Adventure Gamers - Forums

Antrax - 20 October 2015 12:00 AM

I don’t think developers should have carte blache to fail without fear of criticism.

And I agree with that. The backers are allowed to criticise and even to demand explanations, though like with SpaceVenture I’d have preferred for them not to go into so much personal details. In any case the least any project, failed or succesfull, should do would be to offer a postmortem of what went right and wrong with the project.

But at the same time, something I see often is, that people don’t seem to have a good grasp on how much effect for an example stretch goal can have on the development time of a game. They see the original date and wonder why the game isn’t out yet, despite they at the same time can see several achieved strecth goals, which all add their own weight on the project.

Yeah, I agree that the thing with crowdfunding is emphasising that basically you are making a donation, not a pre-order. I fully understand people becoming frustrated when projects take too long, but that’s because, prior to Kickstarter and such, the general public really had no idea, nor was too interested in just how much games take to make, how many hoops the devs have to jump through to make their (and their backers’) dreams come true… And let’s look at the bright side - crowdfunding was definitely the main reason for the recent years’ adventure game renaissance.

So, while I can understand both sides of the argument, I’m convinced - as is the case with most indie devs - that it’s definitely NOT a scam. Thankfully, those projects that are definite scams (like Mansion Lord or Confederate Express) are extremely few and far in between, and tend to be elusive from the beginning, whilst in this case Agustin is a renowned and well-respected designer who’s active both on these forums and Kickstarter.

I really understand the plight of the people who are waiting for the game they were promised to be delivered, but at the same time I am convinced that Senscape are doing everything they can to get the game made as soon as is humanly possible.

And, even though some of you might bash me for saying this, I want another Charles Dexter Ward campaign! I know Agustin became disilusioned with Kickstarter, but I really wish there were a way to make it happen.

Mr Underhill - 20 October 2015 06:11 AM

So, while I can understand both sides of the argument, I’m convinced - as is the case with most indie devs - that it’s definitely NOT a scam. Thankfully, those projects that are definite scams are extremely few and far in between, and tend to be elusive from the beginning, whilst in this case Agustin is a renowned and well-respected designer who’s active both on these forums and Kickstarter.

Exactly! I have had the pleasure of spending many private hours with Agustin throughout the years, and he’s a dear friend. He is not only one hell of a great guy, but also someone who is deeply, deeply passionate about his work. If anyone is not gonna “take your money and run”... it’s Agustin. No matter how people feel about the delays… this project has never been a scam,  and it will never be a scam.

Blackthorne - 19 October 2015 06:54 PM

I was playing Asylum this afternoon, and it is pretty amazing.  Sure, it’s taking longer than people would like, but it’s definitely not abandoned.
Bt

Ingmar - 20 October 2015 11:35 AM

..I have had the pleasure of spending many private hours with Agustin throughout the years, and he’s a dear friend. He is not only one hell of a great guy, but also someone who is deeply, deeply passionate about his work. If anyone is not gonna “take your money and run”... it’s Agustin. No matter how people feel about the delays… this project has never been a scam,  and it will never be a scam.

i think the project just earned two credits for more ‘justified’ delay

i wonder if setting a (far) release date would help it (as the case with SV), and get yourself obliged to?

What someone said above is right: our Kickstarter was supposed to get us through the final lap of development in Asylum. It’s true that the project was in fairly advanced stages then; our teaser released shortly before the Kickstarter helped to test the look and feel of the game as well as the interface. We had tons of locations, assets, complete floors of the asylum explorable. The major pending were the interaction with characters and visual effects.

When deciding the best course of action to include characters in the game, a far from trivial requirement, I was faced with a difficult decision: we could either show pre-rendered animations of characters — which would have seemed robotic and lifeless — or attempt to go full 3D for the best impact. After working for so damn long on exquisite locations, it would have been a shame to ruin the mood with puppets instead of characters. Remember that Scratches was able to get away with this because no characters are seen.

I was this close to making the decision of implementing support for realtime 3D in Dagon, which in retrospective would have been a disaster. 3D is very difficult to achieve and make it look good while supporting the latest technologies and ensuring it runs smoothly. I confess that I wasted too much time experimenting in this phase, only because I was trying to make it work with Dagon. Imagine that: some backers supported the project because of the engine!

When you’re making this type of game where questions of technology and performance demand research, weeks fly by and you can have an entire month without noticeable progress. Put simply, switching to Unity was the sanest decision if we wanted to ensure a smooth and engrossing experience within a reasonable timeframe. And I admit that we’ve been pushing ourselves to our limits ever since, but when we test the game and see how far we’ve come, we know it’s worth it.

Anyway, sorry if I’m being long-winded but I wanted to tell you the reasoning behind a decision that might have seemed rash at first.

