Information Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden 2 Kickstarter Launched

[eric__s]

So Guido should learn from this that it's all about flashing gimmicks.

No, I'd say it's about months of hard work on a good game, strong internal coordination, clear and reasonable goals, solid presentation, actively communicating with fans both before and during our campaign and having visible, tangible mechanics, gameplay, images, concepts and design. If you think that we did not work unbelievably hard on this, or that this does not represent substantial investment of energy, thought and money, you are wrong. Let's play a game. How many hours have you slept in the past month? I can guarantee you that your answer is at least four times mine.

The fact, first, that you are framing this as a competition between Mr. Henkel and me is completely ridiculous - I am a very vocal supporter of his and these are very different games - and second, that you cannot distinguish the obvious differences in the stage of production between the two games is completely ridiculous. We have something. We have a game. It's not a concept, it's not something we want to do. It's something we are well on the way to completing. It will take us a year, but we have an engine, programming, music, art, graphics, design, writing and we have worked on all of it for months. Don't come in here and tell me that my team, a team that has considerably less financial means to do this than almost anyone else, has no substance. You're welcome to criticize our game all you want, but do it in a way that's not unbelievably stupid.

 

[felipepepe]

Henkel made the same mistake as Brenda, they though "I'm wanna do an arrrpeegeee" is all they need to get tons of money. Barkley 2 is a sequel to a great, free game; and you can already see the game, have a glinpse of the gameplay, art and even music before pledging a single dime. And all that is shown looks good.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

If you see my other post, you will see that it is not about a competition between him and you, or an accusation of you pandering to the lowest common denominator, or anything like that. It's not criticism directed to you at all.

I was not implying that you didn't work very hard on this, and it is very nice to take every step to make it as fair a presentation as possible with as concrete a game as possible, but some of the game projects that didn't provide all you did provide did get funded immensely due to their exciteability oriented marketing.

 

[eric__s]

Yes, I understand that. A game that will make at most 1/10th of Guido's goal is not the game to make this point on. Your comment is valid, though, and I'm sorry I was a jerk about it! We studied successful Kickstarters for a long time to learn how to do what they did, but we are also making fun of them, and ourselves, in the process. That stupid tagline - Not for TREND. Not for CORPORATE ATTITUDE. Not for STONER. Only TRUE DOOM-MURDERHEADS. - means literally nothing. It is from an old amazon comment that I thought was hilarious and it makes fun of media buzzword branding. Our $10,000 pokes fun at how absurd the idea of spending time with developers is, or that developers would think that spending time with them is even worth anything. This Kickstarter campaign was tailored specifically to poke fun at ridiculous Kickstarter trends and I'd say the only thing we didn't do was fill half our page up with scrolls of rewards.

You're on the right page about "flash", but it absolutely does not apply to us. We are 100% substance.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

That much is obvious from your interviews, and that's also why I said in my earlier comment that this is a game that was deceptively simple. It's evident your heart is in the right place and that you are very thoughtful about this, and it truly impressed me when I read them.

I was addressing Codexers who think that games who try to be very high brow could get away with solely the quality of their presentation. I think that this is a game that people who want to market their products have to play. At the end of the day, it's important to be able to say "man, this is so cool!". It is what grabs people's attention, it is also what gets the media talking. Some Codexers think that Kickstarter is the answer to very high brow, very deep games looking for outlets, but I think it is not. It's probably why virtually all media outlets ignored the Conquistador game, which tried hard to come off as a serious project adressing a mature theme and setting.

Even the people in the M.O.R.E. 4x game had to play the exciteability, buzzword game in their video.

 

[Jaesun]

What amount is it trending towards?

 

[Kz3r0]

What amount is it trending towards?

$679,551
http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/talesofgames/barkley-2-an-rpg-sequel-to-barkley-shut-up-and-jam/

 

[EG]

What amount is it trending towards?

$679,551
http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/talesofgames/barkley-2-an-rpg-sequel-to-barkley-shut-up-and-jam/

it'll level out at 10,000 a day once that updates again.

