I am one to think that crowd funding and mmorpgs should not go together.
I would go a bit further and say that crowd funding any competitive multiplayer game has fatal flaws since the tiered in game perks associated with the tiered donations do harm to the competitive integrity of the eventually released game, if not in fact at least perceptually.
No one cares much about extra in-game goodies or the usually promised greater influence on development those higher donation tiers have attached to them if the game is exclusively or predominantly single player. But players do care a great deal about that in games that are multiplayer competitions even if that competition is only expressed in how cool you look relative to the low-tier masses.
That huge problem and the endless debates about P2W could all go away if crowd funded multiplayer games treated high rollers as investors and used ownership shares in the game as their only high tier incentives. Not only would it be more honest and fair, the released game with all players starting on a relatively equal footing would have a lot more appeal to anyone who didn't drink the kool-aid early, and that is the general public where the potential big money is.
As it is, the environment they create during development is a huge turn off to anyone that thinks about buying at release or later.
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This was the only game I ever backed and it has failed. Lesson learned.
You would have to qualify your remark with how it has failed , what measures did it fall short on?
Doors are still open, people are still playing.
So 50 people playing it in peak doesn't mean they failed? The game they've delivered is a poorly optimized empty world cash grab based on an engine created for mobile games. This couldn't work. Worth to mention that the proud Richard Garriot, who has been selling his blood for money(!!!???), was their final nail to the coffin.
So failure to draw a large number of players logging in is your benchmark for failure. Are you sure 50 is an accurate figure, where are you pulling the figure from?
I ask because I recall reading those playing in a private or group instance can't be counted.
Also, if from Steam I thought I read gamers have to opt in to be reported online, but perhaps that is only at a personal level, and they are still reported in the total.
Also, players can log in outside of Steam I believe, so it might be challenging to get an accurate count unless the devs report it themselves somewhere.
I realize they are well below the reported 50K figure quoted many years ago, and coupled with the recent 50% layoffs clearly it's fair to say they are severely underperforming.
But despite all that, not really "failing" until the servers shut down, no more new content is being added (might be very near that atm) and players can no longer log in.
Just how I define actual failure.
Certainly not an accurate number, there are 250 people on right now in Steam by itself, not counting all the players in on the launcher.
Dude,even with 2000 active players. The company wont be able to keep working on the game as they wont keep the server online for long. Let's be clear, they don't have 2000 players, 1000 at max. The only reason why the server is still online is because of the monthly begothon. Thats it. Last time they had one ,they had to do it twice in the same week to get atleast 70k...
Your horse is dead mate.
I too feel bad for the people who lost their jobs... that said, the game is horrible. Animations, movement, gameplay, just about everything I played was absolutely atrocious, so it makes sense that it has hardly anyone playing it which would result in this happening.
My guess is there is quite a bit of hyperbole in your statements, or you have very exacting standards.
Or an under powdered rig as this game seems to favor those with a 1080 and 32 GB of RAM with appropriate processor.
No not at all. I think its always shitty when someone loses their job. It does nothing but put them in financial harm. They're 2 separated comments though.... 1 about them losing their job and another about the game being dog shit. Just about everything it offered was dog shit. If you played through the initial tutorial you could see the poor quality it offered. It was piss poor to put it lightly and I'm usually a player to give a game the benefit of the doubt and give it some time. The tutorial basically shot the game in its foot right out of the gate. The tutorial felt like something that was made 20 yrs ago. I mean I could go on and on. I didn't mention ran in my first comment so not sure why you brought that up.
Often when players make comments such as you did here the issue is their rig, especially if other players disagree.
"Animations, movement, gameplay, just about everything I played was absolutely atrocious,"
Hard to comprehend the wide variances in opinions that are often presented in these forums.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
To be fair, the extraordinary system requirements are the result of atrocious optimization, not extraordinary graphical fidelity. The game looks older than ESO, yet ESO utilizes hardware infinitely more efficiently. This results in SotA having higher general reqs than ESO, which is laughable, quite frankly.
at a modest number, we only need about 50k people per month active users to be profitable and that's a pretty low number considering that the fan base for a Richard Garriott Ultima game is in the millions
w/o a subscription fee how would Starr know if 50k can sustain the game?To me that is like saying they know because the game has some FORCED pay walls to enjoy the game properly otherwise why would anyone spend money beyond the initial buy in?
I can't stand the very idea of crowd funding/KSr's i think it is a VERY bad way to blindly design a game based on guess work,no finite income.If you had 50k at 15 bucks a month that is around 9 million a year,that is imo a decent amount of money if not looking to get rich or have to pay a large portion to a publisher. Per month at 50 employees that is 15k per??If my math is right?That is way more than enough and would allow a hefty portion of to go to expenses. So if i was running the game and had confidence in my game,that warrants a sub fee,otherwise you have no base income to rely on and more or less says ok,people won't pay a sub fee to play our game so we will bank on the few whales that will spend enough to make up the difference.
Overall,Lord British NEVER had confidence in his own product,that is why he wanted gamer's to pay for it.The same goes for Pantheon,these wannabe games should really not exist,they are not good enough.Put your own heart and soul and money into it,then we have a MUCH more passionate design.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Red, do you ever fact check any of the information they give you to see if it matches public knowledge? The fact that the following statement is untrue took me about 10 seconds to verify because they post the information publicly on their own forums:
"The team ramped up their production budget in anticipation of picking up new customers"
How? Their staff numbers have been constant for 3+ years.
"The bad news is that art and design teams have taken a serious hit, though Richard pointed out that they were also the teams that saw the largest pre-launch growth."
What are we considering pre-launch here anything prior to March? Both the art and design teams were actually larger in November of 2016 than they were in February of 2018. They didn't lay off final push hires. They got rid of core team members including senior designers and artists. They had close to 8 designers for the past 3 years running, they now have 3. They had around 7 artists for the past 2 years, they now have 2.
w/o a subscription fee how would Starr know if 50k can sustain the game?To me that is like saying they know because the game has some FORCED pay walls to enjoy the game properly otherwise why would anyone spend money beyond the initial buy in?
