Con una risposta dettagliata ad un ragazzo che mostrava un certo pessimismo di fondo, Ian Bell ribadisce alcuni punti chiave del nuovo progetto simulativo del team Slightly Mad Studios:
The 'plan' is that you get to input and vote on direction at a level commensurate with your level of investment. 10 Euros - 1 vote. We do though fully expect to propose the outline of what we would like to do and given our experience in making racing games I suspect the majority will be happy to follow our suggestions. Where that clearly isn't happening we will change them. Where there is a nice debate over particular features etc, we can call a poll vote.Regarding the PC hardcore not getting what they want, well that would be awfully silly of us. The only builds we'll be shipping out during the whole of development will be PC builds. It needs to appeal to the punters to continue to grow investment. As of now, we are already working on the tech for the initial builds and the plan if to convert over time to a full DX 11 engine and my remit to the team (including Griff) is to push the PC to the limits. I want a Crysis beater on looks, something truly raising the bar in every other area. Physics will, again over time, be our brand spanking new best in field physics which has been coded from the ground up over the last 4 years. So, you can't get your investment back, but you can withdraw yourself as a member of the team in protest. We'll still send you your profit though
We know almost exactly what we're going to 'propose'. The investors/team members (yes, everyone at all levels of investment will become a member of the team, with access to builds, tools, tech etc) will modify that in their own direction. We don't want you to throw money at us, we want you to throw it at this project. We will be marketing this paradigm shift beyond even games players (banks, VC's companies, anyone interested in potentially realising a profit). Although there are no guarantees, a game that sold say 1 million copies only (across all formats) would bring in 35 million dollars. The dev cost could be around 5-7 million. That's a nice 500% plus return when you add in marketing etc in a short period. Not a bad investment in the current climate... Even if it did disastrously badly at market I struggle to see how people wouldn't at least get all of their money back. On top of that they get to play a new build every week during development, take part in the development, see the inner details of how games get made, get a mention in the credits, get to code or create art for it if they feel motivated to do so, and much more.
I'm on 4th draft of the terms and conditions, EULA's etc with our lawyers now. Expect an announcement soon.
