May 2018 Kickstarter Update and Feedback Survey Results!

Jun 4, 2019 13:58:55 GMT -6 demiurgos said:

Jun 4, 2019 8:29:50 GMT -6 Mr. Welldone said:

Kids these days.

Games back in the day were simple things. Teams could fill a tiny, single-room office and created classics we still talk about decades later.

Every step of increase in graphical capacity and complexity of the content (MechWarrior Online involves maths the average person never even experienced and even so remains very much a 'niche' game) calls for greater talent on numerous levels. Artists, 3d modeling, writers, coders, consultants, musicians, actors, editors, etc.

What has quite literally gone in two completely opposite directions to extremes is consumer expectation and entitlement. As the demands, costs, and development increase, consumer understanding has flatly decreased thanks to gaming truly being an industry awash with indie developers creating true works of art right back in that tiny office. Likewise, fans seeing their beloved IP become a thing they can interact with are completely blinded to glaring errors and are yes-men (and yes-women) that are likewise as vocal.

Regardless, masterpieces in small offices and limited resources *are not* the standard. Pop-culture it: so Captain America is the best a human can possibly be in terms of physical and mental capabilities. The vocal consumer is expecting every developer to operate on Captain America levels without empathy or understanding of anything less *or pretends that sub-par developers already have achieved a masterpiece simply because its their favoritest IP ever*.

Consumer myopia.

Well said, Mr. Welldone ! I wish something like this was communicated during the kickstarter. 

Getting a salesman to mar the pastiche they are painting in order to sell a game is simply bad business, flatly told.

Kickstarters are risky. THEY ARE RISKY. You are buying a product that *does not yet exist* unless it's by those vetted folks who already have created the frame of the product, but need to fill in the rest with a team. ArtPlay gave it a shot and made history. They sought to be an indie dev contending on a 'AAA' arena. Well, that's really hard.

Four years later and the landscape of the gaming industry has bucked wildly for Bloodstained with the Vita losing support from Sony and having to switch (HAAAAAAH!) to a portable to meet that demographic in so short a span has to be nothing short of a *nightmare* for the team that's currently losing sleep working on it.

Now, business is not a person, and individual people can be duplicitous enough as it is. 505 has its interests, ArtPlay has its interests, IGA has his interests, and each of his teams and each subset of team members has their own interests. Getting this all to go the same damned direction is nothing short of a goddamned miracle. If you get that miracle, you hang onto it with both of your hands and let it take you wherever the hell it cares to go.

But, that's the best situation. Inti came and went, other teams hopped on, Wayforward jumped in at the 11th hour, etc. People read this as 'what a mess!'

No. No. And also no.

What I think is IGA and those who have decided to place cash in his name and reputation that are not just the backers did so because they, for their own reasons, believed in his vision. And to that, I fully believe and am convinced IGA wants nothing but to please his fans and also attract some new ones by continuing what he is proud of being a part of most.

There is integrity in this. He wants a good product. He's not out to get us. Salesmen and Quality Assurance are *PAID* to put as positive a face to events balanced against NDA stuff in order to keep us engaged and make us all be reassured that it's all going well even if plans have changed.

And, again, in this case, I think it has. I know there have been scores of 'HOLY FECKING SHEET* moments which are probably only increasing as launch approaches and the bugs some dev didn't want to deal with at the time are now being bashfully reported, etc.

If any of this sounds familiar, it means you've had a job at a place that paid you to do a thing that probably had at least moments of intense unfun-ness because, y'know, it's called  'work'.

Knowing all this and having been part of a deeply imperfect business, much like I still show my mug every Monday with a refreshed hatred for the job, I'd still back the hell outta this game even what ended up at  the $60 'rip-off' tier and gladly.

I believe in IGA's vision, too and I believe in the people with money that believe in his vision.

This ain't Activision. This ain't EA. This ain't Ubisoft.

It's gonna be a fun game.