9 ms·

Prison Architect, a gaming crowdfunding success story

137 points by Vaskivo 11y ago

ENTP 11y ago
It's more than just how you play the kickstarter crowd. Introversion have a knack of writing really playable games. Darwinia was incredible.
- datruth29 11y ago
  Not just playable games, but also games that are different from the usual stuff you see. Was there any hacking type games like Uplink before Introversion released it?
  - Vaskivo 11y ago
    I agree. Darwinia was a shooter/strategy game set inside virtual world. Even Defcon is unconventional. A game about nuclear war and mutual assured destruction with a retro asthetic.
    - gedrap 11y ago
      >>> Even Defcon is unconventional. A game about nuclear war and mutual assured destruction with a retro asthetic Don't forget the soundtrack! It added a lot to the game atmosphere :)
      - bemmu 11y ago
        Especially the woman in the background who starts to weep as the first missiles hit their targets.
        gedrap 11y ago
        The weeping woman, the cough. Damn I am so tempted to play it again (does it make me a heartless psycho?), but I am at work :( This is a great example of how some well though out details can play a massive role. Would the game be the same without the soundtrack, with the sounds of crying and coughing? It still would be a good game but not THAT good.
        kqr 11y ago
        > but I am at work :( You do realise that you are talking about the game with a work panic button built in, right?
        NoahTheDuke 11y ago
        >Damn I am so tempted to play it again (does it make me a heartless psycho?), but I am at work :( Get your coworkers and boss involved, and then play it in "real-time" mode windowed over the course of a couple days. That'll keep engagement up.
  - vacri 11y ago
    The wikipedia page for it links to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_15000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_15000, which claims first in breed, in 1984.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Vaskivo 11y ago
OP here. I feel in the last years we're having a resurgence of management/simulation games. Just like Will Wright did his own SimCities, SimFarms, SimLifes, etc., new developers are returning to these themes. We need more of these freeform interactive management sandboxes. We have Prision Architect. Rollercoaster Tycoon is coming back. Bring back Theme hospital and the histrical city-builder! Let's open our arms for new management games in new unconventional contexts. (Boon Hill is a graveyard simulator. How cool is that?)
- Udo 11y ago
  > We need more of these freeform interactive management sandboxes. If you haven't checked it out yet: Rimworld. You manage a group of people who crashed their spaceship on a planet, and they found a colony. The game has a storyteller AI that tries to make your struggle for survival interesting and entertaining. I love(d) it.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  > Bring back Theme hospital Well, there's this new Big Pharma simulator on Steam :).
  - elthran 11y ago
    Big pharma is well made, and definitely fun, but it's completely different to Theme Hospital - BP is completely lacking in the humour that made TH what it was.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      Thanks for the opinion. It was a bit pricey last time I checked it out, and I wasn't sure if it's good. I'll reconsider buying it :).
  - detaro 11y ago
    Big Pharma is way more of a puzzle game. Very fun, but different mix of genres.
- 11y ago
Cthulhu_ 11y ago
19 million? For a game developed by just two guys (iirc) over the span of two years, that's hitting the jackpot. I'm seeing several projects that make a lot of money for a little effort - DayZ comes to mind, an early access game that costs $35 and has sold millions of copies already, but still feels like a rather bad mod, with little development effort going into it (seemingly). I'm still on the fence about Star Citizen; the demos they've shown so far are promising, but I'm going to wait until there's an actual game. In contrast, there's Elite: Dangerous, which had a successful kickstarter at about 1.5 million, was built and released, and is still under active development, with few bugs to speak of (atm, experiences from retail version over half a year after first release)
- throwaway13337 11y ago
  Don't forget minecraft which finally sold to microsoft for 2b. Developed by one guy (then he added employees after the game took off). These are all exceptions to the brutal world of indie game development. Mostly, these developers don't make anything. They spend months and years in almost solitude making something no one will play. Games take a huge time investment to make before anyone is at all interested. It's the starving artist profession of the nerd world.
  - xhrpost 11y ago
    You can go even further back to the early days of id Software with John Romero and John Carmack making millions on their titles.
  - gedrap 11y ago
