Incline Neal Hallford and Betrayal at Krondor Sequel Thread

[FrancoTAU]

I like that I got lost in BaK whenever I would go offroading from the main narrative.

Hey Neal, how are you going to handle combat? It sounds like Turn based is the way you're going, but would we do the combat in the 3rd person view as a blobber or would you shift to an isometric grid like BaK? Or something else completely?

I think the hardcore cRPGer all have their preferences, but the camera angle choice isn't going to be the thing that makes or breaks it for most of us. I'm fine with the third person view. If you like for specific design reasons, than go with it and if you can afford to let us change it in game than go for that. The tablet thing is probably the only thing you mentioned that would have half of us instantly tune out the rest of your pitch. The other thing to not do is what Thorvalla or Shaker did with their half ass pitch. Otherwise, between your history and the non tablet stuff you mentioned, I think it sounds good. Just flesh out the story, combat, setting, character progression, visual direction before you launch a KS.

It seems a bit whorish, but you should stick with some kind of "Betrayal at ...." title. If you genuinely intend on making a spiritual sequel than you shouldn't feel bad about some cheap marketing trick.

 

[Cool name]

Since when do you pay money for games?

Spoiler

I did always buy a few games. Mostly PS3 games but a few DS ones too. A couple of PS2 and PSX games as well for collection purposes. On PC I do rarely buy because, well, several reasons: I do not trust demos and none of my close friends does play PC games much if at all, I am borderline computer iliterate so I can't bloody run many of them until my brother does get tired of being followed around the house by a pair of puppy eyes who at random do call 'Ooppaaaa...' in a baby like voice, and to be honest my collection is based around style, theme, and mood mostly. What game one does have in her collection is as much of a statement as what clothes does she have in her closet, and should be picked with the same care. Do get a lot of slow number crunching games and you will be forever be a nerd in people's minds for example. Do get a lot of violent and bloody action games and you will always be a tomboy, etc. Few PC games do come out that do fit into mine.

Originally that did meant I did play a lot of games that I did not buy because they were, say, guilty pleasures for me and my dad was not going to give me that much money for games when I do already spend a lot on clothes and music and tutors and stuffies (and he always thought games were a waste of time anyway so...). Now I do rarely play videogames anymore and after all the weird bleep I did to my head it does seem I did manage to more or less indoctrinate myself to only enjoy those games that do fit the pattern I do deem acceptable so while I do still torrent every single thingie that does come out (I have yet to discover how to indoctrinate THAT out of me) I do rarely play those games more than a few minutes before going back to do more constructive thingies and then deleting them two weeks later when I do notice I haven't touched them since then.

So right now I do buy most of the games that I do play.

 

[Rhuantavan]

It's quite something when 20 years later Betrayal is still probably the best written game ever made and has gotten character development and dialogue far more right than any of BioWare's awkward attempts.

I think that what made it so special was that it looked and played just like a novel in so many different ways, it left quite many things to the imagination. Remove many of these elements, and it won't be quite the same thing anymore. It is just so eerie, it takes you in a completely different world and immerses you in its unique atmosphere. No other game has produced quite the same mood.

I don't think it would be necessary to make extensive assets, but in fact although I constantly got lost, the fact that you could discern so little actually helped the game's mood. Just basic assets without special effects to them and without much detail would be more than enough, and much better than any of BioWare or Bethesda's attempts at ultra-realism. Hinorobu Sakaguchi said a while ago that nowadays games showed way too much, leaving no room for the imagination.

So, I hope that the game will play and look like a book in as many different ways as possible just like Betrayal, in that it will make you think constantly about what you cannot really see.

Also, although that's probably not doable, I think that the actors in real costumes added to the game. They looked kinda silly in amateur D&D costumes, but I think that's the point. It made them easier to relate to us regular people than Gears of War characters. It's always much easier to identity to real people, we always reject approximate CGI attempts because of the "uncanny valley" effect. Maybe insert that as a stretch goal, or even have the higher tier be an occasion to become a character portrait for the game?

Since I cannot BROFIST anymore...

 

[nealiios]

Make sure the game doesn't feel souless like Betrayal in Antara.

Have no fears in this regard. I had ZERO involvement in Antara, and neither did any of the rest of the initial team. Sierra Online decided (after both John and I were both gone, and the rest of the original team had been dispersed to other projects) that they wanted to milk the same cow again. It's like when a movie franchise hands over the keys from one director to another. When you change the creator, you change the heartbeat of the project. So thus, the different feel to it.

