PERIHELION'S PROFILE

You realize this game has nothing whatsoever to do with RM, right?

I totally agree with you, DE. Again, I was never saying that EoE is going to be a great game or that people should fund it. There are a ton of things wrong with their Kickstarter. I just want people to criticize it for things that are actually true.

I'm not intentionally jamming words in your mouth. Have I misunderstood you? I was going on this:

The less people involved in the creation of a game, the better off it is; budgetary or otherwise.

This with your use of Cave Story and Dwarf Fortress as examples seemed to imply that you thought games should only be made by one person, but if that's not the case, I'm glad we got that cleared up!

Again, I'm not trying to say that these expenditures are absolutely necessary, I'm saying they're reasonable. This applies to you too:

Perihelion
It's fine to think that using RTP graphics as placeholders for your Kickstarter is distasteful. It's also fine to think that $20k is way more than you need to make a game, although I think it's reasonable to want to hire professionals if you can. However, that's just my opinion, and I'm not here to argue opinions. The point that I'm making is that given the costs that the EoE and VSA devs listed, there's no basis for calling them greedy and assuming they're pocketing the money because those things actually cost that much at professional rates. Feel free to criticize them for unnecessary expenditures if you think they're unnecessary, but don't say they're greedy unless you have reason to believe they're not spending the money on the games. I don't know if you personally are saying that, but other people are, and that's what my problem is. If you're not saying that, then I don't have a problem with you, so why are we arguing?

@Nightblade: An indie game is any game that isn't backed by a publisher. This includes everyone from individual hobbyists making games in their spare time to small to medium-sized studios. And professional indie developers don't make all of their own assets as a rule, because that takes a long time to do. I mean, yes, obviously anyone making games needs to be talented in at least one area of game development, but not in every single area.

Seriously, how do you not get how unrealistic your expectations are? If any indie game developer who doesn't make everything himself is a failure, why are your games full of rips?

@Ghost:

Hourly rates: In the US, hourly rates for pixel artists vary from $15 per hour up to a cap around $50 per hour for the best artists on the most well-funded projects. This can be a lot of money for somebody in New Zealand, but sometimes not very much if you're in mainland Europe. However, a useful median that you'll see from large, respectable companies is about $30/hr for talented artists to work on high profile projects that look pretty hot on your portfolio.

(source)

There are plenty of other sources saying the same thing if you don't believe that one. So, sure, you can definitely pay less than $30/hour, but it's not like hiring someone for $20/hour instead is going to make all of your art not cost tens of thousands of dollars.

The thing is, when you contract a professional, you're not just paying for quality. You're also paying for timeliness and reliability. Some random person you just grabbed off of deviantART is a total crapshoot, especially if you're paying them peanuts. What if your artist disappears halfway through the project because they're working for you in their spare time and you're barely paying them anything? There's a reason the general industry practice isn't just grabbing people off of deviantART.

Also, how are you expecting a developer to get the assets he needs funding for before getting the funding?

As a side note, both VSA and EoE are moving to XNA and will therefore need fully original assets.

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Even if you guys think RM games don't count as "real" commercial indie games, it doesn't mean that the EoE and VSA developers aren't planning to pony up the industry standard rates for the things they need. When they clearly outlined what they're using the money for, and those things cost about what they asked for, you have no basis for accusing them of pocketing the money. I'm not arguing that game development is expensive because I think you shouldn't try to cut costs wherever possible; I'm arguing that game development is expensive because people here are accusing the EoE and VSA devs of being money-grubbing bastards without taking into consideration how much things cost at industry standard rates. So sure, they might be able to make their games for less, but that doesn't mean that they're stealing the money.

I also haven't actually seen anyone offer a good defense for TFT blatantly lying about the EoE and VSA developers not saying what they're using the money for, which leads me to conclude that his post is malicious. The only counter-argument I've heard is that the VSA developer supposedly didn't respond to an inquiry in the RMN thread, but my understanding is that the thread was deleted soon after it was posted, so how could he have responded?

Ocean
They can pitch the idea to some pixel artist who is starting out and they can do it, maybe for a lower budget. Or they can try making the graphics themselves, by trying it or keeping a simple style like... every other indie game developer who sells a game at least does. Or by knowing your constraints and not making a gigantic RPG if you don't have the means to. It looks bad on people using RPG Maker if people are associating it with people selling RTP games because of whatever excuse they want.

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. Besides, art made by someone who isn't visually creative, which is the case for most non-artists, isn't going to bring any more soul to the project than premade graphics anyway. So why would any commercial developer spend a huge amount of time and/or money on something that will actively hurt his sales? Sure, you need custom graphics if your game isn't fantasy, but if the RTP is in the right general ballpark for what you want anyway, it can be edited to fit your vision. And the EoE and VSA guys have obviously edited it significantly.

I spent years shitting on the RTP and learning pixel art so I could make my own graphics, and then I actually tried to do it. I can tell you from first-hand experience how unrealistic making professional-quality graphics for a long game is when you're doing all the other development too. Good art is not easy to get, and even bad art is a ton of work. I don't really care if TFT hates the RTP and thinks commercial games shouldn't use it out of artistic purity or whatever. I think that's silly, but he's entitled to his opinion. I do have a problem with this idea that using the RTP is lazy and means you're a greedy money-grubber and that you don't care about the quality of your game and just want to scam people out of their money. It seems to me that people are using the RTP as justification for lobbing ad hominem attacks at the EoE and VSA developers when there are totally valid reasons for their decision, and that's what I have a problem with.

Ocean
Kickstarter doesn't show a "editted at x time" thing when someone edits it, but this did actually happen, just not something you can screen anymore.

Regardless of whether this happened the way TFT said it did, I don't see how editing funding into the Kickstarter is refusing to answer the question. Even if he didn't mention it originally, he still put it in when asked. How is that dishonest?