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Don't you see whats going on here ......
Hairysun
Member UncommonPosts: 1,059
You know I am actually a believer in Kick starters, especially those associated with gaming. I always saw it as an indi game companys opportunity to skip the whole publisher BS game. Lets face it, a lot of the time the publishers are the problems with these new releases. "It's taking too long!", "It needs to play more like WoW!", "No, No ...... the majority of gamers like stylized graphics!" , "More cartoony more cartoony! .... etc ...... etc. Publishers screw up games .... plain and simple.
It is why we have 100 carbon copies of a few popular games. Introduce a publisher and the game dream suddenly has to compete with the flavor of the month. Once a publisher has entered the picture the developer has some one to answer to besides the gamer. If you aren't aware of this give it some thought ...... we'll wait. Let me help a bit (Publisher=Investor) ... words can be interchanged in most instances.
Back to kick starters .......... Woo Hoo, Fuq the publishers! We don't need them ..... Woo Hoo. You've gotta love it, we are starting to get some unique and varied games running around. Granted, not a one of them is complete, but they're playable and they have people talking. Now if you were a publisher, what would you do about this? Kick Starter is cutting them out of the profit. Not trimming them back, completely cutting them out of everything. Granted they still have their own studios generally ... but, pffft. If I we're a publisher I'd be concerned. I would rethink some things and act accordingly. I would get some stooge to act as if he were an indi game company CEO and push him a bit to make a kick starter game. All the while knowing if the kick starter succeeded gamers would be paying to make a game that I would eventually buy out cheaply and call my own. Genius ...... the long established publisher gets to make a Kick Starter game.
Now enter Brad McQuaid and Mr. SOE, John Smedley. For those of you that aren't aware, they are buds and have been for some time now. SOE bought Sigil to pull Vanguard from the flames, bought all assets and gave Brad the limited role of "Creative Consultant", for obvious reasons. HERE is some more info on where Brad has been for the last few years ..... working at SOE. (From Wikipedia).
May 15, 2007, Sony Online Entertainment officially announced that it had purchased the key assets of Sigil Games Online.
On June 16, 2010, Brad updated his Blog to announce that he is the co-founder of a new gaming company in San Diego, CA. Some months later, the blog was removed from the website, leaving the website as just a single page website.
On July 6, 2012, Sony Online Entertainment announced the re-hiring of Brad to continue work on Vanguard including its Free-to-Play transition.
On March 6, 2013, Brad announced that he has returned to working on EverQuest.
On September 9, 2013, Brad announced to the world that he left SOE but is still working closely with them, and that Smedley is even excited about this. This news coupled with the string of hints dropped throughout Twitter and various board leads the community to believe that Brad is now working on a true spiritual successor to EverQuest and Vanguard.
On January 13, 2014 the game was announced as Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen alongside a Kickstarter campaign.
I'm sorry but SOE is making this Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen game. Not some new start up company that needs money. Look at the stretch goals for the kick starter ..... are you kidding me. Brad MaQuaid as CEO? Are you kidding me? I am making this thread for one reason and one reason only. So I can bring it back to life when SOE takes over this game to finish it. Why do you think they are cleaning out MMOs like Vanguard, FreeRealms and Wizardry .... to make room is why.
Perhaps the proper response will be "So what" This is what publishers do, they make their investors money any way they can. I just can't help but feel it will be taking advantage of what I see "Kick Starter" as. It is supposed to be an opportunity for an indi company to get their feet in the door of the big boys arena. Not an opportunity for the big boys to make even more money and control the direction of a game. History does tend to repeat itself .......VG
So I will leave this now and bring it up in a couple years after Pantheons fourth kick starter fails them and SOE supposedly buys them out and takes control. Feel free to add to the thread as it will make the discussion in 2016 that much more interesting.
~Hairysun
Comments
Yeah that would really be against the spirit of kickstarter, the whole point of crowdfunding is to help small companies get funding for their ideas and bypass the oversight of investors and publishers.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
It would definitely show how desperate SOE has become and how much Karma has come back to bite them in the ass that is for sure, lol, yeah, well deserved karma at that.
Well pretty sure when this KS was announced Brad and the guys who left SOE who were mainly Vanguard devs knew it was closing as they jumped ship pretty quick,but there could be a hint of truth Brad states the KS is to garner interest.
If it fails we could see SOE jump in and fund the project as then they would be seen as the good guys and maybe VG2 as it were arise under the guise of Pantheon,ok gotta go just need to put my tinfoil hat on and watch that Roswell Documentary.
