I think we are going to worry until the very last second whether we are going to meet the goal or not. They say they are pacing the updates. I'm not sure I like that pace. SC had very little pacing, it was almost all in your face on day one. The fiction stories trickled in every week or so, and new details emerged on a more or less regular basis, but most of the visuals had already been divulged to the raving public (except a few new ship designs).
I can still upgrade if necessary, but I'd rather hope there will be more people who participate in the KS. I don't want to pay 3-5 times more for a game than I have to. Whoever pays more just has money to burn. I could imagine that FD could pay the difference, after all they are getting free money from us the backers.
Biggles<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
Pacing the updates? That sounds like saying "We don't have enough information so we'll release it slowly so that we don't run out." It's not a good sign...
They've been giving daily updates for the last week or so (including today, Christmas Eve) and they do respond to fan questions, I sent them one asking them about the galaxy layout and had a reply within an hour.
That latest update was a staff update of those who are going to be working on ED. That's a nice touch, but does it really help get people excited and ready to pledge (more)? I think not.
It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion. I've also noticed a certain slowdown during the night, so there is no constant flow of pledges, it only trickles when there's no one of FD manning the blog, which seems to indicate that there isn't enough momentum generated by the videos, concept artwork and the design descriptions.
And then there are the Mac and Linux users who are probably boycotting the whole thing because there won't be a version for them on release day. FD has a long history of catering to many platforms, so it is very likely that other platforms will be supported later on. As FD has stated, if the Windows version doesn't get funded, then no version is going to see the light of day. Then they do keep assuring that they will find another way to fund the game if the KS fails, but they'd rather not want to go down that route if they don't have to.
Overall, the crowd tries hard to remain positive even though time is slowly but surely running out and the pledge rate is still not powerful enough to overcome the time issue. I don't follow some of FD's archaic reasoning though. They'd rather get a few more pledgers to give relatively huge amounts of money for a video game, instead of opening the gates a bit more to those who could only afford to pay say £20. Like they beat the drums for the writer packs (£4,500 each) instead of letting more students or cash strapped families in on the fun.
They place too much hope on the KS spike towards the end IMHO.
Biggles<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
[CODE]They've been giving daily updates for the last week or so (including today, Christmas Eve) and they do respond to fan questions, I sent them one asking them about the galaxy layout and had a reply within an hour.[/CODE]
Noone should be expecting such high-frequency updates. Noone should be expecting them to show a nearly-finished game. But saying they're "pacing" the updates makes it sound like they don't have everything they need to present ready yet. When you walk into an investor presentation, you don't tell your potential investors that you have a great idea with a couple of basic concepts, and you'll be back tomorrow or next week with more information. (In my experience with a startup, the search for investors began once product development was already well along with working prototypes that could be demonstrated, and it needed a detailed business plan backed by evidence.) You give them everything at once, up-front. FD should have launched their Kickstarter campaign once they had enough concept material and a detailed-enough development plan prepared to be able to convince people that they could deliver on their promises. Godus had the same problem and I think it's why they struggled as well. Star Citizen, on the other hand, began with a reasonable quantity of concept work, a sound business plan, existing investments (from traditional investors, who typically do a lot more homework before committing than the average Kickstarter contributor is likely to do) to show they had been vetted, and a development team in place and already working. As a result, they generated a lot of excitement and, more importantly, confidence, which directly lead to contributions.
Random ChaosActually Carefully-selected Order in disguise
Looks like something is screwed up with the QUOTE feature when manually entering quotes. I'll track it down tomorrow.
In the interim, what Biggles was trying to quote was:
"They've been giving daily updates for the last week or so (including today, Christmas Eve) and they do respond to fan questions, I sent them one asking them about the galaxy layout and had a reply within an hour."
[h=5]ED Update: 18,175 Backers, £977,740 pledged of £1,250,000 goal, 8 days to go. (78.22% reached, 13.33% time left)[/h]
£1,250,000 - £977,740 = £ 272,260 / 18175 backers = £14.98 per person. If every backer increased their pledge by £15, the project would be funded now.
The people on the KS blog are still cautiously optimistic but it's still quite a way to go to reach the summit. Yes, as far as I'm concerned this is like attempting to climb Mount Everest. The air is pretty thin on top, and many have to brake off the attempts to reach the summit for various reasons. KS runs have failed in the past because of just a few bucks. Some have stated that the goal of £1,250,000 was set too high. In retrospect, they should have made stretch goals to make sure that they wouldn't pledge themselves into a corner. I like how Josh did it with his Limit Theory project, that was smarter IMHO, the pressure to raise money was better distributed and encouraged people to put their cash down. It was not an ALL or NOTHING approach. FD has stretch goals, but they are outside of KS and thus outside of the equation. In a way FD is also a victim of circumstance, being caught with its pants down (unprepared to run an optimal KS) and getting people to fund a project around the holiday season when most have other priorities to spend their money on.
