deanb

As in Apples TOS for iOS (and apps) is along the lines of: Don't reverse engineer our software, don't modify it, don't subvert our security features. Those are the rules you agree to when getting iOS. It is their software and services after all.

And the publisher gets their money to fund further studios and projects from where? It ain't from advertising. Advertisements, if anything, are the major drain on entertainment industry costs, not a source. The boundaries are more solidly defined than when they were with a publisher as far as funding goes though. A publisher can always throw more money at you down the line, with a KS project you're generally stuck with what you've got unless over a year into the process of your development a party outside of your control goes and implements an "Early Access" sales system which can provide a kind of saving grace. If SEA didn't exist what was going to be their plan? There likely was no outcry until now because 9 months ago when it was clear it wasn't going to hit the target it wasn't said that they'd miss the target by nearly two years. Risk averse publishers? Sure many of thier games are the sure fire hits. But it's hardly like the guy that's making a game that's the same kind of game he's been making throughout his career using funds entirely from people he is unbeholden to, as opposed to dipping into his own pocket, is a guy that is taking a risk. At most he'd get a dint in reputation, and just be able to shrug it off as "KS was new and untried on big scale projects". And I'm sure my view on the puzzle platformer scene and it's undue unchallenged acceptance as being "more creative" is well known. When the game got bigger though they should have re-budgeted. Project management. You sit down and go "we have this much money, this will cover x amount of voice actors, x amount of programmers for x amount of months. Here's projections with an error of margin". However it seems as if DF/schafer's method of project management was "we have 8 times the cash, shouldn't need to worry about anything with that much excess". I don't think the FTL guys success with their KS is down to having a mostly done game, I think it's mostly down to just having better project management skills. They had all the temptation in the world to make their game bigger and longer to develop and so on with the excess cash, but they knew what they'd said the backing would get and that it'd be a dark path to go down, and so just popped out what they promised. Even accounting for an acceptance that they must spend all the cash raised and not the initial $400K budget, they have gone over budget. Otherwise they wouldn't need more money to finish the game and not have to cut out 75% of the game. And of course it's not going to be less than $400K worth of game. A kickstarter project is still the same as a kickstarter project. It's just another useful example as a point of comparison (especially since you don't seem to like the comparison between two overly-funded video game kickstarters), and technically TN brought that one up so blame it on him. The main point of the comparisons/analogies is that there is no onus on the project to change the project if the funding is in excess, and many other projects have managed to deal just fine with being funded more than they needed. @TME: And the vagueness of "better and better" doesn't bother you? For a project that was trying to pitch themselves on openness the "better and better" is something that could be translated in any manner. Compared to "Over a six-to-eight month period, a small team under Tim Schafer's supervision will develop Double Fine's next game, a classic point-and-click adventure." "$400,000" "French, Italian, German, and Spanish" "PC, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android". It just seems arbitrary to be fine that the game has gone over $400K it was meant to cost, to now going over the $3.8million that it's still not actually going to cost.

The particular subset of users aren't meant to be using iOS, let alone the iTunes app store, though. Of course Apple probably could attempt some kind of method to check a jailbroken user and disable iTunes store access, but that's not exactly in their financial interests. As I said up top they've got your money, their lack of fucks is significantly reduced. It's shitty, and I'm someone that doesn't own an Apple device as I'm not keen on the shittiness they do and can get away with, but them's the breaks of using Apple's walled garden.

Yes it's intentionally modified to not work on jailbroken devices, but you're still SOL as a jailbroken, unsupported, out of warranty, all that guff, user. The message added being a later addition following the media complaints, there's technically nothing saying they have to add that, or that there's anything that could be refunded if you'd bought it before hand due to you buying it without support. And yes Apple are quite likely to know about it, given the hold the keys to the garden, but it's nothing they have to care about as long as it still works for the users they do support.

But surely saying it doesn't work on jailbroken devices (which Apple would never call as such, and also they'd have to check as part of their approval process too) is surely akin to supported said devices. It'd also technically need to be listed on every single app in the app store too, since technically nothing works on a jailbroken device. Instead, it's in their TOS on the whole reverse engineer, modify software, blah blah legal stuff.

"Because you're worth it"

@TME: No doubt that more money = better healthcare. Even over here's there's still private healthcare so if you can splash the cash you can get swanky rooms and machines that go "ping". For the average joe (and even us below-average joes) it's nice to have a fallback. Hear way too many horror stories of folks trying home methods first, ending up in massive debt, or just putting up with illness in the US. @Revan: Specialists generally always useful if anything goes tits up, birth or not. Still going to want midwives along for the rest of the ride. A lack of ability to deal with more specialised issues in birthing doesn't put them in the similar groups of homeopaths and other such quackery.

