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http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/08/18/former-double-fine-coo-launches-new-crowdfunding-platform-fig

Justin Bailey, the former COO of Double Fine, launched his own crowd funding website specifically for games. The thing that makes this one different is that backers can get a share of the profits.

This is the #1 problem I have had with Kickstarter from day one. I'm an accountant and I deal with funding all the time. Nothing else in the real world is anything remotely like Kickstarter. A normal business can't just get funding for their project and not have to pay it back (plus interest).

The way I see it Kickstarter, and the companies that use it, have been ripping the public off for years. Any dollar you give them over the price it takes to get a copy of the game is basically a 0% interest loan that they never have to pay back. They are using their fans to fund development and then charging more fans to buy the game after release. There is absolutely no risk on their end and they get 100% of the profits.

What's worse is when situations like Shenmue 3 happen. That game absolutely had private funding before they even stepped foot on Sony's stage. They then fleeced their fans for the largest video game Kickstarter ever. They had a publisher and didn't need crowd funded money but they took it anyways because it's free money. A CORPORATE publisher asked fans to DONATE money and people ate it up. They are hardly the first ones to do this either.

This new website makes way more sense to me. If something like Shovel Knight is pitched you can give your money and have a stake in the profits. It goes from a weird donation scheme to a possible investment. The problem is that I'm not sure why anyone would use this to fund their games. Why would Shenmue use FIG and share the profits with the people who helped make it happen when they can use Kickstarter and keep everything themselves?

Well first off, Kickstarter is NOT a pure donation based system. More often than not you pay a certain amount of money and then get perks based on how much. And part of fulfilling that comes out of the money received, so it's not like donating to a charity or something where all profits go towards a goal. They often still have obligations to fulfill besides just delivering on whatever product has been funded. And often you find that the KS projects that do the worst are ones that don't have perks or have bad ones. If you want some good examples I highly recommend the subreddit shi*ttykickstarters. And the

Secondly, you are being a little critical of the Shenmue 3 KS. Yes, they did things a little ass backwards, but there's more to it than just "A corporation got a bunch of free money to make a game." This video from Super Bunny Hop helps explain things a bit better.



Thirdly, there IS risk in trying to screw over Kickstarter backers. Recently there was an instance where the FTC ruled that a funded project had to refund all their money when it became clear that the owners were not going to deliver. There is also legislation in the works that allows backers to sue bad crowdfunded projects. And there have been other instances where projects have failed to deliver and refunds have been issued, most notably this one recently. Yes there still is some risk that you could give money to a project and then it never gets delivered on and the crook gets away, but the same thing could be said on any sort of investment opportunity.

Having said all that, yeah I think having a crowdfunding platform where you give back a share of the profits is a good thing. Any way to allow for independent projects to see the light of day is good IMO. To be fair I'm not going to necessarily fund those that give back money to backers over regular crowd funding models because sometimes the non-monetary rewards can be pretty cool. Hell, I donated to the Return to Nuke'm High Part 2 KS and I get to have a 30 minute Skype call with the director of the film to talk about whatever I want. I'd rather have that than whatever small pittance I'd likely get monetarily in return.

But again, any way that these smaller studios can get their games out there I'm all for. Still, we have to remember that not all successfully funded Kickstarter campaigns result in success stories.

On a side note thanks for posting that link because it mentioned that the Double Fine Adventure Game video series is done so I can see how it all turned out. The last one ended where they finally finished part 2. Curious to see how they reacted to the feedback.
 
Well first off, Kickstarter is NOT a pure donation based system. More often than not you pay a certain amount of money and then get perks based on how much. And part of fulfilling that comes out of the money received, so it's not like donating to a charity or something where all profits go towards a goal. They often still have obligations to fulfill besides just delivering on whatever product has been funded. And often you find that the KS projects that do the worst are ones that don't have perks or have bad ones. If you want some good examples I highly recommend the subreddit shi*ttykickstarters. And the

I was talking about the backer perks when I mentioned that every dollar over the amount that gets you a copy of the game is a 0% loan that they don't have to pay back. I used that example because it's the most common backer perk but I should have been more clear and mentioned that other perks often exist too. I'm okay with this part of Kickstarter. As long as you are buying a perk you want instead of just giving them free money to make the game I don't have an issue with it. I was talking about the people who give $100 when the backer perks are $50. Even then people are free to spend their money how they please. I just feel that they are being taken advantage of in that situation.

Secondly, you are being a little critical of the Shenmue 3 KS. Yes, they did things a little ass backwards, but there's more to it than just "A corporation got a bunch of free money to make a game." This video from Super Bunny Hop helps explain things a bit better.



After watching that video, I stand by my statements about Shenmue. Basically what I got from the video was that none of the Kickstarter money will go to the publisher but they did confirm that a publisher (Sony) was paying for everything that wasn't provided by Kickstarter. That $6 million in donations they received is all money Sony doesn't have to contribute but easily could have without kickstarter. It is impossible to build an open world, AAA game with the $2 million they originally asked for so it was clear from the start that they had private funding. They still chose to take free money from their fans on Kickstarter when they didn't need to do that.

