![]() "About halfway through, when the money starts getting tight, we started thinking, 'why the hell didn't we get a Kickstarter?'" "Let's just close the doors, close the curtains, spend our own money and do it our own way, without having to answer to anybody. Ultimately, Stoic decided on what amounted to an "almost 180-degree turn" for The Banner Saga 2. It was a scary prospect." John Watson, technical director and co-founder, Stoic It's a full-time job, and we didn't have anybody dedicated to being that community manager. There's the setup portion, there's running it for the month, and then for the rest of the development you're supporting that community, answering questions, giving updates. "Running a Kickstarter campaign is extremely demanding. "We were quite exhausted at the end of The Banner Saga," he continues. Kickstarter is "the cheapest form of money" available to most developers, Watson says, but the attendant difficulties are easy to underestimate. When considering a sequel, most developers would have returned to crowdfunding as their starting point, but Stoic thought differently. The middle of 2012 was simply a good time to crowdfund a game, and all the more so if you happened to be leaving one of the biggest names in console development to make a visually stunning passion project. Looking back now, Watson acknowledges that The Banner Saga's performance on Kickstarter was serendipitous. So when we launched Banner Saga, from day one we had this huge engaged audience." "We did a multiplayer demo, Factions, and we maintained our community throughout that time. "A lot of things worked in our favour, starting with that attention through Kickstarter, which continued through launch," Watson says. The Banner Saga, Stoic's debut, was supposed to be "a one year game on our own savings," but a breakout Kickstarter campaign forced them to raise their ambitions Stoic asked the crowd for $100,000, and was duly handed $720,000. "We really neglected our community during the development of Banner Saga 2, because we were focusing on our work. As Stoic, success need only mean the ability to make the next game. At Bioware, success could mean selling millions of units. The advice he offers is much the same as that with which he and his co-founder Arnie Jorgensen reassured themselves when they decided to leave Bioware to start their own studio. Education, funding, publishing, retail every part of the chain seems a degree - and very often several degrees - more complicated.Īs one Nasscom's key international speakers, Stoic founder John Watson has been asked about success by a steady flow of eager Indian developers. Developers in India face virtually all of the same challenges as their peers in the US and Europe, but with a sackful more that directly arise from being part of an emerging games industry. Attending a show like Nasscom GDC lends a distinct perspective on success.
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