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I think mjomble has given the reason for that pretty succinctly. This is genuinely one of those times where they either do it in Chrome or they don't do it at all. There are, obviously, advantages to both courses of action. But I think I'd rather have something than nothing. Then again, as Andres also said, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt because of who they are and what they've done in the past. Many others won't. It's a fine line to tread. There's been a lot of pettiness over HTML5 and Chrome. Not all of it is rational, but people are irrational. Customers and potential customers are irrational. It's irrational to pledge $115 to a product that doesn't even exist yet and probably only has a market value of $30. I remember an article in the centre-right wing newspaper The Times (the Times of London to those of you who are wrong but need some geographical context) written by Danny Finkelstein. He was a PR advisor at one time to the Conservative Party leader William Hague. At the General Election in 2001 he phoned a voter who said she would vote for Tony Blair because Hague "had a funny voice". When Finkelstein said "if you don't mind me saying so, that's a rather silly way to vote". She said "yes, I do mind you saying so" and put the phone down. Essentially, a lot of this bickering is because William Hague has a silly voice. Fucking Tory scum.

We all, surely, used voice parser back in the day anyway? 1980s tech at its finest. Who didn't mumble what they were typing after hours of working out what you needed to enter to get past a particular screen? Anyone? No? Just me? Fine.

Waiting until tomorrow for the press campaign for reasons he can't discuss? Confirmation, I think, that this will be an official Space Quest game and that Activision are stumping up $2m to ensure it gets made. You heard it here first.

OK, am I being stupid here? HTML5 seems to be getting a really rough ride in the comments section of the Kickstarter. While the Zork guy seems to be raising some legitimate concerns (will an HTML5 game be able to render things quick enough; will it have multiple audio channels, etc.), the assumption STILL seems to be that because it's programmed in HTML5 it will need some sort of browser technology in order to run. Am I being stupid, or am I correct in assuming that since the game is going to be a stand-alone executable that it should be able to run as quickly as if it were programmed in anything else, providing the compiler file is properly coded? Some of the comments are about as stupid as saying there's no point in learning French because the only thing it will let you do is go to France. Or maybe I'm the stupid one? Would be interesting to see some more hard-line confirmation from the pontiff on this one in the next podcast.

Damn Rome, damn their numerals and damn you!

Three or four days is nowhere near enough to extrapolate how things are going to go, but let's do so anyway. It looks like the two guys are behind Larry in terms of initial popularity, but will probably (just) get over the line if they can get things to pick up towards the end of the process if current trends continue. I would suggest that if (and it's a massive-probably-worth-assuming-it-won't-happen-so-we-don't-get-our-hopes-up if) it turns out that they can make Space Quest VI, they will break £500k and then some.

Hell, no graphics at all. Totally text adventure. Fucking A.

Not bad. Not bad at all. I think anyone prejudging the ability of HTML5 to do this will have to rethink a little bit. Obviously, we won't know fully until later down the line (see Colin's post), but lookin' promising. My personal hope is that the interface is a little more similar to the SQ4 / SQ6 one (at least as far as the mouse point and click is concerned). Or VSB / Incinerations. Point is, I don't think a single click interface is necessarily a good way to go. It might work, but I do like the ability to move from hand to mouth to nose to feet. And, no, that's not "what she said".

There's also a lot of people acting very precious about their own favourites, worried that more startups means they won't get the game they want. A legit position to take, of course, if a little myopic. More adventure games from more people creates an industry. Are you telling me, for instance, that the 2GFA game is going to be worse for having to compete to look, sound and play better than its competitors? Yeah, right. Variety and competition drive up quality.

Intellectual Property theft is worse than ethnic cleansing. But I'm honoured. :)

Oh Samson. What hast thou donest?

Well, sure. You could change the cursor with a different button or method probably. It just doesn't feel like old Space Quest. And like all people, I hate change. Any change is bad. Keep everything the same. For ever. Or else.

Very interesting. The only slight issue I would have is the lack of a "right click" which puts the game in danger of being a little too simplistic. Then again, Grim Fandango showed that it's not a necessity providing the writing and puzzle design is good enough.

Looking good. Without money to throw around, I've gone for the $60 tier. I'm sure I won't be disappointed.

I am a fish, I am a fish, I am a fish, I am a fish, I am a fish, I am a fish, I am a fish, I am a fish, I am a fish, I am a fish, I am a fish, I am a fish, I am a fish...

Sponsorship?

How not to do it:

I do agree, though, that it is in the Guys' best interests to give out more information than they have now - but that's the point of this sort of "pre-amble" and "consultation" process that's going on. I'd like to know a little more before "investing", but I think it will be a question of degrees. If I like what I hear, I'm willing to put in much more than at the moment, where I'd probably only give what the market value of the game would be in the UK market right now. In my line of work, though, my "investment" comes from funding bodies who basically want to know EXACTLY what you're going to do before you even know yourself. Can be mighty frustrating.

Oh, hells no. In all seriousness, deleting stuff like this, "covering it up", or trying to pretend things didn't happen is absolutely the wrong way to go. With social media, any comment you make on it is in the public domain. Johnathon summed it up perfectly, in my opinion. While we may not be aware of all the facts, the minute you publish your comments you make it fair game. In my opinion. Even if a lot of that speculation can be hurtful or potentially down-right libellous. As I said, having read over some of the comments over previous years, I would dare to suggest that there has been a lot of bitching, squabbling and less than gentlemanly behaviour from all sides. But then it would appear, and this is just an hypothesis, that these guys are humans and may be fallible. But this is unconfirmed by official sources.

I did think, however, that with all these kickstarters kicking up that some sort of risk pooling/code sharing umbrella might have been useful. Perhaps the days of needing an AGI or SCI are over, but with those sorts of tools available to all the people in the group, perhaps costs and time could be reduced. I don't know. All I do know is that from looking around at interviews over recent years, it's quite clear that the ex-Sierra guys spend a lot of time bitching about one another. Artists, eh?

Still in England, and still English. Am towards the end of my History PhD and am looking to submit in early 2013. Right now I'm doing a 3-month research post for the UK parliament. Married. And a lot wiser than I was ten years ago. Which isn't fucking difficult.

GMillie (I think...)

And, of course, the artists that created the games see very little of that money. Obviously, without investment the artist cannot have a canvas, but by the same token without the artist all the developer has is a shit-load of blank canvasses lying around its studio. One of the good things about the rise of internet technologies is that people can produce quality games with very little investment (well, financial investment - the time costs are huge), and VSB, Incinerations are good examples of this. Companies need to realise that, ironically, pirating and unofficial spinoffs can actually lead to increased sales overall. Yet all they see are the "percentages" of the number of copies in existence and the numbers of sales they make. They don't realise that 50% of £100 is much bigger than 100% of £25.

Well I'll be damned. Time to start trademarking everything!

I think it was a specialised keyboard - she wasn't typing out the full conversation, letter by letter. I believe her finger joints would start to smoke if she could!