Near the end of the early access in March, the average dollars spent per user account was around $190. Starr's 50,000 active user statement included comments about the average user spending nearly $200. The 50,000 and $200 numbers are a lot more palatable to people and seem more achievable than stating, 'We need $10 million dollars to become profitable.' Its the same thing though. Their SEC filings show that they are, even after deferred tax revenue is taken into account, almost $10,000,000 in the red as a company. This debt was largely incurred prior to Shroud's start as they received financing for mobile games that failed.
If you follow the link to reddit above, and follow the link on the reddit post to the video, the question and Starr's reply begin at 7:15.
From what I've read through on the SotA forums, there are entire zones that use cloned assets that were supposed to have unique assets created for the zone. I may have misread that, but if I didn't, I would hardly call the product complete. That doesn't even take into account other items they have yet to implement (boats with shipping lanes were another mentioned, I believe as a successfully funded stretch goal from what I read).
Again, if I'm not misreading those forum posts and those backers aren't lying, I don't see how what's there could be considered the complete product. I guess in a "there's a game there" sense, but that's not saying very much about the responsibility of devs to deliver on their funded promises.
I'm not sure if you're misreading it or not, but it's not entirely accurate. So cloned assets, absolutely. Every game on the planet has them whether you've noticed it or not. Wolves change color and size slightly as you go from one place to the next, that's just an asset that's been cloned. I've been playing Path of Exile lately, and it's rampant in games like that. In Shroud's case, there are wolves in multiple zones and they want to eventually replace the wolves in one to create some additional ecological diversity, for example.
That said, the team has said they want their zones to be even more unique than they are, and plan to continue updating assets, and more importantly the behavioral code for those assets, to create more diversity.
So yes, there are cloned assets, and the devs have stated a number of times that they intend to iterate on them to improve diversity. They could stop where they're at, and it'd be complete. I don't think their continuous improvement strategy takes away from that. If it did, then they'd literally never be complete. Nor would most MMOs.
...and this is actually an example of why crowdfunding and transparency maybe isn't a great idea. They told their community that because it was part of their plan. Normally, it'd never be discussed and one day you'd just login to find a zone had been updated.
HobbitsWonTheWar said:
Mate this is a perfect example of why so much of the coverage of shroud has been so laughable. What you think is a retorical question was simultaneously being proven to be ignorant elsewhere. Reddit found portalarium were at one point actually making the custom heads but have it hidden behind developer status. The posters there followed the project honestly enough to have at least remembered at one point the heads had been started and went looking to check their beliefs. So yeah portalarium could do it. Actually were doing it.
And arent now because well nothing portalarium has done made business sense or appealed to the community. The reality is they misspent all the cash money and are burning staff just to stay alive now. Theyre not doin the heads because they cant afford too and for the last 5 years have staggered from crisis to crisis.
Man I get wanting to not let go of your faith but people aint good unless they actually do good things. That was what the ultima games supposedly taught us remember? Hangin on to hope that all this may turn around whilst ignoring all the ways they shaft people aint right. And tryin to spin hope which will only lead to more people gettin burned is actively bad. Maybe the portalarium dudes were always awful or maybe theyre just out of date and out of touch today. But shroud aint no ultima and never will be and tryin to cover for that is just making the coverage look even worse too. Better to just be Honest as the games taught.
I never said they couldn't make the heads. I'm sure they can. I was pointing out that you misread the earlier point.
It was never about not being able to do it at all. It was about the amount of time and cost to do so. My guess is that they listed it as a reward, and then realized how much a pain in the ass it'd be to actually do it. Think about it. Best case, someone sends you a picture as an example and tells you what they want from there. That doesn't go straight to the artist, but probably through a community manager who triages those JIRA tickets. Then the artist gets it, takes his best shot at it, and sends it back to the community manager. It then gets sent back to the backer, who has some additional requests, and back it goes. Each step in that process takes time and money, and detracts from effort that could otherwise go into making the game better. It's not a good business move.
So, yes. I think it was a dumb move to include the reward in the first place. Backing out of it I completely understand.
I was limited on word-count and couldn't go into detail on why technical limitations made the effort untenable from a cost perspective when I said, "Richard specifically cited the custom heads promised to some backers, which the team never found a viable solution for, from technical and cost perspectives." I can understand how the AND in that sentence might be confusing for some.
Fair enough, though it doesn't account for the other items I've seen mentioned that are just completely missing. The deleted thread soliciting photos for the models is telling if those weren't actually delivered (along with, again, the boat/shipping lanes that I read were planned but have not yet been implemented). Again, to say they're project complete without acknowledging that is a very anti-consumer position to take.
Currently, one of the most popular threads in the SotA forums is one asking folks how to right the ship, created by a forum moderator. I don't think that could be misconstrued as a hater thread. It's readily apparent that the significant chunk of backers are hugely disappointed with how things are turning out there. That's where I saw mention of the aforementioned boat/shipping lanes feature mentioned, iirc. It's also where you see backers admitting to a sunk cost fallacy- more than one seemed to indicate they're still around due in large part to the money they put into the project.
RG's recent post also isn't hugely encouraging. It took a thread calling him out to get him to show up, and his post was a fairly general "we're gonna try" sentiment. It didn't indicate to me that he was hugely concerned at the outlook or the end result of the project.
Lacking any formal framework for protecting consumer interests, none of this is entirely surprising to me for a crowdfunded project. I do, however, take issue with implying that it's "mission accomplished" at this point when there appears to be clear evidence of funded promises not being delivered.
I think SotA proved Kickstarter works perfectly fine, they funded a game and delivired one. Now the actual quality of the game is well below what was expected by most, but that has got nothing to do with the crowdfunding mechanism and eveything with the talent and the vision of the developers.
