Crowdfunding - a possible future for Suikoden?

A place to post news and also give your ideas about the future of the Suikoden series.
Please justify all speculations with reasons why you think such an event could happen.
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KC_MCDOHL
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Re: Crowdfunding - a possible future for Suikoden?

Post by KC_MCDOHL »

Yeah, I agree, Exophase. A KS would give a smaller fanbase, like Suikoden's, the chance not only to ''kickstart' the series back into action - but to also be more involved in the series and what type of game, roughly, we would like to see.

I agree that it would not/should not be so hard for Konami to give away small plot and gameplay elements which us fans would consider worthy of supporting. A garauntee of the return of certain key developers would certainly help.

I dont think, however, that a failed KS would be suicidal for the Suikoden brand. I dont think the Suikoden brand could get much worse, tbh (in its present state). A KS would be good publicity atleast. Even a failed one. Unless, of course, a failed KS meant we couldnt try again.

But I'd still be willing to give Kickstarter a shot if the alternative is no future Suikodens at all.

And yeah, I fear Konami are too proud and set in their ways also :/ Lets hope we can change that!
Exophase
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Re: Crowdfunding - a possible future for Suikoden?

Post by Exophase »

Well, if they were really serious about giving it everything, even a failed KS could be valuable, I do agree with that.

For instance, let's say they start with something standard, a fairly graphically minimalistic PS3 or XBox 360 game, and need to raise $10m for it. This is a huge sum for KS but not astronomical, given OUYA hit nearly this amount. In normal game sale money for the minimum tier they'd need perhaps 100,000 to 150,000 pledges, given that many would pledge more than that. Not really that absurd if they're able to really scrape the fanbase, especially if they can make the game multiplatform.

Let's say this fails, but they still hit oh, to pick a random number, $4m. They could take this information and repurpose the project towards a new KS that's for a graphically minimalistic 3DS game, needing $3m. They'd have a pretty good shot of hitting it.

But it'd take an awful lot of time, perseverance and let's face it, humility to actually pursue such a thing. Now if you have any possible ideas for how to get Konami interested in this I'm definitely interested. But I get the feeling that you could cut them a check for $20m yourself and they still wouldn't make the Suikoden the fans want :/
Djungelurban
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Re: Crowdfunding - a possible future for Suikoden?

Post by Djungelurban »

Pretty sure a Suikoden II caliber game wouldn't cost $10 million, especially since there are lots of low budget yet somewhat decent looking RPG kickstarters out there only asking for like 5000-10000 and getting by on that. A $10 million price tag would give us a properly upgraded-to-the-next-level sequel to Suikoden V sure... But do we really give a shoot about that? Wouldn't we be just as happy with a downloadable 2D game with S2 style gameplay and graphics? Or, maybe even more happy... Heck, why not re-use the engine even, it's everyone's favorite anyway... I'd think about $500000 should be plenty to get a much smaller project like this going and that should be perfectly reachable and then you can adjust the level of sophistication based on how much over that number you go...

But yeah, seems Konami just doesn't wanna make more Suikoden games... Heck, wouldn't be surprised if they pull out of the games business altogether at some point in the next 10 years... Heck, that might actually be good for us, might end up selling off some of their IPs then...
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Re: Crowdfunding - a possible future for Suikoden?

Post by Sylo »

Djungelurban wrote:Pretty sure a Suikoden II caliber game wouldn't cost $10 million, especially since there are lots of low budget yet somewhat decent looking RPG kickstarters out there only asking for like 5000-10000 and getting by on that.
You only have to look at Exit Fate for the general idea. I dont even think that was crowd-funded? So imagine what would be accomplished with a few hundred thousand?

I LOVE the idea of Kickstarter/Crowd-funding. But imagine if Konami failed to reach their goal. What kind of humiliation would they face? Would people gasp and be shocked by an amount they request? Would it be worth risking their reputation to see how little people eventually support it (not saying this would be true of course) You can imagine from a (successful) business companys view, Kickstarter gives away too much and would possibly be a blow to the ego of Konami.

