toblix

Jane Jensen's Pinkerton Road CSG Kickstarter

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Another Kickstarter, this time for something that sounds like a subscription to whatever they end up making through June 2013. I see on her Wikipedia page she has made a ton of games since Gabriel Knight 3, and I haven't played any of them. This whole Kickstarter thing has exploded – it'll be very interesting to see how it goes. It seems like everyone's expecting it to burn out pretty soon, and, knowing nothing about markets or funding other than how willing I am to open up my wallet again and again for each new game project (that willingness is slightly decreasing, by the way), I imagine it will collapse into something completely different pretty soon, but it would be incredible if we have witnessed the birth of a completely new financing model for indie/whatever games.

No doubt, there are millions of dollars being transferred around the world among people struggling to get up the next Kickstarter, and Kickstarter themselves are probably (hopefully) looking into expanding outside the US.

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It's kind of a shame (not really) that Tim Schafer set the bar so high. I feel this project of Jensen's will be lucky to hit its $300,000 goal. Which means we'll be getting one AWESOME HILARIOUS HIGH-BUDGET adventure game from Double Fine and then several well-written-but-low-budget projects from Jensen's new company. Having one hugely successful project will make all the minor successes seem like letdowns in comparison. :-/

As for Jensen herself, my sense is that she's definitely still designing adventure games for Sierra in the mid-90s. That's definitely the vibe Gray Matter was going for and didn't quite hit. Her casual games (which I haven't played) seem to be attempts to cram an adventure game plot into, well, tiny casual games. My sense is that her plotting is still pretty good, but she hasn't really figured out how to scale down her visions of Hollywood B-movie thrillers into indie-game budgets.

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This is how many Kickstarters starting today? I'm going to start a Kickstarter to fund the development of a sim where you manage your Kickstarter.

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I'm dreading the probable backlash of people poo-pooing anyone "riding the wave" of the Doublefine Adventure kickstarter. You know, once we start seeing more and more recognizable names trying it, the novelty of it has worn off, and the natural meaningless cynicism of the internet rears its ugly head.

I've never played a Jane Jensen game (my experience with adventure games is exclusively Lucasarts based), but I remember hearing good things about her and her entry in the Kings Quest series on an episode of Idle Thumbs. It would be cool if she could succeed, at very least to show how Doublefine's success wasn't a one-off fluke.

I also hope that, in the case she isn't very successful, people don't immediately assume Doublefine's success was a one-off fluke.

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I'm not poopooing people riding the Kickstarter wave, I just think that only a certain type of gamer would be willing to pledge to these types of things and if you throw up a million Kickstarters within a short time frame, they may struggle to stretch what they're willing to give out. After giving what I did to Idle Thumbs and Wasteland 2, I'll probably be holding off on pledging anything for a little while.

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I have a lot of love for Jane Jensen because of the Gabriel Knight series. However, I agree with Lob: Jensen comes up with really good big budget adventure concepts which don't really work scaled down. Gray Matter took ages and wasn't really successful because it adhered so strongly to old adventure game design but didn't have the budget to get there.

I'll give it some thought. I might still support this. Robert Holmes' music for Gabriel Knight is magnificent, so it's good to know he's aboard.

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I have a lot of love for Jane Jensen because of the Gabriel Knight series. However, I agree with Lob: Jensen comes up with really good big budget adventure concepts which don't really work scaled down. Gray Matter took ages and wasn't really successful because it adhered so strongly to old adventure game design but didn't have the budget to get there.

I'll give it some thought. I might still support this. Robert Holmes' music for Gabriel Knight is magnificent, so it's good to know he's aboard.

To be clear: I was not at all trying to be down on Gray Matter or Jensen. If anything, the opposite - I think she's a great designer and if this kickstarter goes well, could finally put her in a position to do something on her own terms. It's safe to say I care more about the fate of this kickstarter than any of the others so far. So I would encourage all of her fans to contribute!

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I wish I didn't have to keep spending $100 for the package I want. :(

I love Gabriel Knight games so much more than LSL, so this sounds nice. I didn't play Gray Matter or any of her casual games outside of Betrapped. I've heard everything recently has been either average or above average, so I wonder if she still has it? A new studio where she has direct control sounds like it might make a big difference.

(I put this in the Leisure Suit Larry thread on accident!)

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I just noticed that this Kickstarter is 45 days instead of the 30 days most of the other projects have, maybe they are sane enough to realize we need more time to get the funds?:mock:

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I just noticed that this Kickstarter is 45 days instead of the 30 days most of the other projects have, maybe they are sane enough to realize we need more time to get the funds?:mock:

Failing some crazy thing happening in those extra 45 days though, generally if a project can't hit its target in 30 days it's not going to happen in 45 either. I believe longer projects actually statistically have a lower rate of success.

Many projects get a big surge of support at the end to help push them over, and that's going to happen regardless of how long it is. If you're so far from your target at 30 days that such a push isn't going to get you there, it's hard to imagine why your daily pledge rate would increase much at all towards the end, especially since your project is old news by that point and not likely to keep getting lots of press.

