THQ is all but bankrupt and I didn't like the direction that Square/Enix took the game.

Have you guys thought about the possibility of funding Supreme Commander 3 via Kickstarter?

This would allow you to create the game that you want, and that we want to play.

Please give the idea some thought.

Here are some great games that I am supporting on kickstarter: http://blog.k1dblitz.com/p/kickstarter-projects.html

Supreme commander Is owned by Square Enix, not GPG. You should start by posting this on their forums. Also GPG is not RIP by any means!

I think it would be more viable to Kickstarter Kings and Castles and restart that project. The intellectual property of Supreme Commander is owned by Square Enix, so GPG cannot use the name or the setting in future games without SE's approval. K&C, being a completely new IP, would not have to face this restriction.

No one in their right mind would ask a publisher to go the Kickstarter route. That flies in the face of all that Kickstarter stands for.

GPG may not be R.I.P....yet. I'm sure the AoE Online thing has been lucrative for them otherwise they wouldn't have dropped everything they were doing to jump in with both feet.

My concern is that GPG is going down the same path as Cavedog Entertainment... financially anyway. The history seems to be repeating itself, at least from my point of view.



That could still be plausible, assuming that GPG didn't accept any funds from a publisher to begin development on K&C. I know they sold the rights to DS, perhaps that is where they got the money from.

I'm sure they could create a Supreme Annihilator or Total Commander without much problems.

Supreme Commander itself is a brethren of Total Annihilation, to which they didn't own the rights to anymore after Cavedog went belly up but they still managed to make SupCom. (or SOUPcom as Chris likes to call it)

I don't think you understand, Supreme Commander is owned by Square Enix. They bought the IP off GPG.

Well that throws a wrench into things.

I suppose I should rename the subject to "Supreme Commander Spiritual Successor on Kickstarter".

It sounds though, as someone pointed out earlier, that there is a clause that prevents GPG from competing...so the only option to see a "SupCom 3" is for GPG to go under and be reborn under a different name.

Really, apart from a history of making TA style games, why does it need to be GPG?

We just need somebody, anybody, to step up and make a kickstarter for a SupCom-styled game.

Heck, we need 5 different teams to propose 5 different SupCom clones. It's nice to have some choice :)

We need a new "biggest RTS ever"

More like a game called "Supreme Alliance" or something catchy =p

Here's an interesting question: Would you accept a low-budget SupCom?

My personal desire is to one day write a very basic SupCom style RTS. (it will never happen, due to chronic motivation failure.) The key to keeping it viable for a small team (possibly just me alone) is to strip out all non-critical-to-gameplay elements.

ie. I will focus on user interface, moddability, large numbers of units onfield, gameplay, multiplayer.
It won't have 3D models (just strategic icons), no story/campaign mode, no AI.
Heck, if it was me by myself, it won't even have terrain or pathfinding initially, because those are too hard :P
It will be free and open source, so I guess the missing things might be added by others if the project catches on.

-------------------------

Now, I imagine that any kickstarter game would similarly have limitations on the scope of the project. (probably not as harsh as mine, though.) But SupCom is a huge, big-budget, epic, expensive game. The lower-cost SupCom2 was not received particularly well by the fans here.

So, who would be satisfied by a low budget SupCom clone? I imagine the competitive players would probably be ok with it as long as the gameplay and competitive features are good. I assume people who play singleplayer mostly are the ones most likely to be dissatisfied.

A side question is, why doesnt anyone play Spring? :P
(personally, the last time I tried it years ago, it was rather clunky. I wish they would focus more on the user interface / user experience / polish.)

Edit: Now that I think about it, a more interesting question is, why do we want a SupCom sequel anyways? Why not play Forged Alliance Forever, forever? Is it just for ongoing improvements to technology? (eg. better gfx and 64-bit support, etc). Is it to continue the story? (after SCom2, does anyone care?). Or is it just for more of the same (in which case, why not FAF or SCom2?)

Just strategic icons would make it look and feel like GalCon.

Even though I love that, I don't think it'd fit well.

Well, actually I was planning on 3D models as placeholders, so your basic 3D triangles for aircraft, boxes with turrets for tanks, etc. then other people can make proper models if they want later.

Think Arctic Fox for Amiga :)

But yes, initally it will look like GalCon. Or SupCom in carto mode.

Although going all-GalCon is a good step if I wanted to release on a mobile.

OHGOD.

Please no.

I'd buy a smart phone - just for that.

And then I'd play the **** out of it.

Really? Why?

There's no AI, campaign or singleplayer content (well, maybe some sort of survival mode), so it would be multiplayer only via wifi or something.

Can mobile phones do adhoc wifi like PSPs and stuff can? Although what are the odds of finding another person playing my game on the train or something? :P Does mobile data run fast enough these days for proper multiplayer gaming?

I guess the $500 question is, if we start from the initial plan that I listed in the earlier post, what kinds of additional features would I need to add, to make it a desirable (for you guys) game for mobile/tablet?

I assume some sort of singleplayer content is mandatory. Heh, or some sort of almost play-by-mail turnbased mode for multi playing over 3G data :P


Still, a simplified SupCom with GalCon graphics seems like a good fit for tablets. Pinch-to-strategic zoom, draw movement paths with your finger, SCom2's paint mode for commands, and also draw selection areas for commands, etc. SupCom's "blob based combat" seems ideal for touch interfaces, compared to more micro-based games like SC and C&C that favour unit type selection or control groups.