 

[nealiios]

It's quite something when 20 years later Betrayal is still probably the best written game ever made and has gotten character development and dialogue far more right than any of BioWare's awkward attempts.

So, I hope that the game will play and look like a book in as many different ways as possible just like Betrayal, in that it will make you think constantly about what you cannot really see.

The "book/chapter" structure of the game is another one of those features that I consider a core tentpole of the series. Without it, it's just another RPG. Unfortunately, it's also one of our "limiters" in terms of audience, and one of the reasons our potential audience is small. Young players are going to have little --- to no --- patience with it.

If you've sat through as many focus groups as I have, you'll see that one person in about thirty actually reads anything that pops up on screen...and I mean ANYTHING. Dialogue, quest information, your machine has had a fatal exception and here's the crash code...they read NOTHING. They slam on that space bar like it's their only access to oxygen. "Just shut up and give me the quest/money and let me start playing again!!!!!!!!!!!" I'll tell you, after you've spent months writing your guts out, getting no sleep, editing the same paragraph for thirtieth time, trying to meticulously craft something...god that kills me. It makes me fear for the future of literacy. I make games for a living, yes. I love my technology, yes. But I love the written word too. If there's ever a really SERIOUS earthquake here in SD, I'll probably die being buried under my personal library.

It would be possible to make another RPG without the book metaphor, but it wouldn't be a "Betrayal" title.

 

[Moribund]

You are SO dead on, Haba. Having done this for twenty three years now, once you do something one particular way, god help you if you decide you want to do something a little different. This becomes especially true when you're working in a corporation for someone else. They forget that designers become designers to DESIGN, to try new things. We don't do this because we want to make widgets. And that's not just gamers, of course, but human nature. People resist change. Gamers are just A LOT MORE VOCAL ABOUT HOW MUCH THEY HATE YOU.

The thing is, while it may be new to you and sound super cool, it's not new to us in the least.

Showing too much and focusing on how nifty 3D is just drives up the expense and doesn't add anything, and it's not going to impress anybody unless it's 5x better than crysis anyway.

Your market is even older than the WL 2 crowd, which at least had the more recent fallout ties to draw on.

The problem with thorvalla is that it was only vaguely like what was made before. Honestly yes, you had better make something very near to BaK or your kickstarter is going nowhere, that's just reality. A name is just enough to get people to listen, and there's now way too many places to put that KS money instead.

Overhead map like fallout for travel, or first person map like BaK and Gold Box are the only options that make any sense for your market. No one cares about seeing the party waltz around thse days this isn't final fantasie II you're making. To be blunt nothing else is going to get kickstarted, and I'd recant as early as possible to avoid confusion about what you are doing.

Same thing with iOS or tablets. Nobody wants that, no one's going to back it. The people who do want tablet games are hipster mac tards and fat housewives, not computer nerds. Your market is nerdy dudes in their 30s and 40s and even 50s, nobody else is going to even bother looking at a kickstarter by the guy from BaK, and 0% of them are going to back it.

So I dearly hope you take the lesson from thorvalla and really from all the kickstarters. The ones that manage to make nostalgia and seem very near something that was a classic get funded. Having "little" things like camera style and combat be something different than those games will make people pass it up completely.

Thorvalla - total failure.

WL 2- unexpected success.

PE - absolute clone in most ways, even bigger success.

Ultima nonsense - Even with Garriot's HUGE name it's doing much less well than the Torment KS even though VIRTUALLY EVERYONE is TEN TIMES the ultima fan as torment fan, and they outnumber torment fans by a HUGE margin.

So don't try to argue, don't equivocate, just accept it. It's reality and you can't go against it. There's a similar following to RoA as there is to Torment, both much less than Ultima but significant.

If Guido had pitched straight up RoA clone and explained it well and made a decent pitch it would have funded easily. He didn't and failed. Same deal here, same for all of them. People who pitch random crap always fail. If instead of shaker they pitched spiritual wiz 9 then it would absolutely have funded unless they did something terribly wrong.

People will accept and even support a whole new setting but as far as gameplay and basic style goes, it's 100% nonnegotiable. I'd love to see something similar to BaK but I mean with the exact same basic mechanics, not something where the "story" is the same or the setting. I want new stories and settings but could play 100 games with that similar style if there's new stuff to do and new places to go.

