Information Tom Hall and Brenda Brathwaite Kickstart Turn-based Oldschool CRPG

[LeStryfe79]

I love Wizardry 8 as well, but damn. Damn. Do they think their fans are so gullible as to give money to such a half-assed endeavor? If this horseshit is all they can muster, what does that say about the game they want to make? This Kickstarter blows away the retardedness of any game I've backed. Unlike Obsidian's poor start, I have absolutely no faith in their ability to turn this ship around. This wasn't just a poor pitch, this was a poor relationship with reality. They need to go back to their ipads and refrain from using their xxx toys in attempts to fuck us in the ass. Pools of acid mixed with fecal matter would be appropriate when describing this venture. I'd highly recommend steering clear of this.

 

[theSavant]

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

Individually Hall and Brenda have a great background --even if some butthurt entity screams otherwise-- Brenda was one of the main developers of Wizardry 8 and it was a fantastic game

Also, Al Gore invented the internet.

It is true Brenda was given responsibilities for design on Wizardry 8 when the company had millions to throw at development. Shortly thereafter they then went bankrupt and had $50.00 worth of assets left to declare in court. So, in fact, Brenda has already gotten her two million to play computer game designer and spent it all. Chief among her arguments at Sir-Tech in design philosophy was that ...


"NOBODY WANTED TO PLAY OLD SKOOL RPGS ANY MORE."

Sir-Tech took her advice on this subject. I am sure you can see the irony.

Brenda already got her Kickstarter funded. It was called Wizardry 8. Look how that worked out for Sir-Tech.

THINK ABOUT IT WHEN TIME PERMITS.

 

[ghostdog]

Cleve, I think you need a much bigger font size in order convey your argument successfully.

 

[HobGoblin42]

By using the large font he emphasized his true feelings. And this makes his post very believable in my eyes. And I am not ironic.

 

[kaizoku]

Individually Hall and Brenda have a great background --even if some butthurt entity screams otherwise-- Brenda was one of the main developers of Wizardry 8 and it was a fantastic game

Also, Al Gore invented the internet.

It is true Brenda was given responsibilities for design on Wizardry 8 when the company had millions to throw at development. Shortly thereafter they then went bankrupt and had $50.00 worth of assets left to declare in court. So, in fact, Brenda has already gotten her two million to play computer game designer and spent it all. Chief among her arguments at Sir-Tech in design philosophy was that ...


"NOBODY WANTED TO PLAY OLD SKOOL RPGS ANY MORE."

Sir-Tech took her advice on this subject. I am sure you can see the irony.

Brenda already got her Kickstarter funded. It was called Wizardry 8. Look how that worked out for Sir-Tech.

THINK ABOUT IT WHEN TIME PERMITS.

Cleve, in your opinion was Wiz 8 a good or bad game?
Would you say it's an OLD SKUUL game?

And how will this... hypothetical... Grimoire, be better than Wiz 8?

 

[Infinitron]

Reposting a Klassic Kleve Komment

There was this thought that maybe, like adventure games, RPGs were going to die out, too. [...] I wasn't the only developer that thought I'd coded myself into a corner.

—Brenda Brathwaite, former Wizardry developer[4]

They didn't know what they were doing. They were flatlining mentally.They were sitting on a gold mine. No sooner had they told me this (RPGs were "dying") than LANDS OF LORE came out and totally thrashed and it sold like hell all over. It was basically EYE OF THE BEHOLDER upgraded slightly.

Everytime somebody has pronounced the RPG dead, somebody has done something similar to Fallout 3 at Bethesda. Suddenly umpteen gazillion copies are sold and all the camp followers go ... gosh ... I guess we were wrong.

If Sir-Tech knew which way the wind was blowing they would not have gone out of business.

The adventure game is doing just fine. It has graduated to Penumbra and Amnesia. It's a little more realistic and interactive than before, that's all.

The problem in the computer game business is not a cash shortage. It's a brain shortage. Bright people don't grow on trees. Sir-Tech staff is still trying to figure it out.

As I've said on this thread a dozen times, there was this lack of the ability to focus in on what you are doing. This was missing in Sir-Tech staff. I doubt if it was missing in David Bradley or in Andrew Greenberg. It was missing in the staff that remained there. They spent more time plotting against each other than they ever spent thinking about game design and implementation.

