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KickStarter Fig - a new equity-based crowdfunding platform - shut down, RIP

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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.

Our newest campaign is a mystery RPG by SWERY (Hidetaka Suehiro), the creator of the cult classics, Deadly Premonition and D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die.
Welcome to The Good Life. The game is set in Rainy Woods, the self-proclaimed "happiest town in the world." Here, you'll play as Naomi, a photographer from New York who finds herself stuck in this small town in rural England. She's found a way to pay off the massive debt she's accumulated, but she soon discovers that the town is hiding a very bizarre secret...

At night, all of the town's residents turn into cats. Why does this happen? Is this why everyone in town is so happy? No one seems to remember what they do at night. Naomi is here to find out what's going on in Rainy Woods.
The townspeople aren't the only ones who get to roam around at night as a cat - Naomi does too! Once the sun sets, you'll get to explore Rainy Woods and collect clues and important items connected to the events of the story. The town becomes a very different place at night, as certain secret paths, rooftops, and attics can only be accessed by cats. Take a peek at the campaign page for more gameplay details and be sure to leave your feedback in the comments! Also, we've lowered the minimum investment amount - Fig Game Shares for The Good Life will be $100 per share!
And now, a word from SWERY:

Hello everyone. I'm SWERY, the director of The Good Life.

Last November, I created my new studio, White Owls, and this is our first official announcement. From the bottom of my heart, I feel so proud to be announcing this game with Fig, a next-generation publisher.

This game will inherit the spirit of Deadly Premonition, my most representative work, but it will also feature a brand new style of gameplay. It's a mystery game based on the framework of a 'daily life RPG.' I'm positive that the happiest town in the world and the most bizarre townspeople in the world will capture your heart and pull you deep into their world. Please support The Good Life and help us bring this game to life.
I'm sure this game will make a lot of people happy!

I Love You All!!

 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
Atari partners with Fig for two new games, including "a reboot of one of Atari’s most beloved franchises": http://gematsu.com/2017/09/atari-fig-announce-partnership-develop-publish-two-new-games

Fred Chesnais, CEO of Atari

“Fig is providing a model where gamers not only help to get the titles they are most passionate about funded, but also have the opportunity to share in the financial returns with developers and publishers. We’re excited that Fig has opened up the vast potential of crowdfunding to IP holder and publisher alike by changing the narrative and allowing us to partner with our fans.”

Justin Bailey, CEO of Fig

“Atari is synonymous with video games. From the early 70s through today, they built the video game industry from the ground up through indelible franchises and groundbreaking consoles. The gamer community continues to play an ever-expanding role in helping publish games they are passionate about. At Fig, we refer to what we do as community publishing rather than crowdfunding, since a ‘crowd’ is passive, and we’re about much more than just funding. With Fig, the community is active in selecting the public campaigns we run, participating in the funding, getting the word out, playing early builds, and now even profiting like the investors who supported Kingdoms and Castles. The community has become the center of the publishing process, and this partnership provides the rare opportunity to engage with an industry legend in Atari to help publish two IPs, and share in the potential financial success of those games.”
 

Infinitron

I post news
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http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...y-success-asks-tough-questions-of-kickstarter

Equity crowdfunding's early success asks tough questions of Kickstarter
Kingdoms and Castles' success proves the model, Tim Schafer says, and Fig's Justin Bailey sees a niche future for donation-based crowdfunding

With the success of Lion Shield's Kingdoms and Castles, equity crowdfunding finally has the evidence to silence its dissenting voices. According to Double Fine CEO Tim Schafer, who sits on the crowdfunding platform's advisory board, "until we actually paid people money, nobody was going to really take it seriously."

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz before his keynote interview at Milan Games Week, Schafer enthused about the impact Kingdoms and Castles' could have on the status of equity crowdfunding as a concept, and the Fig platform in particular.

"I was waiting for that moment since we founded it," he said. "To be able to show people, because when it first started there were a lot of questions. It's really new, and especially with crowdfunding people are skeptical; they want to know, 'where does this money come from?'"

Indeed, we were among those asking pointed questions back in 2015, shortly after Fig officially launched, prompting a response from Gambitious co-founder Mike Wilson, another of the pioneering figures in equity crowdfunding. In Schafer's view, that kind of debate was inevitable, but far easier to justify in the absence of solid proof that the concept really works.

