Kickstarter - Thorvalla Waiting for your Pledge

Maybe that's a trend? Only conservative projects by famous devs get funded?

I'm not sure about the return of the publisher model. A year ago there was no money to be found for hardcore RPGs. No publisher wanted to touch them. Why should this change? But I'm not sure indies have a future on Kickstarter too.
Maybe a Kickstarter 2.0 will roll up the market? So far only US & UK projects are possible and the payment options are limited. You can't pay via Amazon.de for example (without a credit card, which most Germans don't have). A crowdfunding site which solves these problems could reach a significantly bigger audience.

After about the tenth KS, it gets tiring. Seriously, few people except us fantics can keep track of them and fewer still care.

Well, if they said we want to make RoA 4 (and maybe pretend that RoA 3 didn't happen) I would already be in "Shut-up-and-take-my-Money-Mode"; I'm generally not against Inovation, but all Inovation in Videogames in the last few years was "dumbing down" and "playable on consoles".

Oh - and I don't like Comic-Style Graphics for my Games…

Unfortunately Guido said he didn't want to make a game based on a license.

What systems will it be for? All it seems to state is,

"Thorvalla is a new fantasy computer RPG"

So just PC, Mac?

Daniel.

edit: Nope.

Desktop platforms. So PC and the rest is unclear.

Mobile not planned yet, which sort of surprising because Guido worked on cell phone games for a couple of years. He said they may make conversions later on, but only after the game shipped.

Hmm guess we'll find out more as we go along.

Daniel.

If this game is anywhere near in complexity where I want to see it, and has the micro management I expect, I doubt anyone will want to play it on their mobile devices.

Mac and Linux versions will only be available as a stretch goal, according to the kickstarter page.

I adore most anything Norse inspired (hence my Skyrim and Bloodmoon addictions) … but at the opposite end of the spectrum is anything to do with cards or any "object" you have to collect (another example collect gems to plug into a wand to work magic) … to me makes the game very unrealistic. Also not keen on corridor style games.

Sadly I will pass for now unless they reveal something to really win me over.

Shaker II

I've already kickstarted all the things. It'll take magic to bring me back in before next year sometime, probably.

Guess this falls into the same type of thing where Brian Fargo, Obsidian and Larian all said you can only make a decent RPG for about a million dollars.

Sadly it's not doing so well. They really need to hit the news sites, and get some traction.

I think it needs a miracle. It seems to me that to get that amount of money you need an audience large and dedicated enough to offer you a huge boost straight away. Considering that most of the people willing to spend big amounts would be excited enough to do so straight away, I think for this to even have a chance it should have been at least 30% funded within the first day.

I'm disappointed Guido Henkel's recognition seems so low among our audience. I thought everyone wanted something a little different to standard fantasy?

Henkel's RPGs are rich and complex - $15 is a steal.

He needs a new video stressing Hallford being on board. He's almost invisible to people viewing the page for the first time.

Sad that they're getting zero love from gaming press. A first for such a high profile project. Shaker was everywhere on day one.

I pledged for the name Guido Henkel, for sure, big Realms of Arkania fan. But his name doesn't carry much clout, apparently not even here, and this Kickstarter pitch just wasn't very good. Will take quite a lot to pull it aright, they got waaay too little for a first day, and almost no coverage from gaming sites.

Originally Posted by Gorath
See the posts below. He is a retired developer who quit in frustration because he found himself between a rock (Interplay shortly after their IPO) and a hard place (a dev team which quite naturally didn't enjoy being pushed around by a producer who had to enforce company interests) during the Torment dev cycle. The result was a masterpiece, but Henkel didn't like the role he had to play at all. He even called it a "crap job" and remarks that it was not a position for making friends. He [paraphrased] "swore to himself after Torment never todo that [he means working as a producer] again".

Crediting Henkel for Planescape is like crediting Feargus for Fallout. Not that their work wasn't important, or that you don't need someone doing that job, but it doesn't make you the "creator", a tag usually assigned to creative driving forces. And those are usually more than a few people for a video game, Torment is kind of unique in having such an identifiable single driving force in Avellone, though people should probably recognize the work of others more.

Also, he didn't retire, he just made crappy mobile games with 3G studios for the last 10 years. I guess that's a form of retirement, heh.

Originally Posted by Gorath
I guess Henkel used the word "traditional" because he intends to add some innovation on top of the old school stuff. Which is quite natural. Why would he return to game development to do the same old thing again?! He wants to push a couple of things forward with some fresh ideas. That's quite risky though. Did you notice how both Obsidian and the Wasteland 2 guys carefully avoided even the slightest hint at innovation? They probably had every reason to do so.

I don't think this is accurate. They're all promising old-school games, Henkel just dislikes the term old-school. Henkel has talked a bit about re-inventing cRPG mechanics but he hasn't actually shown any solid design. That's the problem. Not that he's promising innovation where Obsidian/inXile did not, but that where Obsidian/inXile could set expectations by pointing to a set of games (Wasteland, Fallout, Infinity Engine) and going "we want to make it kinda like that", Henkel has just talked vaguely about his ideas and concepts. With Kickstarter further along you need to be more precise, have more solidified design to show, while Henkel has less, and that's why this is bombing so hard. He has less name recognition *and* less to show, that's just a killer combination.

Originally Posted by Gorath
I guess Henkel used the word "traditional" because he intends to add some innovation on top of the old school stuff. Which is quite natural. Why would he return to game development to do the same old thing again?! He wants to push a couple of things forward with some fresh ideas. That's quite risky though. Did you notice how both Obsidian and the Wasteland 2 guys carefully avoided even the slightest hint at innovation? They probably had every reason to do so.

Isn't that what Henkel has done too? There's no evidence of concrete design work done yet on the KS page and in fact, the only "innovation" seems to be a nebulous card games reference.

Originally Posted by Dhruin
I'm disappointed Guido Henkel's recognition seems so low among our audience. I thought everyone wanted something a little different to standard fantasy?

Henkel's RPGs are rich and complex - $15 is a steal.

I like what he has contributed to in the past, and I actually liked his pitch video, he comes across as a reasonable, honest guy. But I really wish the big names would put a bit more effort in the planning phase before they go to KS. I didn't like the vagueness with Project Eternity, and I don't like it here (although I get a better vision of the world and mood from him than with PE - however here the technical and mechanical side is in turn far more vague). This may be less important for established IPs (Wasteland, Shadowrun), but I think it should be essential if you are pitching a new IP. I am holding out for some updates.

I pledged but yeah, not going to happen

I have a bad feeling about this. Really wish they could have prepared a little bit more and waited till after Christmas, when people have saved up some money again.