Adventure Gamers - Forums

From a Corey Cole comment posted under the latest Hero-U Kickstarter update:

We’ve raised about $400,000 after expenses from the original Kickstarter and the web site. The rest is coming from a combination of home equity loan (we’re literally betting our house on this project) and deferred payments to contractors.

As DaveGilbert mentioned earlier, this is somewhat startling. I do hope that, for Corey Cole’s sake, this does NOT mean, in the event that Hero-U isn’t a financial success, that they will lose their home. Perhaps they will just have to be paying back a home equity line of credit for a while.

Since Cole apparently made the decision to get this loan, and if he doesn’t believe he is in any danger of losing his home, then I think he should clarify that there isn’t a real possibility he’ll lose his home if he doesn’t get more money from backers. If more donations are given, IMO they should primarily be made based on the merits of the game and not because people are scared the Coles will lose their house. Though it’s not for me to tell people how or why to spend their money. But if a new funding campaign is more intended to help pay back a loan and isn’t so much about raising necessary funds to make the game significantly better on release, then I believe many might be less inclined to donate.

Corey Cole has made many positive contributions to adventure/RPG gaming in the past. Nobody can deny that. But this new game of his doesn’t look so great.

^im sure they’ll have time to clarify on this stuff when the new kickstarter comes. The most recent update makes it sound like everything is fine and theyr on schedule and that its not a big deal… but why would you turn to kickstarter again if it wasnt a big deal… so we’ll have to hear the clarification at some point as to what exactly a new kickstarter will be paying for and what it means if they cant get that.

Oh I didn’t know they remortgaged their house. Hope they’ll be fine financially. It does prove that they are putting best efforts to the naysayers though…

jaap - 22 February 2015 09:46 AM

giom - 22 February 2015 08:58 AM

By the way OrionO, where are those famous intolerant feminist writings by Corey Cole? the only result when googling for it is your post and I don’t see anything either on the forum… I’m kind of curious…

You can find some of it here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1878147873/hero-u-rogue-to-redemption/posts/978955

Hmm, I don’t think it qualifies as intolerant feminist writings. If it does, then the word intolerant clearly doesn’t mean what I think it means

As an aside on this whole gamergate thing which was rather ridiculous, I feel that adventure games have a stronger tradition of strong minded independent non-sexualized female characters compared to most video game genres…

We have Maureen from Full Throttle, Sophia in Fate of Atlantis, Zanthia of Hand of Fate, Rosella in King Quest, April Ryan in the Longest Journey,  Zoë Castillo in Dreamfall, Kate Walker in Syberia and that’s just off the top of my head… It’s an interesting difference I feel.

giom - 22 February 2015 06:41 PM

Sophia in Fate of Atlantis, Zanthia of Hand of Fate…April Ryan in the Longest Journey,  Zoë Castillo in Dreamfall

To be completely fair, Sophia offers the player an opportunity to stare at a closeup of her cleavage at whim, Zanthia’s clothes consistently fall-off/get ripped off/get magicked into a skimpier outfit throughout the course of the game, and don’t April and Zoe from the Tornquist games each walk around in their underpants for full sections of play time? 

That’s why in case of Sam Everett our good ol’ Uncle Sam helped our weak, perverted minds not to falter and succumb to infernal temptation

Update: Someone commented on the latest Hero-U Kickstarter update and expressed concern about the financial state of the project and the (what I believe and hope to be a very unlikely) possibility of the Coles becoming homeless. Here is part of Corey Cole’s response to that person:

@Dave: We really aren’t concerned about it. We have the right team now and expect to complete the game at the end of this year (targeting mid-October). If nobody buys the game, we’ll be in debt…

As someone said earlier, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what they say in their next Kickstarter, if it happens.

If Corey Cole is going to ask people for more money, he needs to post a full month-to-month accounting (from 2012 to present) of all the funds raised from the last fundraising campaign. Open the books. We should be able to see all specific expense listings (with dates) over the last few years, like what many businesses have to give their investors. This is easy to do in QuickBooks. If he chooses not to do this, it will be quite disappointing.

Also, what happens if the new fundraising campaign is a flop? What’s Plan B?

