Wasteland 3 - Already over 65% funded

Saxon1974 · October 7, 2016

Dang I really like the physical boxes but 100$ is tough...especially when I have small kids so already a backlog with no time to play. Looks good though, I like the frozen colorado theme.

Stingray · October 7, 2016

Roughly $570K for Wasteland 3, from backers, in the first 2 calendar days of the campaign. In the same first 2 days, Wasteland 2 had $865K of backers, Torment had $2.01M, and Bard's Tale IV had $907K. That's a massive drop-off. At least they have the investors now.

Morrandir · October 7, 2016

I think the main reasons are the different funding platform and that WL3 is just a plain common sequel whereas WL2, Torment and Bard's Tale IV had some magic or mysticism because they revived "series" presumed dead.

bjon045 · October 7, 2016

It's not even comparable to Kickstarter though. 570k from backers and nearly 500k from investors in 2 days and another million from investors before it opened to the public. Lower fee's than Kickstarter and at the same time lower profile.

There are plenty of people who grew up playing WL and similar games who are now in their 30's/40's and very successful and want to give something back. Some of them have probably switched to being investors rather than backers.

Stingray · October 7, 2016

bjon045 said:
There are plenty of people who grew up playing WL and similar games who are now in their 30's/40's and very successful and want to give something back. Some of them have probably switched to being investors rather than backers.

Possibly, although I have my doubts about that theory (already mentioned in one of my previous posts in the thread). But to avoid worrying about that, we can instead approach the problem from a different angle. The minimum investment is $1000, and the current amount invested is $1.94M. So, even if every single investor only invested the minimum of $1000, the absolute maximum possible number of current investors is 1940. In reality, I suspect the number of investors is in the low hundreds at the very most, given that there was a big chunk of $1.4-1.5M sitting there before even previous backers got their early access to the campaign page. I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and say there's 500 investors, just for the sake of argument here. That gives us backer (or in the case of Fig, backer+investor) totals, after 2 calendar days, of:

Wasteland 3: ~12800
Wasteland 2: 15206
Torment: 36372
BT4: 21154

GothicGothicness · October 7, 2016

Arkadia7 said:
Just a comment on how you have to be a wealthy individual to be an investor in Wasteland 3…I think that is not based on "discrimination", but instead, as another commentator posted, its probably official U.S. law, and it also just makes a lot of sense, in general. Imagine if some young person, let's say a college student, or someone with low income, or even a foolish gamer thought this investment thing was going to be a get rich quick scheme, and put in all their money into it, like, thousands of dollars, and then the game went bust or something…that would be a terrible result.

So, this stipulation also protects people from making bad decisions that they can't afford…and honestly, I doubt most of those people who are putting up serious money are looking at this as some sort of investment opportunity…most of them probably just enjoy old school rpg games and want to support one of the leading developers of this type game, InXile, and I doubt many of them are even looking to make much of a return in terms of financial gain…let's get real.

The driving force for these type of investors most likely is just passion for their gaming hobby and classic rpgs. (Oh, and I wish I had that kind of money, but I don't, so my comment is definitely coming from the cheap seats, just wanted to make that clear)

It says on fig that they aim to allow other people to invest as well, but they are not done with the legal side of that yet, but it is possible to submit your interest in such an offering. This would allow you to invest as little as $250, and you would not need to be an accredited investor for that.

GothicGothicness · October 7, 2016

Stingray said:
Possibly, although I have my doubts about that theory (already mentioned in one of my previous posts in the thread). But to avoid worrying about that, we can instead approach the problem from a different angle. The minimum investment is $1000, and the current amount invested is $1.94M. So, even if every single investor only invested the minimum of $1000, the absolute maximum possible number of current investors is 1940. In reality, I suspect the number of investors is in the low hundreds at the very most, given that there was a big chunk of $1.4-1.5M sitting there before even previous backers got their early access to the campaign page. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say there's 500 investors, just for the sake of argument here. That gives us backer (or in the case of Fig, backer+investor) totals, after 2 calendar days, of:

Wasteland 3: ~12800
Wasteland 2: 15206
Torment: 36372
BT4: 21154

I think they are extremely satisfied with this, in FIG they can keep a lot more of the money, and they have already now almost reached their goal.

As for "big" backers, I would like to disagree with you. If you get to choose between paying $5000 to "design a unqiue encounter" or get pay $5000 and get your money back with a premium. I think 99% of all people would choose to invest, this is also proven by the fact that none has bought the bigger backer awards, and why should they? Most people who have that kind of money to spend on games also have a brain.

GothicGothicness · October 7, 2016

Pladio said:
Google Finance website shows you S&P and Fig Invest has a little graph showing you the ROI on Wasteland 2 and POE if it were done in this way.

That is clear, but I didn't see anywhere that you have to keep your position for 6 years? I mean the release would be in 2019 right? The huge majority of sales ( and especially full price ones ) are in the beginning of the games life-cycle. So the way I see it you could revise your calculation to a three year cycle, unless there was a requirement to wait 6 years before you got your money back, perhaps that was in the fine print though? If you indeed have to wait for 6 years, than it is not so great.

Stingray · October 7, 2016

GothicGothicness said:
I think they are extremely satisfied with this, in FIG they can keep a lot more of the money, and they have already now almost reached their goal.

Bolded part isn't true at all, if anything it's probably the opposite. Right now, 77% of the Fig campaign's money raised is from investors, not backers. The investments have to be paid back, plus or minus some depending on the eventual sales performance of the game. Whereas backers' money is money they keep forever. Though I suppose you could hypothesize that all the backers who've dropped out (compared to their previous KS campaigns) may buy the game when it's out later, and thus they recoup that lost backer revenue at that point.

