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Trapezium Dave posted:The Unsung Story update is open to non-backers too. I see they have dropped the triangle based map that was their distinguishing feature to go with standard squares. Yeah, my favorite part of the update is them stressing that this is "a very early build". They've had the money for two years and are months overdue. They shouldn't only have a "very early build" to show off.
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Oct 21, 2015 00:34
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IShallRiseAgain posted:About six months ago we realized that Obduction had evolved with enough content to be a bit larger than the Kickstarter-sized experience we had planned.
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Oct 21, 2015 01:02
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I get the impression that they would have been content to drop their plans for extra content if they couldn't find someone else to pay for it, which is the big difference between them and indie upstart #45678.
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Oct 21, 2015 01:07
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Trapezium Dave posted:Why do so many projects fall to this trap. Especially the more experienced developers, who it appears seem to fall for it harder than the newbies. Because now they finally have the opportunity to make the game they really wanted to make.
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Oct 21, 2015 01:08
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Trapezium Dave posted:Why do so many projects fall to this trap. Especially the more experienced developers, who it appears seem to fall for it harder than the newbies. Beacsue they're used to having somebody there to tell them they need to make and release an actual drat game
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Oct 21, 2015 01:09
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ImpAtom posted:Nah, VP2 is really good. The plot's complete naff but it has a lot of really strong core mechanics and actually does creative things with the level design and enemy design. I like VP1 more but VP2's one of the better JRPGs on the PS2. The fact that combats were long and tiresome compared to VP's fights was awfully point-missing, I thought, often spawning you basically down the block from monsters and forcing you to spend several turns just getting into engagement distance. Now even that wouldn't be so bad, but grinding was practically mandatory (as opposed to VP, which limited your grinding with its time limit), and when I got to act 5 or so where I had to grind to get rare drops of a thing from a vague source to craft weapons that would just allow me fight ghosts so I could advance... nope. Having to guess which part of which enemy drops the rare thingy I need at least several of... it felt like a literal waste of my time, given the "reward" would be more of its insipid plot. Glad you found something to enjoy, though! 
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Oct 21, 2015 01:17
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PaletteSwappedNinja posted:I get the impression that they would have been content to drop their plans for extra content if they couldn't find someone else to pay for it, which is the big difference between them and indie upstart #45678.
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Oct 21, 2015 01:35
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Trapezium Dave posted:Except according to that update they are still chasing the chance that another publisher will swoop in and give them additional funding, even though that is at odds with their statement that they are also reducing the scope back to its original level. They can't be doing both, so it sounds like they're still in self-imposed limbo. Yeah, as someone who's a big fan of the Myst series and was really looking forward to this one, I can't believe Cyan got suckered into this. Cyan's corporate history is basically a long chain of being hosed around by publishers. That was actually one of their stated reasons for turning to crowdfunding, so that they would have complete control over the end product without a publisher to answer to. So what's the first idea that occurs to them when they start having a scope issue? Go to a publisher. Not to mention taking them at their word before there was a signed contract in hand and scaling up production using backer funds for something they couldn't achieve. Now they're begging for a new publishing partner offering "generous terms." It's like reading a letter from a drug addict saying that if they just get enough money for one more fix they'll go clean, they swear. Though honestly I don't think Cyan ever truly understood Kickstarter as a platform. They've been offering pretty much radio silence to their backers for the last several months. They offer no producton updates at all to their backers as the estimated delivery date flies by, meanwhile they're giving PC World a hands-on exclusive with the game. If one were to just go off of the Kickstarter updates feed you'd swear that they were still in the pre-production phase, with maybe a vertical slice done, but the PCWorld piece shows that they've got a fully playable game done that just needs to be finished off and tested. It's mind-boggling why they don't care to fill the backers in on that sort of progress.
