On November 25 2023 17:14 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote: Is a bit weird they are opening a kickstarter now. Specially for a company that announced millions in funding from different partners. Riot / EPIC / KAKAO etc. From a marketing point of view you start to wonder how healthy they doing. I would have prefered to see the store section in their webpage offering some toys sales that includes a beta code. Even if in concept it is the same it actually changes the vision. Now they are saying that will help to pay servers so more people can try the game. Im pretty sure i saw recently they are collaborating with some big server provider too so idk how much pr bs is in that kickstarter. I still want them to make a good RTS. I want to see the next evolution of RTS like it happened from WC II to Starcraft to WC3 to SC2. But so far since day 1 the marketing is not really helping them.
Agree with your points except the server provider one. The truth is the market is incredibly concentrated and if you want worldwide servers (for latency purposes) you probably only have a handful of options. So the fact they picked one and are working with them is good and there is a lot of upfront money required for such deals, so part of the kickstarter to raise money for that is not shocking.
The rest i m meh about tbh, merch that looks cool and also grants beta access would be ok, but buying beta directly for this type of game I don't like, it s a slippery slope that puts more pressure on the team but also when your testers pay for the "privilege" it s also harder to keep your concepts and ideas. In particular i m worried about balance.
On November 25 2023 07:39 _Spartak_ wrote: $35m funding isn't all that much for the scope of the project they are undertaking. They aren't a small indie team but not a AAA studio either. They are trying to build a game in a genre we all love and are clearly passionate about the genre. I don't know why you are being so cynical about it. I don't think it is the case but it looks like you would be delighted if you are correct and the project is failing because they are running out of money and you want that to be the case. Very weird.
Especially considering that this is a person who would fervently defend the same shyster-y actions if they were being made by parties that Jimmy liked. The level of emotional investment in this studio from Jimmy is something I don't ever care to understand.
I don't think they're running out of money. They're not beholden to a publisher and can make a kickstarter to get more money, and these days kickstarters are 'figured out' enough that companies will know what they're getting in to and what to expect out of it.
i think you chose to ignore all the PRO tim morton stuff i said. the guy is a great designer. Go back and check it out. this kickstarter could be a sign that he is not as good of a CEO as he is a game designer though.
I know a bunch of elite level software craftsmen. most of them are poor CEOs. My wife is a fantastic CEO. This comes from a lifetime of studying law, accounting, and finance and a lot of street smarts. She can't code a nested FOR loop.
Do you know any elite level software makers that are also elite level CEOs? I do not know a single one. Not one. Therefore, I think my concern about Tim Morton is warranted. Hopefully, Kakao is taking over all that stuff... and Tim can spend his time on the areas he has spent his entire life on.
On November 25 2023 08:37 Fleetfeet wrote: Especially considering that this is a person who would fervently defend the same shyster-y actions if they were being made by parties that Jimmy liked.
i am incapable of "liking" a 10,000+ employee worldwide corporation//publisher. Whether it is Activision or Kakao. If I like their products I buy them.
It is hilarious when orgs like Bungie and Frost Giant present themselves as "your friends". These people are not your friends. I think shigeru miyamoto is the greatest game designer of all time. He doesn't run around telling me I'm his "friend". The guy could beat his grandkids senseless for all i know. Morhaime also tried that "we're all family" BS at a Blizzcon. ok man.
Bungie really lays on the "we're all friends here" bullshit. What did it get them? Death threats to their front line employees when prices increased by 40%. Now that the off the chain crazies amongst the Destiny2 player base don't have Bobby Kotick to rage upon ... they needed a new target.
Bungie has now quit the whole "we're all friends here" live-action-role-play. Hopefully, the death threats go away soon.
On November 21 2023 09:29 Hider wrote: I agree that the next RTS will "fail" or at least not obtain more than a little niche of the overall player market. Stormgate, Immortals gates of pyre and zerospace are all too conservative in their design choices. A mixed average of Wc3 and Sc2 as opposed to investing new stuff that can "wow" in a new playerbase. A good test is this; show the average MOBA player some clips/highlights of a new RTS game. If they are not immediately drawn to it, the game has no potential.
It’s a niche, but it’s a big enough niche. Gaming is just such a larger leisure activity than it used to be that there’s just more pie to go around.
I’m still reserving judgement to see how things go I guess.
If you want to reach a wide (and young) audience, you have to go mobile. It's the only way IMO. Though I personally do not want dumbed down controls etc. so niche is fine for me :D
I think PC MOBA market is big enough. If you can cater to say 20% of that market, you can create a very succesful RTS. Catering to them is less about simplifying/making the game easy and more about innovative and interesting unit-design and whether the flow of gameplay appears fun at first glance.
20% of the MOBA market? That is like making a new CCG which you can play vs others for money and say "poker is pretty popular, if we can get 20% of poker players to play our game, we will be very successful".
