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Succhiateste
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Hello people of 0 A.D.,

I really love this game, and I (like many others I guess) am shivering with a full playable release of 0 A.D.; and I (like many others I guess) think this game has a huge potential to become a wonderful game.

There is a crowd funding site called Kickstarter that recently is becoming decisive for the development of videogames that aren't backed by big videogame companies (example 1, example 2, example 3); watch the examples, they speak for themselves (Double Fine alone raised 1.000.000 $ in one single day!!!).

I think 0 A.D. would have a huge success on this site, so you developers could enjoy of the deserved takings, we gamers could hope in a final release in a relatively short time, and a great open source game could enter in the videogames wall of fame :-)

With love

Maurizio

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Kickstarter needs a U.S.A. address and U.S.A. bank account, and conforming to U.S.A. tax laws, so it doesn't work for a world wide team of developers.

Pledgie on the other hand can go into any Paypal account, so isn't tied to U.S.A. address, account or laws.

So Kickstarter is not for us, we might stick with Pledgie. But thanks for the feedback.

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  • 1 month later...

Kickstarter is all over the media these days, practically screaming for interesting new projects. The gaming community have just discovered that it can have a say in game development and the result is a bonanza over at Kickstarter with Double Fine-studio and the recent Wasteland project being prime examples that gain instant media recognition. I think it is foolish not take advantage of this new development. I don't know much about the "behind the scenes" work of this project, but I can hardly see the requirement for a USA based bank account, address and tax regulations as a problem if such a Kickstarter project were able to generate sufficiently large funds. It would take some organization and administering to get it up and running, admittedly some effort, but if the will was there I'm sure it could be realized. The funds could even be used to set up a USA based development studio with paid developers to work on the project full time. If the concern for the current developers being out of work has supremacy over getting a quality project out in a timely fashion for all of us players to enjoy I think the very core philosophy of the project should be reevaluated. But then again I'm just another gamer with a desperate hunger for quality games in this era of bland Triple-A, releases.

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Kickstarter is all over the media these days, practically screaming for interesting new projects. The gaming community have just discovered that it can have a say in game development and the result is a bonanza over at Kickstarter with Double Fine-studio and the recent Wasteland project being prime examples that gain instant media recognition. I think it is foolish not take advantage of this new development. I don't know much about the "behind the scenes" work of this project, but I can hardly see the requirement for a USA based bank account, address and tax regulations as a problem if such a Kickstarter project were able to generate sufficiently large funds. It would take some organization and administering to get it up and running, admittedly some effort, but if the will was there I'm sure it could be realized. The funds could even be used to set up a USA based development studio with paid developers to work on the project full time. If the concern for the current developers being out of work has supremacy over getting a quality project out in a timely fashion for all of us players to enjoy I think the very core philosophy of the project should be reevaluated. But then again I'm just another gamer with a desperate hunger for quality games in this era of bland Triple-A, releases.

Well, the issue with the latter is probably more the opposite. Setting up a kickstarter project or something similar, and especially having some studio do some of the work, would mean the introduction of deadlines, and more importantly, the need to have something to show at a set time. (Even if that wouldn't be required when setting up the kickstarter project/wouldn't be stated, it would still be implied and expected.) And that would mean that we might have to release something we're not satisfied with.

Regardless I doubt getting enough money to support a larger team working on the project isn't likely to happen, I mean it took 3 and a half month to reach 3250USD. Either way, the problem is probably more to be able to find someone/someones to do the work. The current team members don't generally aren't able to/want to, and it would take quite some time for someone else to know the code good enough for us to entrust with working on the game for money during a longer time. Once/if we'd have the funds necessary it might be enough to convince someone to spend the time to get knowledgeable with the code (provided we'd get the money without having someone, it's not so trustworthy to just say "we want to have a lot of money, if we get it we might find someone to pay" ;) ). By then we'd probably be finished with part 1 anyway =)

All that said, once part one is finished all cards are on the table again. If some members of the team wants to go through all the work and do part of the work/something different but still using the same engine/etc as a professional (i.e. for profit/or at least with paid developers) studio, then that's something we have to decide at that point. For now though it's out of the question. (The game is open source after all though, so it's not like anyone is forbidden to try and do something like what you describe ;) )

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Thanks Maurizio!

We are developing 0 A.D. for fun and not interested in compensation. (We only decided to compensate one specific developer temporarily and under special circumstances.)

Is there any programming competition or something that 0 AD can at least have a chance to be funded?

Edited by majapahit
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  • 1 month later...

