an amiga game kickstarter ?

[turrican3]

hi mates,
do you think a kickstarter for an amiga game could succeed ???
some coders here should try ,how much money could you ask ??? If toni is ok the game could be auto-launched from the cd-rom with an hide winuae. There is for the moment a kind of nostalgia for 2d old good games and some could in theory be ported to the amiga, i mean from a tech pov. Then why not giving a try ??? If it fails, it fails... but if it works !!!!.
But it needs to be a really good one, something like slamtilt or T-zero or turrican 4 eeeerrr i mean 3 etc...
The chance is tiny and perhaps null, i don't know, if nobody try we will never know.

[Gzegzolka]

Yes, if quality is good. Maybe not T-zero or Turrican 3 quality (those games were made by big teams), but if new game was on same level with Solid Gold I would buy it.

[gimbal]

Its a bit difficult to understand what you are exactly talking about. Are you talking about a whole new game, or to port an existing game?

The former might work, if and only if you make it 100% Amiga. Your aim is to shoot directly for the Amiga enthusiasts for your funding, anyone else will just pass it thinking "why bother with this when I can play game XYZ on current gen systems".

If a port of an existing game, the same failure reasons. You can't persuade people to put money into something which already exists, only to have it ported to a machine from 2 decades ago "for kicks". If it happens, it has to be an Amiga exclusive and the kickstarter page better be nostalgia heaven. I wouldn't even make any mention of emulation possibilities because then again you will just raise the red flags: why not make it directly for Windows / mobiles / etc.

But that's me, and I've been known to be a bit of a realist bordering dangerously on pessimism.

[Cobe]

Well as this at first sounds bit crazy maybe it's not cause GOG is doing it already.
I was thinking before I tried that GOG is at least patching old games to work on modern systems but they are just shamelessly using free emulators to make money.

[Devlin]

I agree that it would really have to be an Amiga exclusive if you want to take the full advantage of nostalgia, but eventually people are gonna want a Windows version, and naturally you're going to have people who want to emulate.

Originally Posted by Cobe

Well as this at first sounds bit crazy maybe it's not cause GOG is doing it already.
I was thinking before I tried that GOG is at least patching old games to work on modern systems but they are just shamelessly using free emulators to make money.

Yeah, GoG uses DosBox for most of it's retro games. But they also have a team that puts a lot of work into making sure every DOS game they set up in it works absolutely flawlessly and at the right speed with the absolute minimum of user fuss. These games occasionally contain some GoG-made patches to make them work better(or "crack" them). I guess you could say it's kinda like selling WHDLoad slaves(with all the game files included) and packaging them neatly into their own installer and including all the digital gubbins that came with the original game.

I don't mind it to be honest. They're making it possible to legally and easily get and play old DOS games, and that I think deserves just a little bit of slack.

And for the record, DosBox is not a true emulator, It's more akin to Wine(is also not an emulator) if running on a native x86/x64 system. It only emulates on non-x86 based systems.

[Cobe]

Ok maybe I'm exaggerating my reaction to GOG. It's up to ignorance and laziness of their customers that don't want to click few more times to setup all that by themselves.
But can someone explain me for example Wings(Emulated Amiga Edition)? Did they asked Toni? And what about kickstart rom?

[lightcycle]

why would anyone want a kickstarter for an amiga game ? i have never agreed with kickstarters in the first place but with all the resource that is available to make an amiga game that are totally free to use i dont see a need for such funding.
back in the 80's and 90's i was heavily involved in the pd scene and made a bit of money by making my own projects and doing my own free advertising.
bedroom coders.thats what they were called back then and i still see a lot of them still doing stuff today.
where would emulation be today if the coders wanted paying ? personally i dont see a market in games for older systems as thousands of people still make games and distribute them freely.
but thats just one guys opinion.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by lightcycle

why would anyone want a kickstarter for an amiga game ?

Then there is a financial incentive to complete the game within a year or two?

Originally Posted by lightcycle

i have never agreed with kickstarters in the first place

You've never lost money on a development then? Most kickstarter projects just would not have been started without up-front money because they were too high a risk.

Originally Posted by lightcycle

with all the resource that is available to make an amiga game that are totally free to use i dont see a need for such funding.

Time is money. Why would a game developer spend money developing an Amiga game when they could be spending money developing an IOS or Android title with a much higher chance of turning a profit?

Originally Posted by lightcycle

i dont see a market in games for older systems as thousands of people still make games and distribute them freely.

Quality. You said you were in the PD games area? 9/10 PD games were usually very bad vs maybe 5/10 commercial games. A little bit of financial reward and the project quality increases IMO.

[Gzegzolka]

As I said, yes, kickstarter could work. Sure it's hard to predict how many people will support You. You will know if You do that, just ask Yourself do You want do it. People who create something like graphic/sound/code on good level of quality desrve to be paid for their work. Someones do that kind of work as hobby (and they give us awesome stuff), in spare time between familly and normal job. There are new games for dreamcast, neo-geo, megadrive and many other retro machines.

Anyway if You want to start somethnig on kickstarter:
-make regular updates of Your project,
-offer people something in return for their support like early aceess, free final prodcut, ability to desing something small in Your game,
- screenshoots and small demo version, so people will know You work on Your project and it is not another Dizzy/James Pond scam,
- You will be boss for Yourself and You will need to keep Yourslef at work on this project,

[lightcycle]

Originally Posted by alexh

Quality. You said you were in the PD games area? 9/10 PD games were usually very bad vs maybe 5/10 commercial games. A little bit of financial reward and the project quality increases IMO.

if i could just point you to the newly free to use unreal engine 4.
quality games can be made with this with no initial outlay.
there are lots of free to use game engines that can be made to develop high quality gaming.
check out this retro arcade made with the free unreal engine 4.i think you'll agree its awesome.
[ Show youtube player ]

[s2325]

https://www.startnext.com/monkeyisland