"By having a game that's actually returned two times on the investment? I mean, you can talk and talk and talk and talk about this stuff as much as you want, but until you actually pay people money nobody was going to really take it seriously. Fig was able to write cheques.

"There'll probably always be someone who's making crazy Youtube videos [criticising equity crowdfunding], but I think that this, at least, is the first time we've been able to prove it to the public. We always knew it was a very sound and interesting platform."


Tim Schafer, Double Fine

The people who bought shares in Kingdoms and Castles saw a 100% return on their investmentin two weeks. Lion Shield made its development costs back in just 48 hours, and earned more than $1 million in revenue across the fortnight; impressive figures for any independent developer, let alone the first to release a game funded through Fig. In fact, Schafer is engaged with the notion that Fig itself played a part in helping the game - already a high quality product, he stressed - to achieve that level of success.

"Whenever you do a crowdfunding campaign you get a community of advocates," he said, making sure to include donation-based platforms like Kickstarter in that assessment. "If people believe in you enough to invest money, then they believe in you enough to talk about you. It's one of the great things about crowdfunding, and maybe with Fig they feel that even stronger."

Schafer will find that out for sure next year. Having raised millions of dollars for projects through Kickstarter, Double Fine switched to Fig for its biggest game in years: Psychonauts 2, which raised almost $4 million in equity crowdfunding from unaccredited investors. Certainly, when we spoke to Fig CEO Justin Bailey at Digital Dragons earlier this year, he mentioned a more constructive and positive attitude as a key difference between "donation and charity" crowdfunding (Kickstarter, IndieGogo, etc.) and equity-based platforms.

Put simply, people who back projects on Kickstarter or IndieGogo often feel like they're buying a product, though in a strictly legal sense that isn't the case. This misconception is understandably commonplace among people donating money, especially when those donations are often incentivised with the promise of a free copy of the finished game. This somewhat misplaced sense of ownership is at the root of a great deal of anger around crowdfunded projects that either fail or underwhelm.


Justin Bailey, Fig

"One of the first things that people say is, 'Do you see how mad people get when it's $20 [donation]? How made are they gonna get when it's $2000?'," Bailey said. "But the thing is that they're not giving it [on Fig]; they're investing it, and because of that they actually act a lot more responsibly."

Bailey is hardly an impartial figure when it comes to Fig, but at Digital Dragons he made a convincing case for the ubiquity of the donation-for-reward model contributing to a sense of fatigue around crowdfunding in general. When Sony gave time and space on its E3 stage to Shenmue 3, Bailey saw it as "the peak of reward-based crowdfunding" - and potentially the start of its decline.

"The whole narrative of a major publisher - specifically Sony - using crowdfunding to fund a campaign, and them being the ones to profit from it, didn't go over too well," he said. This was one factor among several in "the narrative changing a little bit" around that time, along with crowdfunded projects with notable figures attached hitting the rocks, and the release of disappointing products after backers' waiting for years. All told, the dynamic had started to seem heavily weighted towards the creators, without enough protections for those donating.

In fact, the success of Kickstarter games has also contributed towards that fatigue. In his talk, Bailey pointed out that the top 50 crowdfunded games raised almost $50 million from backers, and they went on to bring in an order of magnitude more than that in revenue - based on his "extrapolations" from available data.

"The whole idea with Kickstarter is that the name really fits very well," he said. "It's this one-time tapping into your community, into their goodwill. Once you get that and you're successful, the thought is that you use those proceeds to fund future projects - not go back and continue to get free money."

Bailey openly admitted his own lack of objectivity, but Fig was established to provide a more sustainable alternative to the ubiquitous but deeply flawed version of crowdfunding offered by IndieGogo or Kickstarter. If that model is to remain, he said, it is better suited to games that represent an "expression of the art, that people want to support just so it exists," rather than games created with a purely commercial agenda,.

"I do think there's a risk of the charitable donations side of it going away, and I think for the most part it should go away," he said, save for the "expression of the art" exception mentioned above. "We're going to attempt to get our share prices down to $50, and make that so it's workable.

"And you still get a free copy of the game."
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
Heh, there's Fig bundle on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/bundle/5344/Fig_Games/

Fig is a community publisher. We involve the community of gamers and fans in the publishing process, with the mission of providing funding and promotion of fresh, innovative games from independent studios.

This bundle includes all the currently available games previously funded by Fig's community of backers and investors.

