Question regarding organization of the team

[Bakhtosh]

The reason I haven’t supported this Kickstarter yet is that I have doubts about Bill as a project leader. I absolutely love Bills art, his sense of humor and the story concepts he writes. So if someone else is running a project with Bill throwing in his work I would support it without hesitation. But from people from within the game industry I've heard that while Bill is a very nice guy with marvelous skills he lacks in the area of planning, handling the finances, monitoring progress and making grave decisions if needed. The way the AVS Year 1 Kickstarter campaign went reinforced this impression (ages until the campaign started, unbalanced reward tiers, somewhat chaotic in the comments regarding new ideas) at least in my case. You can read a couple of similar opinions in the A Vampyre Story 2 Thread here.


Gene already answered my doubts in the adventuregamers forum (Link) and said a bit about the way the team is organized:

I’m taking some of the load off of Bill by working on the Kickstarter and Greenlight campaigns for Duke Grabowski. I wish I could’ve helped more with Vampyre Story: Year One, but I was busy prepping for E3 to publicize my game 1954: Alcatraz.

A lot of lessons were learned last year. With Unity + Adventure Creator, we now have a stable engine, and we’re keeping the scope of this game small. Jeremiah Grant, our other 1/3, crunched the numbers to make sure our financial and time goals were realistic. The duties and responsibilities of Duke Grabowsk are shared between the three of us.

That sounds like a plan but I still like to know what happens if something does not according to the plan. Does Jeremiah have the final word on every change of plan as he's the one who's in charge of the financial/time goals? What happens if you have different opinions on how to proceed? Does Jeremiah have the final word? Or do you simply plan to vote without anyone having a right of veto? Or has Bill as the one with the idea for the project have the final word?

Sorry for being such a pain in the arse. I simply fear that this project might end up being somewhat chaotic, taking a lot of more time than planned (meaning a lot more than the time you always had to add to game development plans).


P.S.:
Does the failure of the Kaptain Brawe 2 Kickstarter campain affect Duke Grabowski? Because Bill needs time to search for additional art jobs? Or is his order book already full enough to keep him alive?

[bill.tiller]

So I don't trust 100% of my decisions, maybe about 60%. So I wanted to bring in two other people I trust to take over 1/3 of the responsibility. And I wanted people who complement my skill. Jeremiah is, in my opinion, a frugal financial expert, so we trust him to handle the money and budget as well as all things tech. His goal oriented mantra reigns in our creative passions. And Gene, beyond being very creative, is very well organized and makes good practical decisions, and knows games very well. And has a indefatigable work ethic. But at the same time we have our own zones of expertise, that also crosses over too. So I am freed up to focus on the art and story. But if my passion for creativity gets out of hand I have Gene and Jeremiah to keep me in line which I want.

Walt Disney would have failed if it weren't for his financial genius of his brother, Roy, who was the real power behind the company. With Venture Moon it's a bit like that, though I am not the only creative vision here. So I think this arrangement is working out very well.

[gmocsy]

And one of my jobs is to fix Bill's typos, which I am doing right now. It's full-time work.

[bill.tiller]

Yes! Thhanks God fur that.

[Bakhtosh]

Question probably got overlooked since I added it later on:

Does the failure of the Kaptain Brawe 2 Kickstarter campain affect Duke Grabowski?
As Kaptain Brawe should have been one of the art jobs that keeps Bill and his family alive?
Does Bill now need more time to find replacement jobs? Time he now can't work on Duke?

[bill.tiller]

I don't think it will. Currently I have plenty of paying work for the next month or so, and hopefully I will have a big paying gig near the end of the year. Not sure about November yet. But Cateia games is exploring other funding options so I am hopeful to be working on Kaptain Brawe 2 this year.

My plan was to work 6 -8 hours day on non Duke work and then 2-4 hours on Duke, and then 8 hours on the weekend. So slow but steady which is why we plan to take 12 months to do Duke instead of the four months it would take if we had a full time team. But then we would have had to ask for 200k from Kickstarter backers which we didn't want to do.