Bogi - 23 February 2015 04:16 AM

That’s why in case of Sam Everett our good ol’ Uncle Sam helped our weak, perverted minds not to falter and succumb to infernal temptation

WOW…for real?
Not that I’m suprised, but even this seems much for Uncle Sam  

subbi - 23 February 2015 06:49 AM

Bogi - 23 February 2015 04:16 AM

That’s why in case of Sam Everett our good ol’ Uncle Sam helped our weak, perverted minds not to falter and succumb to infernal temptation

WOW…for real?
Not that I’m suprised, but even this seems much for Uncle Sam  

It’s funny cause it’s true

Or maybe it would be funny if it weren’t sad, or maybe the other way around

I do worry about them having an audience and market after the game is completed; they may have already exhausted their audience and potential income with their Kickstarter (or Kickstarters).  They’d have to sell a lot of copies to recoup their losses on investment, especially if they don’t want to lose their house.  I mean, they’d probably have to sell 25,000-50,000 copies at full price to ensure that, and people don’t tend to buy things hot off the presses these days.  They “wait for sales/bundles”. 

Having a good publisher with large infrastructure and an advertising budget might be the only way they could manage that. I certainly wouldn’t want them to lose their home over this.  I’m glad he has more confidence in the project and team now, and I hope for the best.

Bt

OrionO - 23 February 2015 05:30 AM

Also, what happens if the new fundraising campaign is a flop? What’s Plan B?

Thats the big question. Something tells me the new kickstarter will have a very low goal (like 5000) so they can take whatever it makes, and then say, but we really need “this amount”.
Its not going to go over well. Needs to be done very carefully… it may not even fit within kickstarters terms if not careful… maybe they wont even use kickstarter but another funding site.

Lambonius - 22 February 2015 07:01 PM

giom - 22 February 2015 06:41 PM

Sophia in Fate of Atlantis, Zanthia of Hand of Fate…April Ryan in the Longest Journey,  Zoë Castillo in Dreamfall

To be completely fair, Sophia offers the player an opportunity to stare at a closeup of her cleavage at whim, Zanthia’s clothes consistently fall-off/get ripped off/get magicked into a skimpier outfit throughout the course of the game, and don’t April and Zoe from the Tornquist games each walk around in their underpants for full sections of play time? 

The closeup is more focused on the necklace than the cleavage and honestly, it’s a necklace it’s supposed to be in the general area of her cleavage… Point taken for Zanthia’s wardrobe malfunctions although she quickly changes it (and end up using a military camo trouser, hardly something skimpy)...

And to finally play the devil’s advocate, if I were brought to arcadia during my dreams like this, I’d be running in boxers (ok that’s now maybe a bit farfetched )

Now back to the subject at hand. If the situation is as dire as it seems, I’d probably contribute to the second kickstarter even though I already contributed $65 to the previous one (my second highest pledge to a kickstarter game project, I tend to do smaller pledges over more projects) and I believe that I’m probably not the only one who would want to help bail them out.

I’m the same as DaveGilbert, I don’t pledge money on kickstarter to buy a game, I do it to help develop the genres and arts that I enjoy. If a kickstarter is not successful (like Dischan Media’s kickstarter), of course, I’m a bit disappointed but I’ve lost money and it’s not a big deal, it happens.

I hope the worst case scenario is not the Coles becoming homeless but the Coles having to pay back over a certain number of years the new mortgage.

I mean, they’d probably have to sell 25,000-50,000 copies at full price to ensure that, and people don’t tend to buy things hot off the presses these days.  They “wait for sales/bundles”.

This is actually one thing that bothers me a lot. I feel that game developers are shooting themselves in the foot by releasing their games in bundles too quickly. They should wait a certain amount of time before releasing the game in a bundle because it irritates the core customers who paid the full price and they destroy the value of the game far too early. Of course, sometimes it’s unavoidable and I can understand that the revenue that comes with being part of Humble Bundle can be substancial but I think that in the long term, it hurts the sales of future games because people are more and more likely to just wait for bundles…

For example, as a gamer, I used to spend a non negligible amount of money every month on games (about $50-100) but since I have a bit of a backlog I’d usually start playing a game anywhere between 6 month to 1 year after release.  I now get most of the games, that I would have bought normally, through bundles and I spend a lot less than I used to.  I’m sure I’m not the only one and I really think that releasing games this early really devalue them.

In my case, I’ve decided to use that money to pledge on kickstarter or to fund patreons but I don’t think those avenues compensate the loss of revenues due to bundles.

There’s a very good article on this by Jeff Vogel: http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.fr/2014/12/how-youre-going-to-price-your-computer.html