sny
5th March 2012, 11:38 AM
Whew, it's been a while since I posted here... good to see these forums are still active. :P
What brought me out of my hibernation is the recent success of Tim Schafer's idea of community funding his newest point&click adventure game (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure). I'm sure most of you have heard of it by now, but in case someone hasn't, here's the gist of it:
Double Fine (http://www.doublefine.com/) productions started a fundraising via the online site Kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com/) for something they couldn't convince publishers of: releasing an old-school point&click adventure game. The target budget included weekly video updates created by a separate documentary team and the project would start once $400,000 was donated by the community. That target was achieved in 8 hours, and they're currently at 2.4 million dollars, with about a week to go.
Double Fine's project got me thinking. What other thing would I like to see made that developers could never sell to publishers as a viable investment of their money, but the gaming community would just gobble up? One of the first answers I came up with was: additional tracks for WipEout HD! There are still a large number of Pure/Pulse tracks that could be remade for WOHD, not to mention the ones featured in the recently released WipEout 2048. Since - in my experience - the number of tracks are what give the most amount of longevity to a racing game, this would bring out a lot of WipEout players from their slumber (myself included) and get them playing the game actively again, and aside from importing and modifying geometry, retexturing the tracks and playtesting them, there's not much else involved, from what I can tell.
That being said, I'm pretty much clueless as to how much this would actually cost, so without that (and helpful statistical data, like the number of people who bought (as opposed to received for free via Welcome Back package) the Fury DLC) it's hard to estimate for me whether this would work at all in the case of a DLC for a game already released a while ago, but if the target funding isn't met, then worst comes to worst everyone who pitched in just gets their money back and a question has been answered. But I'm already overthinking this and getting ahead of myself. For now, there are three things I'm interested in:
Am I the only one interested in new tracks being released as DLC for WipEout HD (I hope not, that would make me a sad panda :( )?
Would fans of the WipEout series be willing to fund such a project in advance?
Would - and more importantly, could - Studio Liverpool do it if the backing was there? Or are there technical/legal constraints I'm not aware of?
So there you have it. I'm eager to hear the opinions of everyone, especially Studio Liverpool. What do we all say to revitalizing the game that sold so many PS3-s (mine included)? I'd like to be part of it... :rolleyes:
P.S.: If a moderator feels that this topic is better suited for the "Future of WipEout" section of the forums, then by all means move it there. I'm not even sure whether this initiative should be restricted to HD at all.
What brought me out of my hibernation is the recent success of Tim Schafer's idea of community funding his newest point&click adventure game (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure). I'm sure most of you have heard of it by now, but in case someone hasn't, here's the gist of it:
Double Fine (http://www.doublefine.com/) productions started a fundraising via the online site Kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com/) for something they couldn't convince publishers of: releasing an old-school point&click adventure game. The target budget included weekly video updates created by a separate documentary team and the project would start once $400,000 was donated by the community. That target was achieved in 8 hours, and they're currently at 2.4 million dollars, with about a week to go.
Double Fine's project got me thinking. What other thing would I like to see made that developers could never sell to publishers as a viable investment of their money, but the gaming community would just gobble up? One of the first answers I came up with was: additional tracks for WipEout HD! There are still a large number of Pure/Pulse tracks that could be remade for WOHD, not to mention the ones featured in the recently released WipEout 2048. Since - in my experience - the number of tracks are what give the most amount of longevity to a racing game, this would bring out a lot of WipEout players from their slumber (myself included) and get them playing the game actively again, and aside from importing and modifying geometry, retexturing the tracks and playtesting them, there's not much else involved, from what I can tell.
That being said, I'm pretty much clueless as to how much this would actually cost, so without that (and helpful statistical data, like the number of people who bought (as opposed to received for free via Welcome Back package) the Fury DLC) it's hard to estimate for me whether this would work at all in the case of a DLC for a game already released a while ago, but if the target funding isn't met, then worst comes to worst everyone who pitched in just gets their money back and a question has been answered. But I'm already overthinking this and getting ahead of myself. For now, there are three things I'm interested in:
Am I the only one interested in new tracks being released as DLC for WipEout HD (I hope not, that would make me a sad panda :( )?
Would fans of the WipEout series be willing to fund such a project in advance?
Would - and more importantly, could - Studio Liverpool do it if the backing was there? Or are there technical/legal constraints I'm not aware of?
So there you have it. I'm eager to hear the opinions of everyone, especially Studio Liverpool. What do we all say to revitalizing the game that sold so many PS3-s (mine included)? I'd like to be part of it... :rolleyes:
P.S.: If a moderator feels that this topic is better suited for the "Future of WipEout" section of the forums, then by all means move it there. I'm not even sure whether this initiative should be restricted to HD at all.