FD did take a risk here, no question about that. It was a gamble, an avalanche was started and everyone is screaming "We are not ready yet!!!" The sole consolation I have right now is that the current backers have the ability to cause their own spike towards the end of the KS run. I mean right now it's £15, but by the end of next week, it's very likely to be much less.
They saw what was happening with Star Citizen and thought they fans of that game would be excited for another space trading game that is expected almost an entire year earlier. And they were right about that, there would be a fair amount of crossover interest. But unfortunately, it meant they didn't have as much to show for the game as they could have and then Christmas (yet surprisingly, people are still pledging).
What I do like is they are posting something every day, yes it might just be about the people making the game (which by the way, Star Citizen has been doing too) but it's something and each time they do, there's a spike in pledges. There was even an update on Christmas Day and even as I write this, I just had an email with update #24.
Seems like they have announced a stretch goal for something that Star Citizen currently isn't planning.
[I]"Over the duration of the project we've received many requests for a Mac version of the game. We are announcing an official stretch goal for the project. If we reach £1.4 million in funding through the Kickstarter project, we will release a Mac version of the game around 3 months after the initial Windows PC release."[/I]
That should get some attention, although I think they'll be hard pressed to make it that far.
ShadowDancerWhen I say, "Why aye, gadgie," in my heart I say, "Och aye, laddie."London, UK
Indeed, I think just getting to their goal will be a stretch, let alone any stretch goals! To be honest, I'm not that fussed about a Mac version of the game (even tho I spend most of my time on Mac's these days), as I'll be having to upgrade my pc significantly in preparation for Star Citizen anyway.
"My dad always used to say, 'If you're falling off a cliff, you may as well try to fly. You have nothing to lose.'" -- Captain John Sheridan, Babylon 5
I am not sure that making a Mac OS version a stretch goal is going to help that much in a sense that this was already something FD were expected to do before. And as Worf said, the initial goal is a stretch as it is. We'll just have to see.
I always thought that giving players the ability to create their own ships was going to be a problem, but Limit Theory has a neat solution to that problem. I wonder what we'll get in the end with SC. It's clear that you want to get people excited and that you will promise anything just to get them to jump on board.
Hardware upgrades are also the main reason why I try to limit my pledge to what I still consider reasonable. I'm hoping that more people who just put down £20 will double their pledge. I'm not going to double or triple my pledge just to fly around with an avatar saying "I'm one of those fools who paid too much for this game! Can I get a hug, please?" ;-)
[B]ED Status: 18,245 Backers, £990,431 pledged of £1,250,000 goal, 8 days to go. (79.23% reached, 13.33% time left)[/B]
Getting close to £1,050,000, which means just over £200k to go. They really need to put out more updates than once per day though, given the spike that happens after each one. Today David Braben was talking about how trading would work in game.
I've noticed that some potential contributors had problems with that latest update video, so I provided a poor man's transcript just for them. Not all support needs to be just about money. ;-) To be frank, DB does mumble quite a bit in his videos, so it may be hard for a bunch of people to sometimes understand what he's saying. That said, I'm glad he tackled trading, it needs to be made a lot more interesting and what he is suggesting is quite promising.
[B]ED Status: 18,649 Backers, £1,036,186 pledged of £1,250,000 goal, 7 days to go. (82.89% reached, 11.66% time left)[/B]
[B]ED Status: 19,174 Backers, £1,083,255 pledged of £1,250,000 goal, 5 days to go. (86.66% reached, 8.33% time left)[/B]
With a little luck we'll reach the £1.1M today. That would be awesome. :-) An in-game video update surely wouldn't hurt either. Concept art only gets you so far. They need to beat the iron while it's hot.
"Less than [B]£150,000[/B] to go! I think they'll make it but only just." [B]- There fixed it for ya!
ED Status: 19,285 Backers,£1,101,623 pledged of £1,250,000 goal, 5 days to go. (88.13% reached. 8.33% time left)[/B]
At least we are slowly but surely inching closer to the goal, even though today's update is somewhat of a wet firecracker. Submission of "Ask FD anything" questions?! Anyway, the ED KS seems to have gained a cruising speed that should allow it to reach its goal, even if we have to beat it senseless and drag it across the finish line. ;-)
Today's update has some pretty interesting information about ship customisation. It looks like you can paint your ship with different skins, which is good, so people won't all be flying around in the same coloured ships. Star Citizen is doing that too.
