In an interview with Endgadget, Sony discusses how Shenmue on Kickstarter came to be and future plans to gauge interest and fund intellectual properties via the help of Kickstarter. This, once again, prompts the discussion of whether the Linux community or interested parties such as Feral and Aspyr should do the same in order to bring games both old and new to Linux that would otherwise not make it over.
There you have it. What many Linux gamers have suggested and what many other Linux gamers have shot down time and time again is now being done by Sony, a major publisher and console manufacturer.
It was always brought forth that crowdfunding Linux ports would be rife with abuse, and understandably so when considering this list, but persuading developers to allow their games to be ported by trusted porters such as the aforementioned Feral and Aspyr, or by one of the renowned individual porters i.e. icculus, with an actual, monetary pledge should reduce any such risk greatly for us as well as for them.
In addition, for those who say that the larger companies have millions in funds and scores of programmers to throw at a project, you must also remember that these bigger entities usually answer to investors who care solely about how much they profit from an investment. Bringing older games to Linux or even introducing recent games to Linux poses a risk to them, so the more we can accommodate them, the more likely they will be to consider us for their investments as well.
What say you, members of the community? Does Sony doing this change anything? Are you for or against pledging money toward a Linux port, or are you still undecided? Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
QuoteSo I want to switch gears a little bit. I want to talk to you about Shenmue and crowdfunding. That was announced onstage on Monday and it's at about $3 million now. So let me ask you: Why did Sony PlayStation decide to allow that crowdfunding announcement as opposed to funding it?
Ah, no, no, no. It's a very exciting project and there are lots of PlayStation fans asking for it. But it's a Sega IP and of course Suzuki Yu-san is the creator. So somehow Suzuki-san was able to work out with Sega to allow them to Kickstart the project. And because we liked the project, our third-party relations team struck a deal to help Kickstart the campaign at the E3 conference. That's great PR.
Are there other beloved cult titles we can expect to see Sony boost in terms of crowdfunding?
I don't know. Gio Corsi [director of third-party production and developer relations] is the guy working on that.
(Sony PlayStation PR: They're building a list.)
Is there any game that you would like to see crowdfunded so it comes back?
Well, there are many old IPs that have not seen any new games. I can't name any specific ones. But this Shenmue campaign is very successful and also [Koji] Igarashi-san's Bloodstained campaign was very, very successful. And [it] proves that there are a lot of game creators in the past and [that] there's demand for their kind of games by the current consumers. So I hope that the developers in Japan, especially who are used to making console games ... see the success of Igarashi-san's and Suzuki-san's and get encouraged to do their own.
There you have it. What many Linux gamers have suggested and what many other Linux gamers have shot down time and time again is now being done by Sony, a major publisher and console manufacturer.
It was always brought forth that crowdfunding Linux ports would be rife with abuse, and understandably so when considering this list, but persuading developers to allow their games to be ported by trusted porters such as the aforementioned Feral and Aspyr, or by one of the renowned individual porters i.e. icculus, with an actual, monetary pledge should reduce any such risk greatly for us as well as for them.
In addition, for those who say that the larger companies have millions in funds and scores of programmers to throw at a project, you must also remember that these bigger entities usually answer to investors who care solely about how much they profit from an investment. Bringing older games to Linux or even introducing recent games to Linux poses a risk to them, so the more we can accommodate them, the more likely they will be to consider us for their investments as well.
What say you, members of the community? Does Sony doing this change anything? Are you for or against pledging money toward a Linux port, or are you still undecided? Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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It's was a bad move then, and it is a bad move now. Sony is exploiting the Kickstarter model to abuse it as a marketing tool. This is not good and we should not applaud it. And no, we should not strive to emulate it!
Yes, and they are now entirely heaping all the risks of investing on us, while keeping all the benefits and profits. This is a weighted system: entirely good for them, entirely bad for us.
The reply I got when I asked the Shenmue III kickstarter if Linux was a possibility was:
Even though UE4 is a multiplatform as it gets I don't think they even considered that there would be interest in other platforms.
Do I want to see more crowdfunding for ports in general? No, not really. Not if these are titles with established publishers with existent cashflow. It's asking too much from a community that's already plenty generous. But I guess money talks and it might be the only way to get some of these holdouts invested in bringing ports to Linux.
