UFO:AI and Kickstarter

[Jon_dArc]

Why not?

Again, how are you going to turn the cash into progress? Hiring someone who doesn't already work on the game would be thorny in many ways, and I don't think there's any serious prospect of raising enough for one of the current devs to quit their job and work on UFO:AI full time (even if you manage to pay their salary for a year, unless they're already unhappy with their job or there's a real prospect of managing to do it again next year that's just not enough—you'd need at least several years up-front to make the risk acceptable).

Mozilla Corporation, in contrast, is large enough to in fact turn donations into full-time employees.

Now, it's possible that there are resources that could be purchased to help develop the game, maybe a dedicated build/test server or something, but there's another can of worms there: I'm pretty sure there's no UFO:AI Corporation, so anything like that would be owned and physically possessed by one of the devs. How do you ensure ongoing availability of that resource? How do you make sure it gets used to develop UFO:AI and not for the personal affairs of the possessor? This can be a problem even without actual wrongdoing—perception can be just as important.

There's really no point in discussing the matter further until we fill in the "???" in "1) Collect donations, 2) Use the money to ???, 3) UFO:AI is better!".

~J

[Nokim]

There's really no point in discussing the matter further until we fill in the "" in "1) Collect donations, 2) Use the money to , 3) UFO:AI is better!".

I agree with this. If you don't know how to use money to reach promised goal, you shouldn't ask for them. I was just saying that is possible even for this project. But taking money you take responsibility, you can't just spend them for nothing.

So, we can discuss what can be done to make UFO:AI better with some small funding. If it looks worth it - something can be started on Kickstarter or somewhere else. But right now i doubt here is easy target for that.

[H-Hour]

Btw, ninex already runs and maintains a ufoai server which runs build tests, hosts the compiled maps and the website, and otherwise helps keep this project going. Once a year we run a news post to help raise money for his server, and we usually get there with no problem, thanks to donors.

[Crystan]

Why not? Yes, it's different scale. But if there is enough interested peoples... That's main point. Say, there is on Kickstarter project for game console. They are using Android and it doesn't look like they are going to really hide hardware design.

The main reason what will rise problems is: Why should someone get payed for the work he's doing for UFO:AI and someone else not? I would feel a bit deceived if this would happen. Everyone puts hard work into the stuff he contributes. Also we dont have a big core team, lacking of some positions like a main 3d and 2d artist etc. If we had these positions occupied, you probably could say - okay, there is a core team which guarantee a steady development etc. and i want to support them - so shut up and take my money. Atm the development of UFO:AI is just "too open" and without an open one - UFO:AI may have died many years ago.

 The story with ninex is another one, that guy definitely deserve the support because he have to pay money for the servers.