zircon

Well, we actually were looking into licensing options for the music (as I had discussed in a recent interview). But you can't finalize any kind of arrangement until the music is done, or at the very least you know how MUCH you need to license...

I'm down anytime.

Keep in mind that nobody's money has actually been taken; neither Kickstarter nor we are holding any donations. OCR has always been very transparent in most everything we do, from judging decisions to new site policies, often including the community directly. So, please understand that if we could say anything more now, we would. Otherwise, the only thing that we can say at this moment is that we really are looking into it. What I can add is that we are not doing nothing.

Don't jump to conclusions, please... wait for us to make an update.

I'm not scared of writing music. However, I do feel very outclassed by many composers because I rarely hear melodies or arrangements in my head. 99% of what I write comes from pure improvisation. This makes me feel inferior to people who can have an entire song in their head.

A couple updates on the game: * There have been some patches improving functionality and some small bugs certain users were having. * There is now a FREE version with the first ~20 levels of the game! Check it out here: http://itunes.apple.com/app/globulous-lite/id530364234?mt=8 And if you like that, of course check the full version for 99c: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/globulous/id492835046?mt=8 * Original Sound Version posted a review of the soundtrack, which is available on Bandcamp as well as iTunes. Read the review here: http://www.originalsoundversion.com/all-falling-into-place-globulous-ost-review/

I know it's hard to resist the temptation, but please don't speculate. We'll update you guys soon. There is stuff happening; we're not just sitting around.

Just reminding everyone of this. We're not saying it's canceled, or not canceled. Give it a few more days. The songs have nothing to do with the Kickstarter. The music is getting done regardless.

Where did you find that info? I didn't see anything about that on the Bandcamp page.

Let me also throw http://www.audiocatch.com/ into the ring; similar conceptually, but I know the guys that run it and it's awesome

Well, it's not unreasonable for people just starting out to charge less. Web video isn't exactly like AAA gaming. $200-250/min is a lot better than what you would get paid from a middle-end buyout music library and that's how I started getting real $$$. If it were me I'd say $5-6k for the project. But I think they might balk at that.

We're looking into it.

It really depends. I mean if they only have $200, that's all you're going to get. What genre of music is it? The average rate of licensing a piece of library music is about $500-600 if you were to SELL to the library (buyout), but that's kinda bargain-basement. You're writing custom for a client here. My own bargain-basement rate is $250/min for custom projects but keep in mind that might be way more than they have. I would ask WHY they want to keep the rights. Can you give any more information about the company? Are they famous? Do they have revenue already?

Well now, don't forget we'll have hundreds of copies left to give away for free at panels and stuff.

Yep, Brandon is right.

Oh absolutely, VotL is going out to any NEW backers at $50+ as well.

Well wait, why would that be a hangup though? This happens on Kickstarter all the time. If a game developer funds a specific project, and that project gets way overfunded, obviously they're not going to just keep dumping money into the same project when it isn't necessary. That would just be wasting donations. I'm pretty sure I could find a way to spend every cent of this on the most blinged out CD printing imaginable, you know, gold trim and diamonds on every copy. But who wants that? People are still donating, we're not gonna say no to that especially since we've said and they KNOW that some of that is going to OCR. That's just the way KS works. It's expected that if something is overfunded, you're at that point donating at least some portion to the organization/people running the project, not JUST the project itself. And I'm fine with that as long as it's transparent (which it is), and as long as none of us are individually taking money (which we're not). Again why is this a bad thing? As long as you don't pretend or lie and tell people what their money is going toward, what exactly is the problem? People are free to donate their money how they please. If people donate to our Kickstarter knowing that each dollar will be split between the album, the bonus content, additional rewards, and OCR itself, that's fine.

Ooook? What's the scandal exactly? Pretty sure we've explained over and over what our initial goals were, where the money is going, etc. AFAIK not a single backer has withdrawn any pledge whatsoever so nobody is being deceived either. You're just hating at this point. If there are any unanswered questions or concerns I'd be happy to answer them. By the way, fighting over the definition of 'profit' is pointless. If you want to define 'profit' as any donations not being spent on the physical production costs of the FF6 album, then yes, there is profit. But the profit isn't going in the pockets of anyone on OC ReMix. Not myself, not Dave, not the remixers. That's the important part. saying "we're earning a profit" is misleading because it implies we're pocketing money, when we aren't doing that. Big difference between that and, say, selling a VGM remix album for $15 and keeping all $15 for yourself.

