Shaker - "Mercy killing"

Their campaign pitch was bad to say the least.They were asking for one million dollar to make one RPG or two and then they show up with a Hummer?Not a smart move at all.I don't know a lot of people with a Hummer who are in need of money.
Some very vague remarks about the old-school rpg,not much about features,a bunch of video game celebrities showing their support on the video and yet i don't think that even half of the people who said that Tom and Brenda were awesome backed them.Obsidian didn't,Double Fine didn't,so why should we that we don't know them personally?
The whole thing felt like ''give us your money and we'll see what we'll do with it afterwards''
 
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Their campaign pitch was bad to say the least.They were asking for one million dollar to make one RPG or two and then they show up with a Hummer?Not a smart move at all.I don't know a lot of people with a Hummer who are in need of money.
Some very vague remarks about the old-school rpg,not much about features,a bunch of video game celebrities showing their support on the video and yet i don't think that even half of the people who said that Tom and Brenda were awesome backed them.Obsidian didn't,Double Fine didn't,so why should we that we don't know them personally?
The whole thing felt like ''give us your money and we'll see what we'll do with it afterwards''


I'm pretty sure some of the obsidian guys have nice cars. Your facts are wrong obsidian did back them.
 
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I'm pretty sure some of the obsidian guys have nice cars. Your facts are wrong obsidian did back them.

You are right.Last time i checked Obsidian hadn't backed them.My point is that
if you have a nice car, you don't show up in it after asking someone for money ;)
 
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You are right.Last time i checked Obsidian hadn't backed them.My point is that
if you have a nice car, you don't show up in it after asking someone for money ;)

Do you know what cars the obsidian people drive? They have a huge employee list, do you think their CEO doesn't drive a nice car? That's just a silly reason, there many reasons it failed, and trust me the car had nothing to do with it.
 
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Do you know what cars the obsidian people drive? They have a huge employee list, do you think their CEO doesn't drive a nice car? That's just a silly reason, there many reasons it failed, and trust me the car had nothing to do with it.

They can have whatever car they like and can afford.Showing that you have luxuries has a negative impact on the amount of money that people will give you.
How much more simply can i put it?
Backing a project is mainly about trust towards the people you see on the video
and psychology.Of course the Hummer was not the most important reason they failed but it adds up with the rest.
You can change gameplay elements,enrich the lore,improve the graphics make a game bigger but once you lose someone's trust it is very difficult to regain it.
 
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I don't think obsidians marketing had anything to do with it. I pledged arakion and its marketing job wasn't nearly as good. The difference was that I had a clear idea about the game.

Shaker came and went and I still am not sure what it was all about.

Likewise. This pitch felt very weak and uninspired from the start. They were asking our money, but basicly had no idea about the game they were going to do. "give us money and then you'll see." How about giving us some basic info about the setting or the gameplay before asking us to open our wallets. Is it a party rpg or solo rpg? First person camera, third person camera or over the top camera? Scifi, fantasy, steampunk, cyberpunk some kind of mixture of those settings? Is combat real time or not? Its not that hard.

They improved their act a bit ofcourse and answered to many question, but for many people it came too late. To be honest the lore stuff seemed somewhat intresting and its a pity that this didn't work out for them. However when you clearly don't have the slightest idea about a project, you should spend more time on planning board before doing a pitch video and asking people to throw money on it. Its common courtesy.

The worst part of their pitch was when they mentioned that they were ready to give us two games if we backed them. And they didn't even know what the first game was about!
 
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Yes weak initial pledge, however so was Obsidians, imho: Mere namedropping here as there. Shaker actually eventually developed a more interesting premise than PE, which remained vague regarding the story to the end, and dissapointingly generic in its setting. Well, ended up not pledging for either, although that certainly didn't hurt PE much...
 
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They can have whatever car they like and can afford. Showing that you have luxuries has a negative impact on the amount of money that people will give you.
How much more simply can i put it?

Sorry bro, but that's just silly. Wtf does it matter what car someone drives? Would you have pledged if they pulled up in a Honda Civic?

The whole point of Kickstarter is so a developer doesn't have to go through a publisher to fund the game. Do you expect them to fund it themselves just because one of them owns what you perceive as a nice vehicle?
 
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Yes weak initial pledge, however so was Obsidians, imho: Mere namedropping here as there. Shaker actually eventually developed a more interesting premise than PE, which remained vague regarding the story to the end, and dissapointingly generic in its setting. Well, ended up not pledging for either, although that certainly didn't hurt PE much…

Re-treading well-worn territory with this reply but - to me - there was a world of difference. PE was clear as a bell on the basic feel and gameplay.

Shaker? A Wizardry-8-like...I think?
 
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Yeah they clearly didn't emphasize the "feel" of the gameplay enough. You could kinda reconstruct it from the bits and pieces they did provide - such as free movement (no grid) - which does bring it closer to Wiz8 than the earlier Wizardries, but overall it was just so half-assed and muddy, no wonder people didn't give a damn.

A shame, 'cause another Wizardry game would be sweet.
 
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My advice would be don't mix sci-fi with fantasy. Never liked that aspect of early ultima games and the M&M series.
 
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Re-treading well-worn territory with this reply but - to me - there was a world of difference. PE was clear as a bell on the basic feel and gameplay.

