So i just found out from this german article that Larian is planning Kickstarter for D:OS.

Can somebody from dev team confirm this? And why kickstarter? Does that mean that you got don't have enough money to finish this game?

Has Kickstarter changed their policy to let non-American businesses use it?

If it's true, I wouldn't say that it's bad news, they already have some parts of a product to show off, and extra money would just improve the quality of the final thing.

P.S. Larian, I'm still waiting for ANY NEWS AT ALL about Dragon Commander. Weren't you going to update the DC website "soon" two months ago?

Thank you Florian for spreading the word like this – suddenly my mailbox is overflowing with questions

Well, the truth of it is that we are thinking seriously about it but we're not 100% sure yet if we'll actually go ahead and do it. We are very tempted though.

IF we go to Kickstarter, the reason wouldn’t be to fund our current development (that’s already funded) but rather to increase the team we put on this so that we can add more skills, levels, monsters, quests, choices, consequences and obviously ideas such as for instance a “large two-handed sword inhabited by a malevolent spirit that could summon forth demonic powers upon request” (Kenneth Paul Kully) or “X% chance for a free turn after a kill.” (Stabbey) – or a big fiery seven-headed dragon that swallows zombies for lunch and regurgitates them (Swen) or a zeppelin which you can assemble and use to travel around the world , Ultima VII style (Swen) or all the weapon types David put on an enormously long list (David) or… well you get the idea I guess.

i.e. if we do it, we’d do it to make the game bigger and denser, everything you'd expect from a budget increase.

I personally think that if ever a Larian game deserved such a budget increase, then this would be the one, but I'm obviously biased

So imagine that a Kickstarter campaign were the thing necessary to put the above into the game, would you back it ? (Obviously that’s a tough question because you don’t know what’s in there already, but the Buffed.de article should give you an idea of what’s there– I think - my German isn’t as good as I sometimes think it is and Google definitely had a hard time with this one). And what would be your advise in how we approach it ?

@Stabbey: I swear, I literally swear that this is the month for Dragon Commander, really ! New website, new trailer, new everything. We're even going to have it tested in multiplayer at Fragomatic in exactly two weeks. It's taken a lot of time, but we want it to be good, so bear with us. February 15th is the date we are working with here to kickstart the entire campaign for Dragon Commander.

As to your other question, we recently started operating an office in the US to handle our distribution there so I think that would allow us to apply for Kickstarter.

Mhm.

Protip, get TotalBiscuit to notice the kickstarter when it goes up :P He practically saved the funding for Sui Generis by simply liking one of their videos. (well for the last 10.000 pounds he certainly had)

I'll probably back it. Especially if a certain board game is included in the special tier rewards wink wink.

Grea

Great news! Looking forward to it!

That's good to hear, I'm looking forward to seeing the new Dragon Commander stuff in action.

That, on the very first day of the month. Thankfully it's February.

Good luck

What I hope for D OS is a large community continuously pumping out user created content years down the road. Of course, the game will have to perform "decently" in the market to reach that goal. More players, more potential modders, probably a longer lifespan.

My actual plan is to wait about four to five months after D: OS release to see how much of the gamers it manages to capture.

p.s. okay I think my reply seems a bit skewed, anyway for clarification

Actually, I'm not worried about items or spells making it into the game. If you have a powerful editor (Big IF), modders will find ways to model and create anything they fancy. Getting those dedicated modders is another issue though which puts me back to square one in implementing all of those to attract a large audience.

%*@#@ this I'm thinking in circles.

Not really, it is on german. I have no idea what they are talking about.

As for the project funding I honestly don't know. More that that I still know nothing about actual game besides some pr/interview articles and videos. But again, the projects with less info were successfully funded on KS.

Also, the KS addition (be it successful or not) will delay release date yet again.

"yet again"? Did I mess a few release date announcements?

I'm mixed on the idea; but to be honest I intend to buy the game near release given the previous games Larian has released and the support. I hate the drm crap but to be honest Larian has been very good about removing it later on and even supporting later hardware.

yeah yeah yeah !!!
but I thought this found rising was for D:OS. Of course I will support Larian, the question is "how much?" it will depend on the rewards, just get us dreaming

I posted the following text on my blog yesterday to clarify things a bit because people were starting to get the wrong impression.

