Interview Vault Dweller interviewed about Kickstarter, calls Shadowrun Returns an "awful fucking iPhone game"

[Anthony Davis]

I'm not sure if it's the translation or what, but reading the English version of that interview seems so combative towards Vince.

I am not aware of a current Codex embargo.

 

[Invictus]

I greatly admire you arguments VD and I am seriuosly considering buying a copy of you upcoming game but let's us take that as an example for this SR bashing.
SR might be a bad example of what you would consider a RPG, but I must say that as a GAME it was more than worht what it costs. It is not terribly deep but its a whole lot better to me than action RPGs like Diablo or Dungeon Siegue.
I loathe those games but I recognize they might be good games but not my style instead of saying they suck because I don't like the sort of game.
I agree that the money one might have pledged for a game like SR is more like a leap of faith and good salesmanship rather thanas avtestament to the past games and skills of creators such as Obsidian.

But then again that is exactly how investin works; I make an attractive pitch and if you are receptive you give me some money.
Speaking of budgets I would be interested in knowing how much time and money your team has poured into your own game and I adresay it would not be 4 million dolars but that has nothing to do with its quality: Fergus is like any smart businessman you charge for what the product is worth not to its costs to produce; Atari would have made al least 200 million out of a new BG3 and Obsidian would have to charge a price according to those expectations.
With a self founded project they are only caring about paying the rent and keeping their staff engaged, and any profit afyter that is all gravy since they paid their motages, bracers for their kids etc.

I own my own business and that is how it is; Imight make 5 or 6 big projects a year which help me fund myself while we do 60 smallish projects that pay my credit card, the rent and the wages of my staff

I consider you an intelligent indivdual, but your lack of objectivity is puzzling; you mean to tell us that you wouldn't have used Kickstarter if you had the option before?
You can either do things for personal gratification or personal gain and from what I have seen from your game it is aimed at a very niche market of old skool gamers like myself of Mr Grunker for example, but maybe there ate more of those gamers who don't come to the Codex and might be waiting for an experience exactly liek your game

 

[tuluse]

Shadowrun Returns would have been fine with a more balanced character system and more interesting missions, both of which could have been done with the other systems they built.

The problem wasn't that it was shallow, but that it fails to be as interesting as it could be within it's framework.

 

[Grunker]

To me SRR is a game that looked at it's budget after backer rewards and KS's cut - and then created the best game they could the way they knew how to do

Really? That's what you think?

I completely agree with you that the game should be judged on its own merits - see my debate with Vault Dweller. I also found my $20 worth of satisfaction (barely). But that's not the point.

The problem is that even when judged at its own merits - its own systems, its own implementation of gameplay - it falls apart. Its systems are broken and inconsistent, and the best parts (interesting missions with actual depth) are few and far between because they chose to do all sorts of other crap as well that ends up being shallow.

I had fun with SRR, but it could have been much, much better with just a bit of polish and by nixing some superflous parts of the game in favor of depth in the others.

I don't think it's fair to harp on Shadowrun for not being a full-fledged Fallout-ish RPG or whatever, but I do think it's fair to criticize the game for failing in the systems and gameplay it did implement. I think your critical ceiling is pretty low if you consider SRR to be an example of the best RPG possible with 1.2 million dollars.

 

[Roguey]

First, I daresay that SNES Shadowrun was a lot more complex.

Now this is a statement that bothered me. Compare http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/snes/shadowrun/cyberenhancements.shtml http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/snes/shadowrun/magic.shtml http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/snes/shadowrun/armor.shtml and http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/snes/shadowrun/weapons.shtml with http://shadowrun-returns.wikispaces.com/Equipment

Or better yet combat systems. SR's suffers from a lot of boring content, but it can be made interesting with better encounter design. SNES Shadowrun's "'mouse' over, shoot and hope for the best" stuff is irredeemable; there's absolutely nothing that can be done to make it enjoyable.

 

[Davaris]

You will never see a developer say, We can stop making promises we have enough money.