Shaker? A Wizardry-8-like…I think?
From a noob perspective it must have been this:
  1. Who is Brenda Brathwaite and Tom Hall?
  2. What have they done in the years before?
  3. Has anybody ever heard of Loot Drop?
  4. What's the vision?
  5. Why should a former Doom dev be the right guy for a cRPG?
And for genre vets it must have been like this: "The Banner Saga, Dead State, Wastelands 2, Legends of Eisenwald, Shadowrun Returns, Grim Dawn, Project Eternity […] - Damn, I'm running out of money! I've already pledged a lot to Project Eternity. Also, somehow I don't really know what they want to do?" And before they could answer that questions, the important initial funding window closed and they looked like a loser campaign.

For me, Brian Mitsoda and even the Titan Quest devs achieved more for the genre in the last years than BB, TH and JR (says someone who really liked Anachronox). Shadowrun had at least a very interesting licence, plus they knew how to adress the Fans (like the punishment for the Shadowrun Xbox producer in the pitch video).
 
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The original title of the Kickstarter was "An Old-school RPG by Brenda Brathwaite & Tom Hall".

The immediate reaction was, "Brenda and Tom who?"

Everyone here knows who Obsidian is. That is why Obsidian gets my and other people's money, but not Brenda and Tom who.
 
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The original title of the Kickstarter was "An Old-school RPG by Brenda Brathwaite & Tom Hall".

The immediate reaction was, "Brenda and Tom who?"

Everyone here knows who Obsidian is. That is why Obsidian gets my and other people's money, but not Brenda and Tom who.

The correction here to your post is that to those new to RPGs or ignorant to the past thought that. Their original pitch cost them momentum, they still got over 250k....hopefully they come back with something stronger.
 
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The original title of the Kickstarter was "An Old-school RPG by Brenda Brathwaite & Tom Hall".

The immediate reaction was, "Brenda and Tom who?"

Everyone here knows who Obsidian is. That is why Obsidian gets my and other people's money, but not Brenda and Tom who.

Not that i'm justifying their pathetic pitch for Shaker or anything, but personally i've had as much fun playing Wizardry VIII and Anachronox, as playing any Obsidian game to date. And that's just most well known games Brenda and Tom "who" were lead designers on. Both have made games since the eighties. They have enough dev cred to compare with anyone in Obsidian.
 
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I've been playing RPG since 1982. I collected every Ultima game with the trinket, cloth maps, since Ultima VI. Some I even had two or three different boxed versions. I have the original Hero's Quest, every Quest for Glory games as well as the Anthology and Collection sets (which are redundant.) I have the original Fallout 1 and 2 with the binder manual.

I can name Richard Garriott/Lord British, Warren Spector, Chris Roberts, Roberta Williams, Lori Ann Cole, Al Lowe, Brian Fargo, Feargus Urquhart, Chris Taylor, Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky, Chris Avellone, and every major names in the video industry from the 1980s an 1990s.

And I had never heard of Brenda-and-Tom-WHO? And I thought DW Bradley was the mind behind Wizardry. Who the hell were Brenda-and-Tom-WHO? That's the fundamental problem with their Kickstarter. The title of Kickstarter dropped those two names, but few people have ever heard of them.
 
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@ktchong

I never was into the Wizardry games and when I see DW Bradley all I'm going to think off is Dungeon Lord. But when I read the name Brenda Brathwaite I thought Wizardry 8 and when I read Tom Hall I was all Anachronox!

Strange how things works sometimes.
 
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I've been playing RPG since 1982. I collected every Ultima game with the trinket, cloth maps, since Ultima VI. Some I even had two or three different boxed versions. I have the original Hero's Quest, every Quest for Glory games as well as the Anthology and Collection sets (which are redundant.) I have the original Fallout 1 and 2 with the binder manual.

I can name Richard Garriott/Lord British, Warren Spector, Chris Roberts, Roberta Williams, Lori Ann Cole, Al Lowe, Brian Fargo, Feargus Urquhart, Chris Taylor, Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky, Chris Avellone, and every major names in the video industry from the 1980s an 1990s.

And I had never heard of Brenda-and-Tom-WHO? And I thought DW Bradley was the mind behind Wizardry. Who the hell were Brenda-and-Tom-WHO? That's the fundamental problem with their Kickstarter. The title of Kickstarter dropped those two names, but few people have ever heard of them.

Same here in that I never heard of them. Some other names that I would add to your list of famous video game developers: James Ohlen (Baldur's Gate) Brad McQuaid (Everquest) Gabe Newell (Half-Life) and of course the Bioware docs.
 
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I actually liked the lore quite a bit, but like others here I didn't have a clue what the actual game would be like. PE name dropped things like Arcanum, Planescape: Torment and Baldur's Gate - perhaps Shaker should've mentioned features from Might & Magic, Wizardry and so on and so forth?
 
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I can name Richard Garriott/Lord British, Warren Spector, Chris Roberts, Roberta Williams, Lori Ann Cole, Al Lowe, Brian Fargo, Feargus Urquhart, Chris Taylor, Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky, Chris Avellone, and every major names in the video industry from the 1980s an 1990s.

You seem to possess quite a memory, yet the elusive power of google is still not apparenty in your grasp and your wikipedia-fu also needs some work. Look, Brathwaite and Hall aren't nobodies in their field. They both have credits on as many games as the people on your list. Not games, that nobody in the world has played either.
Citing, that YOU don't immediately recognize a name, and therefore a person is nobody in their field isn't a very smart thing to do. Out of your list i had to google Chris Roberts for instance. Does that mean, that he's a nobody? No, that just means, that although i have played a few of his games (and find them fun diversions), space combat sims aren't ultimately my thing.
 
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