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Hero-U Demo

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Yep, you’re either an expert or a fanboy, no middle ground.

     
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Heh, I actually have no idea who is on what side, or who is criticizing which behavior, at this point.

Fortunately, it doesn’t actually matter.  All “professionals” are also “fans” on some level.  I got into the game business because I was a gamer, as most of us do.  Of course, I was also a professional programmer; playing games is not enough by itself to get into the industry.

So cool it everyone.  Be civil to one another and more good games will come out of it.

     
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Monolith - 21 November 2013 12:01 AM

As a gamer, we want to play games that work. As a professional, you go in knowing things will be buggy. The difference is that tactfulness. One will properly word their critique, the other will at times emotional judge the product.

Tactfulness?
Right. I get it. I’ll shut up now. 

You know, I’ve learned so much from all the KS projects I backed. (Including Cognition, Hero-U and Quest for Infamy.) One day I’m going to write an article about Kickstarter from the point of view of the backers. It will be a long article, filled to the brim with facts that can be checked. I realize you won’t read it.

     

See you around, wolf. Nerissa

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Corey Cole - 21 November 2013 02:23 AM

Heh, I actually have no idea who is on what side, or who is criticizing which behavior, at this point.

Fortunately, it doesn’t actually matter.  All “professionals” are also “fans” on some level.  I got into the game business because I was a gamer, as most of us do.  Of course, I was also a professional programmer; playing games is not enough by itself to get into the industry.

So cool it everyone.  Be civil to one another and more good games will come out of it.

What Corey said! Guys, those of us who are out there developing games are doing so for the sole purpose of having you—the players and backers—playing them and enjoying them! Until just a couple of years ago, I was nothing but a fan… But my love for the adventure genre led me to game development. I’m sure almost all of the devs here have similar backgrounds.

Constructive discussions are one thing, but all of this “us vs. them” nonsense is crap. We’re all on the same side; we all just love adventure games.

Let’s keep things civil, and remember that we’re all supporting a genre which tends to be undervalued by the general gaming public—we need to stick together if adventure games are going to make a proper comeback!  Laughing

     
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LaneyBerry - 21 November 2013 06:42 AM

Constructive discussions are one thing, but all of this “us vs. them” nonsense is crap.

How civil and tactful of you to call the opinion of one of your backers crap.

I won’t be reading this thread anymore, so you professionals can drop all this tactfulness.

     

See you around, wolf. Nerissa

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Karlok - 21 November 2013 06:49 AM
LaneyBerry - 21 November 2013 06:42 AM

Constructive discussions are one thing, but all of this “us vs. them” nonsense is crap.

How civil and tactful of you to call the opinion of one of your backers crap.

I won’t be reading this thread anymore, so you professionals can drop all this tactfulness.

Hey Karlock - you okay?  You need a hug, buddy?  It’s okay, man. It’s all going to be okay.

Bt

     

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Joined 2008-01-31

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I backed this, but one thing has annoyed me about the developer’s attitude from the beginning - always comparing this project to AAA games with 25 million budget, and acting like that’s excuse to every criticism. No one expects this to be an AAA game, and no one expects this game to look like an AAA game.

There are tons of great indie games which are made with small budget, and they still look good (some games are actually really beautiful) and many times the game style has been adapted to fit the small budget.

     
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Joined 2005-11-29

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Like SpaceVenture, I think this looks a lot better than what was shown/promised during the campaign, which really helps to mitigate the disappointment factor.

I think (also like with SpaceVenture) the main concern is just that the level of progress is concerning given the time elapsed and the small size of the budget. But I realize much has changed with this project as well. Hearing that all the character art and animations isn’t really all that reassuring (even though I agree they’re a weak point), when what I really want is to see the project get done.

I didn’t back this project specifically because there wasn’t a stable, established developer with it. Such projects are always the biggest risks. I hope they’re able to finish it without having to seriously scale down their vision.

     
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Joined 2007-11-25

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How about us journalists, where do we belong in this Fans vs Developers tennis match? Maybe we’re providing the balls (or in some instances; the guns)? Smile

Is this a backer-only demo?

     

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Joined 2010-11-16

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teme - 21 November 2013 07:35 AM

I backed this, but one thing has annoyed me about the developer’s attitude from the beginning - always comparing this project to AAA games with 25 million budget, and acting like that’s excuse to every criticism. No one expects this to be an AAA game, and no one expects this game to look like an AAA game.

There are tons of great indie games which are made with small budget, and they still look good (some games are actually really beautiful) and many times the game style has been adapted to fit the small budget.

yep its just not a good excuse. If it does in fact take millions to make the game then they should ask for millions. I don’t want to hear “yeah um.. we actually didn’t ask for enough money to do what we said… not our fault we have a “small” budget…” It is your fault, because you set and planned the budget.

