Original Sin - 3 Days of Kickstarter

Myrthos

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Swen Vincke is providing some insights on the Kickstarter campaign for Divinity: Original Sin on his blog.
Personally, I think we can still have a campaign that can go way beyond our funding goal, though admittedly, we will need to fix a few obvious things (well, they’re obvious now
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) like the rewards, part of the story we tell (less features, more who and why), and what happens if we fail in this Kickstarter. Thank you to DarkUnderlord,Robcat and the rest of the gang for helping us get these insights btw.
When I look at the stats of the videos: we have 4452 backers out of 22344 video views at this moment. That means that 1 in 5 people who see the video are backing it. I think that’s an incredible conversion rate, so I’d think that even if we don’t change anything in the messaging, if we manage to get more people to see our page, we could reach our goal in no time. Something to work on.
More information.
 
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Yay, the Watch beat the Codex! Go, Watch!

Otherwise - can't say I'm surprised. I really wish they could extend their campaign, though.
 
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When I first saw their KS goal of 400k I thought wow they'll reach that in two days. It's too bad that didn't happen because there has to be many many thousands of people out there who would consider Original Sin a worthy project to back.

I'm backing Shroud of the Avatar and I would have imagined Original Sin generating revenue more quickly as Original Sin has so much more to actually show and the project itself is so much more focused.
 
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When I first saw their KS goal of 400k I thought wow they'll reach that in two days. It's too bad that didn't happen because there has to be many many thousands of people out there who would consider Original Sin a worthy project to back.

I'm backing Shroud of the Avatar and I would have imagined Original Sin generating revenue more quickly as Original Sin has so much more to actually show and the project itself is so much more focused.

I'm backing both. But I never thought that, I though 400k might be a bit hard for these guys but we will see. They don't have a star name when it comes to their game. Look at all the successful kickstarters that have made a lot of money on pc game side of things...they usually have a large company(obsidian) or big name Richard Garriott, chris roberts, shadowrun behind it.
 
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I'm backing both. But I never thought that, I though 400k might be a bit hard for these guys but we will see. They don't have a star name when it comes to their game. Look at all the successful kickstarters that have made a lot of money on pc game side of things…they usually have a large company(obsidian) or big name Richard Garriott, chris roberts, shadowrun behind it.

I agree. Established studios and names will get your project more money. Still they have 26 days left and are halfway to there goal.

Many projects fail to even achieve half of there goal. As they say have faith they will reach it and probably earn more as it nears the end.
 
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Why don't big publishers want to fund amazing, awesome RPGs like this? Why doesn't troika or sirtech exist any more? Baldurs Gate3 never got made?! Fallout3 is an FPS?!

Market research says people are too dumb for real games. Modern games are too accessible because people want it super easy and fact is turn based tactics takes more thinking than a typical American teenage call of duty player can handle.

It's understandable to see it fund a little slower for reasons like these. People are all idiots. They like to watch reality TV and stuff. I'm not even joking.

I'm looking forward to this game more than any other in history because It's the real deal and I haven't seen anything worthy of that title in a long, long time.
 
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This Game *should* be the game that I am waiting for, but I have a really strange Aversion against *both* Protagonists - from this Source-Hunters "Inquisition Guild" to their appearance...
 
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Games never do very well on Kickstarter over the weekend and this one is a bank Holiday weekend. Hopefully, it will get a lift afterwards.

My main criticism of the Kickstarter is that they should have concentrated much more on the single player campaign, before introducing multiplayer. Single player seems to be where the bulk of the market lies for this kind of game. And it's not even clear from the video that you get to play both the main characters in single player mode.

This may seem like a small point, but Shroud of The Avatar, I think, made a similar mistake and I reckon that with RG's name that would probably be at least competing with Tides (no multiplayer!), if they'd just said SOTA was a successor to Ultima 7, which appears to be the main intention anyway.
 
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I hardly think that the single player 'mistake' of SotA is comparable. The single player mode was added after the start of the campaign because of all the complaints about it.
In Original Sin it was not clear from the Kickstarter, but it has not changed.
Then again the info that you do control both characters (or more) in single player mode was out there, amongst others in my preview of the game.
 
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Well, I might be the minority, but I just see it as a cash grab. I'm not sold that they have time to make many changes before the release date. Since you get the game as part of the kickstarter, I don't have a problem with them trying this, but I feel no need to donate either. I've only donated to two or three projects though, so I'm not a big kickstart fan anyway.
 
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I hardly think that the single player 'mistake' of SotA is comparable. The single player mode was added after the start of the campaign because of all the complaints about it.
In Original Sin it was not clear from the Kickstarter, but it has not changed.
Then again the info that you do control both characters (or more) in single player mode was out there, amongst others in my preview of the game.

That is not true about SotA. Single player Offline mode was added after because people asked for it and it was relatively easy to do. It had always planned to have single player online.
 
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You are funny!
We were talking about multi-player versus single player in Divinity: Original Sin where single player equals offline playing.
So my comparison with SotA was correct.
 
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You are funny!
We were talking about multi-player versus single player in Divinity: Original Sin where single player equals offline playing.
So my comparison with SotA was correct.

Yeah, if you want to believe that…it had single player that you would connect online for updates…which was pretty much single player. You made it sound like there was no single player game in SotA until people demanded it.
 
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You are funny!
We were talking about multi-player versus single player in Divinity: Original Sin where single player equals offline playing.
So my comparison with SotA was correct.

