I have a very hard time listening to the cry of poorhouse, when they could afford a trip into space and was awarded a 32 million dollar ruling after said trip.
What I see, is a company who's owners are not willing to risk their own money for their endeavor. They take their customers and fans for idiots.
These new business models are bullshit.
Disgusting really
Wait, do you know he hasn't put in millions of his own money?
Is your business a sole proprietorship? Only a fool would create a business and put their entire personal fortune on the line. Oh wait, I asked that question on mmorpg, what the fuck was I thinking? Of course gamers would do that. That's why they bitch about having to spend sandwich money on their games.
No pain - No gain
Risk vs Reward
Guess those terms mean shit these days.
My money says he's invested a pittance of his own cash on this title. These guys are just dicking around on someone else's dime.
Those terms have never meant anything in the business world outside of business pep conferences.
We sat down to a meeting this morning to install some specialty EHR software. It required a bunch of hassle with AWS and a whole slew of other software hurdles that put me 5 hours behind on delivering other stuff on my clients.
Lot's of pain. No gain. It would have been better if there was an efficient, cheap, and easy way to do all that. Easier than it was 10 years ago, not nearly easy and seamless enough.
No pain no gain is what you say to try and make yourself feel better after wasting a ton of time and resources that should have not needed to happen.
Risk vs Reward - Smart businesses spend a lot of effort analyzing and minimizing risks. The reward is less loss and wasted effort while others efficiently blaze past you.
Do you actually run your business like a cowboy or do you run it wisely and just suggest that other business play cowboy for the fun feelz of watching them spiral down the toilet?
For me:
No pain - No gain
Means that I had to make sacrifices, not all were monetary.
I've got myself to a place, where I 100% own everything. I didn't get there by buying fancy sports cars.
Sometimes minimizing your risk is knowing when to cut your losses.
I have a bad month, I can't be pawning $50 metal slugs off to my customers crying the poorhouse blues.
You got a bunch of multimillionaires who spend like drunken sailors and look to there fans to buy $50 pixel statues to keep the dream alive.
Nearly four years and what is this game now?
Like I said earlier, I find it disgusting.
I have a friend who works in the automotive and aerospace sector and I can tell you this happens all the time. In fact, they charge a couple hundred bucks for the same bearing that they sell for thousands into aerospace. Only difference is paperwork.
You can't talk about keeping the dream alive because there are actually people who are wanting this game, I guess. So if they want to support it, great for them. Last time I checked, they weren't instituting a mandatory buy on the horse statue. If they did then I could understand the big deal.
Oh, and I did address the matter of cost and salaries above. As a business owner I felt like you would be able to see that they aren't rolling in the dough and it seems unlikely that they are in the black even. So I don't know where you're getting all this party lifestyle spending spree bullshit. They just got a free asset, that's not blowing the bank.
Big difference between the auto industry and aerospace. Every bolt and rivet on an airliner gets x-rayed. A little over 20 years ago I had a contract to make ashtray covers to cover up the ashtrays in seats because smoking was no longer allowed. You would believe the paperwork and bullshit for an ashtray cover.
A better analogy would be buying that bearing from the Dealership or from somebody like a Lordco. I went into a Yamaha dealership to buy a universal for a ATV. Yamaha wanted $75.00 for the main body, $12 x 4 for the bearings and $2.25 x 4 for the retainers. I laughed, cross referenced the universal and bought the whole unit for $19.75 Selling the universal in parts was comical. A universal for a 1 ton truck costs about $30.
People are free to buy all the horse statue's they like. I'm free to criticize it all I like.
I have 32 employees.
I pay over a million for a machine it takes me 2-3 years to get to the black and recoup that purchase, if times are good.
I have a 25000 sq ft shop filled with machinery, millions invested. I have to be globally competitive. As far as mfg is concerned, it's a fine line between black and red. Retailers sell some products for 4x what I sell it to them for. I've been to quite a few liquidation auctions in your Province.
Raising free capital via kickstarter and selling $50 pixel ponies in fantasy land. Why wouldn't a multimillionaire astronaut tourist take full advantage.
He payed 30mil to take that trip.
Fuck if he can't put out his own cash to build a complete consumer product.
What for?
Easy come... Easy go...
You're right, you are free to criticize all you like. I think you prove my point, though, so thanks. In the end this is a business, and all businesses are fucking people over, and I'm sure you're no different. You even admit that your retailers are selling the product you sell them for 4 times what you sell it to them for. The reality is that these are businesses, not charities. I can appreciate the "idea" of your moral compass and where you say you stand, but you also seem awfully judgey for someone who probably knows 10% of the story. That's cool, though, I know that from a high horse on top of an ivory tower, there is literally nobody that you can't look down on.
I have a very hard time listening to the cry of poorhouse, when they could afford a trip into space and was awarded a 32 million dollar ruling after said trip.
What I see, is a company who's owners are not willing to risk their own money for their endeavor. They take their customers and fans for idiots.
These new business models are bullshit.
Disgusting really
Wait, do you know he hasn't put in millions of his own money?
Is your business a sole proprietorship? Only a fool would create a business and put their entire personal fortune on the line. Oh wait, I asked that question on mmorpg, what the fuck was I thinking? Of course gamers would do that. That's why they bitch about having to spend sandwich money on their games.
No pain - No gain
Risk vs Reward
Guess those terms mean shit these days.
My money says he's invested a pittance of his own cash on this title. These guys are just dicking around on someone else's dime.
Those terms have never meant anything in the business world outside of business pep conferences.
We sat down to a meeting this morning to install some specialty EHR software. It required a bunch of hassle with AWS and a whole slew of other software hurdles that put me 5 hours behind on delivering other stuff on my clients.
Lot's of pain. No gain. It would have been better if there was an efficient, cheap, and easy way to do all that. Easier than it was 10 years ago, not nearly easy and seamless enough.
No pain no gain is what you say to try and make yourself feel better after wasting a ton of time and resources that should have not needed to happen.
Risk vs Reward - Smart businesses spend a lot of effort analyzing and minimizing risks. The reward is less loss and wasted effort while others efficiently blaze past you.
Do you actually run your business like a cowboy or do you run it wisely and just suggest that other business play cowboy for the fun feelz of watching them spiral down the toilet?
For me:
No pain - No gain
Means that I had to make sacrifices, not all were monetary.
I've got myself to a place, where I 100% own everything. I didn't get there by buying fancy sports cars.
Sometimes minimizing your risk is knowing when to cut your losses.
I have a bad month, I can't be pawning $50 metal slugs off to my customers crying the poorhouse blues.
You got a bunch of multimillionaires who spend like drunken sailors and look to there fans to buy $50 pixel statues to keep the dream alive.
Nearly four years and what is this game now?
Like I said earlier, I find it disgusting.
I have a friend who works in the automotive and aerospace sector and I can tell you this happens all the time. In fact, they charge a couple hundred bucks for the same bearing that they sell for thousands into aerospace. Only difference is paperwork.
You can't talk about keeping the dream alive because there are actually people who are wanting this game, I guess. So if they want to support it, great for them. Last time I checked, they weren't instituting a mandatory buy on the horse statue. If they did then I could understand the big deal.
Oh, and I did address the matter of cost and salaries above. As a business owner I felt like you would be able to see that they aren't rolling in the dough and it seems unlikely that they are in the black even. So I don't know where you're getting all this party lifestyle spending spree bullshit. They just got a free asset, that's not blowing the bank.
