Mage's Initiation Kickstarter?

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Mage's Initiation Kickstarter?

#1 Post by Chief » Tue Dec 11, 2012 9:29 pm

Does anyone have an estimate on the progress of the game? just curious.

I heard that they are thinking about doing a kickstarter, which is cool.. i hope it's in spring when people's wallets have had a chance to recover.

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Re: Mage's Initiation?

#2 Post by Anonymous Game Creator 2 » Tue Dec 11, 2012 11:01 pm

Yes, we have decided that we'll now be launching a Kickstarter for Mage's Initiation in early 2013.

If you've read my previous thoughts on Kickstarter on these forums, you'll know that I wasn't overly keen on the idea of taking Mage's Initiation to Kickstarter after we'd already made the choice to self-fund it. It wasn't a decision that was taken lightly; there were various factors behind this move -- not limited to the fact that we were in discussions with venture capitalists/potential investors as an alternate source of funding. However, when the Kickstarter boom hit after DoubleFine Adventure succeeded so amazingly, adventure games quickly became more popular on a wider scale. Former developers began popping out of the woodwork and these investors began recommending that developers like AGDI/Himalaya take their projects to Kickstarter before approaching them in exchange for money for company equity. The 'privilege' of pitching to these investors isn't free either. After a few pitches, it really adds up. We also got scammed by a business-plan-writing outfit which wasted even more of our time and funds. I recovered the stolen amount via a credit card charge-back, but developments in the industry changed so swiftly, and with Kickstarter unexpectedly becoming the new game-funding paradigm, our business plan was effectively outdated within a few short months. We've also had a fairly high turn-over rate of workers on Mage's Initiation. With the 2D graphics and animation, in particular, being so detailed, this has cost more than we initially budgeted for.

Progress is good and work is being done constantly. The game is quite far along and we've entered a crunch mode to get it completed by the later half of next year (2013). However, our initial funding is dwindling down and we still need to cast and record voice actors and implement other things (like lip-synching) which have become standard features in our games. There are also some really sweet class-specific quests we had to cut due to the budget constraints.:( I'd love to be able to re-include those and enhance the game to its full potential by giving it even more polish! Given recent successes of similar adventure campaigns on the Kickstarter platform, I've gravitated towards the fact that this actually *is* our best and most realistic chance of realizing this goal at the current point in time.

Oh, and swag! I mustn't forget to mention the swag! When we first announced Mage's Initiation in February 2011, we wanted to pre-sell Collector's Edition boxes but I didn't feel comfortable with taking people's money in advance and sitting on it for an indefinite amount of time. We were also unsure of the legal implications of doing so. This was before the practice was made commonplace by Kickstarter. So, in actual fact, the platform provides us the perfect way to get the Mage's Collectors Editions and swag into the hands of customers in the way we had originally intended to. It gives us the peace of mind to source out really high-quality, cool-looking product. We've been working with Eriq Chang over the past few weeks sourcing things like embossed boxes with Spot UV, cloth maps, glossy posters and other mouth-watering stuff that we'll be loading up the reward tiers with. It's all really high-quality merchandise! Actually, I can't wait to get some samples myself. :D

But perhaps equally as important as the funds to an indie, are the PR benefits of running a campaign. That and the strong sense of community Kickstarter brings to the adventure fanbase is extremely valuable. A costly marketing budget is yet another aspect that we'd need to self-fund if releasing the game via the traditional non-Kickstarter method (meaning less funding towards extras in the game). Kickstarter can almost negate the marketing budget by providing the integrated marketing tools to promote to a large audience as part of their fee structure. For a game like Mage's Initiation, that reduced-cost publicity alone makes running a Kickstarter well worth it, even if we fail to reach our funding goal. Because even in the worst case scenario, a whole lot more people will discover the game who didn't know about it before.

We're doing our research well and making sure we won't fall into any of the common pitfalls that several other campaigns did by running out of backer's money. Our CFO, Rachel, is leaving no financial stone unturned, ensuring that we'll have no nasty surprises or money sinkholes relating to shipping, packaging, fulfillment, or taxes. This means more of the money pledged will go directly to making the game the best it can be.

So, please keep an eye on this space and watch for the Mage's Initiation Kickstarter campaign around the beginning of February or so!

