Republique (story driven stealth game by Camouflaj Studios, founded by Ryan Payton)

[arta]

$550,568 reached.

Scribblenauts devs now chatting with Payton on the stream.

[syntheticvoid]

Wow. I'm blown away! So great we're gonna have this on the iOS! =oD

[Zoet]

Originally Posted by Hodapp

2. How the whole cost breakdown of this actual Kickstarter goes. The Star Command guys first opened everyone's eyes to the fact that Kickstarter swag is actually pretty expensive to produce and ship. It'll be interesting to see what the most "profitable" reward tier is for Republique.

I was actually thinking that myself. For the final tier - flying the backer out to their headquarters - the air fare from some parts of the world could get pretty costly, not to mention dinner and all of the other swag! One would hope that they've factored all of the swag-production costs properly into their budget. But I'd imagine that the digital-only rewards tiers would be the obviously be the simplest and thus probably the most cost-effective to fulfil.

[clocknova]

Personally, I hate the whole idea of physical swag for Kickstarter projects, with the possible exception of boxed collectors' editions (though I have no use for those). That's all good money that could have gone into game development. But I understand why they do it. I just think it's a waste.

[putermcgee]

Originally Posted by novery

We're working on a number of things you have suggested : ) The PC version, however, is not something we're going to announce during this campaign. We love that people want the game on PC though! Seeing that response has put smiles on our faces.

I think the challenge for us that we realized that Republique's gameplay and story is so intrinsically tied to portable, touch-based devices that we would be doing gamers a disservice if we just straight-up ported the game to PC. Republique is not a dual-analog game, it's not mouse-and-keyboard, it's not point-and-click...

With that said, we desperately want to make a PC/Mac version down the road, and we know that will require a lot of work because we believe strongly in making the right game for the right platform. So first priority is making this the best game you've ever played on iOS and not bifurcating our focus.

We're living in a very interesting world...

congrats to the team on making funding. my personal interest in the game is merely that it might exist at some point.

it'll be interesting to see how the game evolves as development continues. when you're talking about a console or pc game, you have a general idea of where the hardware will be a year or two down the line...but with ios, it seems like games of this caliber are limited to only the latest hardware. that means even 4th gen ios gamers could easily get the shaft. and that, in turn, means that a lot of backers who can't afford to always have the latest devices could get the shaft.

with all the tech said to be going into this game, i'm also curious to see how big the game ends up being in the end.

the reason for my quote is that it seems like the final pitch goes completely against everything previously said. that's kind of messed up.

[bloodyparrot]

Will be a fascinating case study, and I think a first for a high profile, high budget iOS game. As Eli noted, there will be development challenges and considerable community management effort needed as a result of crowd funding. Its a living beast now, under the microscope and plenty of organic ugliness is probable.
To me, that is actually a beautiful thing. A funding model like this, and the abilities to both create or directly support a project like this did not exist just a couple years ago. More importantly, with the creation of this game, iOS gaming may be taking another step forward on the path of conquering a staid industry. Large publishers will be watching with great interest because few of them have had the balls to do what this small team proposes to do. IF they do well, perhaps the Activisions and EAs will up their game sooner rather than later...and their prices, too.
Judging by their award tiers, and the fact that early KS supporters effectively pre-order these things for cheaper than expected retail price, Republique will debut around $15, maybe more...I believe that is Chaos Rings territory? (wonder how much the CR games cost to develop? Looking at the sequels, apparently it worked out for Square-Enix).

Props to the team at Camouflaj for doing everything they could to see their preferred plan to fruition. I really hope the game will turn out great and that I can look forward to TouchArcade's typically 'net-leading coverage and analysis from here on out.

[GDSage]

As for what would be the most profitable reward tier, I don't think the teams that do kickstart assume they will be making sizeable profits through the pledges but rather through the new consumers that actually purchase the title when it is released. Obviously, a team would not want to setup reward tiers that lose them money but their real profits will be coming through the $10-$25 given from release day by those that have not pledged.

At that point it will be the teams responsibility to try and sell the game to these new consumers but then that's no different a scenario to any other team regardless of the means of their funding.

Also, I think people are overestimating how much influence pledgers could have to a kickstart project. In any case, it's hardly going to be worse than what already happens with the funding model we have now where if a publisher doesn't outright dismiss the project because it isn't of the top 5 game styles, they can see to it all sorts being added because that's what CoD does or they will pull the entire project on any whim (see the recent Eurogamer article on the demise of Free Radical).

Any problems that can face devs using kickstarter already faces devs with the publisher model. It's odd how kickstarter is being picked apart on this front when it already exists in this industry only now there is an additional model for projects to be funded. A good thing when it is being shown that the middle section of the development industry (not the $10m+ budget devs or the $100k+ devs) are being squeezed like hell under the current publisher / retail model.

We will have to wait and see if Kickstarter can become a large viable route for that middle or if something else does that for them but the reality is the industry is suffering by relying so much just on the current model. Other entertainment industries have managed to expand on how a project can be funded, so it's odd that the newer (what is meant to be) more adaptable games industry has yet to properly expand in the same way.

[Izaya]

This looks so good I'm so glad I bought a 3GS this week =p can't wait for this game!

[B34$T]

Originally Posted by Izaya

This looks so good I'm so glad I bought a 3GS this week =p can't wait for this game!

Isn't this game 4th gen and up? A 3GS would mean you wouldn't get this.

[famousringo]

Originally Posted by GDSage

As for what would be the most profitable reward tier, I don't think the teams that do kickstart assume they will be making sizeable profits through the pledges but rather through the new consumers that actually purchase the title when it is released. Obviously, a team would not want to setup reward tiers that lose them money but their real profits will be coming through the $10-$25 given from release day by those that have not pledged.

At that point it will be the teams responsibility to try and sell the game to these new consumers but then that's no different a scenario to any other team regardless of the means of their funding.

Also, I think people are overestimating how much influence pledgers could have to a kickstart project. In any case, it's hardly going to be worse than what already happens with the funding model we have now where if a publisher doesn't outright dismiss the project because it isn't of the top 5 game styles, they can see to it all sorts being added because that's what CoD does or they will pull the entire project on any whim (see the recent Eurogamer article on the demise of Free Radical).

Any problems that can face devs using kickstarter already faces devs with the publisher model. It's odd how kickstarter is being picked apart on this front when it already exists in this industry only now there is an additional model for projects to be funded. A good thing when it is being shown that the middle section of the development industry (not the $10m+ budget devs or the $100k+ devs) are being squeezed like hell under the current publisher / retail model.

We will have to wait and see if Kickstarter can become a large viable route for that middle or if something else does that for them but the reality is the industry is suffering by relying so much just on the current model. Other entertainment industries have managed to expand on how a project can be funded, so it's odd that the newer (what is meant to be) more adaptable games industry has yet to properly expand in the same way.

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.