Because it would seem weird that the law would apparently require that Apple provide support for user modifications of the device that they not only expressly forbid, void your warranty if you do it, but also have no hand in creating and implementing. But I concede, as an american lawyer you are more than likely right on that case.

I'd imagine the TOS/EULA will get pretty specific on not jailbreaking your device and expecting apps to work fine and dandy. Jailbreaking may be legally fine and dandy, but I'd venture in a court of law they wouldn't be required to offer support given the user modified their own device and Apple cannot be reasonably required to to support every possible user modification of the device software. As for lying in advertising, they didn't say anywhere it would work with jailbroken devices. Though as it's unsupported there's not really much in the way of conventions to even do that anyway (compared to Android where many Play Store apps will specifically mark the requirement, or expanded features, of Rooted phones).

Where the hell did you hear that doctors in nations with socialised health care don't have to give even good healthcare? And I'm literally around the corner from a walk-in, you pop in, sit around for maybe an hour tops depending on how busy it is, and hey get to see a doctor. Also lol at Midwives being voodoo magic (which is making my doubt if you were being serious or not on the previous parts...). You maybe thinking of homeopaths (which NHS is currently dealing with trying to reject)? It'd be pretty weird to be happy to let someone look after your wife and child from pre-natal through to post-natal and thinking they're "voodoo magic" all that time. I'm kinda bummed I'm not ill often/at all. Kinda feel I'm wasting the NHS. Also that I'm likely to end up with something real bad when I'm older to make up for all this good health (minus the overweight n vision part) in my youth. Though have noted recently that I seem to have an issue with gait/leg length. An old PE teacher of mine had noted donkeys years back that I don't run properly but it was never expanded upon as moved school not long after and it was never brought up again. Just noticed a rather severe difference in wear on the soles of my shoes recently that's brought it up again. Just unsure if it's something worth seeing a doctor for though friends have noted could point to back issue in future and I know my mum has pretty bad issues with that to not want to deal with that.

But Apple don't support jailbroken devices. Which also means there's no required need to have it run on jailbroken devices or state they won't run on jailbroken devices. Sure it's a dick move, but a perfectly valid one.

http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/get-on-top-ouya-port A post on PAR from a dev about his experience in porting a game to Ouya. Obviously not a universal example given it was a relatively simple game, and built on AIR/Flash as well. Kinda shocked at quite the turnaround Kuchera has had on Ouya from when he first started posting about it.

Jailbroken devices may be legal, but there's nothing saying Apple have to support them in anyway shape or form. So yeah you'd be SOL if your apps don't run on your jailbroken device.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57593277-75/microsoft-to-businesses-invest-in-the-xbox-one/ Just in case the NSA having a backdoor into your company isn't a bother (though given you're likely also using MS Exchange, MS Windows, and MS Office already) Microsoft are also suggesting Xbox One could be good for use in the business world.

Also I don't know how long this'll be up, and I'll maybe see on getting a proper Youtube embed soon but: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x11tgr6_dragons-2-bande-annonce-teaser-vo-hd-1080p_shortfilms#.UeAUsSoQbN0 Some How to Train Your Dragon 2.

http://benprunty.com/2013/07/11/a-guided-tour-through-the-ftl-soundtrack-analysis-of-themes/ If you know anything about music (I don't) then this might be of interest to you.

@NeoStarr: And it'll only cost you like £2 to see some shady shit in action. tbh most of my time when I've been playing is spent doing NPC missions and mining, the shady shit is mostly top tier really-getting-into-it type gameplay that'd take a bit more than the included month to get to. Here's a list of heavily discounted non-daily deal games: http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1i4ws5/steam_summer_sale_2013_deepest_discounts/ These are, I'd say, quite safe to skip the usual "only buy it if it's a daily/flash deal" rule on.