On the flip side, it could be really amazing to see what could be achieved...if you imagine, say they give a whole 6months, or even a year to raise the funds (not sure what the time limit is on KS projects) people will be able to donate multiple times, or save up to donate more, resulting in the target being reached with EASE. Ive seen millions being raised on various projects, so it could really work.

Even if they promised a HD Version of Suikoden I & II, with added bonuses and the saturn exclusive extras and fleshed out characters, I would easily donate £300 or more. I love the series that much, I really want to see it thrive. I get slightly annoyed at all these crappy projects being financed, all this rubbish on tv being funded, yet something as amazing as Suikoden, is just left in the corner like some has-been legend.

The Suikoden Revival Movement is the perfect cause for helping Konami realise the potential of the Suikoden series, once Suikoden Day has passed and Konami have been made aware of our efforts, then we can see what their focus will be. Hopefully they will give us some hope
"You will never be strong if you consider yourself weak" - Cleo, Suikoden
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Pyriel
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Re: Crowdfunding - a possible future for Suikoden?

Post by Pyriel »

You can't base your development costs, timelines, etc. on an RPG Maker game unless you intend to use that or a similarly simple and janky engine for your game. No commercial game maker would do that unless they want to commit suicide. Just looking at it, it looks like they ripped a lot of art assets out of Suikoden II with minor changes, which is something else Konami can't do.

For development of a current generation console game, from scratch, an estimate of millions is in the ballpark. It depends on how involved things are. Labor-of-love projects like Exit Fate, where developers aren't necessarily looking for appropriate compensation for their time, and localization projects like a lot of KickStarters I've seen, aren't great price-point comparisons.
Djungelurban
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Re: Crowdfunding - a possible future for Suikoden?

Post by Djungelurban »

Pyriel wrote:For development of a current generation console game, from scratch, an estimate of millions is in the ballpark.
A current gen with current gen performance sure. But I don't need that, not even sure I want that. And they don't need to make anything from scratch, they've got a perfectly good engine right there, an engine they've already shown they can port to other platforms twice (or thrice if you go with Suikoden I which, I think it's safe to assume that the Suikoden II engine is only a modification of the first game's engine). Sure, anything like this is gonna be much more expensive when you involve a major developer, but I still think $500000 would get it up and running.
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Re: Crowdfunding - a possible future for Suikoden?

Post by Antimatzist »

Pyriel wrote:You can't base your development costs, timelines, etc. on an RPG Maker game unless you intend to use that or a similarly simple and janky engine for your game. No commercial game maker would do that unless they want to commit suicide.
This new Final Fantasy iOS game looks even worse than a RPG maker game :D
Djungelurban wrote:
Pyriel wrote:For development of a current generation console game, from scratch, an estimate of millions is in the ballpark.
A current gen with current gen performance sure. But I don't need that, not even sure I want that. And they don't need to make anything from scratch, they've got a perfectly good engine right there, an engine they've already shown they can port to other platforms twice (or thrice if you go with Suikoden I which, I think it's safe to assume that the Suikoden II engine is only a modification of the first game's engine). Sure, anything like this is gonna be much more expensive when you involve a major developer, but I still think $500000 would get it up and running.
It's not a matter of "I don't need that", you can't really say an engine that worked in 2001 works flawlessly again in 2013 on a PS3. Really, PS3 games cost a lot and I don't think that's different from any other HD console.
Djungelurban
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Re: Crowdfunding - a possible future for Suikoden?

Post by Djungelurban »

Antimatzist wrote:It's not a matter of "I don't need that", you can't really say an engine that worked in 2001 works flawlessly again in 2013 on a PS3. Really, PS3 games cost a lot and I don't think that's different from any other HD console.
There's nothing that makes PS3 games inherently more expensive to develop for than any other machine ever. Well, the dev kit costs more, but pretty sure Konami got that already. And as long as you got that you could make a PS3 game in a weekend... Probably wont be a very advanced game and I'm pretty sure Sony wouldn't approve it for their service but you could. The only reason current gen games cost so much is they require so much resources if you wanna keep up with PS3 standards, especially graphically so... But what if you aimed for a SNES or PS1 standard? Sure, it would be a little bit more expensive due to inflation and salary increases, but otherwise there's nothing that says that you can't make a game on a PS1 budget. Or if PS3 is too complicated to develop for, screw consoles then, just go PC, I don't much care which platform it is released for, anywhere is better than nowhere...
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Re: Crowdfunding - a possible future for Suikoden?

