[FUNDED!] Wadjet Eye's Kickstarter: Nighthawks - The Vampire RPG

coralinecastell · October 4, 2018, 11:20pm

CELEBRATION TIME

So, I heard you like vampires. Turns out Wadjet Eye Games (Primordia, Unavowed) is taking them for a spin.

Nighthawks - The Vampire RPG

Three months ago, you died. And in that moment you were reborn as something new. A monster. A predator. Not a creature of the night, but one of its masters.

Unfortunately, things aren’t simple as they used to be. Vampires have finally been exposed, and though your existence is tolerated, your new nature is not. You came to the City hoping for a new start, but found only suspicion and starvation. Now you stare at the ceiling of your cheap hotel room as a penniless outcast, suckling on rats and destined to wither away.

But every new era brings new opportunities, and in the political chaos of a world gone mad, even an outcast may rise. An outcast can change everything.

This is the story of how you rose.

As of the time of writing, these are the project’s stats:

20 hours left | ~90% backed | US $116,628 of US $125,000 goal

I have linked the project above and hopefully we can back it in time. I could only pledge US $5 due to my conversion rates – in fact, it’s my first time ‘kickstarting’. But it’s what they say: every dollar helps.

There’s a demo!

Yup. Check it out and play it.

I don’t know who Wadget Eye games is, why should I pledge?

Glad you asked, dear internal monologue.

Well, Wadget Eye Games was funded in 2006 by a dude called Dave Gilbert. During these 12 years they have built an upstanding reputation as one of the best story tellers in town by crafting solid point-n-click games with some very out-of-the-box moves, like adding multiple endings to an age-old genre that was previously very square – LucasArts’ Indiana Jones: Fate of Atlantis being one of the few classic exceptions.

If you want to read more about them, feel free to check Wikipedia or their website, which I linked above.

If you want my personal opinion as a p&c junkie, I think Wadjet Eye is truly pulling an entire genre out of the gutter by yielding its stronger elements and dumping its clunkiness and confusion into a dumpster fire never to be looked back upon. In short: they rock.

Sure, they aren’t going for a p&c title this time, but they have proved time and time again that they know exactly what they’re doing in terms of writing, style and mood. Personally, I think they can pull this off beautifully and swimmingly.

Alright, I’m arguably more charming in person – you’ll just have to take my word for it – , and this is what I could quickly write up to, hopefully, help boost this project from a fave dev of mine during its final strides.

If you’re still around, check out my Primordia review. It’s one of the favorite thing I’ve ever written, in honor of one of the best experiences I’ve ever had.

Thanks for your time, guys.

delenn13 · October 4, 2018, 11:29pm

Another thing they have done is…Gemini Rue and The Blackwell series…

Well, I am pretty much cash strapped at the moment…Sux to be me!

Fraggles · October 5, 2018, 4:27am

I always find it kind of disturbing when an established and at least by appearance successful company relies on kickstarter to make their games. What happened to the profits from your many previous titles? How come you don’t have the money to run your company?

coralinecastell · October 5, 2018, 11:51am

Risks and challenges

Nighthawks is an ambitious project - an unambitious one wouldn’t be worth your time. We’re a small team, aiming to bring you more design innovation with text, careful art and a tight budget than many AAA RPGs and developers with all their fancy polygons and resources.

Fraggles · October 5, 2018, 11:57am

Yes I red through their kickstarter page to see if they had some good arguments going but I don’t feel like what you just quoted answers the questions I have. Don’t get me wrong, I like Wadjet eye, I think they do good work and I hope this game gets made as it looks really rather interesting. I just find this reliance on kickstarter to be worrisome and I’m not about to front them $20 for it.

Edit: They appear to have reached their goal, so good on them.

onLooSe · October 5, 2018, 12:09pm

For me kickstarter is even worse than preordering (which I probably will never ever do with how studious butcher their own games for quick cash grabs). Of course something great can be made like Hollow Knight and what not, but the chances are pretty slim. Most kickstarters even don’t see the light of the day after reaching their goal or being really bad in the end. If we go giving out our money to every kickstarter or early access we might get 1 good game out of 100 :D. Now Imagine if you were paying attention and checked how those games launched and in what state they are - you will have plenty in your bank account by buying the only one decent game on it’s release price.

I will say it… This practice needs to stop! If they are so sure they can make great game why not get a bank loan? LOL

coralinecastell · October 5, 2018, 5:53pm

It got funded!!! Hooray

@Fraggles I pasted that from my phone rushing to get the bus, because I over-exceeded my mobile internet plan or whatever you call it – no 3G/4G. Then I went to college and was doing an exam on psychopathology the whole day and now I can finally answer you properly at home, on the PC.

So sorry for the short answer and the delay and thanks for your patience.

Probably went to light, gas, voice acting, artists, programmers, the cleaning staff and all that jazz.

Their last game, Unavowed, was critically acclaimed but that didn’t translate 1:1 to sales – does it ever? There is anything between 20,000 and 50,000 Unavowed owners. If we do a quick math with the average, we get:

35,000 x $15 = $525,000

- Steam cut: 30%

70% of $525,000 = $367,500

That of course it at the full price, without the 10% launch discount and assuming dollars as the currency – I, alone, would offset that number on both accounts. So if we factor in that it cost something to make the game, that it costs to maintain a studio, that likely it sold at a converted price tag of US $10 or less worldwide ($7.22 for me), that most sales so far probably came in during the 10% discount period and look at that big Gaben cut…

We’re not looking at that much money and even less liquid income – talk about profit enough to fund a $125,000 game…

Two different things.

