You did it right here, in this thread, where you claimed to understand that it was necessary to accept the fact that sometimes you're wrong about things and to be willing to change your mind, and then in the very next breath proclaimed the absolute wrongness and irrelevance of someone else's opinion.

Because it's true? Korny's ad hominem has no bearing on the point at hand regarding Portals through Portals. You should know that; it's a classic logical fallacy.

This idea that I am firm and unwavering regarding truth isn't correct. I've changed my stance on many many things over the years, in part due to posts by people like Leviathan and yourself.

You are absolutely firm and unwavering regarding the truth you think you know at the time, right up until you change it, whereupon you because completely intransigent in your new position and abandon the old one, either pretending that the change never happened, or chalking it up to character-building and kissing ass, as you do above.

You're just mad I didn't name you as a source of change :-p

Good god, no. Claude can take that bait if he likes but leave me the heck out of it. You can keep any real or imagined credit for altering your own opinions anything I've ever said might ever have had, and we'll recognize any actual agreement between us as coincidence :)

What you said doesn't make sense. If I am unwavering, how can I ever change my mind?

You're unwavering until you waver. That's my point. You put up a false front of confidence in your beliefs right up until it is unsustainable, and then you put on a show of being open minded and growing as a person and solidify your new belief. You did it right here, in this thread, where you claimed to understand that it was necessary to accept the fact that sometimes you're wrong about things and to be willing to change your mind, and then in the very next breath proclaimed the absolute wrongness and irrelevance of someone else's opinion.

So you've either actually got way more confidence in your opinions than is warranted, or you actually have less, but feel it necessary to project that confidence when expressing your opinion, either because you feel no one will pay attention to it unless you do, or because you feel it necessary to attack other positions pre-emptively to gain an advantage in an upcoming argument. Only you know which, I suppose.

Presumably, the asking price for a kickstarter game is what is required to pay the salaries of those working on the game. Why does my game have to turn a profit if everybody gets paid their salary by the backers?

If the asking price is what's required to pay the salaries, you'd turn a profit if you sold even a single copy.

But even that kind of sucks in the event of a market failure, because there's no post-development cushion; you can't support the game and everyone suddenly has no income and needs to find another job.

You either do another kickstarter, or you get financiers :-) If your game was good neither should be hard!

What?

Not even close.

https://www.shrm.org/research/articles/articles/pages/metricofthemonthsalariesaspercentageofoperatingexpense.aspx

Salaries range between 20% and 50% of all expenses, varying by sector.

For an indie game startup the percentage may be higher, but it is not 100%. Ever. Even for a sole proprietor. In fact, especially not for a sole proprietor, because they usually get paid last.

Okay, I'll modify that to "all expenses during the development period", which I think is what Cody was implying, even if the language was obviously imprecise.

Presumably, the asking price for a kickstarter game is what is required to pay the salaries of those working on the game. Why does my game have to turn a profit if everybody gets paid their salary by the backers?

If the asking price is what's required to pay the salaries, you'd turn a profit if you sold even a single copy.

What?

Not even close.

https://www.shrm.org/research/articles/articles/pages/metricofthemonthsalariesaspercentageofoperatingexpense.aspx

Salaries range between 20% and 50% of all expenses, varying by sector.

For an indie game startup the percentage may be higher, but it is not 100%. Ever. Even for a sole proprietor. In fact, especially not for a sole proprietor, because they usually get paid last.

Presumably, the asking price for a kickstarter game is what is required to pay the salaries of those working on the game. Why does my game have to turn a profit if everybody gets paid their salary by the backers?

If the asking price is what's required to pay the salaries, you'd turn a profit if you sold even a single copy.

But even that kind of sucks in the event of a market failure, because there's no post-development cushion; you can't support the game and everyone suddenly has no income and needs to find another job.

This idea that I am firm and unwavering regarding truth isn't correct. I've changed my stance on many many things over the years, in part due to posts by people like Leviathan and yourself.

You are absolutely firm and unwavering regarding the truth you think you know at the time, right up until you change it, whereupon you because completely intransigent in your new position and abandon the old one, either pretending that the change never happened, or chalking it up to character-building and kissing ass, as you do above.

You're just mad I didn't name you as a source of change :-p

What you said doesn't make sense. If I am unwavering, how can I ever change my mind?

intransigent

Dude, use words people actually know. It makes communication easier. :-)

If a kickstarter game breaks even, that implies that the developer was actually underwater for a while until a certain time after launch. An independent developer can't live a smooth survival off of non-profitable products. Unless the dev starts off with a lot of capital and can cushion the instability, they absolutely need to make some degree of profit.

Presumably, the asking price for a kickstarter game is what is required to pay the salaries of those working on the game. Why does my game have to turn a profit if everybody gets paid their salary by the backers?

Which, unfortunately, is just going to make this conversation devolve into a Bad Cody/Good Cody argument, instead of an interesting discussion about game design theory. :(

Even if Korny is 100% right (which I am not sure about, since I don't know what he is using as his example), I am allowed to grow and change my mind as I learn.

Good Cody! In order to grow, and change your mind as you learn, you need to admit at each and every step that what you know or think you know right now may be wrong.

His point is completely meaningless in the scheme of things and has no bearing on game design (which as you say is the interesting question here).

Bad Cody. I love how you literally pulled a Jekyll-and-Hyde moment in the same paragraph. How do you not have whiplash after writing that?

This idea that I am firm and unwavering regarding truth isn't correct. I've changed my stance on many many things over the years, in part due to posts by people like Leviathan and yourself.

