Wasteland 3 - Already over 65% funded

Stingray said:

The Wasteland 3 backer number (now 10450 backers @ $473K) is from the Fig site, you have to click on the little "i" button to the right of the funding progress bar to see it.

The Torment/BT4 numbers are from Kicktraq.

Or if you're asking how I knew the campaign was already roughly 55% funded (from investors) before it even started, that's because those of us who backed previous inXile Kickstarters got "early access" to the Fig page.

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OO, I see, still the way I've understood it is that the 40% from FIG does not include the money InXile will spend on the game, neither the outside partners. It could mean that those 55% comes from FIG investors ? I guess it might not be unreasonable to assume that some of the guys who were big kickstarter backers are now fig investors instead? this might explain the numbers.

Just backed it under Wasteland Scout level ($45) I like the digital extras included in that one.

Anyone who is thinking about backing this game should do it now, because you get a free copy of the game, "Stasis", a well reviewed adventure sci-fi game that has an isometric perspective (there is another free game choice you can get too, but I forget what it is)

This game has received good reviews and normally goes for $20 on steam, its great that you can get it free just for backing Wasteland 3… but hurry!

In ten hours, the free game offer goes away…

GothicGothicness said:

OO, I see, still the way I've understood it is that the 40% from FIG does not include the money InXile will spend on the game, neither the outside partners. It could mean that those 55% comes from FIG investors ? I guess it might not be unreasonable to assume that some of the guys who were big kickstarter backers are now fig investors instead? this might explain the numbers.

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Indeed, you are correct Gothic Gothicness. The amount of money listed was from investors. I also had early access. When I looked there were (if I remember correctly) 12 investors who had pledged 55% of the money. I wouldn't be surprised if they include other developers. For example, I think CD project has invested pretty big amounts in other Kickstarter RPGs in the past.

Regardless of people screaming cheating or whatever, they have over 11,000 non investor backers and over 500k from non investors, and those would be good numbers for any Kickstarter. I've invested in a large number of Kickstarters now, and most of the big ones have multiple 10k+ plus pledges. Who are those from? Obviously not private people. They are from other game developers or companies. And they are only going to collect another 500k, and then the campaign will be finished, because that's how FIG works. Once they get the funds there are no stretch goals and the campaign is over.

rossrjensen said:

Well, to be fair, the stock market was also recovering from one of the steepest crashes in modern history. A 50% return over 6 years is not bad, something I might even consider pretty good, and pretty low-risk with this product. There is also always the chance that you invest in something like Minecraft that totally blows up.

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Don't disagree about the investment return, but Minecraft blew up because it invented a genre (by which I mean it was the first runaway success), like Diablo and Doom long before it. I very much doubt WL:3 will do that, especially considering what a sloppy mess WL:2 was on release.

The initial investor offering is restricted to people with a net worth of $1million (excluding primary residence), or an income of $200,000+. Which makes me say WTF? It's like legalized discrimination against the 99%.

GothicGothicness said:

How did you calculate that ?

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Google Finance website shows you S&P and Fig Invest has a little graph showing you the ROI on Wasteland 2 and POE if it were done in this way.

tomasp3n said:

Yeah. I figure I'll replay with the Directors cut in a year or two, since I had already finished the game when the Directors cut released.

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I doubt that there will be a director's cut. WL2 needed some fixes and they were also incorporating changes that were developed for the console versions. Since they are doing both at the same time, there won't be that to spur a director's cut. They also incorporated some learnings from the original WL2 version, I'm pretty sure those will all be in WL3. In other words, don't hold your breath.

I just realized this is set in COLORADO - sweet!

We'll be able to delve the depths of my home state, perhaps investigate bombed-out cannabis grow facilities and abandoned ski lodges.

screeg said:

The initial investor offering is restricted to people with a net worth of $1million (excluding primary residence), or an income of $200,000+. Which makes me say WTF? It's like legalized discrimination against the 99%.

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Why? Most of the people I know would qualify for this (some of them barely). I suspect that most Watch posters and almost all of the staff would qualify as well.

Ploppy said:

Why? Most of the people I know would qualify for this (some of them barely). I suspect that most Watch posters and almost all of the staff would qualify as well.

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Well, you and your friends along with Watch posters should not scoff at $33 to support this amazing game.

I'm waiting for the Watch fundraiser.

GothicGothicness said:

I guess it might not be unreasonable to assume that some of the guys who were big kickstarter backers are now fig investors instead? this might explain the numbers.

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Don't know why you would assume that. I figured most people who pledge large amounts did so because they wanted the rewards offered at those higher levels. You don't get any campaign rewards for investing, not even a copy of the game.

