Re: Elite: Dangerous - and the return

[Corbeau]

[drew]

Well after that little mad hour I've decided to put a little aside each week because by hook or by crook I will upgrade my pledge to E:D to £300

Thanks Tricky!

Cheers,

Drew.

[ClymAngus]

Yes, religious or not it's probably best that the project doesn't remain on £666,666: THE PLEDGE OF THE BEAST! For any considerable length of time.

[DaddyHoggy]

Well it's (only) gained another £4k since then - are we reaching the "need £20K a day" point? Just under 30 days to go, just under £600,000 needed...

Hmmm.....

[Commander McLane]

Well it's (only) gained another £4k since then - are we reaching the "need £20K a day" point? Just under 30 days to go, just under £600,000 needed...

Hmmm.....

I'm still contemplating whether I'm going to pledge. So are probably other people as well. It's looking like the £20 pledges are finally beginning to run out (which has taken a heck of a lot of time). I'm thinking about securing one of the last of them, and seeing what happens from there. So I haven't had any feeling of urgency during these past four weeks.

The really sub-par management of the campaign by its creator, and the sometimes rather repelling atmosphere on the comments page certainly also played their part in cooling my initial enthusiasm; and I don't see Mr. Braben do very much to re-kindle it.

Finally, there's of course the question of cross-platform availability of the final product. "I'd like to see that", is about the most I've heard so far from David Braben about this, and that's not cutting it. I am the one who would "like to see" cross-platform support. Mr. Braben's role is to commit himself to doing it, not sitting back and "liking to see", after all he's supposed to be the developer.

[DaddyHoggy]

Well it's (only) gained another £4k since then - are we reaching the "need £20K a day" point? Just under 30 days to go, just under £600,000 needed...

Hmmm.....

I'm still contemplating whether I'm going to pledge. So are probably other people as well. It's looking like the £20 pledges are finally beginning to run out (which has taken a heck of a lot of time). I'm thinking about securing one of the last of them, and seeing what happens from there. So I haven't had any feeling of urgency during these past four weeks.

The really sub-par management of the campaign by its creator, and the sometimes rather repelling atmosphere on the comments page certainly also played their part in cooling my initial enthusiasm; and I don't see Mr. Braben do very much to re-kindle it.

Finally, there's of course the question of cross-platform availability of the final product. "I'd like to see that", is about the most I've heard so far from David Braben about this, and that's not cutting it. I am the one who would "like to see" cross-platform support. Mr. Braben's role is to commit himself to doing it, not sitting back and "liking to see", after all he's supposed to be the developer.

That is pretty much exactly how I feel.

[cim]

Well it's (only) gained another £4k since then

This is the bit that's ended up being really weird about it.

Just about any other Kickstarter project, if it was gaining ~10k a day as E:D is, more or less, would be considered a hugely popular certainty. I don't see it coming in below £800,000 pounds total raised - which would put it not far outside the top 10 all-time projects (it's already over $1M, which puts it alongside just 17 others)

...and yet, because it has that absurd target, its current trajectory looks dangerously under what's needed

[Selezen]

I'm finding something quite interesting about this. I see lots of things happening that would really only be happening if funding was assured. They have a playable demo. They have assigned a writer to the novella. They have put a lot of work and structure into the things that have been shown but are obviously keeping things under their hats. They admit that they have been working on this on the back burner for quite some time. The admission that the Kickstarter is a test to see if there is still a market for the game is on record.

You know what I think? Even if the kickstarter does not reach its target, I think the game will still get made and be released on the advertised schedule.

They've shown too much now to go back on it, and the amount of individuals who have pledged is no mean sales figure if each of them was to buy the game. Plus there's the issue that if they fail to get the funds then say "well, sorry everyone, but that's it - no Elite" then that will be a serious kick in the teeth to those who have pledged and whose hopes have been raised to the level they are at. Some people might call that commercial suicide and I don't think DB would have been as open and "honest" as he has been so far if he didn't have a vested interest in getting this game made. They know that there's a market for Elite Dangerous now, given the financial backing and media interest that the drive has gained.

