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Thimbleweed Park - Backer Phone Numbers/Answering Machine Messages? This Is the Place to Share!

Total Posts: 134

Joined 2007-03-25

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I’ve been replaying Thimbleweed Park, and as a backer, I did leave a message for people to hear when calling from the phonebook. I listened to it again tonight for the first time in awhile and wondered: What other Adventure Gamers readers/fans have also left messages?

It’s been a dream of mine since the late ‘80s to be a part of an adventure game - especially one from Ron Gilbert. Backing the game was a small price to pay for making that dream come true.

Has anyone else done the same? Then this is a thread to share your number! Mine is 2568.

     
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Total Posts: 5035

Joined 2004-07-12

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Personally, I’ve never backed a game. Not even one being co-designed by one of my best friends in the game design business. Failure rate is too high. And I would rather spend $100 on a good lunch with my wife than on an $8.00 T-shirt reward for a game that never gets made.

     

For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.

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Total Posts: 724

Joined 2004-03-09

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I was absolutely a backer and did so at a premium tier. Backing is never purely on basis that I want the finished product (which I do, to be clear) but in a way, to support the creators in their ambitions/dreams to achieve something great. In regards to Ron, I personally believe his games and the experience I had shaped me and ‘money’ is a very small price to pay for such a thing. So, it’s never about completion but about participation and wanting to help someone on their journey.

That said, I did add an entry but decided on not doing a voicemail, I contemplated a few times adding something but then couldn’t think of anything fun :-)

     
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Joined 2013-02-12

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rtrooney - 21 December 2018 08:51 PM

Personally, I’ve never backed a game. Not even one being co-designed by one of my best friends in the game design business. Failure rate is too high.

Goodness. If one of my best friends was kickstarting a game I’d be running to back it even if I didn’t entirely expect it to succeed! Up to you, I guess.

(I didn’t back Thimbleweed Park, though. Plenty of support without me, and none of the rewards seemed like a great bargain as a preorder.)

     
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Phlebas - 02 January 2019 09:52 AM

Goodness. If one of my best friends was kickstarting a game I’d be running to back it even if I didn’t entirely expect it to succeed! Up to you, I guess.

I’m not quite that heartless. It wasn’t his game. He was simply working on it. And it wasn’t a very good game.

     

For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.

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Karlok - 13 January 2019 08:20 AM
I am one of the many Reset backers. Here’s the gist of the news about the release date from the most recent updates the developers posted. Only six updates in almost three years.

11 months of silence…
I’ll be polite and call it vaporware.

I was about to say that it’s what happens on Kickstarter, but then I found that this project was on Indiegogo, so I retract that comment.  Crazy


I don’t think that project is a scam though, it looks legit, they are just very sloppy with their progress probably.

The sad thing is, if I count all my Kickstarter backings together, they are over 50 years late of estimated release dates.
Indiegogo seems to be just as bad, or maybe even worse there.


Out of post-apocalyptic games on Kickstarter, I might mention Harvest. It was supposed to be out in 2014. Here’s the description of the game:

“In the future, a chemical war took place leaving 99% of the Earth’s population unable to produce offspring.

The remaining fertile humans are crucial to the survival of mankind, however they begin to disappear mysteriously.

You will play as a detective in Detroit working to solve the case and help save the world from human extinction.”


Selected quotes from past updates:

July 2, 2013: “Harvest was funded with the first stretch goal achieved.”

May 12, 2014: “Well let’s start off with the Harvest team, The major reason for the lack of updates is the lack of people working on Harvest. We have had three programmers since the launch of Harvest who have started on the project and left. Two left the project because the just weren’t able to invest the time needed. One left the project without a word, which was very disappointing.”

May 12, 2015: “Hey, backers! I’ve been getting lots of questions about the lack of updates and progress of Harvest. I wish I had some good news to share on the progress, but unfortunately over the last year almost the entire team went their separate ways. The worst part is some of the people working on Harvest wanted to get paid, but not do anything in return.”

October 6, 2015: “As you are probably aware issues had come up and previous members of the project had left without warning. This has rendered some of our assets wasted. We were fortunate enough to be able to complete the demo.”

June 8, 2016: “We finally have some progress with the game, the background Artist has just about completed the art for the first episode, he should have that wrapped up in the next week and we’re getting ready for the character artist to add the art into the scenes.”