MOBAs are not RTS, and players are very loyal and invested into games they play competitively. The new RTS games will aim for recruiting SC2, BW and AoE players, and even then 20% is a tough ask. The player bases are older, and might not bother learning another game from scratch.
On November 25 2023 08:37 Fleetfeet wrote: The level of emotional investment in this studio from Jimmy is something I don't ever care to understand.
i already said multiple times i reject the "friends" BS Frost Giant is spewing. Therefore, there is no emotional investment. Don't try to half read my forum posts and then make some leap of faith about my emotions.
If the game is good I'll play it. If it is not good I won't play it. meh.
On November 21 2023 09:29 Hider wrote: I agree that the next RTS will "fail" or at least not obtain more than a little niche of the overall player market. Stormgate, Immortals gates of pyre and zerospace are all too conservative in their design choices. A mixed average of Wc3 and Sc2 as opposed to investing new stuff that can "wow" in a new playerbase. A good test is this; show the average MOBA player some clips/highlights of a new RTS game. If they are not immediately drawn to it, the game has no potential.
It’s a niche, but it’s a big enough niche. Gaming is just such a larger leisure activity than it used to be that there’s just more pie to go around.
I’m still reserving judgement to see how things go I guess.
If you want to reach a wide (and young) audience, you have to go mobile. It's the only way IMO. Though I personally do not want dumbed down controls etc. so niche is fine for me :D
I think PC MOBA market is big enough. If you can cater to say 20% of that market, you can create a very succesful RTS. Catering to them is less about simplifying/making the game easy and more about innovative and interesting unit-design and whether the flow of gameplay appears fun at first glance.
20% of the MOBA market? That is like making a new CCG which you can play vs others for money and say "poker is pretty popular, if we can get 20% of poker players to play our game, we will be very successful".
MOBAs are not RTS, and players are very loyal and invested into games they play competitively. The new RTS games will aim for recruiting SC2, BW and AoE players, and even then 20% is a tough ask. The player bases are older, and might not bother learning another game from scratch.
People play multiple games. Fewer than 1% of the player base can be said to be truly competitive. Playing ladder at platinum is not competitive. BW players won't switch for stormgate, it s just too different from the economy to the graphic style. But they might play both. Just like a lot of sc2/bw player also play lol.
Maybe you don't remember or you were too young but when sc2 came out a lot of ppl played it despite 0 rts experience because starcraft was a well known franchise and blizzard was still respected back then. The campaign was cool and 3v3 4v4 were fun which also helped.
As i said many times, if the game is good on its owm it will have players. If it s a copy/tribute of other good games it won't
On November 21 2023 09:29 Hider wrote: I agree that the next RTS will "fail" or at least not obtain more than a little niche of the overall player market. Stormgate, Immortals gates of pyre and zerospace are all too conservative in their design choices. A mixed average of Wc3 and Sc2 as opposed to investing new stuff that can "wow" in a new playerbase. A good test is this; show the average MOBA player some clips/highlights of a new RTS game. If they are not immediately drawn to it, the game has no potential.
It’s a niche, but it’s a big enough niche. Gaming is just such a larger leisure activity than it used to be that there’s just more pie to go around.
I’m still reserving judgement to see how things go I guess.
If you want to reach a wide (and young) audience, you have to go mobile. It's the only way IMO. Though I personally do not want dumbed down controls etc. so niche is fine for me :D
I think PC MOBA market is big enough. If you can cater to say 20% of that market, you can create a very succesful RTS. Catering to them is less about simplifying/making the game easy and more about innovative and interesting unit-design and whether the flow of gameplay appears fun at first glance.
20% of the MOBA market? That is like making a new CCG which you can play vs others for money and say "poker is pretty popular, if we can get 20% of poker players to play our game, we will be very successful".
MOBAs are not RTS, and players are very loyal and invested into games they play competitively. The new RTS games will aim for recruiting SC2, BW and AoE players, and even then 20% is a tough ask. The player bases are older, and might not bother learning another game from scratch.
People play multiple games. Fewer than 1% of the player base can be said to be truly competitive. Playing ladder at platinum is not competitive. BW players won't switch for stormgate, it s just too different from the economy to the graphic style. But they might play both. Just like a lot of sc2/bw player also play lol.
Maybe you don't remember or you were too young but when sc2 came out a lot of ppl played it despite 0 rts experience because starcraft was a well known franchise and blizzard was still respected back then. The campaign was cool and 3v3 4v4 were fun which also helped.