That said, I think that it would be good for everyone if Valve acted a bit like Sony here and helped finance ports for SteamOS/Linux. It's in their best interests if they want Steam Machines to succeed. I would even go as far as suggest that they need to be aggressive and secure timed exclusives, but I don't think that's too likely.
The original Shenmue cost $70m to make. So they raise a few million on Kickstarter to "gauge interest"? The games were wildly popular with a cult following - there is nothing for them to gauge. The end result is that a bunch of gamers now think that a game like that can be made for a few million dollars. No wonder so many consumers expect all games to cost <$5 these days, or yell at Double Fine because they think $3m should have produced a AAA game in 6 months or less.
I like crowdfunding and support many projects on there of varying sizes/budgets, but when the Sonys and Microsofts start poking their nose in, things start to get rotten.
In the end, Kickstarter still serves the same ultimate purpose, it allows a game to be made that wouldn't have been otherwise. If Shenmue 3 or KC: D don't make their Kickstarter funding goal then their financial backers don't fund the project and the game doesn't get made.
No, if this trend continues, Kickstarter will become the only way to even make a game. Why make a game when you can get paid a grant for the concept and fuck it up with no liability attached? Disgusting. It served its purpose for people who CAN'T afford it (indie), not people who WON'T take the RISK (at this point, why bother having a publisher).
If the well gets poisoned any further, indie games will be shoved to the side and ignored because that next big AAA title everyone else wanted this year. This has nothing to do with Linux, and not a single company is going to start giving a fuck. They didn't before, why would this make them start? The only thing they learned is to become self-aware in acknowledgement (btw you pay for a professional Kickstarter PR spokesperson these days to handle this). One more sucker is one more dollah bill to feed a cracked out whore (SEGA).
Why are we even comparing Feral, Asypr, and the like? They aren't even close to the size of these big corporate wankers.
Kickstarter might as well change their name to "the internet's world bank".
I will still never pledge on Kickstarter again, simples. Too many risks for me.
I buy games that are on Linux, and not before.
In a perfect world, maybe. I'm wary of big comapnies turning to kickstarter becausse it minimizes risks to them while pushing it all on us. And, of course, maximizing profits with a large amount of what are basically preorders. I'd rather only smaller studios who otherwise couldn't make games use crowdfunding, ideally.
The only plus side I can see to big companies doing this is that it might put a load of marketing people out of work and maybe they can cease to define popular culture by making broad generalisations on demographics and "market demands" despite having no contact with reality:
(warning, lots of naughty words)
View video on youtube.com
However, I would love to see companies like Feral and Aspyr do it since they are in the same category as indie developers in the sense that big developers and publishers won't cough up the money if they think there's no "market" for it (see above). I think a lot of Linux gamers would put forward the money since these companies are very trusted names and there wouldn't be as many of the associated risks that come along with crowdfunding.
Yes, exactly my thoughts. Even if I was outside the Linux community, it would still be rational to me.
A nice idea in theory, but I doubt they would want to do it for their own business reasons. It would also serve to make Linux look bad if they did it, and it failed.
That's a very good point actually. Might be better for more low-profile porters and low-profile games though?
The problem is that the developers we'd most likely target with these campaigns (which is the bigger ones, as most smaller/medium studios DO support us already) have THAT little interest in Linux that they might not even give permission to run the campaign in the first place. I am not sure who in the community would even be able to get face time with somebody high-ranking enough in these publishers to be able to make such a decision.
In general, I'm not really against pledging money for a Linux port if in that case it's the only way to make it. But I agree with those who said above that big corps turning to crowdfunding is fishy. They have piles of money, so they just want risk free funds out of greed.
In addition, I would like Dark Souls and Dark Souls II to come to Linux, but how is this ever supposed to happen? Does anybody have a better idea than utilising crowdfunding to fund the ports of said games and assure developers and publishers alike that the risk is minimal?
I understand why people are angry with Sony for doing this, as Sony is exponentially larger than both Feral and Aspyr combined, and has the means to fund a multitude of games entirely by itself, especially games that are part of a known franchise, and can target a market much larger than either of the two renowned porting houses. That should not dissuade people from crowdfunding the much smaller entities, however.