ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Any thoughts of kickstarting this great game? For..
-- further graphics (current are very nice for a rogue but one can always go further)
-- ports to IOS or other OS
-- outside programmers to add needed mods
etc etc

Given any thought to this?
Really great tactical game and I would love to see it get more exposure!

It's not a terrible idea, but there are some caveats.
- There are complications with doing the kickstart thing. Kickstarter takes some overhead, you have to pay income tax on everything you get, you have to pump out whatever you've promised as rewards (both individual rewards and breakpoint rewards), and so forth. It's not something to be entered into lightly.
- It has to be a kickstarter with a bit of beef behind it. I don't think you're trying to get money for nothing out of the current playerbase here - the current playerbase isn't that large, and there are some reasonably efficient ways for the current playerbase to donate anyway. That means that you have to offer things (either individual rewards or stretch goals, preferably both) that are awesome, and that people who are currently playing both will want and cannot currently get. Preferably you want to go over and above that, and offer things that are awesome enough that people outside the current playerbase will want them (and cannot currently get them). I personally can't think of anything like that, really. Remember, money brought in through kickstarter is less efficient than money brought in through donations.
- You don't want it to be merchandise. There's a fairly large learning curve for doing the merchandise thing - you don't want your first experience to be trying to satisfy a whole horde of customers who've already paid while also trying to work your way around kickstarter based on cost estimates you made when you hadn't ever done any of it before.

So... what sorts of things would be offered, that are cool enough that people would part with their money to make it happen?

There's also the whole thing of Kickstarter only being for American projects (though it's coming to the UK soon, and I'm sure DG could find a trustworthy UK contact...)

What I'd much rather see is ToME4 on Steam. Dungeons of Dredmor has done immensely well for itself there, and it'd be great to see ToME4 alongside it.

Grey wrote: What I'd much rather see is ToME4 on Steam. Dungeons of Dredmor has done immensely well for itself there, and it'd be great to see ToME4 alongside it.

Yeah, that would be awesome.

Has Rock Paper Shotgun covered TOME 4.0? I would think they would be interested.

It was mentioned briefly in a round-up of roguelikes:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/12 ... oguelikes/

Agreed that a KS would perhaps not be the best fit versus getting on Steam, GoG, Desura, GamersGate, etc.

Otherwise though, I've long thought taking a crack at the Bounty Board system that Chaosforge has been doing for awhile now might be a good way to go for some aspects of boosting T4 forward as there is a centralized community present---projects that don't quite yet have one would seemingly not be able to avail it properly.

http://forum.chaosforge.org/index.php?board=30.0

Grey wrote:There's also the whole thing of Kickstarter only being for American projects (though it's coming to the UK soon, and I'm sure DG could find a trustworthy UK contact...)

What I'd much rather see is ToME4 on Steam. Dungeons of Dredmor has done immensely well for itself there, and it'd be great to see ToME4 alongside it.

Actually it's open to projects anywhere -- you just have to have a US bank account to link it to. It doesn't look like this kickstarter idea is getting much traction, but should it resurface for some reason, and enough people are interested, obtaining a US bank account isn't terribly difficult. (especially with the advent of purely online banks)