Adventure Gamers - Forums

Charophycean - 26 July 2022 07:15 AM

VGP - 26 July 2022 06:21 AM

I think this project is charming, even if it never gets released. Just the idea of these two guys working on a game, kind of oblivious to the current world and the crap ventilator that is discourse on the internet.

Totally agree! Who cares if they get it done?

10,809 backers who funded the project 10 years ago might want to see something in return for their money at some point.

I really don’t see anything “charming” about first promising the game to be released in 2013, and fast forward to 2022, they are starting to implement missing features just now.

Delays are understandable when working with challenging and cutting edge software technology (and this game is really neither, but let’s not go there right now), but we are at a point where every month that they had scheduled for development has turned into a year of development, so I don’t know how much longer they need to prolong their alleged game development enjoyment.

If they get their kicks from that, just release one first, and create a sequel next.

tomimt - 26 July 2022 09:17 AM

Charophycean - 26 July 2022 07:15 AM

Totally agree! Who cares if they get it done? If they’re enjoying it, let them work on it for another 10, 20, hell 50 years

I doubt they have been enjoying the project for years now. It must be a personal money sink for them at the moment.

Yeah, they have totally lost momentum.

There was a point where they probably could have made some sales simply by having a game to sell, around the time when Al Lowe had yet one more remake of Leisure Suit Larry and Jane Jensen had Moebius out. And some other games.

But there’s absolutely none of that momentum left, so whatever sales they are going to make, must be on this game’s own merits. And unless it’s the funniest game of the century (and maybe it will be, who knows, other than beta testers…), it will be very difficult to make any money off of it.

Some indie adventure games that got some decent reviews and such, sold only few hundred copies.
Those who are dying to get another “Two Guys” game, already paid for it a decade a go, and some may have even actually died while waiting for it.

GateKeeper - 26 July 2022 09:49 AM

Charophycean - 26 July 2022 07:15 AM

VGP - 26 July 2022 06:21 AM

I think this project is charming, even if it never gets released. Just the idea of these two guys working on a game, kind of oblivious to the current world and the crap ventilator that is discourse on the internet.

Totally agree! Who cares if they get it done?

10,809 backers who funded the project 10 years ago might want to see something in return for their money at some point.

I really don’t see anything “charming” about first promising the game to be released in 2013, and fast forward to 2022, they are starting to implement missing features just now.

Delays are understandable when working with challenging and cutting edge software technology (and this game is really neither, but let’s not go there right now), but we are at a point where every month that they had scheduled for development has turned into a year of development, so I don’t know how much longer they need to prolong their alleged game development enjoyment.

If they get their kicks from that, just release one first, and create a sequel next.

tomimt - 26 July 2022 09:17 AM

Charophycean - 26 July 2022 07:15 AM

Totally agree! Who cares if they get it done? If they’re enjoying it, let them work on it for another 10, 20, hell 50 years

I doubt they have been enjoying the project for years now. It must be a personal money sink for them at the moment.

Yeah, they have totally lost momentum.

There was a point where they probably could have made some sales simply by having a game to sell, around the time when Al Lowe had yet one more remake of Leisure Suit Larry and Jane Jensen had Moebius out. And some other games.

But there’s absolutely none of that momentum left, so whatever sales they are going to make, must be on this game’s own merits. And unless it’s the funniest game of the century (and maybe it will be, who knows, other than beta testers…), it will be very difficult to make any money off of it.

Some indie adventure games that got some decent reviews and such, sold only few hundred copies.
Those who are dying to get another “Two Guys” game, already paid for it a decade a go, and some may have even actually died while waiting for it.

100 percent agree, I bring up Star Citizen because it’s developed by Chris Roberts who created my favorite franchise of all time in Wing Commander. And I know some fans have started calling him a con man because the game is still not out and they’re still fundraising for it, but I really don’t think he is a con man. he is the epitome of a game developer who needs a corporate overload to sit him down and say enough is enough. Every time a new piece of shiny PC technology comes out he wants to implement it and it’s an endless cycle of start and stop. I’ve read a couple interviews with former developers that worked there that would say, they would work on one thing one day, and get pulled off of it the next day, to do something else, while never completing a task.

It is actually amazing how many former famous developers have a hard time getting a game out in a timely manner, when left to their own devices. 2guys, Tim Schafer, Chris Roberts, charles Cecil to a lesser extent because let’s not forget Broken Sword 5 was supposed to be one complete game but instead was broken into 2 episodes, to help the cost to finish the game. The biggest one of all time might be Peter Molyneux. I can’t tell you how many things he promised and then under delivered in Fable and the black and white games among other series. Do you all remember the biggest con he ever tried to pull off, when the XBox kinect came out and he acted like that Tech demo was running on the Xbox 360 when really it was running on the most supercomputer they had lol.