It wasn't a deterrent. It was just the level that we felt was appropriate to getting a physical copy plus all the earlier bonuses. As to why we didn't expect so many people to do it, you have to remember the album itself IS completely free. We said that in big bold letters. Everyone, backer or otherwise, will be able to download it via torrent or zip/rar file with MP3/FLAC. The physical is essentially just a collectible. It will look cool, but it's actually not giving you anything you can't get for free. That's why we didn't expect so many people to do it. KS doesn't allow you to do projects for websites or other things that require ongoing maintenance, they have to be for specific projects. FF6 album IS a specific project, and again we didn't expect to blow past our goal by this much, or this fast! So it's a little unfair to say we should have predicted with certainty that we were going to get this much money, and adjusted the Kickstarter around that guess. Remember in our best years we get <$10k total donations across the entire year.

The way you're framing it is wrong. We've printed large runs of previous albums at a loss. We did NOT sell these physicals, nor did we offer them in exchange for donations. 9 times out of 10 we used them for purely promotional reasons, for example giveaways or prizes at conventions like Otakon, MAGfest, PAX East and PAX Prime, bonus gifts for people that bought our t-shirts OR sponsored events such as Video Games Live. The goal of the Kickstarter was to fund the printing of such a run, with our expectation being that we wouldn't be giving anywhere close to the total run to Kickstarter donors. In other words, we did not EXPECT, when we first started, that we would have as many backers as we do at the $50+ levels. We expected that donations would be spread evenly, weighted toward the lower tiers. This estimation was based on what we observed of people who donate money to the site, as well as people who bought merchandise at conventions. Obviously we way underestimated how many people would come in at the $50 level. In summary, we knew we were shooting to print about 1000 copies. We did not think that the majority (or anywhere close) would be going to Kickstarter donors. As it turns out, people are being way more supportive than we could have ever hoped, so we're sweetening the deal with an entire 5th disc, a DVD, of content as well as more rewards which we'll be announcing over the next few weeks (we already hinted at one today, to be revealed tomorrow). As for the excess donations that AREN'T going toward album printing, shipping, additional rewards and bonuses, that will go to the site. Not as profit, since nobody here gets paid anything, but to pay for various site costs, upgrades and improvements. Same way we use all our donation money. No, this doesn't go against KS policies. KS has no problem with overfunding and they have no requirements or policies saying that all additional funds above the goal MUST be used for that ONE SPECIFIC PROJECT and nothing else. That would be unrealistic and infeasible, and there are countless other examples of this happening to other projects with no problems whatsoever. The policies say that Kickstarter is not for ongoing projects or businesses, but that's not at all what our primary goal was, and we honestly did not expect to blow past our goal this fast. If a game dev wants to raise $15k for a game and ends up raising $200k, nobody can or should expect them to spend every last cent on that one game. Obviously some of that money will go to future projects.

Dave already addressed the stuff with VV earlier in the thread, namely: I read the VV thread myself and didn't see djp "tearing apart" anyone. For what it's worth, we thought it would be better NOT to talk about stretch goals at the very beginning because we thought it would look bad/presumptuous. We had a whole meeting about that. Consider that the most we've made in a YEAR from donations is <$10k - that's a full year! We obviously HOPED for this level of success, but we all agreed it didn't make sense to talk about goals beyond $15k before even starting.

Look, do you think everyone that has contributed past the $15,000 mark is being at all deceived? Obviously we're past the point of paying for the physical production costs of FF6, but that doesn't mean we're going to pocket the rest as profit. As has been said several times, we'll be doing extra rewards with some of the funds (such as the bonus DVD and more content to be announced soon) and anything left over on top of that will go to OCR - the organization, not any individual people. There's plenty of precedent for this among countless Kickstarters we looked at. For example: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jeriaska/nubuwo-debut-bundle-adventures-in-videogame-audio People know that at THIS point, some amount of their donation is simply a donation to OCR itself. What does OCR do with money like that? The same thing we've done with donations for the last 12 years: pay for hosting, bandwidth, other physical prints, t-shirts, etc. Unless you think literally the entire staff is lying about this and we've all secretly been making money all along, take my word for it that the % of excess money that ISN'T going toward new rewards will simply be put into the OCR bank account for the same sort of uses that any other OCR donations would be used for. We've taken GREAT pains to NOT make money from anything, even while lots of other VGM artists and bands are making profit off unlicensed albums and concerts.

They're not mutually exclusive.

New reward unlocked! We'll be posting an update to the Kickstarter itself, but since Dave is at work, you guys are getting the news here first. Thanks to the outpouring of support and donations far exceeding our expectations, we'll now be producing a bonus FIFTH disc for the project, which of course will be included with the physical printing AND available as torrent. But this won't just be another CD of remixes; it's a whole DVD of goodies! We'll be including alternate mixes (such as karaoke/instrumental versions of vocal tracks), bonus tracks (like Jake 'virt' Kaufman's take on the entire opera suite in the style of Queen), audio stems/MIDIs, and more behind-the-scenes audio/video content. We can't wait to get started!

That's part 2 of the rule... always deliver