Kaiju Combat Kickstarter(Giant-Monsters Fighting Game)

Usually I don't care about Kickstarter. I'm not in the "ugh! another Kickstarter?!" crowd, but I just don't care for zombies and other things are regular Kickstarters. But this one caught my interest:

Kaiju Combat is a 1-4 player giant monster fighting game. Imagine a Godzilla fighting game(maybe without Godzilla, depends on how much funding they get). Yep, that's it. Just imagine that. And it's done by people who actually made Godzilla games before! They are asking for 350 thousand dollars, which is quite a lot money to us, but by now we also know that videogames cost a lot(A LOT) more to make. But the team behind Kaiju Combat already has their engine, with netcode and it has been ported to all platforms already(game will be PC first tho), that they used in Deadliest Warrior, their Godzilla and other games. And because they already have all that, they can make such a game without a million dollars.

On top of that they want Kaiju Combat to be a framework for giant monster fighting games. After Kaiju Combat is done they hope to release standalone Kaiju Combat games, that you could play as a standalone game or add to your existing game to make it into a bigger game with a bunch of monsters.

More information and all that jazz: Kaiju Combat Kickstarter page

I'm intrigued. In the video you can see snippets of their older Godzilla games, so you know what they will be going for. I expect a kinda whacky and fun brawler with XBLA quality and I want such a game to exist. That's why I'm spreading the word.

I discovered it on shoryuken.com, where Simon Strange(I wish I had a name like that, I'd become a scientist or a spy!) made a thread and he answers questions too. So head over there if you want to know even more. Also this was hard to write without giant monster puns.

Wow, don't think that is going to happen. $350,000 is a little too much, buddy.

Also, the way he is bragging about his lineup of sub 60 metacritic games he has worked on kind of rubs me the wrong way. Be a little more graceful, man. Tony Hawk Ride? Really?

@Grissefar said:

Wow, don't think that is going to happen. $350,000 is a little too much, buddy.

I can't say I disagree. it's not an RPG about vikings, so I have no doubt they will have trouble making it. but maybe they get lucky and we get one more critically unacclaimed, but silly fun game.

Hello - I thought I felt my ears burning...

Bravestar - thanks much for writing such an honest appeal on my behalf. I don't know you at all, but you're going out on a limb for me. Thanks.

I'm happy to chat about the game here as well as Shoryuken - promoting this project is my full-time job for the next month, and I have a lot to say. If anyone has questions / concerns, feel free to ask and I'll give you some straight-forward answers.

In that spirit! Let me address some concerns already raised. Specifically 1 - $350,000 is too much, and 2 - the quality of my past work.

1 - The price tag. Past Godzilla games were made for about $2 Million dollars each. A single monster character has 250+ animations. A sweatshop animator (which I wouldn't use) could maybe crank out 5 animations a day. That means 10 weeks work per monster - assuming everything comes out perfectly the same time. Animations are, by far, the biggest expense on a game like this. I'm lucky enough to have a crack team of animators who are already familiar with the engine and the subject matter. If I pay both of them $40,000 for a year's work I am getting them for a steal.

The rest of the budget breaks down like this: $25,000 engine license, $20,000 software licensing, $5,000 music, $5,000 audio $10,000 intro cinematics + story, $35,000 Kickstarter / Amazon fees, $8,000 reward fulfillment, $55,000 for two part-time engineers, $7,000 development hardware. That leaves $100,000 for environments, design, networking, submission fees, and IP licensing costs. None of that even pays me a dime. We are absolutely building this on a shoestring budget which is possible ONLY because we have such intimate experience with the technology.

Maybe it's impossible to raise that much - but I doubt it. My co-worker Mark Crowe recently left Pipeworks to Kickstart a game - and he made $500,000+ to make a Space Quest sequel. The last Space Quest game he made was 25 years back - I figure Godzilla fans could at least match that.

2 - My past work. I am more aware than anyone where my work has fallen down. I was actually fired from a studio while finishing Tony Hawk Ride - because I knew it was crap, and didn't want to let them ship it. My worst-rated game was Rampage: Total Detsruction - but it was the #47th best-selling game of that year, with around 1.5 Million copies sold. I thought it was an awesome Rampage game. People knocked it for being childish - but I thought it was perfect. If it spoke best to 10-year olds, and 30 year-old reviewers thought it was beneath them, I can live with that.

