Topic: Rolemaster Unified art: what happened?

[pastaav]

How much would your small business need to grow to be able to commission art for $30 000 to cover the five main RMU books?

I don't know where you are getting that figure. $3,000 would probably get you nice covers for all five books; for twice that, you would have your pick of artists.

I simply took your suggested art budget of $6000 for a book and multiplied by 5 to cover all the books. It is a lot of money and I am still curious how much your business would need to grow to support such large investment. My hunch is that you don't answer despite your bold words since making a major roleplaying game is whole different ballpark from your style of publishing.

Why should we at all assume they could predict such sales?

Well, if you run a Kickstarter, it's a cinch.

Maybe...they would have known how much money they could devote for art, but on the negative side of running a kickstarter is that it would raise demands on very different release schedule. Ironcrowns release pace for RMU is something that would generate lots of bad blood in a kickstarter situation. Without a kickstarter we can be sorry it is so slow, but not make any real complaints.

Of course, if the kickstarter had given enough money to be able to pay the freelancers to skip their daytime job the release schedule could be  made much more user friendly but that requires a very different scale of money. Essentially it require hiring the freelancers as full time employee, but only for a very limited time. If the person is really sure they can get their old job back afterward, they might consider it but myself I would require lots more than $100 each hour even complement to accept such offer.

[EltonJ]

I certainly agree with Pastaav.  A kickstarter can be the wrong strategy for Iron Crown Enterprises right now.  When I worked on Phaeselis so long ago, I had no budget and DAZ Studio.  I chose to work on it as a wiki, since publishing through Drivethru was something I couldn't do.  I could do some art myself, being a 3D artist at the time.  i thought of doing a kickstarter many times, but lacked the resources to do it.

[pawsplay]

I simply took your suggested art budget of $6000 for a book and multiplied by 5 to cover all the books.

So you took a number at the top end of what I suggested, then applied the whole budget to cover art instead of the whole book, and multiplied it by five for books that haven't been published yet. Okay.

Anyway, for those saying art isn't the deciding factor... I think this is the first time it ever has been for me. Maybe it's just me. In that case, carry on. That sucks for me, but there are plenty of other games out there.

[pawsplay]

I certainly agree with Pastaav.  A kickstarter can be the wrong strategy for Iron Crown Enterprises right now.  When I worked on Phaeselis so long ago, I had no budget and DAZ Studio.  I chose to work on it as a wiki, since publishing through Drivethru was something I couldn't do.  I could do some art myself, being a 3D artist at the time.  i thought of doing a kickstarter many times, but lacked the resources to do it.

So let me see if I'm understanding this correctly. You decided not to run a Kickstarter, and thereafter failed to publish your game. What are you blaming on Kickstarter?

[pawsplay]

Of course, if the kickstarter had given enough money to be able to pay the freelancers to skip their daytime job the release schedule could be  made much more user friendly but that requires a very different scale of money. Essentially it require hiring the freelancers as full time employee, but only for a very limited time. If the person is really sure they can get their old job back afterward, they might consider it but myself I would require lots more than $100 each hour even complement to accept such offer.

I didn't respond to this before, but I meant to.

There is no reason you have to run the Kickstarter in the middle of project. You can create the whole game, then run the Kickstarter at the end, and buy good art. In fact, that is probably the most common approach these days.