Astral Terra has failed to get funded as seems to be the trend with a majority of RPG kickstarters lately. Here is the latest post-funding update with the details.
More information.
Astral Terra - Funding Unsuccessful
- Thread starter Couchpotato
- Start date
Yme
Sentinel
Not surprising considering the amount of kickstarters these days. And most of the ones that were funded aint done yet.
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- September 16, 2010
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- 4,813
I'm definitely suffering from KS fatigue. I swore off KS a while ago but broke it for The Mandate. I think I'm back on the wagon now, though.
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- Sep 16, 2010
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This one was totally unrealistic: Skyrim with a voxel engine in six months with a miniscule budget. I don't see how that could have turned out well. Much better that they should work this kind of thing out in their spare time and come back to Kickstarter when they have some gameplay ideas, more realistic expectations and a lot more than a weak technology demo with ugly characters.
greywolf00
Keeper of the Watch
I'm pretty sure Graywalkers is coming back to KS in Feb.
"As many of you probably know already, we will be relaunching early next year. Our target date is February."
Now back to topic, not horribly surprised Astral failed. Skyrim type games have to compete with such a high bar that makes it difficult to sell people that it will be a quality game. I still don't believe that the average KS funding level is capable of producing 60+ hour games. I think a demo might have been helpful.
On a side note, I find it interesting how well some of these projects do on greenlight yet struggle to actually attract backers. I wonder just how bad the conversion rate is.
"As many of you probably know already, we will be relaunching early next year. Our target date is February."
Now back to topic, not horribly surprised Astral failed. Skyrim type games have to compete with such a high bar that makes it difficult to sell people that it will be a quality game. I still don't believe that the average KS funding level is capable of producing 60+ hour games. I think a demo might have been helpful.
On a side note, I find it interesting how well some of these projects do on greenlight yet struggle to actually attract backers. I wonder just how bad the conversion rate is.
For comparison, Skyrim had a budget of $85m and took about 4 years to develop *and* they already had existing lore and IP. Even with that it's hardly perfect… So either Bethesda is incredibly inefficient by several orders of magnitude or… maybe some Kickstarter backers have more sense than they are often given credit for.
The mandate looks pretty ambitious too, but at least they showed some impressive pre production work and realised they'd have to restrict the content for the first release.
greywolf00
Keeper of the Watch
There's no way they'd be able to churn out an exact Skyrim caliber game on that budget, or even one much larger, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be a quality game (which is of course subjective due to varying tastes). Budget costs are impacted by so many things it's impossible to say "All Skyrim type games must have a ballpark budget of $85m to be any good." Different engines, graphic/sound quality, size, work done for free (which often does count to these KS games getting done without having increased budgets), and differences in costs based on different states or even countries.
I'm sure Bethseda has an advantage in experience and expertise, but it's impossible to say a company that has yet to produce anything is incapable of producing something good. However, I absolutely understand the lack of willingness to bet on it, especially without an amazing sales pitch. It's the developers job to convince potential backers that they can make a good game, and I think they could have done a much better job on their presentation.