That expanding the scope to match (and exceed) the budget given to them being perfectly fine would be the major point of contention. And no, not all backers were happy to find the scope had increased and the game delayed by nearly two years from the original 6-8 months. Market research is also how you find out demand, as you initially said KS was for. There's quite a bit more demand for army man shoots than many other types of game, but it's a false and lazy premise, ill fitting of you, to suggest only army man shoots get made through market research. And KS isn't about seeing "how far you can take the project". As TN noted with a project like Pebble, more funding didn't mean diamond encrusted watches, so why is DF attempting to make a diamond encrusted game? And given it's a common practice for Schafer and DF it means it's something that should have been resolved and assessed well ahead of time, not 16 months into an 8 month project. Heck, maybe within the early years of his career even. Spielberg dipped into his pockets to make his early early films, so slightly a moot choice of point there. He's also one of the three founders of Dreamworks, so he still does put his money where his mouth is even further along in his career. I'm still curious where you think money for the entertainment industry comes from if they're not using the regular business of using profits to fund further projects and growth. Also if Indie studios aren't using their own profits to continue going then where are they pulling the money from? They pull it from a publisher then they're not really indie, and KS is only recent so that can't be a source of game making money for most. Mojang would be pre-KS, the (massive) profits from Minecraft going towards founding a proper studio, hiring staff, further development of MC, and development of a second game Scrolls. No kickstarting, publisher or magical money printing machine needed. You specifically said " And there's an example of the ripples I'm talking about. For every line of dialogue, they're translating it into four more languages and that then requires the voicework at least in English (not sure if they expanded on that since the KS page)." so if the porting and languages (which dude who I imagine knows the budget on these things more than you or I has said isn't exponential then I'd go with them not being exponential) isn't what the ripples you're talking about, then what are the "examples of ripples" you're talking about? As for the physical costs of things, that only came in on the $100+ scale of things, which accounts for ~12K backers, and making 12K DVDs is probably cheaper since those kind of things tend to get cheaper as you scale up. If he's getting the 15% from an internal source in the studio then surely that'd be another sign of DF not being as transparent as promised? Until they're a bit clearer on how much they fouled up, having to take the 75% trimmed at current budget at face value. Thing is, people are complaining now. And they've massive amounts of wriggle room to complain with. The game is massively delayed, massively over-budget, and also partially compromised on their "rescoped" vision to boot. You'd have to try real hard to find something to complain about if you got the promised game, on time, for the $15 you paid for it. Oh and there's also the fact it has a ripple effect on other gaming projects. As much as it has helped make KS higher profile for funding games with, it'll work in the exact same opposite way too. Though as Goh notes it'll hopefully serve to make future projects better (obviously not DF's second one mind) if they get in the habit of posting projected costs and such. Showing they're at least somewhat capable of basic budgeting and project management. Also seems a weird to accept it fine for them to expand their scope to match the budget, but not be fine that they went all the way and past it. They wouldn't have done that if they'd not expanded the scope in the first place. I personally think it's reasonable, and it's what their original KS pitch said would happen with the funds, to use the excess to expand porting and translation, but the raw project should have remained that which was pitched and backed.

"Hey Apple, I bought a game through your store, and it doesn't work because I'm on a Jailbroken device an--*beeeeep* Dammit they hung up on me. In an email of all places too?!" Media attention and poor ratings would seem to be the way to go with this. And yeah refusal to buy future games too. Though they of course already have your money for this game.

I think they did it because they assumed jailbroken = pirating it. Which is funny as the pirated version works. :/ Hate to think what they'd do if they'd put it out on Android where they're all basically "jailbroken". I know my banking app doesn't like to work (though TN mentioned workarounds) if you're on a rooted device. Which makes sense. But for a game to go "you're jailbroken therefore you're a pirate" is silly. Kinda bummed the reddit dudes first leap was "fuck S-E" and not "Fuck Eidos Montreal" when it'd be Eidos Montreal that made the game. S-E have put out tons of iOs and Android titles for years and so far I've heard nothing like "You're on a Jailbroken device, Phoenix Downs won't work".