It was a high quality, succesful Kickstarter, it was a low quality, failure of a game. Two different things.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
I'm still not convinced.
I disagree with Red that they don't have staffing problems; they're laying off roughly half the staff before delivering on the funded promises. You can see the aforementioned unique head skins for one example, I've already cited another.
Just because the devs call it a release doesn't mean they've actually met the obligations they entered into through crowdfunding. To say they have is, again, to pretty much absolve crowdfunding devs of any responsibility to be good stewards of the money they receive in good faith from backers. It sets a precedence that anyone should be able and allowed to run a Kickstarter campaign for an MMORPG as long as they give it the ole college try, end results be damned.
Saying they've ran a successful Kickstarter and/or crowdfunding project is basically accepting said project was on the same level of legit as a snake oil salesmen.
So, there again is one of the reasons that Kickstarter may not be the right way to build games. What you're calling obligations is a feature list. Just like what gets pitched when you start a game through traditional channels. Just like in those cases, not all the features make it into the game.
I'm not sure you can obligate games to deliver on feature lists like that, nor should you. With the heads for example, and as I pointed out above, it's not that it can't be done. It's that it can't be done cost effectively, and when you compare that to what those people could be doing instead, the heads lose.
Business folks get that, and even more so. Remember before Kickstarter how these really good games would get pitched to the public and then we'd get it delivered. It ended up being a shell of what was promised because the publisher forced the developer to cut corners to save money? It's not as bad here because there's no publisher to hold feet to the fire, but you still have design intentions that fail to make the cut when you actually start putting the game together.
That's usually hidden more from the public, and maybe should be. That's why I'm a little iffy on crowdfunding and flat out against equity crowdfunding.
Stewardship is about delivering the best you can with the money you have. If they thought the heads would cost too much and that effort was more effective elsewhere, then I think that's pretty definitive of good stewardship. I can't see why people would be upset, but I don't think there's a good case for them having done otherwise.
Stewardship is about delivering the best you can with the money you have. If they thought the heads would cost too much and that effort was more effective elsewhere, then I think that's pretty definitive of good stewardship. I can't see why people would be upset, but I don't think there's a good case for them having done otherwise.
They ran the Kickstarter in 2013. The system to create the custom heads was rolled out in 2014 and devs as well as a few backers had their likeness created, and even put in game for a few people. If you look at the custom work done on Darkstarr's head and Lord British's head you can see that they've been polished and that process has been refined.
It was stated many times for many years that the custom work would be completed.
Now that they've executed layoffs and are aggressively looking to cut corners they've announced a complete abandonment of the promise of custom avatar heads. That is not good business, that is gross negligence and piss poor planning. Everything is about reputation and this is just another promised backer rewards they think it's ok to toss in the bin.
Back in 2013 and hindsight being what it is, maybe they should have used language more specific to game building and trying to get promised mechanics in game, because what they did was make promises and accept funds for said promises.
Maybe a discussion on what good business practices means is too speculative, perhaps it's better to say that ETHICAL business practices would dictate that they treat their backers with some respect and make the effort to deliver on promises made for monies paid. I wouldn't care if my home cost the builder more to build than what I paid him for, he'd either build it or we'd go to court.
I think SotA proved Kickstarter works perfectly fine, they funded a game and delivired one. Now the actual quality of the game is well below what was expected by most, but that has got nothing to do with the crowdfunding mechanism and eveything with the talent and the vision of the developers.
It was a high quality, succesful Kickstarter, it was a low quality, failure of a game. Two different things.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
I'm still not convinced.
I disagree with Red that they don't have staffing problems; they're laying off roughly half the staff before delivering on the funded promises. You can see the aforementioned unique head skins for one example, I've already cited another.
Just because the devs call it a release doesn't mean they've actually met the obligations they entered into through crowdfunding. To say they have is, again, to pretty much absolve crowdfunding devs of any responsibility to be good stewards of the money they receive in good faith from backers. It sets a precedence that anyone should be able and allowed to run a Kickstarter campaign for an MMORPG as long as they give it the ole college try, end results be damned.
Saying they've ran a successful Kickstarter and/or crowdfunding project is basically accepting said project was on the same level of legit as a snake oil salesmen.
So, there again is one of the reasons that Kickstarter may not be the right way to build games. What you're calling obligations is a feature list. Just like what gets pitched when you start a game through traditional channels. Just like in those cases, not all the features make it into the game.
I'm not sure you can obligate games to deliver on feature lists like that, nor should you. With the heads for example, and as I pointed out above, it's not that it can't be done. It's that it can't be done cost effectively, and when you compare that to what those people could be doing instead, the heads lose.
Business folks get that, and even more so. Remember before Kickstarter how these really good games would get pitched to the public and then we'd get it delivered. It ended up being a shell of what was promised because the publisher forced the developer to cut corners to save money? It's not as bad here because there's no publisher to hold feet to the fire, but you still have design intentions that fail to make the cut when you actually start putting the game together.
That's usually hidden more from the public, and maybe should be. That's why I'm a little iffy on crowdfunding and flat out against equity crowdfunding.
Stewardship is about delivering the best you can with the money you have. If they thought the heads would cost too much and that effort was more effective elsewhere, then I think that's pretty definitive of good stewardship. I can't see why people would be upset, but I don't think there's a good case for them having done otherwise.
I disagree; they're getting money free from the strings of investors seeking a monetary return. Absolving them, then, of the responsibility to deliver on specific features that they used to lure in the backers becomes much more atrocious than features cut because the investor wants the return sooner rather than later.
