KickStarter Underworld Ascendant is a disaster

[MasterLobar]

"We expect these hotfixes to be the last improvements we make to Underworld Ascendant"

Wondering what the 10 people who are playing their game are going to say.

https://steamcharts.com/app/692840#1m

 

[Nyast]

LOL. Yeah, still waiting for my physical goods. Thankfully I only ordered the boxed copy I think. I guess I'll put it on my shelf as a sort of talisman to ward me off from purchasing any more Kickstarter video games.

You never bought a bad video game before ( non-Kickstarter ) ? If so, did you decide to boycott video games in general ?

There are many good games that were Kickstarted, punishing other devs / projects for the mistakes of a few isn't doing any good.

Stop shilling for Kickstarter, boy. A completed and shipped product is far different to one promised in Neverneverland.

Yes and so what ? I'm not trying to excuse the mess that Ascendant is. But putting erverybody in the same bag isn't doing anyone's favor. Or are you claiming that ALL kickstarters have been fraudulant and none of them were worth being supported ?

 

[Glic2000]

I definitely support Kickstarter in general. I've spent thousands on Kickstarter board games. Some of those have been really excellent games, and they never would have existed within normal retail channels. A couple of them were bad games, but even in those cases I was able to sell them or enjoy them in a B-movie sort of way.

I just don't think Kickstarter works as well for video games. It's too easy for a game to change dramatically in development. It's too easy for a studio to just toss up a bunch of 3D renderings, a fake video and a bunch of crazy ideas and then never make that into a proper game. And if the game does turn out to be good, just buy it later. No point wasting money on something that's still in development if it's already met its funding goal.

 

[Cael]

LOL. Yeah, still waiting for my physical goods. Thankfully I only ordered the boxed copy I think. I guess I'll put it on my shelf as a sort of talisman to ward me off from purchasing any more Kickstarter video games.

You never bought a bad video game before ( non-Kickstarter ) ? If so, did you decide to boycott video games in general ?

There are many good games that were Kickstarted, punishing other devs / projects for the mistakes of a few isn't doing any good.

Stop shilling for Kickstarter, boy. A completed and shipped product is far different to one promised in Neverneverland.

Yes and so what ? I'm not trying to excuse the mess that Ascendant is. But putting erverybody in the same bag isn't doing anyone's favor. Or are you claiming that ALL kickstarters have been fraudulant and none of them were worth being supported ?

None of them are. If you are so confident of your product, produce it, THEN sell it.

Just because one game turned out perfectly as the developer described after a 2 year gestation period on Kickstarter doesn't mean ALL Kickstarters are above board and worthy of support.

 

[Nyast]

Allright, we'll agree to disagree then. Just because a few rotten projects you're ready to disregard all the work done by honest developers that put in genuine effort. I do not share that sentiment.

 

[Steamboat Willie]

Quality Kickstarter games are definitely the exception, not the rule. Still, I'll only consider giving the publisher money if they have a finished product to sell me.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Here's the big issue with kickstarter: Games with any real team size that had successful kickstarters barely had a tiny portion of the game's budget funded that way.
KCD had one of the most successful kickstarters for a video game at the time… and it was solely to prove to a publisher people were interested so they could get real funding. Kickstarter provided about 3.5%~ of the total funding for KCD if this article is accurate on development costs.

 

[LESS T_T]

Carl Ahlund, apparently lead designer of the unannounced project: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carl-ahlund-0816612/

Lead Designer
Company Name OtherSide Entertainment
Dates Employed Aug 2016 – Present
Employment Duration 3 yrs 1 mo
Location Greater Boston Area

Lead Designer of mobile VR title Underworld Overlord.

Lead Designer of Unannounced Title.

He also worked on UA as a designer and was author of the last insider blog.

Makes me wonder if Tim Stellmach, lead designer of UA, is still working at Otherside. Was the layoffs also of LGS alumni, not only of the young QAs? More ironic if they really work on a Thief-like.

