damn they got sfxt beat these guy want 150k for dlc

...And here we go

Looks like we got a hostage situation on our hands.

They got my PC version preorder like 7 months ago, that's all I'm doing.

cant wait to try out Squiggly (when she's available). and to have Zone-tan the voice of her? THANK YOU BASED GOD!

i wish the characters also got themes. regardless, i'll be supporting this. and Zone-tan is a possible VA, not definite, so don't get too excited.

Not to worry. We just need to give them 19,330 Bison Dollars.

Can't wait for PC version, already have it on Xbox but PC is much more convenient. Also Zone-Tan voice, too good to be true.

150k...seems kinda outrageous how can 1 character need that much funds ? did the game cost 1,000,000+ to make in the first place?

Also are they not using Kickstarter ?

Maybe...this game should just lay to rest? Just let it go...

Sorry, gave all my money to not cure breast cancer. None left for you guys.

Lol yo 150k?

It`s sad that ppl think these costs are insane. Compared to what 1 character costs for Capcom, this is peanuts. Capcom uses up to 1-2m for 1 character. This is the cheapest you can go for making characters. And to be blunt the way they made it work with SG is revolutionary.

If she will be free then its a no brainer but if I help only to have to pay for the character, then no thanks, sorry Mike. If im wrong on that let me know cuz I don't know.

#11 it will if the goal is not met, they will move on to other things.

#9 150k is nothing for a character, you'd be surprised by how much they are.

@10 Kickstarter is too busy kissing up to Bronies. I doubt it would work.

@9

The game definitely cost well over 1m$ to make.

@14

Citation needed.

#9
150k is actually pretty dirt cheap(It was 250k per character before but they took pay cuts) for the character process from Step 0(Art, Animations, Voice talent to the Final Step(submission fees, etc etc). They were being funded by Autumn Games before so a few Million was nothing at the time, but the whole Def Jam: Rapstar lawsuit of 15 Million dollars unfortunately made Reverge Labs dump the Skullgirls Team without compensation due to court issues. If Autumn Games can favorably get out of the lawsuit they can work with the Lab Zero crew again.

Street Fighter IV in contrast costs roughly at least a Million per character (Keep in mind how many characters were created from scratch in Vanilla SIV back in the arcades before slowly adding more characters due to SFIV profits.) After seeing the profits they could afford the Venture for creating more characters for Super and eventually AE.

#10

No IndieGoGo apparently due to Wider secured payment methods and more flexible deadlines is what I hear on stream

@14
I would love to know where you got a figure like that.

waste of cash imo even if the amount is less high than other companies put into making characters honestly if capcom putting over a mil for characters they should find a more cost effective solution

I found the character concept to be interesting but I won't be heartbroken if it doesn't come about. Hope they reach their intended goal.

@14 & 20 Not saying you guys are wrong but I'd like to know where you got your info from as well because I never knew the costs of developing a videogame and I'd be interested in reading up on it and educating myself about it.

I'm guessing the cost is basically the salary of the guys working on the character for a year. So a 3D character would require: a modeler, an animator, a programmer so at the very least 120k. 2D probably takes more time because it's hand drawn and all.

Forgot sound effects and voice actor.

150k is the new 8.95

Hold on a minute! Than how did the crew working on mip-fim do it? Are they retired millionaire IT people? This is outrageous I'm sorry. No way somebody break it down for me please. How can a character they said is almost complete cost as much as a Lamborghini?
How much did it cost to make the game!? What's the profit/loss on this game that caused the team to shut down to begin with? I'm sorry if this is offense but something is amiss.

To make this perfect, the PC version should be released on GOG.

I'll donate.

... So has Umbrella been shelved completely then?

#24, #28

Peter Bartholow(Ceo of Lab Zero) answered questions in the Srk article comments that are similar to the ones being asked here.

http://shoryuken.com/2013/02/15/skull...

Whats more is on the IndieGoGo page on 2/25 will show a full price breakdown of what sections the money will go towards. It will be a glimpse of what the fighting game industry actually has to do for expenses to create a character(Its not as cheap as you think, especially for 2d fighting games, they have to expect their profits will cover the expenses and whatever cuts various 3rd parties take).

About Fim?

The game was HIGHLY incomplete, going at a slow pace, was specifically for PC (Don't have to jump through hoops to deal with consoles reaching in your wallet) and in terms of quality was inferior to Skullgirls (Not saying FiM was garbage, but Skullgirls actually had funding to help the process). It was more of a Fan Project (A really GOOD Fan project using whatever they had)

Old Skullgirls looked similar to FiM in terms of quality and took a year to complete old design Filia so they could pitch the game too different companies like Ubisoft etc to fund them. Compared to now where they could pump high quality characters out in 3 month intervals since they have staff now.