Like you also said, game development is complex and often hard to estimate. If you think about it, it’s the most difficult art form in terms of how many different aspects of production have to be considered — including interaction. Movies are perhaps the closest comparison, and even though we’ve been making them for over a century and are really good at budgeting them, they can still suffer unexpected setbacks (the most notorious case being Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote). Games are still comparatively young and usually change dramatically every five years or so. It can be seriously difficult to adapt to the relentless pace of the game industry and get everything sorted out in the early stages of a production.

There’s more to discuss in the drama of the Kickstartercalypse; unrealistic expectations (i.e.: Broken Age) is usually a big problem, and lack of understanding of game budgets is another one. Hell, I’ve had people comparing us to Star Citizen — I mean, sure, with that sort of budget I could give you a dozen Asylums in a couple of years. Moreover, many of the most successful Kickstarters have raised additional funding through private investors. The equation of Expectation * Budget = Game is hopelessly distorted.

But I’m gonna stop now because this is almost as long as a Kickstarter update and people complain that I talk too much.

Agustín Cordes - 20 October 2015 11:01 PM

But I’m gonna stop now because this is almost as long as a Kickstarter update and people complain that I talk too much.

Yes, less talk, more working on Asylum!

I keed, I keed!

In fact, I’ll say more or less the same thing I told Christopher Bischoff (Pyke) during his Kickstarter: just make the best damn game you can make, and take whatever time you need to do that!

zane - 19 October 2015 12:49 PM

Even before the kickstarter was announced it felt like we had been waiting a long time for this one. The game was announced in 2010. And the premise of the kickstarter was that it was a game that was almost done anyway, and this was just to help cross the finish line.

and

Veovis - 21 October 2015 04:28 AM

I don’t think a single update from the last year or even more has given me the feeling that the game is actually closer to completion. Often quite the contrary in fact.

What they said!

Unrealistic expectations?? The expectations backers have are based for the most part on what they are told during the Kickstarter campaign by the developer(s). In the case of Asylum the developer said it was in an advanced stage of development. (Not fairly advanced. Advanced.) Almost three years have passed since the campaign and the game is nowhere near completion. We are told it is HUGE though. I’m just a simple backer who should be reminded constantly that she doesn’t understand the first thing about game development, who should be grateful that she is allowed to “donate” money without expecting anything in return because KS is not a pre-order system (HA!), but let me tell you developers something you don’t seem to grasp: HUGE is not the same thing as GOOD. Jonathan Boakes and Matt Clark fell into that trap, Tim Schafer too, and now Cyan. 

A major reason I will think ten times before backing another KS is that developers often make promises during the campaign which they don’t keep. Like Dreamfall Chapters, which was not going to be episodical, no way. And then it was. Disappointing. If I’d known that during the campaign, I might still have given it the 15 or 20 bucks to get the game, but certainly not more. Like the author of text adventure Hadean Lands who was going to quit his day job (which he did) and work fulltime on the game (which he did not). In one of his early updates he announced there were many other interesting small projects he wanted to do and they would bring in money. After four years he released Hadean Lands, a 5 dollar text adventure he’d said he could develop in six months in his spare time. I would not have backed him at all if I’d known about the many other projects. Should I mention the Coreys? No, too painful. Harvest? Sheer incompetence. Oculus Rift? Bad for my blood pressure. Delaware St John? Officially on hold.

I am really not trying to seem condescendent or belittle the justified frustration people have with game development never being on time, but incidentally Kotaku just published a somewhat related article:

http://kotaku.com/10-big-myths-about-games-debunked-by-the-people-who-ma-1737839268

...which is a really good read. Hope I didn’t derail the thread too much, back to your regularly scheduled Asylum talk! 

I think Kickstarter is hiting the harders on people who have very little idea of how any software project goes. It happens a lot, that a software is pushed back, when the internal goals aren’t met. A lot of delays happen even on big companies, even on projects that have millions of dollars in them a schedules that are done by groups of seasoned project leads.

What Kickstarte has done is that it has opened that usually closed door to regular people, who might have been accustomed in their own work environment that things might usually happen more or less in time. But softwate development is not like that. Some minor issue can cause a delay that lasts days before it’s cause is found. And that delay of days might mean double amount of time for the actual development.

It’s also pretty well known fact that as a rule of thumb people are very bad at estimating how much time someting takes. If someone estimates that making something takes a week, the real time span might be two weeks. That’s because most people often are too optimistic in their estimations, and hope that nothing goes wrong, despite they should know better based on experience.

tomimt - 23 October 2015 04:24 AM

I think Kickstarter is hiting the harders on people who have very little idea of how any software project goes. It happens a lot, that a software is pushed back, when the internal goals aren’t met. A lot of delays happen even on big companies, even on projects that have millions of dollars in them a schedules that are done by groups of seasoned project leads.

What Kickstarte has done is that it has opened that usually closed door to regular people, who might have been accustomed in their own work environment that things might usually happen more or less in time. But softwate development is not like that. Some minor issue can cause a delay that lasts days before it’s cause is found. And that delay of days might mean double amount of time for the actual development.