Deadliest Warrior - my most recent relevant work, was the second best-selling game on XBLA in 2010, and has had a very positive response. But what you really care about, obviously, are the Godzilla games. I am absolutely staking my reputation on those games - I think they are worthwhile. They are subtle, rich, and still accessible. Reviewers were not as kind as I would have liked, but I'm not going to lower my opinion of work I'm proud of just because it didn't meet the expectations of reviewers. A new Shooter which looks just like every other shooter can score 88%, and be forgotten in a year. I get fan-letters and request to talk about those Godzilla games almost every week or two for the past 10 years - that says to me that they resonate with somebody. That seems like success to me.

I don't mean to be defensive - you are correct that I am boasting about my experience - because my experince (and the experience of my team) is what I'm selling with this project. I'm not promising to re-invest the wheel, or give the world something new - my goal is to give it a better, more refined version of something I've already done a few times - but make it more accountable to the fans. I'm especially interested in getting more serious fighting game fans involved, because I think the quality of their design input would really be an asset.

Thanks for reading all that! Bring on more questions!

@Mr_Strange said:

But what you really care about, obviously, are the Godzilla games. I am absolutely staking my reputation on those games - I think they are worthwhile. They are subtle, rich, and still accessible. Reviewers were not as kind as I would have liked, but I'm not going to lower my opinion of work I'm proud of just because it didn't meet the expectations of reviewers. A new Shooter which looks just like every other shooter can score 88%, and be forgotten in a year. I get fan-letters and request to talk about those Godzilla games almost every week or two for the past 10 years - that says to me that they resonate with somebody. That seems like success to me.

Not to mention Godzilla: Save the Earth was still played competitively online by people all the way up until Microsoft stopped supporting original Xbox Live titles. I was online the last day, and there were at least 20 people still playing Save the Earth online, one last time.

And at the annual G-Fest in Chicago, there is a tournament run every year for both Godzilla: Unleashed and Godzilla: Save the Earth. Over 40 people participated when I was there 2 years ago.

The last couple games like that didn't go so well.

@avidwriter: Blasphemy! King of the Monsters 2: The Next Thing was a masterpiece.

I absolutely love giant monster movies and despite a few flaws, the last few Godzilla fighting games were actually pretty good.

This is something I'm definitely in favour of backing, although I do have doubts about reaching that goal, especially without actually having the Godzilla license attached.

@WinterSnowblind: @WinterSnowblind said:

I absolutely love giant monster movies and despite a few flaws, the last few Godzilla fighting games were actually pretty good.

I'm glad you think so. Video games are very complex, and it's very hard for consumers to see past obvious flaws. I feel like Godzilla:Unleashed was a really fantastic giant wedding cake made with awesome flavors and careful decoration - which then wasn't cooked properly and was thus unpleasant to put in your mouth. I can look at the process and the pieces and say "It was 90% awesome!" but to people who bought it in the store, it was just inedible.

That sort of situation is exactly why I'm going about Kaiju Combat in this way - I don't want Atari, or Toho, or any company looking to make a profit in charge of the process. If we can get the game funded through fan backers, then we complete control over what goes out the door. For example, I would LOVE to make Kaiju Combat a competitive fighting game. The Sunstone offices are literally 1 block away from a Shoryuken Club, where there are dozens of hungry fighting game enthusiasts who I would love to bring in as consultants.

Also a fan-funded game will probably sell for $20 or less, whereas a publisher-backed game would sell for probably twice that. Also publishers would never sell stand-alone expansions for $5, which is what I'm hoping to do. If we're not trying to make profits, we can pretty much sell net content at cost. That's the sort of fantasy I have when I think about what Kickstarter can do for the industry.

As for attaching the Godzilla license - that's something I've been working on for several months. I was hoping that Toho would cut a deal with my studio in exchange for a piece of sales - but they insisted on money up-front. I'm working on creative solutions to that situation now, because I agree that announcing official Toho support would be a Good Thing... give me a few more days!

@Mr_Strange said:

As for attaching the Godzilla license - that's something I've been working on for several months. I was hoping that Toho would cut a deal with my studio in exchange for a piece of sales - but they insisted on money up-front. I'm working on creative solutions to that situation now, because I agree that announcing official Toho support would be a Good Thing... give me a few more days!