Then: We won't make DLC unless a lot of people buy our game.

Now: We won't make this one character unless a lot of people give us money.

Gotta love the way these producers always manage to make the customers feel guilty. Basically, if there's no DLC, then it's our fault because we didn't buy this game. Once a hostage, always a hostage.

Of course the cost is high, especially when you consider that each character is being drawn. S kill mentioned that SFIV would've been far more expensive to make if they went with sprites over 3D models. Not to mention all #20 mentioned. How cheap did some of you thing it would be?

How exactly does pricing for this works? I'm quite confused.

@danny2times Skullgirls sprites in their original resolution are 5 times the size of Fighting is Magic sprites, and each Skullgirls character has well over a thousand sprites.
http://shoryuken.com/wp-content/uploa...
The cost comes from paying professional artists to come in every day and make thousands of images like the above. And it's not all done in one smooth motion. Rough black-and-white sketches are made, then someone has to clean them up into clean line-art, then someone has to color them. Not to mention all the time they spend planning and communicating exactly what animations have to be drawn in the first place, the paid programmers who develop the character, the paid voice actor, the paid employees (probably pulled from the other departments) who have to do test the character to make sure it doesn't break the game, and the amount they have to pay Microsoft and Sony do distribute it (don't quote me on that, I'm not sure how much it is, but I heard it's like $20,000; a drop in the bucket for, say, EA, but a hefty chunk of change for a little guy). In short, there are easily dozens of people working on the character, and every single one of them receives a paycheck for their months of work like they would at any other job. It's easy to do it for free when it's a small passion project, but not when there's so much work that needs to be done and so many cogs in the machine that need to keep spinning.

What happened with people actually making something good and THEN selling it?

Regardless of donating to the cure for breast cancer charity for skullgirls, I'm still going to put a comfortable amount of money into this as it is truly community driven and Mike Z and the group have been through hell, yet are still working to make this game work and doing a great job with the hand they've been dealt. Best of luck to this crowdfunding and I really do hope it gets far more than $150,000 as I would personally love to see this become even more of a full game than it already is as an xbl/psn title.

Oh wow, getting Zon-Tan's Va to do squiggly. THis will be interesting.

@37 You need money to pay people to develop things. you can't just promise them pay and then give them the money you made from sales.

All the luck to them; it won't be easy reaching that goal.

Listen I understand people need to get paid for their work, I get that. I'm saying that if this character is that far done as shown here on hubs a while back. How can it still cost that much too finish? And how much will they ask for the character they've mentioned is only in concept stage, the male character.

This has me very curious, I'm in automotive prototype fabrication. My shop hand built the 2013 viper. It cost 1.5 million complete. From concept to finished driving car, engineer to fabricator and everyone in between. I just can't believe some numbers being thrown around per character.

I am an artist, you name it i do it. If I could make better money just drawing animation stills for a gaming company I'd be doing it. There has to be some exaggeration here.

Who is zone-tan? Or do I even wanna know?

#38

This

@14 hahaha. yeah right. if one character cost capcom 1-2m MvC3 would have cost them atleast 40m only for characters. stop talking bs.

@28 MLP has flash animation quality and flash animation is very fast to make. the characters are made from basic shapes and you move the shapes around. skullgirl's animation has every frame drawn and no shortcuts.

calling it now: this is not gonna happen. I have seen way more popular stuff fail on kickstarter.

Seems weak and uninspired to me. If you're going to raise money build something sustainable, don't just squeak out more dlc on an otherwise dead end product.

Maybe aim to raise what it would take to make a revamped pc version, call it SkullGirls2 or SkullGirls2014, use all the existing content + this extra stuff the 150k would fund. Make it a LOL style freemium game. Everything free to play offline, online you need to buy chars/colors/stages or use the weekly free ones. Then you could do future dlc funding within the game as a preorder.

You've got something really good here guys, please think bigger.

#43

Well known individual in the dark side of the inter web and youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TraCvA... NSFW Animated Comedy Series on Youtube

. The voice of that "Zone-Tan" shown interest to VA Squigly.

#45

You do realize thats Nothing for Marvel and Capcom, especially if they can easily make that all back in profits right?

@45 go stand in the corner with peacemillion

Is $150,000 cheaper than what most characters cost in SG and other FG franchises? Of course. But money is still money, and 150K is still a huge amount. SG was only (in terms of 150K) able to make around 76k in the EVO donation drive and Smash was "only" able to make around 96k. And anyone involved in seriously donating for any of these two games know how hard of a task that was. Money is still money, 150k is still 150k, and people are still people. We don't exactly have bottomless wallets. I will be donating, but you can't blame others for being overwhelmed by the 150k goal.