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Oct 21, 2015 02:45
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Trapezium Dave posted:Except according to that update they are still chasing the chance that another publisher will swoop in and give them additional funding, even though that is at odds with their statement that they are also reducing the scope back to its original level. They can't be doing both, so it sounds like they're still in self-imposed limbo. The story doesn't make sense. They moved forward with a much expanded game in a short period of time without a contract, waited for two months, then went "oh welp, sorry backers." They may be leaving some things out, like them pulling a Broken Age by having the game be too big and needing a big cash infusion just to ship the drat thing. Also: quote:It’s ironic and sad that every time that Cyan has been pushed to the brink, it has been related to some unexpected move by a publisher. Hey dudes if this keeps happening to you, maybe it's you. Myst came out in 1993, you were developing games before that, you don't get to play the excuse card anymore when you could have called up one of your senior industry friends and said "hey publisher X promised to sign a contract but it's been a month, have you heard about them having financial prob- oh, ok, thanks." Jesus Christ. I backed this game against my fears about something like this happening. macnbc posted:If one were to just go off of the Kickstarter updates feed you'd swear that they were still in the pre-production phase, with maybe a vertical slice done, but the PCWorld piece shows that they've got a fully playable game done that just needs to be finished off and tested. It's mind-boggling why they don't care to fill the backers in on that sort of progress. This too, though gaming journalism 101 says to be skeptical of what mags claim. PCWorld? Did Byte not want to offer them a cover slot?
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Oct 21, 2015 02:53
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Trapezium Dave posted:Except according to that update they are still chasing the chance that another publisher will swoop in and give them additional funding, even though that is at odds with their statement that they are also reducing the scope back to its original level. They can't be doing both, so it sounds like they're still in self-imposed limbo. The optimist in me says that because they spent several months developing the larger version of the game, they're hunting for a new publisher to let them make that and not put it to waste while they polish off stuff that'll be in the smaller-scope game. The realist says ha! . macnbc posted:Cyan's corporate history is basically a long chain of being hosed around by publishers. That was actually one of their stated reasons for turning to crowdfunding, so that they would have complete control over the end product without a publisher to answer to. Uru was a dead-end idiocy from start to end, and that more than anything broke the company. They just pumped money into a pointless, useless project.
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Oct 21, 2015 03:12
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I am so  right now about not having given Obduction any money.
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Oct 21, 2015 07:15
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Alien Rope Burn posted:The fact that combats were long and tiresome compared to VP's fights was awfully point-missing, I thought, often spawning you basically down the block from monsters and forcing you to spend several turns just getting into engagement distance. Now even that wouldn't be so bad, but grinding was practically mandatory (as opposed to VP, which limited your grinding with its time limit), and when I got to act 5 or so where I had to grind to get rare drops of a thing from a vague source to craft weapons that would just allow me fight ghosts so I could advance... nope. Having to guess which part of which enemy drops the rare thingy I need at least several of... it felt like a literal waste of my time, given the "reward" would be more of its insipid plot. You don't have to grind or craft a single thing to finish VP2. This is actually one of the 'problems' with the game in that there are a lot of lovely FAQs for it which recommend doing that kind of stuff despite it being completely unnecessary. There are things in the game you can get by grinding but they are not at all stuff you need. (At least not on a first playthrough. The game has a mechanic where NG+ gets harder and harder each time you beat it, which is where a lot of the mechanics go from optional to mandatory but only if you play it a few dozen times which is absurd.) There are rare items you can get by grinding characters up to high levels before they leave your party but they are completely not mandatory, required or essential. In fact the single most game-breaking item in the game can be purchased from a regular shop in Chapter 5. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 08:23 on Oct 21, 2015 |
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Oct 21, 2015 08:16
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Trapezium Dave posted:Why do so many projects fall to this trap. Especially the more experienced developers, who it appears seem to fall for it harder than the newbies. I think it is understandable when a project gets a lot more money than they planned for, but if you don't get the extra money, you really shouldn't start making your game bigger.
