KickStarter Underworld Ascendant is a disaster

[MasterLobar]

Did anyone ever get one of those plastic figurines high-level backers paid for? They showed off some 3D renderings of them but I never saw the final product.

She says they are ready.

" I’m also crossing my fingers that I’ll be able to finish the DVD and Game Manual by the time the Mac and Linux ports are available, since those versions will be printed on the physical discs, depending on what you selected for your reward. ALL the other physical goods are done / waiting to be printed."

https://forums.otherside-e.com/t/july-8-2019-weekly-update-ps4-xbox-one-hotfix-ks-update/10118

 

[LESS T_T]

https://forums.otherside-e.com/t/july-22-2019-weekly-update/10128

Afternoon everyone! Short but sweet:

This week, we’re finishing up work on Mac/Linux and continuing to work on PS4 and Xbox hotfix changes. We’re still monitoring bugs for the latter two platforms.

In addition to this, I’m working on the manual as quickly as possible and finishing up the Making Of DVD, which are two of the biggest final KS items that I need to complete before we can start shipping the physical editions.

As a reference, here’s last week’s post: https://forums.otherside-e.com/t/july-15-2019-weekly-update/10126

the Making Of DVD

 

[Efe]

i hope lobar watches the making-of video. he could catch a lot of their lies there.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Sounds like material for codex movie night

 

[Glic2000]

I picture the making of video as a single developer in a dusty office, poking around with physics in Unity for the better part of a year. Occasionally he sets something on fire and smiles. Sometimes a tumbleweed rolls by.

 

[Nyast]

This is gonna be epic. A disaster movie.

 

[Cael]

This is gonna be epic. A disaster movie.

I think it had already been done...

 

[MasterLobar]

I suspect that the community manager has been fired already (or at least got the message) and is just doing the remaining kickstarter stuff before saying goodbye. She's probably out on August 1.

 

[BEvers]

Sounds like they've learned from their mistakes for their next project:

 

[Steamboat Willie]

I wonder if their "unannounced project" has a publisher yet.

 

[baud]

Sounds like they've learned from their mistakes for their next project:

They still have enough people left from UA to learn from the mistakes done on that project?

 

[Nano]

Can I just say that the existence of this game still fucking infuriates me. Just how the fuck did these people manage to ship such a fucking abortion of a game? HOW?????

 

[MasterLobar]

This doesn't make any sense. They are developing SS3 without a publisher and they are financially in trouble to the point that they have to fire someone like Chris Siegel.

But they are still starting a brand new project on a green field with no publisher or funding and assigned what sounds like at least a handful of people to that project.

Shouldn't those guys work on SS3 to finally push a game out the door that's actually selling so they have some food on the table?

I think Infinitron was spot on here:

My take is that they're utterly convinced that they should never reveal the truth about what they're doing, and the "confusion" arises because different people in the company come up with different versions of bullshit when fans ask questions.

 

[Infinitron]

My take on OtherSide's finances is that they have some sort of small but dependable revenue stream. Like maybe Paul Neurath owns some real estate properties that he earns rent on. They certainly act like they can afford to continue indefinitely with a skeleton crew. That's why Sam talks about how it would "extend our development cycle by quite a bit" if they don't get a publisher, instead of them having to cancel the game and shut down like any other developer would.

 

[MasterLobar]

Paul Neurath's real estate pays for the entire Boston office, the entire Austin office, and the monthly repayments to Starbreeze?

Two teams of game developers, two offices in major cities and probably ~200k to starbreeze per month?

And given how they were dancing around fixing those UA bugs and creating a console version for six months, I don't think they can ever finish SS3 with a skeleton grew, let alone do another project simultaneously.

And if they go on with a skeleton crew, we'd have to see at least a dozen more layoffs, and even with a skeleton crew, they'd still have a large bill for the office space etc.

What Sam is saying simply doesn't make sense. The numbers don't add up.

I stand by my prediction that OS will shut down in the next few weeks, probably by end of August.

 

[Nyast]

The game is now good, didn't you get the memo ? 75% of positive opinions thanks to 12 reviews in the past month on Steam.

About their finances, remember they just released the game on PS4/Xbox. Console gamers are unlikely to purchase the game by doing some deep research on PC ( hell, most might not even know it got released on PC 6 months ago already ) and gave the game a chance. From the screenshots and descriptions you can't guess it was a trainwreck. So my bet is on the console sales doing okay. That's probably enough to buy them some time for a few more months.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

I suspect that the community manager has been fired already (or at least got the message) and is just doing the remaining kickstarter stuff before saying goodbye. She's probably out on August 1.

It also sounds like - a community manager - is fulfilling a lot of the high tier backer rewards, writing the manual, having physical media done, releasing linux and mac builds and other seemingly way, way way above the pay-grade things.

 

[Viata]

I suspect that the community manager has been fired already (or at least got the message) and is just doing the remaining kickstarter stuff before saying goodbye. She's probably out on August 1.

It also sounds like - a community manager - is fulfilling a lot of the high tier backer rewards, writing the manual, having physical media done, releasing linux and mac builds and other seemingly way, way way above the pay-grade things.

Some people take their job too serious.

 

[MasterLobar]

About their finances, remember they just released the game on PS4/Xbox. Console gamers are unlikely to purchase the game by doing some deep research on PC ( hell, most might not even know it got released on PC 6 months ago already ) and gave the game a chance. From the screenshots and descriptions you can't guess it was a trainwreck. So my bet is on the console sales doing okay. That's probably enough to buy them some time for a few more months.

I doubt that the console version is even a moderate seller.

