Not to mention you completely ignored Raze's points.
I didn't ignore his point. I felt I had already addressed it in a previous post and thought it would be unnecessary to touch on this again.
Also, out of all of my points you chose to ignore them all and respond only to my extremely brief semi-joking comment about Star Citizen, which is telling.
kickstarter does not always ended in an aweome-kick-ass product (want a good example? the Ouya ^^) so backers take a risk.
As do backers on Steam Early Access take risk, as projects presented there definitely
"do not always end in an awsome-kick-ass product". Again, everyone purchasing a game before it's actually completed is taking risks, regardless of the platform you're supporting the project through.
In his blog, Swen acknowledge there are risks from both Kickstarter and Steam Early Access:
"Of course there are people that try to abuse a system like Early Access, just like there are games out there on Kickstarter that will never see the light of day and pre-order campaigns that lie through their teeth about what’ll be in the final game. You can’t have good things without bad things and it seems obvious to me that if you want to have safe sex, you should wear a condom. If you don’t want any bad surprises when buying a game, wait until it’s released, unless you want to support the developer or you want to have an impact on a game by giving early feedback. or you just can’t wait."The early access was there to give a better visibility, to have more feedback and balance the game, not to design "major" new features, those were already chosen during the kickstarter campaign, so people who buy the game in early access did not really take a risk as "important" as kickstarter backers.
I find it extremely odd that you're underplaying (even going as far as completely omitting) the financial gains from Steam Early Access. I also find your comment about who had the more "important" risk to be ridiculous, biased, and just plain wrong for reasons explained in my previous post.
This was also discussed in Swen's blog:
"Pros
More revenue now - In theory, launching on SEAG means an injection of cash right now.
More exposure - Word of mouth marketing seems like it would get a shot in the arm, just from the increased number of people playing the game.
Steam Front Page - Some SEAG games get front-page treatment, and that can be a huge marketing boost.
More feedback before launch - Assuming you’re interested, more players means more feedback. And more feedback could lead to a better game.
The pros on this list are very big pros and speak for themselves. Feedback before release is worth gold, at least if you listen to it. Revenue in the final stages is worth gold because some horrible compromises don’t need to be made. Without it, the chances that you can actually listen to player feedback are lowered because making changes does cost money. And word of mouth, well that’s really what you’re after. That’s worth more than gold, which to be fair hasn’t been having such a good track record of late."I don't understand why Kickstarter backers are pretending they funded the entire game and took the greatest risk. The ~1 million dollars raised through Kickstarter did not fund this entire project. It's complete nonsense. Both Steam Early Access and Kickstarter provided *additional* funding for the game (and, if I had to make a realistic guess, Steam sales likely provided the bulk of that additional funding).
Whether you traded in money for the promise of an improved version of Divnity : OS on Kickstarter or Steam, you've done it prior to the release of the game and thus took a risk. If you don't want to take my word for it, read Swen's statement again and take his.
And there is no "bigger" or "more important" risk. I spent $160 on multiple "all-sales-are-final" Divinity copies through Steam Early Access with no guarantee that Larian Studios would be able to deliver on all of their promises (in fact, they were unable to). And yet, someone else may own the game through Kickstarter just through a $25 contribution. How do you rate who stood to lose more between those two examples? In the mind of the Kickstarter backer, apparently my risk doesn't exist, or is automatically minimal solely because it was purchased through Steam instead of Kickstarter. Complete and utter nonsense, and yet completely unsurprising as I see this kind of chest-thumping happening between Kickstarter and Steam backers all the time.
Of course (and again), risk all around was minimal. This wasn't your typical crowd-funded project that was still stuck in the concept stage. Divinity : Original Sin existed as a viable product when Larian dove into crowd-funding. We were all always going to get something, the only question was how many of the additional desired features could be worked in, and you can thank *both* funding platforms for making that happen.
And yet, some of you feel only one of those platforms (Kickstarter) deserves any reward.
Totally typical of gamers who have this irrational need to possess a digital prize that others do not. I want an item like "Zandalor's Trunks of Epic Intelligence" because I love this game and would like to experience everything it has to offer, and the idea of pants butting into my conversations with its own opinions sounds hilarious. On the other hand, you apparently don't want me to have them because you either need your shiny toys to be just that much more unique, need to feed a feeling of entitlement at the expense of others' enjoyment, or are wrestling with some flawed sense of superiority because you helped fund the game through Kickstarter instead of Steam. I'm so super-happy I could help fund this game for people like that!
I don't think I can really add more to this particular topic that I haven't already said. People will feel the way they feel.