Wow. Have you considered making monsters of your own? It sounds like Toho's studio wants a lot of money.

@BraveToaster said:

Wow. Have you considered making monsters of your own? It sounds like Toho's studio wants a lot of money.

Check out the Kickstarter page (I'll just post that link again...) http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/14214732/kaiju-combat

The whole point of "Kaiju Combat" is to make a game system which can accommodate monsters from several different franchises. We won't have the time or money to do that all at once - and we wouldn't want to! But once we make some money selling the first release (featuring Godzilla, almost certainly), we re-invest 100% of that money into paying for more content - including Gamera, Ultraman, Zone Fighter, Stay Puff marshmallow man, Cloverfield, Pacific Rim tie-in, and plenty of original monsters!

In fact, instead of designing our original monsters internally (which, believe me, we would LOVE to do) we're opening up for submissions from the community. Since our backers are all invited to the design process, we then let our backers vote on which original monsters to include first. It's all very cyclic - fans pay for advance copies of the game, which generates money to fund the development of original monsters designed by the fans!

I'd just be thrilled to be able to go to work making monsters every day.

@BraveToaster said:

Wow. Have you considered making monsters of your own? It sounds like Toho's studio wants a lot of money.

$500 and you can submit your own original monster! There's already 10 of the 50 slots claimed, so better hurry...

@Mr_Strange said:

Cloverfield

Sold. How much do you want?

@Mr_Strange said:

Hello - I thought I felt my ears burning...

Bravestar - thanks much for writing such an honest appeal on my behalf. I don't know you at all, but you're going out on a limb for me. Thanks.

I'm happy to chat about the game here as well as Shoryuken - promoting this project is my full-time job for the next month, and I have a lot to say. If anyone has questions / concerns, feel free to ask and I'll give you some straight-forward answers.

In that spirit! Let me address some concerns already raised. Specifically 1 - $350,000 is too much, and 2 - the quality of my past work.

1 - The price tag. Past Godzilla games were made for about $2 Million dollars each. A single monster character has 250+ animations. A sweatshop animator (which I wouldn't use) could maybe crank out 5 animations a day. That means 10 weeks work per monster - assuming everything comes out perfectly the same time. Animations are, by far, the biggest expense on a game like this. I'm lucky enough to have a crack team of animators who are already familiar with the engine and the subject matter. If I pay both of them $40,000 for a year's work I am getting them for a steal.

The rest of the budget breaks down like this: $25,000 engine license, $20,000 software licensing, $5,000 music, $5,000 audio $10,000 intro cinematics + story, $35,000 Kickstarter / Amazon fees, $8,000 reward fulfillment, $55,000 for two part-time engineers, $7,000 development hardware. That leaves $100,000 for environments, design, networking, submission fees, and IP licensing costs. None of that even pays me a dime. We are absolutely building this on a shoestring budget which is possible ONLY because we have such intimate experience with the technology.

Maybe it's impossible to raise that much - but I doubt it. My co-worker Mark Crowe recently left Pipeworks to Kickstart a game - and he made $500,000+ to make a Space Quest sequel. The last Space Quest game he made was 25 years back - I figure Godzilla fans could at least match that.

2 - My past work. I am more aware than anyone where my work has fallen down. I was actually fired from a studio while finishing Tony Hawk Ride - because I knew it was crap, and didn't want to let them ship it. My worst-rated game was Rampage: Total Detsruction - but it was the #47th best-selling game of that year, with around 1.5 Million copies sold. I thought it was an awesome Rampage game. People knocked it for being childish - but I thought it was perfect. If it spoke best to 10-year olds, and 30 year-old reviewers thought it was beneath them, I can live with that.

Deadliest Warrior - my most recent relevant work, was the second best-selling game on XBLA in 2010, and has had a very positive response. But what you really care about, obviously, are the Godzilla games. I am absolutely staking my reputation on those games - I think they are worthwhile. They are subtle, rich, and still accessible. Reviewers were not as kind as I would have liked, but I'm not going to lower my opinion of work I'm proud of just because it didn't meet the expectations of reviewers. A new Shooter which looks just like every other shooter can score 88%, and be forgotten in a year. I get fan-letters and request to talk about those Godzilla games almost every week or two for the past 10 years - that says to me that they resonate with somebody. That seems like success to me.

