Shadowrun Returns - Interview @ Gameindustry.biz

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SasqWatch
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Lengthy interview with Jordan Weisman on the 'really gratifying and enormously scary' Kickstarter audience.
Of course, Kickstarter is not the place for massive projects. "The funding platform and the amount of money we raised there does lead you back towards this kind of game," Weisman agreed. "There's an overlap with the audience that's on Kickstarter. It tends to be an older audience, ones you can afford to take a little risk, and who have an emotional attachment. I think the majority of games that have been funded there to large numbers are people or properties that have an emotional tie to the audience in some way. Certainly that's the case with Double Fine, Wasteland, Shadowrun, the Obsidian guys... these are all examples of that."
Shadowrun Returns was funded far in excess of its goal, but that doesn't mean Harebrained Schemes is rolling in money. "We have 37,000 backers on Shadowrun Returns," Weisman said. "Our hope is that there's a lot more of them than just those 37,000, because if not then we lose the gamble. We've spent every penny and more that they gave us to make the game; we haven't made any money."
More information.
 
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I wonder… to expand the market to a younger audience and thereby make money, will KS projects need to be adopted to portables? I know that games written for portables don't appeal to some here and hence may not be good for the initial KS funding drive, but perhaps allowing for a post-release port will be a business necessity?
 
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I wonder… to expand the market to a younger audience and thereby make money, will KS projects need to be adopted to portables? I know that games written for portables don't appeal to some here and hence may not be good for the initial KS funding drive, but perhaps allowing for a post-release port will be a business necessity?

Well one advantage they have from having relatively modest budgets is that the system requirements on most of the projects, the rpg ones at least, aren't so steep as to preclude being ported to mobile devices and tablets particularly as subsequent generations come out. The trick there will be with the control schemes; with turn based games though that seems at least plausible for tablets without having to *completely* rework all aspects of the UI.

The other advantage most of the projects I've been following have is that they tend to be using Unity as their engine. This makes the prospect of subsequent versions being made available on a wide range of platforms less of a challenge. The tools included also make the task of recreating the UI got those platforms less of a significant barrier as it does offer rather robust features for easily creating distinct and fully functional UIs for each platform.
 
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The other advantage most of the projects I've been following have is that they tend to be using Unity as their engine. This makes the prospect of subsequent versions being made available on a wide range of platforms less of a challenge. The tools included also make the task of recreating the UI got those platforms less of a significant barrier as it does offer rather robust features for easily creating distinct and fully functional UIs for each platform.

Perhaps the main barrier is screen size. There's a limit to how far you can compress a UI to work on devices such as an iPhone and still fit a workable representation of a scene onto it's small screen.
 
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