EPThttps://www.gamesindustry.biz/how-ex-blizzard-devs-frost-giant-got-players-to-invest-nearly-1m-into-the-studio
Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread - Page 121
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada16710 Posts
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/how-ex-blizzard-devs-frost-giant-got-players-to-invest-nearly-1m-into-the-studio | ||
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Nirli
Bulgaria370 Posts
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MegaBuster
167 Posts
[X] Compare Stormgate to Elden Ring [✓] Compare Stormgate to Baldur's Gate 3 | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada16710 Posts
On May 23 2024 02:32 MegaBuster wrote: Tim Morten Interview Checklist: [X] Compare Stormgate to Elden Ring [✓] Compare Stormgate to Baldur's Gate 3 [✓] Pendulum Analogy [✓] catchphrase "a la carte" without the accent [X] monetization model details [X] GamesIndustry.biz writer laid off | ||
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MegaBuster
167 Posts
I've made the effort recently to talk to people who either gave Frosted Giant their money or were inquiring about doing so. Okay so first of all let me tell about these folks. If you take their financial know-how and give it a spirit animal it would be a baby deer on a DDR pad. Flailing, screaming, blinded by flashing lights and unable to get its footing. These were unaccredited investors in the couple of thousand dollar range and they didn't know anything. They don't know how they will make money, what that will look like, they don't know risks or competitors, they haven't talked to anyone from the company. These are people who would gladly feed 20 dollar bills into a floppy drive slot if the company told them to and their computer still had one of those. I know some people argue that these folks are giving tributary in service of their great RTS love but I wish they'd just buy some streamer subs or back some community tournaments or whatever, because they are getting splatted. How many Wardi tournament replays can you buy from Patreon for 1-2k? A lot, he'd probably give you a VIP room replay cast with Ginuwine's Pony playing in the background for that much. What I really want to mention is Wasteland 3's Fig campaign. If you are looking for the connection, its MR. Tim Campbell the Director of Stormgate and also the Director of Wasteland 3. In 2016 Wasteland 3 made $3.1 million on the Fig equity crowdfunding platform. 1 million of which was sold as equity at a rate of $1000 x 1000 shares. Here's a big distinction — Wasteland 3 presented a very clear plan on how people would make money. Basically if they sold 300k copies at $50 then you'd see dividend payback greater than your original investment of $1000. (For full details here's a reddit artifact, since all this financial shit disappears from the web in just a few years. Or you could comb directly through the SEC filing.) Supporting details were that Wasteland 3 was made by a 15 year old company helmed by big industry name Brian Fargo. It had just came off shipping a direct sequel Wasteland 2 another successful (non-equity) crowdfunded game with sales of around 350k at the time. InXile (the studio) had also shipped 3 total crowdfunded games. And Wasteland 3 made its equity investors money! ... By the company getting bought out by Microsoft prior to its release. Brian Fargo negotiated a sale of his then almost 20 year company inXile and all its IP prior to Wasteland 3's release. He said he wanted to retire. So basically Microsoft bought out the equity investment. Each investor got 39% or $1390 per $1000 invested, about 8% annualized interest. They also no longer received any dividends or success based on how big the launch was. That decision got made for them. The game was in early access at the time, had good buzz, and would eventually sell 2 million copies by 2021. How much dividends would that have made people? Well its literally off their chart. Something like $3000 per $1000 of stock by 2021? Unfortunately they didn't get it. Tim Campbell was the director on Wasteland 3 at the time of its sale but not during any of the crowdfunding, he got brought as a replacement director during the last part of the development of the game. A pretty interesting connection though, and this is probably the most comparable equity crowd funding situation you can find and you have to imagine this is where they picked this stuff up from. There's another notably distinction. Because of changes in the crowdfunding legislation (effective 2020) now unaccredited investment can go greater than 1 million dollars per project. (The limit at the time for games like Wasteland 3 and Psychonauts 2) And since all these Fig crowd equity projects happened years ago this might be the one to go over the former ethical limit that the government had set. This to me is kind of the worst of both worlds — Frost Giant has no clear explanation for how their investors will make money, also if they start to make money will they get screwed like this? There's actually a lot of ways to get screwed when you consider how skyscraping-ly high their $150 million valuation was. Remember they can sell their middleware and company for something pretty notably like $50 million and the investors will still have subsidized the development and sale for a net loss. (While the founders each collect 17% of that sum based on their equity holdings) So in closing, people might ignore the Startengine funding, but it is actually historic — if they clear the 1 mil figure they will break new ground on the quantity of money being taken by unaccredited investors in the gaming industry. And its happening here! Let's go Frosting Giant! | ||
