Revival turned out to be vaporware, will Chronicles of Elyria have the same fate?

Yanocchi

Revival developed by Illfonic and Chronicles of Elyria developed by Soulbound Studios. Two games and two studios with very similar game concepts and promises.

Today one goes down.

https://www.revivalgame.com/forum#/discussion/1296/revival-s-future-an-important-announcement


Will the same happen to the other?

Ammon777_new

Nah. I think Chronicles will release, but Revival made the mistake of selling housing for real money.

azarhal

Another one bite the dust (more like undead in this case though going by the post). 

In only 3 months since 2016 started, I think I saw more game studios close and projects get cancelled than in the last 5 years (2010-2015) combined.

Starting to feel like the game crash of the 80s...

Yanocchi

Quoting the announcement:

It’s rare that you’re asked to preside over a memorial. Rarer still for that to come as a surprise, but none the less, here I am. For the past 71 weeks, we’ve been working in public to bring Revival to life, but as many of you know, this is just one period in a much longer saga stretching back decades.

So, what went wrong? I suppose the mistake, if one is to be called out, came in the thought that we could soldier through on what we have available. It goes something like this: When we first set out to build Revival, we had access to expertise and resources that aren’t available today. Making up for their loss, be it as simple as lacking sufficient animators or as complicated as losing access to certain networking expertise, has been a costly affair, far more costly than we can honestly afford to bear.

Ammon777_new

Really? How many were cancelled?

rojoArcueid

Too bad, i was looking forward to this game. I think it was the closest thing to something like World of Darkness.

On the other hand, they laid out a terrible business model and im glad that didnt come to fruition. We dont need new problematic/questionable business models adding up to the ones we have already.

Ammon777_new

I wish people would just realize that subscriptions arent that bad...

Asm0deus

Not surprising. The pricing of house was far too high and they also wanted a sub and to sell p2w SP.

Yanocchi

rojoArcueid said:

On the other hand, they laid out a terrible business model and im glad that didnt come to fruition.

I agree about the total business model failure. During a whole year they were only able to sell houses on three gold servers, while only a few houses were sold on the other seven free-to-play servers. They also didn't properly advertise or hype the game at any point and didn't consider doing a crowdfunding campaign. On the contrary, last year they revealed an infamous dev blog on a controversial issue (sex) which resulted in some negative reputation for the game.

Ammon777_new

Yeah I wasnt surprised at all. Bad business designs.

Thebeasttt

Depends what you consider vaporware. I think the game will die shortly after release, which mine as well be vaporware. Aging and dying is an MMO feature that pretty much no one asked for. Gamers want to see their characters advance over time, not melt away.

Ammon777_new

Thebeasttt said:

Depends what you consider vaporware. I think the game will die shortly after release, which mine as well be vaporware. Aging and dying is an MMO feature that pretty much no one asked for. Gamers want to see their characters advance over time, not melt away.

This may be true.

DrDread74

When there were 5 total MMOs out on the planet, you can make some greedy business models but today I think you have to launch a AAA title game for free with cosmetics only  micro transaction and humbly beg for people to even sign up for it.

... Except for Star Citizen which apparently knows how to get a Hype machine into 9th gear and charge debt inducing amounts to play it

Wizardry

When you design a game to make profits off the cash shop ,instead of designing a game you love with passion you SHOULD fail.

Revival was simply banking on selling houses for RMT,a lame idea you ask me,but hey they saw Chris Roberts doing it,they see other games doing it,so they figured why not.

Besides this COE lead has already put his own money into the game,there has to be some passion there.

Nothing is ever written in stone ,well except the ten commandments.We should never be surprised at what comes out of gaming,it is simply a business like all others only a little more dubious.

Yanocchi

Asm0deus said:

Not surprising. The pricing of house was far too high and they also wanted a sub and to sell p2w SP.

The sub price on gold servers was supposed to cover the salaries of live dungeon masters who would have taken care of the storytelling experience.

Their concept with SP might have introduced a new type of p2w, role-playing/immersion p2w. SP was supposed to be a currency for storytelling. People with real money might have enjoyed interaction with dungeon masters or chance of getting into stories more than people without real money.

Ammon777_new

LOL, how many dungeon masters per player?

Sounds like a distaster.

Lobotomist

Wait what ?! They were selling stuff in game. Like houses. For real money.
But the game didnt even exist.

Then they just cancelled it.

And as far as I see the poor naive suckers can not even figure they have been cheated ?

Yanocchi

Wizardry said:

Besides this COE lead has already put his own money into the game,there has to be some passion there.

Illfonic had used their own money on Revival too. They were only able to raise approximately $100k selling houses and payed the rest themselves. They were definitely no less passionate than CoE developers and communicated really a lot with the community. On the game's forum the designers answered at least 2000-3000 questions concerning the game asked by people over the 14 months of development. The answers to nearly every question and problem raised by the community were very convincing too and showed they had been thinking and planning the game for a very long time before they began production.

