But from my perspective, I kind of question the reason a publisher didn't pick up this game. If a company will pick up a piss poor game, then surely a game such as Wasteland 2 would be a better seller for RPG fans no?
They're not really picking up a "poor game", though, but a concept. At that point they're presenting to the publisher exactly what Kickstarter is presenting to us; a description, some ideas, a plea. The idea being considered is the same too, "is this worth my investment." Nobody is presenting their game as terrible to the potential buyers, of course, nor are they going to do an intentionally bad job. I mean, look at Superman 64. It's widely considered one of the worst games ever made. They probably emphasized that with the capability for full 3D gameplay (rather new at the time), they could make a game where it "felt" like you were Superman, flying in any directions. It's a popular character, and the game was based on a popular show. The terrible quality of the finished result had nothing to do with whether it seemed like a sound idea to start, and didn't even stop it from selling decently.
"RPG fans" are considered a smaller part of the market. An RPG that sells
great is mediocre at best by FPS sale standards. The vast majority of games released today that call themselves RPG's are action games with "RPG elements", in an attempt to rope in both audiences. Part of why Wasteland 2 was never accepted as a concept was because the creator wanted to emphasize on the RPG aspect, instead of watering it down into a different genre. Comparing again to Superman, Wasteland was old enough that most gamers today wouldn't have heard of it. An unpopular genre not based on an existing cash cow is difficult-to-impossible to get publisher backing on these days; the final quality isn't really relevant.
I just want to see a......demonstration model of something, give a vague idea of what they have in store. The concept arts are nice, but you can DRAW anything, but engines having limitations is the problem.
They don't really have that at the presented-to-publisher stage either, though. The option just isn't there. I actually remember another Kickstarter that was pretty much asking for exactly that, enough backing for him to be able to present to publishers. They still asked for $200,000. If you're not willing to take up the publisher role of investing in a vague concept, you'll have the option of paying later for a finished product that does have tangible materials, like any other game.
» Wed May 02, 2012 6:01 pm 