As for "big" backers, I would like to disagree with you. If you get to choose between paying $5000 to "design a unqiue encounter" or get pay $5000 and get your money back with a premium. I think 99% of all people would choose to invest, this is also proven by the fact that none has bought the bigger backer awards, and why should they? Most people who have that kind of money to spend on games also have a brain.

I don't think the sort of people dropping $5K for what amounts to a game pre-order (with some goodies attached) are too worried about whether they get their money back or not. They just wanted to support inXile and/or the game. And being a backer provides more support (since inXile keeps that money) than being an investor does, as I mentioned earlier.

TomRon · October 7, 2016

Grifman said:
I doubt that there will be a director's cut. WL2 needed some fixes and they were also incorporating changes that were developed for the console versions. Since they are doing both at the same time, there won't be that to spur a director's cut. They also incorporated some learnings from the original WL2 version, I'm pretty sure those will all be in WL3. In other words, don't hold your breath.

I'm not expecting a directors cut of WL3. I meant I'll replay WL2 with DC in a year or two, before WL3 releases...

bjon045 · October 7, 2016

Grifman said:
I doubt that there will be a director's cut.

tomasp3n said:
I'm not expecting a directors cut of WL3. I meant I'll replay WL2 with DC in a year or two, before WL3 releases…

Before pre-production even begins we have 2 people here who already know the entire roadmap of the product :lol:

ChienAboyeur · October 7, 2016

Arkadia7 said:
Just a comment on how you have to be a wealthy individual to be an investor in Wasteland 3…I think that is not based on "discrimination", but instead, as another commentator posted, its probably official U.S. law, and it also just makes a lot of sense, in general. Imagine if some young person, let's say a college student, or someone with low income, or even a foolish gamer thought this investment thing was going to be a get rich quick scheme, and put in all their money into it, like, thousands of dollars, and then the game went bust or something…that would be a terrible result.

So, this stipulation also protects people from making bad decisions that they can't afford…

The taste for mental contorsion never ceases to amaze.

What is called an investment is a mere transfer of wealth from people to people. The socalled investment efficiency depends on the number of people excluded from the socalled investment opportunity.
People will get their return through transfer of wealth from non investing buyers (the more the better), plus from other investors through pro rata.
Classical scheme of concentration of wealth: the so called investment is the purchase of a claim over incoming revenues, the product will be priced at x, one share of x set in order to induce the return.

It is for sure a quick way to get richer and students are not excluded to protect them but because they are expected to take the seat of the non investing buyers.

This kind of investment can not work efficiently when everyone is allowed in, or
worse, allowed on the same share.

Nothing to do with law, protection of this or that.

Pladio · October 7, 2016

GothicGothicness said:
That is clear, but I didn't see anywhere that you have to keep your position for 6 years? I mean the release would be in 2019 right? The huge majority of sales ( and especially full price ones ) are in the beginning of the games life-cycle. So the way I see it you could revise your calculation to a three year cycle, unless there was a requirement to wait 6 years before you got your money back, perhaps that was in the fine print though? If you indeed have to wait for 6 years, than it is not so great.

I meant to add 2 years based on how long they have delayed other games

domein · October 7, 2016

2 millions in fig funds, 600k pledges, 92% of the goal completed.
Hardly can call this a crowdfunded game, we are not going away from original issue - investors will put pressure on the developer to release on schedule even if game is not ready for release at this date.

Archangel · October 7, 2016

domein said:
2 millions in fig funds, 600k pledges, 92% of the goal completed.
Hardly can call this a crowdfunded game, we are not going away from original issue - investors will put pressure on the developer to release on schedule even if game is not ready for release at this date.

They cannot. The shares they buy are from a company created by Fig for purpose of supporting Inxile. They don't buy Inxile shares. Part of sales from the game go back to Fig that then gives it to investors.

Ploppy · October 7, 2016

Indeed. These investors are investing in a totally new shell company that receives a share of WL3's revenue. They have absolutely zero control over inXile.

Vindicator · October 7, 2016

domein said:
2 millions in fig funds, 600k pledges, 92% of the goal completed.
Hardly can call this a crowdfunded game…

Just over 2 days in, 99% funded, over 13,000 backers and investors… Just what is your definition of a "crowdfunded game?" You do realize the $2M in Fig funds are from people like us, right?

You click on INVEST, buy some game shares, Fig collects the money on behalf of the developer (inXile) and after release, they deal with the accounting nightmare of calculating and distributing the earnings at different milestones to potentially thousands of individual investors. Fig funds does not include $2.25M from inXile nor money from outside partners. The investment crowdfunding started a few days early for prior backers, and I'm guessing inXile employees, family and friends got first crack at it… thus it started high.

BTW, I think the option for Paypal payments has opened up now.

Moriendor · October 8, 2016

Lynchden said:
Plus the 2019 thing doesn't add any sense of urgency for me to pledge, though I appreciate their honesty about the timeline. They could have said late 17 or early 18, which would have inevitably been delayed again and again.

This is a positive side effect of Fig. With investors on board, they can not throw out any bait date to extort more money from impatient gamers like with e.g. Torment but there needs to be more accountability and an at least somewhat realistic release timeframe.

Ploppy · October 8, 2016

Will our fundraiser start right when the tally on Fig hits 100%, or do we have to wait a few days?

Wasteland 3 - Already over 65% funded

Saxon1974

Keeper of the Watch

Stingray

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Morrandir

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bjon045

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Stingray

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GothicGothicness

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GothicGothicness

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GothicGothicness

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Stingray

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TomRon

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bjon045

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ChienAboyeur

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Pladio

Guardian of Nonsense

domein

Vintage Brewer

Archangel

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Ploppy

Watchdog

Vindicator

Primordial Dragon

Moriendor

Excommunicado

Ploppy

Watchdog