Post by Pyriel »

I think if you specifically asked Konami to make a PS3 or XBox 360 game by porting the Suikoden II engine, they'd probably laugh. If that's your starting point, though, I really have no idea what it would cost. Are you expecting them to use all the same art assets and so forth as well?

Porting an engine like that would be a bad idea anyway. It was designed for a piece of hardware that runs at a tiny fraction of the speed current gen consoles are capable of, with less than 1% of the available memory, and almost no storage capacity. Just getting it to run properly on a PS3 outside of the emulation modes would be a feat, and that's after you get all the system-specific disc reads, DMA handlers, pad lib, SPU, GS, and so forth knocked into line with modern conventions. After you do all that, the game would probably run like it was on fast-forward, because PSX SDK didn't exactly have to hide the hardware and timings behind abstraction layers. Eventually what you'd have is a PS3 game that spends most of its time idling to create the illusion that you're playing a PSX. You'd be better off starting from scratch, or close to.

On the other hand, I'm with you on not needing a lot of window-dressing. I always figured if they could make something at about the level of SNES/PSX that took advantage of the storage to add more gameplay and story content, it'd be much more fun for me than a game that pushes 10X more polygons than its predecessor and uses 90% of the available space for textures that represent different outfits.
Djungelurban
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Re: Crowdfunding - a possible future for Suikoden?

Post by Djungelurban »

Well, I don't think Konami is gonna do either, cause I don't know how much longer the company will be in the games industry at all... But I do believe that at this point it's much likelier that any game we're gonna get is gonna be similar to Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgment in scope than a full blown triple-A attempt (or even double or single-A, if those are in fact terms, otherwise I'm coining them now). Don't believe the porting process would be as complicated as you say, but even if recreating would be easier it shouldn't be too difficult to do since the game has always used rather simple and straight forward mechanics. Assuming they don't decide to do any major alterations it should be fairly simple.
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Lemmy Claypool
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Re: Crowdfunding - a possible future for Suikoden?

Post by Lemmy Claypool »

I would quite happily settle for a game on the same kind of tier as VH: FoJ, much more preferable to this Suiko-limbo we live in now. It wasn't too bad a game in my opinion either.
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Re: Crowdfunding - a possible future for Suikoden?

Post by bluemask »

The problem is, it appears nobody is left which knows the original concept of Suikoden. As the team is disbanded, they have been trying to re-appease fans with spin-offs which sprung from purely new development team, even though it "might" be supervised by old Suiko dev member. They can't seem to relive the old days. Maybe once they fully-polished the technique by the new dev team, they would apply it to maybe a new Main Suiko game.
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KC_MCDOHL
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Re: Crowdfunding - a possible future for Suikoden?

Post by KC_MCDOHL »

I think some of the key members of the Suikoden IV, Tactics and V team have been working on Teirkries and the new PSP game. I cant be too hard for them to get the likes of Noritada Matsuaka and Sakiyama Takahiro back for a new, main install ment either. The problem is the less heard of guys that make up the gaming team, like the tonnes of programmers needed to make a game. That is probably what is meant by the 'Suikoden team disbanded' news, lots of those kind of workers are probably not around anymore.

So, hopfully, the ''new team'' has had good experience now working on these spin offs and we can hopefully see a main installment soon.
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Battlegrim
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Re: Crowdfunding - a possible future for Suikoden?

Post by Battlegrim »

From me - 10.000$ for a start Suikoden VI in Kickstarter.

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Hirathien
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Re: Crowdfunding - a possible future for Suikoden?

Post by Hirathien »

That would be great, say, will you use those 10.000$ to purchase the IP before you make the game?
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