Post by templara on Jun 12, 2015 22:37:16 GMT
That's what one of the guys from the SotA forum told me. I saved this piece of our conversation that was done via PM. Now I didn't bother to check all of this so I do not know how much of this is true, but I figure some of you might be very interested in this.
Probably more than I'll ever have. That 4 mil from pledges is nothing compared to the 30+ mil coming from private investors.
Founders Fund and M8 Capital are Portalarium's financial investors. Both of these companies alone have invested more 4.3 mil.
www.portalarium.com/index.php/opportunities/investors
They're trying to make as much money as they can with as little work as possible. Hence the use of hexes, crowd sourcing, and kickstarting. The actual amount is close to 80 mil btw.
The notion that SotA is an indie game, perpetuated by Portalarium and their supporters, ( www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/feature/8607/page/2 ) is a farce. The game has competitive funding with many AAA titles, and the crowd-funding elements (much like the crowd-sourcing elements) are heavily exaggerated to help maintain the illusion of a small indie game.
Its all about money, I assume. In the end, maintaining an image of a small, yet well-developed, indie game, supported by a strong close-knit highly involved community is good for their image. That's why they suck the Poets' Circle's and College of Arms' dicks so hard, and that's also (I think) the point of Dev+.
Well to start, they invented Royal Warrants to give a chip to PC and CoA guild members. Then they gave the CoA the authority to regulate the entire coat of arms system is SotA, from rules to individual approvals. A similar system is in place with the PC where we have complete control of who is allowed to have their music brought before the devs. These things came about because Portalarium never got around to working on crowd sourcing, and they remain in place because they make it look like Portalarium has done work with their crowd sourcing model.
They can crank out a game that looks as shitty as SotA does currently and rather than being judged harshly like a AAA game studio would be, they'll be judged against indie games which often have hardly any money to work with. Its just a better strategy, and it makes the community feel important. People wouldn't feel needed (both financially and creatively) if Portalarium announced that two investors shadowed the entire community's financial contribution.
Now you've got me hunting for the source of that figure. So far, I'm unable to find it, however if you look up M8 Capital, Founders Fund, and Portalarium, you'll find some stuff. This shows that Portalarium already had over 3 mil from M8 before 2012. In 2012, they got an additional 7 million from M8 Capital, FF Angel, BHV Venture Capital, and Garriott himself, and that has continued through each series of financing. That's 10 mil before 2013, where they started really hitting up their investors for financial support, plus ~7 mil per round. In the second round of funding, they received an undisclosed amount (definitely greater than 5 mil) from FF and an undisclosed investor. They also partnered with Zynga early on when they were releasing Ultima Collectwhore (misspelling intentional), giving them more access to money.
This is all pre-emptive funding btw (and so some of it was used for their pilot games and back-end infrastructure). However, by the time the KS rolled around, Garriott had already invested more than the community in the game, and investors had been dumping cash into portalarium for three years. Early on they stopped disclosing how much money they were getting, but even a conservative estimate would see Portalarium having 30+ mil aside from community support. I haven't paid attention to Portalarium's financial situation for a while, so sorry I don't have concrete evidence to back up that lofty claim of 70+ mil, but certainly you see that tens of millions of dollars have been acquired by Portalarium from people outside the community?
Probably more than I'll ever have. That 4 mil from pledges is nothing compared to the 30+ mil coming from private investors.
Founders Fund and M8 Capital are Portalarium's financial investors. Both of these companies alone have invested more 4.3 mil.
www.portalarium.com/index.php/opportunities/investors
They're trying to make as much money as they can with as little work as possible. Hence the use of hexes, crowd sourcing, and kickstarting. The actual amount is close to 80 mil btw.
The notion that SotA is an indie game, perpetuated by Portalarium and their supporters, ( www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/feature/8607/page/2 ) is a farce. The game has competitive funding with many AAA titles, and the crowd-funding elements (much like the crowd-sourcing elements) are heavily exaggerated to help maintain the illusion of a small indie game.
Its all about money, I assume. In the end, maintaining an image of a small, yet well-developed, indie game, supported by a strong close-knit highly involved community is good for their image. That's why they suck the Poets' Circle's and College of Arms' dicks so hard, and that's also (I think) the point of Dev+.
Well to start, they invented Royal Warrants to give a chip to PC and CoA guild members. Then they gave the CoA the authority to regulate the entire coat of arms system is SotA, from rules to individual approvals. A similar system is in place with the PC where we have complete control of who is allowed to have their music brought before the devs. These things came about because Portalarium never got around to working on crowd sourcing, and they remain in place because they make it look like Portalarium has done work with their crowd sourcing model.
They can crank out a game that looks as shitty as SotA does currently and rather than being judged harshly like a AAA game studio would be, they'll be judged against indie games which often have hardly any money to work with. Its just a better strategy, and it makes the community feel important. People wouldn't feel needed (both financially and creatively) if Portalarium announced that two investors shadowed the entire community's financial contribution.
Now you've got me hunting for the source of that figure. So far, I'm unable to find it, however if you look up M8 Capital, Founders Fund, and Portalarium, you'll find some stuff. This shows that Portalarium already had over 3 mil from M8 before 2012. In 2012, they got an additional 7 million from M8 Capital, FF Angel, BHV Venture Capital, and Garriott himself, and that has continued through each series of financing. That's 10 mil before 2013, where they started really hitting up their investors for financial support, plus ~7 mil per round. In the second round of funding, they received an undisclosed amount (definitely greater than 5 mil) from FF and an undisclosed investor. They also partnered with Zynga early on when they were releasing Ultima Collectwhore (misspelling intentional), giving them more access to money.
This is all pre-emptive funding btw (and so some of it was used for their pilot games and back-end infrastructure). However, by the time the KS rolled around, Garriott had already invested more than the community in the game, and investors had been dumping cash into portalarium for three years. Early on they stopped disclosing how much money they were getting, but even a conservative estimate would see Portalarium having 30+ mil aside from community support. I haven't paid attention to Portalarium's financial situation for a while, so sorry I don't have concrete evidence to back up that lofty claim of 70+ mil, but certainly you see that tens of millions of dollars have been acquired by Portalarium from people outside the community?