You are absolutely firm and unwavering regarding the truth you think you know at the time, right up until you change it, whereupon you because completely intransigent in your new position and abandon the old one, either pretending that the change never happened, or chalking it up to character-building and kissing ass, as you do above.

A failure for a large company is less costly than a failure for an indie studio.

In the sense that a large company can survive the hit, sure.

But consider on a project by project level: investors are usually more willing to take a risk when there's less money on the table, regardless of whether the company is big and will survive or not.

I know someone who has worked at lots of small medical startups. An enormous fraction of those companies appear out of nowhere with some interesting research pitch, do the research, and then dissolve and sell off their patents and whatnot if they don't get far enough to establish future profitability (i.e. produce a very marketable product). Occasionally one succeeds, and the investors get a huge return, and when they fail, well, some of the money comes back and it often wasn't a huge loss.

After all, with that there is zero need to make a profit.

If a kickstarter game breaks even, that implies that the developer was actually underwater for a while until a certain time after launch. An independent developer can't live a smooth survival off of non-profitable products. Unless the dev starts off with a lot of capital and can cushion the instability, they absolutely need to make some degree of profit.

This is generally a false claim. The bigger the game with the more money involved, the more likely it is to be less innovative and to stick to the formula that the company knows will make money. This is why Madden is the same + 1 feature every year. And CoD, and Tony Hawk, and Guitar Hero, etc etc etc.

Companies would rather ensure that they're going to get their money back.

A failure for a large company is less costly than a failure for an indie studio. As an indie, if you game doesn't sell it could mean shutting down the company. A larger studio or one with a big publisher can take a hit. The profit motive is far more important in the indie world.

Even if we grant your premise, at least that would mean large publishers are at worst being stagnant. Smaller studios go backwards with games that could have been made in and belong in previous decades.

The major shifts you see in design almost all come about by a company who has a lot of backing to create something new. Indie games are generally more risk averse than AAA!

Why hasn't kickstarter created a revolution of industry leading game titles? After all, with that there is zero need to make a profit.

That's not like a threat or something... It's a promise. -_-

I don't think you have to be big to innovative or boundary pushing.

I suppose it's possible, but nearly all games that offer huge leaps are among the most expensive games in their respective genres at the time.

Games based heavily around narrative (Heavy, Rain, life is Strange etc) may be the exception, because writing a better story doesn't cost more money. But creating more sophisticated interaction definitely does.

This is generally a false claim. The bigger the game with the more money involved, the more likely it is to be less innovative and to stick to the formula that the company knows will make money. This is why Madden is the same + 1 feature every year. And CoD, and Tony Hawk, and Guitar Hero, etc etc etc.

Companies would rather ensure that they're going to get their money back.

It's why most MMORPGs in the last 10 years have been WoW clones in one way or another - WoW made money and the investment to make an MMO is huge. Stick with the winning formula, say the suits.

Now, you and I know that's *not* a winning formula, but the people who pull the strings in these matters - the purse strings - are not gamers. They don't understand, at all, what makes game X good and game Y bad. They're business people. When I worked at Activision our CEO was the former CEO of Maytag. She didn't know squat about gaming and she didn't care. She knew how to make shareholders happy, and that's all she did. "Oh, Ninja Gaiden is coming out for Xbox? Don't we have a ninja game? Awesome, push up Tenchu: Return from Darkness to release on the same day." Terrible stupid dumb awful decision making. But the shareholders ate it up. Competitor has ninja game? We have ninja game too! Stock wins! Of course, the quarterly report would show "surprising" losses and "disappointing" sales of the ninja game in question, but that report was months later and the new christmas lineup was announced just beforehand in order to temper a decline in market value.

But I digress.

The more money a company invests in their game, the more they want to guarantee success and ROI. The biggest budget games are almost never groundbreaking, or they're "groundbreaking" for AAA titles but are actually mimicking successful indie game mechanics of another game. This is a LOT like the film industry. Your tentpole films are almost all remakes or spin offs or sequels with straightforward plots and known IPs. Even massive films like Avatar they knew would be decent because (a) Cameron's history and (b) Pocahontas did pretty well and it's pretty much the same story.

I actually used to be a navigator in rally racing, so to answer your question, I play video games because you can't be doing cool shit all the time. Plus, video games can take you to worlds where you can't go in real life, which is why Destiny is better than paintball.

If that's really your argument, then you just unraveled your own premise: there are plenty of things you can do in Minecraft that you cannot do in CAD. Likewise, there are tons of things you can do with LEGOs that you can't in clay or on a CNC mill. It works both ways.

In CATIA or NX, I may be able to loft a beautiful 3D model of a new aircraft in a few hours, with perfect curves and gorgeous lines; but can I make a giant circuit out of lava-blocks that plays music with binary switches? NOPE.

What did you think of that movie? I also saw it in the theaters twice with my girlfriend. I'm struggling to remember what actually happened in it, other than one particular show when she was crying for some reason but had to put on a happy face.

I felt kind of bad for her. The way the film was put together made it seem like all of her dressing up and fantasy stuff was the result of her parents not letting her play candyland as a kid, and now she could live out what she missed in childhood. So suddenly it all makes sense.

I saw the Katy Perry 3D concert movie in theaters. Twice.

I would have looked exactly like your DBO avatar the entire time ;)

True story time:

I worked on the episode of the Simpsons where she appears live action with all the puppets. This random girl appeared on set and was wondering around. I wasn't sure who it was. She goes into makeup and doesn't come out. It turns out it was her. She looks so utterly and completely different without being done up I didn't recognize her at all. She was very… normal.

She was nice, and actually pretty funny. The mouths didn't open till she came out of makeup, done up, in that incredibly tight latex red dress.