GO FUND ME SORT OF CAMPAIGN FOR BATTLEGOAT STUDIO!

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Aawish
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GO FUND ME SORT OF CAMPAIGN FOR BATTLEGOAT STUDIO!

Post by Aawish »

I think battlegoat should start a funding campaign on some popular sites so that they can get enough fund to hire a decent team of developers so we can get a completely new version of the game with a better game engine. I hope to see this game rise to it's glory again...
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Re: GO FUND ME SORT OF CAMPAIGN FOR BATTLEGOAT STUDIO!

Post by golden.pole »

I agree. Many games are funded by the community. We should be able to fund a sequel, expansion pack or some fancy features.
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Nerei
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Re: GO FUND ME SORT OF CAMPAIGN FOR BATTLEGOAT STUDIO!

Post by Nerei »

Well lets not go too crazy with that might be achieved. For starters a software development team is not cheap to maintain. I do not know how wages are in Canada but if we go by some numbers I have seen for US studios BG might be paying over 100K USD each year. On top of that you got rent, utility, license subscriptions etc.
Part of it can be substituted with sales sure but for one that only hits once you have a game to sell and unfortunately we are dealing with a niche product. According to steam spy SRU has sold around 20.5K units +/- 3.5K.


The people that have managed to get funding for a fairly large game production have either had a pretty good name to throw behind it and/or played on nostalgia quite a bit. They also tend to have hit the market at a better time than now.
No offense to anyone but being named Koji Igarashi or Brian Fargo helps quite a bit (at least if you throw in the names of the games you have made). Having both the name and the official License probably helped Yu Suzuki with Shenmue III even more (yes Brian Fargo also has a few original, nostalgic licenses on hand).

Naturally you can also go the route of Keiji Inafune which basically calls for lying and promising donators the world and stars and in the end not even getting close to delivering.

A good name is probably all but required today to go beyond the 100K mark.

Going to places like kickstarter has only gotten harder judging by the numbers. If you compare how many 10K+ kickstarters succeeded 2 years ago with now the numbers are not good. That might be due to saturation or just fatigue but either way it is not good.


I am using Kickstarter as an example as they have an easily visible games section that I can get metrics on. Gofundme also generally from what I can tell is not really focused on games.
Further I am sticking with Kickstarter as building a business on forth-running one-time donations is a terrible idea.
With kickstarter at least you got 30-60 days and you know what cash you have. With something like Patreon you have the repeating donations which at least gives a bit of reliability. Building a business on "hopefully John will donate again next month" is just insane.
It is something you should not even do as a streamer much less a multi-person company.

Please do not get me wrong. Gofundme is great for great many things. It has improved the lives of quite a few people by helping them fund medical bills, getting schoolbooks etc but it is not a good platform for a business to rely on.
It is also helping the Romine brothers from Digital Homocide fund their legal bills but that is another quite funny story.


Sorry if this is slightly off-topic but please do not expect funding a large complex game to be simple in 2016 using crowdfunding unless you got some good names to throw behind it.
Here unfortunately Supreme ruler and related names I would say a bit too much of a niche. Sadly the SR1936 kickstarter campaign also indicted this and that was in late 2013.

Launching anything big right now especially is not a good move as the last big crowdfunded game to hit (unless I have missed something) was mighty no. 9 which lets face it was not particularly good. If you want to start a campaign wait and hope the next big release will be good and ride their slipstream.


Personally I think if BG wants to get involved in crowdfunding anything they should create a patreon account and see how that turns out. It is a far better measurement for the overall commitment of the community than the other sources that like Gofundme tends to be spiky in nature (and I am still looking for their game category) or like Kickstater require a good deal of investment in that initial campaign.
Patreon is cheap to start out with and you can build from there.
If all else fails with Patreon it might still get BG free coffee each month.

If they where to launch a large crowdfunding campaign I would say kickstarter despite Gofundme being slightly bigger. Kickstarter has a dedicated games section and most well known crowdfunded games I know off at least have used that in some way so more relevant people are likely to notice it there. From the sites where I can get metrics they are also the ones with the best high tier success rate.


Sorry for a wall of text but crowdfunding of games amongst other things is something I have cared about for several years and thus I have spent a good bit of time and money on it.
For the record I am not at all saying this is a bad idea. But if you just go to Kickstarter or Gofundme and create a 250K campaign without any plan it is doomed to fail spectacularly.
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Re: GO FUND ME SORT OF CAMPAIGN FOR BATTLEGOAT STUDIO!

Post by GIJoe597 »

An observation;

I find it humorous that I have never heard of either of the people you used in your example of famous names. I guess I am really out of the loop.
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Re: GO FUND ME SORT OF CAMPAIGN FOR BATTLEGOAT STUDIO!

Post by Nerei »

GIJoe597 wrote:An observation;

I find it humorous that I have never heard of either of the people you used in your example of famous names. I guess I am really out of the loop.
Well the ultimate name in game crowdfunding is pretty much Chris Roberts of wing commander fame. According to his website they have hit something like 110M. He is an anomaly though that appears to basically have an idea and private people will throw 15K USD at him. Yes it was amazing how fast people bought that package. His own website was basically brought down by the number of interested people.

The hypetrain for star citizen is massive though and will probably be the most spectacular derailment we have seen for a long time. The game might be good but it is just hyped beyond belief.

I am also a bit hesitant with what to say about him as he for one is reporting his own numbers and while unlike Inafune he might have a huge pile of cash he is also promising quite a bit.


Outside of Chris Roberts those 3 (Yu Suzuki, Koji Igarashi and Brian Fargo) are from what I know the people behind the largest kickstarter style crowdfunded digital games having raised around 6.3, 5.5 and 4.1M respectively. They did however also have names like Shenmue, Castlevania and Planescale Torment to throw around though only Yu Susuki actually have the rights to the franchise name. The others are "spiritual successors".