Big difference between the auto industry and aerospace. Every bolt and rivet on an airliner gets x-rayed. A little over 20 years ago I had a contract to make ashtray covers to cover up the ashtrays in seats because smoking was no longer allowed. You would believe the paperwork and bullshit for an ashtray cover.
A better analogy would be buying that bearing from the Dealership or from somebody like a Lordco. I went into a Yamaha dealership to buy a universal for a ATV. Yamaha wanted $75.00 for the main body, $12 x 4 for the bearings and $2.25 x 4 for the retainers. I laughed, cross referenced the universal and bought the whole unit for $19.75 Selling the universal in parts was comical. A universal for a 1 ton truck costs about $30.
People are free to buy all the horse statue's they like. I'm free to criticize it all I like.
I have 32 employees.
I pay over a million for a machine it takes me 2-3 years to get to the black and recoup that purchase, if times are good.
I have a 25000 sq ft shop filled with machinery, millions invested. I have to be globally competitive. As far as mfg is concerned, it's a fine line between black and red. Retailers sell some products for 4x what I sell it to them for. I've been to quite a few liquidation auctions in your Province.
Raising free capital via kickstarter and selling $50 pixel ponies in fantasy land. Why wouldn't a multimillionaire astronaut tourist take full advantage.
He payed 30mil to take that trip.
Fuck if he can't put out his own cash to build a complete consumer product.
What for?
Easy come... Easy go...
You're right, you are free to criticize all you like. I think you prove my point, though, so thanks. In the end this is a business, and all businesses are fucking people over, and I'm sure you're no different. You even admit that your retailers are selling the product you sell them for 4 times what you sell it to them for. The reality is that these are businesses, not charities. I can appreciate the "idea" of your moral compass and where you say you stand, but you also seem awfully judgey for someone who probably knows 10% of the story. That's cool, though, I know that from a high horse on top of an ivory tower, there is literally nobody that you can't look down on.
"The reality is that these are businesses, not charities"
Yet companies like Portalarium Inc. want your and my charity.
You're right, you are free to criticize all you like. I think you prove my point, though, so thanks. In the end this is a business, and all businesses are fucking people over, and I'm sure you're no different. You even admit that your retailers are selling the product you sell them for 4 times what you sell it to them for. The reality is that these are businesses, not charities. I can appreciate the "idea" of your moral compass and where you say you stand, but you also seem awfully judgey for someone who probably knows 10% of the story. That's cool, though, I know that from a high horse on top of an ivory tower, there is literally nobody that you can't look down on.
"The reality is that these are businesses, not charities"
Yet companies like Portalarium Inc. want your and my charity.
Well at least that's one thing we can agree on. I also wish I could say "Yeah, but in the end they're making an amazing game!", but I can't even really say that. In the end it's just another crowdfunding project. I don't think it comes down to a question of morals. Maybe you're not a fan of the model, I don't know, but I could at least understand if you were making a blanket statement that "This is why I don't like crowdfunding. They don't even have a product, yet they're selling <insert thing they're selling>." However, that implicates all crowdfunding companies as a whole, not just these guys. I'm sure I could easily find a handful of games trying to sell me something for their incomplete project, today, and they can try to sell all they like. I probably won't buy it, but I'm sure there are some who will. Maybe some feel that the net benefit is worth it for them. That isn't charity, that's them selling you something. Based on your definition of charity, every single VC backed company are charity cases. Every start-up looking for funding are charities. That's a pretty broad brush to be painting with. Again, though, I can understand it from people living in ivory towers.
Oh, also, I didn't do any reading on the art asset, but it's entirely possible that they would have had to license the asset in order to resell it. Also, even though some assets are free on the unity store, they are not allowed to be used commercially without a license. So this is part of that 90% that we don't know about. Also, people are assuming because it says "free" that there are no associated costs. Again, there are implementation costs to this. Once that's taken into consideration and, probably, the overall cost per unit sold is likely going to be higher than someone like, say, Blizzard. Again, part of the 90% we don't know.
You're right, you are free to criticize all you like. I think you prove my point, though, so thanks. In the end this is a business, and all businesses are fucking people over, and I'm sure you're no different. You even admit that your retailers are selling the product you sell them for 4 times what you sell it to them for. The reality is that these are businesses, not charities. I can appreciate the "idea" of your moral compass and where you say you stand, but you also seem awfully judgey for someone who probably knows 10% of the story. That's cool, though, I know that from a high horse on top of an ivory tower, there is literally nobody that you can't look down on.
"The reality is that these are businesses, not charities"
Yet companies like Portalarium Inc. want your and my charity.
Well at least that's one thing we can agree on. I also wish I could say "Yeah, but in the end they're making an amazing game!", but I can't even really say that. In the end it's just another crowdfunding project. I don't think it comes down to a question of morals. Maybe you're not a fan of the model, I don't know, but I could at least understand if you were making a blanket statement that "This is why I don't like crowdfunding. They don't even have a product, yet they're selling <insert thing they're selling>." However, that implicates all crowdfunding companies as a whole, not just these guys. I'm sure I could easily find a handful of games trying to sell me something for their incomplete project, today, and they can try to sell all they like. I probably won't buy it, but I'm sure there are some who will. Maybe some feel that the net benefit is worth it for them. That isn't charity, that's them selling you something. Based on your definition of charity, every single VC backed company are charity cases. Every start-up looking for funding are charities. That's a pretty broad brush to be painting with. Again, though, I can understand it from people living in ivory towers.
Oh, also, I didn't do any reading on the art asset, but it's entirely possible that they would have had to license the asset in order to resell it. Also, even though some assets are free on the unity store, they are not allowed to be used commercially without a license. So this is part of that 90% that we don't know about. Also, people are assuming because it says "free" that there are no associated costs. Again, there are implementation costs to this. Once that's taken into consideration and, probably, the overall cost per unit sold is likely going to be higher than someone like, say, Blizzard. Again, part of the 90% we don't know.
I don't jump in on every crowdfunding topic and criticize. I support crowdfunding for young fledgling startups. People new in business with good ideas, trying to make an honest go at it.
The idea behind crowdfunding is good. The premise of easy money invites exploitation.
IMHO this particular project falls into the exploitation category.
He makes a poor house building analogy in the process. No, we don't expect the carpenter to create his own boards, but if he got them for free we would not expect to pay a large price for them just because the carpenter underestimated the price of the original job.
They apparently didn't get this asset for free, as a dev explained:
"I completely understand that without complete information this could be frustrating.
Assets like these are often only free if you do not resell them like we are. Even if it was free it doesn't just magically appear in the game without any effort. It takes actual development time to get it working in the game properly. Many hours in fact. Sometimes the textures have to be adjusted. Often we have to make levels of detail versions. We have to make simple colliders. We have to set all the proper decoration and permission flags. We then have to spend time adding it to offers and the add on store. That costs money. It is not free."
As you say the game is pretty niche and other than milking the existing player base there are not many other avenues to bring in enough money to continue the development of that game.
Well at least that's one thing we can agree on. I also wish I could say "Yeah, but in the end they're making an amazing game!", but I can't even really say that. In the end it's just another crowdfunding project. I don't think it comes down to a question of morals. Maybe you're not a fan of the model, I don't know, but I could at least understand if you were making a blanket statement that "This is why I don't like crowdfunding. They don't even have a product, yet they're selling <insert thing they're selling>." However, that implicates all crowdfunding companies as a whole, not just these guys. I'm sure I could easily find a handful of games trying to sell me something for their incomplete project, today, and they can try to sell all they like. I probably won't buy it, but I'm sure there are some who will. Maybe some feel that the net benefit is worth it for them. That isn't charity, that's them selling you something. Based on your definition of charity, every single VC backed company are charity cases. Every start-up looking for funding are charities. That's a pretty broad brush to be painting with. Again, though, I can understand it from people living in ivory towers.
