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Trying to stay consistent with the newsletter timing, and I think this one will be interesting to a lot of people.
It will be going out via email over the rest of the day, but you can also read it online here.
It will be going out via email over the rest of the day, but you can also read it online here.
Excellent!
"If we officially (and legitimately) win Indie of the Year for 2017, we will pull out all the stops to create a"
"If we officially (and legitimately) win Indie of the Year for 2017, we will pull out all the stops to create a"
Already voted for indie :)
Btw if i buy trident tech 3 livery it will be applied to my existing dent or has to manu new dent ?
Btw if i buy trident tech 3 livery it will be applied to my existing dent or has to manu new dent ?
I dont think it requires you making a new dent it just means you have a second insurance option when you wanna use that version probably
1) Purchased Liveries are account-wide.
2) Trident and Goliath liveries are applied with a new Insurance mission, when your ship is destroyed and needs to be replaced.
2) Trident and Goliath liveries are applied with a new Insurance mission, when your ship is destroyed and needs to be replaced.
I voted on the thingy however knowing how you work for you to promise something so complex within a month and a half of the vote ending I would surmise that the feature mostly already exists and has been slowly worked on over all the months of vague updates
voted (because who the hell can compete in my game library), bought a liverie (Will the current ones be available later on, or will they be replaced? I dont have a capship yet and my wallets a little light after christmas shopping anyways), and always stoked for everything we can squeeze from you guys; thanks for it all!
Spence: No, it hasn't. I'm really offering to drop everything and just work on that. Our problem is less of "how long it takes to do things" and more like "how many other competing/necessary things are demanding time". Anyway, yeah, it's a little risky, but I wouldn't have put it in there if I didn't think it was doable.
Luxen: Thanks! The liveries will always be available, but if the ship is upgraded or redone, then we'll release similarly-redone liveries to go with the updated ship. Like we did this on the Warthog Camo recently (LTS reward).
Luxen: Thanks! The liveries will always be available, but if the ship is upgraded or redone, then we'll release similarly-redone liveries to go with the updated ship. Like we did this on the Warthog Camo recently (LTS reward).
What ever happened to that ship livery for the Everspace Kickstarter?
What ever happened to that ship livery for the Everspace Kickstarter?
That went out, they did finally send out the codes to people in one of their newsletters. A bunch of people do have it in-game.
That went out, they did finally send out the codes to people in one of their newsletters. A bunch of people do have it in-game.
well if it doesnt work out and in 4 months you end up making it ill buy the $45 livery lol
use a support ticket, newb
"Sploosh"
whoot!
EDIT: Voted! So, assuming we get this roving Tortuga, that still leaves an unused station in Sedina for my palace, right?
EDIT: Voted! So, assuming we get this roving Tortuga, that still leaves an unused station in Sedina for my palace, right?
Voting Chicago-style: early & often.
That said, is there a cash prize or something? How much would we need to pony up to get the same commitment?
That said, is there a cash prize or something? How much would we need to pony up to get the same commitment?
That said, is there a cash prize or something? How much would we need to pony up to get the same commitment?
There is no cash prize. This is more of an experiment in player-base engagement: promising some particular game construct in exchange for some small action. I imagine raising our profile on IndieDB is of some benefit, and winning an award is nice; but really the point is to see how well this kind of thing resonates with people, as that may make much more interesting "crowd engagement" goals possible as we move towards Steam.
Similarly, it could open up some kind of internal crowdfunding, setting of bounties on development, like you ask (and other people have long suggested). The challenges there are that we don't have such a huge reach to really drive up numbers, and the numbers may have to be higher than is feasible to offset the "opportunity-cost losses" incurred by not doing some other corporate-deal at that time.
Still, I would much prefer to be working on the gameplay for our players, versus doing corporate deals.
I don't know exactly what this would "cost" if I were to post it as a development bounty, this was kind of a last-minute idea I jammed into a newsletter (I happened to notice the award voting), to see how people would respond. Because even if the player base isn't large enough to directly fund things, engaging people to help with marketing can still be really helpful.