As i said many times, if the game is good on its owm it will have players. If it s a copy/tribute of other good games it won't
I think Slydie just meant most people playing SC2/Dota/League/Csgo etc have invested a lot of time into being 'competitive' at their game and will only really dabble in their other games. Even being Plat in sc2 from zero RTS experience takes what, prob 50 hours of learning? Same goes with 50%ish skill in any of those games - it takes quite the investment in both genre and specific game, and you're not that likely to stray outside of your 'main'. Like for me in terms of hours it's ~250 / 4,000 / 300 / 50 hours in sc2/dota/league/csgo respectively. If a new moba came out, I'd only try it if it had some dope onboarding (campaign / co-op / something) or my friends all decided to try it.
Similar anecdote my dad is well into his 60s and has been playing Hearthstone for the last 6+ years. I was never for a moment worried he'd start up MTG Arena when that hit, despite it being a better game, because there's no incentive for him to drop the 1,000+ hours he's put into Hearthstone. He's sure not 'competitive' by any stretch of the imagination, but for him to be pulled by another CCG it's gotta have some kind of draw strong enough to pull him over his "But I -know- this game" for Hearthstone.
Ultimately I agree, if the game is good people will play it. Still, I think if you're entering one of these contested markets you've gotta have something to get people to download it in the first place. In the case of RTS, I think the obvious answer is the campaign.
On November 25 2023 21:15 _Spartak_ wrote: In the case of CoD, you would be buying the game on Steam though. Or you would be buying it through battle.net but then you play the beta through battle.net launcher. You don't buy the game through an external site and then get a Steam key for a beta. I imagine Valve puts such restrictions to prevent developers from circumventing Steam to sell stuff and avoid paying a fee to Valve.
How does this work anyway on steam? Does Valve get 30% of every MTX? That would be cutthroat IMO. Or just the stuff you buy directly on steam like DLC and bundles?
To the other topic: If they ran out of money I'm not sure how a KS campaign which will maybe bring in some 50.000$ would ever help a studio that just burned through 35+ mio $
On the topic of the Kickstarter, the idea that investors care about $100k revenue, especially from the people who are already going to buy the game, is laughable.
Let's also take it as an assumption that Tim Morton and the gang are all industry veterans that could have gotten well-paying jobs doing something less difficult than starting a new RTS game studio, and believe them when they say they want to make a great game.
Both Frost Giant and their investors want a lot of long-term players, because it will mean their game will be played and it will make them money.
And how do you get a lot of long term players? Get a lot of players to try the game, and make it good enough for them to stick around.
So how does a Kickstarter help this?
1. Creates media and social media attention that will lead to more Steam wishlists 2. Gets the biggest fans more invested in the success of the game 3. Gives a better way to filter who joins the beta test out of the large of signups to get better feedback 4. A successful campaign can lead to even more media hype and more confidence from investors if they want to raise more money for whatever reason.
These reasons are a lot more important than what amounts to a week or two's worth of payroll in preorders.
"From the Creators of SC2 and WC3" is not exactly 100% true and it leads to rebuttals like this on reddit.
Frostgiant didn't create Starcraft 2 or Warcraft 3. I just want to say that the language "From StarCraft II & Warcraft III creators" is getting wild. I think more fair descriptions would be like "from part of the team that brought you SC2 & WC3" or "former StarCraft 2 developers" as most independent media has settled on. You've deployed the word creators here in a way that its used nowadays in the general media space, like say in youtube or tiktok, to mean — people who work in that media ecosystem. So its a claim that these are people who work in the Starcraft/Warcraft general area.
But in the context of Kickstarter/crowdfunding this is comparable to saying "From the creators of Starcraft II and Warcraft III" which you would not. Its playing it loose for a stronger effect but this phrasing is misleading.
Investigating Authorship claim Kickstarter in gaming is very famous for allowing the original creators of a work to make a spiritual successor and reclaim the perceived rightful ownership of a work. Better yet when the original corporate ownership is deemed to be malevolent. See Eiyuden a work from Muriyama + Kawano the creators of the original series Suikoden which is seeing spiritual succession wrestled from the hands of dark corporate demi-liches Konami.
Frost Giant doesn't have the same claim to ownership over SC2 and WC3, they aren't the creators, which is fine. James Anhalt, Tim Campbell, and Micky Neilson have long records of contribution to these series. But Blizzard RTS has a long authorship history, and I feel like if you ranked up the top 40 contributors to the -Craft line, you'd have the aforementioned fellas within the upper half of that, with Tim Morten slipping in a bit lower for his leadership in the F2P era.
Still I've watched the drift in secondary news sources and audience reception when this authorship is expressed ambiguously. Many audience members are clapping along to a chant of 'StarCraft Team! StarCraft Team!" and with preorders eminent it requires a little pointing out. Frost Giant has a definite Blizzard genealogy. Of 50~ employees (see https://theorg.com/org/frost-giant-studios, or LinkedIn) probably ~20 have worked at Blizzard. Then consider: - the timing and length of this service (many junior employees) - some of them were employed as marketers/business/esports people (not that they aren't important) - a couple of those are only consultants on Stormgate. (Neilson, cinema director Scott Goffman) This leaves you with about a dozen that can track themselves to working on the StarCraft Legacy of the Void release and the F2P/co-op commander era. For full-time employees of Frost Giant who worked on Starcraft or Warcraft's original releases I count three (Jesse Brophy, Campbell, Ahnalt).
