Orcs Campaign: How, When , Why, What! [important]

[darkgod]

The Prides lie in ruins!
The Sorcerers have been defeated!
Orcs in all Var'Eyal are in dismay, hunted by the Sunwall and their newfound allies from the west.
The Scourge from the West is back in the west, but her legacy stay strong: the orc race is once again upon the brink of destruction!

But not all hope is lost.
On the isolated Clork Peninsula lies the fifth pride: Kruk's Pride; unseen and unharmed by the Scourge.
Yet not all is great there either, the sunwall offensive has setup an outpost blocking the way to the mainland.
But the worst threat comes from the peninsula itself, the main inhabitants are not the orcs, but the Atmos Tribe.
A huge civilization of steam giants whose mastery of steamtech makes them incredible foes.

Play an orc, prove your worth! Use steamtech against the giants, reclaim the far east and free it from sunwall scum!
Craft your own chainsaws, rocket boots, steam powered armours, and all kind of nasty technology!
This is your destiny! For Garkul's Legacy, for the Glory of the Pride!
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Yes this is happening! Work on the orc campaign has started!
You want to play it! I want to play it!

So go answer the poll please (one answer for the [a] questions and one for the please)

PS: as a thing to relate to, the adom resurrection campaign aimed for 50k and got 90k; for some bugfixes & a few simple classes/races

[Parcae2]

For A: I voted te4.org because I assume kickstarter/indiegogo would take a cut, but would be happy to donate wherever it proves convenient.

For B: Surely that's kind of a difficult question for these forums to answer? I mean, I would cheerfully vote for DG to get a million dollars and also a fancy hat, but that's a different matter from saying how much he's likely to raise from a funding campaign. Surely DG himself is the best placed to judge what's realistic?

Anyway, I'm very excited about this project!

[Mewtarthio]

Kickstarter would take a cut, but it'd also probably give you higher visibility. Plus, people who've never heard of ToME will be more likely to donate money to a Kickstarter campaign than to donate money to some random guy on the internet (the rational advantage is that Kickstarter guarantees they won't take your money if the fundraiser fails to meet its goals).

As for goals, I believe both Kickstarter and Indiegogo have the "you only get the money if you reach your goal" policy, so it's better to play conservatively, then try to drum up additional support after making the goal by putting out stretch goals.

Also, yes! It's finally happening! LONG LIVE THE ORCS!

Wait, "her legacy stays strong"? The canon PC is female?

[TheRani]

As intriguing as the steamtech stuff sounds, I don't want to play an orc.

[bricks]

I was about to say that Kickstarter was a bad idea, but then I realized that the reason I dislike Kickstarter is because it's all flash and no substance (while ToME is already quite substantial). I'm still not sure how I'd vote. If you go the Kickstarter route, might I suggest a low main target with the promise of a smaller campaign, but with a large number of stretch goals? A general breakdown of the costs would be helpful, too - I assume it's mostly personal costs and Shockbolt's fees, the costs of maintaining servers, and the costs of the donor bonuses.

[getter77]

Very hard to say---managing even an attempt at a successful crowdfund on IGG and KS are quite demanding endeavors, quite possibly more demanding now than when Biskup ran his to resurrect ADOM on IGG. Though....it IS "The Season" forthcoming as various projects are sharpening their knives and probably starting to go live come April'ish as that is when their historical data has people throwing it all around on account of finally recouping from Winter Holiday spending in theory.

If you do end up doing it instead or in conjunction with some sort of Bounty or Funding Drive (See the Bounty Board on Chaosforge or even more recently the Pledge Drive that garnered a nice sum towards some very nice improvements that should land any week/month now), I'd recommend only doing Fixed Funding on the sites---though only IGG lets you choose the sketchier Flex ala Grimoire.

Ideally, the prelude to this would involve a big, meaty new patch update to hopefully give a good boost to the Steam Greenlight initiative now that there've been a few rounds of accepted projects and thereby slimming the pack a bit allowing for the next ones on up to rise---as would it get the mindshare going again in time to pivot from such into the funding prospect.

[aynama]

I voted for the fund but thought why not open two together? I dunno much about no damn kickstarter but sure don't mind if ya open that too...
well really I know what a kickstarter etc. is... but I just like the idea to give to uncut orc fund from te4.org....
some dig the kickstarter, let 'em have it
whoa I want to be an orc!

[Dwindlehop]

For a, I picked kickstarter/indiegogo. Give me rewards!