If I had to ballpark, off the top of my head, most significant "Suggestions Forum" feature-requests might be between $5k and $20k in bounty size. Occasionally, things that are more involved could be more than that, but I suspect most would be around the $5k/$10k/$20k scale. But, that's above and beyond subscriptions and so on, I can't exchange one revenue stream for another, these costs are over-and-above our usual overhead.
Note, I'm not including trivial fixes or tweaks, or even small-scale stuff that goes quickly, like the recent AI-defend NPC changes. If we bountied something it would cover a whole range of stuff, with some very specific goals, and it would probably saturate a lot of our time; oddly, the funding would really not go to cover not our time/costs in doing the development at that moment, but rather the time we're not doing business-development on some other thing, allowing us to stay in business 6 or 10 months down the road. The game industry is a chaotic and treacherous path to walk, which is why the field is littered with a zillion dead game companies. It's all about planning on how much "buffer" you have to cover the thing you didn't foresee that takes 2-months too long, that happens a year from now, and coincides with some other bad situation.
Anyway, there is the possibility of fundraising by selling.. "shit that doesn't exist", like Star Citizen. I'm really not a huge fan of that, it's kind of like "selling hope"; but I will admit if it's framed the right way.. and people can buy like.. Station Components to help fund Constructable Stations or something, that doesn't seem too evil (as long as one doesn't screw up future-gameplay balance too badly, and one actually delivers on one's promises).
There are also other factors that make the whole idea challenging. People often want like.. I dunno, let's make an analogy and say "cities", before you've come up with a way to construct "buildings" or "roads". They're just like "make cities!" and the dev has to be "that's really not going to work, they'll fall down". And then we have to spend like 2 months constructing some boring gravel surface.
Ultimately, that's why SC doesn't specifically bounty any particular direction, or tie any kind of purchases to any specific thing.. because managing development is pretty chaotic, and it's tough to define features that way. When you dig into building the feature, you find you have to go fix the other giant, boring thing before you can make the small shiny thing, and the project is going to take 5x longer. Even when it's your own codebase, this happens.. our game is just a really complex product, and small changes can have major ramifications that are difficult to foresee.
So, even a bounty-for-feature-development system would have to be somewhat vague.. the goals could be concrete, but it'd have a "ballpark" fundraising round, and then it might need some followup fundraising later or.. something, I dunno. The whole system would need some built-in degree of flexibility and transparency to keep the funders happy, and also let the development follow whatever tortured path was actually needed.
That's a really long response to a one-line question; but obviously, it's not a trivial question to meaningfully answer.
There is no cash prize. This is more of an experiment in player-base engagement: promising some particular game construct in exchange for some small action. I imagine raising our profile on IndieDB is of some benefit, and winning an award is nice; but really the point is to see how well this kind of thing resonates with people, as that may make much more interesting "crowd engagement" goals possible as we move towards Steam.
Similarly, it could open up some kind of internal crowdfunding, setting of bounties on development, like you ask (and other people have long suggested). The challenges there are that we don't have such a huge reach to really drive up numbers, and the numbers may have to be higher than is feasible to offset the "opportunity-cost losses" incurred by not doing some other corporate-deal at that time.
Still, I would much prefer to be working on the gameplay for our players, versus doing corporate deals.
I don't know exactly what this would "cost" if I were to post it as a development bounty, this was kind of a last-minute idea I jammed into a newsletter (I happened to notice the award voting), to see how people would respond. Because even if the player base isn't large enough to directly fund things, engaging people to help with marketing can still be really helpful.
If I had to ballpark, off the top of my head, most significant "Suggestions Forum" feature-requests might be between $5k and $20k in bounty size. Occasionally, things that are more involved could be more than that, but I suspect most would be around the $5k/$10k/$20k scale. But, that's above and beyond subscriptions and so on, I can't exchange one revenue stream for another, these costs are over-and-above our usual overhead.
Note, I'm not including trivial fixes or tweaks, or even small-scale stuff that goes quickly, like the recent AI-defend NPC changes. If we bountied something it would cover a whole range of stuff, with some very specific goals, and it would probably saturate a lot of our time; oddly, the funding would really not go to cover not our time/costs in doing the development at that moment, but rather the time we're not doing business-development on some other thing, allowing us to stay in business 6 or 10 months down the road. The game industry is a chaotic and treacherous path to walk, which is why the field is littered with a zillion dead game companies. It's all about planning on how much "buffer" you have to cover the thing you didn't foresee that takes 2-months too long, that happens a year from now, and coincides with some other bad situation.