What about Dreamhaven? If something would help beyond that language change it would be clarifying Dreamhaven's consulting relationship, its been very nebulous since the announcement and I do feel that the many original contributors to these series who are found there (Morhaime, Browder, Sigaty, Dabiri) are indirectly lending their name to some of this authorship claim by way of a unclear consulting relationship.
You said something wrong and I corrected you. Stop moving the goalposts. But to answer your question, a small video game start-up lasting for over 12 years is a success and shows he knows how to manage a business, which you were implying is not the case.
i'm not moving the goalposts. i am asking a question. where are the goalposts being moved? far as i can tell they ported some existing games to mobile and then went under. i think Morten returned to a game producation role at EALA after that. IMO, RA3 was a success given the constraints placed under the EALA RTS Team. Some might view RA3 as a failure though.
changing the subject, is there any detailed video of combat between the Infernals and the Vanguard? I found this, however, I'm hoping something better exists someplace.
I always felt RA3 went too overboard with the camp. I get red alert was always campy but it felt like it went too overboard in 3. Just didn't strike the right balance
i really liked the combat in RA3 and the economy model and economy decision making. it provided a cool and interesting contrast to Brood War. I like both BW and RA3 for very different reasons. Both great games.
i can see how the unusual, sarcastic, over the top comedy in the RA3 marketing might rub peole the wrong way though. David Hasselhoff did a video series about how RA3 can boost your confidence and help you pick up girls. I was ROFLMAO but i can see how some people won't like it.
I watched ZombieGrub talk about Stormgate on her talk show Real Talk Strategy. After listening to her "not break the NDA" and then answer without answering ...
I think Stormgate is in trouble and some portion of Frost Giant's funding got pulled. Get ready for a real tear jerker sob story from Tim Morten guys. Its coming...
As I said in my post , I am basing it on ZombieGrub's discussion of Stormgate on her show "Real Talk Strategy". I should add that it was the November 22nd show.
I don't see how this is Frost Giant saying they need cash for development. I believe them when they say they are raising money for get more people in the beta, and to go along with steam rules regarding beta keys.
Realistically a kickstarter would never raise money that puts a dent in the budget they originally had. The most successful crowdfunded games might raise say $2-5M, compared with the the $35M Frost Giant are working with. Not just that, they are almost all paid games, and the incentive of joining the crowdfund is that people are essentially just buying the game early.
How would crowdfunding a free-to-play game work? They haven't yet mentioned if the kickstarter will grant access to the paid portion of the game (which will be the campaign from what I understand). They probably shouldn't be selling things like skins this early either, as many of the current units/models/structures might not even make it to full release.
"Real Talk Strategy" is a very good show. I highly recommend it.
"does this augur well for Stormgate or is this suggestive of problems" ZG: "I can't answer that I'm under NDA".
WTF answer is that? LOL. If everything is great and funded like Frost Giant is saying then ZG should just continue with her effusive praise of the amazing company that Frost Giant is. ZG has been heaping praise on FG for months now. All of a sudden she is quiet now.
Also, she labels this question "controversial". If everything is great and FG really has $35M USD in cash in the bank right now then how is this question controversial? its a dumb question if FG really has $35M USD in cash in their bank ready to spend on the game.
"great i get to pay $100 for the privilege of being a QA Tester" ZG: " that is funny but it is true"
so the game is in a state that it needs QA Testing. Having a game in a state where you just need 100,000 users to stress test the servers is a long way off from having a game with only 1 faction working and it still requires QA Testing.
Later on in the segment ZG issues a pretty brutal analysis of what is going on... and the dead silence of her co-hosts is telling.
Its been sunshine, rainbows, and Santa Claus parades for months. Now, the back tracking has begun. Now we're in "managed expectations" mode.
Check out "Real Talk Strategy" episodes about Stormgate from months ago and everyone is grinning from ear to ear. Its just a great old time! Then check out the November 22 episode. It looks like they're covering a funeral.
I dunno about anyone else but my enthusiasm for talking about a game where I’m under an NDA not to say any meaningful things about it would wane pretty quickly. Or hell just the novelty of discussing a game that’s still in alpha and hasn’t changed a massive amount towards being shippable has waned.
Me and my buds who managed to get to check it out on a stream and had enthusiastic watching parties lost interest pretty quickly, it served as a promising taster for a hopefully appetising main course down the line.
I just think it’s a bit of a jump from an answer that’s admittedly a bit odd to the studio having big funding problems.
Maybe you’re right but I don’t think it’s much more than a gut feeling you’re going off
EPT
