You are aware that if Konami had anything to do with the backing they would have never ever kept the ip right?
Konami was only involved as a publisher. As a publisher, their only obligation was to distribute and market the game. If they were more involved the IP would belong to them and not Autumn Games.
Any one ever counted the number of famous/infamous failed crowd funded games so far?
Lol, stay free you weirdos. I didn’t hate the game, but it just failed to leave any real impression on me when Maximillian was hyping it up. I forgot it existed until now. Unfortunately for indie developers, fighting games are really difficult to do, so we don’t see a lot of them slip through the cracks.
Off-Topic:
Spoiler
Speaking of the EVO scholarship, this reminds me of my biggest gripe with the program: Winners can only use the scholarship to study at a low-profile college in New York State. I feel like they could spend the same amount of money but award it directly so people who are trying to go to better/closer colleges than NYU can qualify, which greatly expands the amount of people this could help. It’s a really great idea, but the current implementation just seems really lacking.
And then you have Skisonic winning, which brings up a whole other can of worms.
Even if I accepted that Konami didn’t give them a single penny (which I find really hard to believe), having a publisher and marketing means that you are not indie. You don’t fully understand what a publisher does. The whole reason they were able to have an initial budget of a million is precisely because they had a publisher. Indie means that you fund, develop and distribute the game entirely on your own.
By that definition, some accepted indie games aren’t indie. For example, Bastion was published by Warner Bros. Games despite being funded entirely by Supergiant with their own money. In fact, it’s not just that, there are several other indie titles who are published by smaller publishers (e.g. World of Goo, developed by 2D Boy, published by RTL Games; Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, developed by the Chinese Room, published by Frictional Games).
Having a publisher doesn’t necessarily mean that something isn’t “indie” anymore. It’s not just in games either, both in music and film we’ve seen numerous labels and studios helping to bring out independent works.
I would like to add that with the 360 M$ wouldn’t allow indies on the marketplace unless the game had a publisher. Self publishing wasn’t a thing on console until late in the PS360 lifescan.
So if a game or movie is entirely budgeted and produced independently and then the final product gets picked up by a publisher, it ceases to be indie anymore? Lol please.
That’s like saying the movie,Clerks isn’t indie because it was picked up and distributed by Miramax. And that movie is indie as fuck. (Noting Miramax paid licensing fees for the film’s soundtrack,which costed more than the film’s own budget).
I think they should do another crowdfunding project.
…
Wait, wait, wait, everyone is wrong here.
Skullgirls isn’t dependent because of Konami, it’s dependent because:
- Mike and Alex do not own Skullgirls legally, and thus completely dependent on Autumn Games for distribution, money before the fundraiser, and rights.
- The game wasn’t completed in the slightest upon release, personally still isn’t, and was dependent on Autumn Games for DLC.
- They pitched the concept build, not the 2012 version, so further development was dependent on investments and profit.
- They don’t even have a flat percentage of the profit, and thus made zero money before the crowdfunding.
It’s actually less indie than UNIB and Arcana Heart for Pete’s sake.
Regardless, it’s a bad comparison.
You can split hairs all you want, the simple fact remains that Skullgirls is not indie. Even you can’t deny this. Indie means “independent”, and they were fully dependent on multiple companies to make the game (Autumn Games for funding, Konami for publishing). They had multiple moderate-to-big-sized companies helping them with funding and distribution, and did not pay for the game entirely out of pocket. And I think the examples of so-called indie games you brought up are debatable, but that’s leading into a different argument.
I could argue against this, but the point is that this isn’t AT ALL what happened with Skullgirls, so this is an irrelevant strawman.
How is this a point against what I’m saying? This only reaffirms my point that it’s not indie.
@PSYCH0J0SH Dude the game s indie in the sense that they had no finacial backing from an established game dev company or any organization to foot the bill for the development. They had to get the money and resources themselves to make it happen.
But they did. This is literally the opposite of the truth. They had financial backing from Autumn Games, an established game publisher, which itself had a business arrangement with Konami. Without AG’s assistance, they would not have been able to finish the game. So it is not indie in any way, shape or form.
No it doesn’t. It’s why @d3v mentioned Bastion. The game was entirely funded by Supergiant and due to Microsoft guidelines at the time they weren’t allowed to self publish the game if they wanted it on the Marketplace. They needed a publisher if the game was gonna be on console and they manage to get WB for it. There’s Braid that was published by Microsoft Game Studio on the 360 but self published on PC. Every indie needed a publisher big or small if they wanted release on console. Self publishing wasn’t an option at the time.
Self-publishing was always an option on PC, but they got greedy and wanted to release on consoles first. In my opinion that was the first of their many mistakes.
please forgive my lack of knowledge on how this whole thing works, but couldn’t they have asked bigger companies like Capcom or Arc System to develep the game insted of trying with a small team that had no experience ?
No. Ideas are a dime a dozen in the game industry, if you just go up to a big company with nothing but “boy have I got a game idea for you!” they blow you off right away. Think of Mr. Burns pushing a red button on his desk that opens a trapdoor beneath your feet.
Although they did try going to Ubisoft to help with publishing once they had the demo, that didn’t go anywhere.
No,in the exact thing that I quoted you said that having a publisher and marketing means that something is no longer indie. There’s nothing strawman about what I said. Your argument is still that because Autumn Games helped publish it that it’s not indie which is fucking retarded. Lab Zero had to run crowd funding campaigns to even build up their budget for skullgirls and release new content. The game started out being independently made and ended being independently made through the efforts of the development team. Having a publisher doesn’t change that. Autumn Games couldn’t even give Lab Zero any money because of a lawsuit they were stuck in.
Piggy backing of what @PSYCH0J0SH said. They would’ve had to pay quite a pretty penny to get them to delay other projects and focus on making their game. Also even if they could’ve went that route. Where’s the glory in that? by doing things their own way on their own. They have made a name for themsleves within the gaming industry with a successful game under their belt. And now they’re working on their next game. If they keep this up they could be the next Capcom ( 90’s era Capcom )