Thirdly, there IS risk in trying to screw over Kickstarter backers. Recently there was an instance where the FTC ruled that a funded project had to refund all their money when it became clear that the owners were not going to deliver. There is also legislation in the works that allows backers to sue bad crowdfunded projects. And there have been other instances where projects have failed to deliver and refunds have been issued, most notably this one recently. Yes there still is some risk that you could give money to a project and then it never gets delivered on and the crook gets away, but the same thing could be said on any sort of investment opportunity.

I wasn't really talking about the risk that they might be sued for screwing their backers. When I said that companies that use Kickstarter take on none of the risk but get all of the profits I was talking about the risk of loosing money. Companies like Double Fine got all of their development cost paid for by Kickstarter. If the game didn't sell a single copy after that the worst they can do is break even. Every sale they make after the Kickstarter period is essentially 100% profit.

When a normal business wants to start a project they have to get investors to give them the money to fund it. The risk is still mostly on the investors if the game doesn't sell but the difference is that the investors get their money back plus part of the profit if it does sell.

Having said all that, yeah I think having a crowdfunding platform where you give back a share of the profits is a good thing. Any way to allow for independent projects to see the light of day is good IMO. To be fair I'm not going to necessarily fund those that give back money to backers over regular crowd funding models because sometimes the non-monetary rewards can be pretty cool. Hell, I donated to the Return to Nuke'm High Part 2 KS and I get to have a 30 minute Skype call with the director of the film to talk about whatever I want. I'd rather have that than whatever small pittance I'd likely get monetarily in return.

But again, any way that these smaller studios can get their games out there I'm all for. Still, we have to remember that not all successfully funded Kickstarter campaigns result in success stories.

On a side note thanks for posting that link because it mentioned that the Double Fine Adventure Game video series is done so I can see how it all turned out. The last one ended where they finally finished part 2. Curious to see how they reacted to the feedback.

Totally, I'm not against crowd funding. I think it can be a great tool for making independent projects happen. A model like FIG can still do that but it takes away the part of Kickstarter that takes advantage of people.

It's not right that games with a traditional publisher or private funding can use Kickstarter. They are abusing a system that was meant to fund independent projects by using it so the traditional publishers don't have to come up with as much money for games that are very much NOT independent. I can all but guarantee that Shenmue 3 would not have been a Kickstarter game if they had to follow FIG's model and share the profits with their backers. Sony would have just funded 100% of it like they do with every other game they publish because the free money incentive would be gone.
 
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Metal Gear Solid 5 promises to settle the "greatest mystery in Metal Gear."

Sadly part of this is in Japanese. Text is translated but for some reason speech is not.

 
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Harmonix has released a legacy device compatibility list for people who want to use old Guitar Hero/RB equipment on the new devices. The list is what you'd expect, although for some reason I don't see the Guitar Hero 2 wired Xbox 360 Controller listed.
Okay so I went to the page the article linked to and it looks like they're planning on adding more as time goes on.

In related news, if you want to play the Xbox One version with your old 360 wireless equipment, you'll also have to buy a $20 converter box.

http://www.polygon.com/2015/8/24/91...t-compatibility-last-gen-xbox-one-adapter-ps4
 
Launch Trailer for The Phantom Pain released.



That Metal Gear looks pretty badass, and a little perplexing. I mean, this takes place BEFORE Metal Gear 1 and Metal Gear Solid 1 & 2, but this Metal Gear looks superior in like every way. Be interesting to see how they try to explain it..
 
Launch Trailer for The Phantom Pain released.



That Metal Gear looks pretty badass, and a little perplexing. I mean, this takes place BEFORE Metal Gear 1 and Metal Gear Solid 1 & 2, but this Metal Gear looks superior in like every way. Be interesting to see how they try to explain it..


As an outsider to the series this is just one of many things that I don't understand. For example, if this takes place before MGS 1 & 2 how is Snake missing a hand and why is his face all screwed up in the one but not others? I guess I remember people talking about more than one Snake so are you actually playing a different person in each of these games?

This doesn't relate to this specific trailer but almost everything else they have shown shows "horse stealth." This is when Snake is riding a horse and about to pass some guards. If the guards are on the right side of the horse he leans off the left side so the horse is blocking their view of him. This makes no sense to me. Are guards really going to think nothing of a random horse walking past the area they are guarding? Even if they can't actually see Snake it seems like this would probably be suspicious enough to check out. Maybe there is a story detail I'm missing that could explain it. Maybe their camp in the middle of the desert is surrounded by a bunch of wild horses. Seems pretty unlikely though.
 