 

[Jaesun]

$679,551? Holy fucking shit.

 

[evdk]

$200k seems reachable. What are the stretchgoals?

 

[Jaesun]

Yeah I am kind of thinking probably 100 to 150K. They are probably all shitting them selves right now and figuring out what the fuck to do for stretch goals. I say take your time and come up with some good ones (unlike the kneejerk ones Obsidian at first did when they realized HOLY SHIT! UM FUCK WHAT DO WE DO NOW?). heh

 

[wormix]

My estimate: $136,000.

Unfortunately most of my friends have horribly short attention spans and about the longest response I've gotten from sharing this was "wtf is that" followed by something completely unrelated.

 

[eric__s]

Haha. We didn't expect to reach the goal this quickly, but we have a few in mind. There are some really big ones we'd like to announce but they require a little more time, but we are releasing some early ones tomorrow. We're actually more than already half way to a Mac port and we'll probably be like 75% there by the time we actually announce it. It is incredible how much demand there is for a Mac port. Over half the emails we've gotten have asked about it, so if you're going to do a Kickstarter and you're capable of it, absolutely announce a Mac port. The ones we're announcing tomorrow are things I think the core audience will be interested in and will allow us to work on the game for full-time longer, which directly translates to more content and higher quality. The big ones later on may draw in more people but will probably cost us significantly more to produce. For instance, it is going to cost us five times more to produce a console port of the game than a Mac port, so this is something that we're going to shoot for much later.

 

[evdk]

Must you shoot for a console release at all? It's not like MS is not gonna screw you over anyway.

 

[Jaesun]

I don't have a problem with consoles (for this kind of game) but that whole what is it 5000$(?) to just do a patch to your game? Do that shit later. Spend all this money making this game great, not giving money to M$ and Sony.

Hell maybe do a OUYA port (which does NOT have a fee for you to do a patch).

 

[kazgar]

I thought he meant backporting it to the sega genesis/megadrive.

Custom cart stretch goal!

 

[Johannes]

That stupid tagline - Not for TREND. Not for CORPORATE ATTITUDE. Not for STONER. Only TRUE DOOM-MURDERHEADS. - means literally nothing. It is from an old amazon comment that I thought was hilarious and it makes fun of media buzzword branding.

Huh? That's a perfectly descriptive review for that album.

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

Hell maybe do a OUYA port (which does NOT have a fee for you to do a patch).

Plus, wouldn't OUYA port and android tablet port be pretty complementary efforts?

 

[Murk]

Huh? That's a perfectly descriptive review for that album.

Yeah the "stoner" makes a lot more sense when taken in context of the (somewhat recent) popularity of "stoner metal" or "stoner rock". The other two make sense as well given it's about metal and so the genre is flooded with fake personalities and trends.

Tho I think cboyardee meant the tag means nothing for their game, not in the review.

 

[Ignatius Reilly]

I like your style, but I backed mostly for those sweet beats.

 

[Gold]

Well supported. Now Im waiting for 4 games next year and one in 2014. The platinum age of niche rpgs seems to be upon us. 4 indieish post-apocalyptic games and one dnd clone. It seems the dark ages have passed.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

A lot of indies made console ports of their games, but ended up focusing solely on computer releases for their sequels because they sold a lot better and it was much simpler, like with Orcs Must Die for example. It also allowed them to set their own prices and to control sales and whatnot.

 

[LeStryfe79]

I've always thought a new game + feature would make for a pretty good stretch goal, especially in a game like Barkley 2.

 

[TeknoBM]

I've always thought a new game + feature would make for a pretty good stretch goal, especially in a game like Barkley 2.

This. 100 times this

 

[HobGoblin42]

XBLA and PSN are not dying, they are already dead. We did our own experience by releasing a game on XBLA and PSN, but without first party support, your visibility on the marketplace is close to zero.

I would focus on the PC, Mac and Linux releases. Maybe add iOS/Android tablets. The current gen consoles are not worth the effort anymore.