
Shadowrun Returns: an old-school turn-based RPG on Kickstarter - tomislav
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1613260297/shadowrun-returns
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tibbon
What I find most interesting about this Kickstarter trend is that it is
proving game publishing companies wrong. Publishers think that it isn't worth
the money/time to build games like this. They want the next Angry Birds/Modern
Warfare, full of DLC upgrades, in-app purchasing and facebook spam with the
core gaming experience being secondary at best.

While the investors/publishers don't think its worth it monetarily, users are
demanding higher quality games and putting their money where their mouth is.

Its also a huge shift. Instead of guessing what gamers might want, putting
money in, and seeing how the game does- this enables developers to get their
idea fully vetted monetarily and demand-wise upfront, then take the time to
develop the game.

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huggyface
_They want the next Angry Birds/Modern Warfare, full of DLC upgrades_

I chuckled at this as one of the kickstarter levels on this project gets you
enhanced abilities.

Really, though, does everything have to be so binary? Isn't HN above this
"stereotype the worst of the worst and cast it as the only alternative" false
dichotomy?

There are plenty of incredible games that publishers have supported. And in
this case these guys are claiming that they're going to create a PC and a Mac
version for $400,000? Really? Most "real" game cost many millions of dollars
to bring to fruition.

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jiggy2011
$400,000 seems like a reasonable amount to make a game. Maybe not a super
polished AAA game, but it seems they are being ruthless about cutting features
to keep it in budget.

for $400,000 you could easily retain 4 people to work on it full time for a
year.

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joshaidan
I'm wondering if a good idea for a startup would be to take the Kickstarter
model and flip it backwards. Fans propose projects they would like to fund,
others fund it, then the respective rights owners see this interest and
receive the money for the project.

There is a downside to this, which is the respective author might not be
motivated anymore for the project and thus would do a poor job. Or worse, the
company owning the rights to the projects, may decide it's not worth selling
it back to the original author and therefore create their own version that's
not up to par with the author's vision. Perhaps this could be avoided by
specifically targeting the original author so that only s/he could receive the
funding.

But ultimately, I guess the problem is that if it's proven there's a huge
interest in a project, then the current rights owner may be more reluctant to
give up the rights or only at a much higher cost.

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zdgman
I am glad that more developers are deciding to do this and putting more
control into the hands of their consumers.

The biggest benefit to the developer here is that they have paid for initial
development up front AND they get to sell this game on Steam and other market
places once it releases.

Even with a moderate PR push from any one of these companies if they sell 100K
copies at 10 dollars a piece (or even less) they have come out WAY ahead on
this project.

Obviously a big publisher like Activision or EA is going to scoff at something
like a 10 Million dollar profit when they need to fund the rest of their
operations + split that revenue with the developer. They take risks but only
when they know the chances of meeting their return percentage is higher than a
certain threshold.

What was the last game you can remember from a big publisher that took a huge
risk?

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Tichy
I don't understand what exactly they are proposing: a new computer game? The
remake of an existing computer game? Or a reprint of the pen & paper RPG?

~~~
jiggy2011
I think it will be a brand new computer game based on an existing pen & paper
RPG.

According to the video other games were made based on the same RPG (I never
played any of them) but the video hints that these were not so popular with
the "true" fans of the original RPG and this game aims to right those wrongs.

At least that's the impression I got.

~~~
bulletsvshumans
In my experience people like the Shadowrun game on Sega Genesis (it's one of
my personal favorites actually), but not so much the Super Nintendo one. And
the recent Shadowrun first-person shooter borrowed the Shadowrun branding
without much of its essence, angering people who were expecting a deeper
Shadowrun experience.

~~~
lzy
I actually really enjoyed the Super Nintendo version and I was too young (at
that time) to try the Sega Genesis version. Anyhow, I've decided to pledge
$60, for the game, the t-shirt and the docwagon.

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pinaceae
Shadowrun is such a great universe, that mixture of classic fantasy elements
like elfs, orcs, magic with cyberpunk ala neuromancer really hit a nerve.

wonder why there never was a movie or tv series in such a setting, seems way
cooler than vampires.

kickstarter seems to become the ycombinator for gaming, which is awesome in
its own. will be interesting if they'll ever compete.

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sbinetd
It slightly irks me they moved from "Linux support is definitely on the table
too!" to "a Linux version [...] beyond the scope of the project." But not
quite as much as their move to add more technical content when they reach one
million, rather than the expansion into GNU+Linux support.

I do however understand their reasoning. Their cold, realistic and undoubtedly
true reasoning.

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mrinterweb
I still play the Shadowrun pencil and paper game weekly with a group of
friends. I will definitely support this kickstarter.

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sbarre
This morning's update talks about the interface and UI, and they describe it
as "X-Com like"...

So excited..

No Linux or multiplayer in the first version though.. But I'd rather have a
solid and detailed core product, and get MP in v2, if v1 works out..

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jiggy2011
There doesn't seem to be mention on a Linux version at all, rather just a Mac
version.

I have to wonder, if you create a Mac version of a game how difficult would it
be to port it to Linux?

I understand that games designed specifically around Windows (and therefor
DirectX) are going to be a pain to port over to a platform without DirectX.

Surely though Mac versions of games are all based on OpenGL and most Linux
distributions have OpenGL support too (as well as both being Unix type OSes)
so surely the port is not that difficult?

It almost seems justified to have some project that aims to make it easy to
port Mac games to Linux, if that was the case then you would see a massive
increase in the number of Linux games available.

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fufulabs
They are using Moai (getmoai.com) which is a cross-platform LUA based open-
source game engine. It outputs to Android, iOS and Chrome. From what i gather
you can develop+test games on Mac or PC but it doesnt compile to them much
more so for Linux. The Chrome part may play in linux but not so sure about
that.

~~~
jiggy2011
Interesting, I had a quick look at the moai docs and the library mostly looks
like a wrapper for OpenGL and it already targets android which has a Linux
kernel.

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fufulabs
Wow! a bunch of people put in $10,000...

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jiggy2011
It wouldn't surprise me if that was the developers themselves and that was the
money they used to buy their rights back.

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jerf
That doesn't make any sense. They're going to claim their own $10,000 slots
and pay Kickstarter their cut on their own money?

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huhtenberg
By the way - the cut appears to be 5%.

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wccrawford
Plus the payment processor's cut. Another 5%.

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dallas
I've backed a few great tabletop RPG products on Kickstarter/IndieGoGo.

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dromidas
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm BACKIN THAT SH __! That is all.

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jmcgough
A bit off topic, but the new google glasses keep making me think of augmented
reality in Shadowrun 4th Edition. So cool :p

I'm really glad this kickstarter got funded, the Shadowrun universe has always
been one of my favorites.