Oh, also, I didn't do any reading on the art asset, but it's entirely possible that they would have had to license the asset in order to resell it. Also, even though some assets are free on the unity store, they are not allowed to be used commercially without a license. So this is part of that 90% that we don't know about. Also, people are assuming because it says "free" that there are no associated costs. Again, there are implementation costs to this. Once that's taken into consideration and, probably, the overall cost per unit sold is likely going to be higher than someone like, say, Blizzard. Again, part of the 90% we don't know.
I don't jump in on every crowdfunding topic and criticize. I support crowdfunding for young fledgling startups. People new in business with good ideas, trying to make an honest go at it.
The idea behind crowdfunding is good. The premise of easy money invites exploitation.
IMHO this particular project falls into the exploitation category.
Ok, thanks for the clarification. I can at least get an idea of what you're arguing here.
I'm coming at it from a different perspective, looking at the final product. So I look at things like PoE, Tides, Shadowrun, Divinity, Wasteland 2/3. These are all games developed by people who have lots of money, lots of industry experience, and lots of industry contacts who could have probably got backed by VC or something if they really wanted to go that direction. They aren't crooks, they'd just prefer to not have the restrictions of investors. We've all heard horror stories about that.
Honestly, I'd rather put my money into a game by somebody who's known than someone looking to make "a go of it" only because, while I can appreciate their ambitions, the risk to that project increases exponentially depending on their experience, or lack thereof. Especially with something as big as an MMORPG. The Yogcast guys were a perfect example of that. Jason Appleton was another. Basically, hopes don't float boats. There are success stories like Chivalry. It happens all the time on Kickstarter. However, multi-million dollar games are risky. MMORPGs are risky. As far as portalarium is concerned, I think it's pretty much doomed the same way Pantheon is doomed or CU is doomed. However, that doesn't lessen their obligation to the few people who did buy into their product. If this was an exploitation play they'd have packed it in long ago. They've made an attempt, they could simply release it as is and absolve themselves of any additional responsibility, but they aren't.
Well at least that's one thing we can agree on. I also wish I could say "Yeah, but in the end they're making an amazing game!", but I can't even really say that. In the end it's just another crowdfunding project. I don't think it comes down to a question of morals. Maybe you're not a fan of the model, I don't know, but I could at least understand if you were making a blanket statement that "This is why I don't like crowdfunding. They don't even have a product, yet they're selling <insert thing they're selling>." However, that implicates all crowdfunding companies as a whole, not just these guys. I'm sure I could easily find a handful of games trying to sell me something for their incomplete project, today, and they can try to sell all they like. I probably won't buy it, but I'm sure there are some who will. Maybe some feel that the net benefit is worth it for them. That isn't charity, that's them selling you something. Based on your definition of charity, every single VC backed company are charity cases. Every start-up looking for funding are charities. That's a pretty broad brush to be painting with. Again, though, I can understand it from people living in ivory towers.
Oh, also, I didn't do any reading on the art asset, but it's entirely possible that they would have had to license the asset in order to resell it. Also, even though some assets are free on the unity store, they are not allowed to be used commercially without a license. So this is part of that 90% that we don't know about. Also, people are assuming because it says "free" that there are no associated costs. Again, there are implementation costs to this. Once that's taken into consideration and, probably, the overall cost per unit sold is likely going to be higher than someone like, say, Blizzard. Again, part of the 90% we don't know.
I don't jump in on every crowdfunding topic and criticize. I support crowdfunding for young fledgling startups. People new in business with good ideas, trying to make an honest go at it.
The idea behind crowdfunding is good. The premise of easy money invites exploitation.
IMHO this particular project falls into the exploitation category.
Ok, thanks for the clarification. I can at least get an idea of what you're arguing here.
I'm coming at it from a different perspective, looking at the final product. So I look at things like PoE, Tides, Shadowrun, Divinity, Wasteland 2/3. These are all games developed by people who have lots of money, lots of industry experience, and lots of industry contacts who could have probably got backed by VC or something if they really wanted to go that direction. They aren't crooks, they'd just prefer to not have the restrictions of investors. We've all heard horror stories about that.
Honestly, I'd rather put my money into a game by somebody who's known than someone looking to make "a go of it" only because, while I can appreciate their ambitions, the risk to that project increases exponentially depending on their experience, or lack thereof. Especially with something as big as an MMORPG. The Yogcast guys were a perfect example of that. Jason Appleton was another. Basically, hopes don't float boats. There are success stories like Chivalry. It happens all the time on Kickstarter. However, multi-million dollar games are risky. MMORPGs are risky. As far as portalarium is concerned, I think it's pretty much doomed the same way Pantheon is doomed or CU is doomed. However, that doesn't lessen their obligation to the few people who did buy into their product. If this was an exploitation play they'd have packed it in long ago. They've made an attempt, they could simply release it as is and absolve themselves of any additional responsibility, but they aren't.
I understand where you're coming from, but the people putting out the cash for these projects are investors.
He makes a poor house building analogy in the process. No, we don't expect the carpenter to create his own boards, but if he got them for free we would not expect to pay a large price for them just because the carpenter underestimated the price of the original job.
They apparently didn't get this asset for free, as a dev explained:
"I completely understand that without complete information this could be frustrating.
Assets like these are often only free if you do not resell them like we are. Even if it was free it doesn't just magically appear in the game without any effort. It takes actual development time to get it working in the game properly. Many hours in fact. Sometimes the textures have to be adjusted. Often we have to make levels of detail versions. We have to make simple colliders. We have to set all the proper decoration and permission flags. We then have to spend time adding it to offers and the add on store. That costs money. It is not free."
As you say the game is pretty niche and other than milking the existing player base there are not many other avenues to bring in enough money to continue the development of that game.
Well a user may say they did get it for free while a developer says they paid for the asset and there were costs associated with implementing it in-game.
There are many reasons for some people to be angry I guess (relatively high price for a virtual item, purchased at low / no cost on Unity Store, devs not saying a word about it afaik so people thought it was created by the artists, etc.).
Otoh developing a game in the US costs load of money and I understand how it may seem necessary for this studio, considering their current situation, to take shortcuts and sell this kind of things in the store.
It's amazing people are still following this game to give these reports. Do they have absolutely zero standards? You do realize if SoTA was 100% free, no strings attached it would still be a ghost town right?
Well at least that's one thing we can agree on. I also wish I could say "Yeah, but in the end they're making an amazing game!", but I can't even really say that. In the end it's just another crowdfunding project. I don't think it comes down to a question of morals. Maybe you're not a fan of the model, I don't know, but I could at least understand if you were making a blanket statement that "This is why I don't like crowdfunding. They don't even have a product, yet they're selling <insert thing they're selling>." However, that implicates all crowdfunding companies as a whole, not just these guys. I'm sure I could easily find a handful of games trying to sell me something for their incomplete project, today, and they can try to sell all they like. I probably won't buy it, but I'm sure there are some who will. Maybe some feel that the net benefit is worth it for them. That isn't charity, that's them selling you something. Based on your definition of charity, every single VC backed company are charity cases. Every start-up looking for funding are charities. That's a pretty broad brush to be painting with. Again, though, I can understand it from people living in ivory towers.