We both know there’s no “running the company” if you can’t pay the internet bill. Closing contracts and actually paying people for long enough to publish a game is something else. That’s the development cycle*, which as we saw with Tell Tale sometimes breaks apart and, if it does for long enough you can’t “run your company”.

In short, having a game under production is not a pre-requirement for having a “working company”, but having a “working company” is a pre-requirement for having a game under production.

This Kickstarter is, supposedly, to get a game under production, not to run a company.

– *More on game development cycle: Game Development Life Cycle, LinkedIn article; Game development life cycle guidelines, interesting paper presenting new game development life cycle guidelines for devs.

Alright, I’ve got a few answers to that if you actually want an answer. In the off-chance that that was rhetoric and you didn’t, disregard the following.

Making a “great game” does not equal making loads of sales. The bank doesn’t care if your game is sexy af if you don’t show up with some cash when you’re supposed to.
You need to be eligible to make a bank loan. Banks approve around 20-25% of small business loans. Here’s an optimistic article from this Sep. 11th talking about how the “approval rates are high” at 26.5%. Maybe they tried and didn’t get a loan for whatever reason, we’ll never know. Here are some of the pre-requirements and brief explanation of the convoluted process of getting a loan. More here as well.
Interest can go from 6% to 60%. Here is a table with some of the rates.
The game development cycle isn’t really compatible with bank loans. The bank will usually ask for the money back, with the aforementioned stratospheric interest, WAY before you get to publish your big game that required so much money to make in the first place. For reference, bank loans usually go up to 12 months and Nighthawks is schedule for mid 2020. You do the math.
Collateral. You know, that asset of value that you hand to your bank or savings and loan company to say “if the ship sinks here’s the guarantee that I won’t screw you over, m8”. So, if you buy a house with loan money and then later oopsie daisy you can’t pay, you get welcome to the street with open arms by Johnny, that homeless man you saw coughing up blood the other day on your way to the bakery.

QUESTIONS ANSWERED. Hopefully. I had some fun looking up these terms in English. Also, American banks are weird and Thomas Jefferson would be depressed at our current state of things.

And I sincerely believe with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; & that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale
– Thomas Jefferson. Letter to John Taylor, 28 May 1816

Oh yeah I forgot to say something:

I totally, 100%, agree with

Yup, thank goodness for the fact we only get charged if a project actually gets funded – more on that and some boring bureocracies @ their Terms of Use.

Also I just learned Kickstarter’s cut is 5%.… they makin’ some sick money, bois.

However, I think Kickstarter is still a good way to fund projects. Why? Because we’re part of a system yada yada system’s effed up yada yada capitalism yada. Hope you get my argument cause I ain’t gonna bother to articulate it any better than that after all this h*ecking typing.

onLooSe · October 5, 2018, 6:04pm

I know and understand everything you just said. I as well know that it’s easier to take money from random people in form of donations - hell even kids are invited with their parents’ money

I might try to toss money in the wind and hope they land somewhere nice. I will repeat myself - there’s no justification of this insanely bold practice and it needs to die. TB stressed this situation plenty of times and I can imagine him rolling in his grave right about now.

Fraggles · October 5, 2018, 6:16pm

Well I agree with you in general that sure running a company and running a game studio are two fairly different processes. But it could be a lot more similar than it currently is, something is really weird in how games production work.

Almost every title out there is produced in a sort of debt system, where money is gained before hand to run your studio for the development cycle and then you hope you recoup the costs once the game sells. If the money comes from a publisher then most of the money goes back to the publisher and the studio is kinda stuck on square 1 again having to go to a publisher to get the money for their next title and so repeats the cycle.

Kickstarter works in an eerily similar manner in that you’ll sell a nonexistent product to your customers and get your money that way instead but that then means that once the game is finished a large chunk of your audience gets the game “for free” and you have little to no income and post launch sales. This is especially dire if you’re doing stretch goals and pledge to spend all the money you raise on that particular title. It’s a damn mess and not a healthy way to run a business.

It would of course be preferable if you could run it as a business where you run “at a loss” on savings or investor cash for 3-5 years, push your product, get paid and put the income into future productions. While someone who starts their own plumber service will see smaller sums of money circulating at a more rapid pace a game company will look at huge sums moving across years instead, but technically it should be possible to run the same.

Seeing as they have a demo done and quite frankly the game appears to be well along in development, though it’s hard to tell. They want another 18 month to polish it up, to keep running their company, but this seems a lot more like a glorified pre-order really.

I’ve kickstarted a fair few games and most of them has failed to impress, one or two has been really quite bad. None has completely failed to deliver anything though.

coralinecastell · October 5, 2018, 6:28pm

Yeah this sucks ass big time! Hopefully the game will pan out like we’re all expecting and it’ll be big enough to reach beyond Wadjet’s current niche audience. Otherwise, you know, thoughts and prayers, peeps.

Should, but it doesn’t seem like it does, sadly.

I mean I clap at all these crazy bastards crunching themselves to death to render Ezio’s ass to round perfection because I have no idea how they pull it off beyond the theory and “omgomgomgomDEALINEomgomgomg” ad infinitum.

I wonder what would be a less-poopy way of making more great indie games happen while sticking to capitalism. I’m out of ideas but if anyone got any contact me and we’ll ask for a 5% cut and be rich and live in the Bahamas like whoever runs Kickstarter probably does – and I refuse to believe otherwise.

I never funded anything beyond my need for more books, so hopefully this one little adventure won’t come back to shoot me in the arse in 18 months.