Peter Bartholomew discussed a lot of the price issues on SRK. The team all took pay cuts to get the price down to 150k, Squigly will be free for 3 months, and they will start working on next dlc character if goal is reached. They are an indie company that doesn't have the funds Capcom has, so I don't know why everyone thinks this is too expensive. Its not that different from Fox making a movie versus an indie film maker. They may spend 200k on a movie, and that seems outrageous. Then you hear Fox spending 40 million on a movie and it seems a lot less now.

LoL, that last little tidbit about Zone had me rolling. Guys I know Skull Girls is a little ris-ke but lets not associate with hentai artists. Then again, considering all that messed up shiz the lead animator has on MechaFetus.com, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

"@14 hahaha. yeah right. if one character cost capcom 1-2m MvC3 would have cost them atleast 40m only for characters. stop talking bs."

I'm surprised it's only 1 mil. Most gaming budgets these days are astronomical - that's not even a shocking revelation. You can pretty much do the math just by adding up what's needed to complete a character. You need concept artists, 3D modelers, texture artists, animators (sometimes multiple animators for separate jobs)‚ programmers, and of course voice actors - which likely gets even more pricey these days because they're not just calling out a move or two (ie., complete intro/ending dialogue, cutscenes, etc.).

That's not including testing.

150k is pretty cheap... and that's not considering that it's likely even more involved when you factor in those 3D modelers are now instead 2D animators, and you have to add in keyframers and such into that.

This -ish is not cheap.

"If I could make better money just drawing animation stills for a gaming company I'd be doing it. There has to be some exaggeration here."

Going to blow your mind even more then: most animators/artists/illustrators/modelers/etc. don't get paid THAT well (considering the level of work most have to do), nor is the work steady. Most of it is contract work unless you get extremely lucky (or are just that damn good) and land a permanent gig with the likes of a Capcom dev or a Konami dev (or more to the point outside of gaming, a Disney or a Dreamworks or Pixar, etc.).

It's a really tough field and the cost to do work in it is increasing. It's why despite not really being all that into SG's play-style, I admire the hell out of Alex Ahad for continuing to work on it and pitch it for so many years, and Mike Z and their team for doing everything they can to support it despite all the setbacks.

really? that much? come on....

Mass education is needed about the real costs of the video game industry. I can't blame people for being dumbfounded by what they are asking. But, I reeeeeeally think that all vg companies need to be more upfront about the costs of vg development and exactly where the money goes.

I think Sven from Capcom mentioned that it would make investors and stockholders cry in a corner, however. lol

I'll probably donate. Good to help a great game in the scene.

A male character, eh? Kinda seems out of place. Nothing wrong with male characters... but only having one in a game just seems odd for some reason.

Lol god damn man! $150k for a DLC character? I'm laughing so much I don't even know what to say. ROFL!

Ugh, I realize that $150k seems ridiculous but that really is a reasonable cost compared to the amount for each mainstream fighting game character.

I wish I could contribute but I really don't have the income for it. That said, I really hope they achieve that goal as I would love to see Panzerfaust or Big Band playable in the future.

@15 (xShonuffx)
Upon release, Squiggly will be free for a whole three months before requiring pay, so anyone who donates won't pay twice for her.

Well. They should be incentives. Memrebolia and the voice actress voicemails and stuff like they did for the drive. Personally I don't mind it. Especially with a stage and music that's also included.

Bait and switch?

Why are there so many people with such a shallow mentality in these comments? What you thought making characters was free? 150k really isn't that much, even if it's not mostly coming out of their pockets.

I find it hilarious people believed a single character costs anything less than something in the six figures, for a console game no less.

LMFAOOOO 150K, Are they high on crack!? This game is DEAD. Don't waste your money on a dead on arrival product. I mean when your video games are making less money then EA Sports' Yearly rewashed NHL Hockey Video Games are, you are a joke.

If Caxx gets the part, I want Squigly to have a Zone-tan color alt. And I'm definitely voting for Umbrella.

@55

I hear you, and I'm sure many other do.

Characters that are not street fighters in Street Fighter include Guile (Air Force Colonel), Chun-Li (Interpol Agent), M.Bison (Dictator) and I doubt E.Honda goes to random hole-in-the-wall undercover locations to practice Sumo against random thugs.

It's not too far-fetched.

The primary difference between something like this and the cost of DLC characters for someone like, oh we'll just say Capcom, is that a company like Capcom can afford to wait until the product is released to get their 150k per character.

