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The Banner Saga Kickstarter project by Stoic [Ended, 723K funded]

Q

Qwomo

Junior Member
Had to withdraw my $50 pledge because I'm poorer than I thought, but it's good to see them hit 700k.
 
I

Ignis Fatuus

Banned
I really think they could have hit another stretch goal if they'd added one at 750k. Regardless, nothing to do now but sit back and see where they end up.
 
S

subversus

I've done nothing with my life except eat and fap
backed them with 10$ but my debit card is almost empty so I'm not sure if there is enough to charge me. Well, whatever.
 
M

mclem

Member
The interesting thing here, I think, is that this isn't really being made by a huge name; sure, they're developers with a pedigree, but they're not exactly 'celebrities', for want of a better word.

And yet, despite that, they were still able to manage to get around three quarters of a million dollars through kickstarter. Is this the most successful gaming kickstarter without a big name or franchise behind it?
 
I

Ignis Fatuus

Banned
mclem said:
The interesting thing here, I think, is that this isn't really being made by a huge name; sure, they're developers with a pedigree, but they're not exactly 'celebrities', for want of a better word.

And yet, despite that, they were still able to manage to get around three quarters of a million dollars through kickstarter. Is this the most successful gaming kickstarter without a big name or franchise behind it?
Click to expand...
Yes. It's proof that true indie titles can hit it big on Kickstarter and it provides a model for others to follow. Until now I think FTL held the record at around 200k, or maybe that atrocious Takedown thing passed it a bit. This sum is just unprecedented.

Seven digits remains the realm of the celebrity developer or known franchise for now, but The Banner Saga has opened the door, so to speak.
 
RPGCrazied

RPGCrazied

Member
I'm curious to see what Tim Shacfer does with his several million dollars, that has got to be one hell of an adventure game.
 
M

MightyHedgehog

Member
mclem said:
The interesting thing here, I think, is that this isn't really being made by a huge name; sure, they're developers with a pedigree, but they're not exactly 'celebrities', for want of a better word.

And yet, despite that, they were still able to manage to get around three quarters of a million dollars through kickstarter. Is this the most successful gaming kickstarter without a big name or franchise behind it?
Click to expand...

It really helps that they came across as earnest and brought with them footage of the early game and showcased its artstyle. That video really sold it, just like all of the super-successful KS projects, along with constant updates that reflect the backers' concerns and wishes.

Glad this one turned out so successful and I hope the three chapters turn out awesome.
 
P

Piecake

Member
Got home and saw it was at 720k. Talk about awesome! The additional content explanation in the new update sounded fantastic as well. Just the type of stuff that I want to see
 
N

NichM

Banned
Dang, if they can somehow get 12 more pledges in the next 15 minutes, they'll be at an even 20,000 backers.

EDIT: And of course they did that too.
 
E

El-Suave

Member
This project is a nice success for Kickstarter, it's the first one I'm funding that I found through Kickstarter itself and not through GAF or some famous developer being involved.
Edit: Of course it was already successfully funded when I jumped on board and the GAF thread existed, I just hadn't heard of it yet.
 
M

mclem

Member
RPGCrazied said:
I'm curious to see what Tim Shacfer does with his several million dollars, that has got to be one hell of an adventure game.
Click to expand...

Um, no, that has got to be a fairly normal-sized adventure game. It's only a couple of million, after all!

Anyhow, a couple of minutes left to go!
 
D

Des0lar

will learn eventually
El-Suave said:
This project is a nice success for Kickstarter, it's the first one I'm funding that I found through Kickstarter itself and not through GAF or some famous developer being involved.
Edit: Of course it was already successfully funded when I jumped on board and the GAF thread existed, I just hadn't heard of it yet.
Click to expand...

haha me too
 
M

mclem

Member
~Kinggi~ said:
Shit, saw only 7 minutes left and had to donate real quick. 25 for me.
Click to expand...

If you up it to 50 you'll get the other two parts as well (but do it fast!)

(Although it sounds like each component is a full game)

Edit: And there we go!
zBqdl.png


Edit:
Piecake said:
723,751

Nice!
Click to expand...

If that's right, someone *literally* got in at the last second.
 
M

mclem

Member
LiquidSolid said:
A lot of people seemed to get in right at the last second. $723,886 now. I'm guessing quite a few of them were halfway through the process so it let them finish as it was closing.
Click to expand...

Letting any currently-active backing processes finish makes perfect sense, of course.
 
Stantron

Stantron

Member
Glad to see this one become such a success past its goal. These kickstarters are giving me a warm fuzzy feeling.
 