 

[abnaxus]

I thought Betrayal in Antara had an interesting setting and decent story, it's just that the protagonists were pretty bland after Betrayal at Krondor.

They went from seasoned warriors/thief to adolescents (including token female likely only put in for the purpose of sexual tension with the whiny noble) - and the mage in Antara was a bad clone of Owyn. Who knows, maybe the team was inspired by jRPGs.

But BiA's magic spell research system was a great addition, I actually prefer it over BaK's awesome unique spells.

Also what Antara had that should be in every single "Betrayal" game is PUZZLE CHESTS.

 

[Western]

You are SO dead on, Haba. Having done this for twenty three years now, once you do something one particular way, god help you if you decide you want to do something a little different. This becomes especially true when you're working in a corporation for someone else. They forget that designers become designers to DESIGN, to try new things. We don't do this because we want to make widgets. And that's not just gamers, of course, but human nature. People resist change. Gamers are just A LOT MORE VOCAL ABOUT HOW MUCH THEY HATE YOU.

The thing is, while it may be new to you and sound super cool, it's not new to us in the least.

Showing too much and focusing on how nifty 3D is just drives up the expense and doesn't add anything, and it's not going to impress anybody unless it's 5x better than crysis anyway.

Your market is even older than the WL 2 crowd, which at least had the more recent fallout ties to draw on.

The problem with thorvalla is that it was only vaguely like what was made before. Honestly yes, you had better make something very near to BaK or your kickstarter is going nowhere, that's just reality. A name is just enough to get people to listen, and there's now way too many places to put that KS money instead.

Overhead map like fallout for travel, or first person map like BaK and Gold Box are the only options that make any sense for your market. No one cares about seeing the party waltz around thse days this isn't final fantasie II you're making. To be blunt nothing else is going to get kickstarted, and I'd recant as early as possible to avoid confusion about what you are doing.

Same thing with iOS or tablets. Nobody wants that, no one's going to back it. The people who do want tablet games are hipster mac tards and fat housewives, not computer nerds. Your market is nerdy dudes in their 30s and 40s and even 50s, nobody else is going to even bother looking at a kickstarter by the guy from BaK, and 0% of them are going to back it.

So I dearly hope you take the lesson from thorvalla and really from all the kickstarters. The ones that manage to make nostalgia and seem very near something that was a classic get funded. Having "little" things like camera style and combat be something different than those games will make people pass it up completely.

Thorvalla - total failure.

WL 2- unexpected success.

PE - absolute clone in most ways, even bigger success.

Ultima nonsense - Even with Garriot's HUGE name it's doing much less well than the Torment KS even though VIRTUALLY EVERYONE is TEN TIMES the ultima fan as torment fan, and they outnumber torment fans by a HUGE margin.

So don't try to argue, don't equivocate, just accept it. It's reality and you can't go against it. There's a similar following to RoA as there is to Torment, both much less than Ultima but significant.

If Guido had pitched straight up RoA clone and explained it well and made a decent pitch it would have funded easily. He didn't and failed. Same deal here, same for all of them. People who pitch random crap always fail. If instead of shaker they pitched spiritual wiz 9 then it would absolutely have funded unless they did something terribly wrong.

People will accept and even support a whole new setting but as far as gameplay and basic style goes, it's 100% nonnegotiable. I'd love to see something similar to BaK but I mean with the exact same basic mechanics, not something where the "story" is the same or the setting. I want new stories and settings but could play 100 games with that similar style if there's new stuff to do and new places to go.

I agree with you on the 3D thing in the sense it's probably going to add to costs and not really bring in pledges, possibly pushing them away. The thing with Thorvalla though is that it would have failed even if it was a straight clone, BAK was just never that huge compared to some of the other titles, was an older title and Guido was not as well known as Fargo and other producers and he asked for too much money as a result. He really should have looked at ways of doing the project for less if he really wanted to do it, his pitch and persona also hurt the kckstarter a little.

Personally though I backed Guido's project because I was willing to give a different gameplay stye a go, there are probably others willing to accept gameplay changes if they aren't popamole decline but it's true the mony raised wouldn't be as high as if a straight clone was delivered instead... kickstarter targets/budgets should be adjusted accordingly depending on what you want to do Neal.

 

[Infinitron]

Ultima does not have a larger fanbase than Torment. Even with Ultima Online they're equal in size at best.