Here ya go

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1307515311/night-in-the-woods/posts/642257
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tynansylvester/rimworld/posts/617083

Sounds like he was thinking along the same lines...

But getting that in the first half week... well, suddenly 200% seems like the baseline and you should really be going for 400%, and then if that happens you’ll feel like you need 600%. And you start to make stupid decisions. You've seen it before, a KS gets an amazing response and the creators start expanding the scope here, offering something new over here, doing some new crazy rewards here, all in the name of more stretch goals. And before you know it they’re overbudget and the game is a year behind because the project they went into KS with was far more feasible than what they came out with. It’s so easy to let Kickstarter change the game it was supposed to fund.

That can be great- in particular having Adam design a totally separate game-within-game is something we are really excited about. But if you aren't careful…

But they've already been caught.

 

[Anthony Davis]

To me SRR is a game that looked at it's budget after backer rewards and KS's cut - and then created the best game they could the way they knew how to do

Really? That's what you think?

I completely agree with you that the game should be judged on its own merits - see my debate with Vault Dweller. I also found my $20 worth of satisfaction (barely). But that's not the point.

The problem is that even when judged at its own merits - its own systems, its own implementation of gameplay - it falls apart. Its systems are broken and inconsistent, and the best parts (interesting missions with actual depth) are few and far between because they chose to do all sorts of other crap as well that ends up being shallow.

I had fun with SRR, but it could have been much, much better with just a bit of polish and by nixing some superflous parts of the game in favor of depth in the others.

I don't think it's fair to harp on Shadowrun for not being a full-fledged Fallout-ish RPG or whatever, but I do think it's fair to criticize the game for failing in the systems and gameplay it did implement. I think your critical ceiling is pretty low if you consider SRR to be an example of the best RPG possible with 1.2 million dollars.

I wasn't just talking about money when I said they best they could. No one on their team that I knew of is known for making the kind of RPGs we usually appreciate around here. Their sole claim to RPG fame was the SNES version of Shadowrun. The SNES version of Shadowrun gets a lot of love for being a groundbreaker for console RPGs and for its atmosphere, but it's no Fallout. I still love it though.

I think it is absolutely fair to criticize SRR, I had criticisms for it too. The classes were not equally fun or challenging. Some skills were borderline useless. There was very little C&C.

However, I do think that for 1.2 they hit quite a few bars. Visually the game looks p. sweet to me. The sound and music is great. The toolset is quite nice, and the campaign I actually got with it filled $20 worth of entertainment for me. I think they story and writing were pretty decent, if linear.

 

[Zetor]

I guess it's cool to hate on SRR nowadays? It started off as a tablet game, they got overfunded and overexcited, expanded scope like crazy and couldn't fill the shoes they made for themselves. The result is still one of the best RPGs of 2013.

Also, using the toolset, you CAN create modules that fix many of the original campaign's weaknesses (with the most glaring unfixable one being lack of persistence due to the save system -- but they said they'll retrofit an actual save system into the game). It's kind of like the NWN situation, only the OC doesn't suck as much as NWN's did. And yes, in my opinion, spending a lot of time/effort on the editor was the right choice for the SRR devs, even if it came at a price of a weaker OC -- I don't think it did, btw, considering level designers != programmers.

 

[Midair]

Maybe there is better publicity in being a noted critic of Kickstarter than there is in doing a Kickstarter.

 

[CWagner]

SRR is probably one of the best fucking low budget ($1.5 Million) RPGs that I ever played.

I enjoyed it and am looking foward to the add-on and sequel.

SRR OC was a cool animated story with fights in between. SRR is a framework for GMs to build campaigns on. It can use some improvements and I hope Berlin will provide those. But my impression from the KS campaign was, that a framework for UGC was the main goal and imo they really delivered.