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CicadaSC
United States1735 Posts
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MegaBuster
167 Posts
Art teams seem comparable in size but Zerospace seemed to bring in visual stuff when they were absolutely needed while Stormgate had some senior artists as part of the early employees just spinning their wheels for years. They also had producers, business development, user interface and esports people well in advance of the main development cycle. They needed these seniors to create their 'ex-Blizzard' credential but they are expensive folks to have before you are ready for them to do their job. I really don't see it as a tale of Zerospace's incredible efficiency, so much as one of Stormgate's bloat and Blizzard's glacial development pace inherited by Frost Giant. The most notable part to me financially is how they went through 1/3rd of their 35mil, undocumented, in the first year and a half of development with <20 employees and no office space. Just a bunch of people sitting around teaching themselves how to use Unreal Engine and cooking up the story of their incredible veterancy. Still none of that explains anything because the money filings produces some wild figures like 200k/year per employee when they themselves claim to have only 25% employee overhead on each salary. There's also the fact that across many statements Frost Giant repeatedly pushes the false information that StarCraft 2 cost 100 million to make. This info has no citation so unless they are leaking some private shit from Mike Morhaime then its the classic fake figure that is traceable back to some bad news reporting from the Wall Street Journal in 2010. So the whole scale is out of whack. There's no public figures for StarCraft 2's cost. Besides If Blizzard spent at the rate that Frost Giant seems to be spending it would have cost 300 million to make StarCraft 2 anyways — so this is probably why they like managing expectations with this false number. | ||
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Gorsameth
Netherlands21687 Posts
Frost giant is acting like the AA(A) studio that they are not. | ||
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RogerChillingworth
2873 Posts
Oh well. Gl hf. | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada16710 Posts
On May 23 2024 11:29 RogerChillingworth wrote: This thread is so completely overrun by blockheads I don't even want to return to check the discussion anymore, which is is sad because I like this site. Oh well. Gl hf. i do not think the negativity surrounding this game is particular to this web site. things are negative in general. to wit. https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/1cxwirs/i_love_stormgate_it_better_not_leave_me/ Inspired by the recent stopkillinggames campaign, some questions for Frost Giant: Offline modes: is the campaign online-only? What about the Editor? Custom modes? End-of-support: once the game is no longer financially viable, Tim C hangs up his cap, and Tim M turns out the lights for the last time in the office... will FG do a Ubisoft and make the game unplayable? Or will we be able to set up custom servers and play the game until the bitter end of UE5 compatibility with our OS? Tbh i am not really incentivised to pay for Stormgate campaign missions (or anything really) until I know if i can enjoy the game without the worry of the rug being pulled out from under our feets if FG goes belly-up financially. | ||
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Harris1st
Germany6931 Posts
On May 23 2024 13:36 JimmyJRaynor wrote: i do not think the negativity surrounding this game is particular to this web site. things are negative in general. to wit. https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/1cxwirs/i_love_stormgate_it_better_not_leave_me/ Was clicking a bit through reddit (which I usually don't because reddit) and I found the general feeling towards Stomgate rather positive TBH. I mean it's nice and all that some guys cherry pick the worst to link here but honestly, it doesn't looks so grim. For everyone who isn't invited to Frigate here https://www.pcgamer.com/games/the-pc-gaming-shows-10th-anniversary-celebration-features-hosts-of-old-games-brand-new-bear-exclusives-and-citizen-sleeper-2/ will be the official reveal for the third faction I believe. Hosted by Day9 among others on June 9 | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada16710 Posts
In the last month the reddit has been relatively inactive. On May 23 2024 18:38 Harris1st wrote: Stomgate rather positive TBH. I mean it's nice and all that some guys cherry pick the worst to link here but honestly, it doesn't looks so grim. I don't think the general perception of a F2P game, before its released, matters very much. If a F2P game is great when its playable on Steam then it'll do great on Steam. | ||
