Deathfire - Update #2, We Thank You

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

Hopefully the KS will succeed and you'll have plenty of time to answer more questions later on. :)

Backed at $75 just now, good luck! I really do want more classics like RoA and M&M..
 
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Too bad this isn't going better, I hope he doesn't cancel game if kickstarter fails, since there is increased interest for this kind of games he might be able to find alternative funding source.
 
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Ah but you see, this is were Kickstarter may prove to be a sort of two edged sword:
Can you really convince some VC suit to give you money when you have failed to appeal to all the nostalgia driven fans of old (that gave freely to other projects) ?

Very unhappy to not see this one doing better.

Maybe a better pitch would help? Not downplaying the involvement with old Classics ?
(Developer creds do matter quite a bit in this scene obviously)

I don't know. A lot of people were very eager to jump into Legends of Grimrock i.e and this looks just as good (and quite a bit deeper and fully fleshed as an rpg) so there must be an audience for it…
 
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Ah but you see, this is were Kickstarter may prove to be a sort of two edged sword:
Can you really convince some VC suit to give you money when you have failed to appeal to all the nostalgia driven fans of old (that gave freely to other projects) ?

Very unhappy to not see this one doing better.

Kickstarter numbers don't mean a lot for sale numbers.Take Miasmata for example that kickstarter failed pretty badly, they got only around 1.5k IIRC yet game did solid on market and in press, also Race the sun barely made 20k goal yet game is also doing solid this are only examples of the top of my head there are probably better examples.
On the other hand Defense grid did well on market but not on kickstarter, Bug bear is also struggling same way as Guido with game that look like unoffcial Flatout sequel(flatout 2 sold over 1m copies in year it came out).
 
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I don't doubt that Deathfire will also do decently, if it makes it to market. As I was saying I believe it will provide much better value for money than Grimrock i.e. (and I already liked that pretty well for what it was), so buying this should be a no-brainer for the people enjoying that one…

So lets hope that the people with the money will look at the same numbers you point out and not on the failure of gathering interest on a platform where precisely this type of Old school RPG seems to thrive… Always happy to see my pessimistic streak proven wrong :)
 
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Kickstarter numbers don't mean a lot for sale numbers.Take [/url=http://www.gog.com/game/miasmata]Miasmata[/url] for example that kickstarter failed pretty badly, they got only around 1.5k IIRC yet game did solid on market and in press, also Race the sun barely made 20k goal yet game is also doing solid this are only examples of the top of my head there are probably better examples.

That's really not surprising. There's a world of difference between "u give me moniez, I maek game" and buying a finished product, preferrably after a few positive reviews. I really think this is true for Deathfire; it might turn out to be a very intriguing game once it's finished, but right now it doesn't have a lot of things that grab people one way or another (like character interaction which could be great but could also be annoying depending on implementation).
 
We have to keep in ming that Grimrock received a big hype. It was "promoted" by Notch and then it received a dynamic in itself.
The game was well made. But it wasn't a specially good game I'd say.
Well, now the press is covering Deathfire. It already appeared on Rock Paper Shotgun and IGN, but the increases in pledges are not high. Actually today IGN posted about it and it today and it looks like it's the worst day in the campaign till now.
It's not enough if people visit the project. When they take a first look at the video they need to be instantly hyped. Which doesn't happen here due to unspectacular music and missing namedropping.
But yeah. Guess during the time Thorvalla was active this campaign would have worked. Now it's Kickstarter fatigue.
 
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I am not sure its kickstarter fatigue - the press is now very busy with the next gen consoles and their new games. This means that we will be back to the era where PC games (indie domain) take the back seat in a very long bus!
 
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Or that. But the golden times for PC games on Kickstarter seem to be over. And not just because of media coverage.
 
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You mean the 'kickstarter boom' is over. As far as the concept itself, it might have matured but is still one of the very few places available for people with innovative ideas to request funding.
 
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Games get still funded, so i don't think its kickstarter failing by any means. To prove my point, look at this adventure game called Obduction: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cyaninc/obduction?ref=category

Sure it takes more nowdays to run a successfull ks campaign, but its doable. Larian Studios' Orginal Sin kickstarter is likely my favourite ks campaign of all time. It was just pure to joy to follow how much fun larian guys had with us, their fans. You really wanted to be on their side because who wouldn't like to make history together? Deathfire ks needs more that kind of joyfullness and momentum.

Deathfire concept looks good enough and imo he has presented enough proof that he can actually pull it off, but I wish Guido had just dropped even few names in his orginal pitch video and shown more of his past work. Kickstarter is a nostalgia trip for many and Guido is not as well known among rpg fans as lets say Obsidian guys or Inxile dudes and he has not such an active grass roots movement behind him as Larian does.

He is not asking a small ammount of money and people likely want to know of his past work to judge if he can pull this off. I don't personally doubt him, but i wonder if its the reason why this ks is lagging a bit… Its still doable, but magic needs to happen soon.
 