The "book/chapter" structure of the game is another one of those features that I consider a core tentpole of the series. Without it, it's just another RPG. Unfortunately, it's also one of our "limiters" in terms of audience, and one of the reasons our potential audience is small. Young players are going to have little --- to no --- patience with it.

If you've sat through as many focus groups as I have, you'll see that one person in about thirty actually reads anything that pops up on screen...and I mean ANYTHING. Dialogue, quest information, your machine has had a fatal exception and here's the crash code...they read NOTHING. They slam on that space bar like it's their only access to oxygen. "Just shut up and give me the quest/money and let me start playing again!!!!!!!!!!!" I'll tell you, after you've spent months writing your guts out, getting no sleep, editing the same paragraph for thirtieth time, trying to meticulously craft something...god that kills me. It makes me fear for the future of literacy. I make games for a living, yes. I love my technology, yes. But I love the written word too. If there's ever a really SERIOUS earthquake here in SD, I'll probably die being buried under my personal library.

It would be possible to make another RPG without the book metaphor, but it wouldn't be a "Betrayal" title.

In a word -:patriot:

 

[nealiios]

It's always weird realizing that devs read this place and see your posts calling them shitheads and morons. I guess any serious dev would want some unfiltered feedback about their project..

Actually the REALLY weird thing is this bizarre "us and them" attitude that I've watched develop between designers and fans over the past twenty years. Where did this come from? Why do we have to behave as though there's a war going on, and "it's consorting with the enemy" to try and have a reasonable conversation?

Please understand that game developers aren't just grown in a vat in a factory somewhere. We ARE you guys. We got into making games because we ARE gamers. Just like you, we play other people's stuff. It's honestly mind-boggling when we've got fans screaming at us because we're THE MAN and we're keeping them down, like we're some kind of anti-christ outsiders, like we don't really love games. And I wish I could say this was a one-sided problem, but my colleagues in the industry are JUST as guilty. I've spent countless hours watching other devs beating their heads against the wall, bewailing how stupid players are, how whiny they are. And for the sake of full disclosure, I've had many of those moments myself, though I'm not proud of them. It's just stupid tribalism hardwired into our genes, I guess. US/THEM = FRIEND/ENEMY. Maybe it's the same competitive spark that makes us gameplayers that also turns all of us into douchebags when we feel that our wants are being thwarted. The sad thing is, this draws a line between us when we should be allies and friends.

Questions, and expressed concerns, and constructive criticism are all part of what goes into making a good game, and I'll be glad to hear what you guys have to say. I'll try and be responsive when I hear really good ideas, or when I need to take an axe to a bad idea of my own. But let's try not to make this a battle between you guys and me. Let's kick around ideas, not people. Let's take this opportunity to work together on something that I'll be proud to have made, and that you guys will be happy to play. Deal?

 

[HobGoblin42]

Same thing with iOS or tablets. Nobody wants that, no one's going to back it. The people who do want tablet games are hipster mac tards and fat housewives, not computer nerds.

Let me complete this list properly:"The people who do want tablet games are Hipster mac tards, fat housewives and family men playing 10 minutes on a tablet while traveling and still thinking they're core gamers"

 

[nealiios]

Also what Antara had that should be in every single "Betrayal" game is PUZZLE CHESTS.

Of course the puzzle chests STARTED in BAK, and they were a huge fan favorites (and us), so they're definitely coming back.

 

[norolim]

The "book/chapter" structure of the game is another one of those features that I consider a core tentpole of the series. Without it, it's just another RPG. Unfortunately, it's also one of our "limiters" in terms of audience, and one of the reasons our potential audience is small. Young players are going to have little --- to no --- patience with it.

Since this is an essential feature of a Betrayal game, perhaps it could be used to reduce costs: divide the planned game into actual chapters/episodes. This way you could stick to your original ideas as far as production values are concerned (or at least wouldn't have to modify the vision completely) and have something that could be realistically funded through a Kickstarter campaign. It's a controversial idea and right now I have no idea how to pull that off and preserve the open world experience of the original BaK and story integrity at the same time, but maybe further discussion could lead to a solution. IDK, it's just a suggestion.

wall of text

Although I generally agree with a lot of what you wrote, I just can't see why making the exact same BaK all over again would be a good idea. If I wanted to play the exact same game I would play BaK.