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Re: Mage's Initiation?

#3 Post by Chief » Wed Dec 12, 2012 12:07 am

Thanks so much for the quick and detailed reply!

Could you give an estimate on the budget of the game that you initially determined?

One recommendation - Hero-U didn't have the resources at the time and are working on it now, but I hope that you have a forum similar to this for the fans devoted exclusively to Mage's Initiation.

Also, I think you should get a small focus group of people not directly related to the project to critique your KS Pitch video and page before it goes live to make it the most effective it can be.

Definitely looking forward to the swag and the start of the campaign!

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Re: Mage's Initiation?

#4 Post by Anonymous Game Creator 2 » Wed Dec 12, 2012 3:03 pm

The original budget was a $20k loan. But since then, I've put much more into the project from personal funds.

Having worked on the free Sierra remake games and with shoestring budgets before, we're quite adept at making money go a long way. Though on account of the aforementioned hurdles (as well as increased overhead after incorporating) it's evident that we'll need a higher budget to give Mages the amount of polish we'd like it to have.

Yep, we have our forums at Himalaya Studios which should easily be able to handle the transition period from the Kickstarter. The Mage's Initiation forum there has actually been up since 2011 but hasn't received a large amount of traffic yet.

Ah, very good idea with the focus group review. If you have any such people or group of people in mind, plaese let me know!

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Re: Mage's Initiation?

#5 Post by Chief » Thu Dec 13, 2012 6:56 am

very cool.. thanks.

I don't really have a group in mind but I would volunteer as would probably several other fans from around these parts!
just keep us posted.

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Re: Mage's Initiation?

#6 Post by gamecreator » Mon Dec 17, 2012 4:33 am

Looking forward to contributing to the Kickstarter, even if it's just a few dollars. You guys have have spent an incredible amount of time to entertain the community and I know a lot of people are eager to give back in some way. I hope you'll be sending out an email or two announcing this to everyone when you're ready. I also hope the beta access is affordable (I'm assuming you'll be doing this as most people do).

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Re: Mage's Initiation?

#7 Post by Anonymous Game Creator 2 » Tue Dec 18, 2012 11:06 am

Yup, we'll be sending out a newsletter email, for sure, once the time comes. :)

Offering beta testing as a reward tier is a bit of a grey area. Technically it's considered a paid job and getting a large number of people to do it for free could be considered illegal since it eschews minimum wage laws. Aside from that (and just knowing how hectic beta testing is with merely a team of 20) I shudder to think how some of these larger Kickstarter projects are going to realistically manage thousands of beta testers simultaneously, let alone sort through all their bug reports in any meaningful way. Seems like it'd be absolute chaos that would only slow things down!

Actually, I think that's why some Kickstarters put the beta testing barrier-to-entry up higher; in an attempt to stem the flow of people who will get access and make the process somewhat more manageable. Personally speaking, though, I already know I could not handle hundreds or thousands of testers as we simply don't have the resources or manpower to facilitate them all.

I really want all of our reward tiers to be realistic. Things that can be promised, met, and delivered. And things that won't hinder the game from being released in a timely manner. I honestly think it would be irresponsible to offer a reward like beta testing if I already know it's something that may later be reneged on (either due to laws or just not having the resources to handle it). I've already seen a few Kickstarter projects acting recklessly and wasteful with the funds they've received. Being responsible with investor money is of paramount importance and I think it's better to be realistic and transparent than offer a bunch of overhyped things that risk disappointing people. :)

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Re: Mage's Initiation?

#8 Post by gamecreator » Tue Dec 18, 2012 4:15 pm

I've gotta think you must be wrong on the beta minimum wage thing. Obviously consult with a lawyer or other Kickstarter project leaders or something but there are so many projects out there that offer beta access. I'm part of the Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter beta and I know no one promised me payment. I'm sure the same goes for their other 47,945 beta backers. I also pre-ordered Starcraft 2 and it came with beta access. Again, no one paid me or the thousands or people who played that. I'm sure it has to do with the wording of their contract too but again, I'd ask around.