Oh, also, I didn't do any reading on the art asset, but it's entirely possible that they would have had to license the asset in order to resell it. Also, even though some assets are free on the unity store, they are not allowed to be used commercially without a license. So this is part of that 90% that we don't know about. Also, people are assuming because it says "free" that there are no associated costs. Again, there are implementation costs to this. Once that's taken into consideration and, probably, the overall cost per unit sold is likely going to be higher than someone like, say, Blizzard. Again, part of the 90% we don't know.
I don't jump in on every crowdfunding topic and criticize. I support crowdfunding for young fledgling startups. People new in business with good ideas, trying to make an honest go at it.
The idea behind crowdfunding is good. The premise of easy money invites exploitation.
IMHO this particular project falls into the exploitation category.
Ok, thanks for the clarification. I can at least get an idea of what you're arguing here.
I'm coming at it from a different perspective, looking at the final product. So I look at things like PoE, Tides, Shadowrun, Divinity, Wasteland 2/3. These are all games developed by people who have lots of money, lots of industry experience, and lots of industry contacts who could have probably got backed by VC or something if they really wanted to go that direction. They aren't crooks, they'd just prefer to not have the restrictions of investors. We've all heard horror stories about that.
Honestly, I'd rather put my money into a game by somebody who's known than someone looking to make "a go of it" only because, while I can appreciate their ambitions, the risk to that project increases exponentially depending on their experience, or lack thereof. Especially with something as big as an MMORPG. The Yogcast guys were a perfect example of that. Jason Appleton was another. Basically, hopes don't float boats. There are success stories like Chivalry. It happens all the time on Kickstarter. However, multi-million dollar games are risky. MMORPGs are risky. As far as portalarium is concerned, I think it's pretty much doomed the same way Pantheon is doomed or CU is doomed. However, that doesn't lessen their obligation to the few people who did buy into their product. If this was an exploitation play they'd have packed it in long ago. They've made an attempt, they could simply release it as is and absolve themselves of any additional responsibility, but they aren't. Read more at http://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/461453/shroud-of-the-avatar-strikes-again/p3#jhxvhkWj7dX6kx4T.99
I understand where you're coming from, but the people putting out the cash for these projects are investors.
It's the new age of investing.
Yeah, but that's the same case here. I already show you how, conservatively, the company has spent nearly $10 million on this. KS raised $2 million of that. It's more likely that they're approaching the $15-$18 million mark since the company was already up and running BEFORE the KS got underway. The KS was a reactive venture in this case. So they've got other funding and have had some for a while. The "investor", whoever that is, is currently on the hook for a vastly higher percentage of that cash.
Your sentiments are exactly what's wrong with crowdfunding, though. The investors see all the warts up close and personal. The development process is exposed and the reality of inefficient processes or actual amount of work involved with making a game is unsavory. This is the one reason I'm not a fan of crowdfunding. On the whole, though, I support it. I just back something and then cover my ears and I don't want to hear about it again until it's released.
He makes a poor house building analogy in the process. No, we don't expect the carpenter to create his own boards, but if he got them for free we would not expect to pay a large price for them just because the carpenter underestimated the price of the original job.
They apparently didn't get this asset for free, as a dev explained:
"I completely understand that without complete information this could be frustrating.
Assets like these are often only free if you do not resell them like we are. Even if it was free it doesn't just magically appear in the game without any effort. It takes actual development time to get it working in the game properly. Many hours in fact. Sometimes the textures have to be adjusted. Often we have to make levels of detail versions. We have to make simple colliders. We have to set all the proper decoration and permission flags. We then have to spend time adding it to offers and the add on store. That costs money. It is not free."
As you say the game is pretty niche and other than milking the existing player base there are not many other avenues to bring in enough money to continue the development of that game.
Well a user may say they did get it for free while a developer says they paid for the asset and there were costs associated with implementing it in-game.
There are many reasons for some people to be angry I guess (relatively high price for a virtual item, purchased at low / no cost on Unity Store, devs not saying a word about it afaik so people thought it was created by the artists, etc.).
Otoh developing a game in the US costs load of money and I understand how it may seem necessary for this studio, considering their current situation, to take shortcuts and sell this kind of things in the store.
Oh, they did pay for it, did they? I wondered about that in a previous post.
So that actually casts a big question mark over the whole thing because now there is a cost. So now the Blizzard example becomes even more relevant. So Blizzard sells the Warforged Nightmare mount for $30 which APPARENTLY is owned by 11% of the user base. Assuming that's 500,000, then we're talking about $15 million!!! NOW!! Let's say Blizzard is paying this person $80k per year to make these mounts. We've heard that the horrible art staff at SC take a CRAZY 3-6 weeks to get a new character into the game. So let's say it takes 6 weeks. So we're looking at somewhere around $10k to get that into the game. The cost per unit would then hover around the $0.02 per unit.
Call me crazy, but that might as well be free. People can be as critical as they want, but there's absolutely no way that the price Portalarium is paying per unit sold is less than $0.02. I don't even care what they bought it for.
Well at least that's one thing we can agree on. I also wish I could say "Yeah, but in the end they're making an amazing game!", but I can't even really say that. In the end it's just another crowdfunding project. I don't think it comes down to a question of morals. Maybe you're not a fan of the model, I don't know, but I could at least understand if you were making a blanket statement that "This is why I don't like crowdfunding. They don't even have a product, yet they're selling <insert thing they're selling>." However, that implicates all crowdfunding companies as a whole, not just these guys. I'm sure I could easily find a handful of games trying to sell me something for their incomplete project, today, and they can try to sell all they like. I probably won't buy it, but I'm sure there are some who will. Maybe some feel that the net benefit is worth it for them. That isn't charity, that's them selling you something. Based on your definition of charity, every single VC backed company are charity cases. Every start-up looking for funding are charities. That's a pretty broad brush to be painting with. Again, though, I can understand it from people living in ivory towers.
Oh, also, I didn't do any reading on the art asset, but it's entirely possible that they would have had to license the asset in order to resell it. Also, even though some assets are free on the unity store, they are not allowed to be used commercially without a license. So this is part of that 90% that we don't know about. Also, people are assuming because it says "free" that there are no associated costs. Again, there are implementation costs to this. Once that's taken into consideration and, probably, the overall cost per unit sold is likely going to be higher than someone like, say, Blizzard. Again, part of the 90% we don't know.
I don't jump in on every crowdfunding topic and criticize. I support crowdfunding for young fledgling startups. People new in business with good ideas, trying to make an honest go at it.
The idea behind crowdfunding is good. The premise of easy money invites exploitation.
IMHO this particular project falls into the exploitation category.
Ok, thanks for the clarification. I can at least get an idea of what you're arguing here.
I'm coming at it from a different perspective, looking at the final product. So I look at things like PoE, Tides, Shadowrun, Divinity, Wasteland 2/3. These are all games developed by people who have lots of money, lots of industry experience, and lots of industry contacts who could have probably got backed by VC or something if they really wanted to go that direction. They aren't crooks, they'd just prefer to not have the restrictions of investors. We've all heard horror stories about that.
