Shadowrun: Hong Kong - A Game You Can Trust

Couchpotato

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A website by the name of Clipping Error published a new article with their opinion about why the Shadowrun Hong Kong is Kickstarter you can trust. Here is a short sample.

Okay, so why is Shadowrun Hong Kong a Kickstarter you can trust? The reason is, Harebrained Schemes have earned our trust. Shadowrun not only created a big fan base for itself, it built up an audience that knows and loves the developer. People trust developers that deliver on their promises, and Harebrained Schemes have done nothing but deliver. In short, you can trust Shadowrun Hong Kong because of the people behind it. I’m not saying Pete Molyneux was untrustworthy, but a lot of people have said that he has a proven track record of failing in projects, but because he’s been around for so long people find it endearing.
More information.
 
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He should better have published such an article when the campaign was still running. ;)
 
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He should better have published such an article when the campaign was still running. ;)

Yep. Well, at least people still have an opportunity to pledge at a few select reward tiers through their Second Chance Backerkit campaign.

It's good to see that in spite of the "KS fatigue" and some rather big Kickstarter games being abandoned, it is still possible for developers with good reputations to have big successes with crowd-funding. This bodes well for CRPG fans as I still don't see a lot of publishers lining up to fund isometric party-based RPGs with turn-based combat.
 
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Yep. Well, at least people still have an opportunity to pledge at a few select reward tiers through their Second Chance Backerkit campaign.

It's good to see that in spite of the "KS fatigue" and some rather big Kickstarter games being abandoned, it is still possible for developers with good reputations to have big successes with crowd-funding. This bodes well for CRPG fans as I still don't see a lot of publishers lining up to fund isometric party-based RPGs with turn-based combat.

There really hasn't been that many abandoned kickstarters.
 
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He should better have published such an article when the campaign was still running. ;)
Yeah he is late by a few days , but better late than never as they say.^^
Yep. Well, at least people still have an opportunity to pledge at a few select reward tiers through their Second Chance Backerkit campaign.
Good to know as $15, or $20 is still a good bargain as it will probably sell for $30 on release. Now if only the new Underworld Ascendant would get funded faster.
 
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There really hasn't been that many abandoned kickstarters.

Not a lot high profile ones. "Clash" is probably the highest funded abandoned game that I can think of.

Quite a few smaller game projects have either been abandoned or seem to be in serious trouble (i.e., development hell), with no updates or signs of life for several months. Off the top of my head:

Confederate Express
RaiN
Days of Dawn
Echoes of Eternea
Ortus
Dwarfcorp
The Stomping Land
Code Hero
Kitaru (still hold out some hope for this one as they did actually create a beta, but there's been no update in several months and reports from beta backers are that the beta still needs a lot of work).

While it's true that out of those only Confederate Express, Code Hero, RaiN, and Clash have been officially canceled, there's a high likelihood that most of all of these projects will never be completed. And I'm sure there's more that I'm not aware of.

Perhaps the lesson to take from this is that we shouldn't back Kickstarter games from developers with no previous games shipped. But that would be a shame because there are some really promising indie games being made by first time developers. So I'd add a qualifier; unless they are already a playable demo or a significant amount of gameplay footage to show. Still won't completely eliminate risk but will prevent a lot of disappointments.
 
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Not a lot high profile ones. "Clash" is probably the highest funded abandoned game that I can think of.

Quite a few smaller game projects have either been abandoned or seem to be in serious trouble (i.e., development hell), with no updates or signs of life for several months. Off the top of my head:

Confederate Express
RaiN
Days of Dawn
Echoes of Eternea
Ortus
Dwarfcorp
The Stomping Land
Code Hero
Kitaru (still hold out some hope for this one as they did actually create a beta, but there's been no update in several months and reports from beta backers are that the beta still needs a lot of work).

While it's true that out of those only Confederate Express, Code Hero, RaiN, and Clash have been officially canceled, there's a high likelihood that most of all of these projects will never be completed. And I'm sure there's more that I'm not aware of.

