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[PA Comic] Friday, May 4, 2012 - Incredibility
Geth
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
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Here you are, my good man.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
But seriously, I wonder if any notable game kickstarters have crashed yet, or how soon. I sorta hope such an event doesn't damage the concept too badly.
... My, what a boring Signature.
It will be at least a year before it is known if any of the big ones fail.
This is because I think people have this misunderstanding that games failing is some sort of 1-in-a-million kind of thing.
And it really really really isn't. I have absolutely no figures to back this up, but games do fail. They fail all the time. And this is when there are companies backing them up, so that if they are having troubles they can sometimes give the game a cash infusion to make sure it gets made.
If a game is 100% crowdsourced and runs into issues... there are no more funds, unless you do another kickstarter and say "Things aren't going well, please give us more money"... which doesn't sound like a great sales pitch.
Soooo yeah. If you're thinking of supporting a game on kickstarter, kudos to you- just go into it with the knowledge that you might never see that money, or any of the cool level bonuses they are promising, because the game may never materialize.
Not just you....
That's a good line to take; hopefully it results in people giving it a long, hard think before they ask strangers for money.
Look at his nose, those eye brows, that 5 o'clock shadow. He looks so
French
Oh shit
A quick GIS reveals his birth name is Jean Jeuxvidéos
I am almost 100% sure that it wasn't done on purpose.
I hope I don't get banned for this, with quotes like these I don't think I am going to find many friends here.
I just tweeted and emailed @ tycho & gabe and asked them to use Randy Pinkstaff or their own characters.
It hurts to see a comic I like so much perpetuate a stereotype that a swarthy male is a con-man or whatever.
The fact thy the guy calls himself John Videogames or claims to have invented video games seems to get lost in just how ethnic/middle eastern/Mediterranean/ just over all swarth this guy looks.
Did a swarthy guy offend one of these dudes?
I mean I am sure they have black friends and Kiko has thick eye brows. I don't think Tycho and Gabe are bad people. I just wish they knew this is a hurtful stereotype and that perpetuating it isn't anymore funny then equating black face with happy servitude, simplicity or whatever.
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An example would be Blizzard's Warcraft Adventures, where Blizzard apparently just changed its mind about making an adventure game. Meanwhile Double Fine experienced the initial publisher dropping out during the development of both Psychonauts and Brutal Legend. Neither were over budget, the publisher merely changed its mind and cut its losses.
Now, this means that with Kickstarter games, the developer doesn't have the luxury of simply killing the project if they don't like the way its going and just eat the losses, which they could do if it was self-funded. However, the developer also knows that there's a committed consumer base for the product, and that they're in the green as long as they stay in budget, versus committing their own money.
This is a possibility. However, a number of these games are still taking pre-orders after the Kickstarter ended, meaning that there's additional funding coming in throughout the development, with budgets being able to be adjusted accordingly.
There's also the possibility of self-funding. A number of these games are by game companies, while others like Grim Dawn were being self-funded before the Kickstarter. Brian Fargo was originally going to kick in $100K if Wasteland didn't meet its goal, so it's possible he would kick that in at a later point if they hit a budget crunch.
There's also the idea of other investments or loans. Considering the Kickstarter funds don't have any equity in the game, there's still a fair amount of value in the title. Developers could get a loan. They could get a single investor in exchange for a share in the game (similar to what Notch was proposing in potentially funding Pschyonauts 2). Or they could sign with a publisher, with the publisher getting money from the sales generated after release.
Finally, they could simply start cutting back on the project. This has happened in traditionally developed games, where looking through the released product reveals abandoned levels, characters, side-quests, etc. It might be harder if its a feature the developer explicitly promised, but otherwise they simply trim the game a bit and finish up what they have.
I can't find anything about that specific case; this was the closest I found:
http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/creating a project#StarAProj
That's about specifically outlining stages ahead of time. I know a few games have been self-funded and are running Kickstarters for the "last legs" so to speak (Grim Dawn, Battle Chess), but I don't know how Kickstarter would react to try to run a 2nd Kickstarter for essentially the same project.
One thing to consider is that the developer may not have to do the 2nd round of funding through Kickstarter. By the point they know they're going to need more funds, they'll already have all their Kickstarter backers' contact info. They could run a drive on their own site, perhaps letting people do after-the-fact upgrades to their reward tiers, or offer additional rewards and promotional materials. They could set up pre-orders and ask backers to spread the word.
And going back to a developer simply cutting back on a project, once they ship the reduced but finished game, they could run a kickstarter for an expansion pack or DLC that adds that excised content back in after further funding.
You know what offends me most of all?
People who get bent out of shape and try to raise a huge stink over a silly webcomic, looking for the next controversy.
I only saw a dude.
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Since when is compassion a huge stink?
It just really made me feel a pit in my chest that this might be how my heroes see people who look like me, or who talk like me sometimes breaking English down in a different way then they are use to or that they would consider "proper".
Please forgive me for admiring these guys and their incredible success not just at finding a niche for expression and social acceptance and but also in attracting the right people into their family, and sustaining that family.
G&T are pretty amazing to some one like me.
When I finished reading today's comic I almost wept. I wondered if I was over sensitive but I realized that all my life I have had to de-emphasize my ethnicity. Over articulate my language. Shave my face and cut my hair short.
Learn all kinds of ways of unarmring barbed criticisms of my masculinity because my square jaw or hairiness made people feel inadequate or intimidated, or made them feel proud of being refined to the point where they are no longer carrying around unnecessary body hair since we all wear clothes right now or have small faces because we are civilized enough to control our food.
And then I read the title. Oh, I thought, this comic is all about credibility. Social credit, the one thing I cannot accumulate since I still hold to the theism that allows a simple animal like myself to understand the way that consciousness interacts with quantum physics. Social Currency that i cannot hold onto since I do not cower away from people's bad opinions of me. Social Currency that I cannot accumulate because I am not a clever double talker always weaving a group-thought instead of saying "I, Me, My" which is so frowned upon in this society of subtle backbiting and verbal sniping.
What stink is it to say "Ouch, please stop doing that, please apologize."
The last thing I want to do is punish Gabe and Tycho. It just hurts to see this guys face associated with dishonesty not because I think swarthyness should be protected above other looks, but because it is a hurtful stereotype that I have had to deal with my whole life.
Thank you.
I love you.
Please do not attack me for expressing myself. Thank you for reading this post.
There are plenty of PA comics where white people are given similar treatment. And the fact that you feel like I attacked you by saying you're being oversensitive about things is hmmm... what's the word I'm looking for here...
I don't feel like attacked me for being over sensitive. I think you are expressing your concern that I am attacking or causing a huge stink.
Again, how can I cause a huge stink asking for consideration?
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How white people are portrayed in the comics doesn't really affect whether or not this is an ethnic stereotype being used to trigger "shady" in the viewer's mind.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-04-26-the-collapse-of-free-radical-design
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-05-04-free-radical-vs-the-monsters
From the 2nd article:
Do you know what a stereotype is?
do you know what a stereotype is? because i've gotta tell ya, i am not seeing one in this comic.
save maybe the stereotype of a generally-inept, disheveled, unprofessional, anonymous person trying to use kickstarter to reel in suckers of all races, genders, creeds, and gaming platforms with a scam.
i'm honestly a bit more sensitive to racial stereotyping and the like, and i honestly cannot see what you're claiming here.
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