RPGWatch Forums - Dead State - Update #9, On Writing

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Dead State - Update #9, On Writing

DoubleBear has kicked up the 9th Kickstarter update for Dead State ($197k, 7 days), offering a piece of fiction that represents playing the game and discussing the writing in general:

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One of the biggest components of Dead State is the writing. With dozens of characters, item descriptions, and loads of game text, there’s a lot to experience. We’ve got over 10,000 lines of branching dialogue – to give you some perspective, the average screenplay contains about 1000 lines of linear story. For our dialogue, we need to create reactivity for relationships with other allies, the character’s respect for the player, character mood, concerns for events happening in and out of the shelter, and personal requests. As you can imagine, this takes a bit of scripting and time to write, rewrite, and implement – and every ally in the shelter has dozens of nodes of reactivity, including some random events.
Another (optional) component of our game involves collecting data. Out in the world you’ll find phones, USBs, hard drives, and other devices that contain information on them. These will unlock blogs, emails, news reports, and even confidential information that will shed some light on what happened to the rest of the world before the game started. Some of this data is unlocked bit by bit, each segment revealing more of a person or group’s complete story. All told, there is almost an entire novel’s worth of stories and fiction in the game.

While we're talking about Kickstarter in some fashion or another, Indie Games Reviews sent in 10 Commandments For Indie Developers on Kickstarter:

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“THOU SHALT HAVE ACTUAL GAME FOOTAGE”

How many Kickstarter projects have 2 unshaven guys talking about how cool their game idea is? Way too many. Unfortunately it’s a lot harder to executive a concept than it is to chat about it. Images and stills are just as bad. The hundreds of hours that go into modeling and engine creation show us, the consumer, that you have the knowledge and expertise to put your vision into action. DeviantArt is cool and all. but cool images and cheesy videos do not turn into games overnight.

More information.

Link to the fan interview / chat on Reddit:
http://de.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments…ment/?sort=old

This one is directly topical.

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A certain zombie survival RPG game that I love and have been following for some time recently released its Kickstarter program. I would absolutely love to back this game, but I see its expected release date is more than 18 months away! … and that’s if they are on schedule (these things rarely are). As much as I love the game I just don’t have the energy or mental acuity to remember that at some point in the distant future this game will be done and I get to probably play it.

Kickstarter is a large source, so many projects to be presented on it. After a few hours spent browsing the multiple projects,the commandments reflect more the wishes of backers than rules to obey to run a healthy kickstarter.
Footage of game? Some have, others dont. Some with footage fail. Others succeed.

Commandments 2 and 3, I wish they could be followed but certainly not essential to success. Or determining a failure.
Etc

Marketing matters the most.

Regarding the 10 comandments - some good points but I don't agree with all of it. Long wait? That's to be expected if people actually develop video games. Singling out Dead State is really wrong here, imho - one of the few projects with a realistic (and probably still optimistic) deadline, if you ask me.

I think putting something personal form a backer in the game is a nice high tier reward. People seem to like it so why not? Just plan it well enough that it doesn't end up affecting your game negatively.

Kick it forward - Nice in principle, but rather something for the big guys. Small studios will need every dime to develop their next project, unless they are a runaway success.

Yeah the release date comandment is retarded. 18 months, that's an extremely short amount of time for a very small team to create a game. Large game studios have hundreds of people working on the game for around 3-4 years. I would be very surprised if any of the Kickstarter's i'm backing will make it to release date, and i don't care the least as long as the game turns out good.

It's even more retarded to make Dead State as an example, that game has been in development for longer than any Kickstarter project that i've backed or seen so far, so most likely it also has the most realistic release date of any kickstarter game.

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Originally Posted by GhanBuriGhan (Post 1061151033)

Kick it forward - Nice in principle, but rather something for the big guys. Small studios will need every dime to develop their next project, unless they are a runaway success.

5% is 5%, so if they make $100 in profit, that's five bucks. It's also up to the developer to determine what constitutes profit. How many "big guys" do you think are going to be raising funds on Kickstarter exactly?

For most of these projects the entire deal is funded upfront, meaning they're essentially no risk. Giving 5% back to the community doesn't seem to me like much to ask in return.