Question about publisher

[Recoil36]

I was reading through kickstarter. It reads they need kick starter funds to fund the game for a year. After a year they are going to go to publishers to try and get more funding. My question is. What happens if they don’t find a publisher, or if the publisher wants to completely hose their vision?

Me kick starting this game doesn’t mean the game will get released unless a publisher is found. Am I reading this right? I don’t want to spread hate or what not. I am just curious

[oncelostgames]

If we cannot find a publisher, one that has the same vision for the game as us, then we will continue on at our the same pace as we had before.
Updates would continue until a proper release though we will likely have some other funding options like patreon or merchandise sales.

[Nick]

I think this would fit nicely with Hooded Horse as a publisher.

[Recoil36]

Originally posted by oncelostgames:

If we cannot find a publisher, one that has the same vision for the game as us, then we will continue on at our the same pace as we had before.
Updates would continue until a proper release though we will likely have some other funding options like patreon or merchandise sales.

Thank you for the frank and honest answer.

[owl]

Originally posted by oncelostgames:

If we cannot find a publisher, one that has the same vision for the game as us, then we will continue on at our the same pace as we had before.
Updates would continue until a proper release though we will likely have some other funding options like patreon or merchandise sales.

I'm not sure how they intend to continue on at the same pace without a publisher -- if $500k is enough to fund one year of development, is patreon and merch sales going to make that much in subsequent years? It'd be unprecedented, I think.

Unless you mean people would go back to being volunteer, which makes sense, but that'd (I'm sure you'd agree, otherwise you wouldn't be seeking Kickstarter or a publisher) certainly impact the pace of development.

And I'm struggling to think up any publishers that would be willing to fund a project with this much risk, both technical and in terms of timelines.

I say this as a game designer that's worked, at different points, as a QA tester, a solo dev, and a team lead for small, volunteer-led projects. I've worked in Unity, UE5 (A bit of 4, too) and Godot. I've also listened to many GDC talks from indies and AAA devs alike about scope, and the risks and challenges of game development. I don't say any of this to brag, only to illustrate that I'm well aware of the general capabilities of modern game engines, and teams. I don't know how many team members are working on this game, but if I look at similar projects from teams of around 10 people -- Tainted Grail, for example -- who have had years of development and are nowhere near the level of scope/ambition this project has, I get worried.

Hoping this doesn't come across like a slight against the devs. I absolutely don't believe you guys are trying to scam anyone here. But I've had multiple projects get ♥♥♥♥-canned because my ambition and scope outscaled my funding, the capabilities of my team, and the number of hours in an (even extreme) work week.

I was excited at first -- until I read the features on the Kickstarter page. I wish I could go back to my pre-dev days when I was naive and didn't understand the realities of game development, but reading those features really had me concerned about the future for this project.

Personally, I'd love a very frank blog post/forum post from the devs that addresses these concerns, and also goes into detail on how the team plans to tackle some of the astronomical challenges they've set for themselves, like the 'thousands' of cities and 'thousands' of npcs in the cities (I get that you only want to have an NPC become a 'proper' NPC when the player approaches, but... What if the player leaves and comes back, wanting to visit their old friend again? Are all of these NPCs going to get stored in memory? How are you going to manage all of their schedules at once, if the player has many 'real' NPCs living in the same part of the city?).

Even games like Dwarf Fortress, which are purely ASCII, are not able to reach this level of scope (they're trying, but they've had nearly two decades to work on it). Daggerfall managed it by having a very limited set of interactions you can have with NPCs.

I really do wish you all the best, but if I were backing this project, I'd want to know how the team plans to tackle these problems. I'm NOT saying you can't pull it off -- maybe there's some tech wizardry your team has found/will find that gives you an edge. But, if I were a backer, I'd want to know more about what that edge is and whether my money is well-invested.

Best of luck.

[oncelostgames]

We meant go back to a volunteer basis if we cannot find further funding, though obviously we would still be trying to find further funding.
We are always happy to answer questions on any of our platforms, so feel free to ask. NPCs the player directly interacts with get stored. There will be a limit to how many are saved and as the player interacts with new ones the old ones will get deleted. If you keep interacting with one, then they keep being pushed up that list and safe from deletion.
Proc gen is going to make up 90 percent or more of the game, so the scope is not as ambitious as if were were doing it all by hand. We know that kind of design is not for everyone, but it is a core design pillar for us.

[robertgamer91]

Originally posted by oncelostgames:

We meant go back to a volunteer basis if we cannot find further funding, though obviously we would still be trying to find further funding.
We are always happy to answer questions on any of our platforms, so feel free to ask. NPCs the player directly interacts with get stored. There will be a limit to how many are saved and as the player interacts with new ones the old ones will get deleted. If you keep interacting with one, then they keep being pushed up that list and safe from deletion.
Proc gen is going to make up 90 percent or more of the game, so the scope is not as ambitious as if were were doing it all by hand. We know that kind of design is not for everyone, but it is a core design pillar for us.

is there a way to make an NPC permanently saved? Like if you do add a romance/relationship system will they be protected from being erased?

[oncelostgames]

Sure, wherever it makes sense to permanently store that NPC.