As for feedback: you can control that. One option is to design your game so that when it crashes, it automatically emails you a bug report of what was going on at the time (where the player was, what he was doing, etc.). If you can't do that, you can generate that file and have the player email it to you. In either case, you can filter these automatically once you get them. For example, if you're looking to solve problems in room 42, you can just grab reports for bugs that happened in that room. You can filter down further based on where the player was, what specific action he was doing, what he did or didn't have in his inventory, what spell he had active - whatever. This should be all pretty automatic to you. And the best part is that while people are playing the beta and sending you feedback, you're not technically even making contact with them at this point. They're just providing useful information to you.

Now, all that said, if you're using AGS, I'm not sure how much of this is possible. If it's not, you can ask people to fill out a form and email it to you. Again, people are still participating in the beta and sending you bug reports but you're not obligated to look at a single email.

Of course, ideally you open the forums for bug reports as well and have a moderator who collects data there. Maybe even the bug forum can be organized into areas/worlds. I hate to say it but you probably won't have Double Fine's numbers to worry about but it's not a bad idea to have the beta be a higher tier.

Hopefully some of this is helpful.

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Re: Mage's Initiation?

#9 Post by adeyke » Tue Dec 18, 2012 9:17 pm

Beta testing is hard work. However, I have the feeling most people don't see "beta access" as "you have to do the work of beta testing the game for us" and more as "you get the game early (and will probably then be upset that it's still buggy)".

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Re: Mage's Initiation?

#10 Post by rugged » Wed Dec 19, 2012 1:21 am

Technically it's considered a paid job and getting a large number of people to do it for free could be considered illegal since it eschews minimum wage laws
I am unsure of employment law elsewhere but I wouldn't imagine you would have problems signing testers up for free. If you wanted to get them into a contract that required minimum hours of work and performance goals etc then you may get into trouble, but otherwise you should be sweet.

Totally agree though it is pointless having 100s of testers. I think what a lot of teams will end up doing is releasing a very late build as the "beta" version and most of the testing will have already been done at alpha stage with a designated non kickstarter based team
Being responsible with investor money is of paramount importance
While I agree with the need to be responsible with KS funds, remember they are backers and not investors :)
Any ideas of funding goals?

If possible I would strongly suggest having a demo, that is one of the things that worked so well for QFI.

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Re: Mage's Initiation?

#11 Post by gamecreator » Wed Dec 19, 2012 1:45 am

adeyke wrote:Beta testing is hard work. However, I have the feeling most people don't see "beta access" as "you have to do the work of beta testing the game for us" and more as "you get the game early (and will probably then be upset that it's still buggy)".
True. They want access, you want testing - there's gonna be a compromise. But then again, who's paying who here? It's all about how efficiently you can use this resource.

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Re: Mage's Initiation?

#12 Post by FamousAdventurer77 » Wed Dec 19, 2012 5:27 am

It's one of those damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't things because yes, while we don't expect to have DoubleFine's numbers, we also don't have DoubleFine's human resources. We're stretched pretty thin managing everything ourselves and yes, while on one hand having that many betas is a great resource, on the other it's going to be pretty difficult managing that many of them. Beta testing has always been kept to a small team because we need that one-on-one aspect.

But I really doubt labor laws are an issue-- America runs on the backs of unpaid interns, baby!

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Re: Mage's Initiation?

#13 Post by Anonymous Game Creator 2 » Wed Dec 19, 2012 5:56 am

Well, I use the term 'investor' loosely. I consider anyone who pledges money to a project will expect that their funds are being used wisely, and that they'll see some kind of return relatively soon. Further to this, it helps me to think of Kickstarter funds in the same terms as a traditional investment money because the funds shouldn't be deemed any less important or risk-free simply because it wasn't a VC who supplied them. A VC would go nuts at how some of these poorly-executed campaigns have wasted money (particularly if it was the VC's investment money) without first conducting their due diligence prior to laying out a single dollar. Fiscal responsibility is one of the key things VCs look for, which weeds out the irresponsible. Yet Kickstarter doesn't mandate any kind of fiscal responsibility so backers don't typically hold the project owners accountable at the same level that a VC would. The idea that Kickstarter money is expendable and backers won't mind how it's spent is a dangerous one that risks damaging the integrity of the platform. That's why I think it's important to know what your limits are and admit when certain rewards are beyond your scope or ability to handle.

