will be disappointed – it’s much more fun to promise new stuff than to deliver what’s expected, but we believe it is the right approach.  We hope that you’ll support us in this decision, at least for now, and we’ll reassess this decision again sometime in the future.

Props.

[Malakili]

He might as well have just come out and said "We aren't Star Citizen."

Which is a good thing of course.

[HaemishM]

Well, as much of a "pie in the sky" dream as a good PVP MMOG is, it's still a less ambitious goal than what Star Citizen is promising.