Helpful Video Link on Reinforcement & My Op & Questions

Captiva

This video link was posted by some helpful person on the sticky reinforcement thread, and I thought it explained things better then the NS2 web page did.

2nd video down on the link page.

rockpapershotgun.com/2013/08/30/natural-selection-2-needs-cash-asks-the-crowd/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rockpapershotgun%2Fsteam+%28Rock%2C+Paper%2C+Shotgun%3A+Steam+RSS%29


What I got from it is that they did good money wise with NS2. 8 million good.
People paid for the initial game and some balancing tweaks.
Next the Devs "invested" in continued support of NS2 by adding a bunch of content that amounted to the current Reinforced update, which cost them $550,000.
Problem is they are not making enough money from the sales of NS2 to make continued support a winning strategy for the long term future of the company.

So they can either stop any major development on NS2 and focus on something that will hopefully fund the future of the company, Or they can raise enough money from the Reinforced program to fund the continued work on NS2 (which will almost certainly include new content and maps as well as tweaks) so they do not have to worry about running out of enough money to start work on another game.

While there are many arguments and comments and questions I am sure that can be made about it, I think this sums up nicely what the Devs are getting at.

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Biggest Question I have is what will the devs do if they only reach 200 thou or 300 thou or so? Will they just keep the money and start work on something else? Or will they at the very least put that money towards NS2?

Giving the content up front is cool, but I would guess most people will donate to reinforced to help fund NS2's future and not just to give the Devs extra "fun" money.
Would seem only fair to me to put any money donated from the Reinforced program towards NS2 future development. Even if it falls short on the goal.

So would be nice for them to clarify...

BTW, Yes I am very new to the game... Like just bought it this weekend new. I do however love the game already and hope it still has a future. So regardless I am planning on making a "donation" to the reinforced program here in a month when I get some extra cash.


Hope maybe this info helped someone, as I was confused until I saw the video.



**Edited for clarity

Chizzler

Captiva wrote: »

Biggest Question I have is what will the devs do if they only reach 200 thou or 300 thou or so? Will they just keep the money and start work on something else? or will they at least put that money towards NS2?
Would seem only fair considering the initial 550 thousand they spent on NS2 did come from the sales of NS2. So giving the content up front is cool, but just asking us to pay for content we already technically paid for doesn't seem right.
Paying for future content and support does though. So would be nice for them to clarify some of these questions.

Most people are not new to the game. We bought the game earlier (upon release in my case). Those who purchased since release purchased the game in its state at that time. As for updates from that point, the Developers had no obligation to provide any at all. The 'reinforced' project is not asking us to pay for something we already paid for. it's allowing us to show our support and thanks to the developers for all the free content they've dished out.

similarly, although you can argue you've purchased the game in it's current state and the price incorporates all that content, it's worth pointing out that you've not paid any more than anyone else has in the past 10 years (start of development - I think they started 'selling' it 8 or so years back) for the base game. All that extra content wasn't free to produce, so it's hardly unreasonable for them to offer (not ask) the community to help pay the bills and nab some rewards in the process.

UWE want to continue to support the game and they're testing out this business model to see if it's financially viable. If they don't make the $550,000 they're trying to recoup, I'd say it's not viable in its current form (not to say it couldn't work with adjustments). Note the word 'recoup'... it's not extra money to fund continued development, it's money they've already spent. SO whether they reach their goal or not, they shouldn't be obligated to continue development. They have stated however, that if they do reach their goal they intend to continue to support the game "full time". Whether they'll use the money they raise on future development if they don't meet their goal is entirely up to them and why should they? they'd have lost money over the past 6 months. Your donation is towards recouping the costs of previous development, not funding future development.

That said, it would be nice to hear an official response as to what happens if they don't meet their goal, though I imagine there's some uncertainty in the UWE office too. This business model is new, they don't know what the results will be themselves yet.

On another note: thanks for the link, I hadn't seen that video. Welcome to NS2! If you're loving it already (with its current minor performance/balance issues) you're going to be blown away when they pull the performance back up to what it was a few builds (patches) ago.

See you on the battlefield!

Tova

I wonder how much of that $8,000,000 is profit. I really enjoyed the video, the things said in it really reinforced my opinion of Unknown Worlds as being stellar.

ezekel

I do love all the work they do, and hope this reinforced helps them continue to support the game as they make their new title, but I'd really like for them you know to continue the balance changes and all that but put some full focus on to trying to pull out as much performance as possible for a few months (although I'm not sure if it's possible or there's some limit to the engine where it literally cannot be done) because if the performance improves to something incredible, then servers can improve, and then I can literally see the game not having many flaws

From that point it would just be how can we improve even more or something that's already good, things change here and there but I enjoy the game no matter what changes really; just wish it was running at what I hoped when I initially got it (which I dare not say :P)