     
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Joined 2011-10-25

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To be fair, *some* (and I stress that means NOT all) backers/players don’t understand that, and do expect things that are way out of scope for your average, or even rather good, Kickstarter budget. I don’t blame, I sure as hell didn’t know until it was my job, so why should they? I think that’s more often said in an attempt to explain what one’s expectations should be. Yeah, it sometimes gets used as an excuse instead. That doesn’t mean it’s meant that way.

It’s also hard when some Kickstarters out perform others and some people will think, hey, these guys got just as much money, how come it’s not as good as that one? And there can be a lot of factors to that, some of which may be known, some of which may not be known. Some are honest mistakes and bad decisions, some are out of your hands. Usually a mix thereof.

And in case my comments came across as ‘us vs. them’, that’s not at all what I intended. I was saying that negative feedback is fine, even welcome, but it needs to be constructive if it’s going to be helpful. As a player and backer, that’s what I was trying to offer (and I appreciate Corey replying, thank you for engaging with us!); as a dev, I was trying to help others know how to help devs and also help keep the dev-player lines of communication open. Doing so has always been helpful for us at Phoenix, and I love having that.

     

Katie Hallahan
Designer, PR Director
Phoenix Online Studios

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Joined 2012-09-25

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@teme:  Good points.  I apologize for having posted that thing about $250K vs. $25M budget several times.  I am not trying to whine that our budget is small; I’m actually very proud of what we are making (and have made in the past) for under $1M.

I also think fans could use some education on “real” game costs.  If you consider developer time at a reasonable salary, I think you would have a hard time finding even five high-quality games that cost less than $500K to develop.  I’ve done it exactly once - Hero’s Quest, our first game, cost $250K in 1989 dollars, or about $475K today.  That doesn’t include the marketing budget that helped turn an unknown first-time game into a bestseller.

@Frogacuda:  It really comes down to risk and trust.  You rightfully trust an established company to finish a game.  Known developers such as Lori and I are “second tier”, and unknowns have a rough time raising anything.  That’s perfectly reasonable and sensible.

@Jannik:  Our demo is backers-only for now.  After the negative feedback on the animation, we might wait until we have the new character designs and animation before providing a press or public demo.

@zane:  See my comment to Frogacuda.  To get our $660K budget, we would have needed to ask for $800K on Kickstarter.  That would have failed; we didn’t have enough “company cred” or a prototype to show backers at that time.  Our solution was to ask for what we thought we could get, and to extend that with loans and eventually pre-sales.

     
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Jannik - 21 November 2013 01:12 PM

How about us journalists, where do we belong in this Fans vs Developers tennis match? Maybe we’re providing the balls (or in some instances; the guns)? Smile

Is this a backer-only demo?

Is it not true that the way you act defines you? Wouldn’t you be a hobbyist/professional?

Karlok - 21 November 2013 06:42 AM

You know, I’ve learned so much from all the KS projects I backed. (Including Cognition, Hero-U and Quest for Infamy.) One day I’m going to write an article about Kickstarter from the point of view of the backers. It will be a long article, filled to the brim with facts that can be checked. I realize you won’t read it.

Yeah, because my observation wasn’t based off of other articles that came before your whole world of Kickstarter. Who knew that money didn’t grow on crowdfunded tress.

     

Stuart Bradley Newsom - Naughty Shinobi || Our Game: Shadow Over Isolation

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Total Posts: 164

Joined 2007-11-25

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Monolith - 23 November 2013 01:25 PM
Jannik - 21 November 2013 01:12 PM

How about us journalists, where do we belong in this Fans vs Developers tennis match? Maybe we’re providing the balls (or in some instances; the guns)? Smile

Is this a backer-only demo?

Is it not true that the way you act defines you? Wouldn’t you be a hobbyist/professional?

I was ironic (mostly) Smile

The discussion just seemed like a tennis match, and sometimes journalists are accused of having a tendency to stir things up, hence providing the tennis balls and/or guns…

     
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Jannik - 23 November 2013 02:09 PM
Monolith - 23 November 2013 01:25 PM
Jannik - 21 November 2013 01:12 PM

How about us journalists, where do we belong in this Fans vs Developers tennis match? Maybe we’re providing the balls (or in some instances; the guns)? Smile

Is this a backer-only demo?

Is it not true that the way you act defines you? Wouldn’t you be a hobbyist/professional?

I was ironic (mostly) Smile

The discussion just seemed like a tennis match, and sometimes journalists are accused of having a tendency to stir things up, hence providing the tennis balls and/or guns…

Sorry if I didn’t pick up on that. lol Yeah, I can see your point. Anyways, I wish I backed this game just to get a hold of the demo. As always, I’d love to assist in squashing bugs just to make the game work out in the end. Grin

     

Stuart Bradley Newsom - Naughty Shinobi || Our Game: Shadow Over Isolation

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