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Fester Mudd and the Curse of the Gold.
I mean Replay has a staff and an office full of people. It’s not like All or Josh were ever the basis of the company. Al in particular always struck me as more figurehead than full time employee.
Well sure, they may have staff, but the way I understood their practices is, that they don’t have any coders or artists. They just use outsourcing services when needed. They get the design specs down and then just outsource the “grunt” work, which was pretty much how they did Larry as well. Josh and Al hammered the design down and nFusion was hired after the fact to put it together.
I think that’s right. They’re a publisher rather than a developer. But it’s not just Paul is what I’m saying.
It’s always been Paul. And now that he has been, how should I say it, discredited, I wonder what is left of Replay despite the fact that there’s an office and staff. What exactly are they going to do?
For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.
So the DoubleFine community has an informal weekly thing called The Double Fine Game Club where they play a chosen game for a while and discuss what they like/dislike, sometimes with the authors of those games.
This week it’s Fester Mudd, the first session was on the 18th of January; the second is today, 25th of January, 09:00PM UTC (in about 13h from now). They had both Paavo Harkonen and Josh Mandel join in (and they’re supposed to be returning for todays session as well). Here is the chatlog from the first session, and some selected quotes I thought might be of interest:
About Festers future (turns out it’s not tied with Replay):
(07:07:05) flesk: How are things looking for a second episode?
(07:09:50) Paavo_Harkonen: flesk: Unfortunately, the sales of the first episode were not as good as we hoped, so things are looking… somewhat uncertain at the moment. It’s a matter of funding. But I certainly haven’t given up hope yet.
(08:11:00) yama: Paavo_Harkonen, Is there any way the second episode will be made from the continuous sales of the game or must you get big funding for it as one sum?
(08:13:01) Paavo_Harkonen: It’s clear that the money we get from the sales won’t cover the costs (unless the sales suddenly sky rocket for some unexpected reason), so we would need a separate funding on top of that.(07:11:18) flesk: Paavo_Harkonen: Sorry to hear that. Is the licence somehow tied up with Replay Games or are you free to pitch the game to other potential developers or self-fund future episodes?
(07:14:01) Paavo_Harkonen: flesk: We (as in Prank Ltd) own the license for Fester Mudd, so we’re not tied up with Replay Games concerning the future episodes.(07:25:51) Cheeseness: How many episodes were planned originally?
(07:31:01) Paavo_Harkonen: Cheeseness: The plan was/is to make three episodes.(08:13:18) Cheeseness: Would you consider crowdfunding?
(08:15:24) Paavo_Harkonen: Yes, we’ve considered crowd funding, of course. But the fact that our company is based in Finland makes things a bit complicated. If we were to use Kickstarter, for example, we would need an American company to act as a middle hand.
About Josh’s future (turns out he’s still involved with N-Fusion, working on some mysterious “projects”):
(07:51:43) Cheeseness: Josh_Mandel: What have you been up to since leaving Replay?
(07:52:59) Josh_Mandel: Cheeseness, I’m actually working with N-Fusion some more.
(07:53:15) Josh_Mandel: I can’t mention the projects, unfortunately.
About Activisions past plans for Sierra IPs… and farts:
(07:52:39) Josh_Mandel: Back before the Pinkerton Road and LSL:R Kickstarter projects, there was an effort by someone at Activision (a man I used to work before before he went to Activision) to restart some of the Sierra IPs as mobile games.
(07:27:52) Paavo_Harkonen: As a matter of fact, Al Lowe personally sent me a few fart sound effects from Larry games for me to use in Fester Mudd.
(07:28:30) Paavo_Harkonen: I included my favourite one, which is the fart from the unforgettable bean dip scene in Larry 7.
(07:29:35) Paavo_Harkonen: In all honesty, I have no idea if we have the rights to use that effect, but it was sent by Al Lowe, so maybe we won’t get into trouble
Good to know that Josh has returned the scene again.
(07:07:05) flesk: How are things looking for a second episode?
(07:09:50) Paavo_Harkonen: flesk: Unfortunately, the sales of the first episode were not as good as we hoped, so things are looking… somewhat uncertain at the moment. It’s a matter of funding. But I certainly haven’t given up hope yet.
This is such BS. It’s super shady to do business in this way and leave people hanging so hard. Don’t release a “chapter 1” without a plan for a guaranteed chapter 2 and 3.
(07:07:05) flesk: How are things looking for a second episode?
(07:09:50) Paavo_Harkonen: flesk: Unfortunately, the sales of the first episode were not as good as we hoped, so things are looking… somewhat uncertain at the moment. It’s a matter of funding. But I certainly haven’t given up hope yet.This is such BS. It’s super shady to do business in this way and leave people hanging so hard. Don’t release a “chapter 1” without a plan for a guaranteed chapter 2 and 3.