You can't compare the two without acknowledging the huge benefit that is seeking funding from folks who aren't experienced or educated about the risks. A source of funding that, again, expects no monetary return from you as a company. That's a huge benefit. To then act as if cutting features, even ones specifically promised as a result of that backer money being given, is okay is (I'm sounding like a broken record here, but it's warranted) incredibly anti-consumer. If that's going to be the accepted case, there needs to be a much more open and upfront assessment of the project's chances to succeed available to backers at day one. That, quite honestly, is not something you can trust the project creators themselves to provide. An independent assessment should be available and updated on an ongoing basis to provide a fair outlook for potential backers.
Fair enough, though it doesn't account for the other items I've seen mentioned that are just completely missing. The deleted thread soliciting photos for the models is telling if those weren't actually delivered (along with, again, the boat/shipping lanes that I read were planned but have not yet been implemented). Again, to say they're project complete without acknowledging that is a very anti-consumer position to take.
Currently, one of the most popular threads in the SotA forums is one asking folks how to right the ship, created by a forum moderator. I don't think that could be misconstrued as a hater thread. It's readily apparent that the significant chunk of backers are hugely disappointed with how things are turning out there. That's where I saw mention of the aforementioned boat/shipping lanes feature mentioned, iirc. It's also where you see backers admitting to a sunk cost fallacy- more than one seemed to indicate they're still around due in large part to the money they put into the project.
RG's recent post also isn't hugely encouraging. It took a thread calling him out to get him to show up, and his post was a fairly general "we're gonna try" sentiment. It didn't indicate to me that he was hugely concerned at the outlook or the end result of the project.
Lacking any formal framework for protecting consumer interests, none of this is entirely surprising to me for a crowdfunded project. I do, however, take issue with implying that it's "mission accomplished" at this point when there appears to be clear evidence of funded promises not being delivered.
Yeah, that's why I'm reconsidering my position on crowdfunding. I liked it initially, and I enjoyed my experience. I'm not certain it's a healthy way to get a game out, past a certain size.
Though, I think HBS did a good job with BATTLETECH, so it suggests there can be success. Industry just needs to zero in on what's viable through that model and what's not.
Stewardship is about delivering the best you can with the money you have. If they thought the heads would cost too much and that effort was more effective elsewhere, then I think that's pretty definitive of good stewardship. I can't see why people would be upset, but I don't think there's a good case for them having done otherwise.
They ran the Kickstarter in 2013. The system to create the custom heads was rolled out in 2014 and devs as well as a few backers had their likeness created, and even put in game for a few people. If you look at the custom work done on Darkstarr's head and Lord British's head you can see that they've been polished and that process has been refined.
It was stated many times for many years that the custom work would be completed.
Now that they've executed layoffs and are aggressively looking to cut corners they've announced a complete abandonment of the promise of custom avatar heads. That is not good business, that is gross negligence and piss poor planning. Everything is about reputation and this is just another promised backer rewards they think it's ok to toss in the bin.
Back in 2013 and hindsight being what it is, maybe they should have used language more specific to game building and trying to get promised mechanics in game, because what they did was make promises and accept funds for said promises.
Maybe a discussion on what good business practices means is too speculative, perhaps it's better to say that ETHICAL business practices would dictate that they treat their backers with some respect and make the effort to deliver on promises made for monies paid. I wouldn't care if my home cost the builder more to build than what I paid him for, he'd either build it or we'd go to court.
Good business IS ethical business. Not only do you have shareholders to answer to, but the goal is the best product. Even when you back, that's what you're looking for. Let's say that something is pitched that seems like a great idea and everyone buys into it, the project gets funded and off they go.
A few months into development, they find out that either the idea doesn't end up as fun as everyone expected, or maybe it's just going to cost too much to develop. You don't stick to it and make an unfun game or run out of funds to complete the game. That's not really an ethical choice from any direction.
I mentioned HBS earlier and their BATTLETECH, which is a good example here. The initial pitch included a much more robust electronics warfare system. That didn't make it to release. They released anyway and the game is fantastic. By your definition, that wasn't ethical, but if you talk to the devs, you find out that the effort needed to implement that system would have delayed them by months and possibly put them past their funding runway. They launched without it, and if they can get it sorted, they'll add it in later.
A really good example, btw. Because they HAVE versions of it that work. It just wasn't up to the standards that they wanted and implementing it was going to be expensive at the time. So they punted. It's an incredibly common theme in development of any form.
Fair enough, though it doesn't account for the other items I've seen mentioned that are just completely missing. The deleted thread soliciting photos for the models is telling if those weren't actually delivered (along with, again, the boat/shipping lanes that I read were planned but have not yet been implemented). Again, to say they're project complete without acknowledging that is a very anti-consumer position to take.
Currently, one of the most popular threads in the SotA forums is one asking folks how to right the ship, created by a forum moderator. I don't think that could be misconstrued as a hater thread. It's readily apparent that the significant chunk of backers are hugely disappointed with how things are turning out there. That's where I saw mention of the aforementioned boat/shipping lanes feature mentioned, iirc. It's also where you see backers admitting to a sunk cost fallacy- more than one seemed to indicate they're still around due in large part to the money they put into the project.
RG's recent post also isn't hugely encouraging. It took a thread calling him out to get him to show up, and his post was a fairly general "we're gonna try" sentiment. It didn't indicate to me that he was hugely concerned at the outlook or the end result of the project.
Lacking any formal framework for protecting consumer interests, none of this is entirely surprising to me for a crowdfunded project. I do, however, take issue with implying that it's "mission accomplished" at this point when there appears to be clear evidence of funded promises not being delivered.
Yeah, that's why I'm reconsidering my position on crowdfunding. I liked it initially, and I enjoyed my experience. I'm not certain it's a healthy way to get a game out, past a certain size.
Though, I think HBS did a good job with BATTLETECH, so it suggests there can be success. Industry just needs to zero in on what's viable through that model and what's not.
I felt the same initially with crowdfunding, but it quickly became an obvious example of the positive purpose publishers served that we were so conveniently forgetting as gamers.