The last quote is from the la(te)st update.


Still, it’s a nice game concept in theory at least.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1840293109/harvest-0

Karlok - 13 January 2019 08:20 AM
I am one of the many Reset backers. Here’s the gist of the news about the release date from the most recent updates the developers posted. Only six updates in almost three years.

11 months of silence…
I’ll be polite and call it vaporware.

I was about to say that it’s what happens on Kickstarter, but then I found that this project was on Indiegogo, so I retract that comment.  Crazy


I don’t think that project is a scam though, it looks legit, they are just very sloppy with their progress probably.

The sad thing is, if I count all my Kickstarter backings together, they are over 50 years late of estimated release dates.
Indiegogo seems to be just as bad, or maybe even worse there.


Out of post-apocalyptic games on Kickstarter, I might mention Harvest. It was supposed to be out in 2014. Here’s the description of the game:

“In the future, a chemical war took place leaving 99% of the Earth’s population unable to produce offspring.

The remaining fertile humans are crucial to the survival of mankind, however they begin to disappear mysteriously.

You will play as a detective in Detroit working to solve the case and help save the world from human extinction.”


Selected quotes from past updates:

July 2, 2013: “Harvest was funded with the first stretch goal achieved.”

May 12, 2014: “Well let’s start off with the Harvest team, The major reason for the lack of updates is the lack of people working on Harvest. We have had three programmers since the launch of Harvest who have started on the project and left. Two left the project because the just weren’t able to invest the time needed. One left the project without a word, which was very disappointing.”

May 12, 2015: “Hey, backers! I’ve been getting lots of questions about the lack of updates and progress of Harvest. I wish I had some good news to share on the progress, but unfortunately over the last year almost the entire team went their separate ways. The worst part is some of the people working on Harvest wanted to get paid, but not do anything in return.”

October 6, 2015: “As you are probably aware issues had come up and previous members of the project had left without warning. This has rendered some of our assets wasted. We were fortunate enough to be able to complete the demo.”

June 8, 2016: “We finally have some progress with the game, the background Artist has just about completed the art for the first episode, he should have that wrapped up in the next week and we’re getting ready for the character artist to add the art into the scenes.”

The last quote is from the la(te)st update.


Still, it’s a nice game concept in theory at least.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1840293109/harvest-0

Do you still have a question as to why I don’t back a crowd-funded project?

     

For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.

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Total Posts: 1167

Joined 2013-02-12

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rtrooney - 13 January 2019 09:25 PM

Do you still have a question as to why I don’t back a crowd-funded project?

I don’t think we had a question anyway - you said it was because you were afraid the project would fail. That’s fair enough - it is always a bit of a gamble, especially if you think of it as a pre-order. For what it’s worth, Indiegogo tends to be more of a risk than Kickstarter because the ‘flexible funding’ model lets backers pay even if a project hasn’t raised nearly enough to fund the work. There’s an informative summary of game project successes and failures here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lFW2sjShHriYRsyuVZx4Se8Qxjw38VJk4g-7cls8cpg/htmlview

I don’t back many projects these days but I have backed quite a few in the past - some of them haven’t completed, some have completed and been a bit disappointing, some have completed and I haven’t found time to play they yet, some have completed and I’ve loved them. There have been enough in that last category (Night in the Woods, Consortium, Beeswing, Pillars of Eternity, Dex, Hadean Lands etc) that I definitely don’t feel cheated overall. And one or two special cases - Jonas Kyratzes’ game that I backed still isn’t complete but he’s sent backers free or discounted copies of pretty much everything he’s worked on in the meantime so I feel I’ve had my money worth even before the game I backed arrives (and I still have faith that it will, eventually).

But yes, you have to go into it knowing that projects may fail and be sanguine about that. I can understand if that puts you off.

     
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Total Posts: 506

Joined 2003-09-10

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Wow, this went off topic. Can we get back to the Thimbleweed Park answering machine discussion? (Especially considering this game *did* come out…)

I’m in the phone book, but like CaliMonk, I couldn’t come up with a good idea for a message so I don’t have one.

Here’s a thread on the Thimbleweed Park forum about “famous” people in the phone book: https://forums.thimbleweedpark.com/t/famous-people-in-the-phonebook/285/23

My favorite surprise was to come across Rich Sommer. He played Harry Crane in Mad Men. His phone number is 5705.

     

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