I hear you called this woman and she told you this
Roses are red
Violets are blue
The reviewer has a mishapen head
Which means his opinion is skewed
...Aldous.MF'n.Huxley
Good thing it is not true
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
This is the point that a lot of people are missing. Their pledges aren't going towards the development of the game, the 800k is going to be used to rent office space, purchase hardware (and other infrastructure materials) and pay the wages of the current staff and future hires. They are pledging money to help Brad set up his company, that is pretty much it.
After which he will most probably launch another Kick Starter campaign to raise more cash to fund the continued existence of the company while they finally get around to the actual development of the game itself.
They are using their brains to make profits. Developers in kick starter get to experiment with thoughts they had but never got approved, while using the crowd funding to look for someone who'll invest in what they could have done. I see it as an opportunity for the industry to game some much needed vision. At least, that's what I would hope.
Yeah and they'd probably get a lawsuit out of the whole thing as it would be considered fraud, given the money given from Kickstarters is largely dependent on who is behind the game.
If this is true this is against the kickstarter rules. You can not under any circumstance use kickstarter for a business startup.
If you are interested in making a MMO maybe visit my page to get a free open source engine.
Your logic is really weird.
Sellouts!!!!!
not all will take that route.
Oh kickstarter. A place where the average Joe (Who has no clue about investing, potential, vision, etc), gets to throw their money at people who know how to exploit these people who have no clue. It is really hilarious watching these fail games get put up and the monkeys ready to throw them their banana's.
Granted, it is your money, you earned it so you can throw it where you want to. But don't complain to the rest of the country about being a part of the 99%. It's your own damn fault for being so stupid.
what
If Vanguard was ultimately not worth paying for, why would SOE do it again on McQuaid's next "bright" idea?
LOL!
It's not very smart to pick a fight with 99% of the country.
Just sayin.
Don't worry. He's part of that very same 99%.
He just pretends he's not.
OP only seems to have half the facts. First of all Brad and Smed WERE friends 10 years ago. Brad left on bad terms after he helped make the Luclin expansion long ago. Since then he made Vanguard and when the ship was sinking he tricked Smed into buying Vanguard, with the notion that the game was a lot closer to being finished then it really was(Smed's words not mine). Smed was furious with Brad because he got completely screwed over with the purchase of Vanguard.
Fast forward half a decade. Brad is involved with various projects that all never see the light of day and creates a blog on his website with mostly excuses for why VG failed that don't involve him on drugs or out of the office 90% of the time. He then shallows his pride and asks to work for Sony again, they agree and put him on Vanguard. Less then a month goes by he realizes how unfixable the game is so he moves to EQNext. Another month or so they realize Brad has nothing to offer themepark MMO design in 2013 and so they force him to work on EQ1 again. After another month or so he finally gets laid off and here we are with Pantheon.
Now all of this doesn't mean Pantheon can't succeed or that Brad can't make another killer MMO but if you're a gambling man you'll let someone or noone front this particular bill because he pissed away a hug opportunity with Microsoft. Personally I think his time has been done for 10 years now but no shame in saying the only thing you accomplished was creating EQ classic. That's still more then any of use will likely do in our lifetimes.
This is exactly what he is doing. He has no game. Only concept art and "lore". Every cent raised with his KS will be put towards founding his new gaming studio, Sigil 2.0. NONE of it is being used to make a game. None. Its a scam people are willing buying into because they are desperate to recapture whatever positive feelings they had 10-15 years ago playing EQ.
What most people supporting this are actually longing for is not the game they were playing back then, but the lifestyle they had. I'm willing to bet most Pantheon supporters are in their 30's or 40's, which means they were in their late teens or early 20's when they were playing EQ. Back then, they had very few responsibilities in life. They could play 8 or more hours a day, playing into the early hours of the morning, without having to worry about too many consequences. Now that they are full fledged adults with jobs to go to, families to spend time with and mortgages to pay, their time is not their own. Their lifestyle has drastically changed. They don't want harsh death penalties, long travel times, forced grouping or whatever other nut punching feature makes a game "old school" and "hardcore". They want their old lifestyle back, the one where they could play an MMO all day and all night but now they can't because they grew up and became adults (theoretically). Or at least they want that old feeling, which will have to do since they can never go back and be 20 again and they're hoping this game will give it to them.
Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?
Remember, I live in a world where juggalos and yugioh players are real things.