As someone mentioned before, you just can't use a 30 year old method of presentation and expect a game to sell. Even fans of classical RPGs have higher expectations as far as visual presentation and design are concerned. Graphics, camera and audio are hardly the main concern when designig a traditional RPG, but that doesn't mean you should use top-down ASCII. Those elements need to have a certain level of aesthetics and appeal and above all they have to work well in the context of a particular game. Mechanics on the other hand are a core design element and I expect improvement in comparison to the early 90s.

Here is an example: I recently played pedit5 and for certain reasons I enjoyed it. But if Rusty Rutherford came to me and asked if I would fund a new pedit that was exactly the same game (same mechanics and visual presentation), but with a new "story" (more of an "aim" in case of pedit), my answer would be: "No fucking way."

 

[nealiios]

kickstarter targets/budgets should be adjusted accordingly depending on what you want to do Neal.

So here's a simple equation. Some people might disagree with the root assumptions, but this is what twenty three years of having made a living doing this tells me.

(Krondor's turn based combat + Book Chapters structure + Exclusively single player) = Small potential audience = low potential Kickstarter funding = low Kickstarter ask = small project.

That's the reality. We will be a boutique game. I can't say for certain at the moment what the total budget will be. I don't have a finished design document, or bids from team members from which to cost out the production, but I will say we're NOT going to be asking for a million dollars. Probably nowhere even close to it. But I have a team to assemble and a design to complete before the total can be ascertained.

 

[nealiios]

lthough I generally agree with a lot of what you wrote, I just can't see why making the exact same BaK all over again would be a good idea. If I wanted to play the exact same game I would play BaK.

As someone mentioned before, you just can't use a 30 year old method of presentation and expect a game to sell. Even fans of classical RPGs have higher expectations as far as visual presentation and design are concerned. Graphics, camera and audio are hardly the main concern when designig a traditional RPG, but that doesn't mean you should use top-down ASCII. Those elements need to have a certain level of aesthetics and appeal and above all they have to work well in the context of a particular game. Mechanics on the other hand are a core design element and I expect improvement in comparison to the early 90s."

We have no disagreement in this regard. This will not be a "clone" of BAK. You don't want to play exactly the same thing, and I don't want to design exactly the same thing. I'm not dressing people up in silly outfits and photographing them for this title. The puzzle traps, if they come back, will come back in a modified form. The inventory management system will be a little more user friendly, as will the dialogue management system. You'll have a quest log. Plus, there's there's the whole new aspect of building your mechinas and golems. Improvements will absolutely be made, but they don't mean completely eradicating the feel of the original title. Imagine that the series had never been cancelled, and that we've been continously making Betrayal sequels for all these years. Just think about that. Over the decades, we would naturally have made changes to adapt to changes in technology, but we would have made sure that the core features were familiar enough that the fanbase hung around. That doesn't mean they are EXACTLY the same as they were in 1993, but people will by and large recognize stuff when they see it.

And as far as the open world issue goes and not seeing how that happens -- right now the ability to freely roam isn't in jeopardy. The free-roam philosophy is still in place, and the players will generally be able to go wherever they want. The problem is a matter of how many zones can I afford to build, given that I'm predicting a fairly small budget. Will it be as Lawrence of Arabia, wander all over the world, holy-shit-does-the-walking-ever-end big like BAK? Honestly probably not. I could still see a world maybe half as big, with more stuff going on in each of those individual zones. It's hard to say without having at least built a couple of levels with our new team. This is one aspect of the design that will have a direct correlation to what we raise, and I expect that many of our stretch goals will be related to adding more world.

 

[nealiios]

All right guys, the sun rising means my work day is coming to a close and time for some shut eye. Probably won't see me much for the remainder of the week because as a one man team right now, I can either talk to you guys, or I can be actually be working on the design and recruiting my team. And if I'm actually working on the design, then we'll eventually get the point where my answers aren't always "I'm still figuring that part out" and instead will be "let's talk about X".

Nighters and best wishes,
Neal

 

[Jaesun]

Thanks for sharing some info with us Neal.

 

[Themadcow]

* TIME STOPPED OR TURN BASED COMBAT - I'll either go with the turn based combat of the original Betrayal, or I may go with something like the original Bard's Tale which allowed you to pause at any point during combat so you could actually plan your battles. The major upshot being that we allow the player to be as strategic in battle as they wish to be.

Bards Tale wasn't turn based? Errr...