I agree, this is a reason why I hate this new trend of releasing episodic games. I don´t mind Telltale´s way of releasing games, because they release a new episode every month, at least that was the case before the problems with The Wolf Among Us.
The problem are this little studios that decided to release their games in episodes and you never know if you will ever see the next episode. I have played a couple of those, like Fester Mudd and Journey Down, that has been a long time ago and still there are no new episodes.
I understand that they hoped to earn some money from the first episodes and then invest that money in the production of new episodes but this is a very bad way of doing business , and in a way you are cheating the people that bought the game.
The thing is though, many devs just don’t have enough resources to do full lenght games, especially if they’re small team, working with next to no pay. You need to start thinking about actually trying to make some money of the work at some point or abandon the whole project.
Yes, the risk with episodic game not getting past the first chapter is very real, but releasing an epsiode does provide the devs either of the two things: money to make more episodes and finish the game or insight that there wasn’t that much demand for what they were doing in the first place, so pouring more money to the project might not be wise.
The thing is though, many devs just don’t have enough resources to do full lenght games, especially if they’re small team, working with next to no pay. You need to start thinking about actually trying to make some money of the work at some point or abandon the whole project.
Yes, the risk with episodic game not getting past the first chapter is very real, but releasing an epsiode does provide the devs either of the two things: money to make more episodes and finish the game or insight that there wasn’t that much demand for what they were doing in the first place, so pouring more money to the project might not be wise.
but that’s not even necessarily true. i don’t buy games that only have an episode 1 out. i don’t want to play something and then wait a year or forever to have it finished. they completely undermine demand by releasing an unfinished product, especially now that this is an established pattern. it’s hard to imagine they could’ve had all the momentum of making episode 1 (with minimal production value) and couldn’t have just carried it through to the end if they decided to. You can’t build buzz and sales with just a chapter 1.
It is kind of a catch 22 situation. Fester Mudd had been in development for a quite a while before the first episode was released. And as it is a retro game with no voice acting, it was always going to be a though sale.
And I suppose the devs had made it with next to no money, so they really did have only couple choices here: either release what they have as an episodic format in hopes to get some money, ditch what they have and forget about it or try desperately to scrape more money in order to develope the game further, delaying the development even further.
And yes, I don’t buy episodic games either unless the whole season has come out. But I do understand why they did publish the first episode.
I thought Fester Mudd episode 1 was already pretty far finished in AGS, before they decided to switch to Unity for the multiple platform release. It seems odd to me that they spent so much money on ep1, as it is comparable to tons on 1-man AGS freeware games of similar (or better) quality. I hope Paavo will finish it in AGS, if he ever finds the time 
Max: Right! We’ll travel through this dimensional portal on the top of the bar!
Sam: That’s spilled beer, rockhead.
Max: Oh in that case ...
Good to know that Josh has returned the scene again.
Josh strikes me as pretty hard to shake in that regard. Unlike some of these other Sierra guys, he’s always stayed involved in the adventure game scene.
Staying with N-Fusion is interesting, though. I know he was the one who suggested them in the the first place. I wonder what they’re up to.
The problem are this little studios that decided to release their games in episodes and you never know if you will ever see the next episode. I have played a couple of those, like Fester Mudd and Journey Down, that has been a long time ago and still there are no new episodes.
The Journey Down episode 2 is under full development (the studio making it recently closed down their MMO, Nord, to focus 100% on TJD), and I’m guessing it should come out within the next few months.
Personally I don’t mind waiting for episodic titles, as long as they’re actually working on them and the game isn’t just abandoned.
(07:07:05) flesk: How are things looking for a second episode?
(07:09:50) Paavo_Harkonen: flesk: Unfortunately, the sales of the first episode were not as good as we hoped, so things are looking… somewhat uncertain at the moment. It’s a matter of funding. But I certainly haven’t given up hope yet.This is such BS. It’s super shady to do business in this way and leave people hanging so hard. Don’t release a “chapter 1” without a plan for a guaranteed chapter 2 and 3.
I disagree (to an extent). It’s not always practical to have the money and time to be able to “guarantee” future chapters even if sales on the first chapter are poor. That’s the way it goes. Many TV shows get canceled long before they complete their stories due to poor ratings. Do you say it’s “BS” for a network to not keep hemorrhaging money just so that you can see the story to the end?
I think you’re also slightly overrating the value of “finishing” a story. Sometimes open-endedness is preferable, even when it was unintended. If the show Lost had ended unexpectedly after 3 seasons, it would be a legendary unfinished story. As it is now, having finished off in what most people considered a mediocre way, nobody cares or talks about the show anymore.
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