It has 17 reviews with 2.5 stars for PS4:

https://store.playstation.com/de-de/product/EP4040-CUSA15003_00-0000000000000000?smcid=psblog:en:page-name::Underworld Ascendant

For Xbox, it's also only 13 reviews, 2.5 stars:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/underworld-ascendant/9mzg29lrcck0?activetab=pivot:reviewstab

There are studies that say on Steam 1 review equals about 70 copies sold (was discussed in this thread recently). It might be higher for console, but even if it is A LOT higher, like 1 review for 200-300 copies sold, the game is still selling very poorly.

And even if sales were better, remember that all revenues from UA go to 505 until they recoup their investment plus a margin. The CM revealed recently that UA's budget was $5-6 million, so 505 likely buried at least $2 million in this game.

How many copies would the game have to sell for total sales to be above $2 million + x%, after refunds, discounts and Steam/PS4/Xbox fees?

Probably north of 100,000 copies. It is safe to say that they have not reached that number (PC and console combined).

Otherside isn't going to make any money any time soon.

 

[Katana1000S]

I never thought I'd say it, but ... I do not want System Shock 3 to be released, at least not by these clowns or related to them in any way whatsoever, would rather have no SS3 and that's the god dam truth.

 

[Nyast]

About their finances, remember they just released the game on PS4/Xbox. Console gamers are unlikely to purchase the game by doing some deep research on PC ( hell, most might not even know it got released on PC 6 months ago already ) and gave the game a chance. From the screenshots and descriptions you can't guess it was a trainwreck. So my bet is on the console sales doing okay. That's probably enough to buy them some time for a few more months.

I doubt that the console version is even a moderate seller.

It has 17 reviews with 2.5 stars for PS4:

https://store.playstation.com/de-de/product/EP4040-CUSA15003_00-0000000000000000?smcid=psblog:en:page-name::Underworld Ascendant

For Xbox, it's also only 13 reviews, 2.5 stars:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/underworld-ascendant/9mzg29lrcck0?activetab=pivot:reviewstab

There are studies that say on Steam 1 review equals about 70 copies sold (was discussed in this thread recently). It might be higher for console, but even if it is A LOT higher, like 1 review for 200-300 copies sold, the game is still selling very poorly.

And even if sales were better, remember that all revenues from UA go to 505 until they recoup their investment plus a margin. The CM revealed recently that UA's budget was $5-6 million, so 505 likely buried at least $2 million in this game.

How many copies would the game have to sell for total sales to be above $2 million + x%, after refunds, discounts and Steam/PS4/Xbox fees?

Probably north of 100,000 copies. It is safe to say that they have not reached that number (PC and console combined).

Otherside isn't going to make any money any time soon.

That's why I said "for a few more months". Also, I'm not sure you can extrapolate the reviews ratio to sales on the console stores. Are they even able to rate the game and leave a review when they're on a console ? It sounds like to me they'd have to buy the game on console, but do the effort to log in to a PC to rate the game. That could explain a very low ratio.

I do agree they didn't sell 100K copies, not even close. But maybe 10-20K out of naive gamers ? doesn't sound impossible to me.

After all, the game *did* sell 10-15K copies on PC, despite all the warnings from the backers and the Steam forums being hell. Typically, console sales are x2-x3 of PC, and if the red alarms aren't visible on the console stores that ratio could be even higher.

 

[MasterLobar]

The point is, it doesn't matter if they sold 10k, 30k or even 50k.

Let's go with 50k with no fees, refunds and at full price (let's say $30 per copy, ignoring exchange rates). That means $1,500,000 in total revenue.

This is almost certianly below what 505 invested in the game, so all the money goes to 505. Otherside doesn't get anything.

UA's sales, even in this ridiculously optmistic scenario, won't contribute one cent to the development of SS3 or the "unannounced project" (which doesn't exist).

 

[Nyast]

"All the money goes to 505" -> you have no idea how the contract is structured, that's a huge, very huge assumption to make here that I do not share. It makes more sense to believe they're repaying 505 at a fixed rate, or based on royalties, and even then it could be on profits and not gross revenue ( meaning they still pay for their expenses first, before repaying 505 ). The fact is, nobody knows. Another fact is that they haven't shut down yet and they still claim they have enough money to go for a while. We'll see how it turns out.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

It also sounds like - a community manager - is fulfilling a lot of the high tier backer rewards, writing the manual, having physical media done, releasing linux and mac builds and other seemingly way, way way above the pay-grade things.

As shit as this game is, she deserves a
Hope a better company picks her up

 

[MasterLobar]

Nyast: It's quite obvious that 505 paid advances to OS for the development of the game. If they hadn't done so, how could OS have kept the Boston office running for so many years with no other revenues or funding? (the kickstarter money wasn't nearly enough and the $3.5 million stock sale didn't come in until August 2018)

Under these circumstances, advances are usually fully recoupable.

"Usually the publisher paid the studio advances against royalties to fund that game’s development, often millions of dollars in advances. So, the studio doesn’t receive royalties until the publisher recoups the advances from the royalties.

So let’s say a game cost $10 million to develop. The the game must sell enough for the game to earn $10,000,001 in royalties (not sales) before the developer receives their first $1 in royalties."

https://davidmullich.com/2017/02/13/a-dirty-little-secret-of-the-game-industry-royalties/

This is also how the SS3 deal with Starbreeze was structured in March 2017:

"Starbreeze will be able to recoup 120% of its full investment including marketing costs. Starbreeze share of revenues will become 50% after the investment is recouped."

https://www.starbreeze.com/2017/03/...igns-otherside-entertainments-system-shock-3/

The deal with 505 was made in August 2017:

https://otherside-e.com/wp/505-games-to-publish-long-awaited-fantasy-rpg-underworld-ascendant/

The conditions of the Starbreeze deal were public at that point, so it is hard to believe 505 would have settled for less.