Honestly, I'd rather put my money into a game by somebody who's known than someone looking to make "a go of it" only because, while I can appreciate their ambitions, the risk to that project increases exponentially depending on their experience, or lack thereof. Especially with something as big as an MMORPG. The Yogcast guys were a perfect example of that. Jason Appleton was another. Basically, hopes don't float boats. There are success stories like Chivalry. It happens all the time on Kickstarter. However, multi-million dollar games are risky. MMORPGs are risky. As far as portalarium is concerned, I think it's pretty much doomed the same way Pantheon is doomed or CU is doomed. However, that doesn't lessen their obligation to the few people who did buy into their product. If this was an exploitation play they'd have packed it in long ago. They've made an attempt, they could simply release it as is and absolve themselves of any additional responsibility, but they aren't. Read more at http://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/461453/shroud-of-the-avatar-strikes-again/p3#jhxvhkWj7dX6kx4T.99
I understand where you're coming from, but the people putting out the cash for these projects are investors.
It's the new age of investing.
Yeah, but that's the same case here. I already show you how, conservatively, the company has spent nearly $10 million on this. KS raised $2 million of that. It's more likely that they're approaching the $15-$18 million mark since the company was already up and running BEFORE the KS got underway. The KS was a reactive venture in this case. So they've got other funding and have had some for a while. The "investor", whoever that is, is currently on the hook for a vastly higher percentage of that cash.
Your sentiments are exactly what's wrong with crowdfunding, though. The investors see all the warts up close and personal. The development process is exposed and the reality of inefficient processes or actual amount of work involved with making a game is unsavory. This is the one reason I'm not a fan of crowdfunding. On the whole, though, I support it. I just back something and then cover my ears and I don't want to hear about it again until it's released.
I know coding is a skilled profession. What is the average salary for someone in gaming? and elsewhere for that matter.
Yeah, but that's the same case here. I already show you how, conservatively, the company has spent nearly $10 million on this. KS raised $2 million of that. It's more likely that they're approaching the $15-$18 million mark since the company was already up and running BEFORE the KS got underway. The KS was a reactive venture in this case. So they've got other funding and have had some for a while. The "investor", whoever that is, is currently on the hook for a vastly higher percentage of that cash.
Your sentiments are exactly what's wrong with crowdfunding, though. The investors see all the warts up close and personal. The development process is exposed and the reality of inefficient processes or actual amount of work involved with making a game is unsavory. This is the one reason I'm not a fan of crowdfunding. On the whole, though, I support it. I just back something and then cover my ears and I don't want to hear about it again until it's released.
I know coding is a skilled profession. What is the average salary for someone in gaming? and elsewhere for that matter.
By your numbers it must be pretty high.
edit:
Interesting
I wonder if those numbers include Steam sales
Cool numbers!!! I did not see this!! Thanks!
I pulled the numbers based on the average software dev salary in Austin, TX. Granted, not everyone would be making that, some would be higher, some lower. However, I also only estimated based on 22 employees, when the current number is 36. All around, it should be relatively conservative. I mean I try to stick to conservative numbers as much as possible so it's easier to argue
Based on these images, though, this means that steam sales could be, effectively, $0. There are 62,000 backers total and only 42,000 owners on Steam. Someone who is more in the know than me could probably state whether or not this is true, but generally crowdfunded games don't distribute themselves if they have a distribution system like steam in place. So is there a way to tell how many players actually bought through steam? No idea!
Also troubling is that only 31k players have even played it and less than 2000 in the past 2 weeks. That being said, of those, the average play times are pretty high (like 20 hours per person). So somebody likes it, I suppose.
Also interesting is that this image probably proves there is some kind of a market for this type of game. I've argued in the past that getting 50k users would be difficult, at best, approaching impossible. I suppose the backer numbers here suggest that people are at least interested enough to back. Not play, but back. Which probably means that the market is somewhat larger than the number of backers. So could they get to 300k owners post-launch? It MIGHT be possible. Fuck! I hate being wrong on a Friday. Fucks up my whole weekend.
Yeah, but that's the same case here. I already show you how, conservatively, the company has spent nearly $10 million on this. KS raised $2 million of that. It's more likely that they're approaching the $15-$18 million mark since the company was already up and running BEFORE the KS got underway. The KS was a reactive venture in this case. So they've got other funding and have had some for a while. The "investor", whoever that is, is currently on the hook for a vastly higher percentage of that cash.
Thing is they were 3 months from having to shut their doors and decide if they wanted to close the company and start a new one before this kickstarter. They'd used up the money investors gave them for their failed app game and only had enough money for about 3 months and they wouldnt be getting anymore so they whipped up the game with cheap and free assets to get something out there to pitch to the nostalgic UO and Ultima fans. I havent seen anything that they have gotten anymore funding outside the kickstarter since the beginning, did you see something somewhere?
32:00 – Richard talks about Portalarium’s failure to chase the social media and mobile gaming trend.
41:00 – Richard mentions Portalarium’s foray into social and mobile gaming was a disaster and talks about Portalarium having only enough funds to operate for another 3 months just before the Shroud of the Avatar Kickstarter was launched. He mentions receiving advice from Cloud Imperium Games (Chris Roberts / Star Citizen) about what it would take to do a Kickstarter, and then goes on to say that they started from literally nothing and put together the Shroud of the Avatar Kickstarter in 45 days.
43:00 – Richard mentions they took their art almost exclusively from the Unity Asset Store and wrote a bare minimum of code.
44:40 – Richard admits the $1M fundraising target in their Kickstarter was an amount they decided would allow them to “get out of this pickle” and not necessarily finish the product (which of course would entail fulfilling the promises made in the Kickstarter).
So they're reselling indie artists' assets in their game, supporting the artist, providing more options for players, and saving on labor costs so I don't see this is as a bad thing at all. Why do you people hate indie artists?
The asset was acquired for free: that is not supporting indie artists. If they had an iota of integrity they would have contacted the artist and asked them to make some assets for their game- either paying them for it upfront or giving them a percentage of sales from the asset store.
What they did (as far as I can tell from the OP) was to exploit the artist by reselling something the artist had provided for free in goodwill.
So they're reselling indie artists' assets in their game, supporting the artist, providing more options for players, and saving on labor costs so I don't see this is as a bad thing at all. Why do you people hate indie artists?
The asset was acquired for free: that is not supporting indie artists. If they had an iota of integrity they would have contacted the artist and asked them to make some assets for their game- either paying them for it upfront or giving them a percentage of sales from the asset store.
What they did (as far as I can tell from the OP) was to exploit the artist by reselling something the artist had provided for free in goodwill.
He makes a poor house building analogy in the process. No, we don't expect the carpenter to create his own boards, but if he got them for free we would not expect to pay a large price for them just because the carpenter underestimated the price of the original job.
They apparently didn't get this asset for free, as a dev explained:
"I completely understand that without complete information this could be frustrating.
Assets like these are often only free if you do not resell them like we are. Even if it was free it doesn't just magically appear in the game without any effort. It takes actual development time to get it working in the game properly. Many hours in fact. Sometimes the textures have to be adjusted. Often we have to make levels of detail versions. We have to make simple colliders. We have to set all the proper decoration and permission flags. We then have to spend time adding it to offers and the add on store. That costs money. It is not free."
As you say the game is pretty niche and other than milking the existing player base there are not many other avenues to bring in enough money to continue the development of that game.
Also note that the preparation they are talking about is extremely easy (especially in Unity), even I can do that and I am not a game dev. I can't believe it would take hours for a pro to do that, unless the asset needed some extreme reworking/re-texturing.
He makes a poor house building analogy in the process. No, we don't expect the carpenter to create his own boards, but if he got them for free we would not expect to pay a large price for them just because the carpenter underestimated the price of the original job.
