The Enthusiastic Urchin's New Survey

I definitely wanted the short stories, much less strain on resources and more opportunists to expand the mythos and lore of Fallen London. I think the Silver Tree was enough spin-off content for all (so no on Zee Stories), card games are more trouble than they are worth, and a graphic novel might distract from the mystery one can find in a good set of written texts.

I hope the rest of the community agrees with me and votes to have short stories implemented as a future venture. What would also be cool is if each short story, when purchased, also came with a code that gifted players something on their Fallen London account. Nothing big, maybe a social item or even access to a small storylet? I don’t know what’s fair, but I would snap those short stories up in a heartbeat if that were the case.


edited by Owen Wulf on 6/28/2013

Personally I voted for the short stories as well.

Reasons: It will be easier on the dev team to get content for that, if only by mining here and talking to those who are already making that content. The team doesn’t have to hire new folk to do coding, or take others off critical projects, the stories can be filled out by others. Give a short outline, check the work based on what is and isn’t coming (maybe drop hints to different areas like NORTH in the stories) and reward with in-game items or so on. (HINT HINT HINT!!!)

The other options would nearly mandate that people be hired full time (as contractors) or they be re-routed from the work they are doing, to the detriment of us, the player.

If this were the way of things, I’d be THRILLED to work on something like this. I’m already a writer, may as well get paid for it…

Bonus content for purchase would be great. Something like a book in game would be great, or Diary of the Dead and so on. For the authors, maybe a small % of what is brought in by the stories and/or compillation, especially if the pay to the authors is in echoes which encourages the authnors to hawk their own work to everyone. Add to that the fact that you could get pictures and illustrations in it, bringing new artwork into the mix.

Ah, now I’m babbling and I have to go to my job, tech support for Dell.

I’m going to vote for the graphic novel.

In the vein of directions FBG can take, going from the game to the platform is smart, but the magic of Fallen London isn’t in the mechanics but rather the world.

Now it comes down to the goal of branching out to a new audience and looking for a profitable tie-in hook within an established marketplace. For this, I believe text on its own has a difficult job. The shift from physical to digital in this space has higher adoption among consumers of short stories than consumers of graphic novels due not in the least to the higher price points of devices capable of displaying the graphic fidelity desired in the medium. The impact of a physical copy is also greater than a digital copy; it’s hard to ignore and feels less disposable than a digital copy.

The intent may be to sell the short stories as physical medium, but I believe the distribution difficulties and getting noticed in that crowded space puts the project at a much higher risk.

[color=rgb(0, 153, 0)]Folks[/color]
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[color=rgb(0, 153, 0)]It’s kind of you to worry about effects on FL, but these are all projects we can manage internally with resource that would otherwise go on client work, not on FL (and I’m afraid we don’t hire external writing resource). As I said above, this isn’t a zero-sum situation.[/color]
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[color=rgb(0, 153, 0)]It’s most helpful just to support the project you think you’d most enjoy - second-guessing how our team might work internally will give you, and us, misleading answers. :-)[/color][li]

Personally, I voted for the Zee Exploration game. That’s what I wanted, and it’s what I would pay the most for in a kickstarter. That’s exactly the question they asked, and nothing else, so it’s exactly the question I answered.

EDIT: Rough day at work, kinda snippy, apologies.

Graphic novel, definitely. I’d love to see that.

Well, I could dream…

So, now to figure out how to turn in an application to work at FL. :-)[li]

As for being worried about the personnel at FL and the projects, I think we all got into that &quotmindset&quot because we’ve seen you occasionally talk about how much everyone at SN is working on and the lack of personnel there to do everything. Since (afaik) SN is solely supported by us purchasing Nex, I didn’t want to add an additional strain to the budget or the people. BUT now that I know it’s a non-issue…
edited by Joy Phillip on 6/28/2013

A Question: I’ve heard that different options in the survey award different amounts of Fate. Is this intentional, or are my sources merely mistaken?

I got 3. That seems like the right amount.

P.S. - How do I become internal?[/li][li]
edited by Finvara on 6/29/2013

I only got two fate for my choice.

Sorry, Alexis. I realize there’s no equity stake involved, but I apparently can’t help but wear my investor hat when looking at this question.

Perhaps it’s best if we just stick to talking about how awesome a graphic novel would be (pretty awesome to be sure.) I present exhibit 1: the Bishop of Southwark.

Also received 2 fate. Afraid different fate rewards might skew the results as players begin to share which choice results in which reward…

I also got 2 fate, but I don’t mind the difference with such a small amount.

Besides supporting it on Kickstarter, I’d also buy any physical book written as soon as I could. Both the graphic novel and short stories sound great and could have a huge potential for illuminating previously fuzzy or briefly-touched-upon things in the lore. I also think the idea of a bonus for the buyer’s character; it’d be something unique that says “I bought this and supported the team” and perhaps unlocks a little storylet or option unavailable to others, not just something of high value. It might also be difficult to implement a code to unlock it though, as each copy would have to have a unique one or it could just be leaked online.

Well, like any content that is published, it’s going to get leaked eventually. But the badge or the unique item for purchasing the GN or SS’s would be keen. Make others think about also buying it.

They had unique reward-codes for backers of the previous Kickstarters - I don’t imagine that would be difficult to wrangle.

All four suggestions are highly attractive to me!

As I read one option to the next, I kept saying “Ooh, this sounds good. Ah, this one’s nice, too. Oh, so is this one! Why, this also sounds fantastic.” and then I could not choose for the longest time… I finally decided on the zeeploration game because, a few years back, I unexpectedly and delightfully played through Tradewinds Legends, a similar trade & exploration game with a narrative slant. I’d love to see FBG’s version on an arcade platform.

The idea of a point-and-click adventure game is rather appealing, too! But you probably just want to know which one I’d throw the most monies. I suppose it’s a tie between the zeeploration and point-and-click games. (Maybe you should combine them!) Close behind come the graphic novel, short story collection and card game.

I think I’d get more play out of Zeesploration than point-and-click adventure - open-ended games let you keep coming back to them for years and years.

Point-and-click games usually have little replay value. Card games tend to be light on story. That behavior isn’t set in stone, though. The trade/exploration game does seem to have the advantage; it could naturally provide unique player experiences through fluctuating economics (buy/sell prices ever changing), random ship encounters (ally/enemy type, attack/defense size, loot), unpredictable weather (manual navigation being slower, faster, diagonal or backwards in extreme conditions) and probably other aspects I haven’t considered. Admittedly, the examples I mentioned could still be coded into each game genre – lots of hybrids these days!

All three games could be tailored to include multiple storylines, characters and endings, but the Elite zee spawn edges out the other two competitors when it comes to technical gaming replayability (totally not a word). Is that what you mean by “open-ended”? Either way, it is important to me as a paying customer; I prefer to buy games which I think I’ll replay several times.

The Zee game is sounding more and more like Taipan.

Of course, this is because we’re alikening it to things we already know instead of hearing from the idea-marms.