As an outsider to the series this is just one of many things that I don't understand. For example, if this takes place before MGS 1 & 2 how is Snake missing a hand and why is his face all screwed up in the one but not others? I guess I remember people talking about more than one Snake so are you actually playing a different person in each of these games?
Ummm... without spoiling too much, let's just say that that's not Solid Snake.

Some more info:
You're looking at Big Boss. Big Boss is the world's greatest soldier. He was so great that at one point when he was knocked out, the government extracted his sperm and used it to make 3 offspring, in hopes of keeping Boss's bloodline continuing and then go and create clones and basically make an army of the perfect soldier. The 3 kids were named Solid, Liquid, and Solidus. Solid Snake is from Metal Gear 1 and on in terms of timeline. All the games before it star Big Boss.
 
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Ummm... without spoiling too much, let's just say that that's not Solid Snake.

Some more info:
You're looking at Big Boss. Big Boss is the world's greatest soldier. He was so great that at one point when he was knocked out, the government extracted his sperm and used it to make 3 offspring, in hopes of keeping Boss's bloodline continuing and then go and create clones and basically make an army of the perfect soldier. The 3 kids were named Solid, Liquid, and Solidus. Solid Snake is from Metal Gear 1 and on in terms of timeline. All the games before it star Big Boss.

Yeah, at this point it's pretty clear that even if I play MGSV I'm never going to go back and play all the older games so I'm not too worried about spoilers. IGN just posted this Metal Gear Solid in 5 Minutes: Big Boss Edition video. It's nice for a quick summary of the story so far but you obviously can't really boil the entire series down to 5 minutes. It explains things without requiring a few hours of youtube videos but outsiders like myself still won't understand lots of it.

 
Yeah that's a decent summary. Still, if you think that stuff is crazy, you should see where the story goes AFTER Solid Snake comes into the picture..
 
I hope none of you were looking forward to seeing Mortal Kombat for last-gen consoles to be under your Christmas Tree this year, because after numerous delays the game has finally been cancelled.

http://www.polygon.com/2015/8/28/9223697/mortal-kombat-x-ps3-xbox-360-canceled

They claimed that the game didn't reach WB's quality standards (yet Arkham Knight on PC did??) Personally I think this just shows how AWFUL of a development team High Voltage is. I played Mortal Kombat X on XB1 and there was nothing that game did that the 360/PS3 couldn't handle. It was very similar to MK9, which the last gen consoles ran just fine AFAIK. Still, it does suck to have so much money and time thrown into a project only to finally say "F*ck it" and abandon it. Must have been REALLY bad for them to cancel it, given the other crap ports WB has allowed out into the wild. Or maybe in a post Arkham PC world, WB is actually giving a sh*t about what it puts out. In any case I'm sure whoever really wants to play the game will get a chance.
 
Guild Wars 2 is going free to play, sort of. Similar to WoW's beginning level cap, you can play GW2 with no entry fee but you have some tangible limitations to your character and ability. The game is not going to start implementing F2P microtransactions either. Still, it is a way to open the game up to more people with a "Try before you buy" system, although again I'm not sure why they didn't just implement a level/world cap or something.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/play-for-free-today/
 
Microsoft has introduced the Xbox One Elite. It has a 1TB SSHD (yes, a Hybrid drive, not SSD) drive and apparently a better controller for $499. Still, for that price you'd think they could throw a Kinect in...

http://www.polygon.com/2015/8/31/92...ndle-includes-1tb-sshd-drive-elite-controller

Doesn't sound like a great deal to me unless you really wanted that $150 elite controller. Even then, you can buy one of the awesome standard bundles for $350 and a $150 elite controller. For the exact same amount of money you would have 2 controllers (including an elite) instead of 1 and a game or two instead of none. $500 and it doesn't even come with a game bundled in?

I guess this would be worth it if the SSHD really makes a big improvement to the console and you are dead set on having an elite controller. The standard 1TB console only costs $100 less than this and the elite controller is $150 on its own. You could definitely argue that those two things are a lot more useful than a Kinect.

Still, I would wait until they start bundling games with this package. There is a decent chance that there will be a bundle version of this at launch that just hasn't been announced yet though.
 
Well, Square-Enix has just unveiled the Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Pre-order scheme. I can charitably say that it is certainly very original, and I will also uncharitably say that it's an AWFUL system that will likely be cancelled once they see all the backlash they receive (the video already has an awful like/dislike ratio.) The idea that pre-order reward "tiers" are "unlocked" only by enough people pre-ordering the game is an awful, manipulative system.

 
Well, Square-Enix has just unveiled the Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Pre-order scheme. I can charitably say that it is certainly very original, and I will also uncharitably say that it's an AWFUL system that will likely be cancelled once they see all the backlash they receive (the video already has an awful like/dislike ratio.) The idea that pre-order reward "tiers" are "unlocked" only by enough people pre-ordering the game is an awful, manipulative system.



The ultimate Tier V bonus is the game releasing 4 days early? Really? Give me the possibility of unlocking a free season pass, and I might be interested. Otherwise *yawn*.
 

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