Like it or not, many software project managers need an authority to tell them when enough is enough, polish what you got and stop making pie-in-the-sky promises.
Stewardship is about delivering the best you can with the money you have. If they thought the heads would cost too much and that effort was more effective elsewhere, then I think that's pretty definitive of good stewardship. I can't see why people would be upset, but I don't think there's a good case for them having done otherwise.
They ran the Kickstarter in 2013. The system to create the custom heads was rolled out in 2014 and devs as well as a few backers had their likeness created, and even put in game for a few people. If you look at the custom work done on Darkstarr's head and Lord British's head you can see that they've been polished and that process has been refined.
It was stated many times for many years that the custom work would be completed.
Now that they've executed layoffs and are aggressively looking to cut corners they've announced a complete abandonment of the promise of custom avatar heads. That is not good business, that is gross negligence and piss poor planning. Everything is about reputation and this is just another promised backer rewards they think it's ok to toss in the bin.
Back in 2013 and hindsight being what it is, maybe they should have used language more specific to game building and trying to get promised mechanics in game, because what they did was make promises and accept funds for said promises.
Maybe a discussion on what good business practices means is too speculative, perhaps it's better to say that ETHICAL business practices would dictate that they treat their backers with some respect and make the effort to deliver on promises made for monies paid. I wouldn't care if my home cost the builder more to build than what I paid him for, he'd either build it or we'd go to court.
Good business IS ethical business. Not only do you have shareholders to answer to, but the goal is the best product. Even when you back, that's what you're looking for. Let's say that something is pitched that seems like a great idea and everyone buys into it, the project gets funded and off they go.
A few months into development, they find out that either the idea doesn't end up as fun as everyone expected, or maybe it's just going to cost too much to develop. You don't stick to it and make an unfun game or run out of funds to complete the game. That's not really an ethical choice from any direction.
I mentioned HBS earlier and their BATTLETECH, which is a good example here. The initial pitch included a much more robust electronics warfare system. That didn't make it to release. They released anyway and the game is fantastic. By your definition, that wasn't ethical, but if you talk to the devs, you find out that the effort needed to implement that system would have delayed them by months and possibly put them past their funding runway. They launched without it, and if they can get it sorted, they'll add it in later.
A really good example, btw. Because they HAVE versions of it that work. It just wasn't up to the standards that they wanted and implementing it was going to be expensive at the time. So they punted. It's an incredibly common theme in development of any form.
Did Battletech have continued crowdfunding after the Kickstarter? Did that continued funding entice players through specific rewards that they never delivered (i.e., did they sell a bunch of limited edition EW mechs that had to be gutted or cancelled due to the EW issues)? If not, it's not quite the same as bailing on specific backer rewards.
I disagree; they're getting money free from the strings of investors seeking a monetary return. Absolving them, then, of the responsibility to deliver on specific features that they used to lure in the backers becomes much more atrocious than features cut because the investor wants the return sooner rather than later.
You can't compare the two without acknowledging the huge benefit that is seeking funding from folks who aren't experienced or educated about the risks. A source of funding that, again, expects no monetary return from you as a company. That's a huge benefit. To then act as if cutting features, even ones specifically promised as a result of that backer money being given, is okay is (I'm sounding like a broken record here, but it's warranted) incredibly anti-consumer. If that's going to be the accepted case, there needs to be a much more open and upfront assessment of the project's chances to succeed available to backers at day one. That, quite honestly, is not something you can trust the project creators themselves to provide. An independent assessment should be available and updated on an ongoing basis to provide a fair outlook for potential backers.
Well, I think the comparison was more that it's a natural process of game development. Also, it's not just that the investor wants a return sooner, but that the investor doesn't want to give anymore money, and that's where the comparison holds up. If a feature is going to cost so much to implement that doing so will run the project out of money, then that's not really a good decision.
I'm an angel investor, for instance. If I give some amount of money to a local startup and they come back to tell me they're going to be short. My first, and often only, answer is what can you cut? If you're having problems and then want more money, it's going to cost you even more equity because of the increased risk. Far better for everyone for them to slim down their deliverables.
To me, this is the same thing. They pitched a feature that ended up not being cost-efficient and they punted on it. I'd rather them do that than to stick to doing it and the whole game suffer because they run out of money implementing something.
If cash were infinite, then I think you'd be correct. Because it's finite and they can only do so much with what they have, everything comes down to cost/benefits and ROI. Things that fall below a certain threshold unfortunately get cut. It's a truth in every business/project.
Though, I would add @MadFrenchie, I am starting to think that crowdfunding isn't a great way to go with things like this. I don't think anyone has set out to be deceptive, but you're right about non-business folks investing in a process they don't understand well.
There's a lot of room for accidental abuse there, and certainly plenty for intentional abuse. There are a lot of advantages as well, so I'm still kind of on the fence, though.
Good business IS ethical business. Not only do you have shareholders to answer to, but the goal is the best product. Even when you back, that's what you're looking for. Let's say that something is pitched that seems like a great idea and everyone buys into it, the project gets funded and off they go.
Let's explore this for a moment.
When Portalarium ran their Kickstarter they had investors that were no disclosed. They had burned through close to 10 million dollars of investor money already that was not disclosed. All the while they were telling backers that wee were their only revenue. For years they told us that we were their only source of funding and that we were the reason this project existed.
We all thought we were the shareholders.
They said they'd never use a publisher then in 2016 , or 2017 they announced a partnership with a publisher in Russia they'd been dealing with since 2014. Then they took no another publisher (Travian) after they ran a SECOND crowdfunding campaign through Seed Invest to become a PUBLISHER.
There are patterns to how they disclose information and make moves. What investors are they protecting when they create narratives that suggest to backers they are the only source of funding? Couple that with offering rewards like ... oh, let's promise to do something ground breaking like custom avatar heads and then make that reward exclusive to $5k and $10k pledge packages!