Also, the investments get paid back, plus or minus some money depending on how the game ends up doing sales-wise. A $10K backer means that's $10K that inXile keeps, whereas a $10K investor could be thought of as a loan. Obviously a $10K backer is far, far more valuable to inXile than a $10K investor. Meaning: if there was previously a $10K backer who didn't actually care about the campaign rewards, but was just intent on giving $10K to inXile, then they would want to remain a backer, not become an investor.

Wasteland 3 ended up bringing in about $440K in its first (calendar) day, which makes it the least successful first day of any of inXile's 4 crowdfunded games so far, in terms of backers. I would suspect a combination of factors in this: (a) Wasteland 2 being less impressive than most people expected, (b) using Fig instead of Kickstarter, (c) bad direction for Wasteland 3 (ie: stuff like multiplayer, cinematic conversations, etc).

screeg said:

The initial investor offering is restricted to people with a net worth of $1million (excluding primary residence), or an income of $200,000+. Which makes me say WTF? It's like legalized discrimination against the 99%.

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I'm no expert, but I believe there is quite a lot of legal red tape around these types of investments. I would guess the restriction is driven by legal concerns, rather than arbitrary discrimination against ordinary people.

Seems those numbers ($200K income or $1M net worth) come from the Securities Act (US law), not something Fig invented.

I'm not sure this is a great investment. Lets assume they hit the 1 million mark (sales); I don't know the numbers from wasterland 2 but I think this might be reasonable for combined sales of pc ps4 and xbox for this sort of game (does someone actually know the sales of wl2) ?
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at 1 million your return is .8 over a period of 4 to 5 years. This is not a bad return but of course there are two gambles; actual sales and delays in game release (i.e, time till return).
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Anyway it would be good to know wl2 sales # as well as poe and dos to get a feel for market size.
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ok on the investment description they tell you that wasteland 2 had 600k units sold and poe had 775k units sold; at 600k units sold the return is .4 which is not horrible but not so great over 5 years. Also it is not clear to myself it the graph takes into account sale and price reduction over time or presumes 600K units at full price (which isn't what happened). I'm incline to believe the acutal return is much lower. They claim 12million revenue @ 600K units which works out to approx 20$ average per unit sold. But the graph assume an average price of 21.96$ so perhaps the .4 factor is accurate.

Xian said:

I backed Wasteland 2, and also the new Bards Tale from inXile, but think I am going to hold off on this one until it is released and see if they do a Directors Cut like they did with WL2. I had already played WL2 nearly a hundred hours before the Directors Cut came out, and by that time I really didn't feel like revisiting it.

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I'm not sure you'll get a hugely different Director's Cut with this game - they sunk the money into redoing the graphics/the other changes they made for Wasteland 2's Director's Cut partly because they were remaking it for a console version and could expect a return of investment there. This time they're releasing to consoles at the same time, so there won't be a large new revenue stream in returning and remodeling the game. I mean, they might go back later and make an improved version, but it seems less likely this time around.

Well I'm not going to lie but I hate having to use another crowdfunding service to help fund games. Also the changes to the sequel worry me, but I still backed it.

I backed WL2 & Torment. I thought WL2 was pretty good, but I got bored with the story & never finished it. I also greatly preferred D:OS, which came out at about the same time. This is their 4th crowdfunding campaign but they have only delivered one game, which was above average but not great (in my opinion). I need to see how Torment turns out before I commit to WL3. I'm hoping for a major step up in the writing department.

Plus the 2019 thing doesn't add any sense of urgency for me to pledge, though I appreciate their honesty about the timeline. They could have said late 17 or early 18, which would have inevitably been delayed again and again.

Just a comment on how you have to be a wealthy individual to be an investor in Wasteland 3…I think that is not based on "discrimination", but instead, as another commentator posted, its probably official U.S. law, and it also just makes a lot of sense, in general. Imagine if some young person, let's say a college student, or someone with low income, or even a foolish gamer thought this investment thing was going to be a get rich quick scheme, and put in all their money into it, like, thousands of dollars, and then the game went bust or something…that would be a terrible result.

So, this stipulation also protects people from making bad decisions that they can't afford…and honestly, I doubt most of those people who are putting up serious money are looking at this as some sort of investment opportunity…most of them probably just enjoy old school rpg games and want to support one of the leading developers of this type game, InXile, and I doubt many of them are even looking to make much of a return in terms of financial gain…let's get real.

The driving force for these type of investors most likely is just passion for their gaming hobby and classic rpgs. (Oh, and I wish I had that kind of money, but I don't, so my comment is definitely coming from the cheap seats, just wanted to make that clear)