patrickklepek

A bunch of Arrested Development's new season was on a green screen, and actors weren't necessarily together? Hrrrrrm. http://t.co/CMhS3dpInq

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#1 Edited by patrickklepek (1629 posts) - 2 months, 21 days ago

@avatar said:

Wrong war Patrick, 1916 was the first world war with Imperial Germany. The Nazi's came later.

D'oh. Thanks.

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#2 Posted by patrickklepek (1629 posts) - 2 months, 22 days ago

Inaccurate thread title! I actually think Conan O'Brien provides an incredibly refreshing viewpoint on what we all take for granted in modern video games.

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#3 Edited by patrickklepek (1629 posts) - 2 months, 25 days ago

This is a good lesson for people to realize how much this stuff costs. Seriously I think some people think DLC just falls out of the sky.

This definitely accounts for some of the frustration you see from developers working on downloadable content for a game that's released after the game's initial launch. I'm not defending the practice of why such DLC (like, say, Asura's Wrath's ending) exists in the first place, but to say it doesn't cost a substantial amount is to definitely miss the point. There's some miscommunication on both ends.

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#4 Edited by patrickklepek (1629 posts) - 2 months, 25 days ago

@dennistm said:

Am I wrong or does 48k sound really low for 8 people for 10 weeks? Technical staff no less.

No, you're not wrong. This is dirt cheap, and a rough financial road for the developers.

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#5 Posted by patrickklepek (1629 posts) - 2 months, 25 days ago

First off Patrick this is one of the best articles you have written. I hope you do more of this stuff, specifically spotlights on lesser known kickerstarters and greenlights.

Random thought though, you misspelled indiegogo in the second to last paragraph as indiegoto.

Keep up the good work!

Fixed, and appreciate you pointing that out. Hope to have more of this in the future, been happy with how many features I've been able to get up so far in 2013 versus 2012. Alex has done a great job with his editorials, too, he has another really good feature lined up for this week.

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#6 Posted by patrickklepek (1629 posts) - 2 months, 25 days ago

@donpixel said:

People willingess to trow money at kick-starters still bends my mind.

Ian Bogost's piece on Kickstarter for Fast Company has my favorite analysis of this phenomenon.

http://www.fastcompany.com/1843007/kickstarter-crowdfunding-platform-or-reality-show

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#7 Edited by patrickklepek (1629 posts) - 2 months, 25 days ago

First off Patrick this is one of the best articles you have written. I hope you do more of this stuff, specifically spotlights on lesser known kickerstarters and greenlights.

Random thought though, you misspelled indiegogo in the second to last paragraph as indiegoto.

Keep up the good work!

I'm hesitant to write many stories about Kickstarter projects because an article, it it provokes a certain level of sympathy, directly leads to financial donations. That makes me uncomfortable. I didn't actively pursue this story until it was over the funding line, and even then, my goal was not to necessarily highlight the Indiegogo part of it, and instead offer an examination of the $150K amount.

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#8 Posted by patrickklepek (1629 posts) - 2 months, 25 days ago

@sweetz said:
@ravenlight said:

I don't know. I'd say that the rise of crowdfunding has actually exposed me to the true cost of making a game.

As Patrick's article elaborates, what you're seeing is not the true cost. Most Kickstarter goals are below (sometimes far below) what it actually costs, because publishers are worried they won't get funded if they ask for too much. It is therefore creating a distorted view of what development costs unless you're aware of this.

You may be savvy enough to know you need to goose the goal number by as much as 50% to get an idea of the true cost, but most backers probably are not.

Kickstarter and crowdfunding has done a good job exposing people to HOW games are made, but less so on how the cost actually works out, especially given how many ask for just 50% of what they need.

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#9 Edited by patrickklepek (1629 posts) - 2 months, 25 days ago

@drdarkstryfe said:

The lack of transparency in this industry has finally started to catch up. It is hard to want to invest, and take seriously, an entertainment industry that hides its development costs so much.

The biggest disconnect between the average game consumer, and those that make and publish the titles, is the knowledge of how much contracted labor, how much outsourcing, and how much in licensing fees go into the development of a game. People see a name like Infinity Ward attached to Call of Duty and think that every bit of the game is done by them.

This makes me really interested in the documentary that is being done alongside the development of Double Fine's Kickstarted adventure title. When it is all said and done, will we get a really nice look at everything that entails in game development?

The video game industry has a seriously lack of transparency with its financials. We all champion the cheap sales available on Steam, but does Steam make people money? Probably, but since Valve is a private company, they don't have to disclose any numbers whatsoever, and that data essentially becomes proprietary. Good for Valve, but not good for consumers necessarily. The publishers have bullied organizations like The NPD Group into showing less and less retail sales data to the public, not to mention NPD Group wanting to make money for that data, and we're left with little to analyze on a month-to-month basis. Compare that to the movie industry, which discloses its box office returns every damn week. We'd have a much better idea of what the industry was really like if the numbers were on the table, rather than waiting for people to spin it for us.

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#10 Posted by patrickklepek (1629 posts) - 2 months, 25 days ago

I would love for some of the bigger companies to come out and say how much it costs them to develop games. Wait a minute....most of the bigger companies are publicly traded. Shouldn't all that info be in their end-of-year company report?

There are R&D budgets 'n the like disclosed in some quarterly calls, but I'm not sure you're ever going to see "Dead Space 3 = $35 million" anywhere. Not that I'm aware of, anyway. I can double check.

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