At my university? Very high. A good mate of mine in my degree, I met him in Halcyon years before. There's several friends that are FA players.

Wi-Fi would have enough bandwidth, but latency would be a problem.

There is a 2D RTS on android which boasts most features of supreme commander: land sea, air, *VERY* basic skirmish AI, 2D units and buildings that turn into strategic Icons when zoomed out, paint , pinch, drag select, Strategic zoom, import custom maps, very basic campaing at the time, survival mode, some very awesome pathfinding, alot of units on screen..

It will have Tier 2 units soon. It is still alpha, will be hitting beta anytime now with tier 2 units I'm sure. I have exchanged messages with the creator, and he is very ambitious about the game. I have played the game on a tablet, pretty good experience taking into account its in alpha

Rusted Warfare on android market

please excuse my huge bot post

Zeech's idea of a basic competitive SupCom RTS would work well for a open-source, free title, but I don't think it would work well as a commercial product. GPG found that the vast majority of RTS players never play online, so a single-player campaign, good AI, and skirmish options are a must. And since most people play non-competitively and by themselves, graphics would also be a concern as most casual players don't like looking at dots and triangles. Even the sight of thousands of tiny shapes colliding together in battle is not as visually "epic" as a clash of hundreds of highly-detailed units with good graphical effects.

It depends. Some well known developers have been able to pull in as much as $3 million dollars through kickstarter.

SupCom1 required around $10 million. If you want SupCom 3 to have a rewritten simulation/graphics engine that uses DirectX11 features, true multithreading, 64-bit executables, and other goodies, you'll need to raise a lot of money from a small community. Possible, but very difficult.

Kickstarter is great for indie or XBLA games that require $3 million or less. If you want SupCom3 to be a triple-A title like vanilla, FA, and SupCom2, then it won't be sufficient.

Where are you getting your numbers from?

There was a conversation between a forum member and a GPG staff member years ago about SupCom1 costing around $10 million. It was too long ago for me to get a forum link to that post. I and the community have basically used that number as the accepted value. If you don't believe me, then you are free and justified in doing so, but keep in mind my next statements.

All AAA games these days cost in the tens of millions. A former Infinity Ward employee said that Modern Warfare 2 cost $50 million to develop, GTA4 cost $100 million, the original WoW cost $60 million, so I wouldn't expect any game considered triple A to cost less than $10 million. So far, all the Kickstarter games I've seen or heard about are small indie/arcade-quality games with budgets that are no more than a couple million dollars. SupCom 3 can be Kickstartered, but I wouldn't expect the same quality that we see in the current games.

Frankly, for the reasons mentioned above it'd be much more feasible to Kickstart Kings and Castles, because it's technically already in production, meaning a few different things in regards to kickstarting;

1] You already have a product(still WIP) to show, and backers like this because it gives a much more "Concrete" idea as to what they're backing, rather than some other that are nothing more than "abstract" concepts.

2] Because the game was already in a form of production some of the work is already done, meaning less cost overall. While it was in the early alpha stages still when we last saw it, there were still some very neat things kicking about too.

3] They already had some hype built up from when they were doing the Vlogs and that E3 show, sure it's stagnated since then, but the fact is that the interest was there, and it can be sparked again.

4] GPG has Chris Taylor, sure, he may not be the biggest Game Dev out there, but to say he doesn't have any clout would be wrong as well.

All in all, GPG would still have to put some work into KnC prior to starting the Kickstarter, and that work would be a bit of a leap of faith kind of thing, but I think they'd have a chance, CT is like Tim Schafer in that I think he'd give a good pitch and has already show they're willing to work with the community, and being self funded does open up some unique possibilities like accepting user created content(similar to what Achron did) and other community involvement stuff.

As we say during the Double Fine kickstarter, they brought a huge chunk of new backers to KS, and based on the last reports we saw, they have continued to back other projects(It'd be nice to see an update to see if that trend has gone down or not).

But in the end it's hard to say what would happen......thought it'd be nice to see them try something, I'm not holding my breath either ;p

Mike

Nice, I'll check it out. Heh, strat icons / galcon looks better to me than retro sprites tho :)



Heh, my planned title for my never-to-be-written RTS is Web of Destruction. A pretty derivative name, but I wanted to play on the old supcom criticism of War of Dots :P
Also my design is based on intricate lines of supply, so the "web" part is apt at least.

X-Cubed, I am asking about where the numbers came from because I want to understand precisely which costs were quoted in that sum.

I wanted to know if that was purely developmental costs or if that $10 million also included the costs of advertising/marketing, lawyers, PR, etc.

Also keep in mind that Supcom1 was starting from scratch engine wise which would incur additional development costs/time. I'd be willing to bet that Supcom2 cost much less to make than the original, as did Demigod. (which reminds me, I'd like to see a Demigod 2 also)

I'm not doubting your numbers, but I have a really hard time believing that Modern Warfare 2 is a $50 million dollar game, and that it still falls under the "AAA" category. That game has been using the same engine since 1982 (sarcasm) and it shows.

The single player campaign was less than 8 hours and there wasn't a large selection of MP maps. Someone is making out like a bandit.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see what the current rendition of Kickstarter Superstars pump out to see if this really is viable.

And as far as I know it wasn't planned to host SupCom2 on Steam. :*

And a Kickstarter for SupCom3 ? ... Will be there enough peoples to do it?

I don't think so.