One of the biggest lies was the reassurance that they have sufficient company funds to create the game slowly on their own without additional funding.

It all tumbled because business models didn't work, the scope was too big, technology too advanced for a company of their size, even though they were all gaming industry veterans and apparently had good expertise of modern game engines CryEngine 3 and Unreal Engine 4 judging by all the contracts they did for bigger game companies. They probably had some talented people in the company while they were working on Star Citizen but lost or had to lay off those people and later realised they didn't have the resources to continue making Revival while the company is also preoccupied with two other games.

The sitation is really crappy for people who bought houses and manses. Their $200-$500 contributions will be compensated with free copies of Nexuiz and Moving Hazard, mediocre games purchaseable for $20-$30 on Steam.

Asm0deus

Yanocchi said:

Asm0deus said:

Not surprising. The pricing of house was far too high and they also wanted a sub and to sell p2w SP.

The sub price on gold servers was supposed to cover the salaries of live dungeon masters who would have taken care of the storytelling experience.

Their concept with SP might have introduced a new type of p2w, role-playing/immersion p2w. SP was supposed to be a currency for storytelling. People with real money might have enjoyed interaction with dungeon masters or chance of getting into stories more than people without real money.

Some of us posted our concerns back in jan 2015 both in the monetization thread and in the house prices thread but were greeted with yes men attitudes and heads in the sand from others...sadly what we voiced back then has just happened. 

SP was for more than story telling and was going to allow the purchase of "buffs" as well as other things groups could use to influence city "owning" and the like. We voiced concerns of this too....just too many heads in the sand.

It's that simple.

Yanocchi

Anyway, @JeromyWalsh ; should probably contemplate about inviting Adam Maxwell and Chris Holtorf from the Revival team aboard on Chronicles of Elyria if CoE succeeds in raising millions of dollars with its Kickstarter campaign. They could make a good team because they share a lot of similar visions. Adam Maxwell has been working on a lot of systems and concepts that fit the spirit of Chronicles of Elyria and Chris Holtorf is his partner who creates immersive lore and setting. CoE might also gain a big portion of the Revival's player community with such a move. CoE is the only game that is anywhere close to Revival and that could be the new home for most of them.

Cayll

Wizardry brought up a very important point. I've been gaming since we had to march down to the local arcade and play monochrome games as big as a bus.

The big difference between the industry of today, and the industry of yesterday, was that there really wasn't much money in the game industry of old. Games were made out of love, and out of a desire to create something that the programmer wanted to create.

A game studio had perhaps a dozen people employed, graphics were limited so they focused on story and enjoyable elements.

Today, it's a cash cow, developers release games with the goal of becoming the next Blizzard, they have hundreds of people on staff, it's become all about the flash and the cash.

Unfortunately, at the end of the day, the ones that suffer are us. We live in a society that thinks with their wallets, the problem with that theory is we're conditioned to only think a certain way. We need to stop throwing mass amounts of money at pipe dreams that do not exist in exchange for an in-game flash that also doesn't exist.

If a company cannot secure the necessary funding in the private sector, then there is a reason. If something is a guaranteed success, as most of these companies claim they will be, then an investor would be all over that. So there is obviously something that prevents these people from throwing their money into the ring.

For example, I remember a game company that shall remain nameless, that had the dream concept for a game. They couldn't secure funding. Why? Because even though they had the ability and the concept, they lacked the organization, the leadership, and the ability to manage the product and budget.

whilan

Yanocchi said:

Revival developed by Illfonic and Chronicles of Elyria developed by Soulbound Studios. Two games and two studios with very similar game concepts and promises.

Today one goes down.

https://www.revivalgame.com/forum#/discussion/1296/revival-s-future-an-important-announcement


Will the same happen to the other?

Anything is possible. The devs seem dedicated but only time will tell if they do the same thing.  Starting a business/game isn't easy. You need the people behind you to get it off the ground and sometimes that isn't enough. We can really only take this one step at a time.

Pledging to me is like gambling, only give them the amount you are willing to lose. If you win, than you are the better for it.

fs23otm

Wow... I remember seeing so many people going "Revival will be THE game"...

LOL

Kyleran

Even when well funded it is a huge undertaking to launch a MMORPG.  Expect the majority of indie titles to either fail outright before launch, or under perform even if they do.

Octagon7711

Ammon777_new said:

Thebeasttt said:

Depends what you consider vaporware. I think the game will die shortly after release, which mine as well be vaporware. Aging and dying is an MMO feature that pretty much no one asked for. Gamers want to see their characters advance over time, not melt away.

This may be true.

The creators thought it was a great idea, it appears they were the only ones.  

Octagon7711

The other thing is marketing.  I forgot this game was in development I heard so little about it.