This.
How many times in barely over a week have they had to say something like this?
And he completely ducked explaining the Batman decision , I'm guessing because how do you explain that ?
Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
How many times in barely over a week have they had to say something like this?
And he completely ducked explaining the Batman decision , I'm guessing because how do you explain that ?
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We're not relaxed because the work they've done since launching the Kickstarter has been rather shit.
I have my $250 worth of faith backing the project, but damn if it hasn't been hard to avoid getting discouraged by how they are handling this. It's a proper mess.
Of course I don't ant Rift/Tera/SWTOR like stuff to keep on pouring in, but I also don't want a shitty game. I'm not willing to forgive everything just because they promise a design philosophy that appeals to me. They have to demonstrate that they are capable of delivering something good.
Muligan
Trakanon Raider
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Time? Yup, 31 days to get it right. If they want everyone's money and if these little announcements are all we have to go on then I think they get whatever they deserve for every minor detail.
I think it has less to do with his audience, and more to do with him. He's infamous for a very public meltdown in the same space he wants to reenter. Therefore he has to try harder than everyone else. His KS tries less hard than everyone else. That's the critical problem. He has had more good will than I thought he would. We're desperate.
What if the negatives result in the Kickstarter not being successful?
Just hypothetical, let's say Brad and his vision doesn't extend to being able to do a good Kickstarter. It doesn't matterwhatthe downfall is, if we all just go along on the positive and assume they'll get it right eventually it might not work. This isn't an alpha of a game they can continually tweak until it's fixed, there is a definite deadline and if that deadline passes without it working just how likely is it the second go around is successful? What will the PC Gamer article be then, "Remember we told you Brad was back... well it's 6 months later and he's back again for real this time".
It's not being doom and gloom, it's just trying to make the point that we all give a massive shit about making this happen but we don't really believe it's being given its best shot by continuing the way it is.
If you're still listening Brad, here's something to takeaway from all this: stop with the "big reveals" and just constantly be talking about your game and features. Do it all the time. This is the pattern the thread followed:
Kickstarter soonT
"WHERE IS THE KICKSTARTER"
Basic info about the game, more to be revealed soon, we promise
"WHERE IS THE PC GAMER ARTICLE"
Dark knight.
Hyping up big reveals does not work when you're this niche. You have to be on forums constantly talking about your design and gameplay goals. You needed to have been doing that LONG before the kickstarter launched, because word of mouth is what needs to be working for you, and right now the word of mouth is "wait for some PC gamer article". Everyone knows the game will have clerics and not-shadowknights. that's not the kind of stuff that gets people excited and talking. That's what people expect and demand and will get mad about if it's *not* in the game. Want to get people excited? Post a concept map of a dungeon that will blow our fucking minds and make "sebilis seem like kindergarden." It doesn't need to be finalized, but give people something to be excited about. Have your map guy draw something up that's terrifying to even look at on paper, and then tell us how parts of it are pitch black, full of traps, and no in-game map to navigate with but what you draw out with your mapmaking skill.
Stuff like that's what will get people talking.
Kickstarter soonT
"WHERE IS THE KICKSTARTER"
Basic info about the game, more to be revealed soon, we promise
"WHERE IS THE PC GAMER ARTICLE"
Dark knight.
Hyping up big reveals does not work when you're this niche. You have to be on forums constantly talking about your design and gameplay goals. You needed to have been doing that LONG before the kickstarter launched, because word of mouth is what needs to be working for you, and right now the word of mouth is "wait for some PC gamer article". Everyone knows the game will have clerics and not-shadowknights. that's not the kind of stuff that gets people excited and talking. That's what people expect and demand and will get mad about if it's *not* in the game. Want to get people excited? Post a concept map of a dungeon that will blow our fucking minds and make "sebilis seem like kindergarden." It doesn't need to be finalized, but give people something to be excited about. Have your map guy draw something up that's terrifying to even look at on paper, and then tell us how parts of it are pitch black, full of traps, and no in-game map to navigate with but what you draw out with your mapmaking skill.
Stuff like that's what will get people talking.
Quaid
Trump's Staff
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Ben's 'playable bunny' lip-service crap is annoying to anyone but pants-on-head-drooling-fanboys.
It's so early guys! We don't know what classes there will be yet! Absolutely ridiculous.
The FIRST thing you should have determined about Terminus would be what types of problems the game would ask the players to accept. Those problems should be solved via the sets of solutions (classes -> abilities) you give to players. So what they're saying is that they have no idea what kind of things the players will need to do in their game, but we should probably buy it because 'this is gonna rock'.
The arrogance of coming to kickstarter before they had answers to these fundamentals is staggering.
It's so early guys! We don't know what classes there will be yet! Absolutely ridiculous.
The FIRST thing you should have determined about Terminus would be what types of problems the game would ask the players to accept. Those problems should be solved via the sets of solutions (classes -> abilities) you give to players. So what they're saying is that they have no idea what kind of things the players will need to do in their game, but we should probably buy it because 'this is gonna rock'.
The arrogance of coming to kickstarter before they had answers to these fundamentals is staggering.
This thread is more entertaining then Pantheon ever could hope to be. Brad if you're still reading a quick tip is to undersell and then outperform. Nothing hurts more than unmet expectations even if said expectations were not realistic to begin with.