    >>> Mostly, these developers don't make anything. They spend months and years in almost solitude making something no one will play. Games take a huge time investment to make before anyone is at all interested. It's the starving artist profession of the nerd world. Yeah, the Indiepocalypse. The thing is, a lot of indie games... simply are not fun to play. And that's ok, it's hard to make a game which is fun to play. It's fine. [0] You can treat indie games as a hobby, just have fun, call it 'starving art', whatever, but don't be shocked that people are not paying money. On other hand, treat it like a business, with a solid product, market research, plenty of feedback from the outside (echo chamber is no good for a product that you are working on for years), marketing plan and some marketing budget. Even then, you have a chance of failure, where failure is that the revenue does not cover the costs. However, the odds are more in your favor. These two extremely distinct segments (hobby v business) are both under the 'indie' label, however, their chances at succeeding are extremely different. [0] I won't even talk about the platformers (there are dozens, if not hundreds, of them released every week) and they all are largely the same.
the_af 11y ago
A bit of an off-topic rant, but: I think the author is wrong to dismiss Ian Bogost's article as "as an opportunity to ignore gameplay in order to pontificate on race and show off the Foucault they read in college". The author is probably unfamiliar with Bogost, and also misunderstands that Bogost's article in The Atlantic about Prison Architect isn't a game review. I found the analysis of the game and how it relates to cultural perceptions of imprisonment in America (and the world, really) very interesting. It's political and it's about games-as-culture. It's not a shopping recommendation, and I think this is what the author of TFA misunderstood.
- tailgate 11y ago
  Games are sadly just on the cusp of developing a true arts culture - but we have yet to move out of the consumer mentality, where the only value of a game is if you were entertained by it at your most base level. It also doesn't help that a lot of internet commentators can't distinguish between someone criticizing something they like and personal attacks.
  - librvf 11y ago
    > but we have yet to move out of the consumer mentality, where the only value of a game is if you were entertained by it at your most base level. Neither did Mozart.
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    It also doesn't help that a lot of internet commentators can't distinguish between someone criticizing something they like and personal attacks. It also doesn't help that a lot of critics can't make a criticism along the lines of "I don't like this because X" without injecting an overt or covert "People who like this are X". The former is criticism, the latter is always a personal attack.
  - Kalium 11y ago
    Games are frequently something that most instances of arts culture struggle with - commercial. This means that trying to treat games as artistic artifacts, made of beauty and aesthetics, free of the drudgery of economics, is a misguided thing at best. Games are not generally produced as solely artistic works. The economic aspect is significant. Attempting to discuss and critique games as solely artistic artifacts means missing one of largest influences on any such artifact. It's like discussing architecture without admitting that materials and physics and humans impose limits.
wnevets 11y ago
I've been playing a lot of it the past two weeks. Its very addictive like the old roller coaster tycoon games.
- chrisper 11y ago
  The new RCT is coming out soon too. I think if you preorder you can play the beta on October 30.
  - talmand 11y ago
    No preorders. Well, unless you want to, then that's fine.
- emeraldnext 11y ago
  Check out Planet Coaster, they seem to have a much more impressive ambition and scope than the RCTW devs have displayed so far, and are using the same crowdfunding model that Prison Architect has used so far. Video on Crowd Flow and Guest Animation, using what's essentially a fluid simulation. This game really seems like the logical and superior spiritual successor to RCT3, after more than 11 years since the last game this is what we should be expecting! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tyWUT0UsZE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tyWUT0UsZE Their last game, Elite: Dangerous has been quite controversial, since the mechanics inherently lack much depth and the core loop is very repetitive, but it has a lot of horizontal content and completely NAILS its atmosphere, being one of the better titles you can purchase for the Oculus Rift right now and one of the better optimized games on PC for the time being.
gommm 11y ago
> while Tim Schafer’s Broken Age ran over budget, needed to be split in half, and delivered a disappointing final product. Speak for yourself, quite a few adventure game fans don't agree with it delivering a disappointing product. And there are quite a few more success stories... Broken Sword 5, Tesla Effect, Resonance, Shadowrun Dragonfall, ... It's true that there are conflicts with Kickstarters due to the fact that most backers do not really understand how hard it is to estimate Software Developments (especially in games, refining gameplay and puzzles until it become fun is by definition not something that can be estimated accurately) and game developers that suddenly have to take on the role of PR which the publishers used to do. But overall, there's been more than a few success stories.
personjerry 11y ago
> Crowdfunding has failed to revolutionize video games. How can he say that? A good 1/3 or so of the new games on Steam are crowdfunded nowadays. This shows a viable new way to go about funding your game. That's pretty "revolutionary".

