Anyone know how to get in touch with Chris Roberts?

Bojamijams

Master Chief Petty Officer
With Kickstarter and the fact that old favorites/classics are now being made again (Fallout, Shadowrun, etc.) this seems like the perfect opportunity to get a new Wing Commander game made, without requiring a $30mil investment and approval of publishers.

With how well Mass Effect series pulled off in-game cinematics there's no need to pay actor's wages either.

His twitter hasn't had any action since August and I'm wondering if anyone has his email so that we can prod him with this idea.
 
The CIC has been reporting for the past year that Mr. Roberts is certainly up to something. I don't think there is really a need to prod him. He's made it clear he wants to revisit WC.
 
Well he may want to but publishers may not want to, since there really doesn't seem to be any space combat games except for the X series (and I think the relatively 'poor' sales of that franchise further scared publishers on future ideas of that sort)

I just hope he's aware of Kickstarter and how thats changing the landscape of game funding.
 
I think everyone's "aware" of Kickstarter by now, but someone who's got a proven track record of marshalling tens of millions of dollars per project (for movies even moreso than games), taking initernet donations really doesn't strike me as his thing. It's a novel concept at first, but with everyone and their grandma popping up Kickstaters now, there's only so much money that people want to give away. I wouldn't be surprised if that bubble burst before too long.
 
Its not really a donation though. And people aren't 'giving money away'. You are purchasing a product on good faith based on a proposal, but you are getting something for your money (after product is released) and its not going away to charity like a 'donation'. Hopefully he understands this too.
 
That's how it's supposed to work, and the program is surfing high off that novelty right now. There certainly are a lot of small groups making big money on Kickstarter. But just like in the real world with bank loans, some of these ideas won't pan out and some of these companies will simply go bankrupt before they deliver a product. That's why people are turning to Kickstarter... if they had a sure thing and a solid business case, they could pursue conventional funding up front. There'll certainly be exceptions and great successes via Kickstarter, but I think a lot of people are going to look back in a few years and realize that donating to all these 'causes' was a bit naive.

It takes more than financing to make a game. For a big time ensemble like Chris Roberts/EA, financing isn't necessarily among the biggest issues they face. And if it is, it's because he wants $40 million to make a AAA title, not $800,000 to fund a small independent studio. :)
 
Mmm, I don't know. Obviously, in many cases people are putting their game up on Kickstarter because it's a simple way to finance a small product right now, what with all the enthusiasm - but there is more to it. Kickstarter is also a good publicity machine, because it's a very convincing way of demonstrating that there is an audience for your product. If a hundred thousand people donate for your game, you know there's at least ten, twenty times more people out there who will be willing to buy the game when it's done. In an age where publishers have to be more wary than ever of new titles, where sales of less than 1 million are failure, and sales of 1-2 million are considered modest at best, you really have to work hard to convince the publishers to put their money behind you. If, while you're at it, you can essentially run a huge free advertising campaign for your game - that's pretty excellent.

So, I think Kickstarter will have its use even for big, $40 million productions - it's just that people have to figure out how to use it. Obviously, you can't just go and ask for $40 million, you'd fail in an embarassing way.
 
Mmm, I don't know. Obviously, in many cases people are putting their game up on Kickstarter because it's a simple way to finance a small product right now, what with all the enthusiasm - but there is more to it. Kickstarter is also a good publicity machine, because it's a very convincing way of demonstrating that there is an audience for your product. If a hundred thousand people donate for your game, you know there's at least ten, twenty times more people out there who will be willing to buy the game when it's done. In an age where publishers have to be more wary than ever of new titles, where sales of less than 1 million are failure, and sales of 1-2 million are considered modest at best, you really have to work hard to convince the publishers to put their money behind you. If, while you're at it, you can essentially run a huge free advertising campaign for your game - that's pretty excellent.

So, I think Kickstarter will have its use even for big, $40 million productions - it's just that people have to figure out how to use it. Obviously, you can't just go and ask for $40 million, you'd fail in an embarassing way.

And its basically free money, in the sense of interst free money. That can be the difference for many projects between making a profit or not. Take the adventure project which asked for somewhat under one million dollars. Raising 1 million dollars through loans will cost you quite a bit of money (60.000 dollars interst per year), raising it through other means still means that you have to promise your investors a fair share of your profit. Games on kickstarter offer their supporters a finished product and some merchandise or immaterial benefits (like a statue in the game if they pay much money).
 
