KickStarter Underworld Ascendant is a disaster

[Curratum]

I like this reply from one of the posters there in reply to the rant:

"Stop being angry with them. They did nothing criminal. They just managed to not tell the truth and con everyone out of their money and hopes for a good game. Just never touch or back anything this sad circus clown troupe ever produces. Only YOU can prevent forest fires and another disaster like UA."

The sarcasm, condescension and outrage is hilariously well put together.

Why, thank you, kind sir! :D

 

[Big Wrangle]

Not even the PR could salvage the situation, what a train wreck this has been. It's gonna Deathwing all over again, the promise of the Good Edition™ to coincide with a console release that in reality is just a less buggy version as they bail to give additional support to the SS3 team.

 

[sk2k]

creative risks my ass

 

[Prime Junta]

I threw a few shekels at them too.

Somehow can't manage to work up a good head of outrage about it. Guess T:ToN reset my expectations at a level that I'm positively surprised if a Kickstarter delivers something that's even remotely like the pitch.

It does look like the fire has gone out of the old guard. Perhaps a new generation of geniuses will arise to re-light it.

If Disco Elysium disappoints, I'm giving up on cRPGs.

 

[IronMaiden]

This certainly bodes well for System Shock 3. Can't wait to see how they move that genre "forward".

 

[Big Wrangle]

Just delete RPG Codex at this point.

 

[Machocruz]

It is fully fixed now, right?

Only ∞ micro-issues left

 

[unfairlight]

Just delete RPG Codex at this point.

I agree, delete Prime Junta from RPG Codex.

 

[udm]

Top-tier rage post by Nyast: https://www.othersideentertainment.com/forum/index.php?topic=7476.msg37235#msg37235

Nyast Curratum

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I’m still a little baffled how there can be much of a bridge between Zeus and the Greek mythos to the Abyss underworld dungeon with SirCaribus etc. some serious moonstone dust snorting going around here.

Well, I guess it isn’t that far fetched considering worlds of ULTIMA and the black moongate to Econ. Or going to Mars.

EA still retain all ULTIMA as property?

 

[Gord]

I'm borderline treating this as a scam now.

I can't get over the fact they knew from the start they didn't have the budget to deliver their Kickstarter and never bothered informing anybody until now.

Personally, I'm not so angry about that part. I mean - anyone with half a brain knew that the Kickstarter money wouldn't be enough and they obviously had to look for more money elsewhere.
Of course, losing that additional source of income should have probably made them stop the project (and at the very least they should have told their backers).
But anyway, Kickstarters are inherently risky, so one should only "invest" money one doesn't care to lose.

What really baffles me, however, is how completely and utterly out of touch they seem in that statement.
Either they are outright lying (and very bad at it), or just completely deluded, because frankly, nothing there adds up.

 

[LESS T_T]

From 2015 Codex interview in hindsight: https://rpgcodex.net/article.php?id=9788

mindx2: Something Peter Molyneux said in an interview with RPS recently about his own KS game Godus, “Now the trouble is with Kickstarter, you don’t really fully know how much money you need and I think most people who do Kickstarter would agree with me here. You have an idea, you think you need this much, but as most people will say with Kickstarter, if you ask for too much money up front because of the rules of Kickstarter, it’s very, very hard to ask for the complete development budget. This is the advice I have given to people about Kickstarter, is to not ask for too much. You cannot unfortunately ask for the actual amount you need. Because you don’t really know.”

Peter Neurath: I don’t know how Peter budgeted his project. I can’t speak to that and don’t have familiarity with that. The approach we took is we ground up figuring what we need to make the basic game, core game single player experience for the PC, now the PC/Linux/Mac. What’s that going to budget and that’s our baseline budget and we also raised some investment before we started the Kickstarter. So we didn’t start at zero. So with what we’ve raised and what we’ve budgeted from our fans at Kickstarter that’s what it takes to build the game. I’ve been doing this for thirty years and worked on about 50-60 projects and collectively on the team it’s close to a hundred. I would hazard to guess that our track record of starting a game and finishing a game is probably better than 9 out of 10 game developers who are working today. Part of it is we take a conservative approach. It’s not interesting to start on a game that can’t be done. There’s no point in that. So we’ve done this enough now that we know what’s feasible and what we can do with a given budget. The other thing about game design that I’ve learned is that I view it as sculpture. It’s about bearing down to get to the essence of what makes a great game. If you look at games like Thief they’re not big games. They have a core essence to them that make them great games. Adding a lot of features to that won’t make them any better. If anything it dilutes the experience. So Underworld Ascendant in a similar way is not going to be a hodge-podge of features and stuff in there. At the baseline budget, if that’s what we have to work with, that’s a lean, mean game but it’s going to be a wonderful game for what it is. I don’t know Peter very well, only met him a couple of times, and know he often has visions for what he wants to make. Maybe with us being New Englanders makes us more grounded. (laughs from around the table)

mindx2: … but you understand the concern when people look at the budget and say “How far are they going to get and will that be enough?”