Ok, don't forget these guys are industry veterans. Richard Garriott coined the term "avatar" ffs and now you want to give him a pass because good business game dev and reasons? If anyone knows the risks, it should have been him - he's the father of MMO gaming is he not? He's developed and launched how many games over the course of more than THREE DECADES in the business?
Though, I would add @MadFrenchie, I am starting to think that crowdfunding isn't a great way to go with things like this. I don't think anyone has set out to be deceptive, but you're right about non-business folks investing in a process they don't understand well.
There's a lot of room for accidental abuse there, and certainly plenty for intentional abuse. There are a lot of advantages as well, so I'm still kind of on the fence, though.
I don't disagree; I don't think we saw projects from folks like CR or RG spring up with the intent of deceiving anyone.
I'm a huge advocate of independent review of these projects. There needs to be an independent, educated review of the project as stated, any already-created assets or systems, the funding goal, the timeline, and how realistic all of it is compared to similarly funded projects as well as experience gleaned from similar products funded more traditionally.
CoE is a perfect example of a project that likely should never have received funding, because the timeline and funding goals were, quite frankly, fairy-tales. Had they been required to provide potential backers with an independent document detailing this and why, they likely would've never received funding. But that's not a bad thing- not every project that comes to the table deserves funding, no matter how bored some gamers with extra cash are. It's much more important to ensure the players are fully-informed about the projects than it is to prop up ill-conceived and ill-planned projects.
Nothing would've stopped Caspian from then revising his timelines and funding goals to something much more realistic and re-attempting it. At that point, the project either stands on its own accurate merits or it doesn't.
I don't disagree; I don't think we saw projects from folks like CR or RG spring up with the intent of deceiving anyone.
I'm a huge advocate of independent review of these projects. There needs to be an independent, educated review of the project as stated, any already-created assets or systems, the funding goal, the timeline, and how realistic all of it is compared to similarly funded projects as well as experience gleaned from similar products funded more traditionally.
CoE is a perfect example of a project that likely should never have received funding, because the timeline and funding goals were, quite frankly, fairy-tales. Had they been required to provide potential backers with an independent document detailing this and why, they likely would've never received funding. But that's not a bad thing- not every project that comes to the table deserves funding, no matter how bored some gamers with extra cash are. It's much more important to ensure the players are fully-informed about the projects than it is to prop up ill-conceived and ill-planned projects.
Nothing would've stopped Caspian from then revising his timelines and funding goals to something much more realistic and re-attempting it. At that point, the project either stands on its own accurate merits or it doesn't.
I could back that idea. In a sense, you see that in VC rounds where there's a lot of enforced transparency with potential investors. There are firms who specialize in parsing that information and then advising investors. In that case, it's something investors pay for and it's an economy driven-protection.
I'm still a little unsure, but I think I could be convinced to require projects to hire third-party assessors as a part of the crowdfunding process.
Though, when Star Citizen implodes, crowdfunding may cease to exist anyway. lol The point might be irrelevant.
I don't disagree; I don't think we saw projects from folks like CR or RG spring up with the intent of deceiving anyone.
I'm a huge advocate of independent review of these projects. There needs to be an independent, educated review of the project as stated, any already-created assets or systems, the funding goal, the timeline, and how realistic all of it is compared to similarly funded projects as well as experience gleaned from similar products funded more traditionally.
CoE is a perfect example of a project that likely should never have received funding, because the timeline and funding goals were, quite frankly, fairy-tales. Had they been required to provide potential backers with an independent document detailing this and why, they likely would've never received funding. But that's not a bad thing- not every project that comes to the table deserves funding, no matter how bored some gamers with extra cash are. It's much more important to ensure the players are fully-informed about the projects than it is to prop up ill-conceived and ill-planned projects.
Nothing would've stopped Caspian from then revising his timelines and funding goals to something much more realistic and re-attempting it. At that point, the project either stands on its own accurate merits or it doesn't.
I could back that idea. In a sense, you see that in VC rounds where there's a lot of enforced transparency with potential investors. There are firms who specialize in parsing that information and then advising investors. In that case, it's something investors pay for and it's an economy driven-protection.
I'm still a little unsure, but I think I could be convinced to require projects to hire third-party assessors as a part of the crowdfunding process.
Though, when Star Citizen implodes, crowdfunding may cease to exist anyway. lol The point might be irrelevant.
Yea, if SC falls on its face, the inevitable class-action suit alone would likely spell the end to crowdfunding as a serious MMORPG funding route. You can't take AAA levels of funding from consumers then fold without some serious repercussions.
The main issue with independent review is, as you allude: who pays for it? My gut reaction is the platform provider- currently, Kickstarter makes money off doing damn near nothing. At least: nothing unique enough that it couldn't be handled by almost any manner of hosting services. If they're going to make money for essentially nothing, they could at least provide an unbiased and educated review of the project outlook for consumers. The project creators wouldn't like it, but accurate and open information trumps the desire for project creators to be able to confuse marketing with project planning.
Yea, if SC falls on its face, the inevitable class-action suit alone would likely spell the end to crowdfunding as a serious MMORPG funding route. You can't take AAA levels of funding from consumers then fold without some serious repercussions.
The main issue with independent review is, as you allude: who pays for it? My gut reaction is the platform provider- currently, Kickstarter makes money off doing damn near nothing. At least: nothing unique enough that it couldn't be handled by almost any manner of hosting services. If they're going to make money for essentially nothing, they could at least provide an unbiased and educated review of the project outlook for consumers. The project creators wouldn't like it, but accurate and open information trumps the desire for project creators to be able to confuse marketing with project planning.
I'd bet money on there being little to no repercussions on the CIG end. Crowdfunded money is essentially a gift. Especially at this point with all the negative press around the project. Newer backers can't even claim to have been misled.
The problem with transparency, as Portalarium found, is with how people interpret the information. What I see as a business guy is different from what an actual developer sees, and what Average Joe sees is going to be completely different from both.
