The Video Game Kickstarter Thread of the Future of Passing the Risk to the Consumer

I'm pretty sure one of the reasons the reception was weaker in Germany than the US is because Eastern European games are much more visible here. Yes, with Metro and the Witcher the US is slowly discovering there's a game developing world out there, but it's still limited to "big" names. Germany already gets more games from that side, and the low-fantasy (or no-fantasy) medieval(ish) settings seem much more popular there.
That aside, I find it funny how, time and again, publishers are all shown to behave like sheep. Honestly - I can say "hmm, PS4, XB1, WiiU, I'm not sure which one's going to make it, I'll wait it out and invest in a game for the one that seems successful" too. That's not venture capital, that's not taking risks, that's not innovating. Game publishing has become one of the least innovative industries around, along with but perhaps even worse than film producing.
Once again, they're shooting themselves in the foot and making a self-fulfilling prophecy at the same time. If all you invest in is MMOs and mobile games, you'll be making a lot of money on mobile games and MMOs - right up until those markets are saturated and the margins fold. At which point they'll all rush off to the next "big thing". Ridiculous.
 
That aside, I find it funny how, time and again, publishers are all shown to behave like sheep. Honestly - I can say "hmm, PS4, XB1, WiiU, I'm not sure which one's going to make it, I'll wait it out and invest in a game for the one that seems successful" too. That's not venture capital, that's not taking risks, that's not innovating. Game publishing has become one of the least innovative industries around, along with but perhaps even worse than film producing.
This is why VC funding is generally a better source than publishers if you're not making something that they can expect to make $100M in profit off of. Publishers have become so risk-averse that the idea of spending $5M to maybe only make $10M just seems crazy to them (which is crazy thinking to anyone else).
 
Publishers never took risks before, it's not like something has changed.
Yes and no. They've never been risk friendly, but they've never been as desperate to only have mega-hits as they are now, and it's because of how much money they think they need to spend to compete. In 2005, your average AAA publisher title cost around $5M to develop and another $5 to promote, with maybe double that for the big franchises. Now we're looking minimum at the $30-40M to develop and as much to market, and that definitely doesn't include the big franchises. That's well beyond inflation. Bubble had it right; game publishers are stuck in Hollywood blockbuster mode and don't know how to get out of it.
 


A LIVE AI WORLD???

Bethesda better be looking at this game carefully... heck most game companies should.
 
Spoken as a person who's never gone to Europe. Nothing changes that opinion more than changing your currency to Euro.

TRY IT.
 
I have no clue what brings on the sudden Eurohate, but...what? It's only real if it's American? I expect better from you. As in, at least funnier.

That aside, though, slight mistake. It's £1.1m. That's €1.5 million, or about $1.8 million US for those still using legacy currency.
 
Top