So I guess PoE 2 and Phoenix Project also will be part of this bundle.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
:hahyou:

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-03-08-randy-pitchford-joins-fig-advisory-board

Randy Pitchford joins Fig advisory board
Gearbox president signs on with game crowdfunding/investment platform

Fig has added another high-profile name to its roster. The gaming crowdfunding and investment site today announced that Randy Pitchford, president of Borderlands development studio Gearbox Software, has joined its advisory board.

"Randy brings a very unique set of industry experiences to Fig," said Fig CEO Justin Bailey. "He has had a massively successful career of developing monster AAA hits for some of the largest publishers in the world, as well as helping small studios bring their passion titles to market. Adding his knowledge to our advisory board will level up the Fig platform, benefit our developers, and allow us to bring the most ambitious titles to-date to our platform."

Pitchford joins an advisory board that already boasts a wealth of development talent, including Obsidian Entertainment CEO Feargus Urquhart, Double Fine Productions president and CEO Tim Schafer, inXile Entertainment CEO Brian Fargo, Indiefund co-founder Aaron Isaksen, and Harmonix Studios chief creative officer Alex Rigopulos.

"My expectation is that Gearbox Software and Gearbox Publishing can help inspire more developers to discover the Fig platform while also encouraging our audience of millions of gamers to become micro investors or otherwise support their efforts," Pitchford said.
 

Perkel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
15,810
They should add this guy on board:

Peter-molyneux-at-university-of-southampton.jpg
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
Speaking of Sean Murray, remember this game? Outer Wilds, the first game funded on Fig, is coming this year via publisher Annapurna Interactive:



Is Masi Oka still involved at all, I wonder.

edit: Steam page:

 
Last edited:

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
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Messages
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Codex 2014
Profits and not-so-profits for investors: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-03-16-fig-turns-a-profit-for-some-investors

Investors of Outer Wilds has seen profit even before the release. It turns out the new publisher of the game paid the investors 220% of their investment while buying the game's rights.

Fig turns a profit for some investors
Crowdfunding/investment site has provided positive returns on two of three released games, and one unreleased one


It's been two and a half years since the Fig let people support crowdfunding projects for a share of the revenues, and the early returns have been promising. Fig today revealed information on its first three released games, and a fourth as-yet-unreleased title that has turned a profit for backers.

Of the three released games--Kingdoms & Castles, Solstice Chronicles: MIA, and Trackless--the first two have already turned a profit for investors, with Kingdoms & Castles tripling supporters' money. Solstice Chronciles has barely made back its original money for investors (104.3%), but there's room for that to grow as revenue sharing on sales will continue through July of 2020. As for Trackless, Fig said backers have only seen 12.2% of their money returned to date, with revenue sharing ending in September of 2020.

Investors in a fourth project, Outer Wilds, didn't need to wait for the game to launch to cash out. They received 220% of their initial investment after Fig sold its rights to the game to Annapurna Interactive.

Fig noted that if an investor put the same amount of money into each of those projects, they would have seen a 59% return on investment on an average holding period of under a year.

"In just two years, we already have seen four games that were community published on Fig generate returns to investors," Fig CEO Justin Bailey said. "The speed of these returns to individual investors is unprecedented for our industry. As gamers increasingly reject donation-only crowdfunding, our model of community publishing provides indie developers with a now-proven method to bring their artistic creations to life."

This is shaping up to be a big year for Fig, as a dozen projects funding on the platform are expected to launch by the end of 2018. Included among those are two of the site's four biggest projects to date: Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire (which raised $4.4 million) and Phoenix Point ($766,000). Two more prominent Fig titles, Psychonauts 2 ($3.8 million) and Wasteland 3 ($3.1 million) are not expected until at least 2019.

Looking forward to see how PoE 2 will turn out, heh.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
FargoBot killer: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...-help-build-decentralized-publishing-platform

Fig acquires blockchain startup Ownage Ltd
UK company will help build the "Shard" decentralized publishing platform

Crowdfunding platform Fig has acquired UK-based blockchain company Ownage Ltd. Ownage will assist Fig in developing Shard, the company's upcoming decentralized publishing platform, separate from the Fig platform.

Ownage principals Alex Amsel and Jack Du Rose have joined Fig as a result of the deal, and additional funding has been provided by Neopets founder Adam Powell.

"Shard seeks to accomplish what we set out to do with Fig, center the publishing process around the people who are most passionate about the properties being created - the community," said Fig CEO Justin Bailey in a statement. "Shard will be offering a unique community-based approach to the funding, engagement, and cross-promotion of games."