M

Man-is-Obsolete

Member
MightyHedgehog said:
It really helps that they came across as earnest and brought with them footage of the early game and showcased its artstyle. That video really sold it, just like all of the super-successful KS projects, along with constant updates that reflect the backers' concerns and wishes.

Glad this one turned out so successful and I hope the three chapters turn out awesome.
Click to expand...

BINGO!

They had a true vision and related that through art, how the story will work (brief synopsis, branching dialogue, caravan, etc), how they will do the animation and thus adding value to the Rotoscope reward tier, and of course they showed actual gameplay. Having said that not every project that does what Stoic did will reap the same rewards (Starlight Inception has a similar kickstarter that has not got off to nearly as fast as a start), but it is definitely a vast improvement over Takedown's kickstarter where the developer didn't even have art or even know what perspective they wanted the game to be in.
 
M

matmanx1

Member
Proud to be a part of this Kickstarter project. $10 was all I could do at this point but even with that I feel like I made my vote towards the development of this very cool looking project. Congrats, Stoic!
 
I

Ignis Fatuus

Banned
So it turns out that 75 people showed up at the pub. Anyone here among them?
Just got home from the Kickstarter closing event at the Pour House in Austin. About 75 people showed up to the chagrin of the waitresses...we told them about 20-30 people would show up. oops!
I think Alex took some video so we'll be sharing it when we can!
Next week we'll be works on getting forums up on the site to give this amazing community a place to call home.
Hope everyone's haveing a great weekend.
-Arnie
Click to expand...
Torn by indecision over my crest.
 
H

hym

Banned
Ignis Fatuus said:
Torn by indecision over my crest.
Click to expand...

Speaking of which, the FAQ says this:
"We'll be talking more about the template before the campaign ends so you can see if it's something you can commit to!"

Any idea if and where they expanded more on the template crest arrangement?
 
E

eudaemonic

Member
I'm interested to see how far this will deliver. I backed it mostly because I liked the project as soon as it was announce (before the kickstarter). But when they started tacking on all the features (three episodes instead of the first one, multiple platforms, orchrestra, etc - it sent off a huge red flag that maybe they're not thinking realistically for the amount of money pledged.

But we'll see. I'll be hopeful. :)
 
K

Khar

Member
There's an interesting interview with Stoic's Alex Thomas at Wired.

They seem have this planned out thoroughly and aren't trying to overstretch their small team of 3 guys in a goat shack. Outsourcing some elements of the game to bring up the overall quality seems a sensible way to add polish with their extra funds.
 
Alexios

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
HP_Wuvcraft said:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stoic/the-banner-saga/posts

Breakdown of costs. Thought you mike like to post it, since you are the OP and all, and I can't doublepost.
Click to expand...
http://youtu.be/nEaY4JYooJk
Stoic said:
The quick answer is that so far things are going according to plan and we've budgeted correctly!

The longer answer is this breakdown:

- Of $730k, 10% immediately comes out for amazon, kickstarter and failed payments. We actually had a shockingly low number of these failed payments, but this alone leaves us with roughly $650k.
- Actual prizes cost us about $22k to produce. $22,000 certainly is a lot for posters, tshirts and some fancy art, but this was not a surprise to us since we had gotten estimates and set prices based on that.
- Shipping costs are a bit troublesome, especially since we have a fair number of international backers. We estimated that shipping would cost roughly an amount equal to the prizes themselves. When comparing our prices to other kickstarter campaigns we felt that we couldn't ask for more than the standard international shipping rate- between $10 and $20. This helps but does not cover the cost. Now any time I see a campaign asking for an extra $10 for international shipping I just assume they have no idea what they're talking about. That said, it's not like this will cut into our budget by a significant amount with the kind of volume we're pushing. Between prizes and shipping that's another 18% of our total funds.
- Once we've dealt with all that business we've got about $600k to work with. I want to re-emphasize that this came as a surprise to none of us!
- As for development, contractor salaries take the lions share. We've now contracted (not hired) two programmers, a sound design team, a dedicated composer, a QA specialist, a writer, an interface artist, a community manager and an entire animation production house working for us to produce more content than we ever dreamed at higher quality. That, my friends, is currently where a good 50% of our total funding goes.
- We've got the mundane business expenses like a (rather miniscule) office lease, software like adobe products, dropbox and fmod, computer upgrades, and hardware coming out to about 5% of our budget.
- We're anticipating the relatively small operation costs of maintaining our own server-side data on amazon's cloud so people can download the game from us and play online without Steam.
- Lastly, we've put aside the remaining funding as our safety net which will be re-evaluated as we go. You never know when things are going to go unexpectedly wrong.
- We're still not taking personal salaries. We'll be living off our savings until our game starts making income.

To summarize: so far, so good.
Click to expand...
 
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