Jdawg445 - 26 July 2022 10:41 AM

100 percent agree, I bring up Star Citizen because it’s developed by Chris Roberts who created my favorite franchise of all time in Wing Commander. And I know some fans have started calling him a con man because the game is still not out and they’re still fundraising for it,

In the same genre, unless I remember this completely wrong, didn’t Elite: Dangerous campaing make a promise of the game being DRM-free?

And when it was released, it turned out to be a game that not only required a launcher to get it running but it also required online connection?

So fictional space sim genre fans might have been robbed twice of their money.

Jdawg445 - 26 July 2022 10:41 AM

It is actually amazing how many former famous developers have a hard time getting a game out in a timely manner, when left to their own devices. 2guys, Tim Schafer, Chris Roberts, charles Cecil to a lesser extent because let’s not forget Broken Sword 5 was supposed to be one complete game but instead was broken into 2 episodes, to help the cost to finish the game.

Yeah, I’m not forgetting that.
The game-breaking bug in the first episode and then a long wait for the next part was the last time for me to play any “in development” titles, or even games that are less than six months from their official release date.
I want my games to be fully fixed and patched, if I want to be a game tester, I’m going to apply for that job.
At least the game itself was kind of OK, not counting excessive fan service with returning characters, and very restricted freedom to explore the game world.

Anyway, since the conversation took this turn, how did Jane Jensen manage to pull her scam off, and for all practical purposes didn’t get too much blame for any of that?

She promised to deliver two new original games, but only one, Moebius, happened.
From the Kickstarter page: “This campaign is for two new adventure games from Jane Jensen”
The other game was never made. And those who had supported her studio* to make two games, got a copy of that Gabriel Knight remake instead.
I guess she had some Jane Jensen card in her sleeve, because a developer with less cult kind of following would have been harassed for ages for that.

On the other hand, she actually did deliver something, so there’s obviously that.

* = I’m also surprised how she managed to run her Kickstarter campaign at all, which was against Kickstarter rules. Those rules state that you can crowdfund a product, but not a company. And the campaign was obviously to support the studio, as none of the games had been decided when the crowdfunding period was started. Apparently Kickstarter didn’t notice, and presumably no one reported, but technically speaking, the whole thing shouldn’t have happened.

GateKeeper - 26 July 2022 12:11 PM

Jdawg445 - 26 July 2022 10:41 AM

100 percent agree, I bring up Star Citizen because it’s developed by Chris Roberts who created my favorite franchise of all time in Wing Commander. And I know some fans have started calling him a con man because the game is still not out and they’re still fundraising for it,

In the same genre, unless I remember this completely wrong, didn’t Elite: Dangerous campaing make a promise of the game being DRM-free?

And when it was released, it turned out to be a game that not only required a launcher to get it running but it also required online connection?

So fictional space sim genre fans might have been robbed twice of their money.

Jdawg445 - 26 July 2022 10:41 AM

It is actually amazing how many former famous developers have a hard time getting a game out in a timely manner, when left to their own devices. 2guys, Tim Schafer, Chris Roberts, charles Cecil to a lesser extent because let’s not forget Broken Sword 5 was supposed to be one complete game but instead was broken into 2 episodes, to help the cost to finish the game.

Yeah, I’m not forgetting that.
The game-breaking bug in the first episode and then a long wait for the next part was the last time for me to play any “in development” titles, or even games that are less than six months from their official release date.
I want my games to be fully fixed and patched, if I want to be a game tester, I’m going to apply for that job.
At least the game itself was kind of OK, not counting excessive fan service with returning characters, and very restricted freedom to explore the game world.

Anyway, since the conversation took this turn, how did Jane Jensen manage to pull her scam off, and for all practical purposes didn’t get too much blame for any of that?

She promised to deliver two new original games, but only one, Moebius, happened.
From the Kickstarter page: “This campaign is for two new adventure games from Jane Jensen”
The other game was never made. And those who had supported her studio* to make two games, got a copy of that Gabriel Knight remake instead.
I guess she had some Jane Jensen card in her sleeve, because a developer with less cult kind of following would have been harassed for ages for that.

On the other hand, she actually did deliver something, so there’s obviously that.

* = I’m also surprised how she managed to run her Kickstarter campaign at all, which was against Kickstarter rules. Those rules state that you can crowdfund a product, but not a company. And the campaign was obviously to support the studio, as none of the games had been decided when the crowdfunding period was started. Apparently Kickstarter didn’t notice, and presumably no one reported, but technically speaking, the whole thing shouldn’t have happened.

