Elite on Kickstarter...

[adam]

& if he's looking for that kind of money i'd think he can afford to get a pr company on the case, i don't know if he's done this or not, may have a press office anyway

[gravy]

The dynamic of when money comes in KS is interesting. There was a great talk at Rezzed by Ben Gunstone from Stainless about the Carmageddon kickstarter. They managed to get in £625k

Key points:

* A lot of people pledge more than once - they go for a lower award and then over time will upgrade to a more expensive pledge for a better prize - KS is basically a micro-payment system
* Specialist press gave the biggest boost to pledges, apparently GOG and Reddit caused two of the biggest spikes by far
* The found adding new reward levels also caused a good boost both in new pledges and people upgrading
* They took pledges directly on their own site after the KS round had finished and got some more money then

[adam]

thanks, i was pondering earlier about whether mainstream media is so important for these when there are a lot of good specialist channels now so to speak, and peer to peer communication is so much stronger than it was in the 80's say

might be different for different things, elite i suppose was so massive that bbc works well, but for real special interest stuff other things might work better, but then the net blurs the line a bit, in that people who are interested will spread a bbc story by whichever means, so really niche stuff with something quirky about it that makes it interesting might get spread widely that way too

[Portland]

I'd made a mental note "must post this on Yak" Like I needed to

[Portland]

I will happily lob £ at Llamasoft tackle too ofc.

Just Steamed GRR as it happens as my old download from the store stoppedworking.

[KlaxonCow]

The days where you got famous making a game are gone

...unless you're notch and the game in question is Minecraft.

But, yeah, I get your point. That's an unusual exception, not the rule.

[Firefox]

Wow, their Kickstarter campaign must've really set them back a couple of bucks...

I would've been excited about this ten years ago, but there have been so many announcements of "Elite 4" followed by nothing over the years that it's kicked the arse out of the nostalgia of it all now.

I suspect that it won't actually be Elite (despite the BBC video showing Breadbin playing the Beeb version) either, it'll be Frontier - complete with boring Newtonian flight/combat model.

It's nice that Chris Robert's Star Citizen gets some extra publicity in the BBC article, though. I'm really looking forward to that one!

[Quaker]

£50 to participate in 2nd beta test.
£75 to gain access to the forum.
£100 to participate in 1st beta test.

He is actually taking the piss, if he cared about this project it would have happened by now.

[adam]

of interest to me is the number of people buying the £30 game when there are still plenty of £20 earlybirds remaining

[Portland]

of interest to me is the number of people buying the £30 game when there are still plenty of £20 earlybirds remaining

I did see that and

Maybe they wanted to give more £££

[adam]

still rattling up, about a grand a minute perhaps

one thing i read online is that people are more likely to back a ks that is already oversubscribed, seems like there might be a certain amount of fence-sitters with this who'll back if it's doing well

[Governmentyard]

I've whined on about Elite for years. Its my favourite game, and besides everyone says, as soon as Breadbon releases anything at all, or even says anything, that he should just do Elite 4.

Now he goes properly public for the first time with it and all we, myself included, seem to be saying is "meh, it might not work".

I had to pledge £20 just to stop myself being an actual ungrateful bastard.

[DeanoC]

Cos I posted in the programmer forum so as not to seem pushy making a thread in the main forum...

Heres a link to the discussion about my kickstarter... http://www.yakyak.org/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=83537

Since I've started I've learnt a lot (hopefully in time but if no maybe for next time). Its real hard getting eyeballs on your game unless you have a name or loved IP.

1 - 0 to Mr B

Getting websites especially reddit (Simon Roth Maia's getting more pledges from reddit than elsewhere) and gaming website is key.

2 - 0 to Mr B

[Sir_LANs-a-lot]

So, say it does hit its target - Is this a good thing or bad thing for the Games Industry in the UK?

We don't seem to have too many good news stories pertaining to the "biz" so it'd be nice if it did what it set out to do, no?

[Jamesac]

KS is basically a micro-payment system

I've got to disagree with that statement, although I do understand the logic behind it. I've backed a a few dozen Kickstarters (literally) and, while it's easy to think "Ok, a few bucks more for a nicer reward", it all comes out in one giant lump at the projects end. I'm not sure what to call the reward tier temptation, where one upgrade leads to another, but from a nitpicking semantics point of view I wouldn't call it micropayments.

/pedant

Oh, and while it's kind of tempting, I'll pass on this one. The base entry fee is too high and I'm not sure the game will deliver. If it turns out great I'll be there on Day 1 for the official release, though, and I wish them luck in pulling it off.

Oh, and I'd throw any amount of cash at Llamasoft for a full-scale PC/console game. I live in hope that, someday, they'll be able to pursue a project on Unity's scale again.

James