I think (after initial confusion) that the main intention of SOTA *is* to be a single player game that follows on from and replicates the kind of gameplay that was in the original Ultima Series. The online bits are intended to augment that gameplay style and allow you to play it with a few friends. I don't think Original Sin is very different in this respect, since it's basically a single player game too. In fact both these games aren't really that different from say Baldur's gate, which also has a multiplayer mode - although no one would think of it as a multiplayer game.

My point is that is was a mistake for *both* Larian & RG to stress the multiplayer aspects of their games, since people are getting totally the wrong impression about the kind of games they are. On the one hand they're not attracting the MMO crowd, cos they aren't MMOs, and on the other hand they are putting off those who just want to play a single player game.
 
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Yeah, if you want to believe that…it had single player that you would connect online for updates…which was pretty much single player. You made it sound like there was no single player game in SotA until people demanded it.
Whatever Rune, if you feel the single player mode that SotA had before The Kickstarter is the same as DOS had, so be it. I'll just stay in my make believe world where the single player modes of DOS and what SotA had at the start of the Kickstarter are not equal.

I think (after initial confusion) that the main intention of SOTA *is* to be a single player game that follows on from and replicates the kind of gameplay that was in the original Ultima Series. The online bits are intended to augment that gameplay style and allow you to play it with a few friends. I don't think Original Sin is very different in this respect, since it's basically a single player game too. In fact both these games aren't really that different from say Baldur's gate, which also has a multiplayer mode - although no one would think of it as a multiplayer game.
Well I disagree. SotA is an online game with an offline component. The game was designed to be an online game. Going online means your game can change. Buildings can be added or removed etc. etc. The completely offline part where you never went online was an afterthought. That is not comparable to BG or DOS. Both are offline single player games that have an option where your party members can be controlled by other players.

My point is that is was a mistake for *both* Larian & RG to stress the multiplayer aspects of their games, since people are getting totally the wrong impression about the kind of games they are. On the one hand they're not attracting the MMO crowd, cos they aren't MMOs, and on the other hand they are putting off those who just want to play a single player game.
For Larian I agree with that, they should have addressed the SP component more. I think they felt that it having a single player mode was evident.
For SotA I think the pitch matched the game as it was intended by Garriott. In his past interviews he already made clear that in his opinion games should be a social experience and thus are supposed to be played with others without it becoming a real MMO. He probably did not envision before the Kickstarter that there are a sufficient amount of people that would just want to play his game without ever going online and just couldn't care less about the social interaction stuff.
 
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For Larian I agree with that, they should have addressed the SP component more. I think they felt that it having a single player mode was evident.
For SotA I think the pitch matched the game as it was intended by Garriott. In his past interviews he already made clear that in his opinion games should be a social experience and thus are supposed to be played with others without it becoming a real MMO. He probably did not envision before the Kickstarter that there are a sufficient amount of people that would just want to play his game without ever going online and just couldn't care less about the social interaction stuff.

I certainly see where you are coming from with respect to SOTA and that is somewhat the impression that I got too, initially. But, the problem is that the kind of game which that would result in just would not work given other things that they are aiming for such as being able to take decisions in progressing your own personal story:

The *only* approach to multiplayer that seems to work outside of sharing a static MMO world is what Larian are doing. But, in that case one person is always controlling the story and the other person just drops into the story in the place the host has got to. The second player is not independent and must pick up the game where the host has got to. If you want to play on a peer basis with a friend you would have to both start together and play together throughout the whole game. This is really just single player gameplay, where a friend can play one of your companions (in the case of Original sin your one companion as things stand).

So, I reckon, if SOTA is not intended to be a full scale MMO (with a static world), it must be similar. I can't think of any other sensible approach of playing a story that will be at different stages for different people.

Finally, the disctinction is not between online and offline, but between single player gameplay and multiplayer gameplay. There's no reason that an essentially single player game can't require you to go online for some other reason than multiplayer (as we all know happens for DRM among other things). And being able to see housing, doesn't imply MMO mechanics for gameplay outside of living areas.
 
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Whatever Rune, if you feel the single player mode that SotA had before The Kickstarter is the same as DOS had, so be it. I'll just stay in my make believe world where the single player modes of DOS and what SotA had at the start of the Kickstarter are not equal.

Not really what I meant, what I meant there is single player on both, the only difference was they thought people would want to be connected in SPO to get updates and changing things in the world more then just what happens on your machine. However, you would still would not see anyone else…you could however for instance buy from peoples vendors or whatnot. Going offline you would lose all that really.

Not sure why it required that tone of a response from you, but whatever floats your boat.

PS: I also backed this, so it isn't me picking on them.
 
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Well, I might be the minority, but I just see it as a cash grab.

But you can get two copies for $40 by pledging. I feel like I ripped them off as I was expecting to pay about that much each. The "add $50 for alpha access" seems a bit cash grabby though.

I'm not sold that they have time to make many changes before the release date.

I believe the kickstarter is for extra staff to speed up production over the same length of time.
 
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I believe the kickstarter is for extra staff to speed up production over the same length of time.

Yes - I find the accusation that it's a "gash grab" a bit silly. Of course they want cash to finish their game, they are a small self funded company working on a limited budget. You can see the effects of having to rush their games to market on some previous games and they don't wish to make the same mistake. What we should want to see is *more* independent companies going to crowd funding at this stage, since it lowers the cost of making the kind of games we like playing and promotes innovation.

The danger on Kickstarter lies much more in funding games that are just some pipe dream of the designers and never make it to market. That's much less likely with Original Sin, which will likely be released even without KS money - just in a much more restricted form.
 
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