 

[Grunker]

I wasn't just talking about money when I said they best they could. No one on their team that I knew of is known for making the kind of RPGs we usually appreciate around here. Their sole claim to RPG fame was the SNES version of Shadowrun. The SNES version of Shadowrun gets a lot of love for being a groundbreaker for console RPGs and for its atmosphere, but it's no Fallout. I still love it though.

I think it is absolutely fair to criticize SRR, I had criticisms for it too. The classes were not equally fun or challenging. Some skills were borderline useless. There was very little C&C.

However, I do think that for 1.2 they hit quite a few bars. Visually the game looks p. sweet to me. The sound and music is great. The toolset is quite nice, and the campaign I actually got with it filled $20 worth of entertainment for me. I think they story and writing were pretty decent, if linear.

I roughly agree.

 

[DeepOcean]

First, I daresay that SNES Shadowrun was a lot more complex.

Now this is a statement that bothered me. Compare http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/snes/shadowrun/cyberenhancements.shtml http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/snes/shadowrun/magic.shtml http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/snes/shadowrun/armor.shtml and http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/snes/shadowrun/weapons.shtml with http://shadowrun-returns.wikispaces.com/Equipment

Or better yet combat systems. SR's suffers from a lot of boring content, but it can be made interesting with better encounter design. SNES Shadowrun's "'mouse' over, shoot and hope for the best" stuff is irredeemable; there's absolutely nothing that can be done to make it enjoyable.

People are giving too much credit to the console versions. The SNES version while doing the whole 90s cyperpunk vibe better than SR is terrible in all other aspects. The Genesis version while alot better and more interesting than the SNES version is plagued with terrible things like random encounters that happen from 2 and 2 seconds and a terrible real time combat, it was if the whole city wanted to murder all the time and the combat is awful. I tried to replay those recently and the best people can say about them is that they are mediocre but a decent cRPG using the systems of the Genesis version but more developed would be nice. SR isn't the crowning achievement of cRPGs but I wouldn't say that is worse than the SNES version and its character creation and combat work alot better than the Genesis version.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Regarding SRR, I invested nothing in the KS, but I bought the game and beat it. I easily got my $20 worth on entertainment out of it.

It's a very practical way of looking at things. Following it, one would discover that there are no bad games.

 

[Grunker]

Regarding SRR, I invested nothing in the KS, but I bought the game and beat it. I easily got my $20 worth on entertainment out of it.

It's a very practical way of looking at things. Following it, one would discover that there are no bad games.

Regardless, whether or not you got your money's worth doesn't really matter when your criticizing something in a vacuum. At least I hope Davis and his company aspires to create more than just "$40" when they make games.

 

[Anthony Davis]

Regarding SRR, I invested nothing in the KS, but I bought the game and beat it. I easily got my $20 worth on entertainment out of it.

It's a very practical way of looking at things. Following it, one would discover that there are no bad games.

While I try to mitigate my "losses" when it comes to bad game purchases, my steam library is filled with games that are terrible at even the sale price I got them for.

I think your criticisms of SRR are a tad harsh, but fair. The same way I might understand a professional reviewer telling me the reasons, both technical and thematic, why The Riddick movies are terrible, but I still love them.

 

[Anthony Davis]

Regarding SRR, I invested nothing in the KS, but I bought the game and beat it. I easily got my $20 worth on entertainment out of it.

It's a very practical way of looking at things. Following it, one would discover that there are no bad games.

Regardless, whether or not you got your money's worth doesn't really matter when your criticizing something in a vacuum. At least I hope Davis and his company aspires to create more than just "$40" when they make games.

Of course not. You set out to make the best game you can within your constraints. Those constraints might be budgetary, know-how, technical, time, or any if them. However in the end, when you create a product that you sell, a good measurement is, is it worth what people pay for it?

In some rare cases, gamers might think, wow I would have paid 100$ for this, it was that good! Other times gamers will think, ugh should have waited for a steam sale. I'm pretty sure most people use the old bang for buck measuring stick when making or evaluating their purchases. At least for evaluating "value".