But what I really like is the engine concept art. Picking different kinds of engine not only changes the ship performance but the way the ship looks as well. I can imagine that other components will do the same :)
ED Status: 19,925 Backers, £1,155,185 pledged of £1,250,000 goal, 3 days to go . (92.41% reached, 5% time left) Yes, less than £100K!!
[URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9NSMMTfwTOU"]The latest video update[/URL] talks about the artistic side of the game and how each system should tell you just by its mood (lighting, effects and activity) what is going on. Pretty cool stuff. [IMG]http://www.firstones.com/forums/core/images/old/smile.gif[/IMG]
@Gopher - thank you for pledging, every single pledge counts towards the finish line. ;)
ED Status: 20,223 Backers, £1,177,542 pledged of £1,250,000 goal, 65 hours to go. (94.20% reached, 4.51% time left).
The good news is that the gap between the reached goal and the time left is closing because the number of backers is increasing and/or the current backers are increasing their pledge.
The average pledge is £58.23, which is still quite reasonable. What is unreasonable is that some backers are still pledging several hundreds or over one thousand pounds. That is a nice thing to do to help the KS, but is totally out of proportion for a video game. So what did you get, a game and a toy space ship? So much for the kids going to college then. ;)
Comments
I can still upgrade if necessary, but I'd rather hope there will be more people who participate in the KS. I don't want to pay 3-5 times more for a game than I have to. Whoever pays more just has money to burn. I could imagine that FD could pay the difference, after all they are getting free money from us the backers.
It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion. I've also noticed a certain slowdown during the night, so there is no constant flow of pledges, it only trickles when there's no one of FD manning the blog, which seems to indicate that there isn't enough momentum generated by the videos, concept artwork and the design descriptions.
And then there are the Mac and Linux users who are probably boycotting the whole thing because there won't be a version for them on release day. FD has a long history of catering to many platforms, so it is very likely that other platforms will be supported later on. As FD has stated, if the Windows version doesn't get funded, then no version is going to see the light of day. Then they do keep assuring that they will find another way to fund the game if the KS fails, but they'd rather not want to go down that route if they don't have to.
Overall, the crowd tries hard to remain positive even though time is slowly but surely running out and the pledge rate is still not powerful enough to overcome the time issue. I don't follow some of FD's archaic reasoning though. They'd rather get a few more pledgers to give relatively huge amounts of money for a video game, instead of opening the gates a bit more to those who could only afford to pay say £20. Like they beat the drums for the writer packs (£4,500 each) instead of letting more students or cash strapped families in on the fun.
They place too much hope on the KS spike towards the end IMHO.
Noone should be expecting such high-frequency updates. Noone should be expecting them to show a nearly-finished game. But saying they're "pacing" the updates makes it sound like they don't have everything they need to present ready yet. When you walk into an investor presentation, you don't tell your potential investors that you have a great idea with a couple of basic concepts, and you'll be back tomorrow or next week with more information. (In my experience with a startup, the search for investors began once product development was already well along with working prototypes that could be demonstrated, and it needed a detailed business plan backed by evidence.) You give them everything at once, up-front. FD should have launched their Kickstarter campaign once they had enough concept material and a detailed-enough development plan prepared to be able to convince people that they could deliver on their promises. Godus had the same problem and I think it's why they struggled as well. Star Citizen, on the other hand, began with a reasonable quantity of concept work, a sound business plan, existing investments (from traditional investors, who typically do a lot more homework before committing than the average Kickstarter contributor is likely to do) to show they had been vetted, and a development team in place and already working. As a result, they generated a lot of excitement and, more importantly, confidence, which directly lead to contributions.
In the interim, what Biggles was trying to quote was:
"They've been giving daily updates for the last week or so (including today, Christmas Eve) and they do respond to fan questions, I sent them one asking them about the galaxy layout and had a reply within an hour."
£1,250,000 - £977,740 = £ 272,260 / 18175 backers = £14.98 per person. If every backer increased their pledge by £15, the project would be funded now.