I don't mean to be defensive - you are correct that I am boasting about my experience - because my experince (and the experience of my team) is what I'm selling with this project. I'm not promising to re-invest the wheel, or give the world something new - my goal is to give it a better, more refined version of something I've already done a few times - but make it more accountable to the fans. I'm especially interested in getting more serious fighting game fans involved, because I think the quality of their design input would really be an asset.

Thanks for reading all that! Bring on more questions!

Wow thanks for addressing the concerns, man. While I don't doubt that $350,000 is a very low budget for a polygonal action game, I guess what I mean is that, for a kickstarter, that is a lot for a game that is unappealing to begin with. All the other successful kickstarter projects try to revive old PC franchises and genres that were thought dead, and they are primarily singleplayer games. That is appealing, and it makes sense for kickstarter since you don't have to hire a giant team. What you are trying to do is to revive a silly last gen console monster 4 player fighting franchise on PC, which is why is makes less sense.

Those kids who played those 4-player battles on the couch against their friends aren't going to fund some kickstarter, and even if it should succeed, it's not the same experience. 4-player fighting games and PC and tiny budgets don't go hand in hand. And how are people going to play against eachother? Online? That's not the same and it's a feature that even the biggest fighting games can't nail. So you probably can't really have the desired experience in Kaiju Combat and it's probably not even going to be up to par with the old games, which I assume is not the case for a regular singleplayer kickstarter game. And that's why it's not suited to be a kickstarter game, in my opinion.

As for your work, it is work after all and you don't always have a ton of saying in the matter. Just beware that the bragging might be a little much for some people. Or perhaps it was just unconvincing to begin with, I don't know.

I guess my question is, what will happen if the current kickstarter fails? Can the game still happen? Would you re-try with Godzilla licence or try to pitch it to a publisher?

@Grissefar: @Grissefar said:

Those kids who played those 4-player battles on the couch against their friends aren't going to fund some kickstarter, and even if it should succeed, it's not the same experience. 4-player fighting games and PC and tiny budgets don't go hand in hand. And how are people going to play against eachother? Online? That's not the same and it's a feature that even the biggest fighting games can't nail. So you probably can't really have the desired experience in Kaiju Combat and it's probably not even going to be up to par with the old games, which I assume is not the case for a regular singleplayer kickstarter game. And that's why it's not suited to be a kickstarter game, in my opinion.

I guess my question is, what will happen if the current kickstarter fails? Can the game still happen? Would you re-try with Godzilla licence or try to pitch it to a publisher?

Lots of things to address here:

1 - The game will play just fine with 4 USB controllers on a PC. That's how we always developed the games in the past - putting them on console was just the last step. We also have some of the very best fighter netcode in the business - because the game engine was built around network play back in the day. Capcom-style fighting games were built and optimized for non-network play, so you did all your calculations and then had to sync your data. But the Spigot engine was actually designed to sync low-level inputs before doing any frame processing - which means that missing or late/absent inputs can be taken into account without having to do any fix up - which is where traditional fighters end up dropping frames all the time.

2 - Will the new game be "up to par" with the old ones? Yes and no. The monsters, menus, story, combat, and UI will be better - because we can iterate on them more. I expect to save time & money by only making a couple of environments - instead of 20 or so like StE. I think money is better spent on the monsters.

3 - I could probably get a publisher or investment firm to foot the bill for the game - but then it would be their game, and not the fans' game. I'm not sure I'm interested in doing that again. Publishers are looking to make money - so they are happy to cut on time & quality to increase their profits. Publishers wouldn't let fans have direct interaction with the team - so it would end up being a very different game at the end.

@GunslingerPanda said:

@Mr_Strange said:

Cloverfield

Sold. How much do you want?

How about backing the project for $20, to secure a copy of the game on release?

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/14214732/kaiju-combat

@Lenbo: Wait. Back up.

There's a Godzilla festival in Chicago every year?

How did I not know this.