What soured Kickstarter for a lot of people were a lot of developers that as soon as were funded went radio silence. You can’t not let people know how things are going and what you’re struggling with, if you are, an expect empathy and understanding when things are delayed. From what I see there are a LOT of meaty updates on Asylum so Agustin is clearly keeping everyone in the loop, which is what every campaign should do.

Karlok - 21 October 2015 05:36 PM

Unrealistic expectations?? The expectations backers have are based for the most part on what they are told during the Kickstarter campaign by the developer(s). In the case of Asylum the developer said it was in an advanced stage of development. (Not fairly advanced. Advanced.) Almost three years have passed since the campaign and the game is nowhere near completion. We are told it is HUGE though. I’m just a simple backer who should be reminded constantly that she doesn’t understand the first thing about game development, who should be grateful that she is allowed to “donate” money without expecting anything in return because KS is not a pre-order system (HA!), but let me tell you developers something you don’t seem to grasp: HUGE is not the same thing as GOOD. Jonathan Boakes and Matt Clark fell into that trap, Tim Schafer too, and now Cyan. 

A major reason I will think ten times before backing another KS is that developers often make promises during the campaign which they don’t keep. Like Dreamfall Chapters, which was not going to be episodical, no way. And then it was. Disappointing. If I’d known that during the campaign, I might still have given it the 15 or 20 bucks to get the game, but certainly not more. Like the author of text adventure Hadean Lands who was going to quit his day job (which he did) and work fulltime on the game (which he did not). In one of his early updates he announced there were many other interesting small projects he wanted to do and they would bring in money. After four years he released Hadean Lands, a 5 dollar text adventure he’d said he could develop in six months in his spare time. I would not have backed him at all if I’d known about the many other projects. Should I mention the Coreys? No, too painful. Harvest? Sheer incompetence. Oculus Rift? Bad for my blood pressure. Delaware St John? Officially on hold.

You’re Fien/Betje, right? You’re extremely intelligent and darn well-versed in the adventure genre, but I’m sorry that you can be so spiteful. I’ve tried reasoning with you many times in the past (ever since the Just Adventure forums) to no avail. I’ll give it my best shot now:

By unrealistic expectations I meant that backers form this ideal game in their minds (especially because of their early involvement in the production) that not always becomes a reality. And adventure games perhaps get the worst part because of all the nostalgia and emotional baggage attached to them. Broken Age is the perfect example: no one in his/her right mind can claim it was a bad game. In fact, it’s a superb production, polished, well-written, even charming to play, but most importantly: it took a reasonable three years to be produced. Of course it took much longer than what was originally planned with a budget that shattered the initial goal and with the astronomic expectations surrounding the project.

Double Fine may have taken bad decisions during this production, but a good game was still delivered. And yet, Tim Schafer was almost crucified online — by fans and press alike — because everybody was basically expecting the next Grim Fandango. This disproportionate reaction may have costed us another good (maybe not mind-blowing but still good) game from Tim.

Me, I can definitely relate to both sides: I have backed 150+ projects myself and understand the frustration and impotence when developers fall off the radar and backers begin to fear the worst. But I also sympathize with the extreme pressure developers must face — what backers don’t seem to realize (and I stress this isn’t their fault) is that Kickstarter budgets are only meant to complete a project. That is, developers rarely factor in profits as otherwise the budgets would skyrocket. Obviously, they need to figure out how they can make money out of these games, which is what sometimes rub backers the wrong way. “I’m supposed to play your game first!”, “How come you signed with a publisher?”, “Why are you wasting budget in trade fairs?”, and so on. Again, I’m not blaming them, and in our case communication with our backers has been extraordinarily smooth, but you have to put things into perspective before accusing developers of incompetence, laziness, or even worse, foul-play. The industry changes fast and sometimes we must take drastic decisions to survive — the decision to turn Dreamfall Chapters into an episodic game is one of them. I can guarantee you that neither Double Fine or Red Thread or any of the companies you mentioned are diving in money. You can’t possibly think they mean ill with such decisions.

I’m feeling that pressure now especially as Scratches is experiencing a sort of surge in popularity. People keep telling me what a great experience it was, that they haven’t played a game like that, and how much they’re looking forward to Asylum. Expectations are way off the scale, and it’s precisely why I want to meet those expectations that I decided to switch engines last year and ensure an even better experience. People will complain the same whether we delay the game or deliver a subpar game, so I’d much rather face the heat now but ensure a fantastic experience (among our possibilities) that stands the test of time.

I don’t expect anyone’s sympathy, I just hope you can see our perspective and why we sometimes do what we do. Perhaps most importantly, that we don’t mean wrong (at least in most cases).

That’s a good approach Agustín, that was my take on you but now you are doing more than great, approaching your fans is a careful need whatever their intentions or state(s) are; got many screws loose or firmly attached they are, to their heads, nevertheless. then your haters (even) will bow in respect for that attitude.
Sorry for saying what is all well known (by simplest minds).