I'm not ruling out beta testing as a reward just yet, but as far as I can see, a large beta team would probably delay the game's release even longer than a small, closed beta group. And wouldn't backers prefer the finished game in their hands sooner, rather than getting to play a slightly early buggy version that will drag out the final release longer than normal?

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Re: Mage's Initiation?

#14 Post by rugged » Wed Dec 19, 2012 8:55 am

Yeah maybe I was being a bit ridiculous picking up on the use of th word investor. I know you guys would always treat KS money as a serious thing, I guess what I was meaning is KS money comes withou a lot of the complications of investors. As long as backers get what they were promised on time then they don't care how the money is spent.

You rightly point out that many teams are taking advantage of this and ultimately the games, fans and future of their companies will suffer because of this

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Re: Mage's Initiation?

#15 Post by FamousAdventurer77 » Wed Dec 19, 2012 7:34 pm

Couldn't have said it better myself, rugged.

KS is not free money. Or risk-free, either. Nothing is. But unfortunately a lot of people gotten too starry-eyed at the prospect of not dealing with the constraints of a publisher and/or traditional capital sources (banks and investors) that they forget by cutting out the middleman who creates said barriers to capital that THEY are now solely responsible for what happens with the money. It's easy to shift blame on a game's cancellation or screw-up when someone else holds the purse strings, but when you yourself now hold the purse...

And yes...not everyone is fiscally responsible.

On both rewards and features, I want to make sure the promises we make are financially feasible and don't dramatically increase our chances of running out of funding like what happened with some campaigns such as ZionEyez. No CFO has a functioning crystal ball, but I can tell from looking at some campaigns, both gaming and other categories, that the campaigners really didn't look into how much some of these promised features and/or rewards would cost.

Costs aside, a lack of integrity is what will unfortunately make the games, fans, and indies' futures suffer if the system gets abused. Well, we shall use it awesomely whether or not we make our funding goal!

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Re: Mage's Initiation?

#16 Post by gamecreator » Thu Dec 20, 2012 11:02 pm

Anonymous Game Creator 2 wrote:as far as I can see, a large beta team would probably delay the game's release even longer than a small, closed beta group. And wouldn't backers prefer the finished game in their hands sooner, rather than getting to play a slightly early buggy version that will drag out the final release longer than normal?
Not really. Double Fine is spending time (and money!) to film their development and also release regular forum posts with art, music, etc. Tim had two videos where he played Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle for about an hour each as "research," which set him back I'm sure. I doubt most backers are complaining about that.

Also, did you read what I wrote above? You have options as far as how the beta works. It's not necessarily about hiring 50 people for 2 years to oversee thousands of beta testers, like you make it seem.

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Re: Mage's Initiation?

#17 Post by Anonymous Game Creator 2 » Fri Dec 21, 2012 1:26 am

Not really. Double Fine is spending time (and money!) to film their development and also release regular forum posts with art, music, etc. Tim had two videos where he played Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle for about an hour each as "research," which set him back I'm sure. I doubt most backers are complaining about that.
I think the difference is that the DoubleFine documentary was advertised from the outset as a key part of their Kickstarter campaign, and backers knew that they'd be getting those kinds of 'insight into game development' video rewards all along. Plus, there's also an entertaining/marketable aspect to watching Tim do "Let's Plays" of his older games which probably explains the lack of backer complaints.

But regardless of what DoubleFine (or any other Kickstarter project) have or haven't done to delay their projects, there's also the point to make that I really don't want to delay Mages Initiation any longer than necessary. Some upcoming projects require that we'll need to release this game relatively quickly, and the only way to comfortably do that is to stick to the methods we've refined over the years, which we know will work effectively for us.
Also, did you read what I wrote above? You have options as far as how the beta works. It's not necessarily about hiring 50 people for 2 years to oversee thousands of beta testers, like you make it seem.
AGS doesn't really have any kind of advanced bug reporting features like the ones you've mentioned. Also, we have a method of handling betas which we've refined over a decade of working with complex adventure games. The reason I say that it only works well with a small beta group is because, due to the nature of the bugs and reporting, I need to have one-on-one communication with every beta tester so that we can go back and forth and I can ask them to perform additional steps. With hundreds or thousands of people posting duplicate bugs, or bugs that are similar but with small variations, reporting would quickly become unmanageable and near impossible to recall who posted what.