137 points by Vaskivo 11y ago

ENTP 11y ago

It's more than just how you play the kickstarter crowd. Introversion have a knack of writing really playable games. Darwinia was incredible.

datruth29 11y ago
Not just playable games, but also games that are different from the usual stuff you see. Was there any hacking type games like Uplink before Introversion released it?
- Vaskivo 11y ago
  I agree. Darwinia was a shooter/strategy game set inside virtual world. Even Defcon is unconventional. A game about nuclear war and mutual assured destruction with a retro asthetic.
  - gedrap 11y ago
    >>> Even Defcon is unconventional. A game about nuclear war and mutual assured destruction with a retro asthetic Don't forget the soundtrack! It added a lot to the game atmosphere :)
    - bemmu 11y ago
      Especially the woman in the background who starts to weep as the first missiles hit their targets.
      - gedrap 11y ago
        The weeping woman, the cough. Damn I am so tempted to play it again (does it make me a heartless psycho?), but I am at work :( This is a great example of how some well though out details can play a massive role. Would the game be the same without the soundtrack, with the sounds of crying and coughing? It still would be a good game but not THAT good.
        kqr 11y ago
        > but I am at work :( You do realise that you are talking about the game with a work panic button built in, right?
        NoahTheDuke 11y ago
        >Damn I am so tempted to play it again (does it make me a heartless psycho?), but I am at work :( Get your coworkers and boss involved, and then play it in "real-time" mode windowed over the course of a couple days. That'll keep engagement up.
- vacri 11y ago
  The wikipedia page for it links to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_15000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_15000, which claims first in breed, in 1984.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Vaskivo 11y ago

OP here. I feel in the last years we're having a resurgence of management/simulation games. Just like Will Wright did his own SimCities, SimFarms, SimLifes, etc., new developers are returning to these themes. We need more of these freeform interactive management sandboxes. We have Prision Architect. Rollercoaster Tycoon is coming back. Bring back Theme hospital and the histrical city-builder! Let's open our arms for new management games in new unconventional contexts. (Boon Hill is a graveyard simulator. How cool is that?)

Udo 11y ago
> We need more of these freeform interactive management sandboxes. If you haven't checked it out yet: Rimworld. You manage a group of people who crashed their spaceship on a planet, and they found a colony. The game has a storyteller AI that tries to make your struggle for survival interesting and entertaining. I love(d) it.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
> Bring back Theme hospital Well, there's this new Big Pharma simulator on Steam :).
- elthran 11y ago
  Big pharma is well made, and definitely fun, but it's completely different to Theme Hospital - BP is completely lacking in the humour that made TH what it was.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Thanks for the opinion. It was a bit pricey last time I checked it out, and I wasn't sure if it's good. I'll reconsider buying it :).
- detaro 11y ago
  Big Pharma is way more of a puzzle game. Very fun, but different mix of genres.
11y ago

Cthulhu_ 11y ago

19 million? For a game developed by just two guys (iirc) over the span of two years, that's hitting the jackpot. I'm seeing several projects that make a lot of money for a little effort - DayZ comes to mind, an early access game that costs $35 and has sold millions of copies already, but still feels like a rather bad mod, with little development effort going into it (seemingly). I'm still on the fence about Star Citizen; the demos they've shown so far are promising, but I'm going to wait until there's an actual game. In contrast, there's Elite: Dangerous, which had a successful kickstarter at about 1.5 million, was built and released, and is still under active development, with few bugs to speak of (atm, experiences from retail version over half a year after first release)

throwaway13337 11y ago
Don't forget minecraft which finally sold to microsoft for 2b. Developed by one guy (then he added employees after the game took off). These are all exceptions to the brutal world of indie game development. Mostly, these developers don't make anything. They spend months and years in almost solitude making something no one will play. Games take a huge time investment to make before anyone is at all interested. It's the starving artist profession of the nerd world.
- xhrpost 11y ago
  You can go even further back to the early days of id Software with John Romero and John Carmack making millions on their titles.
- gedrap 11y ago
  >>> Mostly, these developers don't make anything. They spend months and years in almost solitude making something no one will play. Games take a huge time investment to make before anyone is at all interested. It's the starving artist profession of the nerd world. Yeah, the Indiepocalypse. The thing is, a lot of indie games... simply are not fun to play. And that's ok, it's hard to make a game which is fun to play. It's fine. [0] You can treat indie games as a hobby, just have fun, call it 'starving art', whatever, but don't be shocked that people are not paying money. On other hand, treat it like a business, with a solid product, market research, plenty of feedback from the outside (echo chamber is no good for a product that you are working on for years), marketing plan and some marketing budget. Even then, you have a chance of failure, where failure is that the revenue does not cover the costs. However, the odds are more in your favor. These two extremely distinct segments (hobby v business) are both under the 'indie' label, however, their chances at succeeding are extremely different. [0] I won't even talk about the platformers (there are dozens, if not hundreds, of them released every week) and they all are largely the same.