Discuss.

[Disembodied]

You know what I think? Even if the kickstarter does not reach its target, I think the game will still get made and be released on the advertised schedule.

It's a possibility ... then again, it would be bad publicity for the Kickstarter to fail. If they are prepared to put their own resources into this anyway, might they put forward their own high-value "pledges" to make sure it crosses the line?

[Commander McLane]

You know what I think? Even if the kickstarter does not reach its target, I think the game will still get made and be released on the advertised schedule.

Discuss.

Well, that's what I've been saying on page 18 of this very thread, two weeks ago.

FD's willingness of granting writer's licenses regardless of reaching the Kickstarter goal was the most obvious clue that they're making the game anyway. Calling Kickstarter a marketing tool (rather than a funding tool) openly from day 1 of the campaign was another clue.

Whether they'll put their own money into it, or will use the amount of backers on Kickstarter as an argument in their negotiations with a publisher, that's what I can't say.

[Rese249er]

[cynical mode]
Maybe they're just gonna go ahead with it if the Kickstarter doesn't hit goal, but that might also mean they get out of the pledge commitments; minus writing obligations, it would appear.
[/cynical just-broke-up mode]

[Selezen]

The interesting thing about ED's kickstarter failing is that it means none of us have to pony up for the pledges. It also means that the successful author kickstarters pledges will now be seriously profit, thereby covering some of the things that Drew, for example, would have had to pay for themselves (KS kickback, editing etc).

So in some ways, the ED kickstarter failing could be beneficial to the production of the side media. Frontier's other pledge rewards were mostly game related, including copies of the game and so on, that they will make back in sales and so on anyway since each of the thousands of people who pledged for copies of the game would now be spending about the same amount on commercial copies of the game anyway. So the only change in the profit model would be that the game's income would come after the release of the game instead of before.

Given the condition that ED is in now, I would be surprised if there's a lot more financial input (paying devs etc) that's needed to make the game releasable. It looks like it could be in an alpha state already (at least for the physics, rendering and combat models) so a year and a half could be a bloated estimate. I don't know.

I just get this feeling that Frontier wouldn't be going this far into a marketing and publicity process without having something "on the shelf" or at least very nearly on the shelf. It's a method that the company I work for uses with update releases - get a working release ready then assess the market for viability before carrying out the final phases of development (polishing it up and adding the shiny goodies).

[Cody]

I notice that Ashley, the community support manager at Frontier, has joined SSC purely to answer any Elite: Dangerous questions.

[drew]

You know what I think? Even if the kickstarter does not reach its target, I think the game will still get made and be released on the advertised schedule.

It's a possibility ... then again, it would be bad publicity for the Kickstarter to fail. If they are prepared to put their own resources into this anyway, might they put forward their own high-value "pledges" to make sure it crosses the line?

I am *convinced* the KS won't fail. DB or signicant others will push it over if it needs it. Expect a stampede in the closing few days.

Cheers,

Drew.

ps. Vested interest acknowledged!

[Thargoid]

You know what I think? Even if the kickstarter does not reach its target, I think the game will still get made and be released on the advertised schedule.

It's a possibility ... then again, it would be bad publicity for the Kickstarter to fail. If they are prepared to put their own resources into this anyway, might they put forward their own high-value "pledges" to make sure it crosses the line?

If they have the funding to support it anyway, if the Kickstarter looks like it's going to fail then I'd expect a few last-minute "mysterious large supporters" coming in, quite possibly buying up newly created large support packages.

They would of course be FD themselves, supporting their own kickstarter and so ensuring its success. That way there's no risk, they get all the publicity of the thing and they also minimise the amount that they have to invest by coming in at the end to top things up.

Or at least that would be my cynical expectation.