A couple of days ago, an extensive article appeared on buffed.de (a German RPG magazine & website) about Divinity: Original Sin. It was a pretty cool article for us because we showed the game for hours to the journalist and despite all the bugs that were apparent, he considered the presentation to be sufficiently convincing to write “shut up and take my money” in his conclusion.

It’s always cool to get quotes that we can rip totally out of context

At the same time, Jean-Marie Prival, a French independent journalist who visited Larian for jeuxvideo.com, wrote on his newly launched blog about his press trip to our offices and the words he used in his entry are actually quite flattering for Larian, something we’re obviously grateful for too.

But If both these things made me smile as I drove home, the thing that really made my weekend was getting the message that we were voted runner up for most anticipated RPG of 2013 at RPGWatch, receiving 22% of the votes. Major whistling because this is a site I visit daily to keep up to date on the antics of our fellow RPG developers. Being in their lists makes me feel pretty good, and tbh, even a bit smug because I had been dealing with quite some naysayers in the past about this game.

But because I learnt the hard way that “Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall” I figured over the weekend that it was important to find a counterbalance and therefore decided to visit another site this morning…(insert doomy music)

THE RPGCODEX !!!

Specifically, the RpgCodex forums, your daily antidote to thinking you’re getting anywhere in the world of CRPGs, unless your name happens to be Chris Avellone.

And lo and behold, they didn’t disappoint

For those not familiar with the RPGCodex, it’s where you go if you’re looking for a hefty dose of RPG critical analysis wrapped in imaginative language (often involving gastrointestinal issues). Now despite the occasionally interesting wording and tendency to rant about what makes a true RPG, I think that more than often the posters there represent the unvented opinion of a lot of players, and if you’re into making RPG’s, you can learn a lot by reading between the lines. In the same breath I have to add that you’ll also need a very thick hide, preferably made of dinosaur scales, especially if you already dared release a RPG that they played. But together with the RPGWatch forums, you can get a lot of “market research” done by just spending some time there.

So the Buffed.de article referred to how Larian is financing its game projects, citing that the funding comes from a mix of our own money, investor money and Kickstarter money. Obviously somebody jumped on the Kickstarter part, and suddenly it started popping up on forums everywhere, including the RPGCodex where the phrase “partially funded through Kickstarter” was quickly translated into “Larian ran out of money”.

Now admittedly, the original article was in German, but clearly the guy who wrote that has another version of Google translate than me. Still, I have to say that the original quote in the article is actually not telling the entire story either, and it could do with a bit of nuance, so here goes.

Basically, Divinity:Original Sin is already funded. Larian, together with two minority investors, one for each game (Divinity: Original Sin and Divinity: Dragon Commander), put sufficient amounts of cash in both games to guarantee that they get done. We’re even reasonably assured that the games won’t be a financial disaster because we managed to get sufficient guarantees from our retail distributors to earn back large parts of our money and, we only need to sell a fraction of our previous sales to be in the black.

The reason we received these guarantees is that the concepts are solid, our previous games sold well enough and to talk about Divinity: Original Sin specifically, if you see Divinity:Original Sin in action and love RPGs, any doubts you may have will disappear on the spot. This game is just cool. Because words are but words and some posters on the Codex are rightfully wary of any rhetoric, I’ll happily extend an invitation to one of them to come to our offices so we can show the game. I’m serious btw guys , but you’ll have to agree on who you send as an emissary, the emissary obviously being the person who knows a real CRPG from a a mutated adventure (evil grin )

So, the “Larian is out of money” story won’t fly on this one, though as I said, it’s true that we’re walking a tight line and that we’re burning a lot to ensure that what we release as good as we can get it. However,for over a decade we’ve been working with tight cash flows and publishers (not all, I’ve been getting complaints ) that don’t pay us or pay late, so it’s not like we’re not used to this, and I actually think that we’ve proven in the past that we can do a lot with a constrained budget. I’m certainly not afraid to compare the budget of our productions to that of other RPGs of the same scope and age, anticipating to come out lower than most.