I am not sure about Elite dangerous,  was not my cup of tea. Actually neither is start citizen. I don’t like multiplayer games that much. I wanted the single player story campaign called Squadron 42 which was supposed to be a spirit successor to wing Commander. They even rehired Mark Hamill to play one of the leads. That game is also never coming out most likely.

for the record I actually like broken Sword 5 quite a bit, and count it as one of the better crowdfunded games. But as a whole I hate that subgenre and think it’s full of con artist who throw out buzzwords. That’s why I almost stopped coming to this forum, because only one or two topics on the main page would be anything interesting. every other thread was somebody begging for money to a nondescript game on kickstarter using Buzz words like my game is like Gabriel knight, broken sword, Monkey Island Etc… for the record there was a couple of games that I actually did like. For instance hand of Glory while not perfect by any means but was fun and honest. Those developers threw out buzz words like Broken Sword and the game was a lot like broken sword. But for every one of those games you got twice as many games like St kotar who threw out the word Gabriel knight and kotar was nothing like gabriel knight in game design.

I know sometimes I may come off as rude, I don’t try to be. I just don’t put up with BS period. Rather it’s from a two man Indie team from Germany, a former famous developer, or a big publisher. If it’s good it’s good and if it is bad it is bad.

Karlok - 26 July 2022 12:51 PM

So one day I mailed him: Look, why not simply admit that The Council of Crows was a mistake and will never see the light of day. You will be so relieved and I will still love you. (Well, I didn’t actually say that, but it’s true, he’s one of my favorite designers.) He was nice and apologetic, told me he was finishing the game now, for real. That was 2.5 years ago and the rest is silence.

Sometimes when developers are reminded to communicate they actually do that.

One crowdfunded game project, which shall remain unnamed here (it wasn’t an adventure game anyway), promised backers keys to an older game. Then there were some management changes and whatever, but obviously those keys were never delivered.

So I wrote to whoever was speaking for them at that time and I said something like, “it’s not even a question of getting those keys anymore, but we would just appreciate being informed about things.”

And a little while later, there was an announcement saying that they are sorry that they can’t deliver the keys that other people running the campaign had previously promised.

Obviously not an ideal situation, but at least they got the message, and started to communicate even about unpleasant things after being reminded about it.

For the record, they actually did deliver the actual game that they were developing.
I think some people of higher tiers were waiting some physical items years afterwards, so I don’t know what happened with those, as I wasn’t getting or expecting any physical rewards.

Overall, I have had one crowdfunding project deliver everything they promised and exactly on time.
The sad thing is, it’s the only entirely un-game-related crowdfunding project that I have supported. 

I guess what does ultimately shock me is how so many of these former big game developers, who worked for these big companies had no idea how much things cost really. I’m actually convinced Tim Schaefer might have been in financial trouble again if not for Microsoft bailing out double fine and Psychonauts 2 in the end.

tomimt - 27 July 2022 08:22 AM

Ron Gilbert put it pretty well on his final budget breakdown for Thimbleweed Park. When you get that 500k to your bank account, it looks like a huge sum of money. But, when you start the work, it dwindles fast. And if you are not careful, you’ll soon run over the budget.

I think Double Fine has always been a barely succesfull studio, but Schaefer did manage to keep it up and runnin for a good while before MS bought them out, so he was doing something right, or at least well enough.

I do wonder how much over the budget SV has ran at the moment. I mean, reportedly, Larry Reloaded ended up costing a bit over 1 million, the Coles had to mortage their house and I doubt Moebius was on the budget either.

I will say I somewhat disagree because it look like he didn’t learn his lesson from Broken Age which earned way over the asking price and he still had to release the game in two parts to cover the budget of the game. That should have been a learning experience but he did it again with psychonauts 2 just a couple years later. I am glad that game was finished though, because I adore the new game.

Supposedly the game is supposed to come out September 16th 2022. I hope it lives up to whatever y’all wanted the game to be after all these many many many years lol.

tomimt - 23 August 2022 12:27 PM

Yeah, this was a surprise news indeed. I do hope they’ve managed to iron out the worst bugs.
I doubt it will blow anyones mind, it’s otherwise a fun little game

I will say I read through the update and I think it’s pretty crappy that folks won’t get their physical rewards until they sell enough copies of the game on Steam to pay for the shipping and handling and to get the rest of the rewards made and shipped. That would be like me paying for dog food from Amazon and them sending me an email saying well we’d love to ship you the 50 lb bag of dog food you ordered, but until we sell enough other dog food we can’t afford to pay the shipping and handling just to ship yours. That’s bad business all the way around. But look on the bright side even though you already spent upwards of $7,500 on some of the teir rewards, if you want to get them quicker you can pay extra for shipping and handling on top of what you already spent and they will send them to you faster.