 

[MasterLobar]

Was the layoffs also of LGS alumni, not only of the young QAs?

Chris Siegel was a Looking Glass alumnus.

 

[LESS T_T]

Was the layoffs also of LGS alumni, not only of the young QAs?

Chris Siegel was a Looking Glass alumnus.

Yeah, that's why I was wondering about that.

 

[thesheeep]

Stop shilling for Kickstarter, boy. A completed and shipped product is far different to one promised in Neverneverland.

Exactly. I'm neither a charity nor a venture capital firm.

But you are certainly a fool if you ever supported a Kickstarter expecting anything out of it.
It was always known that supporting a KS (or similar) is buying a faint hope of something good coming from it, with the chances of that being about 50/50.
As long as you are aware of that and you don't spend your last money on it, I don't see any reason not to do it. The projects most likely to fail can be filtered out just looking at the campaign and maybe doing some digging.

I actually find that surprisingly many decent games came from KS that I supported, with the number of failures like UA being rather low, only exaggerated by negativity/confirmation bias.
Well, I didn't support UA (I just don't have that much nostalgia for Ultima games in general)...

 

[MasterLobar]

Layoffs have reached Austin-based staff. (h/t Infinitron)

Mike Ammer

Senior Designer
Company Name OtherSide Entertainment
Dates Employed Sep 2018 – Aug 2019
Employment Duration 1 yr

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-ammer-0168517/

 

[Steamboat Willie]

People on Steam reporting issues with the game are now being referred to the modding thread on the UA forum.

https://forums.otherside-e.com/t/what-fan-mods-would-you-like-to-see/10014/32

 

[MasterLobar]

Is the community manager still with Otherside?

I think she'll do all the physical KS stuff, because that would be something they could in fact be sued for if they don't deliver it, and then she's out, too.

 

[Infinitron]

Sam should demand her title be upgraded to Producer before they lay her off. It's what she actually is and it's probably better for your CV than "Community Manager".

 

[Nyast]

Latest fiasco: https://steamcommunity.com/app/692840/discussions/0/1640919103685204016/

1. Player complains about movement being physics-based
2. Flarechess answers that they don't plan on addressing it but hints / suggests it could be modded and refers to the modding thread
3. Modding thread says game can't be modded anymore ( https://forums.otherside-e.com/t/what-fan-mods-would-you-like-to-see/10014/37 )

 

[Butter]

I managed to get a refund on this game pretty quick when I realized it was a total clusterfuck. That was 9 months ago. What are people still doing with this game installed on their PCs?

 

[Katana1000S]

Its a waste of disc space

 

[Nyast]

Official stance of Otherside about modding. Masterlobar could've written that in irony, but no, that's the real statement:

Unfortunately we're not able to officially incorporate mod tools into UA, but in general we are supportive of the game being modded.

Get that guys, they are SUPPORTIVE of the game being modded, too bad there are no modding tools.

 

[Gord]

They are an easy target to make fun of and might even deserve most of it, but come on, limited modding can be done without official tools and the fraction of studios that actually offer them their games is pretty small...

 

[MasterLobar]

This Dewie Morgan guy is a strange fellow. I mean he is in his 50s or 60s. He doesn't really want to mod this game 10-20 are playing on the whole planet (and he is never going to do it).

https://forums.otherside-e.com/t/what-fan-mods-would-you-like-to-see/10014

I suspect he is a friend of a high person at Otherside or something like that. I think that's why he keeps posting in the totally dead OS forum from time to time.

 

[Infinitron]

I know Dewi. He's just an eccentric Ultima superfan, the same sort of person that's keeping Shroud of the Avatar alive against all odds.

 

[Terenty]

Is this game even worth modding? Never did any modding, but i cant imagine spending even 5 minutes on this thing

 

[biggestboss]

I bought this game at full price on release and never opened the game even one time.

 

[Glic2000]

Not sure what modding would even do? I mean the one thing that's always been really lacking in this game is just content. NPCs, monsters, quests, etc.