You can also evaluate on other merits, such as how VD evaluated SRR on its RPG merits and found it wanting. That doesn't change it's value to me, even if I agree with some of his points.

 

[Vault Dweller]

SR might be a bad example of what you would consider a RPG, but I must say that as a GAME it was more than worht what it costs. It is not terribly deep but its a whole lot better to me than action RPGs like Diablo or Dungeon Siegue.

First, the issue isn't that it's not overly deep, but that it does everything poorly. As Grunker said:

"The problem is that even when judged at its own merits - its own systems, its own implementation of gameplay - it falls apart. Its systems are broken and inconsistent, and the best parts (interesting missions with actual depth) are few and far between because they chose to do all sorts of other crap as well that ends up being shallow."

Second, I'm not looking at it as a GAME because I'm not interested in GAMES. I'm interested in RPGs, played it as an RPG because it surely looks like one (character system, inventory, TB combat with APs, dialogue options, multiple solutions, etc). I didn't like it.

Now, to be fair, this interview was a private conversation and the SR comment was an offhand remark. Then the guy asked my permission to post it and I didn't want to go over it and tone it down.

I loathe those games but I recognize they might be good games but not my style instead of saying they suck because I don't like the sort of game.

I'm saying that it sucks as an RPG because it does everything poorly.

Speaking of budgets I would be interested in knowing how much time and money your team has poured into your own game and I adresay it would not be 4 million dolars but that has nothing to do with its quality...

Unless one has a small team that's willing to work on pure enthusiasm for many years, one needs money to hire and keep a team, which isn't cheap. A team of 20 people making 50k a year average (for example) would cost you a million bucks a year. You need an office, hardware, etc.

... Fergus is like any smart businessman you charge for what the product is worth not to its costs to produce...

You ask for what you can get, not for what something's worth. Any sales rep can tell you that the odds of getting a contract signed depend on the amount asked.

Atari would have made al least 200 million out of a new BG3 and Obsidian would have to charge a price according to those expectations.

It's a very simple (and incorrect) way of looking at things. The fact that Obsidian isn't swimming in these 20-25 mil deals that would make someone 200 mil should tell you that.

I consider you an intelligent indivdual, but your lack of objectivity is puzzling; you mean to tell us that you wouldn't have used Kickstarter if you had the option before?

No.

When's before? Before when I had nothing but ideas? Of course not. I believe that indie developers should prove themselves first and deliver something playable and then ask for money.

You can either do things for personal gratification or personal gain and from what I have seen from your game it is aimed at a very niche market of old skool gamers like myself of Mr Grunker for example, but maybe there ate more of those gamers who don't come to the Codex and might be waiting for an experience exactly liek your game

Not maybe, definitely. You reach them through the gaming media. Same way you'd reach them to ask them to back your game on KS. You don't use the media, you're dead in the water anyway.

So, if you have to use the media to generate awareness, you can stop there and not do the circus act that is KS.

 

[Grunker]

Regarding SRR, I invested nothing in the KS, but I bought the game and beat it. I easily got my $20 worth on entertainment out of it.

It's a very practical way of looking at things. Following it, one would discover that there are no bad games.

Regardless, whether or not you got your money's worth doesn't really matter when your criticizing something in a vacuum. At least I hope Davis and his company aspires to create more than just "$40" when they make games.

Of course not. You set out to make the best game you can within your constraints. Those constraints might be budgetary, know-how, technical, time, or any if them. However in the end, when you create a product that you sell, a good measurement is, is it worth what people pay for it?

In some rare cases, gamers might think, wow I would have paid 100$ for this, it was that good! Other times gamers will think, ugh should have waited for a steam sale. I'm pretty sure most people use the old bang for buck measuring stick when making or evaluating their purchases. At least for evaluating "value".

You can also evaluate on other merits, such as how VD evaluated SRR on its RPG merits and found it wanting. That doesn't change it's value to me, even if I agree with some of his points.

I don't think anything should ever be evaluated on how much it cost to make like this.