When we've conducted betas in the past, it has been with a maximum of about 30 people (typically in waves of 10 new testers being introduced per game build). I always ask for a very specific set of formatting to be used when posting bug reports to make them faster to sort through. At least half of the testers ignore my request and post reports in their own format. It often takes a bit of dialogue to make them understand why we need the layout a specific way. This is just to illustrate that even with a relatively small group, getting people "on the same page" can be a very time consuming process. With thousands of testers, this would be amplified to such an extent, that I just can't fathom how it would function - unless we paid lip-service to the majority of testers and only listened directly to a few of the best ones who would be the 'liaisons' between us and the rest of the pack.

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Re: Mage's Initiation?

#18 Post by gamecreator » Fri Dec 21, 2012 5:24 pm

Thanks. I can see how the urgency of releasing sooner rather than later and the frustration with beta testers in the past would make you want to avoid releasing a beta to backers.

I'm still tempted to write you a beta bug form program that only allows testers to submit bugs when the required fields are entered. :P

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Re: Mage's Initiation?

#19 Post by DrJones » Sat Dec 22, 2012 3:51 pm

We already use a good one, so you don't have to go to such lenghts to help us. :D

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Re: Mage's Initiation?

#20 Post by gamecreator » Sat Dec 22, 2012 8:11 pm

AGC2 mentioned that he doesn't always get the reports in the format he wants; that's why I mentioned that. But it's great if you like your program otherwise.

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Re: Mage's Initiation?

#21 Post by Anonymous Game Creator 2 » Thu Dec 27, 2012 10:58 am

There are several bug trackers out there which could probably fulfill the task of handling reports quite adequately. The main issue with using them for a large audience, is not having any way to filter duplicate reports, or allow reporters to check whether an issue already exists prior to posting a new report.

Some kind of manager would probably be required to constantly sort through everything that gets posted to streamline the process so that it doesn't bog us down.

I'm still trying to determine whether there's a way to include beta testing as a reward tier. Even if it just means giving backers access to a beta build at the same time we conduct a closed beta test, and then keeping an occasional eye on the backer reports to check for any that may have slipped through the net. Would people be okay with that approach?

By the way, are there any other rewards, digital or physical, that people would particularly like to see offered in the tiers?

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Re: Mage's Initiation Kickstarter?

#22 Post by Chief » Sun Dec 30, 2012 10:00 pm

I think some digital game art, backgrounds and concept art would be nice. Hi-Res would be excellent!

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Re: Mage's Initiation Kickstarter?

#23 Post by rugged » Sun Jan 27, 2013 6:38 am

Any chance of having a stretch goal that would mean an iOS release?

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Re: Mage's Initiation Kickstarter?

#24 Post by Anonymous Game Creator 2 » Sun Jan 27, 2013 1:12 pm

It's in our best interests to try and release the game on as many platforms as possible, so we're going to try and make it available on Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS when it's possible to do so. There are AGS ports in the works for all of these platforms, but they're not completely stable yet.

Since we can't guarantee a time and date for the ported versions (engine porting schedule is out of our hands), we probably won't make ports a part of the Kickstarter campaign. We'd just release them regardless, whenever the AGS ports become available and are stable enough.

We got some pretty good ideas for other stretch goals, though, as well as some pretty awesome reward items, that I think people will like a lot!

Chief: We're definitely looking into some signed background art prints. Eriq's helping us with sourcing the print materials, so you know they'll be high quality.

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Re: Mage's Initiation Kickstarter?

#25 Post by rugged » Tue Jan 29, 2013 12:08 am

that is great news about the platforms. Are you still working for a Feb kick starter? I think it is important to have a bit of a build up to your kickstarter. You want your first day to be a big one and for that to happen people need to know about it and have had time to think about what they may want to pledge.

Will you have a reward tier that combines a digital copy of Al Emmo and Mages? I think the idea of pledging say $25 - $30 and getting one game straight away (well at the end of the KS) and Mages when it releases could be a good ploy for those who have missed Al.

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