Deathfire - Update #2, We Thank You

Well, if only that were true. :)

For the past 9 weeks now I have spent every waking hour of my life on nothing but this Kickstarter and the reason I've been lagging with the update yesterday was simply because I was completely bogged down all day, trying to get some press people on the phone or to answer my emails so we could get some better coverage.
I completely understand but trying to convince others of that isn't easy. All projects cant be like Project Eternity. They showed a promise with no game footage and still got a million in one day.

So hang in there and give it your best you still have 27 days left. Just know your not alone as I talk to other smaller kickstarter teams, and they have the same problem.

Also if anyone is interested Jeff Vogel and The Rampant Coyote wrote about this. It all comes down to luck in the end.

Link-http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.it/2013/11/marketing-dumb-luck-and-popping-of.html

Link-http://rampantgames.com/blog/?p=6624
 
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I guess I agree with greywolf00, here. It may not be like PE but I think they can still learn from small indie companies who have been successful in surviving in the market. When you are self-employed or running a small company, you cannot rely on other functions inside of your company or other companies in business with it as you do when you are working at bigger companies.

According to Kordanor, Henkel appeared in German magazines, which probably explains why German backers were quick to act. However, at the same time, he seems to have told that he wouldn't like to play as a key person since he values team work as a German corporate culture.

Actually, even Avellone has been repeating that the importance of team work. I remember him mentioning Colin (even before the Torment Kickstater) or even Brian Mitsoda whenever he finds opportunity appropriate. However, I think he understands that it's a valid tactics to make use of his fame, judging from the fact that he sacrificed presented himself as a Kickstarter stretch goal. So, I think he should get into the marketing mode especially if he really values team work (since I think it is what he can do during crowd-funding campaign). The team cannot rely on other systems to do marketing task and need to resort to any means available, which may even mean someone acting like a mascot. Also, Swen did a good job in introducing developer members in his uplifting updates, highlighting both family feel of the devs and professional responsibility in his own relaxed manner. I know not every person is born to get spotlight (Remember the proper "shy geek"-ish reaction of Sawyer in PE broadcasting?) but I hope Henkel and his teammates will do his/their best enough not to leave something regretted during their campaign. You know, they have already joined a bloody competition in robbing other people of money for their winter vacation. They should be determined to rob them blind.
 
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Well, if only that were true. :)

For the past 9 weeks now I have spent every waking hour of my life on nothing but this Kickstarter and the reason I've been lagging with the update yesterday was simply because I was completely bogged down all day, trying to get some press people on the phone or to answer my emails so we could get some better coverage.

I hear this a lot from KS developers. It seems the press is very, and increasingly, disinterested in reporting on Kickstarter projects. I wonder what triggered that behavior - the early KS projects got a lot of coverage, and generally positive coverage too, IIRC. To me it seems strange as I am still very interested in KS projects, but maybe these projects really are not interesting to most of the gaming site audience? Or has there been specific incidents that turned the press against KS projects? I really wonder.
 
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You're EA. And you're paying press to speak positive about your crap games. What stops you to pay them not to write about KS at all?
 
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These are actually pretty good questions and you should ask me these over in our official forums or in the Kickstarter comment section. As much as I like RPGWatch, sadly, on a remote comment thread such as this, questions like these will go mostly unnoticed, because I simply can't be in all places at once, and I stop by here irregularly, mostly skimming over posts.

I will try to answer your question later when I have a bit more time. Sorry for being so verbose right now.

Thanks for giving me the heads up and taking the time to answer my questions! Much appreciated :)
 
I hear this a lot from KS developers. It seems the press is very, and increasingly, disinterested in reporting on Kickstarter projects. I wonder what triggered that behavior - the early KS projects got a lot of coverage, and generally positive coverage too, IIRC. To me it seems strange as I am still very interested in KS projects, but maybe these projects really are not interesting to most of the gaming site audience? Or has there been specific incidents that turned the press against KS projects? I really wonder.

The answer is simple: next gen concoles are out in the next week or so - so do you think average Joe would like to read about the new PS4 gamepad and COD, or Guido's old-school, party based, turn-based rpg? The press caters mostly for average Joe.

Oh forgot that average Joe is also dying to spend countless hours on the new Blizzard MMO or whatever.

All of this is the press's main concern at the moment, which is an unfortunate timing for Guido.
 
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@Guido: if combat is an important part of Deathfire, maybe answer my questions in an update on combat (preferrably soon). That and the question of how interactive the companions are gonna be seems kind of important to the gameplay.
 
@Sacred_Path: Did my update about the Psycho Engine answer some of the questions about the interactivity of the companions.

As promised I will still cover combat in an upcoming update in more detail.
 
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While I would appreciate more info (which I am sure will be coming in the next updates) this game is sounding like something I would certainly like to play. It will be sad if this doesn't make it. (will be backing soon)

A bit off topic: I do not understand what is the problem with German fans and amazon payments ?! a simple debit (not credit) card is totally sufficient for it. I've been using a Visa Electron for years for all my e-payments (various shops across Europe). I've only needed paypal for some American shops…

I have an account on amazon.co.uk linked with the visa Electron and I logged in to amazon payments via that one. Works just fine…

P.S I like the whole look of the traits screen and the disadvantages in particular remind a bit of Ars Magica (only a good thing in my book :) ).
 