To be fair unless you are into those genres it is entirely possible to miss those. None of them are even remotely related to the SR series. Star Citizen is an open world space exploration game, Shenmue III is open world action adventure, Bloodstained is sidescrooling action hack n' slash an Torment is a 90's style RPG.
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Re: GO FUND ME SORT OF CAMPAIGN FOR BATTLEGOAT STUDIO!

Post by GIJoe597 »

I am familiar with Chris Roberts, played his previous games and watched his movies. RSI.com reports $123,246,488 as of this post. A very healthy number, to be sure.

At any rate, whatever BG do, I am enjoying my purchases and I am sure I will continue to do so for years.
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Re: GO FUND ME SORT OF CAMPAIGN FOR BATTLEGOAT STUDIO!

Post by nick-bang »

A very good idea ... I thought it was dead, but it seems not. Which is good.
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Re: GO FUND ME SORT OF CAMPAIGN FOR BATTLEGOAT STUDIO!

Post by Leafgreen »

Or just make Supreme Ruler 2030. And later expansions for it.
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Re: GO FUND ME SORT OF CAMPAIGN FOR BATTLEGOAT STUDIO!

Post by nick-bang »

Leafgreen wrote:Or just make Supreme Ruler 2030. And later expansions for it.
I agree, but that does not seem to be in the cards ...
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Re: GO FUND ME SORT OF CAMPAIGN FOR BATTLEGOAT STUDIO!

Post by Nerei »

“Just"? Making software is not exactly cheap. As a company the ultimate goal for BG have to be to make money on the software they release. Given that BG has apparently chosen not to make this I can only assume they do not see it as feasible. Considering that they have access to things like accurate sales figures and overhead expenses I have to assume they know better than us that have the power of vague numbers and guessing.

Ignoring this what would be the defining characteristic of 2030 over 2020? What would Distinguish it from 2020? Made up politicians, world history and military hardware?
Not really sure how to sell that to people at full retail price when the majority of customers already have SRU.
Maybe if they significantly improved the engine and sold it as one of those ever so popular remakes but that just brings us back to point 1. Making software is not exactly cheap.
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Leafgreen
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Re: GO FUND ME SORT OF CAMPAIGN FOR BATTLEGOAT STUDIO!

Post by Leafgreen »

What made 2020 different from 2010? And now they've had what, 8 years? to have ideas and watch the world turn. Heck, how many Hearts of Iron are out now? Civilization? How many games can you think of where 1 and 3 weren't that different, but sold 50 million copies?

And i'd rather have the initial company make it if anyone does. A different company would not understand the concepts without a lot of study, know the problems and great ideas that spawned on the forum, and new companies like to change things that don't need changing just because they can or don't understand why the game is appealing in the first place.

Why do planes have this silly carry weight number? Let's dump it!
Player xyz starts up 2030, finds that a Cessna just overflew his capital and dropped 32 M-1a4 and a destroyer.

I'm still getting 1/4 of the budget to make the intro and cutscenes, right?
Hey... what is pathfinding? Is that like an explorer unit? We can add that in post-production.

I want high def sprites and a map that will dazzle players with the graphics! What do you mean the game needs 30gig of ram to reach year 20. Well obviously we need to cut the number of units down to something more manageable like... 45 total. Rock/Paper/Scissors is the way every studio does fighting, duh.

Sorry. 2 posts on first page of a thread is hogging but I couldn't resist, i'll stop. =)
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Re: GO FUND ME SORT OF CAMPAIGN FOR BATTLEGOAT STUDIO!

Post by nick-bang »

I agree with Nerei

One have to face the economic realities of what this game is a part of:

Its a niche product, and as Nerei points out, then obviously not generating enough cashflow for BG. George have been working with this game since the mid-80´s

He wouldnt stop it if he had any other options...

Now ... IF ... we were to generate a new sources of cash for BG, then it would clearly be another matter. But until we actually, maybe, mount a kickstarter and generate enough cash, then its just dreams and ideas.
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Re: GO FUND ME SORT OF CAMPAIGN FOR BATTLEGOAT STUDIO!

Post by YoMomma »

If i was impressed by changes from SR2020 i would suport this idea, but i don't.

I rather see modders make money of this game, like mw mod of fistalis or all the great mods from SR2020. Game is being to sloppy since then. Not impressed at all.
Game still has naval production site without sea port imho. Fix damn Denmark! Fix damn Isis if your have to balls to add them. Fix your mistake from airfield-airbase, so Russia and China actually has supply. Fix relations, Fix auto repair, or atleast give control of puppet facility repair, Fix your game!

Maybe BG will make some money then, wont you think? I dont want to see another sloppy dlc/game.
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Re: GO FUND ME SORT OF CAMPAIGN FOR BATTLEGOAT STUDIO!

Post by nick-bang »

YoMomma wrote:If i was impressed by changes from SR2020 i would suport this idea, but i don't.

I rather see modders make money of this game, like mw mod of fistalis or all the great mods from SR2020. Game is being to sloppy since then. Not impressed at all.
Game still has naval production site without sea port imho. Fix damn Denmark! Fix damn Isis if your have to balls to add them. Fix your mistake from airfield-airbase, so Russia and China actually has supply. Fix relations, Fix auto repair, or atleast give control of puppet facility repair, Fix your game!

Maybe BG will make some money then, wont you think? I dont want to see another sloppy dlc/game.

HOW exactly do modders make money from this game ?
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Re: GO FUND ME SORT OF CAMPAIGN FOR BATTLEGOAT STUDIO!

Post by YoMomma »

Well guess that's up to the modders, that's the same question as asking how devs make money of this game, you charge for it.
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