I doubt we'd get much better results from buying stuff. Either they would be buying generic models which may be used in other games, or they'd pay oodles of cash to get specialized models. The quality of the stuff already in 0 A.D. stands well enough on its own that I'd say it would be almost a complete waste of money.

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There are some people that wants freeware and opensource videogames and projects on kickstarter. It's a source of money but isn't the way of 0 A.D, I think. But we can make a local campaign in US with kickstarter for make a campus party or anything similar for 0 AD.

---

Sorry for my bad english.

Edited by Catalanoic
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There are some people that wants freeware and opensource videogames and projects on kickstarter. It's a source of money but isn't the way of 0 A.D, I think. But we can make a local campaign in US with kickstarter for make a campus party or anything similar for 0 AD.

Indeed. I don't think you need WFG's express permission to do things 0 A.D.-related. You only cannot claim to do things in the name of WFG or defraud people claiming to be WFG.
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Indeed. I don't think you need WFG's express permission to do things 0 A.D.-related. You only cannot claim to do things in the name of WFG or defraud people claiming to be WFG.

Perhaps community activities & crowdfunding should be informed to WFG before and after the event to prevent misunderstanding?

However it should be acceptable to publicly claim as 0 A.D. community or 0 A.D. supporters. :roman:

Edited by majapahit
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Maybe the staff can contact a college and ask if they can present students working on video game design to help so that they can get experience for when looking for a job like an internship

This is a nice idea so some students can get their internship points from WFG. However WFG must provide a proof/notification after the internship period is over to the faculty stated that the following student has performed internship and so on.

Edited by majapahit
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In that case, Google Summer of Code would be a better bet. Less management for 0 A.D. folks - they mainly have to provide guidance to one or more students, while Google and the student takes care of the more organizational aspects. At least that's what I've understood from it; no direct experience.

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  • 1 month later...

"Where there's a will, there's a way" is an old English proverb that I think is fitting in this case. Have a look at this:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/659943965/planetary-annihilation-a-next-generation-rts

I think there is a huge interest for this game and if only people were alowed to contribute financially to it's success.. Please think about it one more time, please..

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"Where there's a will, there's a way" is an old English proverb that I think is fitting in this case. Have a look at this:

http://www.kickstart...-generation-rts

I think there is a huge interest for this game and if only people were alowed to contribute financially to it's success.. Please think about it one more time, please..

Thats pretty great, and I agree with you. But such decisions are based on consensus, so some more discussion might take place. :)
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Problem is that it puts pressure on the team on several levels. And people still haven't gotten all of what they've already donated for in the previous two donation campaigns (mainly a more efficient pathfinder). I don't mind waiting, but I think people expect a higher level of responsiveness with larger campaigns like on Kickstarter.

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If we did a kickstarter, we'd need someone in the US that would be happy to lend their bank account (which is not likely given tax issues).

We'd also need someone willing to work full time. We'd probably want to get 2 years worth to make it worth it (~$100,000 USD).

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0 AD seems like it could make a boatload from a crowdfunding system. Its already got global exposure and support, you proved you could commit seeing as its been 10 years, work definitely gets done.

On the other hand because its open source you already get it free. It seems like you are mostly paying for a speed increase and maybe a bit of codebase cohesion and optimaztion. Of course I presume there would also be cool swag for donating. God I hate the word swag...

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I think that before you get into massive-scale crowdfunding, you'll need to have the new website up first and already have a merchandise store set-up. The quality of the main website does not portray the quality of the game imo. And having a merchandise store already set up would make further logistics of issuing possible rewards so much easier.

The money made with crowdfunding could be used in many ways:

- paying current developers and/or hiring freelancers to help with long-standing issues

- hold your own competition for implementing new features or making new models

- paid advertising, as a way to attract more developers & users. I mean smart advertising though, don't think that throwing piles of money on google adwords would help a lot...

Atm 0 A.D. is a well known open-source project, but many indie gamers don't know about it (we would have seen more "Let's plays" otherwise). Crowd-funding could change that, I think

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The brilliant thing about this way of funding a project is that if a goal is not met, the backers get their money back. If the goal is say 250.000 then the work will only commence if this financial goal is met. In addition to this, it serves as a brilliant indicator for how much interest there is for any given project. But as I've said before, I still think there is a limited window of opportunity for this to work, the novelty factor is starting to go away and a few years from now no game or tech sites are gonna write about games being funded this way.

I'm not an expert in open source etc, so forgive me if I'm incorrect, but wouldn't it be possible to branch of the project and use crowd funding to develop the branch further while the "original" keeps being developed the old fashioned way? The crowd-funded version could for instance focus more heavily on things like perfecting the on-line competitive aspect of the game etc

Edited by Peter
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