It's definitely a strange new system for funding development, and I don't know that there are right answers. Leveraging requirements sounds like a good idea, but it also hurts the tiny projects who are the folks we most want to enable. It's definitely going to be something where a lot of smart people need to iron out all the ramifications of all the options and pick the lesser evil, whatever that ends up being.
Comments
No one cares much about extra in-game goodies or the usually promised greater influence on development those higher donation tiers have attached to them if the game is exclusively or predominantly single player. But players do care a great deal about that in games that are multiplayer competitions even if that competition is only expressed in how cool you look relative to the low-tier masses.
That huge problem and the endless debates about P2W could all go away if crowd funded multiplayer games treated high rollers as investors and used ownership shares in the game as their only high tier incentives. Not only would it be more honest and fair, the released game with all players starting on a relatively equal footing would have a lot more appeal to anyone who didn't drink the kool-aid early, and that is the general public where the potential big money is.
As it is, the environment they create during development is a huge turn off to anyone that thinks about buying at release or later.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Dude,even with 2000 active players. The company wont be able to keep working on the game as they wont keep the server online for long. Let's be clear, they don't have 2000 players, 1000 at max. The only reason why the server is still online is because of the monthly begothon. Thats it. Last time they had one ,they had to do it twice in the same week to get atleast 70k...
Your horse is dead mate.
"Animations, movement, gameplay, just about everything I played was absolutely atrocious,"
Hard to comprehend the wide variances in opinions that are often presented in these forums.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Starr Long:
I can't stand the very idea of crowd funding/KSr's i think it is a VERY bad way to blindly design a game based on guess work,no finite income.If you had 50k at 15 bucks a month that is around 9 million a year,that is imo a decent amount of money if not looking to get rich or have to pay a large portion to a publisher.
Per month at 50 employees that is 15k per??If my math is right?That is way more than enough and would allow a hefty portion of to go to expenses.
So if i was running the game and had confidence in my game,that warrants a sub fee,otherwise you have no base income to rely on and more or less says ok,people won't pay a sub fee to play our game so we will bank on the few whales that will spend enough to make up the difference.
Overall,Lord British NEVER had confidence in his own product,that is why he wanted gamer's to pay for it.The same goes for Pantheon,these wannabe games should really not exist,they are not good enough.Put your own heart and soul and money into it,then we have a MUCH more passionate design.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
"The team ramped up their production budget in anticipation of picking up new customers"
How? Their staff numbers have been constant for 3+ years.
"The bad news is that art and design teams have taken a serious hit, though Richard pointed out that they were also the teams that saw the largest pre-launch growth."
What are we considering pre-launch here anything prior to March? Both the art and design teams were actually larger in November of 2016 than they were in February of 2018. They didn't lay off final push hires. They got rid of core team members including senior designers and artists. They had close to 8 designers for the past 3 years running, they now have 3. They had around 7 artists for the past 2 years, they now have 2.
If you follow the link to reddit above, and follow the link on the reddit post to the video, the question and Starr's reply begin at 7:15.
I'm not sure if you're misreading it or not, but it's not entirely accurate. So cloned assets, absolutely. Every game on the planet has them whether you've noticed it or not. Wolves change color and size slightly as you go from one place to the next, that's just an asset that's been cloned. I've been playing Path of Exile lately, and it's rampant in games like that. In Shroud's case, there are wolves in multiple zones and they want to eventually replace the wolves in one to create some additional ecological diversity, for example.
That said, the team has said they want their zones to be even more unique than they are, and plan to continue updating assets, and more importantly the behavioral code for those assets, to create more diversity.
So yes, there are cloned assets, and the devs have stated a number of times that they intend to iterate on them to improve diversity. They could stop where they're at, and it'd be complete. I don't think their continuous improvement strategy takes away from that. If it did, then they'd literally never be complete. Nor would most MMOs.
...and this is actually an example of why crowdfunding and transparency maybe isn't a great idea. They told their community that because it was part of their plan. Normally, it'd never be discussed and one day you'd just login to find a zone had been updated.
I never said they couldn't make the heads. I'm sure they can. I was pointing out that you misread the earlier point.
It was never about not being able to do it at all. It was about the amount of time and cost to do so. My guess is that they listed it as a reward, and then realized how much a pain in the ass it'd be to actually do it. Think about it. Best case, someone sends you a picture as an example and tells you what they want from there. That doesn't go straight to the artist, but probably through a community manager who triages those JIRA tickets. Then the artist gets it, takes his best shot at it, and sends it back to the community manager. It then gets sent back to the backer, who has some additional requests, and back it goes. Each step in that process takes time and money, and detracts from effort that could otherwise go into making the game better. It's not a good business move.
So, yes. I think it was a dumb move to include the reward in the first place. Backing out of it I completely understand.
I was limited on word-count and couldn't go into detail on why technical limitations made the effort untenable from a cost perspective when I said, "Richard specifically cited the custom heads promised to some backers, which the team never found a viable solution for, from technical and cost perspectives." I can understand how the AND in that sentence might be confusing for some.
Currently, one of the most popular threads in the SotA forums is one asking folks how to right the ship, created by a forum moderator. I don't think that could be misconstrued as a hater thread. It's readily apparent that the significant chunk of backers are hugely disappointed with how things are turning out there. That's where I saw mention of the aforementioned boat/shipping lanes feature mentioned, iirc. It's also where you see backers admitting to a sunk cost fallacy- more than one seemed to indicate they're still around due in large part to the money they put into the project.
RG's recent post also isn't hugely encouraging. It took a thread calling him out to get him to show up, and his post was a fairly general "we're gonna try" sentiment. It didn't indicate to me that he was hugely concerned at the outlook or the end result of the project.
Lacking any formal framework for protecting consumer interests, none of this is entirely surprising to me for a crowdfunded project. I do, however, take issue with implying that it's "mission accomplished" at this point when there appears to be clear evidence of funded promises not being delivered.