That's not to say this project will suffer because of its 45 day limit; it's just probably unnecessary if it has the audience to become successful at all.

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Well, that makes sense, but did anybody notice that you can pay for a "cycle"?

If you pay enough you get all the games they release in that cycle, which I assume is year from the day the studio is open, but what are the chances of them releasing more than one game a year? And wouldn't we rather have one quality game a year than two or three that feel rushed?

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Well, that makes sense, but did anybody notice that you can pay for a "cycle"?

If you pay enough you get all the games they release in that cycle, which I assume is year from the day the studio is open, but what are the chances of them releasing more than one game a year? And wouldn't we rather have one quality game a year than two or three that feel rushed?

Even if the games in that cycle are delayed, you still get them. The details page makes this more clear - at $16, you get one game, at $50 you get both the kids game and whichever of the three options she mentions is voted on the most. (Seems likely to be Moebius, at this point.)

She mentions having multiple studios to work with, so possibly she hands one game to each? From the interviews she's given, it sounds like she and Holmes will mostly occupy producer/director roles, since they don't plan on staffing up themselves.

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Ugh, still haven't broken the $100,000 mark. It *kills* me that her project is struggling like this while so many of the other "throwback" projects seem to rocket to their goal in a few days.

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Here's why I have trepidation:

1. I haven't played any of their games before.

2. It's unclear what I get for my $16.

3. Although the video is pretty good, it's got some major story-telling problems, which for a bunch of people trying to sell me on how amazing their story-telling is, makes me concerned.

But I may go and donate to this one, too, seeing how passionate some members here are. There must be a good reason for it... Right?

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Here's why I have trepidation:

1. I haven't played any of their games before.

2. It's unclear what I get for my $16.

3. Although the video is pretty good, it's got some major story-telling problems, which for a bunch of people trying to sell me on how amazing their story-telling is, makes me concerned.

But I may go and donate to this one, too, seeing how passionate some members here are. There must be a good reason for it... Right?

1) This is the game that made her nerd-famous:

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/gabriel_knight_sins_of_the_fathers

It has not aged terribly well, mainly due to the general Sierra-ness of it, but it is the game that put her on the map. Its sequels are also very well-regarded, although each exists on a completely different technology stack. GK2 was made when FMV adventures were trendy, so its....FMV. And GK3 was Sierra's first serious stab at doing adventure games in full 3D. It's interface is widely hated, although I think it's actually really neat. GK3 is by far my favorite - you can explore a bunch of different locations and eavesdrop on many totally optional conversations, and a lot of plot threads are moving at once. It has also not aged perfectly, mainly because the centerpiece of its plot was later used in the novel The Da Vinci Code. The writing in all three is highly-regarded among the adventuregamers.com crowd, though, for what it's worth.

2. You get one of the two games they will make in the next year, either the kid's game or the "GK-style" game to-be-voted-on. I can only imagine that they let you choose, because who on earth among her supporters would choose the kid's game?

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This would have gone better if it was simply Support Jane Jensen's Next Game and nothing more, IMO.

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You're probably right. Even the title was bad, though they've changed it now. I've visited the page three times now, and since I never read all the text I still don't know exactly they're trying to do. I guess they're making a lot of games, and you have pledge 50 dollars for all the games they make in a year. And when I hear I'll get "all the games they make in a year" from what seems like a small studio I get the impression they maybe won't be super great.

This, combined with the weird, super-serious "master storyteller" image with crows or ravens or whatever, promising of a movie so fucking dark and serious I don't even dare click it, plus the fact my Amazon password is super complicated so I have to do this whole thing to retrieve it, has lost this kickstarter 50 dollars probably.

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I funded it because the Gabriel Knight series was my favorite at Sierra but I'm going to agree with everyone where the kickstarter should have just been for her next time. Way more people would have given money if it was just for some detective story by her or whatever.

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This would have gone better if it was simply Support Jane Jensen's Next Game and nothing more, IMO.

Absolutely. I want to support her, but it's been too confusing. I still don't understand why they don't just say, "Pay $50 and get two games -- One being a kids game." It's utterly confusing, and weird for "master storytellers" to explain things so badly.

I guess I'll donate the minimum and get the one adult adventure game.

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I don't like the idea that they have three different concepts everyone can decide on. I think if they just offered something very concrete without "what ifs" it would lead to more donations.

Also, Jane Jensen's stepdaughter is ridiculously beautiful and I'm not afraid to ignore the rest of this thread to say it!

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PSA: The voting begins at 9pm EST tonight, so if you have a strong preference for one of the three pitches, then you should get your pledge in now.

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...And Moebius is the runaway winner. So for those of you waiting to know what exactly you get for your $16 the answer is: Moebius. It looks a lot like Gabriel Knight, actually -- even more so after reading the "extended" backers-only pitch. Here's the description from kickstarter:

Story: Malachi Rector is an antiquities dealer who hunts down artifacts all over the world. After losing everything in a fire, he's hired by a Manhattan millionaire to investigate a series of events and document them in his meticulous way. But Rector soon realizes that the events hold a bizarre significance, as does his own existence. This is a metaphysical thriller ala Dante’s Equation and Gabriel Knight.

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