They were only approached as "consultants" not designers.
Understandable, in that case.
The CRPG Renaissance has been incredibly successful. If you think this is what failure looks like you need go to take a look at other genres. And remind yourself again how things were back in 2011-2012.
Banner Saga, PoE, Shadowrun and WL2 were disappointing to me. D:OS was a pleasant surprise, and we'll see about TTON. I'm glad all of these games got funded in the first place, mind you. Things are better and all, but I expected better games. Just my two cents.
not really I think. While he is a respected writer in crpg community to get that much money he need to work with famous designer.
Eh...you do know he's not just a writer?
Sadly, Avellone does not have that large a reputation of an auteur figure to command funding like that. For reference, he has like 20k Twitter followers while Ken Levine has 700k and Tim Schafer has a million.
I honestly don't know enough about Twitter to explain that difference, but there are some things to consider:
- Ken Levine and Tim Schafer made much bigger brands of themselves, and it shows. Unlike other "celebrity devs", Tim Schafer went out of his way to do it himself.
- That notoriety is not good if you start to harm your reputation. People already got burned with DF kickstarters and the spacebase fiasco, then the Psychonauts 2 Fig campaign effectively failed among backers and needed an extensions to reach its goal even with the shady investors. Fortunately, MCA's reputation is pretty much intact.
- They've had much bigger roles in recent, prominent projects. Levine led 2 very successful AAA FPS, while Tim Schafer got this whole KS thing going.
- MCA hasn't had a major role in a game since Alpha Protocol, and he was actually brought in halfway through to rescue it. KOTOR2 was the last time he was Project Director. That was 12 years ago, and this would actually be a selling point.
- A quick look at Levine's twitter tells me he talks about more controversial topics, including politics and the games industry in general. MCA has never been an outspoken figure, and his Twitter seems much more "personal". Again, I don't understand enough about twitter, but that's my impression.
- If Chris got this ball rolling, it goes without saying the people he'd bring along would come from well-known studios as well. You can check KS and see projects raising a lot more money simply because of the previous games and studios used to work on. It makes a difference.
I mean, just look at TTON. It was sold as a spiritual sequel to MCA's magnum opus. It had Fargo promoting it, MCA endorsing it and members of the original PS:T team, none of which were celebrities. I'm sure codexers knew it was in good hands with Kevin and all, but that's not something more casual fans considered. The project raised $2 million before adding more popular devs and ambitious stretch goals.
As I said, here's how the numbers changed after the Chris Avellone stretch goal. It was announced on March 22:
The 7 days before had an average of $32,146 pledged per day. And that's without considering 03/21 was the day they announced the Pat Rothfuss stretch goal. The 7 days before that had an average of $28,632.
The 7 days after MCA had an average of $45,540. A 41.66% increase over the former, and a 59% over the latter.
The day his stretch goal was announced was also (by far) the most funded day outside the initial 4 and last 4 days of the campaign.
I don't think he'd raise nearly as much as these games simply because the project itself wouldn't be as ambitious, and the Kickstarter fad is a bit worn out. However, with the right pitch and the right campaign, he could easily get $2.5-3 million. Except if the project is made by InXile and he's hired as a freelancer to lead it. In that case it'd make much less.
Anyway, just some random speculation as usual. Or not. Perhaps it's something Chris has been foreshadowing for a while.