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Hider
Denmark9387 Posts
On May 23 2024 07:50 Gorsameth wrote: Zerospace is acting like the startup indy dev that they are. Frost giant is acting like the AA(A) studio that they are not. Hey man, Tim Morten needs his 250K paycheck on top of 17% equity. He may not have any technical skills nor product-development understanding, but he can talk a good talk. | ||
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RogerChillingworth
2873 Posts
On May 24 2024 02:36 Hider wrote: Hey man, Tim Morten needs his 250K paycheck on top of 17% equity. He may not have any technical skills nor product-development understanding, but he can talk a good talk. Salary bullshit aside (given the number you mentioned, he takes home ~$150K? Holy shit, what an evil bastard!), he's been in the industry for over 30 years and is now a CEO of his own company, starting as an engineer at Activision in his early 20s. So not only does he have technical skills, he has production skills and can also talk a good talk. Sounds like a pretty good leading man to me. I don't even have any vested interested or know Tim Morten personally. I just find the vitriol annoying and ignorant. Like you listen to Frost Giant employees and it's patently obvious they love this genre and care about us. It's not PR crap, they're real humans. Occasionally you'll see a sour moment because survival in our shit system is hard. It's easy to shoot spitballs from a safe distance but it doesn't give us any more credence or insight or clout. If I were Wax I'd be executing all of you. Thank god I'm just a pleb poster, I guess. | ||
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moomin22
29 Posts
Judge based on actions not on words because they are very good at crafting narratives to suit them | ||
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RogerChillingworth
2873 Posts
On May 24 2024 08:55 moomin22 wrote: Remember when they nuked the community API because they care about us. How's that roadmap coming along they promised, anyone seen it? Judge based on actions not on words because they are very good at crafting narratives to suit them Remember when you made an account 3 months ago? | ||
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moomin22
29 Posts
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Waxangel
United States33390 Posts
On May 23 2024 18:38 Harris1st wrote: Was clicking a bit through reddit (which I usually don't because reddit) and I found the general feeling towards Stomgate rather positive TBH. I mean it's nice and all that some guys cherry pick the worst to link here but honestly, it doesn't looks so grim. For everyone who isn't invited to Frigate here https://www.pcgamer.com/games/the-pc-gaming-shows-10th-anniversary-celebration-features-hosts-of-old-games-brand-new-bear-exclusives-and-citizen-sleeper-2/ will be the official reveal for the third faction I believe. Hosted by Day9 among others on June 9 The problem is, and why some people in this thread are getting soft-banned again if they get too spammy, is that they care about the failure aspect WAY too much. From my POV, the situation is pretty simple. FG started their business when economic conditions meant there was lots of investment going around, and they proceeded with the assumption that those conditions would last. However, the economy took a turn for the worse, and FG ended up in trouble alongside many other games/tech companies. This, unfortunately, reduces the chance they will be able to deliver a successful game, but we won't know for sure until it's actually out in early access. I just don't understand turning a fairly simple situation into some kind of massive conspiracy theory and something I should take as serious as the battle for the fate of the Earth. A couple of people desperately want to be right about SOMETHING (and it isn't even clear what this is), whereas the rest of are just waiting around to see what happens. [I still appreciate the specific scrutiny around crowdfunding and the fan-investment.] | ||
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MegaBuster
167 Posts
Thread is dead for a week during the conclusion of their last beta. Twitter averages less than 1 Stormgate mention a day during the whole beta period. (remember to filter out a chinese guy who was the twitter name Stormgate). I urge all positive Stormheads to reclaim their land and talk as much as possible. Still I'll never get your repeated portrayal that its hip and cool to say nothing about a very irresponsible crowd equity gamble with the community's money. Frost Giant themselves have done 3 interviews incl 2 hours of podcasts this week doing a victory lap about it and its disappointing to see a call to enforcement of an apathy about that. | ||
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Uldridge
Belgium4779 Posts
But I've seen too many creatively bankrupt things in the last decade to think this will be anything different. Like, you could do so much more with resource incomes other than rocks laying on the ground to be mined. | ||
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