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Oct 21, 2015 08:26
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MikeJF posted:Uru was a dead-end idiocy from start to end, and that more than anything broke the company. They just pumped money into a pointless, useless project. I really wanted Cyan's new totally-not-myst-this-time project to succeed, but I also saw this production mess coming since the kickstarter pitch and at least I dodged that bullet (although I've been suckered in way worse kickstarter projects *ahem* Hero-U *cough*). The weird thing was, that I visited their kickstarter page and then the new facebook page, where there was no mention of any production issues and missing their estimated date (which was this month), and literally no comments were concerned about this. Either the Obduction backers have all never backed any other project, or none of them thought that there was something fishy going on because Cyan in their mind is incapable of screwing things up(?). Which they have exclusively been doing for the past decade with their games (and DLCs with limited installations, remember those? ) and the publication terms.
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Oct 21, 2015 08:28
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Memoranda has been funded
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Oct 21, 2015 10:17
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Oasx posted:I think it is understandable when a project gets a lot more money than they planned for, but if you don't get the extra money, you really shouldn't start making your game bigger. Yeah this has happened so many times now that there's no excuse for thinking it'd work. Seriously, make the game you intended first, and then IF you have money/time left at the end, add all the extra cool poo poo that was beyond the scope of the original pitch. Worst case; you ship with the game you originally promised.
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Oct 21, 2015 11:36
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AntiPseudonym posted:Yeah this has happened so many times now that there's no excuse for thinking it'd work. Seriously, make the game you intended first, and then IF you have money/time left at the end, add all the extra cool poo poo that was beyond the scope of the original pitch. Worst case; you ship with the game you originally promised.
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Oct 21, 2015 13:15
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AntiPseudonym posted:Yeah this has happened so many times now that there's no excuse for thinking it'd work. Seriously, make the game you intended first, and then IF you have money/time left at the end, add all the extra cool poo poo that was beyond the scope of the original pitch. Worst case; you ship with the game you originally promised. Almost nobody in the industry wants to do this. The original ideas almost always end up being too big, and there tends to be denial about making the painful cuts needed to ship the game on time and on budget. The hardest job in any software company is being the person who says "yeah we need to cut that." I still remember (15 years later!) some features we cut from a game I worked on, they would have been cool as hell but the game has got to ship.
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Oct 21, 2015 13:24
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Woolfe got bought by Rebellion, they plan to honor backer rewards and maybe do something with the IP.
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Oct 21, 2015 13:30
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How Rebellion manages to stay in business I'll never know
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Oct 21, 2015 13:33
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New Fig campaign "Anchors In The Drift" is live: https://www.fig.co/campaigns/anchors-in-the-drift  "Anchors in the Drift is a Free to Play Action RPG with a unique twist that gives players the freedom to combine and craft their own customized abilities from collectible cards to combat dynamic enemies."
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Oct 21, 2015 14:08
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Hakkesshu posted:How Rebellion manages to stay in business I'll never know
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Oct 21, 2015 14:11
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Mr Underhill posted:"Anchors in the Drift is a Free to Play Action RPG with a unique twist that gives players the freedom to combine and craft their own customized abilities from collectible cards to combat dynamic enemies." This might be one of the worst sentences I've ever read.
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Oct 21, 2015 14:11
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All its missing is rogue-like and procedurally generated.
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Oct 21, 2015 14:13
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I like the idea of different islands and archipelagos with different themes, from WW2 to vikings and feudal japan, and the fact that you can build your own combos, but I'm extremely curios how crowfunding and free-to-play will go together.
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Oct 21, 2015 14:17
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Mr Underhill posted:I like the idea of different islands and archipelagos with different themes, from WW2 to vikings and feudal japan, and the fact that you can build your own combos, but I'm extremely curios how crowfunding and free-to-play will go together. quote:customized abilities from collectible cards I'm betting it has something to do with this. Also other than the "Dynamic" enemies (how are they dynamic? what does that even mean??), the whole collectible ability cards thing is what's turning me off from that pitch the most. There's just way too many FTP games that have taken the wrong route with this, and their backer rewards are the opposite of comforting on the issue: 
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Oct 21, 2015 14:22
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Mr Underhill posted:"Anchors in the Drift is a Free to Play Action RPG with a unique twist that gives players the freedom to combine and craft their own customized abilities from collectible cards to combat dynamic enemies." horns.aiff
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Oct 21, 2015 15:21
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Mercury_Storm posted:I'm betting it has something to do with this. Oh yeah you're totally gonna pay them money to open randomized loot crates, enjoy your slot machine
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Oct 21, 2015 15:26
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Mercury_Storm posted:Also other than the "Dynamic" enemies (how are they dynamic? what does that even mean??) Enemies will undergo character development after being defeated, a la indie darling Undertale
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Oct 21, 2015 15:37
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Why would they launch Fig without a solid blockbuster up front? The stuff coming through looks very second rate.
