New (Game) from the TA(and Co.) Developers

SupCom cost $10M.

Guess it all went into the graptical engine?

Still that is a kinda massive amount of money, where does it all go?

Labour is expensive, and businesses have overheads, unless you've been exposed to the costing process of these sort of things the numbers can look shocking.

Indeed :shock:

that is also what I hope for

I wish I couldn't say they have themselves to blame. They did everything wrong that Uber did right. Uber pitched the best possible KS game: innovating, in an awesome and obvious way, within your core competence, in a dead (to publishers) genre. GPG tried to innovate in a lame and confusing way in a genre they have already tried and failed, which also happens to be the world's most popular genre. Uber were upfront about having no DRM, F2P or P2W; GPG clearly wanted their game to be a P2W MMO then changed their mind nonsensically. Uber had a clear vision and communicated frankly with the fans; CT seemed to be half trying to pull the wool over our eyes, half making it up as he went. Uber was in charge the whole time; CT had a public emotional breakdown :shock: (did he really think that would help or did he just not give a **** anymore?)

It's not like they didn't have every chance to figure this out, for the past 6 months Gamasutra has been nothing but 'how to succeed at Kickstarter'. Seems like CT didn't read any of those.

What sucks most is that it's so easy to see how Chris could have pulled this off. There are so many pitches he could make that are not a MOBA/RTS/ARPG in a caveman setting! For instance, off the top of my head, going back to Medieval 1: Total War graphics and seeing how many millions of unit sprites you can put on screen. But I guess now he'll get slapped around for another year or two. We'll see what happens then. I definitely wish him all the best, I also wish he would avoid making such poor decisions. :|

You call it poor decisions but what I'm seeing is the CEO of an independent dev studio who make the responsible decisions for his team. Chris said himself that he makes the game that he thinks the player wants, not the game he wants.

He looks at the statistics and sees 80% of the players in SupCom never played online. Ergo: Single player game. ARPG are currently selling well and are an established genre. (DIII, Torchlight...) Those are very responsible decisions and they tried to build a game around them that could be sold to a publisher as well in case of an emergency. Publishers like mainstream games based on conservative design. Of course those games are harder to sell to the fans on Kickstarter. But GPG is in a different position than let's say Uber. GPG has a larger overhead, more employees (until recently), it's simply more expensive to keep going even if nothing happens. A publisher who pays the bills is again the more responsible choice for them.

I think Chris Taylor only makes one mistake with his decisions: He assumes that the market for a game that is based on what HE likes is not large enough. He makes all those save choices and aims for a design that can appeal to casual players when he really wants to go deep and make something spectacular, nerdy and crazy. Look at Project Mercury. That right there is what Chris Tayler wants to realize!

There are enough gamers who like spectacular RTS games with crazy ideas and are willing to step up and help make them happen. Otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation on this forum right now, would we? Somebody needs to tell Chris...

I found his problem. Publishers with mainstream games don't belong on Kickstarter.

Hell :shock:

Project Mercury can make him rich...
Bet microsoft, google or apple is now behind this....

Which is why Chris Taylor was justified in stating his skepticism that Uber could make Planetary Annihilation for 2.2 million, since he knows how much making an RTS game can be especially making one from scratch like Uber are doing. I am skeptical about it too, although I think they have cash reserves to draw upon to make up the difference for the final cost (which will be well north of 2.2 million I imagine).

I feel like I need to repeat again that the kickstarter raise is not the same thing as the budget.

As far as SupCom goes I saw where the money went...

Seems to be an important point people are missing. People just assume that total money involved in a project = it was spent properly in every way, and that every game spends money in the same way. But this can't be true. IE: marketing cost is different for each company. As a business owner I know how much I do/could spend on marketing and how much that results in bang for your buck. Clearly you guys would not be taking this project on if you did not think you had a chance of doing it.

I think GPG found funding from another source. Whether or not it's for Wildman or another project remains to be seen.

Hoping its for K&C!! Would be awesome news, PA & K&C plus SC2 all in one year!

I would not be surprised at all.

Using Win8, and MS could definitely use some pointers on how to change the desktop. They've been spreading to new tech recently as well.

Google seems to be eating up everything anyway, so same thing. May be old news though.

Apple I doubt, but I have no experience with them.

I'm no expert, so would they really need to back GPG just to get access to Mercury? It just started. Could they not just adopt the concept? They certainly have the resources to make it themselves.

Tell us more

If I had to hazard a guess I'd say Valve. The minute he said it works on any OS I figured this would be a great addition to Steam. Plus, Gabe has a history of picking up failed Kickstarters and I doubt any of those other guys would be so quick on the draw.

If that's true, this could work out very well indeed for Chris and his team. What a turn of events!

Gas Powered Games’ chief Chris Taylor struggles to stay positive after crowdfunding failure
Read more at http://venturebeat.com/2013/02/12/gas-p ... lclv2u0.99

His hypothesis of consumer fatigue re: games on KickStarter may have merit.
But I can't help but feel there's a note of sour grapes in there too.

Dreamfall Chapters looks set to reach $2m, and it's not the world's most popular franchise. It's all because (1) his pitch sucked and (2) his company fell apart.

I would dare say that most anyone who was in the market for an RTS already spent their money Kickstarting PA, and it didn't help that he started the Kickstarter in December.