GHZ Kickstarter Picks

[G.Silver]

We've had a couple posts about Kickstarters before but I figured it might be cool to just have a thread where we can stick ones that interest us. Mainly I just want to plug the latest ones I've backed!

I am really keen on The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers. This guy will be traveling around Japan interviewing all the game developers he can with an expert translator in tow. My shameful time sink is going to Mobygames and looking at the credits of old Japanese games and tracing developer histories, I'm really fascinated by the early Japanese game development period and have a tendency to romanticize it in my mind a lot, so whether to satisfy those feelings or finally burn them away, this project sounds right up my alley, I'm really excited for it.

I also backed Doug TenNapel's Armikrog the other day. I still kinda think of Doug as a bit controversial lately (was that seven years ago?!) but I still love his games and a lot of his comics, and of course his crazy creatures, which Armikrog is probably going to have plenty of. It's an adventure game in the style of Neverhood, I'm more of a SkullMonkeys guy myself but this is something I can't resist anyway. If nothing else, just watch the animation clip at the start of the Kickstarter video. Just watch it!

[Esrever]

I've actually gotten to know Doug through the con circuit. He's very Christian and very conservative, and not afraid to tell you what his social values are. But he doesn't expect you to live by them. He just expects you to tolerate what he thinks. Which can be a challenge, I will not lie! But Doug will work with you and support you and be your friend even if he thinks you're a sexually deviant baby-murdering communist, so all the hippie left-wing artist types that know him try to extend him the same courtesy.

I'm going to be launching a kickstarter soon for a 1500 page print collection... wish me luck! :S

[G.Silver]

That's very cool! I just felt like I should preface that one, since he's come up on the forum before (and your post about it was kind of hilarious). I met Doug at an ECCC a couple(?) years ago (you were there too!) and talking to him was a lot of fun, though of course that sort of topic never came up, it's not like it's the sort of thing I would bring up with anyone else at a con (or at their job), either.

I saw you were prepping something on your tumblr! :)

[Protodude]

I too donated to that Japanese Developers book, I even sprung for the platinum copy with the cover by Hitoshi Yoneda.

I should have posted this a while ago, but you have about 15 hours left if you want to help fund The Leaning Girl, which is part of the french comic series Obscure Cities. They still plan on selling copies after the fact, but if you want any of the extras now is the time.

[Popcorn]

Someone I know (the woman who translated MGS2 and Katamari Damacy, Agness Kaku) is contributing to that book. She's furious and fascinating so it should be good.

[Esrever]

I launched my kickstarter this morning!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/168 ... me-omnibus

It... um... is already 80% funded. I can't believe it. I guess people like enormous books?

[Jingles]

I donated $69(lol), and have encouraged friends to donate as well! Are we going to see some stretch goals in the future?

[Esrever]

Yes! I am going to do crazy shit to these books if people will let me... extra stories and content for all the omnibuses, and fancy physical enhancements for the hardcovers. I'm just budgeting it out right now but I should be able to post about it soon.

[G.Silver]

I guess all those people who said they wanted it weren't kidding around? Clearly they aren't as perturbed as I am that a thing called the "Monolith" edition is actually two books? How dare you, sir.

How does the pricing out work when you have two different things that you're selling? Does one kind of subsidize the other? What if you ended up in a situation where a whole lot of people bought the hardcover but only a few bought the paperback?

[Esrever]

In general, it's not a big deal, because we're funding the minimum print run, which is more books than we need to sell to hit the goal. Right now this run is planned to be 80% softcover and 20% hardcover, but there's flexibility there. The interiors are all the same and are printed at once, so the part that's a separate charge is printing and attaching the covers. The hardcovers cost more, both because they are fancier and because we are making less of them. But if we need to make more of them and less of the soft ones, the unit price of the hard covers will go down (and the softcovers will go up), so that will balance out a bit of the expense. It'll still be more money over all, but in this scenario we will have sold extra hardcovers, so we'd be able to afford it!

[G.Silver]

Oh, well that makes perfect sense! I assumed that you'd be working with some thoughtless jerk printer who would treat them as two completely separate print projects and charge you accordingly.

[Esrever]

You have to do a certain volume to use a regular printer, but when you do, there are advantages for sure!

[Radrappy]

Many a hearty congratulations to you Esrever!

[G.Silver]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bo ... te-zombies

I'm really pulling for this one, not for love of zombies but just more art by Robb Mommaerts. They've already met their goal but the stretch goals provide additional characters and artwork, and if you have some need for a bag of plastic brains then they've got you covered for that as an optional add-on.

It's a "battle game" where damage is dealt via rock paper scissors, and each human character has a special ability that makes them more (or less) attractive to zombie attack, or they deal damage in an extra way. Many of them involve a special effects with different throws, for instance a character who gets an instant kill if he wins by throwing rock, or a character who is legally allowed to use dynamite (a "thumbs up" gesture that loses to scissors) for "area effect" damage. It seems pretty clever.

[G.Silver]

Not a Kickstarter, it's Patreon!

This guy over at "Shmuplations" has a thing going where he's got a massive list of interviews and articles to translate, and he's allowing the financially privileged (ie, those with an extra $5 every month) to determine which ones he releases every month by voting on what they'd like up next. Votes are accumulative, so even if you only vote a few times those votes will still be there. The list includes some Sonic Team material (NiGHTS, Burning Rangers) and even a Miyamoto x Yuji Naka discussion on Mario 64 (I'm so curious!) so I figured some around here might be interested in getting in on that.

Of his existing material, I found this recent Street Fighter 2 interview (from 1991!) really interesting (it was also one of the first to be picked from his Patreon list), and here's a weird little artifact from Alien Soldier's main programmer in which he explains that no one else could possibly love the game the way he does.

[Frieza2000]

Banjo-Threeie will probably not beat Not-Megaman, but it's off to a good start.

[Dr. BUGMAN]

I wish Hirokazu Yasuhara would strike out on his own a make a Not-Sonic, among potentially other things.

Was he involved in that recent Mario vs Donkey Kong, BTW?

[Jingles]

They should make a game that's exactly like that other game you used to play as a kid, just with different graphics.

That being said, Yooka-Laylee actually looks pretty fun.

[Dr. BUGMAN]

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night.

Nuff said really. Castlevania was never really tied to any specific characters or settings, so a spiritual continuation is a lateral change, but it is a continuation. So yay!

[Yami CJMErl]

!!! - OFFICIAL SHENMUE III KICKSTARTER - !!!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ysnet/shenmue-3

[Dr. BUGMAN]

So is part of the funding going towards obtaining the rights? I don't understand. A corporation panhandling or not being a dog in the manger seem unlikely, to put it mildly.

Fantastic news, but very curious.

[Yami CJMErl]

THAT...is actually a really good question. No mention of SEGA was made at the Sony conference OR on any of the Kickstarter pages...it's not an abandoned trademark, is it?

[Locit]

Welp, they hit $2 million. In less than 24 hours Shenmue 3 went from unheard of to fully funded.

Gotta say, not how I envisioned today going!

[G.Silver]

To be fair the game is probably going to cost a lot more than 2 million. Besides their stated stretch goals (which don't even get into the cost of the latter 2/3 of the game mentioned in the video), the original Shenmue games were incredibly expensive. Sure, tech has changed a lot since then, but I'm pretty skeptical that any developers who were paid 70 million to make the original titles are going to do a new one for only 2. (Maybe that was all marketing money?) Pretty sure Sony is actually financing the whole thing since it was revealed on their stage--2 million is probably just a drop in their own E3 advertising bucket.

[Yami CJMErl]

This explains just about everything apart from potential SEGA-related rights issues.