And yes, we are so passionate about what we do that if we can fund a budget increase via Kickstarter, we’ll happily do so. If we indeed go to Kickstarter, it’ll be because the game deserves to get the maximum funding we can find, even if financially that’s not necessarily in our best interest (you’re essentially pre-selling a lot of games at a significant discount if you sell on Kickstarter, partially compensated because Amazon and Kickstarter take a lower cut than other digital distribution platforms).

Which may bring the question why we’re actually interested in increasing the budget at all ?

In short, it’s because it’ll allow us to put more things in, prevent us from having to take shortcuts because of some development mistakes we made, and in general give us a better chance of making that great RPG we know we can make if we can marshal the resources. It’ll also allow us to accommodate for some of the suggestions we received during development, not only from people who saw the game live but also from our fans. And it’ll allow us to put more stuff in the editor, which we expect great things of. How long has it been since somebody released a decent commercial level single– and multi-player RPG editor anyway?

So in a nutshell, that’s why we’re contemplating going to Kickstarter. All those things would increase the fun for our players and it won’t necessarily mean that the game will come out later because the things we’d like to do are all things that could be done next to what we’re doing already. We’ve been working on this game long enough now to want to see it released , but we are sufficiently in love to want to do all the extras we can while development is ongoing.

Anyway, now that the cat is out of the bag – how about it. Do you think it makes sense for us to go to Kickstarter, having read all of the above? Or should we just focus on finishing the game with the budget we have and reserve all the things we think should be added for some future game? I personally think that if ever a Larian game deserved a budget increase, then this is the one. I’d very much like to to see multiplayer and cooperative dialogs and turn based combat as a new standard in party-based RPGs and this game becoming successful will certainly help that cause

I personally think that if ever a Larian game deserved a budget increase, then this is the one.

That's good enough for me to throw money at my monitor (not coins, unlike some people (video for the GOG Divinity PWYW promo) ). I have not really followed any Kickstarter campaigns in any detail, though...

As long as it doesn't delay it for too long, I'm all for it.

Judging by the already released video material, you guys shouldn't have any problems with funding it via kickstarter. Original Sin already looks 50 times better than preety much every funded kickstarter project. No sweat.

You know one advantage if you do a kickstart is you could make a sufficiently high stretch goal be an expansion. I.e, you could use a very modest target to 'complete' the game and effecitvely use the kickstart to fund the expansion/addon (or next game in the series). Mind you I hate the concept of DLC but I like the concept of true 40-60 hour expansion. I haven't played this game yet (nor have i yet played beyond divinity) but I very much did enjoy divine divinity and divnity 2. My biggest fear of this game is that the co-op is the right way to play with maximum enjoyment but as a single player I will not be able to experience the true co-op experience.

I don't see, and I'd like to, why there's such a need for kickstarter? I assumed that the dos designer would be the key to the extra content you want your fans to provide with. Is there a reason why these enhancements you'd like to deploy should be done before the game's release? Backward compatibility problems perhaps? But then, if you're not willing to sacrifice the budget for "the rpg that will dwarf them all" that would demand either a higher selling price or non-free-to-play dlcs, which you want to avoid, so kickstarter'd make sense then yes. I guess no one'd be interested in kickstarter after the game's release right? If on the other hand those dlcs would be free-to-play that would be good publishing for a few months to come, so there's benefit in that as well.

I'm not telling do or don't, but you might be going to have to reveal lots more stuff on dos if you're truly gonna have a ks. And would someone be willing to answer whether it's feasible or not to have these extentions as dlc? Thanks

That reminds me, I was affraid to hurt your feelings at first, but well, here it comes: I tried the Anthology version of Beyond Divinity and it's STILL too buggy to do so. Not that I feel guilty about it (in fact that should be the porting team) as it's well known to be the least interesting of those released yet.

What goal you are approximately aiming for, Lar?

Most game reviews (which are a large influence on most people's purchase decisions) will be based on the released version. Presumably more features / content from the start will help with initial sales, and a better editor should result in more user made content.


Post in the Beyond Divinity forum for specific issues, but I had no serious problems with the unpatched original release, let alone the Anthology version.

I see. So dlcs won't have the same effect then. In a way that reminds me of Flames of Vengeance.