Endless Space I think it pretty ace, and the big edition is currently £8.49 at the moment. It's sort of a cross between elements of Civ, Sins, and Alpha Centauri. The updates are also pretty meaningful too, adding in extra races and such. I'd say my only issue is I'm sort of mixed on the combat system (though the new DLC spices it up so I hear). It's quite different, sort of a rock-paper-scissors-turbolaser approach, with "cards" you unlock through leveling up your hero units or through expanding your tech tree. It's just it's all quite a bit of luck in what you pick over what the other AI-controlled ship picks. Defense Grid is my fave tower defense games, and despite it being a TD and not some long winding RPG is one of my most played games on Steam. And it's only £1.74 without being a Daily Deal too. Last Remnant is a pretty neat JRPG from Square. The combat system is the main draw, sort of a mix of modern mainline FF titles with a dash of Tactics. Major issue is it levels up with you. You get higher Battle Rank, so does the enemies you fight as you progress. Also can take a bit until you get the freedom to make your own teams and battle formations. Also I've yet to finish the game, so can't say too much on the story. Characters are neat enough, Rush is quite headstrong compared to some other FF protags. Only £2.71 without Daily Deal too. Puzzle Quest 2 - Have this on my phone, neat game. Though I guess you'd have to like the match-3 kind of games to enjoy it. EVE Online - This tends to drop quite cheap to like £2 or so (don't buy it now). Grab it just to play for a month and say "I've played EVE". Killing Floor - Wave based zombie game set in England. Wait for it to be on sale. I'd gladly join in with folks to play. Dungeons of Dredmor - It's 87p. You could afford that fine if you sold a playing card or two. Avadon: The Black Fortress is one of my Humble Bundle surprises. Actually got it in the Android bundle but it's for tablets, which I don't have, so settled on playing it on PC. It's very old school looks and such, but with a few modern additions that I can't quite remember as I've not played it for quite a few months. Though you're better of getting it, and others, at HIB at the moment.

I was bought Hotline Miami by Maritain if that counts.

Progressed from a sketch http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1i1pdg/a_quick_sketch_i_did_in_my_notebook_modeled_by/ to an animation idea http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/1i3q3z/i_think_this_would_be_a_good_nsacritisising/cb0sg1w to the above animation in little under a day.

Not just Skype. MS have been quite happy to hand over pretty much everything. The source Guardian article linked is the better read.

Not quite, to gauge demand is to carry out market research. Kickstarter was just for demand there wouldn't be multimillion dollar figures thrown around. Pebble raised $10million from 68K people, but they'll have a much much higher demand than just 65K units. If the entertainment industries funding for further projects isn't being pulled from revenue and profits, then where is the money coming from? They don't have a magical money printing machine. If they are successful, and generate profits, then that is reinvested into further projects and studios. If they are unsuccessful then they fuck up and end up the way of THQ. That is how business works. You make revenue, you make profit, profit is invested into further growth. The FTL guys the funding of a company wasn't from the extra money, it was from their $10K backing. The FTL guys seeked $10K to finish up the game, found themselves as a company, and pay their music guy. Most of their money from the extra that they spent on the FTL stuff was just doing the now vastly ramped up reward manufacture and distribution. The rest is to be put toward further projects. The dialogue doesn't cost an extra $3.4million, nor does porting. As I said, if it does then these indies that are out there with games across multiple OSes and platforms must have some serious amounts of cash they're not letting on. As for pocketing the extra, going back to the second part on profits, do you think they're going to make zero extra sales on this? Cos they're going to, and they'll generate profits, and assuming their intention is to not become a true indie self-publishing and continue funding via KS for all their further game projects, then what is happening to the profits of BA except being pocketed? They're more open than a studio would be with publishers, but their openness is nowhere near they're claimed "total transparency" of the KS pitch or folks would have known well ahead of time it was this badly over budget and off key from the original pitch. They're so open the only reason folks that haven't backed it know about this is because the backers copied the post verbatim for everyone else to see. The analogy is largely flawed in that it makes an assumption that the full amount has to be spent. It also still works on the assumption that a KS project is pretty much like being funded by a publisher, but it's not one publisher with a big lump of cash, but lots of little publishers with tiny amounts. It kinda forgets that EA can pour extra money into a project* (like say...Brutal Legend which EA bought on and funded for the final stretch) whereas KS runs for ~30 days, and that's all the funding you get unless you go around it and go all Steam Early-Access (which is largely a game-only revenue, and didn't exist when their KS was done) and hope that that produces the extra revenue you need to finish your project, which you really should have budgeted ahead of time and maybe not assumed it needed to be "rescoped". I am confused where he pulled them having a 15% margin of error from. Assuming that the rescoping was necessary (otherwise they're already 800% over budget) Tim has said without excess funding they'd have to cut 75% of the game, but can release half of it in beta to SEA, implying they're more in the 50-75% over budget range. If they're only 15% short then that'd be accountable to porting and translation costs, so the regular Windows game in English should be doable, not only quarter to half of the game. *Also I'd need TN to confirm this, but if a studio pitched a game to EA, and budgeted it for $4 then EA wouldn't (especially in their current state) go "here's $30!". At best maybe go "well in our experience you're going to need a bit extra, stick to your budget but here's $5".