Brenda is a lot like that wizard in Harry Potter who is always on the front cover of the newspaper but you have to ask, what has she ever really done on her own? Playboy Mansion? DRUIDS : DAEMONS OF THE MIND ? She talks like she created Wizardry but I don't think so. I don't think so. A lot of the Sir-Tech staff are kind of a couple of psi overinflated. Maybe going bankrupt and having to declare $50 worth of assets in court would smarten them up a little ... nah, I don't think so.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

He makes good points throughout all of it.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Ok. I am ind finance, but I don't quote shit. I dead drunk so I willvre=repsong tommorow.

Banks I know do a very simple thing when it comes to loans: They'll look at three-years cash-flow. If the business is making money, you have a chance. If it isn't, goodbye. Most gaming companies (and small businesses) would be in the goodbye category. They don't have three-years of steady income from a game, at best it comes in one big lump or its publisher funding (investment) which is ignored (because it's not income).

 

[Micmu]

If Hervé blesses their campaign, I'll pledge.
Until then, they have zero credibility to me.

 

[theSavant]

Chief among her arguments at Sir-Tech in design philosophy was that ...
"NOBODY WANTED TO PLAY OLD SKOOL RPGS ANY MORE."

Sir-Tech took her advice on this subject. I am sure you can see the irony.
Brenda already got her Kickstarter funded. It was called Wizardry 8. Look how that worked out for Sir-Tech.

But maybe she was right. Maybe the success of Grimrock was only because a long time has passed since the last classic RPG. If they had released the dungeon crawler in 2001 it probably hadn't been successful. It was the time of Morrowind, Open World RPGs etc. But nowadays many people are saturated by all the same mishmash games. They were longing for an RPG experience from the past with updated graphics and Grimrock was just released at the right time.

As you mention Wizardry 8: there you got it, Wizardry 8 was never a financial success, despite getting minimum ratings of at least 9/10 points (which were really deserved). But it never got as popular as any of the Infinity Engine Games. As if people didn't like Party RPGs from 1st person view (many keep saying "what crap, how unrealistic is that..."). I can't explain it otherwise. If I ask my friends about RPGs most of them never heard of Wizardry, but know every Infinite Engine RPG... (NWN, Baldurs Gate, Icewind Dale...). This obviously reflects on the kickstarter.

 

[Infinitron]

According to Wikipedia:

Despite its reception, the new game and other hardcore RPGs release around that time struggled. New gamers had difficulty adjusting to the old-school RPG feel of the game. With a lack of widespread advertising and limited distribution, the game failed to attract much attention at its release.

 

[Jaesun]

Yeah. At the time IIRC KotOR AND Wizardry 8 came out at the same time. I still remember going from store to store trying to just FIND a fucking copy of Wizardry 8. But I finally found one (and bought the last copy at the store).

 

[Infinitron]

Yeah. At the time IIRC KotOR AND Wizardry 8 came out at the same time. I still remember going from store to store trying to just FIND a fucking copy of Wizardry 8. But I finally found one (and bought the last copy at the store).

No, it came out two years before KOTOR. Confused with another game?

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Wizardry 8 was awesome. Really enjoyed playing it.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

True dat.

 

[Mother Russia]

Wiz 8 was great gameplay wise and graphic wise, but it had an utterly shit WTF story. Sorry folks, but if your game isn't an open ended sandbox, then you need a good story otherwise the game will suffer.

I need to care when I play a game, care about the quests, the gameworld, the princess who I am trying to rescue, etc etc.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

Chief among her arguments at Sir-Tech in design philosophy was that ...
"NOBODY WANTED TO PLAY OLD SKOOL RPGS ANY MORE."

Sir-Tech took her advice on this subject. I am sure you can see the irony.
Brenda already got her Kickstarter funded. It was called Wizardry 8. Look how that worked out for Sir-Tech.

But maybe she was right. Maybe the success of Grimrock was only because a long time has passed since the last classic RPG. If they had released the dungeon crawler in 2001 it probably hadn't been successful. It was the time of Morrowind, Open World RPGs etc. But nowadays many people are saturated by all the same mishmash games. They were longing for an RPG experience from the past with updated graphics and Grimrock was just released at the right time.

As you mention Wizardry 8: there you got it, Wizardry 8 was never a financial success, despite getting minimum ratings of at least 9/10 points (which were really deserved). But it never got as popular as any of the Infinity Engine Games. As if people didn't like Party RPGs from 1st person view (many keep saying "what crap, how unrealistic is that..."). I can't explain it otherwise. If I ask my friends about RPGs most of them never heard of Wizardry, but know every Infinite Engine RPG... (NWN, Baldurs Gate, Icewind Dale...). This obviously reflects on the kickstarter.