So, there again is one of the reasons that Kickstarter may not be the right way to build games. What you're calling obligations is a feature list. Just like what gets pitched when you start a game through traditional channels. Just like in those cases, not all the features make it into the game.
I'm not sure you can obligate games to deliver on feature lists like that, nor should you. With the heads for example, and as I pointed out above, it's not that it can't be done. It's that it can't be done cost effectively, and when you compare that to what those people could be doing instead, the heads lose.
Business folks get that, and even more so. Remember before Kickstarter how these really good games would get pitched to the public and then we'd get it delivered. It ended up being a shell of what was promised because the publisher forced the developer to cut corners to save money? It's not as bad here because there's no publisher to hold feet to the fire, but you still have design intentions that fail to make the cut when you actually start putting the game together.
That's usually hidden more from the public, and maybe should be. That's why I'm a little iffy on crowdfunding and flat out against equity crowdfunding.
Stewardship is about delivering the best you can with the money you have. If they thought the heads would cost too much and that effort was more effective elsewhere, then I think that's pretty definitive of good stewardship. I can't see why people would be upset, but I don't think there's a good case for them having done otherwise.
You can't compare the two without acknowledging the huge benefit that is seeking funding from folks who aren't experienced or educated about the risks. A source of funding that, again, expects no monetary return from you as a company. That's a huge benefit. To then act as if cutting features, even ones specifically promised as a result of that backer money being given, is okay is (I'm sounding like a broken record here, but it's warranted) incredibly anti-consumer. If that's going to be the accepted case, there needs to be a much more open and upfront assessment of the project's chances to succeed available to backers at day one. That, quite honestly, is not something you can trust the project creators themselves to provide. An independent assessment should be available and updated on an ongoing basis to provide a fair outlook for potential backers.
Though, I think HBS did a good job with BATTLETECH, so it suggests there can be success. Industry just needs to zero in on what's viable through that model and what's not.
A few months into development, they find out that either the idea doesn't end up as fun as everyone expected, or maybe it's just going to cost too much to develop. You don't stick to it and make an unfun game or run out of funds to complete the game. That's not really an ethical choice from any direction.
I mentioned HBS earlier and their BATTLETECH, which is a good example here. The initial pitch included a much more robust electronics warfare system. That didn't make it to release. They released anyway and the game is fantastic. By your definition, that wasn't ethical, but if you talk to the devs, you find out that the effort needed to implement that system would have delayed them by months and possibly put them past their funding runway. They launched without it, and if they can get it sorted, they'll add it in later.
A really good example, btw. Because they HAVE versions of it that work. It just wasn't up to the standards that they wanted and implementing it was going to be expensive at the time. So they punted. It's an incredibly common theme in development of any form.
Like it or not, many software project managers need an authority to tell them when enough is enough, polish what you got and stop making pie-in-the-sky promises.
I'm an angel investor, for instance. If I give some amount of money to a local startup and they come back to tell me they're going to be short. My first, and often only, answer is what can you cut? If you're having problems and then want more money, it's going to cost you even more equity because of the increased risk. Far better for everyone for them to slim down their deliverables.
To me, this is the same thing. They pitched a feature that ended up not being cost-efficient and they punted on it. I'd rather them do that than to stick to doing it and the whole game suffer because they run out of money implementing something.
If cash were infinite, then I think you'd be correct. Because it's finite and they can only do so much with what they have, everything comes down to cost/benefits and ROI. Things that fall below a certain threshold unfortunately get cut. It's a truth in every business/project.
There's a lot of room for accidental abuse there, and certainly plenty for intentional abuse. There are a lot of advantages as well, so I'm still kind of on the fence, though.
I'm a huge advocate of independent review of these projects. There needs to be an independent, educated review of the project as stated, any already-created assets or systems, the funding goal, the timeline, and how realistic all of it is compared to similarly funded projects as well as experience gleaned from similar products funded more traditionally.
CoE is a perfect example of a project that likely should never have received funding, because the timeline and funding goals were, quite frankly, fairy-tales. Had they been required to provide potential backers with an independent document detailing this and why, they likely would've never received funding. But that's not a bad thing- not every project that comes to the table deserves funding, no matter how bored some gamers with extra cash are. It's much more important to ensure the players are fully-informed about the projects than it is to prop up ill-conceived and ill-planned projects.
Nothing would've stopped Caspian from then revising his timelines and funding goals to something much more realistic and re-attempting it. At that point, the project either stands on its own accurate merits or it doesn't.
I'm still a little unsure, but I think I could be convinced to require projects to hire third-party assessors as a part of the crowdfunding process.
Though, when Star Citizen implodes, crowdfunding may cease to exist anyway. lol The point might be irrelevant.
The main issue with independent review is, as you allude: who pays for it? My gut reaction is the platform provider- currently, Kickstarter makes money off doing damn near nothing. At least: nothing unique enough that it couldn't be handled by almost any manner of hosting services. If they're going to make money for essentially nothing, they could at least provide an unbiased and educated review of the project outlook for consumers. The project creators wouldn't like it, but accurate and open information trumps the desire for project creators to be able to confuse marketing with project planning.
I'd bet money on there being little to no repercussions on the CIG end. Crowdfunded money is essentially a gift. Especially at this point with all the negative press around the project. Newer backers can't even claim to have been misled.
The problem with transparency, as Portalarium found, is with how people interpret the information. What I see as a business guy is different from what an actual developer sees, and what Average Joe sees is going to be completely different from both.
It's definitely a strange new system for funding development, and I don't know that there are right answers. Leveraging requirements sounds like a good idea, but it also hurts the tiny projects who are the folks we most want to enable. It's definitely going to be something where a lot of smart people need to iron out all the ramifications of all the options and pick the lesser evil, whatever that ends up being.