Fig has already served as a successful funding platform for games such as Pillars of Eternity 2 and Psychonauts 2. Shard will be "owned" by its community, and developers will be able to publish on and use Shard even if they do not have a presence on Fig. However, Shard will be able to be integrated with Fig campaigns.

An unpublished Gary Gygax IP, previously announced for Fig, is planned to be one of the first uses of Shard.

Jeez, how more they should make the Gary Gygax IP deal worse?
 

TT1

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More information

FIG ANNOUNCES ACQUISITION OF OWNAGE, LTD.
Fig developing Shard, a decentralized platform for digital publishing; Gygax IP planned to be among its first uses
May 31, 2018 08:00 ET | Source: Fig

San Francisco, CA, May 31, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fig, the community publisher behind such games as Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire, Phoenix Point and Wasteland 3, announced the acquisition of Ownage, Ltd., a UK-based blockchain development company. The team is now working at Fig to build Shard, an open, decentralized platform for digital publishing. Its principals, Alex Amsel (founder of Tuna Technologies) and Jack Du Rose (co-founder of Colony.io), have joined Fig, and Adam Powell (founder of Neopets) has provided initial funding support for Shard.

“Shard seeks to accomplish what we set out to do with Fig, center the publishing process around the people who are most passionate about the properties being created - the community,” said Justin Bailey, Fig’s CEO. “Shard will be offering a unique community-based approach to the funding, engagement, and cross-promotion of games. We’re really excited to add the talents of Alex, Jack and the Ownage team to help Fig develop this platform for the games industry.”

To launch and build engagement with the Shard platform, Fig plans to work with established game developers and brands. Fig Publishing, Inc., Loose Tooth Industries’ subsidiary, has previously announced that it is working with the Gygax Trust to bring unpublished works of famed creator Gary Gygax to life, and is planning to allow the developer to use Shard to leverage these works and bring gamers new and deeper gameplay experiences.

Since Shard will be an open, decentralized platform, “owned” by the community of developers and gamers, all game developers will be able to use Shard regardless of whether they run a Fig campaign. Fig will also be using Shard and integrating it in Fig campaigns. “While Fig is sponsoring the development of Shard as an open, decentralized platform, it can be used and modified by publishers, developers and gamers completely independently of Fig. Fig intends to support the growth of the Shard community throughout its early development, with a focus on working with game developers to explore new innovations and opportunities enabled by the platform,” remarked Alex Amsel, Creative Lead for Shard.

Interested parties can sign up at www.shardhq.com for more information. Fig will be sharing further details as it develops the Shard platform.

Since its inception in August 2015, Fig.co has had four of the top 10 most funded video game campaigns: Obsidian’s Pillars of Eternity 2 ($4.4M), Psychonauts 2 ($3.8M), Wasteland 3 ($3.1M) and Phoenix Point ($766K). More than 10 new games that funded on Fig will launch during 2018, including the follow-up to Obsidian’s Game of the Year title, Pillars of Eternity 2, Julian Gollop’s Phoenix Point, and a battle royale on Switch, Crazy Justice. Recently Fig Publishing, Inc. revealed Fig Game Share investor returns for its first four released games.


Press Kit: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/wpe1bvrhylcshtd/AACCt18XCZzEVQRLEmiH_QIFa?dl=0

###

About Fig

Loose Tooth Industries, Inc. (dba Fig) empowers developers and passionate fans alike to bring well-known franchises and undiscovered indie titles to market. On Fig.co, the community is the center of the publishing process, and the focus is on successful development and commercial viability rather than solely on the funding campaign. In Fig campaigns, developers raise funding from the community of gamers and investors, who can pledge for a reward and/or invest in Fig Game Shares that pay a return based on the game’s sales when it releases.



Over 20 games have successfully funded on Fig, from high profile campaigns for Obsidian’s Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, inXile’s Wasteland 3, Double Fine’s Psychonauts 2, Snapshot Games’ Phoenix Point and Interabang’s Jay and Silent Bob Chronic Blunt Punch to innovative indie games including Kingdoms and Castles and Crazy Justice.



Fig Publishing, Inc. is a subsidiary of Loose Tooth Industries, Inc.
 
Self-Ejected

unfairlight

Self-Ejected
Joined
Aug 20, 2017
Messages
4,092
Because it's an easy money making scam.
 

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