I will give you a completely different viewpoint, divested of group think and popular misconceptions (about everything).

If you are a charlatan, one of the ways to avoid direct scrutiny of your competency is to pretend to be wired into a gestalt and steer attention away from core competency in your supposed profession. Deception is a part of the survival strategy of most of the animal kingdom and plays a huge part in the lives of Homo Sapiens, most of whom are incompetent in nearly everything except social engineering. The only biped we know of in the natural world who adapted to avoid deception because of his harsh environment is likely the Neanderthal with his small social groupings and demanding circumstances. Otherwise "Jacob" means "To Deceive" in Hebrew. "Esau" means "Honest and Guileless Man." How apt. Again, the Bible has proven to be an incredibly prescient book on anthropology.

The majority of Homo Sapiens are fakes and Brenda Braithwaite is even worse. I believe Brenda enjoys socializing a lot more than she enjoys game design. Brenda is more interested in dominance and being the boss than making games. She is a female who likes to be in charge and as I have noted my entire life, this is general compensation for feelings of inferiority. It is the weakest and most damaged humans who always seek to dominate their fellows.

How does Brenda achieve her goal of being in charge and delegating work without being exposed as a person without the core technical competencies to do so? She denigrates skill itself. It's an old strategy and has probably been used for tens of thousands of years. How do you climb a meritocracy when you cannot demonstrate any merit? Brenda is not David Bradley, Andrew Greenberg or even Tom Hall. She is a hollow person who skipped right over the part where she first learns the skills required to build computer games.

This is a common phenomenon in nearly all the professions that assume some merit has to be present to be qualified. In psychology, frauds like Dr. Phil will ignore 100 years of precedent and announce it is no longer necessary to study classical psychology or refer to previous knowledge on the subject. Dr. Phil does this because he is incompetent and has been judged incompetent to practice psychology by his peers. He was never qualified in his own profession. He just moved the goalposts into Oprah Winfrey territory and proclaimed that psychology was discussing subjects in this strange clipped Orwellian leftist newspeak that is full of general assumptions that do not agree with the classic science that Dr. Phil failed to learn.

If you can't program old skool classic roleplaying games, you are going to begin to build yourself up by suggesting that those who can must lack some other etherial, indescribable and vague qualities that ... wait for it ... you yourself will then declare to be in possession of. People who are good games designers are out-of-touch. They are nerds who demonstrate simple ability that no longer matters. What will be important in the future is to move away from all this competency and just do gigantic "games" consisting of full motion videos linked end-to-end which is conveniently their level of understanding of games design. NEMESIS : THE WIZARDRY ADVENTURE and ARMED AND DANGEROUS.

This bright future opens doors to people who otherwise would never be qualified to design and create computer games. Once you destroy standards, anybody can claim to be anything.

This is why women have flooded into psychology. It is a field that has been abandoned because of charlatans like Dr. Phil and Oprah Winfrey. As long as you don't require people to demonstrate any of that dull stuff monopolized by the Neanderthal hybrids like competency and actual ability, it opens all the professions to everyone. Finally we can get rid of all these nerds because you see :

"NOBODY WANTS TO PLAY OLD SKOOL RPGS ANY MORE."

And yet whenever anyone produces a good one, it seems to sell really well and certainly well enough to provide a living for honest practitioners.

I first noticed the phenomenon of the worst soldiers seeking leadership positions in the Army and have seen this in civilian life ever since. It is the sick oyster that produces nacre. It is the people not qualified to do much of anything who always attack the standards that prevail in any profession based on a merit system.

 

[Infinitron]

Note to Codex: Cleve does not actually know Hebrew.

 

[Marsal]

Yeah. At the time IIRC KotOR AND Wizardry 8 came out at the same time. I still remember going from store to store trying to just FIND a fucking copy of Wizardry 8. But I finally found one (and bought the last copy at the store).

No, it came out two years before KOTOR. Confused with another game?

Wizardry 8 release date: November 15, 2001
Halo: Combat Evolved release date: November 15, 2001

Halo killed Wizardry!

 

[Lockkaliber]

Looks like Brenda Bratwurst should stick to facebook games.

 

[Trash]

Classy. A guy responsible for trying to get money for a game that is 'nearly finished' since the 90's starts bitching about someone else's kickstarter.

 

[Marsal]

Note to Codex: Cleve does not actually know Hebrew.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

So, did they cancel the project yet or what?

 

[kaizoku]

Neanderthal. Neanderthal never changes.