DLC with added content would have an effect (like FoV/DKS). If it is just extra features, though, I'm not sure how many of the original reviews would be updated. Of course the DLC itself would get some reviews, but probably not as high profile.

Whether extra features are added as DLC or in a patch, that would also mean another set of QA and additional testing procedures (for the update itself and compatibility with previous saves) compared to getting them in before the original release. It is easier to justify that for large updates (extra content, etc) or very small ones that wouldn't need much testing. Before release there is more flexibility in adding features.

By all means, these are things not only the game developers want but also the consumers.

I'm not sure if kickstarter will be a good thing or a stigma that will follow D: OS all throughout. I can already see it being mentioned in the reviews. The fact that it carried the connotation "Larian ran out of money" should be a decent warning. Maybe, uh... label it something like "Bonus features for D: OS" at kickstarter?

------warning more freakin opinions ahead------
I don't know... IIRC some games that need "additional" funding went about it in a different way. They have different products for sale that offered early access to a beta version. It ranged from: simple access to an early version of the game to a high priced "investor level category" which gave the purchaser unique items, some collector material etc.

Well, IMO the benefit of that is, you don't come across literally asking for money, it's more like "Good news! Early access for a price!", where the truth is, "D*&%, need more money for additional content."

My mind's wandering off again, #^%& it.

p.s. and you can kindly ask them for feedback which they will readily give as fans of the game, you got money and free testing at the same time lol

Crowdfunding is a cool concept, in general. For D:OS, it might not be such a great idea. I'm not even sure "additional content for D:OS" would qualify as a "project" according to Kickstarter standards.

Of course, having additional content would be fine, and I agree D:OS looks promising enough to deserve a larger budget. I'd like to support the development of D:OS myself, and I can imagine there are many people out there who want to do so, too. Still, the Kickstarter project might fail, and that would attach a big "fail" tag to D:OS, encouraging magazines and websites to write about "the game that failed on Kickstarter", even though, ironically, there is and was enough money to see the game's development through. If you choose high goals that you don't reach, it can cause some unnecessarily bad publicity.

Like many people in Germany, I don't have a credit card, so I can't pledge on Kickstarter. And no, I won't get one just for supporting D:OS, although it's the game I'm currently looking forward to the most.

Since you're a Belgian company, have you considered using one of the European crowdfunding platforms? In the US, it might be taken for granted that adults have a credit card. In Europe, that's not the case, so European crowdfunding platforms often offer other means of pledging. They are also much smaller than Kickstarter, though ...

Kickstarter is the better known crowdfunding site. If you can make it there, you got a lot more publicity to share! But personally, I too hope the 'crowdfunded' label won't harm dos' reputation.

If going to kickstarter means that you can deliver an open world which equals that of Divine Divinity, Beyond Divinity and Eco Draconis (at least, shouldn't be hard) than I am all for it! That is, if you aren't doing that already. =)

Also, more voice dialogue would be really epic. But yeah, kickstarter can be a great place to gain popularity and feedback for the game. So, yes, it is a good idea. :P

I find kickstarter to be a great idea if that can make the game better! Can't wait to have the game in my hands. YOu are by far my favorite game developers, your games have great stories, interesting characters and tons of funny things, like the tombstones the killer bunny etc. If there is a collectors edition for original sin I will by it day one without even thinking about it.
Love you (no homo)

Absolutely.

I have been playing CRPG's since... well... damn... I am getting old...

Anyway... we have watched for years how games have become more and more streamlined. With each successive release, we get less and less features. Skills get reduced, simplified. Dialogue gets streamlined for "hurry up" play. Thinking aspects get thrown out for instant gratification audiences.

This sells to the immediate crowd, but to be honest, I couldn't recall any of them if I wanted and I certainly wouldn't waste my time going back to play any of them if I happened to remember them.

When you released DD, I was shocked even then, back when there were still great detailed CRPG system, you took a Diablo like game, kept its "action" aspect, but then provided a full featured development system, questing system, and story that made Diablo look like it was a grade school project and even rivaled some of the better turn based systems around.

I remember that game to this day, have played it multiple times and heck, just talking about it makes me want to play it again.

