GHOST'S PROFILE

Good luck~

Dang double post, I'll edit this later~

The only reason I responded initially Peri was to clarify what TFT was trying to say, and despite all the naysayers, Sailerus had every right to post his game because that's how Kickstarter works. There's nothing we can do about it.

Personally, I think the game should have been more organized with its goals, but in all honesty I frankly don't care. Who am I to him or the pledge folk? A nobody, my input doesn't matter, the site won't let me speak my mind so why should I get all flustered?

If he did get funded however, I would feel the same way I felt about Echoes. Good intentions, not really the best planning / goal settings. Best wishes to the authors, I'm not a hater do whatever you want.

The reason I posted more was because you were giving a false sense that art costs infinite amount of money, you were placing filler details to justify the 20k. "Industry rates are X". This is misleading, I encourage people to take their game to the next level but saying things like that makes it seem like a pipe dream. There are other routes, just make sure you plan and surround yourself around people who can actually help you propel your game project. Set good goals etc.

I think this discussion has gone way past its life so I'm gonna bail, peace.

author=perihelion
You know how much this game cost to make? $32,000. That covers paying contractors, business expenses, and the developer paying himself a small salary over the six-month development period. (source) In case you think that's some freakish anomaly, according to this site, an average iPhone game costs $10,000 to $125,000 to make depending on complexity.

You're just throwing out numbers holy shit. Vacant Sky was not going to be a mobile game. It has no mobile costs. His game is for PC as that is the RM platform at the moment. He was using rtp graphics and had some custom graphical art. The graphical art costs are minuscule, I'll explain below. You're exaggerating beyond belief and I can just tell right away you don't know what you're talking about. As for the XNA and Monogame part, this is an admittedly expensive route to take. The issue I have is that I'm not really taking this game seriously at this point, if he wanted to do this he should have mentioned how he planned to make this jump. His description about the funding is lacking a lot of detail, important details. I feel that this should remain an RM game based off his own ad. As an RM game, I don't feel it needs 20k for the funding. Can he ask for this much? Of course he can but his plan was not solid enough to me personally to justify that amount. A XNA game with completely original assets and so on sure, but from the ad? There are conflicting elements.

author=perihelion
A big part of that price tag is art, because good art is expensive, and RPGs in particular are very asset-intensive. For a commercial game, you need commercial-quality graphics. For those of you decrying the use of the RTP, where exactly are you suggesting the replacement graphics come from? If an artist charges you $30/hour and takes three days to make a tileset, that's $18,000 for half as many tilesets as come with the XP RTP. There went your entire $20,000 Kickstarter, never mind sprites. And battle graphics. And character portraits. And animations. And GUI. These games would need to be asking for a lot more than $20k if they wanted to replace the RTP with graphics of similar quality. Oh, and don't forget you need audio too.

Just... Stop this dude it's really annoying. You're misinformed, you have no clue what the costs are and everything you're saying is hypothetical. If you actually took the time to figure out how much pixel art and vector art costs you would know that what you're saying is utter nonsense.

Art is actually an OVER-SATURATED market, to find good quality artists is no where near as hard as you described. Graphical artists are a dime a dozen, the good artists normally have rates because they have most likely done commissions at some point. These rates vary and if you've done research then you would actually know that artists are not demons, talk to them talk about your plan and your budget and present something interesting (artists like doing jobs that are actually interesting) and you would find out out that they will likely support / be willing to help projects that have a lot of planning behind it. They may even give you a small discount, especially if you were requesting something visual for an kickstarter ad initially. If this doesn't work? Keep looking, adjust your plan.

Deviant Art and Pixel community sites have a shit ton of artists, especially Deviant Art. Besides these communities there are even more places to check and either post job ads OR you can simply approach an artist if you like their gallery / work. I've dealt with artists that even had their commission windows closed and STILL were interested in working for a friend of mine or myself sometimes. I don't buy your arbitrary numbers you're pulling out god knows where. Stop misinforming people here. Of course there are artists that would want 30/hr, don't hire them find someone you can afford and does good work this part takes... effort?

author=perihelion
It's great if you can recruit a talented artist who will work for profit share, but if it happens, you got really lucky. It's completely unrealistic to expect someone to do tens of thousands of dollars of work essentially for free. And getting a bad artist to do it, or doing it yourself, is shooting yourself in the foot. Graphics are the first thing that potential customers judge you on, so if you actually want to sell copies, your game needs to be attractive. Unless you somehow manage to become a viral sensation, but don't count on that.

You acknowledge art to be #1 priority but then suggest it's impossible to find someone to do tens of thousands of art for free? Why would they do it for free? Pay them artists are starving as is. Second, pay your artists BEFORE you post an ad. Is that so hard? Pay for your assets initially something to show the general art of the game and then ask these crowd source companies to help you out, they clearly have a good indication of how the art looks (also more money, more detail).

Echoes made 43k and for what was essentially his first game. He showed off rtp looking art and called it temporary,

http://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/projects/111698/posts/253663/image-129857-full.jpg?1340585226

http://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/projects/111698/posts/253663/image-129856-full.jpg?1340584978

This is the current in game art... Do I even need to explain why it's more intelligible to HIRE artists firsts and pay your way to show how the game will REALLY look first? If you want you can learn to do the art yourself, but OH GOD THAT TAKES MONTHS OF WORK according to you that's basically a waste of time amirite?

By posting an ad with just rtp as temporary resources to me is ludicrous. Vacant Sky has how many people working on that game? Art is not that expensive, it will be a good chunk of any budget but again I'm telling you from experience that you don't know what you're talking about, look and you'll find affordable good artists willing to work with you if you have a solid plan. I've not only done commissions for art / music I know the ball park figure of how much the majority of artists would ask / fair prices to charge. The more you are informed about these things, the easier it is to find people willing to work with you. Strong leader, strong project.

Edit:

Oh and base tiles, base tiles, base tiles... BASE TILES. Once you have initial base tiles you can use that for a lot of the game dude at least for tile based games *woosh. That would cost like.... *pulls out abacus (couldn't afford calculator that would cost $412,003 dollars)... Hmm like 18k?