Karma

[Taernath]

I really doubt that it was anywhere near completion. An established game development studio making a kickstarter reeks of "We only had enough money to make exactly enough resources for a development concept video". Studios release "almost finished" games all the time when they run out of money. They just do it on Steam as early access now. Look at The Guild 3 for a perfect recent example. The studio touted it as almost finished, early access'd a pre-alpha version to stay afloat, and was replaced by another, more competent studio within months.

I'm not positive when Steam started offering early access, but if DoE was so close to done, I'm betting it was soon enough after 2009 that they could've revisited it and gotten an influx of cash to finish development.

It was a global recession and I think Simutronics was out of money to develop at that point. I think that's why they jumped into the mobile game market. At the time it was a higher payout for less development time. Again I'm guessing here, but the only difference I see between Simutronics and all the studios that tried and failed to release Duke Nukem Forever in that same time period is that Simutronics had DR and Gemstone bailing out its sinking ship to keep their heads above water.

They had a mostly feature-complete alpha demo that people -seemed- to enjoy, released in '13. I think they just vastly overestimated the interest, and when they only made 10% of their kickstarter goal it kind of scared them because they know how much had already been sunk in the project.

Here's their kickstarter video, always worth a watch:

[Gelston]

They had DoE already mostly finished at the point they set up the kickstarter, remember? The kickstarter was just about 'going global' or something ridiculous. That's several months or years of development money (to actual developers!) that they lost with nothing to show for. I suspect DoE hurt them more than people think.

DoE was no where near finished.

The problem with DoE is it looked like a game from 2003 and not 2013.

[Tgo01]

Dragons of Elanthia sure looked like it was almost finished. I remember Whately did a stream on Twitch where he played with a few other people and it looked like a finished, playable game. Maybe there were some bugs to work out and some features to add but it easily could have been an early development on Steam these days. They even said the game was in alpha and invited everyone who signs up to test the game.

Here is their Kickstarter and why they say they need more money:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...ia/description

We think this game is special, and we want to keep it that way. And Kickstarter is the best way for us to do that. Not only do we avoid the headaches of working with a publisher who might not share our vision, but we get to reach out directly to all of you fine folks. And of course bringing you guys along with us on the journey is a nice bonus.

We've already produced tons of content, and spent a lot of time refining our gameplay, but we need your help to finish the game. And because we respect your time and money, all the money we collect goes directly into our ongoing development. The more we get, the more we can add:

More support for major platforms
More international infrastructure
More maps
More dragons
More riders
More skins

I'm not saying there is no development involved in making maps, dragons, riders, or skins, but once they already have the basics down and have created several of these already it's not really the same as starting from complete scratch.

Sounds like the main reasons they wanted to start a Kickstarter was because they didn't want to go through a publisher who would take some of the profi...I mean who wouldn't share their same vision! Also because they apparently had grand visions of porting this game to Nintendo, Playstation, Xbox, and probably even mobile, and also they apparently thought the game was going to be so popular that they would have to create servers all over the world like this was the original launch of WoW or something.

They probably saw that very few people even cared about this game and the fact that their Kickstarter and that the game was supposed to be free2play so they couldn't even gouge people by charging them 50 bucks up front so they probably thought the game was a flop and decided not to waste anymore time or money on it.

[Gelston]

Dragons of Elanthia sure looked like it was almost finished. I remember Whately did a stream on Twitch where he played with a few other people and it looked like a finished, playable game. Maybe there were some bugs to work out and some features to add but it easily could have been an early development on Steam these days. They even said the game was in alpha and invited everyone who signs up to test the game.

Here is their Kickstarter and why they say they need more money:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...ia/description



I'm not saying there is no development involved in making maps, dragons, riders, or skins, but once they already have the basics down and have created several of these already it's not really the same as starting from complete scratch.

Sounds like the main reasons they wanted to start a Kickstarter was because they didn't want to go through a publisher who would take some of the profi...I mean who wouldn't share their same vision! Also because they apparently had grand visions of porting this game to Nintendo, Playstation, Xbox, and probably even mobile, and also they apparently thought the game was going to be so popular that they would have to create servers all over the world like this was the original launch of WoW or something.

They probably saw that very few people even cared about this game and the fact that their Kickstarter and that the game was supposed to be free2play so they couldn't even gouge people by charging them 50 bucks up front so they probably thought the game was a flop and decided not to waste anymore time or money on it.

I played it. It didn't feel finished in any way to me, from the physics, to the graphics, even the controls were fucked up. He might have said all that stuff, but that shit was just trying to raise money and you shouldn't believe any of it. They only had like, one map.

[Tgo01]

Here's the video on YouTube for the game:



Starting around the 4:37 mark Whately explains the game is "really far along" and the game is "beautiful and playable" so they get the question "why Kickstarter?" and he explains that they want to "scale it out" to "get as many players as possible", they have to "scale it worldwide", and that all takes a lot of infrastructure. So his answers sound like what I said in my last post: they had high hopes this game was going to be so popular they really thought they were going to port it to Nintendo, Playstation, Xbox, Mobile, etc before they even released it on PC to see how well it was received and they wanted to dive to a worldwide market before even seeing how well it did in a US wide market.

Oh also he gave the gloom and doom speech about going through a publisher in his answer too, a publisher might want to make this game a sequel to another game (LOL!) so by going straight to fans for money instead of a publisher they can keep the game "pure."

Maybe they should have went with a publisher because they could have helped with some actual graphics or something because for a 2013 game those graphics and animations were pretty sad.

[Tgo01]

I played it. It didn't feel finished in any way to me, from the physics, to the graphics, even the controls were fucked up. He might have said all that stuff, but that shit was just trying to raise money and you shouldn't believe any of it. They only had like, one map.

Other than the graphics that's all relatively minor tweaking stuff in comparison. If they were planning on upgrading the graphics then that would have cost a pretty penny but were they really planning on upgrading the graphics? I was under the impression they were going with those graphics.

[Gelston]

Other than the graphics that's all relatively minor tweaking stuff in comparison. If they were planning on upgrading the graphics then that would have cost a pretty penny but were they really planning on upgrading the graphics? I was under the impression they were going with those graphics.

Building maps isn't minor tweaking. The collision detection was shit too.

There was also no skills, nothing carried over, no ranking up, any of that. It was just here is a map, go fly around and kill each other. It'd be fun for a second, but nothing to hook you. You didn't progress. None of that.

Like I said, they had a looooot of work to do.

[Taernath]

Building maps isn't minor tweaking. The collision detection was shit too.

There was also no skills, nothing carried over, no ranking up, any of that. It was just here is a map, go fly around and kill each other. It'd be fun for a second, but nothing to hook you. You didn't progress. None of that.

Like I said, they had a looooot of work to do.

Maps are comparatively easy to add vs. core mechanics.

Did they ever promise a progression system? I don't remember that.

[Tgo01]

Building maps isn't minor tweaking. The collision detection was shit too.

There was also no skills, nothing carried over, no ranking up, any of that. It was just here is a map, go fly around and kill each other. It'd be fun for a second, but nothing to hook you. You didn't progress. None of that.

Like I said, they had a looooot of work to do.

Looks like they're using skills in the video. Are you saying Whately put out a deceptive video and then lied about why they needed money?! My Whately would never do that!

[Tgo01]

Did they ever promise a progression system? I don't remember that.

I don't see anything about a ranking system, sounded more like it was going to be like Team Fortress 2, you just join a random match and start playing.

They did say your dragon and rider would level up though.