@Mr_Strange said:

@Grissefar: @Grissefar said:

Those kids who played those 4-player battles on the couch against their friends aren't going to fund some kickstarter, and even if it should succeed, it's not the same experience. 4-player fighting games and PC and tiny budgets don't go hand in hand. And how are people going to play against eachother? Online? That's not the same and it's a feature that even the biggest fighting games can't nail. So you probably can't really have the desired experience in Kaiju Combat and it's probably not even going to be up to par with the old games, which I assume is not the case for a regular singleplayer kickstarter game. And that's why it's not suited to be a kickstarter game, in my opinion.

I guess my question is, what will happen if the current kickstarter fails? Can the game still happen? Would you re-try with Godzilla licence or try to pitch it to a publisher?

Lots of things to address here:

1 - The game will play just fine with 4 USB controllers on a PC. That's how we always developed the games in the past - putting them on console was just the last step. We also have some of the very best fighter netcode in the business - because the game engine was built around network play back in the day. Capcom-style fighting games were built and optimized for non-network play, so you did all your calculations and then had to sync your data. But the Spigot engine was actually designed to sync low-level inputs before doing any frame processing - which means that missing or late/absent inputs can be taken into account without having to do any fix up - which is where traditional fighters end up dropping frames all the time.

2 - Will the new game be "up to par" with the old ones? Yes and no. The monsters, menus, story, combat, and UI will be better - because we can iterate on them more. I expect to save time & money by only making a couple of environments - instead of 20 or so like StE. I think money is better spent on the monsters.

3 - I could probably get a publisher or investment firm to foot the bill for the game - but then it would be their game, and not the fans' game. I'm not sure I'm interested in doing that again. Publishers are looking to make money - so they are happy to cut on time & quality to increase their profits. Publishers wouldn't let fans have direct interaction with the team - so it would end up being a very different game at the end.

@GunslingerPanda said:

@Mr_Strange said:

Cloverfield

Sold. How much do you want?

How about backing the project for $20, to secure a copy of the game on release?

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/14214732/kaiju-combat

Wow thanks for responding, man. I don't know that 4 players with USB controllers in front of a PC is the same as 4 dudes on a couch in front of a TV. I guess the main problem is that even if the game makes good on every promise, the audience is not there. Remember, the people who bought the old games were primarily mothers and little brothers, looking at the shelves, picking the first and best game that catches their eye. Without a boxed product, you lose that large audience. Also, I don't know that I can remember a lot of non-F2P downloadable that didn't have a dead online part after a week.

Hopefully you can understand where I am coming from. Not trying to bash the game too much here - instead I guess I'm trying to give some reasons why the funding is still below $10K. I guess for me it's just fun to write directly with a developer.

@HistoryInRust: @HistoryInRust said:

@Lenbo: Wait. Back up.

There's a Godzilla festival in Chicago every year?

How did I not know this.

Indeed:

http://www.g-fan.com/

@Mr_Strange said:

@HistoryInRust: @HistoryInRust said:

@Lenbo: Wait. Back up.

There's a Godzilla festival in Chicago every year?

How did I not know this.

Indeed:

http://www.g-fan.com/

Yeah, and they have Godzilla video game tournaments too! I got 2nd place in the Godzilla: Save the Earth tourney in 2010:

Sadly, I lost in a mirror-match against the incredibly talented player Monster Master:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HK96yYXg6Y&feature=plcp

^ WATCH ME LOSE!

Anyone see the new concept art that was posted?

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/14214732/kaiju-combat/posts/264780

Pretty slick!

@Lenbo said:

Anyone see the new concept art that was posted?

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/14214732/kaiju-combat/posts/264780

Pretty slick!

@Mr_Strange said:

@HistoryInRust: @HistoryInRust said:

@Lenbo: Wait. Back up.

There's a Godzilla festival in Chicago every year?

How did I not know this.

Indeed:

http://www.g-fan.com/

So perhaps I am wrong here, but didn't you ask people to paypal $500 in between kickstarters? Now the donations on the new one seems to have slowed to a crawl so it might not hit the goal. So what will happen to those peoples money if that happens? Also, what will happen to the game then? Will you just make it with the 200k, or were that money dependent on you hitting the 100k goal?

I wanted to make some dismissive comment about giant monster fighting games that don't involve Brad Muir in some fashion, but with the game's creator here, that would be an awfully dickish thing to do.

Man, I'll be really sad to see this game not be made. From the stuff I'm hearing, it sounds right up my alley.

It's a bummer the Double Fine game in this vein didn't get voted through.