The reason? Because of the depth, the detail you put into the game. The small details count, those "extra" features are what set you apart. Those are the things that make a title stick in someones mind years later.

I enjoyed BD as well, but... you dropped the ball with the random generated dungeon grind fest (finger in throat).

Anyway, the point is, if you can get extra funding through Kickstarter to add more, detail more, polish more to release a product that is large, fully featured and shows extreme attention to detail in all aspects... well... not only should you, but you MUST do this.

No offense to anyone but I have feeling that Kickstarter for OS won't be successful (and I'm talking about gaol in 300k, for example, anything less than 100k-70k has chance to happen quite easily).

Yeah, I think that if they actually want the Kickstarter to succeed, they'll need to be a bit more specific about what the goal is than just "increase the team size to add some undetermined amount of features."

I think it does, but as Stabbey mentioned, they will have to have a clear set of goals outlined for people. Going in "unprepared" worries people. There was a project that some of the crew from Wizardry pitched for a continuation of the series. They didn't have much to go on other than their names and past titles. Their plan was very vague and limited. While pulling in near 200k to start, the questions by backers led them to canceling the project due to being unprepared.

While I don't see that as being a problem with this game (as they already have a fully functional game), they will need to provide a clear goal list of what they want to achieve for people to buy into it.

Many Kickstarters have stretch goals that do exactly what Larian is seeking now with such a decision. The difference is that they won't be using the Kickstarter to for the main project, but entirely for "stretch goals". The result could be enormously successful.

Think about an already finished game that you have played. Think about all of the features you wished it had extra. Think about the games you loved, but wished it had more content to play because it went by too fast (it always does when it is a game you love, regardless).

Not only that, but they get a massive feedback group from their backers to help them tweak, tune, and expand on many things.

Personally, I would love to see more companies take this approach even with an already fully funded project. How many times have we seen a game released where... well... it just felt like it was "rushed", or that it needed "just a bit more time or effort to it"?

I think Kickstarter isn't going to be a fad. Looking at the numerous game projects being developed shows that much of the old concept games that are revered are coming back. Games that publishes refused to fund or mandated bland systems to appeal to mass audiences at the expense of a genre focus.

We are seeing games like Wasteland 2 (Brian Fargo), a new game from Richard Garriott, Shadowrun (returns and online), Project Eternity, Star Citizen (Chris Roberts), etc... all developers from the era of golden age CRPGs. You also have games like Planetary Annihilation (RTS) and many other concept projects that are taking games AND hardware (OUYA,Occulus Rift) to the next level.

I am not sure how many of you realize how suffocating the publisher based model has been on creativity. It has kept good game concepts from being created and destroyed legendary titles.

The developers need to be able to achieve what they desire. Let them achieve their full desires for a game and you will start to see legendary games being released again (nothing is meaningful these days, most are weak and lack innovation). Most of the innovation is being done in the indie market.

My advice is they sit down, write up a clear and concise list of stretch goals based on the amount of funding they get. Create a pitch video that specifically states their case and markets their existing product while focusing on the "key" areas to which the kickstarter campaign will achieve.

They need to be reasonable with their time, one of the pitfalls of this is getting too much and it extending the time tables (Shadowrun hit this problem, but it only set them back by 6 months so far). If they are clear, concise and direct about what they want to achieve, well... it will do well in the campaign.

Just looking at the system already, it is well on its way to being a complex and detailed system. With Kickstarter, they can get the extra funding they need to expand and refine the game to the same level of achievement they had with Divine Divinity (which really was a milestone accomplishment at the time).

I see this as a win/win, but as was mentioned, it needs to be done correctly.

Also, I would strongly encourage Larian (if you can get your investors to sign on) to look into the "kick it forward" campaign that Brian Fargo pulled together. It takes a percentage of your profits 5% (after everything is paid and clear) and you (Larian) will choose where the money goes to new projects on Kickstarter. It is honor based btw, not a contract.

I know this sounds "idealistic", but if gaming is to achieve greatness as it once was, if it is to escape the strangle hold that publishers have on the industry, the small studios, the developers, the ones who "love gaming and love making them" need to be supported and encouraged to excel, expand, take risks, and innovate.