The people on the KS blog are still cautiously optimistic but it's still quite a way to go to reach the summit. Yes, as far as I'm concerned this is like attempting to climb Mount Everest. The air is pretty thin on top, and many have to brake off the attempts to reach the summit for various reasons. KS runs have failed in the past because of just a few bucks. Some have stated that the goal of £1,250,000 was set too high. In retrospect, they should have made stretch goals to make sure that they wouldn't pledge themselves into a corner. I like how Josh did it with his Limit Theory project, that was smarter IMHO, the pressure to raise money was better distributed and encouraged people to put their cash down. It was not an ALL or NOTHING approach. FD has stretch goals, but they are outside of KS and thus outside of the equation. In a way FD is also a victim of circumstance, being caught with its pants down (unprepared to run an optimal KS) and getting people to fund a project around the holiday season when most have other priorities to spend their money on.
FD did take a risk here, no question about that. It was a gamble, an avalanche was started and everyone is screaming "We are not ready yet!!!" The sole consolation I have right now is that the current backers have the ability to cause their own spike towards the end of the KS run. I mean right now it's £15, but by the end of next week, it's very likely to be much less.
What I do like is they are posting something every day, yes it might just be about the people making the game (which by the way, Star Citizen has been doing too) but it's something and each time they do, there's a spike in pledges. There was even an update on Christmas Day and even as I write this, I just had an email with update #24.
Seems like they have announced a stretch goal for something that Star Citizen currently isn't planning.
[I]"Over the duration of the project we've received many requests for a Mac version of the game. We are announcing an official stretch goal for the project. If we reach £1.4 million in funding through the Kickstarter project, we will release a Mac version of the game around 3 months after the initial Windows PC release."[/I]
That should get some attention, although I think they'll be hard pressed to make it that far.
I am not sure that making a Mac OS version a stretch goal is going to help that much in a sense that this was already something FD were expected to do before. And as Worf said, the initial goal is a stretch as it is. We'll just have to see.
I always thought that giving players the ability to create their own ships was going to be a problem, but Limit Theory has a neat solution to that problem. I wonder what we'll get in the end with SC. It's clear that you want to get people excited and that you will promise anything just to get them to jump on board.
Hardware upgrades are also the main reason why I try to limit my pledge to what I still consider reasonable. I'm hoping that more people who just put down £20 will double their pledge. I'm not going to double or triple my pledge just to fly around with an avatar saying "I'm one of those fools who paid too much for this game! Can I get a hug, please?" ;-)
[B]ED Status: 18,245 Backers, £990,431 pledged of £1,250,000 goal, 8 days to go. (79.23% reached, 13.33% time left)[/B]
ED Status: 18,328 Backers, £1,000,338 pledged of £1,250,000 goal, 8 days to go. (80% reached, 13.33% time left)
[B]ED Status: 18,649 Backers, £1,036,186 pledged of £1,250,000 goal, 7 days to go. (82.89% reached, 11.66% time left)[/B]
With a little luck we'll reach the £1.1M today. That would be awesome. :-) An in-game video update surely wouldn't hurt either. Concept art only gets you so far. They need to beat the iron while it's hot.
They really need to post more at this point, keep people getting excited.
ED Status: 19,285 Backers,£1,101,623 pledged of £1,250,000 goal, 5 days to go. (88.13% reached. 8.33% time left)[/B]
At least we are slowly but surely inching closer to the goal, even though today's update is somewhat of a wet firecracker. Submission of "Ask FD anything" questions?! Anyway, the ED KS seems to have gained a cruising speed that should allow it to reach its goal, even if we have to beat it senseless and drag it across the finish line. ;-)
ED Status: 19,557 Backers, £1,126,709 pledged of £1,250,000 goal, 4 days to go. (90.14% reached, 6.66% time left)
ED Status: 19,557 Backers, £1,126,709 pledged of £1,250,000 goal, 4 days to go. (90.14% reached, 6.66% time left)
But what I really like is the engine concept art. Picking different kinds of engine not only changes the ship performance but the way the ship looks as well. I can imagine that other components will do the same :)
[URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9NSMMTfwTOU"]The latest video update[/URL] talks about the artistic side of the game and how each system should tell you just by its mood (lighting, effects and activity) what is going on. Pretty cool stuff. [IMG]http://www.firstones.com/forums/core/images/old/smile.gif[/IMG]
@Gopher - thank you for pledging, every single pledge counts towards the finish line. ;)
The good news is that the gap between the reached goal and the time left is closing because the number of backers is increasing and/or the current backers are increasing their pledge.
The average pledge is £58.23, which is still quite reasonable. What is unreasonable is that some backers are still pledging several hundreds or over one thousand pounds. That is a nice thing to do to help the KS, but is totally out of proportion for a video game. So what did you get, a game and a toy space ship? So much for the kids going to college then. ;)