They apparently didn't get this asset for free, as a dev explained:
"I completely understand that without complete information this could be frustrating.
Assets like these are often only free if you do not resell them like we are. Even if it was free it doesn't just magically appear in the game without any effort. It takes actual development time to get it working in the game properly. Many hours in fact. Sometimes the textures have to be adjusted. Often we have to make levels of detail versions. We have to make simple colliders. We have to set all the proper decoration and permission flags. We then have to spend time adding it to offers and the add on store. That costs money. It is not free."
As you say the game is pretty niche and other than milking the existing player base there are not many other avenues to bring in enough money to continue the development of that game.
Also note that the preparation they are talking about is extremely easy (especially in Unity), even I can do that and I am not a game dev. I can't believe it would take hours for a pro to do that, unless the asset needed some extreme reworking/re-texturing.
Honestly... WHO CARES how this particular store item was obtained?
They have a range of pricing on things to have a range of pricing on things. Some things they made, some things community members made, some things they paid for from the unity store, some things they did not.
They have items in-game that you can craft they did not get for free. They have items in their store that perhaps they did get for free.
Every single cosmetic thing they have in pledges, bundles, stores, costs nothing once it's built and people can keep buying them - they all sell for more than the cost to obtain.
The funding model relies on a range of players. - People who will pay just for the base game and will earn anything else in-game (by the way I have neighbours who obtained a house with in-game currency after a month of playing - not for "hundreds of dollars"). - People who will make purchases of small cosmetic items they like. There's no subscription, so the store is what is used instead. - People who will buy tons of assets in the store, because they "must have that 50$ statue"
Building the game costs something - time, employees and money.
Nobody is forced to buy the 50$ "giant" horse thing. Nor the smaller one that's a life-sized statue for 20$. It's a choice you make.
There will be people out there that will buy it simply because it IS 50$, and there will be people who buy 5$ statues because they're cheap, and there will be people who will only want to place the in-game craftable statues, and there will be people saying "wtf why would I want a statue, I'm just here to kill other players."
Who would buy the pillars set from the store for 10$ when it looks nearly identical to the ones you can craft in-game? Someone. Not me, but someone will. I don't criticize Portalarium for selling something cosmetic for big bucks - if someone else buys it, that helps to fund the game I'm playing.
I don't criticize Portalarium for how they raise the funds as long as they stay away from a pay to win shop. They skirt the line with the unbreakable tools imo, but those are actually really cheap to obtain in-game for gold from other players because the unbreakable tools are abundant... and they never break.
I don't criticize Portalarium for selling cosmetic junk, nor do I criticize other people for how they want to spend their money either, they can buy the statues or not - their choice.
You want a 50$ horse? Go for it. You don't? Then don't.
Why do we need a 5-page thread ranting about it?
What else should we criticize Portalarium for now?
I know - the Hot Tub probably cost more than 5$ to implement, we need 5+ pages about why it's not fair to price the digital hot tub so cheap when the digital horsey is so expensive.
So they're reselling indie artists' assets in their game, supporting the artist, providing more options for players, and saving on labor costs so I don't see this is as a bad thing at all. Why do you people hate indie artists?
The asset was acquired for free: that is not supporting indie artists. If they had an iota of integrity they would have contacted the artist and asked them to make some assets for their game- either paying them for it upfront or giving them a percentage of sales from the asset store.
What they did (as far as I can tell from the OP) was to exploit the artist by reselling something the artist had provided for free in goodwill.
What I can tell from the OP is that they have a particular stance regarding Portalarium/Shroud of the Avatar. The OP does NOT inform us they are exploiting the artist who "provided the item for free in goodwill." Someone will have to ask the artist if the artist feels exploited. During this same time a bundle of new statuary went into the game that one can craft for free - perhaps the price they decided to charge for the horse covers their costs in a short time period of importing all the different statue sets they got in that same time.
I still don't see why anyone cares. If the artist has a problem with it they can always ask Portalarium not to sell it. But anything Portalarium sells funds the game - if people want to buy it. There seems to be a demand for this kind of thing. If selling 20 of these horse-things means they can put 50 new craftable items in the game that are free I've got zero problems with it. I personally have seen the horse in-game and thought it was kind of ugly.
That's got to take the cake. Its one thing to grab free assets from the Unity store and use them in your game. Its another thing to take free assets from the Unity asset store and SELL them in your store to players to use in your game. I'm speechless.
I have a friend who works in the automotive and aerospace sector and I can tell you this happens all the time. In fact, they charge a couple hundred bucks for the same bearing that they sell for thousands into aerospace. Only difference is paperwork.
You can't talk about keeping the dream alive because there are actually people who are wanting this game, I guess. So if they want to support it, great for them. Last time I checked, they weren't instituting a mandatory buy on the horse statue. If they did then I could understand the big deal.
Oh, and I did address the matter of cost and salaries above. As a business owner I felt like you would be able to see that they aren't rolling in the dough and it seems unlikely that they are in the black even. So I don't know where you're getting all this party lifestyle spending spree bullshit. They just got a free asset, that's not blowing the bank.
You do understand people don't have a problem with them selling things in the cash shop that THEY make, or flat out begging for donations, but come on, really? Lets take freeware assets and resell them, you don't see a problem with that, at all? they are not including it in their game then selling their game with it in it, they are literally SELLING the item itself. Its.....sleazy.
Honestly... WHO CARES how this particular store item was obtained?
They have a range of pricing on things to have a range of pricing on things. Some things they made, some things community members made, some things they paid for from the unity store, some things they did not.
They have items in-game that you can craft they did not get for free. They have items in their store that perhaps they did get for free.
Every single cosmetic thing they have in pledges, bundles, stores, costs nothing once it's built and people can keep buying them - they all sell for more than the cost to obtain.
The funding model relies on a range of players. - People who will pay just for the base game and will earn anything else in-game (by the way I have neighbours who obtained a house with in-game currency after a month of playing - not for "hundreds of dollars"). - People who will make purchases of small cosmetic items they like. There's no subscription, so the store is what is used instead. - People who will buy tons of assets in the store, because they "must have that 50$ statue"
Building the game costs something - time, employees and money.
Nobody is forced to buy the 50$ "giant" horse thing. Nor the smaller one that's a life-sized statue for 20$. It's a choice you make.
There will be people out there that will buy it simply because it IS 50$, and there will be people who buy 5$ statues because they're cheap, and there will be people who will only want to place the in-game craftable statues, and there will be people saying "wtf why would I want a statue, I'm just here to kill other players."
Who would buy the pillars set from the store for 10$ when it looks nearly identical to the ones you can craft in-game? Someone. Not me, but someone will. I don't criticize Portalarium for selling something cosmetic for big bucks - if someone else buys it, that helps to fund the game I'm playing.
I don't criticize Portalarium for how they raise the funds as long as they stay away from a pay to win shop. They skirt the line with the unbreakable tools imo, but those are actually really cheap to obtain in-game for gold from other players because the unbreakable tools are abundant... and they never break.
I don't criticize Portalarium for selling cosmetic junk, nor do I criticize other people for how they want to spend their money either, they can buy the statues or not - their choice.
You want a 50$ horse? Go for it. You don't? Then don't.
Why do we need a 5-page thread ranting about it?
What else should we criticize Portalarium for now?
I know - the Hot Tub probably cost more than 5$ to implement, we need 5+ pages about why it's not fair to price the digital hot tub so cheap when the digital horsey is so expensive.
