Precinct - Jim Walls Kickstarter!

[Rudy]

It did not even reach 25,000 with Kickstarter... so...

The Kickstarter had $85,000 pledged when it was canceled. A farcry from 500K, but definitely more than 25K.

As for not having a deadline, actually it does, for the sake of the development team. Keep in mind that pledgers are only charged when the next stage is reached (25K, 90K, 250K and 400K). Meanwhile however, development continues. So if a stage is not reached within a reasonable time, or worse, at all, who's paying for the development that goes on in the mean time? You guessed it. So you can bet the devs will do everything to get it done within a reasonable time and that they also have a backup plan should funding not go smoothly.

As for communication between the fans and the developers - I can pretty much guarantee that changed last night.

[Tawmis]

Well, if they get closer to the 400K mark, I will jump on. But the no deadline makes me VERY leery. And while I know you're a great Sierra fan, that still doesn't ease any comfort with the lack of information how anything was going to be done with the game itself.

Regardless, I am doing what I can to pimp it out on LarryLaffer.net (posting things on there and a Help Fund Precinct widget on the side), and posting it on the Larry Laffer twitter.

[Rudy]

I'm currently writing the dev team a long email about the complaints actually. The 2 main points: a) tell us how the game will be like and b) explain your plan so that people know it will be made in a timely fashion and what the backup plan is should the pledges stall. Those 2 things must be addressed for it to succeed.

[Tawmis]

I'm currently writing the dev team a long email about the complaints actually. The 2 main points: a) tell us how the game will be like and b) explain your plan so that people know it will be made in a timely fashion and what the backup plan is should the pledges stall. Those 2 things must be addressed for it to succeed.

Well the benefit of Kickstarter is reward tiers...

So if it does stall - will they suddenly offer reward tiers? Like donate 100 dollars, and voice one of the people in the game. (Or something).

So knowing how they will handle that would definitely help.

Because that original campaign as I said, just... sat there. Like it felt like he expected it would hit 500,000 with no effort being applied...

[Rudy]

The reward tiers were my third point

The physical reward tiers are imo not much of an issue, since they're going to open a store for it and I didn't really see anybody complain about it, but the non-physical awards should be brought in again as there is otherwise no incentive to pledge high amounts. The only thing they should be careful about of course is not to offer non-physical tiers that may turn out they can't fulfill (eg. your name in the game if the 400K doesn't get achieved, see point 2).

[Tawmis]

The reward tiers were my third point

The physical reward tiers are imo not much of an issue, since they're going to open a store for it and I didn't really see anybody complain about it, but the non-physical awards should be brought in again as there is otherwise no incentive to pledge high amounts. The only thing they should be careful about of course is not to offer non-physical tiers that may turn out they can't fulfill (eg. your name in the game if the 400K doesn't get achieved, see point 2).

Definitely. It's one of the areas they fubared. With that limited # $19 tier. I had asked on their FB page, for those that donated more (as I had), would they get it also, or was it limited to only those who donated $19 because it had a "limited number" of slots. So they removed it, put it back, and it was... just not good.

I also think having a physical copy of a boxed version should be something they should consider. I brought that up repeatedly, and he kept saying, "There's no plans for it." And that's just silly.

As you know, many of us Sierra "fans" are collectors. We want that boxed version to display.

[Expack3]

Apparently, Jim Walls has cancelled his Kickstarter for Precinct in order to do crowdfunding on a new, Precinct-specific crowdfuning site. The mean reason cited for the switch was so focus could be placed on the game, rather than having to worry about costs associated with physical rewards (although these are available separately).

NOTE: This was posted in the other Precinct thread. I merged them. - Tawmis

[Constantin35]

My 2 Cents...:

I proposed that 130 US$ tier because I thought it would be fun to have Jim Walls as a voice message on my answering machine. And because I had a small amount of hope, that the final product would be some sort of fun. BUT... regarding the information on the game (I didn't really followed the whole reward tiers being introduced, changed, cancelled and so on) it was weak from my point of view, to say the least.

PQ1 and PQ2 are probably the two most favoured games of all time to me. So, getting something like that, with such a storyline, protagonists you could identify with, follow their career, lifelines of their colleagues (Keith with his smoking, that guy who got into alcohol as his daughter was abusing drugs and so on) I had no problem paying that amount of money. To be brutally honest, I probably could even live with graphics in that old EGA AGI/SCI style.

BUT what I heard about the game sounded more like Kings Quest 8. Using a well-known franchise, but with a totally different gameplay. What I heard (and saw) about the gameplay sounded more like a 3D-Action thing like "Driver", and less like an Adventure. Which would have been fine (I might have not pledged, but that's okay) if on the other hand they wouldn't have always used the franchise. Daily Videos about Sierra Online and Police Quest seemed like fishing for these fans, while the gameplay looked like being targeted for a totally different audience.

Apart of that I think the goal was too ambitious from the beginning. Leisure Suit Larry did not get funded much more than 500K if I recall correctly. But LSL is a much stronger, more popular brand. And they got the kickstarter campaign right. Well covered by the responsible persons. And from reward tiers to stretch goals everything seemed to be pretty professional.

So, when they reset the campaign now I hope to get at least a little bit more information about the game. Will I get an Adventure in a sense of the Police Quest Series? Or will I get a 3D Action Game?

Kind regards,
Constantin

[Collector]

Perhaps they were thinking of something more along the lines of Heavy Rain?

[Tawmis]

So... yeah... Rudy, got any info about the game, the tiers, etc - the things you mentioned were a concern?

[Tawmis]

Also, on the site - any chance of creating a mail list folks can join to get updates emailed to them?
I check the twitter account, but that sees as much activity as it did during the KS campaign, which was next to very, very, very little.

[Tawmis]

Also - on the site, unless I am missing it - there's no way to create a new account. So I can't log in (or log into the forums), if there is one.

[Rudy]

This week an ama is planned and for next week a live Q&A chat with Jim and Robert. I'll be moderating it and make sure the necessary questions will be asked, but also anyone else can fire questions on it.

As for the forums, only people who pledged can comment (much like Kickstarter). I did request read-access for everybody though. Do you have read-access to the forums?
There were also issues with Paypal payments. Those were reportedly resolved a few days ago.

[Tawmis]

This week an ama is planned and for next week a live Q&A chat with Jim and Robert. I'll be moderating it and make sure the necessary questions will be asked, but also anyone else can fire questions on it.

As for the forums, only people who pledged can comment (much like Kickstarter). I did request read-access for everybody though. Do you have read-access to the forums?
There were also issues with Paypal payments. Those were reportedly resolved a few days ago.

Q&A would be awesome. Anyone allowed to do the Q&A or is it going to be backers only?

As for the forums, no access. You click forums from the drop down and it goes to the log in page.

[DeadPoolX]

Rudy, one thing you might want to mention is to whoever is sending out emails to backers, they need to change the subject heading. The most recent one I got (which was today at 10:20 AM) had the following as the subject: "Project Update #8: Precinct - from the creators of "Police Quest" (Canceled) by Jim Walls"

Granted, this is a minor issue, but the "canceled" part of the heading is misleading. The Kickstarter was canceled, but the project to make Precinct is still underway.