Perhaps the lesson to take from this is that we shouldn't back Kickstarter games from developers with no previous games shipped. But that would be a shame because there are some really promising indie games being made by first time developers. So I'd add a qualifier; unless they are already a playable demo or a significant amount of gameplay footage to show. Still won't completely eliminate risk but will prevent a lot of disappointments.

I didn't back any of those games, why you ask? Because I didn't feel any of them were worth backing/could get the job done. Those are all high risk projects and if you were backing them you had to have known that.

Just because they are successful at the campaign doesn't mean they will be able to complete it. If anything this shows that people didn't do their research enough.
 
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I don't care if the campaign ended, with all the recent media coverage about the (very few IMHO) failures, I welcome any bit of good coverage for Kickstarter.
 
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More than anything, they are redoing what they have already done.
Same of the same old. Should they be trusted to deliver the same old as the same old?
Sure and for a discount of the cost they endured the last time.
Innovation, creativity and vision all the way.
 
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Well they will have created 3 games that are in total about the size of BG1 and in time it took to create BG1 so I see no problem. The problem is if they keep doing this for 5 years or more. On the other hand Avadon developer has been doing "same" thing for much longer.
 
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Well they will have created 3 games that are in total about the size of BG1 and in time it took to create BG1 so I see no problem. The problem is if they keep doing this for 5 years or more. On the other hand Avadon developer has been doing "same" thing for much longer.

The difference with BG1 is that, in BG1 you could only play for a few levels of D&D, the whole game only got you to, what was it, level 8? So they could make BG2 which would be completely fresh as you would go to higher levels, many new spells, more tactical options, etc.

In the case of Shadowrun, you could already get access to everything in the first game. The second game is the same thing except with a different environment and story. To people like me who focuses more on the combat than the story or the background environment, new Shadowrun games might not bring that much to the table, so I don't think I'll be getting more after Hong Kong.
 
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It seems a pretty safe cash-grab, but most fans are more than happy about it - so it's hard to blame them :)
 
Well they will have created 3 games that are in total about the size of BG1 and in time it took to create BG1 so I see no problem.
Size is one of the few things SR has in common with BG. Another is the connection with Bioware, considering that SR returns got strongly inspired by the lastest Bioware releases.
Inspiration and originality, the trademark of kickstarted projects.
The problem is if they keep doing this for 5 years or more.
They will run out of locations before 5 years. What are they left with? Another US city maybe and after that...
 
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Size is one of the few things SR has in common with BG. Another is the connection with Bioware, considering that SR returns got strongly inspired by the lastest Bioware releases.
Inspiration and originality, the trademark of kickstarted projects.

They will run out of locations before 5 years. What are they left with? Another US city maybe and after that…
I was not talking about locations but limitations in current engine and design and options of the game due to that.
They need to start thinking more and bigger like D:OS devs do and Witcher devs did. Each game should be a stepping stone to something greater. That is how true artists work.
 
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Size is one of the few things SR has in common with BG. Another is the connection with Bioware, considering that SR returns got strongly inspired by the lastest Bioware releases.
Inspiration and originality, the trademark of kickstarted projects.

They will run out of locations before 5 years. What are they left with? Another US city maybe and after that…

I'm pretty sure there are quite a few locations they could go with, even returning to seattle again if they wanted. I'm thinking there are enough source books out there to keep going for awhile.
 
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That is that. They could absolutely return to Seattle.
The HK location is the main difference with the previous one. If they were ever to return to Seattle, it would come full circle.

Sourcebooks: not really. The universe of Shadowrun did not age that well. When it started, it had that ominous appeal, it was somewhat anticipation.

Today, the universe is irrelevant as geopolitics evolved in such a different way than the ones depicted in SR.
Even Hong Kong is irrelevant as a setting.
Each game should be a stepping stone to something greater. That is how true artists work.
If true artists work like that, not that many true artists get crowdfunded...
 
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