Obviously no one, since GOG won't carry it.

My point was 1000 backers isn't an indication of the demand for this game.

"the game isn't right for OUR audience at that price point"

I'm glad GOG gets to decide what is right for what audience at what price $$$ (Sarcasm)

Sounds like hand holding, oh well, I'll just buy it somewhere else. GOG's loss.

Easiest way to check the audience: Put the game in the wishlist... ;) You will see how many people are actually wanting it ;)

Oh they are doing that with the portraits? I suppose they could put females in the portraits then, it will look just as weird with the sprites not matching. I mean if this is a quirk that comes with the technical limitations might as well roll with it all the way.

I disagree with any sweeping statement that "No Indie game is worth more that $x," but I do understand GOG's point of view. At $25, this game would be the third-most expensive game in the catalog, after Witcher 2, a major AAA game by GOG's sister company, and Alan Wake, another fairly major release that GOG could be confident would sell well (based on the fact that it had already sold well), and which they introduced at a special discount. The current third-most expensive game, which costs less than $25, garnered a huge amount of flack ... for being too expensive.

GOG can talk all they want about leading a revolution, but in the last analysis, they're a business that has to release games people will buy in order to make a profit, and I suspect that from that point of view, they made the right decision. Obviously I wish the best of luck to the developers, but I can't work up much outrage over this.

Do you think most of Paradox grand strategy games worth the original $40 price point during the release date? Paradox Games is well known as low budget with simple 2D graphic, but it compensate those with huge replayability and deep strategy, gameplay, options, consequences and historically accurate. So, for me yes, it's worth the $40 price.

What's the different with Xenonauts? I'm on the fence here, but i think the game worth at least $20 for standard edition at Desura. After spending some hours on the demo, i think it's very entertaining and good game. Maybe the $25 doesn't fit current GOG pricing scheme and target audience. We are so used to $10 and $6 price point, anything higher than that are deemed as steep by some customer.

I for one don't think it should be GOG's place to force a price. If the developer wishes to sell their game for $25, then I think that should be their choice. Especially seeing how much work and time they have put into this title. I think it should be the costumers that should determine whether or not they would like to buy that game at that price, not the distributor.

But then again, it is certainly GOG's decision how they want to run their own business. But I personally disagree about excluding games because of pricing matters. In my opinion, price should be determined through demand, not though force of principle.

I also think $25 is a very reasonable price for a game like Xenonauts. If anything, it's $5 too cheap.

I don't understand how gog can jump up and refuse this on those grounds after releasing an old game (rollercoaster tycoon 3) for $19.99 and then Alan Wake for $30 (it's on sale atm). Is this a case of gog being more lenient with bigger publishers or harsher on indies? Maybe it is a case of the developer overpricing their game but it feels hypocritical.

I wonder how long it will be before we start to see indie & new games as weekend sales (if ever).

If they put it for 25$ and one month later the dev decides to put his game on a bundle...what will the outcome be? This is the problem with indie devs... They want money fast as possible....

You are comparing a game studio with almost a decade and a half of experience and proven ability to produce a quality products to a new (less than three years old) studio that no one has ever heard of and has no history of producing anything, good or otherwise. The history that Paradox has justifies their pricing just as much as Goldhawk's lack of history justifies GOG's hesitance to risk over pricing the game.

This is the problem with most of the indie's on gog already though. Almost all of them have been in bundles already so most people who're interested already own them. If gog gets new indie games onboard like they did with Grimrock, they stand to make more money than releasing the critically acclaimed ones most of us own already.

Yet,but Grimrock came in 15$ or less price... That is the whole problem.

Here we go again. I google "child soldiers ussr", no quotes.
I get the wiki page with some "page needed" shit. No English source on Soviet child soldiers in the English wikipedia.