the_af 11y ago

A bit of an off-topic rant, but: I think the author is wrong to dismiss Ian Bogost's article as "as an opportunity to ignore gameplay in order to pontificate on race and show off the Foucault they read in college". The author is probably unfamiliar with Bogost, and also misunderstands that Bogost's article in The Atlantic about Prison Architect isn't a game review. I found the analysis of the game and how it relates to cultural perceptions of imprisonment in America (and the world, really) very interesting. It's political and it's about games-as-culture. It's not a shopping recommendation, and I think this is what the author of TFA misunderstood.

tailgate 11y ago
Games are sadly just on the cusp of developing a true arts culture - but we have yet to move out of the consumer mentality, where the only value of a game is if you were entertained by it at your most base level. It also doesn't help that a lot of internet commentators can't distinguish between someone criticizing something they like and personal attacks.
- librvf 11y ago
  > but we have yet to move out of the consumer mentality, where the only value of a game is if you were entertained by it at your most base level. Neither did Mozart.
- Karunamon 11y ago
  It also doesn't help that a lot of internet commentators can't distinguish between someone criticizing something they like and personal attacks. It also doesn't help that a lot of critics can't make a criticism along the lines of "I don't like this because X" without injecting an overt or covert "People who like this are X". The former is criticism, the latter is always a personal attack.
- Kalium 11y ago
  Games are frequently something that most instances of arts culture struggle with - commercial. This means that trying to treat games as artistic artifacts, made of beauty and aesthetics, free of the drudgery of economics, is a misguided thing at best. Games are not generally produced as solely artistic works. The economic aspect is significant. Attempting to discuss and critique games as solely artistic artifacts means missing one of largest influences on any such artifact. It's like discussing architecture without admitting that materials and physics and humans impose limits.

wnevets 11y ago

I've been playing a lot of it the past two weeks. Its very addictive like the old roller coaster tycoon games.

chrisper 11y ago
The new RCT is coming out soon too. I think if you preorder you can play the beta on October 30.
- talmand 11y ago
  No preorders. Well, unless you want to, then that's fine.
emeraldnext 11y ago
Check out Planet Coaster, they seem to have a much more impressive ambition and scope than the RCTW devs have displayed so far, and are using the same crowdfunding model that Prison Architect has used so far. Video on Crowd Flow and Guest Animation, using what's essentially a fluid simulation. This game really seems like the logical and superior spiritual successor to RCT3, after more than 11 years since the last game this is what we should be expecting! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tyWUT0UsZE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tyWUT0UsZE Their last game, Elite: Dangerous has been quite controversial, since the mechanics inherently lack much depth and the core loop is very repetitive, but it has a lot of horizontal content and completely NAILS its atmosphere, being one of the better titles you can purchase for the Oculus Rift right now and one of the better optimized games on PC for the time being.

gommm 11y ago

> while Tim Schafer’s Broken Age ran over budget, needed to be split in half, and delivered a disappointing final product. Speak for yourself, quite a few adventure game fans don't agree with it delivering a disappointing product. And there are quite a few more success stories... Broken Sword 5, Tesla Effect, Resonance, Shadowrun Dragonfall, ... It's true that there are conflicts with Kickstarters due to the fact that most backers do not really understand how hard it is to estimate Software Developments (especially in games, refining gameplay and puzzles until it become fun is by definition not something that can be estimated accurately) and game developers that suddenly have to take on the role of PR which the publishers used to do. But overall, there's been more than a few success stories.

personjerry 11y ago

> Crowdfunding has failed to revolutionize video games. How can he say that? A good 1/3 or so of the new games on Steam are crowdfunded nowadays. This shows a viable new way to go about funding your game. That's pretty "revolutionary".