exactly!
I know the Kickstarter fund seems quite out of the ordinary, but since Farsight is such a small niche developer, we should all support them. Remember, big developers wouldn't touch any of these licenses, let alone produce virtual pinball recreations. And I always hear those who are into retro gaming say to themselves, "If there was a way to buy these roms/tables in unadulterated form legally, then I would. Farsight is trying to go above and beyond because they're passionate about bringing us the best pinball simulator around for the foreseeable future. Since a great many of you are expressing that they don't mind paying a premium for TZ, why not instead help by paying now to get it put into development? If you'll pay $15 to 20 dollars, whats the difference if you fork it out ahead of time or when it comes out? Again, for me, I think it's more important to support a developer that is willing to preserve pinball history. I'd rather do that than sit idly by and question their business model, especially when they explained it pretty clearly- either we, those who really love Twilight Zone, step up and get the ball rolling through Kickstarter, or it will just probably not happen at all, otherwise they would not have been so candid with us. Additionally, if this works out and TZ gets funded then released, maybe some other licenses that are out of the questions can also get fan funded. And maybe we, the fans, can pick which ones. STTNG anyone?
Agreed on how this could be messy. If the licenses are so high for Twilight Zone, I can't imagine what the costs would be for more of the other tables requested that have big name movies etc. I really like Lord of the Rings and Indiana Jones (got a chance to play them for real last month) I'm sure the licenses on those would be huge.
Still though I would pay minimum of $5-7 for those tables. It should be worth it when you consider the tables we will be getting in the next DLC is around $2.50 each.
Love that idea of a Kickstarter package for those tables or other licensed tables. Count me in.
We gotta get the word out to pinball fans.
I hope FarSight decides to go through with Kickstarter despite some negative feedback on Facebook about it.
For those who might not be on facebook. Here is the post.
We’ve received many requests to bring the Twilight Zone pinball table to the Pinball Arcade. This table was released by Midway under the Bally label and is unquestionably one of the greatest pinball tables of all time (in fact it’s current...ly #1 in user rankings on the Internet Pinball Database!) We’ve finally succeeded in negotiating all of the licenses we’d need to bringthe Twilight Zone to the Pinball Arcade. Unfortunately when we add up the costs of each required license and calculate what we’d have to charge for the table, we’ve realized that the Twilight Zone is just not commercially viable. So we’ve decided to try crowd-funding the cost of the licenses. We’ve set up a Kickstarter project for the Twilight Zone (just the licenses, not the development costs- we’ll cover all of those ourselves). If we can raise enough money through Kickstarter we’ll be able to digitize the Twilight Zone and preserve one of the greatest pinball tables of all time. If we don’t reach our goal no credit cards will be charged, but if we raise more than our goal we’ll be able to digitize other licensed tables as well (like Star Trek: The Next Generation!) We’ve put together a tempting list of rewards to say “thank you” for helping out. Plus the top five contributors will get their initials featured as the default high scores for the table, immortalizing them as true pinball fanatics! Check out our Kickstarter site and video using the link below. Please join us!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1067367405/pinball-arcade-the-twilight-zone
Would be nice to see a graph of the progress made over the days it's been up. This was started, what, 4 days ago? Already up to 31,780 of the 55,000 needed. I think TZ is close to a lock.
So with TNG, do they collect everything over the $55,000 and start up a second one for the remaining funds needed?
Would be nice to see a graph of the progress made over the days it's been up.