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A bit off topic: I do not understand what is the problem with German fans and amazon payments ?! a simple debit (not credit) card is totally sufficient for it.
Debit (and credit) cards simply aren't that common in Germany as in other countries.
But I don't understand why more of my fellow citizens just don't get one. You need it for more and more things. Booking hotels, flights, etc. can hardly be done done without a credit card these days…
 
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Hmm odd, I thought every bank practically issued you with a debit-atm withdrawal card practically on opening an account. Security concerns or "bank culture" I imagine…

Debit cards are pretty safe in the sense that you can have a specific amount in it (edit: i.e in a special account just for e-payments I mean) to do transactions. I have it linked to paypal too so I feel pretty "safe" when buying stuff.

I only use the credit card while booking flights and hotels as you said. No other way to do it indeed if you are traveling to the states on business i.e…
 
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Ok, I think I mixed this up. If I understand the terms correctly, you indeed get a debit card on opening an account in Germany. So virtually everybody has one, yes.

But as far as I can tell, for amazon payments you actually need to have a credit card. I just checked my account on amazon payments and there's no other payment options than credit card.
 
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Did you try to login with your usual amazon account ?
Do you have that linked with a debit card ?
I am pretty sure it works as I have backed 8-9 projects with it…

P.S the card is certified by visa. I don't know if that makes any difference though...
 
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Debit Amex works in my case.
 
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To be clear I never created an amazon payments account. Just logged in with my 10 year old amazon.uk account using my 10 year old Visa electron, when Kickstarter first asked me to login to amazon payments.

Here's my profile on KS btw: JonNik
 
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Direct Debit does not equal Direct Debit.
In Germany and Austria they have different systems (Elektronisches Lastschriftverfahren - short: ELV). They have another system in spain. And even another in France (Carte Bleu).
Now if you want to pay in a German shop with Direct Debit, they will probably only offer that you pay with the German ELV System.
Well actually Germany even has another system on top called Giropay but that's another story.
ELV works like this: You enter your payment details in a shop and buy your product. At that point the shop can only confirm wether the number of digits are right but not much more. After that the shop goes to the bank with this details and tries to get the money. This process normally takes like 1-3 days.
If the money isn't available then the bank will first give them the money and then take it back again and say "nope, not available" which is a chargeback and either causes additional costs for the customer or the company depending on company procedures.
In either case the company is screwed because they might already have given away the product and now need to find a way to get the money.

Credit Cards however are always the same on the surface. Where the money is coming from can be different. But in the very moment you enter the details, it's checked whether the money is available or not. If it's not available the payment is aborted and nothing happens.

The topic is quite complex and that is why european customers need "special care" on that side. Companies in Europe often hire other companies to take care of their payment stuff. If you want to sell your product online in Germany you have to offer payment via ELV, which is a pain in the ass for most companies from other countries.

As most international Shops, Amazon US does not support ELV or any of these other direct debit methods.

But there is another option, which Guido mentioned in the update: PaySafe. PaySafe is another abomination coming from a German speaking country: Austria.
A PaySafe card is basically working as a prepaid credit card but it's a completely different payment system. Like Visa or Mastercard the shop needs to support payments from this source. As far as I understand you can buy Amazon.com vouchers directly on the paysafe card and then use them again to buy stuff on amazon. But I cannot guarantee that this works for Kickstarter.
 
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There's no need for any cards. You can make direct transactions from your PayPal account (which needs to be charged up first) to the seller, just like with a credit card. If Kickstarter didn't have some weird deal with Amazon to only allow PayPal after the funding goal has been hit there would be no problems whatsoever.
 
It's not working that way. Kickstarter only works with Amazon.com as payment. They simply don't care about paypal.

The use of paypal is completely parallel to the whole project. So a project could offer to help fund it via paypal, but they would need to establish an infrastructure outsite of the kickstarter project, maybe on an own site.

The reason why most kickstarter projects only offer that when the goal is secured is because otherwise everyone who prefers to pledge via paypal instead of credit card is one person lost for reaching the kickstarter goal.
Kickstarter doesn't care if you have 80/100k on kickstarter and another 50k collected yourself via paypal, or checks, or robbed a bank. For kickstarter only the kickstarter value is relevant. So in the case of 80/100k and 50k via paypal (which is sent instantly) the following would happen: Kickstarter goal is not reached, the 80k are "lost" and the 50k are now at the project starter. They however will need to send it back to all individual backers because they won't be able to finish the project with that amount.

So instead the project creators wait till they are absolutely sure that they reach their goal, and THEN start to collect via paypal.
Another option a couple of projects took was going to indiegogo after having a kickstarter campaign. Kickstarter was to secure the minimum funding and indiegogo offers everyone else to pay via paypal. That way the project creator can use the payment structure of these crowdfunding sites and doesn't need to put any effort into that kind of thing.
 
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The reason why most kickstarter projects only offer that when the goal is secured is because otherwise everyone who prefers to pledge via paypal instead of credit card is one person lost for reaching the kickstarter goal.

It was said by one company a few months ago that it was Kickstarter policy to only allow PayPal after the funding has been secured. I don't remember which campaign it was, only that it was succesful. Could have been the Torment one, it was a while ago. Maybe the policy has changed or it's only half the truth (like the claim that European devs can't get on Kickstarter).

edit: I'm not talking about a parallel PayPal campaign but one that is integrated into the Kickstarter account.

Example:

Thorvalla had a kickstarter site but they also accepted PayPal pledges on their homepage. That's not what I mean. I mean that PayPal can be integrated into the Kickstarter account after the funding goal has been met. This was done by at least one project... I think it's not Torment but Divinity: Original Sin.
 
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European devs can't get on kickstarter. They actually need an "legal outpost" in the us. :)
For example the Giana Sisters guys used Chris Hülsbeck as this "outpost".

Btw. The legal situation is still that unclear that the German Company King Art (Battle World Kronos) which also founded a company for KS in the US, still has no idea about how the taxes will need to be paid. The Game was already released. ^^
 
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