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Games get still funded, so i don't think its kickstarter failing by any means. To prove my point, look at this adventure game called Obduction: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cyaninc/obduction?ref=category

Yes but names of Cyan, and Miller brothers are far better known in Adventure genre, than Guido's in RPG.
Big kickstarters still get funded, one of most funded games was less than month and half ago(Mighty number 9), but it seems it's harder to get funded now, especially without household name.
 
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Larian Studios' Orginal Sin kickstarter is likely my favourite ks campaign of all time. It was just pure to joy to follow how much fun larian guys had with us, their fans. You really wanted to be on their side because who wouldn't like to make history together? Deathfire ks needs more that kind of joyfullness and momentum.

Now that there is an example of a Kickstarter done right.

A lot of the recent ones are so… Anemic…

Very little in the way of updates, not enough enthusiasm (they need to remember they are, on a large part, speaking to a platform with an American audience after all ;) ).

Chumming up with the backers on the KS comments alone (as I see some do) is not a way to reel the money in imho…
 
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I think we did pretty well on the update front, wouldn't you say? I tried to get an update up every day of the campaign, and I also tried to make sure it contained valuable information, not only a brief "Hello".
 
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It is true, yours is one of the better covered campaigns in the sense of update frequency (and they all had something interesting inside). It was a broader comment about several of the other ones that have popped up the last few days (several of which I backed)…

Keep them coming though. Very interested to hear more details of your systems and design goals :)
 
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Your updates aren't bad. But what Larian Studios did was a on a completely different level. They had several video updates and while texts may contain more information I am pretty sure that videos will almost always impress more people if they are well done.
The ones from Larian were especially well because they were also funny. So you relinked them just to show your friends a funny video and not only because "look these guys need money for a great game".
The very same goes for other campaigns:
Frontiers: He did small videos about gameplay or just of him while he was explaining stuff (like you also saw with David Braben in the ELITE Updates)
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/railboy/frontiers-explore-discover-survive/posts
Another great example is Shadowrun Online. They were also struggeling and probably only made the goal because they started to produce several good videos, not about gameplay, but about other stuff, endorsements, or themselves explaining things. That is what you remember from a campaign. Not all the texts.
Shadowrun Online looks very intersting on Kicktraq: http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/1964352341/shadowrun-online/

To me personally the Deathfire Campaign doesn't seem to be "engaging" enough.
1. As was mentioned before the main video needs to be more catchy, needs to flash people. More Epic music, and more name dropping with some nostalgica coming up. It doesn't help if lots of people visit the site but are not caught be the campaign. The first impression is important. Once they checked out the campaign and decided they won't back it, I am pretty sure most of them wont come back later to see if it improved.
2. The Campaign needs to produce News. Contenwise and viral and in that way engage people. I am very sure that a 10 Minute clip where you explain stuff is much more likely to be shared by people on facebook and taken by news than a plain text.
3. The Campaign needs to be feel more engaging. Give you the impression that you need to participate somehow. Not necessarily by pledging but maybe by using special kickstarter signs, maybe a little contest and so on.
Jagged Alliance Flashback did this to a point where it almost felt being over the top, but thats better than not doing it at all.
293787f5dbd3ea03de1c62b2f51c13cf_large.jpg
 
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I have to agree with Kordanor here. Particularly on the point about the liveliness of video updates and the general enthusiasm and zest you need, especially when addressing a younger (and american :) ) audience.

Just my gut feeling. Being a programmer nerd myself I am hardly qualified to tell people how to run a PR campaign ;)
 
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But they could copy successful PRs. The important part is to let their passion shared by the potential backers. I backed their precious campaign but, frankly speaking, it was not difficult to guess the result. I would be a shame if it ended up another failed campaign. Don't misunderstand me, I'm rather a reader type but I know enough that "walls of texts" are not appealing to everybody.-People have different strings. Just making noise does the job often since, if they attract more people, at least, some of them would put money in.
 
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Not trying to diss the campaign or the game, but I have to agree with most of the posters here. The game looks rather good, new information keeps coming, and the updates are somewhat frequent. But the main problem I see is the pitch video, which is in my opinion a bit... uninspiring and bland. And if the video doesn't generate instant interest, then many people won't even bother to read the description.
 
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Most of what has been said before is pretty much true....well I don't think the video or updates are bad, but they don't stand out a whole lot.

KS projects success or failure hang on 3 things most of the time...and updates are a really important part of it:

-Strong push the first few days: That requires a video that is more than ok, it needs to be catchy and make people talk about it, link it… It also helps to have a nice looking art etc.

-Keeping a steady stream of backers: Thats done with constant updates, getting posted about on various news sites, more updates! Interviews, Tweets, Facebook, TwitchTv etc…
(That part probably means the ones making the project won't get much sleep or time to do much else :p)

-And a strong final push: That one pretty much depends on the above two, if the goal is seemingly in sight and looks possible…a lot of people jump on the band wagon. It seems that many people don't like to back a project that may not look like it'll succeed.



Anyway, I backed the project :p
 
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