If someone like Mike Z took out a loan to fund the work and nobody paid for the DLC, he'd be pretty boned. So. Y'know. Cash up front!

In actuality, the money a large company spends on DLC is probably going to end up being higher than 150k per character. That said, they also generally make more than that in sales of that character.

Companies that offer free DLC are basically taking the cost-hit for the work involved with the hopes that DLC releases will keep the game active longer. This, combined with the good publicity for creating free DLC, in turn leads to more sales for the core game itself.

To those who believe content developers should just give you free stuff out of the goodness of their hearts... Get a damn job, move out of Mom's basement, and we'll talk again in 5 years.

$150k on one characte/possible DLC nah something aint rite

@14 and 20 I am 99% certain that doing characters in 3D is cheaper than that in 2D, and that was a huge reason why Capcom is pointing their middle finger at 2D animation and insisting on sticking to 3D. So I really want to know where that 1 million figure came from.

#68 Because when you are a big company you aren't trying as hard to minimize costs. Also 3D requires much more people to work on stuff (programmers, animators, designers) as in 2D requires only artists (at least in doing the animations) and thus is a better choice for a producer that isn't that big.

BTW you all should really remember that one time when Sven (or was it Seth?) said that you would be really surprised just how much developing things costs. Personaly I believe in that 1,000,000$ thing and I sure believe that Skullgirls have cheaper characters than others.

So, umm, where's the donation link?

#70 Donation starts at 25 February so it doesn't exist yet.

...What, that's less than people are asking to make entire games on kickstarter, yes i know the process in creating and balancing a Skullgirls character is insane but damn, and stretch goals for new characters? What are they 300k... 450k?

Just think, those dudes making that mlp fighting game were doing it for free.

Will donate.

Skullgirls sold about 50k so if everyone who bought the game donated $3 the goal would be met.
i'll break it down a little
$3 x 50k =150k
$6 x 25k =150k
$10 x 15k =150k
$15 x 10k =150k
$20 x 7.5k =150k ect.
i stopped at $20 cause its not really a lot and any more than that would be a waste. i'm sure a lot of you play marvel, would you pay $20 to see your favorite character in? i would gladly fork over $20 to get Jon Talbain in UMVC3. so the more money people donate the less people that have to donate. we finally get a company that wants to add to there fighting game unlike UMVC3 were fans have asked for more characters going on a year and a half now and nothing. at least lab zero is trying. and its free once it's done.

This crowdfunding could have been successful if done BEFORE the SRK illuminati decided they needed a pat on the back from Kotaku and auctioned their 8th game spot.

There is NO WAY people will invest a huge sum like $150 000 so soon after the Evo donation drive. You can thank the srk staff craving approval from the e-sports media for that.

Looking forward to the PC version, 15$ well-spent, and that's enough.

Pass... Skullgirls was disappointing, so I'm through supporting it.

I wish them luck but... $150k does seem a bit unrealistic. The reason that the breast cancer drive did so well was because frankly, after the mud that was slung last year we all wanted to stick it to Kotaku

Alas. I wish them well and will chip in, but I'm pessimistic.

This is a crappy ass dead game, and these guys want 150k for an extra character that will not do crap for the game....... Not sending a penny to these guys, get your own money.

They saw the potential to get dat dough with the srk donations drive.

finish the product and then sell it. Its retarded to expect consumers to take the risk and finance of production. I hope this game dies.

I will definitely donate to this.

good luck.

What if they only get $100,000? All the people who paid to have a character just don't get to have it? Instead of paying money to get a character, I'd have to pay money to MAYBE have a character? WTF?

This is some cowardly stuff. Like, I actually wouldn't mind if they had a $3 DLC character, because they are a relatively indie team. But now, it's just a hope/promise.

So much hate here...I hate it.

I thought the money doesn't get transferred unless the goal is actually met. Hmm.

@83 and @85: the rule of Indiegogo and Kickstarter is that if the goal is not met, the payments don't go through. Indiegogo in particular will list the charge right after you contribute, but they will refund it if the goal doesn't go through. (this is also listed in red on Indiegogo after you input a cost and perk).

you either get a character and lose a bit of cash (no one's expecting $1k from each person), or you get nothing and lose nothing. and Lab Zero isn't doing scumbag stuff, they're making Squigly free for like 3 months after she's released. stop complaining.

$150K these nuts.

personally im more upset about the next char inline being a guy...guess he caved into the pressure of alot of people not taking the game seriously cause its all girls.

No investor wants to give them the money to do this because they know not to throw money away.... Why should we? the game is dead no matter what.

Holy shizz at the hate and sheer ignorance in these comments.