You got a right to your opinion but mine is.....
High end backers like you don't care how it looks. To new people that might look at this game they should know how this game is just a grindy sleezy money grab with no effort or quality put into it. (They should know this game came about because portalarium was months from closing their doors trying to chase the app game market and threw this turd together to keep their doors open. That came straight from RG he said something similar to that, minus the word turd.)
Dude just look at the prices in that store. $50 for a darn tree? $50 for a horse statue hundreds and thousands of dollars for a lot and houses. They're so desperate for money they're selling blood for thousands of dollars. I mean look at that store, half that stuff you can find on unity asset store for cheap prices It's hilarious.. Hell even the turdy looking mobs they got in game are mostly $10-$45 dollar assets they bought. It just shows what type of quality you get from these jokers. If you and Portalarium think that's just dandy you're in for a surprise when the devs stop hiding behind the early access tag and say it's released. Reviews for the game is already bad, and it's just gonna get worse.
Why would anyone aside from backers like you that spent thousands of dollars and are on the cheerleading squad pay the price of a triple A game for those amateurish high priced add-ons? I'm sure they'll slap a subscription in their game soon to try and milk more money before the game has to close.
Hell you can go to elder scrolls online and buy the grandest houses you want for in game gold or crowns. You got a choice and it won't cost you thousands of dollars for them. Sota is a turd of a game and no matter how much the cheerleaders try and deceive people it's still a turd that you spent thousands of dollars for and you can't keep but a few hundred people playing out of the what over 60k people that backed it? Remember the time devs asked people to go put some reviews up because they were in the mixed on steam and wouldn't get much money if it stayed that way?
Keep kidding yourself dude aren't you due back to the shroud forums where you dudes bully and attack others for telling the truth about this turdy game. Hey are you Lord Andernut? If so your the one that tried to bully that person that made the 50 dollar horse statue post right? They didn't kiss up about this gaudy cheap horses price and thank the devs for gouging people with overpriced cheap crap like you did and this would make your game look bad because of the title or something....Let me look real quick, oh yeah that's you. You basically had the gall to tell this person they can't speak their mind and you want them to change their post to suit you. You told them to revise their thoughts as if you and the other high and mighty cheerleaders are forum godsand tell people how they should think? Why should that dude revise their thoughts to reflect what YOU want them to say, unbelievable.
Are you people this touchy? Jesus you all are old uo fans so guessing in your 40s and 50s and getting all sensitive over not being nice? And telling that person that? I can't say I'm surprised that's the type of pathetic bullying that community offers on a daily basis.
Comments
You're right, you are free to criticize all you like. I think you prove my point, though, so thanks. In the end this is a business, and all businesses are fucking people over, and I'm sure you're no different. You even admit that your retailers are selling the product you sell them for 4 times what you sell it to them for. The reality is that these are businesses, not charities. I can appreciate the "idea" of your moral compass and where you say you stand, but you also seem awfully judgey for someone who probably knows 10% of the story. That's cool, though, I know that from a high horse on top of an ivory tower, there is literally nobody that you can't look down on.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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Yet companies like Portalarium Inc. want your and my charity.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
Well at least that's one thing we can agree on. I also wish I could say "Yeah, but in the end they're making an amazing game!", but I can't even really say that. In the end it's just another crowdfunding project. I don't think it comes down to a question of morals. Maybe you're not a fan of the model, I don't know, but I could at least understand if you were making a blanket statement that "This is why I don't like crowdfunding. They don't even have a product, yet they're selling <insert thing they're selling>." However, that implicates all crowdfunding companies as a whole, not just these guys. I'm sure I could easily find a handful of games trying to sell me something for their incomplete project, today, and they can try to sell all they like. I probably won't buy it, but I'm sure there are some who will. Maybe some feel that the net benefit is worth it for them. That isn't charity, that's them selling you something. Based on your definition of charity, every single VC backed company are charity cases. Every start-up looking for funding are charities. That's a pretty broad brush to be painting with. Again, though, I can understand it from people living in ivory towers.
Oh, also, I didn't do any reading on the art asset, but it's entirely possible that they would have had to license the asset in order to resell it. Also, even though some assets are free on the unity store, they are not allowed to be used commercially without a license. So this is part of that 90% that we don't know about. Also, people are assuming because it says "free" that there are no associated costs. Again, there are implementation costs to this. Once that's taken into consideration and, probably, the overall cost per unit sold is likely going to be higher than someone like, say, Blizzard. Again, part of the 90% we don't know.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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The idea behind crowdfunding is good. The premise of easy money invites exploitation.
IMHO this particular project falls into the exploitation category.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
https://www.reddit.com/r/shroudoftheavatar/comments/5vzhpp/wow_addon_store_items_they_got_for_free_from_unity/
Ok, thanks for the clarification. I can at least get an idea of what you're arguing here.
I'm coming at it from a different perspective, looking at the final product. So I look at things like PoE, Tides, Shadowrun, Divinity, Wasteland 2/3. These are all games developed by people who have lots of money, lots of industry experience, and lots of industry contacts who could have probably got backed by VC or something if they really wanted to go that direction. They aren't crooks, they'd just prefer to not have the restrictions of investors. We've all heard horror stories about that.
Honestly, I'd rather put my money into a game by somebody who's known than someone looking to make "a go of it" only because, while I can appreciate their ambitions, the risk to that project increases exponentially depending on their experience, or lack thereof. Especially with something as big as an MMORPG. The Yogcast guys were a perfect example of that. Jason Appleton was another. Basically, hopes don't float boats. There are success stories like Chivalry. It happens all the time on Kickstarter. However, multi-million dollar games are risky. MMORPGs are risky. As far as portalarium is concerned, I think it's pretty much doomed the same way Pantheon is doomed or CU is doomed. However, that doesn't lessen their obligation to the few people who did buy into their product. If this was an exploitation play they'd have packed it in long ago. They've made an attempt, they could simply release it as is and absolve themselves of any additional responsibility, but they aren't.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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It's the new age of investing.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
There are many reasons for some people to be angry I guess (relatively high price for a virtual item, purchased at low / no cost on Unity Store, devs not saying a word about it afaik so people thought it was created by the artists, etc.).
Otoh developing a game in the US costs load of money and I understand how it may seem necessary for this studio, considering their current situation, to take shortcuts and sell this kind of things in the store.
Yeah, but that's the same case here. I already show you how, conservatively, the company has spent nearly $10 million on this. KS raised $2 million of that. It's more likely that they're approaching the $15-$18 million mark since the company was already up and running BEFORE the KS got underway. The KS was a reactive venture in this case. So they've got other funding and have had some for a while. The "investor", whoever that is, is currently on the hook for a vastly higher percentage of that cash.
Your sentiments are exactly what's wrong with crowdfunding, though. The investors see all the warts up close and personal. The development process is exposed and the reality of inefficient processes or actual amount of work involved with making a game is unsavory. This is the one reason I'm not a fan of crowdfunding. On the whole, though, I support it. I just back something and then cover my ears and I don't want to hear about it again until it's released.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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Oh, they did pay for it, did they? I wondered about that in a previous post.
So that actually casts a big question mark over the whole thing because now there is a cost. So now the Blizzard example becomes even more relevant. So Blizzard sells the Warforged Nightmare mount for $30 which APPARENTLY is owned by 11% of the user base. Assuming that's 500,000, then we're talking about $15 million!!! NOW!! Let's say Blizzard is paying this person $80k per year to make these mounts. We've heard that the horrible art staff at SC take a CRAZY 3-6 weeks to get a new character into the game. So let's say it takes 6 weeks. So we're looking at somewhere around $10k to get that into the game. The cost per unit would then hover around the $0.02 per unit.
