I don't think he means profit in the literal sense, he's just noting that a substantial slice of that $550,000 is going to pay for miscellaneous swag, overhead, taxes, etc., rather than funding actual game development. But I completely agree with you. Combined with digital distribution channels, crowd funding allows developers to sidestep publishers entirely and pitch their ideas directly to end users. Publishers purport to know what the customer wants, and place constraints on the developer accordingly, but now the customers can tell the developer themselves what they want without a patronizing middleman. It's early days for crowd funding, so there's a lot of inexperience and unreasonable expectations on all sides, but it's not hard to imagine a future where funding is handled by companies like Kickstarter, distribution is handled by companies like Apple and Amazon, and publishers/movie studios/record labels simply do not exist.
So awesome republique made it. Love anything to do with big budget ios games. Congratulations to RP and the gang. However i'm extremely disappointed by Eli's attitute, and more so his conduct and demeanour. keep in mind this is coming from a touch arcade fanboy, ive read the site for years since the heady NGmoco days, and listened to every podcast since the reboot, but i dont think i will continue to recommend the website, and have been soured on the podcast. Eli is completely entitled to his opinion, but i feel let down disheartened.
So you're disappointed that his opinion isn't the same as yours? I thought he is 'completely entitled to his opinion'. If he doesn't like the game and Kickstarter, yet you do, that is a difference in opinion and so not recommending the site based on that is contradicting yourself and not allowing him an opinion.
Yes, it does. But let me state it more clearly: This thread exists to discuss Republique as an upcoming game. Any discussion about Kickstarter as a concept should go on the Lounge or (perhaps) the developer's section. Discussions about the whole NeoGAF drama, what Eli said or didn't say about Kickstarter, and any of the soap-operaish nonesense associated with that can be held in a different forum altogether.
Sweet, Edge does awesome articles. Big fan of their media. Yeah, I admire the ambition of this project greatly, to get a kick-ass aaa-quality title on mobile platforms and I think it was the best decision they made to go cross-platform and include PC, that way the 500k makes a lot more sense, is less risky. Just a risk to go with a film-like game on mobile due to the cost of the graphics, audio. And I hope that there is some good gameplay included. For eg I often see comments that applaud Thief for it's stealth gameplay. So it would be good if we see this married with the quality assets. And the question of how much replayability is the next one on the list for me? So from the pov of genre I'm sceptical. But, from the pov of the mobile market, there's too much freemium junk the size of Texas in the app store, so to see an aaa console quality title on mobile would be just the right thing. Maybe it's a bit like an interactive movie and the power of these smart devices could be a promising path for this stuff? Hollywood watch out!
Ryan Payton wrote a 5 page article detailed with charts and personal reflection on the Kickstarter campaign. Here's the highly abridged version with a link to the full article. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/176187/how_camouflaj_saved_rpubliques_.php
They post updates every month or so to the "Backers Only" Updates section of their Kickstarter page. My impression is that the game is moving along nicely.
The developers have a podcast where they update non-kickstarter backers of updates to the game. Camouflaj Radio on iTunes. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/camouflaj-radio/id555358044
I forgot all about this game! If it ever shows up ill give it a try. Maybe I'll have an iPhone 10s by then
Just so everyone knows, camouflage have released this message on they're website on 1st January: It also says that it will be released summer 2013