I suppose it depends on your definition of turn based, but I've never come across anyone who desribed BT as a pause based combat system before. That is a very strange view indeed - although I do appreciate the subtle distinction between individual and party turn based combat.

 

[norolim]

We have no disagreement in this regard. This will not be a "clone" of BAK. [...]

This part of my post was actually meant for Moribund and concerned his ideas. But I'm glad you addressed those issues, sort of, by accident I completely agree with all you wrote there.

And as far as the open world issue goes and not seeing how that happens -- right now the ability to freely roam isn't in jeopardy. The free-roam philosophy is still in place, and the players will generally be able to go wherever they want. The problem is a matter of how many zones can I afford to build, given that I'm predicting a fairly small budget. Will it be as Lawrence of Arabia, wander all over the world, holy-shit-does-the-walking-ever-end big like BAK? Honestly probably not. I could still see a world maybe half as big, with more stuff going on in each of those individual zones. It's hard to say without having at least built a couple of levels with our new team. This is one aspect of the design that will have a direct correlation to what we raise, and I expect that many of our stretch goals will be related to adding more world.

My idea was actually to cut the game into episodes (like Walking Dead) and through that: conform to the tradition of having Betrayal games structured as chapters and at the same time cut initial costs. The problem I saw and couldn't come up with a solution to was that in case of episodic games it may be hard to preserve both the open world experience and story integrty. What I mean is that you could release the 1st episode of the future Betrayal game offering a relatively small area to roam, and then add more with each successive episode. By the time the last chapter is released the world would be quite big, but what about the story? How do you tell a coherent, consistently designed story in an episodic game with an open world? Do you just move the focus of the story from area to area with each episode and as a result render the "older" areas useless storywise? Do you add things to do in the areas covered by previous episodes and thus significantly increase the required resources and budget of each successive episode? I don't know, but I'm not a game developer. Maybe there are easy answers to those questions.

All right guys, the sun rising means my work day is coming to a close and time for some shut eye. Probably won't see me much for the remainder of the week

Well, I guess I'll have to wait to get those answers. Thanks for taking part ion this discussion and good luck with designing the game.

 

[nealiios]

* TIME STOPPED OR TURN BASED COMBAT - I'll either go with the turn based combat of the original Betrayal, or I may go with something like the original Bard's Tale which allowed you to pause at any point during combat so you could actually plan your battles. The major upshot being that we allow the player to be as strategic in battle as they wish to be.

Bards Tale wasn't turn based? Errr...

I suppose it depends on your definition of turn based, but I've never come across anyone who desribed BT as a pause based combat system before. That is a very strange view indeed - although I do appreciate the subtle distinction between individual and party turn based combat.

Yeah, that wasn't supposed to be Bard's Tale but Baldur's Gate. Side effect of having just posted something very quickly on my Facebook wall.

 

[nealiios]

Okay, mean it this time. *zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz*

 

[tuluse]

You could have the world state change with each chapter. As an example. Lets say your main quest is to kill the bandit leader, once you do that the first episode ends. However, it turns out the bandits were being used to soften the area up before an invasion. So the 2nd episode would be the beginning of the invasion. So there would be no more (or fewer) bandits around and instead you would have enemy soldiers, and you could add new areas when you go behind enemy lines or something.

 

[SCO]

The old fabled lands gamebooks had a idea on that 'episodic dlc' thing. They divided the word on regions, made each region a book that could be purchased separately, with a main quest, and did some side quests on one or more of those areas in combination that provided access to the 'epic' area, as well as going back and forth at the border regions.

Of course, the 'narrative' gets quite floaty, as in typical serialized format, and it was never completed because customers are idiots, but it kinda worked for a while (5 books IIRC), with those constraints.

 

[Gozma]

Episodic format would conflict with Kickstarter which right now is patronage-for-nostalgia. Asking for patronage over and over is definitely gonna chafe Kickstarter-as-it-is (maybe not Kickstarter once several of these big games have come out, but who knows) and nostalgia will not be the dominant factor once they actually have an episode in their hands to judge with. It's much better to plan for a game that's much smaller than BaK (which is ungodly huge) and stretch goal/expansion pack more stuff.

 

[tuluse]

Well it depends how you plan to fund the episodic content. Like Shadowrun Returns plans to release the 2nd city as DLC, but backers will get it for their original contribution.The Banner Saga was upfront about it being episode 1 of a series.

I wonder how kickstarter backers would respond to different tiers offering more episodes.