It's not free money - you actually have to promise quite a bit to get it. Apart from all the bonus stuff that people have come to expect, you're also giving people copies of the game, which means that all this "free money" in fact comes from pre-orders sold at a lower price than the final retail price. So... is it better to promise someone 20% of your income in exchange for his money... or to voluntarily give up 20% of your income in exchange for someone's money? Logic dictates that this adds up to the same thing :).

Again, with the exception of small projects that can be entirely funded through Kickstarter (~1-2 million dollars max), the money you get out of Kickstarter is entirely irrelevant. What matters is how many people are interested, how quickly they became interested, and what can be determined about your overall potential market based on this information.
 
The barrier to creating a new game isn't the funds to develop it--it's getting permission from the rights-holders to produce it without paying THEM a buttload of money.
 
Doesn't Christ Roberts have the rights to Wing Commander?

I doubt he would've sold his baby (IP rights) to EA .
 
Doesn't Christ Roberts have the rights to Wing Commander?

I doubt he would've sold his baby (IP rights) to EA .
Chris Roberts never, ever owned the rights to Wing Commander. Right from the start, the series was owned by Origin, and when Origin was sold to EA, all its intellectual properties were included. Remember, Chris Roberts didn't actually consider Wing Commander to be "his baby". At the time, it was just another game he was making. He never expected it to become the game people would associate him with, so it probably never occured to him to negotiate with his bosses to retain any kind of IP rights - not that he would have had any chance of winning such negotiations, because the game was quite an expensive one, and it was entirely financed by Origin.

That said, given all the little bits of info we've had over the past year or two about Chris Roberts, we can safely assume that he currently has a license from EA to develop a Wing Commander game.
 
Yeah, when Origin was sold to EA they talked about holding on to the rights... maybe for a nanosecond, but basically EA wasn't interested in Origin if it didn't also come with the IPs... Namely Wing Commander and Ultima. I think Chris tried to get the rights When he left EA/Origin but best they could do was that he got the rights for film and television.
 
I would like to know how to get in touch with Chris Roberts; different reason though. I'm more interested in trying to get his blessing for my role-playing game project (and, when it goes to print, I'd like to send him a hard-copy). This isn't something I need to know right away, obviously, but it would be nice to know if it's even possible to get in touch with him when the time comes.

Wouldn't want the info to be general public knowledge; a PM would do quite nicely.
 
that project sounds phenomenal... I hope it comes to fruition... someone help this man out please!
 
Hello,
I stay in touch with Chris Roberts and I can mention Kickstarter. My guess is that it's not something he's interested in; if anything, the thing that impresses me about Chris' ambitions is that they're as big as they were in 1996, rather than reformatted to match the modern game development landscape. He wants thirty million dollars to do a big Wing Commander game and he's not settling for mobile games or Facebook games or whatever like most of his contemporaries moved on to.
 
LOAF, can you help me out with getting in contact with him? And if he's not interested, he's not interested; no biggie. I ain't interested in making money with my little project - I just want to be able to send him a hardcopy when the time comes, as a way of saying "thanks for creating one of my all time favorite game series", or something like that.
 
Yes, but Chris Roberts doesn't own Wing Commander. Electronic Arts would be responsible for licensing an RPG. Chris Roberts has a deal to develop a game (and he has certain TV rights left over from 1999) but he doesn't control the whole IP.
 
Yes, but Chris Roberts doesn't own Wing Commander. Electronic Arts would be responsible for licensing an RPG.

Hmm......in that case, EA's actually a consideration this time around, isn't it? I didn't run into that problem with The Starflight Role-Playing Game because Binary Systems owned the game and EA was simply licensed to distribute it, and I had Rod McConnell's (the owner of Binary Systems both then and now) permission to publish as long as I made no profit. If EA owns Wing Commander, it's them I need to talk to.

Damn.

Wait, wait, wait, now I'm confused......did the Standoff and Saga folks have to get clearance for their projects from EA? I seem to recall asking something like this before (different thread, of course) without getting a clear-cut answer. And if so, the question becomes how to get in touch with the legal department at EA, and whether or not I then want to go through all the ensuing hassle.

In any case, even if I have EA's blessing, Mr. Roberts oversaw the creation of the original game, and so he's the one to whom I'd want to mail a copy.
 
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