For b, I picked free. You tell me how much it will cost. What I care about is the cost to me, not how much is raised total. (Edit: Euros or dollars?)

[emblempride]

Such a hard choice... I'd really rather have ALL funds go directly to Mr. Darkgod solely, but.... They may take a cut, but bands that use Kickstarter generally make their goals insanely fast and actually get fairly good publicity on the site for what it's worth (unless you're Charlie Dominici), even super underground ones that no one but me has heard of like Sketching in Stereo made their $1000 goal in about a week or two, which is pretty crazy imo. Of course, it's usually because 2 or 3 people will donate a crazy amount of money, but that's still generating profit. I haven't seen a game campaign yet though so I'm not sure how it would compare, but ToME seems to be pretty decently popular as far as roguelikes go and freeware in general, so it very well could be the more profitable choice even with the cut... Gonna have to think this over a bit before I vote...

[CaptainTrips]

Ermahgawd. I'm excited.

I'd donate via Kickstarter or directly, but I agree that you'd probably get more exposure via Kickstarter, especially if you make a nice video and whatnot.

As to the second question, I have to agree with some of the previous posters that we (the unwashed masses) can't really answer that question. It really comes down to how much work you think you'll need to invest and what that time is worth to you. If it's something you're definitely going to work on either way and you end up using Kickstarter, it probably makes sense to set a very realistic (i.e. from the lower end of your expectations) goal and then work out a series of stretch goals as Mewtarthio says.

[Parcae2]

Also, this is happening anyway, right? It's different from Biskup's thing, where he wasn't going to work on it unless he was paid. That being the case, if there's a Kickstarter, I think it makes sense to do it in terms of time-to-completion rather than features (the more DG gets paid, the more time he can afford to devote to a side project like ToME).

[Grey]

PS: as a thing to relate to, the adom resurrection campaign aimed for 50k and got 90k; for some bugfixes & a few simple classes/races

This is an incorrect way of looking at it. Many will look at what you're doing and say "how can he ask for money for just an expansion?" in exactly the same tone you use for the ADOM fund. But it comes down to how much the fans value the goal. There was a high perceived value for ADOM because it hadn't received an update for 10 years, and its fans were mostly older and in high-paying jobs. About 60% of the money came from about 5% of the funders, with the top people paying around $10k each - will you have that? Also there's a lot more than just bugfixes in it - new graphics, soundtrack, quests, artifacts, corruptions, etc, on top of the novelty factor of getting a release after many years. I'm not saying it's all worth $90k (especially if you're not an ADOM fan) but it doesn't do well to be dismissive of it or to think that it's easy to get that level of money. Compare DoomRL's Donation Drive that got just $4.4k, with the highest donation being $1k.

But of course ToME fans are generous and I'm confident you can beat $5k, and likely $10k with ease. How much further you can get depends a little on what sort of rewards and stretch goals you're likely to have. The ADOM campaign was very well run and it is worth looking closely at its reward levels, stretch goals and mini-drives mid-campaign. But avoid physical rewards except at the very highest levels - they're more effort than they're worth and end up costing a lot to produce, eating away at the funds.

Kickstarter has the benefit of more payment systems, higher perceived trust, as well as giving a fan communication channel and tracking reward levels (saves you some significant effort in managing rewards). It also gets a bit more notice on general gaming sites like Rock, Paper, Shotgun, possibly drawing a few new people in. Is that worth its processing fees? It's worth considering seriously.

For rewards there's some good scope for including donors as random boss enemies, since they can be almost any race/class/monster in the main game. For higher rewards you can have custom bosses with a bit more polish and their own Shockbolt tile. You can also have dedicated artifacts for donors, and at higher levels whole questlines. I think a minimum donation for early/beta access would also work well. And I'm happy to offer lore pieces as donation rewards :) For stretch goals bringing forward the release date is good, as is further monsters, items, classes etc. Depends on what's realistic though.

Another big deal is getting the video pitch right, but that will come later...

For the Prides!

[Grey]

An interesting recent article on using Kickstarter:

http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/Bes ... sp?c=48791

The point about choosing pledge levels well is very apt. I suggest you openly consult about these before the start of the project.

[stinkstink]

As intriguing as the steamtech stuff sounds, I don't want to play an orc.

As intriguing as the orc stuff sounds, I don't want to play a steampunk.

[darkgod]

As intriguing as the steamtech stuff sounds, I don't want to play an orc.

As intriguing as the orc stuff sounds, I don't want to play a steampunk.

I see what you did there !