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Oct 21, 2015 15:43
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Icept posted:Why would they launch Fig without a solid blockbuster up front? The stuff coming through looks very second rate. What do you mean, there was that game being developed by that actor from Heroes.
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Oct 21, 2015 15:47
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Icept posted:Why would they launch Fig without a solid blockbuster up front? The stuff coming through looks very second rate. "Blockbusters" already have publishers through traditional channels. No crowdfunding platform, fig included, is designed for blockbusters, those people. You're not going to see relevant, well known names crowdfund. This has always been a way for smaller teams and smaller games to get made. Fig seems designed to target something between indie, and AAA (AA?) games.
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Oct 21, 2015 15:50
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I meant blockbuster in crowdfunding terms, like an Obsidian pitch, or one of the other entities that started the site. It seems like you'd want the name associated with a game that'll draw a lot of attention.
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Oct 21, 2015 15:53
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Hmmm. Jumped to 73k with 15 backers. I wonder if if the actual player money will even get into lower five digits.
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Oct 21, 2015 15:56
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Icept posted:I meant blockbuster in crowdfunding terms, like an Obsidian pitch, or one of the other entities that started the site. It seems like you'd want the name associated with a game that'll draw a lot of attention. They're going for a slow build? I don't know anything about this kinda stuff but at this rate they'll blow through the goal no problem. Kickstarter video gaming category never ceases to amaze and baffle me. Please let me know if you can make heads or tails of Sex, Drugs and Video Games - My 90s Virgin Story. Mr Underhill fucked around with this message at 16:06 on Oct 21, 2015 |
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Oct 21, 2015 15:58
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I still don't understand how someone willing to crowdfund something (like me) can get around the logic block of helping to fund something that is going to have the majority of people playing it not pay anything at all.
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Oct 21, 2015 16:13
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honestly the game sounds kind of cool, but it's being launched as a ftp game. which means that i and everyone else with even a lick of common sense should just wait till it releases before putting any money in i really do wonder if anyone thought this campaign through considering that you'd have to be a special kind of retarded to put money into a game monetized around microtransactions, unless one of the tiers was "Everything is free forever" oh, wait, they have one. it's just seven hundred and fifty dollars ell oh loving ell NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Oct 21, 2015 |
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Oct 21, 2015 16:53
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Toxxupation posted:i really do wonder if anyone thought this campaign through considering that you'd have to be a special kind of retarded to put money into a game monetized around microtransactions, unless one of the tiers was "Everything is free forever" In fairness, some whales put in way more to other free to play games than that, so a $1750 "everything's free forever" tier isn't that bad. poo poo, there was someone in an IRC channel I hung out in for some mobile phone game that spent that much in a month. It's terrifying.
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Oct 21, 2015 17:47
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There's also the example of that train sim with $10 grand worth of DLC. The number of people who own all of that DLC is greater than zero. Whales are out there for the hunting. Just need to release the game that hits their niche.
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Oct 21, 2015 18:43
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Oh boy for $25 I can get a whole three days of XP boost? Can't really wrap my head around the idea of pre-paying for a free-to-play game at all. I mean I don't even like those types of games to start with. Even if you go with the whole donation angle it's not something I'd imagine most people want to donate to anyway. Edit: I wonder if this is investor bait to see if the can lure in people that want a cut of that sweet sweet F2P model. It's the only angle I can think of where you'd put your money in. Darkhold fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Oct 21, 2015 |
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Oct 21, 2015 18:51
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