Call me crazy, but that might as well be free. People can be as critical as they want, but there's absolutely no way that the price Portalarium is paying per unit sold is less than $0.02. I don't even care what they bought it for.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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By your numbers it must be pretty high.
edit:
Interesting
I wonder if those numbers include Steam sales
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
Cool numbers!!! I did not see this!! Thanks!
I pulled the numbers based on the average software dev salary in Austin, TX. Granted, not everyone would be making that, some would be higher, some lower. However, I also only estimated based on 22 employees, when the current number is 36. All around, it should be relatively conservative. I mean I try to stick to conservative numbers as much as possible so it's easier to argue
Based on these images, though, this means that steam sales could be, effectively, $0. There are 62,000 backers total and only 42,000 owners on Steam. Someone who is more in the know than me could probably state whether or not this is true, but generally crowdfunded games don't distribute themselves if they have a distribution system like steam in place. So is there a way to tell how many players actually bought through steam? No idea!
Also troubling is that only 31k players have even played it and less than 2000 in the past 2 weeks. That being said, of those, the average play times are pretty high (like 20 hours per person). So somebody likes it, I suppose.
Also interesting is that this image probably proves there is some kind of a market for this type of game. I've argued in the past that getting 50k users would be difficult, at best, approaching impossible. I suppose the backer numbers here suggest that people are at least interested enough to back. Not play, but back. Which probably means that the market is somewhat larger than the number of backers. So could they get to 300k owners post-launch? It MIGHT be possible. Fuck! I hate being wrong on a Friday. Fucks up my whole weekend.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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What they did (as far as I can tell from the OP) was to exploit the artist by reselling something the artist had provided for free in goodwill.
So, they are also lying to us ..wow.
They have a range of pricing on things to have a range of pricing on things. Some things they made, some things community members made, some things they paid for from the unity store, some things they did not.
They have items in-game that you can craft they did not get for free. They have items in their store that perhaps they did get for free.
Every single cosmetic thing they have in pledges, bundles, stores, costs nothing once it's built and people can keep buying them - they all sell for more than the cost to obtain.
The funding model relies on a range of players.
- People who will pay just for the base game and will earn anything else in-game (by the way I have neighbours who obtained a house with in-game currency after a month of playing - not for "hundreds of dollars").
- People who will make purchases of small cosmetic items they like. There's no subscription, so the store is what is used instead.
- People who will buy tons of assets in the store, because they "must have that 50$ statue"
Building the game costs something - time, employees and money.
Nobody is forced to buy the 50$ "giant" horse thing. Nor the smaller one that's a life-sized statue for 20$. It's a choice you make.
There will be people out there that will buy it simply because it IS 50$, and there will be people who buy 5$ statues because they're cheap, and there will be people who will only want to place the in-game craftable statues, and there will be people saying "wtf why would I want a statue, I'm just here to kill other players."
Who would buy the pillars set from the store for 10$ when it looks nearly identical to the ones you can craft in-game? Someone. Not me, but someone will. I don't criticize Portalarium for selling something cosmetic for big bucks - if someone else buys it, that helps to fund the game I'm playing.
I don't criticize Portalarium for how they raise the funds as long as they stay away from a pay to win shop. They skirt the line with the unbreakable tools imo, but those are actually really cheap to obtain in-game for gold from other players because the unbreakable tools are abundant... and they never break.
I don't criticize Portalarium for selling cosmetic junk, nor do I criticize other people for how they want to spend their money either, they can buy the statues or not - their choice.
You want a 50$ horse? Go for it. You don't? Then don't.
Why do we need a 5-page thread ranting about it?
What else should we criticize Portalarium for now?
I know - the Hot Tub probably cost more than 5$ to implement, we need 5+ pages about why it's not fair to price the digital hot tub so cheap when the digital horsey is so expensive.
What I can tell from the OP is that they have a particular stance regarding Portalarium/Shroud of the Avatar. The OP does NOT inform us they are exploiting the artist who "provided the item for free in goodwill." Someone will have to ask the artist if the artist feels exploited. During this same time a bundle of new statuary went into the game that one can craft for free - perhaps the price they decided to charge for the horse covers their costs in a short time period of importing all the different statue sets they got in that same time.
I still don't see why anyone cares. If the artist has a problem with it they can always ask Portalarium not to sell it. But anything Portalarium sells funds the game - if people want to buy it. There seems to be a demand for this kind of thing. If selling 20 of these horse-things means they can put 50 new craftable items in the game that are free I've got zero problems with it. I personally have seen the horse in-game and thought it was kind of ugly.
High end backers like you don't care how it looks. To new people that might look at this game they should know how this game is just a grindy sleezy money grab with no effort or quality put into it. (They should know this game came about because portalarium was months from closing their doors trying to chase the app game market and threw this turd together to keep their doors open. That came straight from RG he said something similar to that, minus the word turd.)
Dude just look at the prices in that store. $50 for a darn tree? $50 for a horse statue hundreds and thousands of dollars for a lot and houses. They're so desperate for money they're selling blood for thousands of dollars. I mean look at that store, half that stuff you can find on unity asset store for cheap prices It's hilarious.. Hell even the turdy looking mobs they got in game are mostly $10-$45 dollar assets they bought. It just shows what type of quality you get from these jokers. If you and Portalarium think that's just dandy you're in for a surprise when the devs stop hiding behind the early access tag and say it's released. Reviews for the game is already bad, and it's just gonna get worse.
Why would anyone aside from backers like you that spent thousands of dollars and are on the cheerleading squad pay the price of a triple A game for those amateurish high priced add-ons? I'm sure they'll slap a subscription in their game soon to try and milk more money before the game has to close.
Hell you can go to elder scrolls online and buy the grandest houses you want for in game gold or crowns. You got a choice and it won't cost you thousands of dollars for them. Sota is a turd of a game and no matter how much the cheerleaders try and deceive people it's still a turd that you spent thousands of dollars for and you can't keep but a few hundred people playing out of the what over 60k people that backed it? Remember the time devs asked people to go put some reviews up because they were in the mixed on steam and wouldn't get much money if it stayed that way?
Keep kidding yourself dude aren't you due back to the shroud forums where you dudes bully and attack others for telling the truth about this turdy game. Hey are you Lord Andernut? If so your the one that tried to bully that person that made the 50 dollar horse statue post right? They didn't kiss up about this gaudy cheap horses price and thank the devs for gouging people with overpriced cheap crap like you did and this would make your game look bad because of the title or something....Let me look real quick, oh yeah that's you. You basically had the gall to tell this person they can't speak their mind and you want them to change their post to suit you. You told them to revise their thoughts as if you and the other high and mighty cheerleaders are forum godsand tell people how they should think? Why should that dude revise their thoughts to reflect what YOU want them to say, unbelievable.
Here it's is:
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/are-people-here-really-ok-with-this-sort-of-thing.81211/page-2#post-764545
The first post is a wee bit inflammatory - might want to copy @DarkStarr's response into your OP and your revised thoughts.
Are you people this touchy? Jesus you all are old uo fans so guessing in your 40s and 50s and getting all sensitive over not being nice? And telling that person that? I can't say I'm surprised that's the type of pathetic bullying that community offers on a daily basis.
This isn't a signature, you just think it is.