It's a false measurement. Price and ambition go hand in hand, certainly, but not price and quality. Many games that cost next to nothing are great and many expensive ones are terrible. Such it is with all things - low budget can excuse low ambitions, but not low quality.

So - do I fault SRR for its lack of ambition? NO. This is where I think Vault Dweller is wrong.

Do I fault SRR for the problems it has with what it tries to do within its budget constraints? Hell yes.

 

[Vault Dweller]

So - do I fault SRR for its lack of ambition? NO. This is where I think Vault Dweller is wrong.

Do I fault SRR for the problems it has with what it tries to do within its budget constraints? Hell yes.

I don't recall saying anything about their ambitions or lack thereof.

 

[Grunker]

So - do I fault SRR for its lack of ambition? NO. This is where I think Vault Dweller is wrong.

Do I fault SRR for the problems it has with what it tries to do within its budget constraints? Hell yes.

I don't recall saying anything about their ambitions or lack thereof.

You faulted it for not being more complex and a full-fledged RPG. I'm not sure how that's not blaming the game for having too little ambition. Otherwise I haven't understood anything of what you said in our entire debate at the first page. The only thing I said - and have kept saying for these four pages - is that SRR is a game with big problems, but that those problems aren't related to "not being RPG enough" or whatever you want to call it.

Its systems are broken, its dialogue screen attempts to offer choice but doesn't, and its non-linear "exploration" maps offer zero exploration. It attempts to offer a wide variety of stuff, but offers only the most simplistic, boring stuff in each category.

Which is what makes it an awful fucking RPG, hence the splitting hairs comment.

No, that's bullshit. I provided Daedalic's Blackguards as an example. That game has none of these things, it focuses on its tight, narrow concept. And though it might be shit, it is not shit by definition as you seem to claim.

If your only claim is "well it might be awesome, but it is shit as an RPG!" then your claim is pretty worthless to a discussion. Then you're just looking at an awfully cute kitten and saying: "DAMN, THAT IS ONE FUGLY DOG LOL"

Shadowrun is shit because it fails at the things it tries to do, not because it fails to live up to the arbitrary standards of your definition.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I fault it for the same thing you do - "Its systems are broken, its dialogue screen attempts to offer choice but doesn't, and its non-linear "exploration" maps offer zero exploration. It attempts to offer a wide variety of stuff, but offers only the most simplistic, boring stuff in each category."

In my opinion, that's precisely what makes it a bad RPG. If the systems weren't broken, the dialogues offered real choices, the exploration maps offered exploration, and it did somewhat complex, interesting stuff in each category, it would have been a great RPG.

 

[Grunker]

I fault it for the same thing you do - "Its systems are broken, its dialogue screen attempts to offer choice but doesn't, and its non-linear "exploration" maps offer zero exploration. It attempts to offer a wide variety of stuff, but offers only the most simplistic, boring stuff in each category."

In my opinion, that's precisely what makes it a bad RPG. If the systems weren't broken, the dialogues offered real choices, the exploration maps offered exploration, and it did somewhat complex, interesting stuff in each category, it would have been a great RPG.

Are you intentionally ignoring points in my posts, or am I just being insanely obtuse?

Which is what makes it an awful fucking RPG

No, that's bullshit. I provided Daedalic's Blackguards as an example

You can call Daedalic's Blackguards whatever you want, the end result is that it looks to be a tightened - not broadened - version of Shadowrun Returns, and it will be better for it. It will have depth, because it realized its limitations and focused on its tight focus. Shadowrun did not - and failed.

Shadowrun should have focused on LESS, not MORE, to be good. Blackguards will not have exploration, will not offer a bunch of branching dialogue or C&C. It will be tightly focused on the character system, the RPG combat, and a few pieces of meaningful interaction. And it will be better for it - regardless of whether it fails at making the actual systems work or not (that remains to be seen).

The point is that Shadowrun bit off more that it could chew, NOT that it didn't take a big enough bite, like you claim.