Olga Kucherenko is anti-Russian (not just anti-Soviet). The partially state-sponsored "propaganda" movie she gives as an example, We Are from the Future, cost $5 mln and grossed $6+ mln - enough to qualify as a failed attempt to make money. On the other hand, the two Burnt by the Sun 2 movies were fully state-funded for a total of $95+ mln. Fair warning: these are widely considered to be worse than Manos: the Hands of Fate. What concerns us at the moment is the fact that they are extremely anti-Soviet, anti-Russian and anti-war.
Ergo: Olga Kucherenko is full of shit. She can't even get current events straight.

Apart from these two links, there are no references cited on the forums on Soviet child soldiers.

Quite a number of otherwise healthy men were considered "physically unfit" for war. Before the Soviets would ever consider using child soldiers, they would have drafted the various unfit people. From a coldly practical standpoint, there's no sense to use a child where a grown man or woman will do. Also, Nazis had no qualms about killing children (see Nuremberg trials files for proof).

When yet another state-funded anti-Soviet movie Bastards (not to be confused with Inglourious Basterds) was released, it was advertised as based on real events, specifically on an autobiography written by an alleged Soviet child soldier Vladimir Kunin. The author was consistently proven to be full of shit and had to backpedal to "zomg artistic license". However, the media storm was still raging, and FSB had to come forward and formally state that "the Soviet Union did not use child soldiers. Nazis did use both Soviet children recruited on occupied territories and German children". Not just "Kunin lies". Interesting fact: no one then came out and said, "FSB lies" (note that wage slaves are not afraid of FSB).

So what did children do during wartime? That's actually well-documented. Older children of both genders worked. Younger children managed households (cooked food, washed clothes, babysat). Pioneer Heroes' heroic deeds were in the vein of "was enslaved, poisoned her Nazi master", "relayed messages", "stole a Nazi officer's gun and killed three Nazis". The Young Guard (the most famous young Soviet guerrillas) were young adults, not children.

====================

Now, Xenonauts.

I hereby announce cessation of all hostilities between me and Goldhawk and confirmation of a separate peace. Thus I can praise the project and not fell bad about it.

So what is remarkable about the project that future projects need to learn from?

* The subject matter. X-Com 2 was worse than X-Com 1, and it went downhill from there. What is being resurrected is not an IP (storyline, characters, etc), it's the entire subgenre. Without Wasteland 2, we'd still have the various Fallouts, Stalker, various zombie games, etc.
* The demo version. It exists. It's playable. It's (reportedly) enjoyable.
* No bullshit reward taking up the premium real estate first slot. Unless your product is stupidly expensive, the first tier should always be the product itself. The $1 "heartfelt thanks" never amount to serious money and actually distract and detract from the bread and butter levels.
* Almost no third-party extras (these can be added later if necessary). The thing is, until the (actual, secret) goal is met, 3PEs that are not marked up count against the project creator - e.g. if you're offering a game for $20 and a game + t-shirt for $40, it is much better to have two $20 pledges than one $40 (even if the tee is marked up $5 - however, mark up too much and backers will catch on). Once the actual goal is met with first-party goods and byproducts 3PEs are just icing: do I get this guy's $20 and that's it or do I get this guy's $20 and allow him to waste $20 more on legal 3PEs?
* High-tier rewards are not going well, which is expected from a project that didn't sign up a celebrity to sell their toenail clippings. (Noncelebrity people see moderate success selling their original art at these tiers.)
* No "I will name my firstborn after you" pledge level. That is probably a good thing.
* No in-game kickstarter exclusives, As It Should Be.
* DRM-free, Steam, Desura - a little something for everyone.

And I say prove it. You don't become a professor at St Johns College if your work is not extensively peer reviewed, fact checked, and otherwise ripped apart by people who would love nothing more than to see you fail. If her work wasn't top notch she'd be teaching history at some po-dunk state college.

Besides, you missed the crux of my argument. Can you point to a single regular military in 1979 that used women in a front line combat role? I remember that when this was hashed out on the Xenonauts forums someone was able to find a link regarding women in the Israeli military serving in a combat capacity in the early 80's but that's it.

Ghadaffi's Amazonian guard doesn't count.