Muligan
Trakanon Raider
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Lithose
Buzzfeed Editor
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Heh, I love the hair splitting on "investor". Yes, the investopedia entry will tell you kick starters are not investors. And that's correct, they are not.
However, the precise definition of what they are isn't as important as how they need toviewed. Since there is no product to speak of, what Brad is really selling is his capability to make something. That means, a huge part of this pitch needs to be confidence building, confidence in himselfandin the product. In that way, you'd definitely want to look at these people like investors, because you want to instill confidence in them like you would an investor.
Anyway, like I said before--this is being run as if they are selling a product, rather than an idea. I'm no so sure that will work out for them. It's not a coincidence that other successful kick-starters came out swinging with a deluge of rock solid information, and then whored out their well known and trusted names like there was no tomorrow and instead of using info to bait people, they used dialogue and inclusion to do so (Make it so everyone believes they are part of the process--they are like mini-devs!). These campaigns have to be looked at more likepsyching up a crowd, rather than bringing in customers. Because it's thecrowdthat's ultimately going to bring in other people willing to put up money--not your ad campaign.
The reason for that is because discreet advertisements alone almost never produce an impetus to purchase. It takes a slew of them (Hence the term Ad CAMPAIGN)--and without a product, these guys don't have the time or information to continue acampaignfor the months it takes for normal ad methods to be effective. (Especially recently, over the last 15 years, since the media boom from all the new tech, market action from normal advertising has dropped significantly--more sources have made each individual source less effective.)
Anyway, long story short--AdvertisingCampaigns, tend to take a long time and require a lot of tangible information. Kickstarters don't have either of those. Youcan'tsell it the same way you would a completed or "in development" game.
However, the precise definition of what they are isn't as important as how they need toviewed. Since there is no product to speak of, what Brad is really selling is his capability to make something. That means, a huge part of this pitch needs to be confidence building, confidence in himselfandin the product. In that way, you'd definitely want to look at these people like investors, because you want to instill confidence in them like you would an investor.
Anyway, like I said before--this is being run as if they are selling a product, rather than an idea. I'm no so sure that will work out for them. It's not a coincidence that other successful kick-starters came out swinging with a deluge of rock solid information, and then whored out their well known and trusted names like there was no tomorrow and instead of using info to bait people, they used dialogue and inclusion to do so (Make it so everyone believes they are part of the process--they are like mini-devs!). These campaigns have to be looked at more likepsyching up a crowd, rather than bringing in customers. Because it's thecrowdthat's ultimately going to bring in other people willing to put up money--not your ad campaign.
The reason for that is because discreet advertisements alone almost never produce an impetus to purchase. It takes a slew of them (Hence the term Ad CAMPAIGN)--and without a product, these guys don't have the time or information to continue acampaignfor the months it takes for normal ad methods to be effective. (Especially recently, over the last 15 years, since the media boom from all the new tech, market action from normal advertising has dropped significantly--more sources have made each individual source less effective.)
Anyway, long story short--AdvertisingCampaigns, tend to take a long time and require a lot of tangible information. Kickstarters don't have either of those. Youcan'tsell it the same way you would a completed or "in development" game.
Muligan
Trakanon Raider
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I can't handle it. I think everyone understand and sympathizes with Brad and where the development process is at this time. However, the level of trust, competence, and direction correlates with the pledges. You have to expect some accountability with these guys. Brad and his team are not newcomers. These guys have worked on the absolute pinnacles of these genre so I keep my expectation high and I will pledge based on their decisions over these next 30 days.
Muligan
Trakanon Raider
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I know.... sorry. Work is closed today due to weather so I'm catching up on some design work and thought I would do something fun really quick while I ate lunch.
You could look at it as investing your capital with the expectation of entertainment return!
Lithose
Buzzfeed Editor
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Research is everything in marketing. Even the most brilliant social media pro bounces his ideas off people, or they hire another company to do so. Granted, you typically want statistically relevant surveys--but doing a few passes against a decent, but closed off population? It's something I don't think any reasonable business would pass up if they could get it for free. And the irony here is Brad had access to a decent population that represented the market share he wanted to sell to, who would also be critical. This place should have been the proving grounds BEFORE the kick starter went up. (Note: I'm not saying design by committee, I'm saying that one brush over a fire tends to burn away the bullshit that builds up from an insular team--feedback is important for any developer, on any project, even outside of video games.)
Yes, you absolutely want a social media guy (or team) to handle fans. But you always want to bounce your ideas outside of your own echo chamber, if only to see if there is a pattern in bad reactions (Dark Knight would have been a pattern). But now it's a little too late, this stuff should have been done before the KS got launched.
Are you playing TESO and answering every complaint with IT'S BETA GUYS? Seriously the point is that if they have been working on this September there should be something more tangible from 10 fucking INDUSTRY VETERANS than this piece of shit kickstarter and some screens an industry noob could have thrown together for an entry level 3D design class. It does take time to get shit right. You take that time, get shit right, THEN ask for money.
Mr Creed
Too old for this shit
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Is that question for lowering it or removing it entirely? Because I'd lower it just to provide that feedback there where I assume it'll reach them (although that's starting to look like a big assumption).