Paul: The things we have there [in the game] we’ve done before as a team and we know how to execute. The baseline doesn’t have any big unknown risks. Now if we get to the high stretch goals then there’s more “We’re going to try this” and be less certain if all this will work out and that’s why they’re in as higher stretch goals.

 

[Nyast]

Personally, I'm not so angry about that part. I mean - anyone with half a brain knew that the Kickstarter money wouldn't be enough and they obviously had to look for more money elsewhere.
Of course, losing that additional source of income should have probably made them stop the project (and at the very least they should have told their backers).
But anyway, Kickstarters are inherently risky, so one should only "invest" money one doesn't care to lose.

I'm not agry at them not securing their funding. Shit happens all the times, even to the best. That's not the issue. The issue is that it was never communicated. Everybody thought the project was on rails, until it was no longer possible to hide it. It was a "surprise motherfuckers !" that was sent to the backers. Total lack of respect. The least would have been to announce that they lost their investor and failed to secure additional funding, and would have to reduce the scope. Instead, they made everybody believe everything was fine, "just a few bugs but hey! we have lots of things in the works, and you know, projects like this come together at the last minute". I wish I was kidding, but that was their official communication until the release.

 

[Viata]

I would hazard to guess that our track record of starting a game and finishing a game is probably better than 9 out of 10 game developers who are working today.

Well, I fear for those 9 game developers out there, now.

 

[karnak]

They should've hired Cleve Blakemore to finish the project.
Or delivered it to the team behind the Dungeons of Aledorn project.

Right now we'd still be waiting and hyping for the game and everything would be just fine.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

I would hazard to guess that our track record of starting a game and finishing a game is probably better than 9 out of 10 game developers who are working today.

Well, I fear for those 9 game developers out there, now.

That’s a great soundbite to use for their next Kickstarter pitch: “9 out of 10 game developers are smart enough to cancel a project when it’s a total train-wreck; we’re the exception!”

 

[Terenty]

Yeah, even if Jon Van Caneghem started now a kickstarter with the promise of a new and shiny M&M in the vein of MM6-8, i wouldnt give him a damn ruble. Its obvious at this point they all went fucking senile

 

[Viata]

It's not that they went senile, it's that you are paying a guy who was part of a great team of programmers. I want the whole team of programmers included, because it's obvious they can't do shit without them.

 

[Curratum]

It's BOTH the team AND that they went completely senile.

 

[Dorateen]

Yeah, even if Jon Van Caneghem started now a kickstarter with the promise of a new and shiny M&M in the vein of MM6-8

On the other hand, if JVC promised a new Might & Magic in the vein of 1 - 5...

 

[fantadomat]

Yeah, even if Jon Van Caneghem started now a kickstarter with the promise of a new and shiny M&M in the vein of MM6-8, i wouldnt give him a damn ruble. Its obvious at this point they all went fucking senile

This shit will be epic,i wouldn't mind giving them some shekels. After all he make a LOT of games,and he is not famous for being the coffee boy when the studio was making X classic game. The guy runned a studio that made ton of epic games.

 

[Excommunicator]

A message by Paul Neurath, a kinda apology and postmortem explaining how they took creative risks, some "retconing", funding problems, and their mistakes.: https://otherside-e.com/wp/underworld-ascendant-where-were-headed-how-we-got-here/

This makes me angry reading this. That he would suggest the end result is because of experimentation and creative exploration rather than outright incompetence and constant deception just shows they don't get it.

I would not give any money to this studio at any point in the future.

 

[Nyast]

505 is apparently not aware that Otherside released the Linux version accidentely, lol:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/692840/discussions/0/1742229167172698974/

We have not yet released a Linux version of the game. Due to our focus on the updates, it is delayed.

So why is there a download? From what I understand, if a game doesn't have an offical Linux (or Mac) version, steam will try to make an emulated version as per this announcement from August:

https://steamcommunity.com/games/221410#announcements/detail/1696055855739350561

 

[DemonKing]

Like how the developer says they're soliciting player feedback to improve the game - how do you solicit feedback when literally no one is playing? Less than a month out from release there are regularly <10 people playing at any point in time worldwide...

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I would try it (lord knows I uh... acquired it.. <.<. >.>! ), but I have shit for computing power for such games. (Shrugs).