Possibly another Kickstarter

I knew about this, but didn't want to give it publicity. Since you posted it I'll give you a couple tidbits.

1. The timer is a little over 14 hours on my end so there may be a timezone issue.
2. Someone had said they read the sourcecode on pinkerton road and got the following

"First Tim, now Al and Jane Jensen starts in a few days with a $300.000 goal for a new adventure (one to choose out of three, GM2 is on the list besides two new titles)...

Great for the genre!
(..but I hope it´s not too much in a short time.)"

So unless the person is lying or Jane is skillfully trying to throw us off track it means no GK4. However no GK4 is great for Tex!

Craptastic, someone else going to the well.



I know what my priorities are....

The timer says 0 all the way across for me and there's nothing on the page. Late April Fools joke? (I suppose it might not be "late" if they started the timer on April 1st maybe). Or broken timer?

EDIT: Oh just looked on AdventureGamers:

I was surprised by your post, since the counter says 1 day and 40 minutes here. And then I looked at the source of the page, and it turns out that the stupid counter counts down to April 4th, 10 AM based on your computer's local date and time instead of the server's.

There's gonna be a few disappointed people in Europe when the thing reaches 0 for them and nothing happens... I'm guessing the correct time is 10 AM in Pennsylvania, since that's where the company's supposed to be located. Which means there's still about 21 hours and 30 minutes to go.

Also someone managed to sneak a look at the websites "Games" page (before they added a redirect) and found out the 3 games are: Gray Matter 2, Anglophile Adventure, and Moebius. It also apparently says they intent to make all 3 but letting fans choose which first.

Some are saying jane Jensen doesn't really own the rights to produce another Gabriel Knight over there too as its with some big corporation sitting on it, similar to how Tex Murphy used to be I guess whilst Microsoft were holding the poor P.I. to gather dust.

I'd like a Gabriel Knight 4 if like Tex Murphy it was a return to FMV in the vein of the Beast Within. I couldn't get into the third installment of GK, but I should give it more of a chance though, I just remember wandering around near the beginning and getting bored for some reason, a lot of people say the environments were poorly designed (little too early on the 3D bandwagon) but then Grim Fandango wasn't the pinnacle of 3D and I still felt drawn in from the getgo. People do say the story was good though if you can get past the other flaws.

I don't have any experience with Jane Jensen's other works so far though I'm sure they're good games.

It's live...

The main trailer they made is pretty fun. Nice concept art too, Moebius looks nice. Hope the Tex Murphy page will be really good.

In the FAQ they mention they don't have rights to Gabriel Knight but if they get their studio running and some successful titles they may be able to claw (werewolf pun) the rights back. But no promises and no info on what another GK would be.

I recall an old interview with Jensen from back in the day, about how the next installment of GK would refer to Grace going to India, while Gabriel heads to the UK. Beyond that, the word "ghosts" got dropped.

That's as far as anyone on the interweb knows beside Jane Jensen herself.

And, of course, over the years those plans might've changed.

-Fred

and in other news:
"Kickstarter projects are like jell-o - there`s always room for more"

Has that really only been running for around 13 hours? (going by the earliest comment). That's an impressive amount (already over halfway to their 400k goal as of this posting). Never played the Shadowrun series meself.

at this rate the only projects that'll get funded only will be ex-AAA. All the indie startups will get squat. *sigh* the system wasn't invented for this. I haven't the slightest clue why all of a sudden its become a huge deal to quickly jump on kickstarter, this should ideally be the last place you go to for funding.

They're clearly doing this to get out of having to pitch the game to publishers. The concern I have is if the publishers try to put an end to it. The flood of devs doing this is a huge sign that their days are numbered, I expect retaliation, and it could be very bad for the few startups who haven't even begun showing us what they can do.

Not to meantion it seems like the video games industry is single handedly pulling Kickstarter... which I find annoying as Amazon are pretending like Kickstarter is some huge revolution.. bullshit, this is community funding that's caused the revolution, its not exclusive to kickstarter at all and its only a matter of time before the industry realizes whats going on and cuts amazon out of it.

Getting really sick of seeing developers flood Kickstarter.. NONE OF IT HAS BEEN PROVEN.. ffs wait! give it time to prove itself first.. god damn. Its only for emergencies, its not something you just do.

Can I at least bloody see ONE of these do their pitch in production, not pre-prod.. so damn sick of this.. you're asking me to pay you funds for something you haven't even started. Leap of faith much?

I just want to say I love shadowrun, but geez..

love is not enough?

I just hope to christ the guys have not missed the boat,

it`s a rubber boat... for a while

Can't be surprised there. Shadowrun was another title ripe for this type of action. The previous revival was a horrible sham that let everyone down, and no heavy hitter would back a 2d role-playing game, it's just not sexy enough, and the AAA process is too heavy and cumbersome for a smaller project of this magnitude.

Just look at what is happening with the Syndicate revival, which is incomprehensible, considering an original isometric Syndicate update would fit perfectly well in the tablet and portable market. Unlike RPG's, their missions were short enough to last a bus trip or a wait-time at the dentist. It would have certainly provided a much-needed boost to the drab and repetitive casual games, and content those waiting for a proper revival. As a shooter, it brings very little to the table of any market, and costs an arm to develop.

Double-post retrospect. I'm actually somewhat worried about this surprisingly new tangent birthed by Shaffer, but not for the aforementionned reasons.

What I fear is that in the end, in such a case as Shadowrun, we won't be any better off than we were 15 years ago, once the game is released.

What I would like to see is 2d in HD. I woulk like to see heavily-populated environments, free of repeptitive sprites, that feel alive, with hundred of NPC's actually living and existing within this microcosmos. I want to see 15 years of gaming evolution, thrown into a 2d environment. All of which is nigh impossible to realistically achieve in 3d, considering the sheer amount of work required, but could be done in 2d, had games evolved in that direction.

With a 400k budget, while the table is no doubt set for a deeply-involving, story-driven satisfying rpg, you just know what type of indie product we will wind up with, despite their best intentions. In the end, they will have successfully revived a 15 year old zombie, with a heavy layer of makeup thrown at it, hoping no one will notice. An expensive piece of candy for the nostalgics to throw their money at, but little chance of a serious change in the larger productions. I could be wrong of course, but I don't forsee a positive reaction from the publishers to this sudden outburst.

I'm talking industry-wide here, of course. I will gladly take the revived Tex in whichever form our boys manage with the budget they end up putting together.