Anyway, there is the possibility of fundraising by selling.. "shit that doesn't exist", like Star Citizen. I'm really not a huge fan of that, it's kind of like "selling hope"; but I will admit if it's framed the right way.. and people can buy like.. Station Components to help fund Constructable Stations or something, that doesn't seem too evil (as long as one doesn't screw up future-gameplay balance too badly, and one actually delivers on one's promises).
There are also other factors that make the whole idea challenging. People often want like.. I dunno, let's make an analogy and say "cities", before you've come up with a way to construct "buildings" or "roads". They're just like "make cities!" and the dev has to be "that's really not going to work, they'll fall down". And then we have to spend like 2 months constructing some boring gravel surface.
Ultimately, that's why SC doesn't specifically bounty any particular direction, or tie any kind of purchases to any specific thing.. because managing development is pretty chaotic, and it's tough to define features that way. When you dig into building the feature, you find you have to go fix the other giant, boring thing before you can make the small shiny thing, and the project is going to take 5x longer. Even when it's your own codebase, this happens.. our game is just a really complex product, and small changes can have major ramifications that are difficult to foresee.
So, even a bounty-for-feature-development system would have to be somewhat vague.. the goals could be concrete, but it'd have a "ballpark" fundraising round, and then it might need some followup fundraising later or.. something, I dunno. The whole system would need some built-in degree of flexibility and transparency to keep the funders happy, and also let the development follow whatever tortured path was actually needed.
That's a really long response to a one-line question; but obviously, it's not a trivial question to meaningfully answer.
right now we are #158 out of 45k games, so keep voting guys! this is just round one of the voting btw; they do a re-vote on the top 100 later.
158? that's not bad at all it was like 2000 or something when i voted
I'm not going to lie Incarnate. I really wanted to read that huge post you made,but I saw you were selling a Trident skin for 40 dollars, and then I just kind of puked in my mouth.
I've gotta agree with Boda, I mean, wow, $10 for a vulture skin? I mean sure, people have asked time and time again for this kind of thing, but I'm not 100% sure they had this price range in mind. I mean, sure other games do the skin/livery thing, but although they may charge quite a bit for a "special" skin, prices usually start at around $2.99 and top out at around $19.
I'm pretty sure you would make a load more cash outta cheaper skins, and may even make quite a bit of coin if the prices were divided by a factor of ten but at the current prices? Yeah, I think I'll pass, as I am sure many others will? I mean it is not like this is E:D where the online game is sponsored by skin sales, this is a subscription based game already!
[edit]
I do so hate to link to other games here, and please do remove the links if you feel they are out of order, but a good example is the ED store (may as well use this one as its already mentioned), for a single skin these guys charge like $2-3, and a skin kit - which includes multiple colours, some effects and visual model mods - is about $10. I see thousands of these skins in ED flying about, and even own a few myself! They make enough from the sale of skins and other cosmetic items to keep the game subscription free (an early development choice sure but the point stands). At the prices you are currently charging, only those with a sense of "backing the game" or more money than sense will bother - and after all the years of subscription, I kind of feel I've done the first bit already - sorry guys!
I'm pretty sure you would make a load more cash outta cheaper skins, and may even make quite a bit of coin if the prices were divided by a factor of ten but at the current prices? Yeah, I think I'll pass, as I am sure many others will? I mean it is not like this is E:D where the online game is sponsored by skin sales, this is a subscription based game already!
[edit]
I do so hate to link to other games here, and please do remove the links if you feel they are out of order, but a good example is the ED store (may as well use this one as its already mentioned), for a single skin these guys charge like $2-3, and a skin kit - which includes multiple colours, some effects and visual model mods - is about $10. I see thousands of these skins in ED flying about, and even own a few myself! They make enough from the sale of skins and other cosmetic items to keep the game subscription free (an early development choice sure but the point stands). At the prices you are currently charging, only those with a sense of "backing the game" or more money than sense will bother - and after all the years of subscription, I kind of feel I've done the first bit already - sorry guys!