Shadowrun's problems was trying in some areas to be full-fledged RPG, and failing because it couldn't be due to its natural limitations (budget and development time).

I am not sure I can make it any clearer than that, so if we're still at a standstill, then may the force be with you

 

[VioletShadow]

Some of the SRR criticism is a bit too harsh. Although some of the missions were a tad boring, the game did have its high points and I feel like they made the best game possible with the resources they had. I didn't back the game, but the $20 I paid was money well spent; got my entertainment and kept me interested enough to get to the end. Certainly, it's much better than many other games that claim to be RPGs. The main problem I have with it, and the reason I'd give it a 7/10, is that overall it is so constrained. I felt as though I was just following the path the devs wanted me to, couldn't explore the areas, and that the game world felt a bit lifeless...like nothing was going on except for what my character was involved with.

 

[DeepOcean]

Shadowrun should have focused on LESS, not MORE, to be good. Blackguards will not have exploration, will not offer a bunch of branching dialogue or C&C. It will be tightly focused on the character system, the RPG combat, and a few pieces of meaningful interaction. This is what Shadowrun should have done, and not try to make a full-fledged RPG work with a small budget and a smaller development time.

Now, Mr Grunker, I agree with you. If they had sticked to the plan and kept the game how it was meant to be, an Ultima 7 style perspective with kinda simplistic graphics but used the extra budget to expand it , the result could be a better RPG. The focus would be in infiltrating instalations, simulating how a shadowrun should be done with ways to avoid security and combat encounters, not making a full fledge RPG. The problem is that they tried to make a full fledge RPG with all the bells and wizzles, realised that was impossible with their budget and tried to salvage their attempt, getting on an unconfortable middle ground. Not ambitious enough to be a good full fledge RPG and not focused enough to be a good RPG focused on one aspect.That is for us here in the Codex, because most people that bought the game only cared for: Pretty 2D graphics and it is IMMERSHIUM in Shadowrun world.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I fault it for the same thing you do - "Its systems are broken, its dialogue screen attempts to offer choice but doesn't, and its non-linear "exploration" maps offer zero exploration. It attempts to offer a wide variety of stuff, but offers only the most simplistic, boring stuff in each category."

In my opinion, that's precisely what makes it a bad RPG. If the systems weren't broken, the dialogues offered real choices, the exploration maps offered exploration, and it did somewhat complex, interesting stuff in each category, it would have been a great RPG.

Are you intentionally ignoring points in my posts, or am I just being insanely obtuse?

Which is what makes it an awful fucking RPG

No, that's bullshit. I provided Daedalic's Blackguards as an example

You can call Daedalic's Blackguards whatever you want, the end result is that it looks to be a tightened - not broadened - version of Shadowrun Returns, and it will be better for it. It will have depth, because it realized its limitations and focused on its tight focus. Shadowrun did not - and failed.

Shadowrun should have focused on LESS, not MORE, to be good. Blackguards will not have exploration, will not offer a bunch of branching dialogue or C&C. It will be tightly focused on the character system, the RPG combat, and a few pieces of meaningful interaction. And it will be better for it - regardless of whether it fails at making the actual systems work or not (that remains to be seen).

The point is that Shadowrun bit off more that it could chew, NOT that it didn't take a big enough bite, like you claim.

Shadowrun's problems was trying in some areas to be full-fledged RPG, and failing because it couldn't be due to its natural limitations (budget and development time).

I am not sure I can make it any clearer than that, so if we're still at a standstill, then may the force be with you

Let's try it again.

me: Shadowrun is an awful fucking RPG.
you: the systems are broken and it does everything poorly.
me: exactly! :high five:
you: bullshit! Blackguards, blackguards, blackguards!

I'm not saying that it should have been more. While I prefer full-fledged RPGs, I'm more than ok with games that offer less but do it well. I don't need dialogue trees and C&C in every game. Star Trail didn't have dialogue trees or multiple solutions, yet it's a fine game that's been on my top 10 list for ages.