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KickStarter Apocalypse Now RPG by Monty Markland - terminated with extreme prejudice!

Kev Inkline

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A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.

thesheeep

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Codex 2012 Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
This is a CHEAP SCAM TO GATHER PASSWORDS.

When you want to change your password on the apocalypsenow website, it shows the password in clear text.
Clear sign of phishing (kinda).

:lol:

MLMarkland just kidding, but you should definitely report that to whoever is responsible to fix it. At least on Chrome, it shows whatever you enter in clear letters.
 

MLMarkland

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This is a CHEAP SCAM TO GATHER PASSWORDS.

When you want to change your password on the apocalypsenow website, it shows the password in clear text.
Clear sign of phishing (kinda).

:lol:

MLMarkland just kidding, but you should definitely report that to whoever is responsible to fix it. At least on Chrome, it shows whatever you enter in clear letters.

Good call. We should definitely fix that thank you.

And thank you for the access to your premium Pornbub account, bank account and gmail.
 

MLMarkland

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And thank you for the access to your premium Pornbub account, bank account and gmail.
You already had my bank account and mail, so now at least we know what was the real target.

1dpn.jpg


Edit: Technically because it's a valuable distinction amidst the lolz, we don't actually have your credit card, debit card or bank account information. We do not collect nor store any of those things when you pledge. All we store is your Stripe account ID. You control what financial tools you attach to your Stripe account. We can't see it. We have no access to it. Cancelling your Stripe account would effectively cancel your pledge.

I would lie to my own kid AND punch him in the face for a billion dollars- Hell, alot less.

An/cap acknowledged.

Who the hell works without getting paid to the tune of 9k?

No one. Maybe a slave. But I never owned any slaves.

Plus, chill bro- I'm not sure what it is about this game exactly that has you so pissed or if theres something personal between you and the dev (I had my own rage out a couple years ago for my own reasons - So I get it) but your posts are out of character for how you normally are

Unless Mustard is an alt for someone else who's been here a lot longer, I have no idea who he is.


Yes.

Is this the cancelled Alien Crucible you are talking about? It sounds like you basically want to ressurect/recreate Alien Crucible by repurposing the design tenets to the theme of Apocalypse Now. Would you say that is correct? Except now as a single character first person game?

This is ancient history in game business timelines. But the thematic elements and the narrative elements of Aliens: Crucible were a lot more influential on Apocalypse Now.

The RPG mechanics and core mechanics (FPS vs 3rd person, etc.) are not as influential. Also what a group of game devs decide to do in 2008 is way different from what we actually do 9 years later. You can read the design document itself.

Apocalypse Now game design document:
DocDroid http://docdro.id/shdCynh

That design only shares vestigial elements of Aliens: Crucible.

Aliens: Crucible was cancelled in Q4 2008.

in the interceding decade, the lead and senior members on Apocalypse Now have shipped, just ballpark, 20-25 video games and 30 productions (including VR, physical toys, etc.). At the time of the quote you might be remembering, it was true that all of the team previously worked on either Aliens: Crucible or worked at Killspace.

That was true for a period of time. As the team grows it changes. The team mix is a bit different today. Everyone on the team either worked at Obsdian, worked at Killspace or worked on Arma3 at this point.

But the realities of time are important too.

In between the cancellation of Aliens: Crucible and our pitching Francis Ford Coppola directly was a six-year period. Larry and Josh shipped Fallout: New Vegas. Crowdfunding "became a thing." OEI shipped Pillars of Eternity. I produced Wasteland 2 and Torment: Tides of Numenera, Rob worked on The Vanishing of Ethan Carter and Battlefield and Gears of War and multitudinous VR projects, and one of the most controversial ARGs ever made.

Collectively, aside from things that actually got made between A:C being cancelled and AN being announce, over three dozen unique game proposals were generated by various subsets of the people involved, at various companies, to various companies, in various formats, etc.

Aliens: Crucible's narrative was based on Heart of Darkness. That's the biggest comparable element. Aliens: Crucible's game format was a 3rd person, squad-based action RPG.

This is not our game format at all. We are a first-person RPG with stealth, horror and survival mechanics. But we are based on Apocalypse Now, Heart of Darkness and The Odyssey.

Aliens: Crucible did have an extensive, let's call it recon, set of game design documents. Hundreds of pages of documents that detailed a lot of stuff. The main point of the collection of documents in this area was: How do you make the xenomoprh scary in an RPG where "killing things repeatedly" is a primary mechanic.

This was a major challenge of the game.

1dpq.jpg


It's why Alien Isolation is a better game (but SOMA is better than Alien Isolation).

Some of the general collection of documents ended up being the basis for parts of Alien: Isolation. No one ever saw the actual stealth gameplay design document (which wasn't just about stealth but also about horror and being authentic to the Aliens franchise, recon, traps and many other things -- and no one ever will probably because it's covered by an NDA and anyone in possession of it abides by the principles of those documents.

On a big AAA title, the documentation for the title will run into the thousands of pages. The volume of "design documents" is mammoth. And then implementation starts cutting things, etc.

Also sometimes life is very simple. I worked on Aliens: Crucible as a designer (and later a producer when SHTF and Sega was collapsing under a $250 million deficit so we entered into triage mode to try and save the project. This mainly involved cutting 2/3rds of the designed game.

Which still wasn't enough because Sega didn't have enough money to fund both Alpha Protocol and Aliens: Crucible. Internally, at the time it was the universal agreement of anyone that A:C was better than AP. But AP had a release window that Sega could maybe survive with (they needed cash flow) whereas A:C wasn't coming out for another two years.

Sega basically cancelled any project that they didn't think would come out in 2009 or early 2010. (Every project as far as I am aware).

The Aliens: Crucible video people saw leaked bore very little resemblance to the actual game intended made because: 1) it was a year old; 2) it was made while the global economy collapsed and layoffs were rampant; 3) it was still at a prototype stage, it was 10% into the process. Sega and 20th Century Fox (and RSA) they had three Aliens projects in pre-production / concept or full production.

All this being said, if it's not your thing, that's great. There's more games in the world than people can play in a lifetime. The game design document linked above is very specific and clear -- I recommend reading that (even though it's 87 pages) if you want a sense of what we are actually doing.

Maybe that would change that would be great.

The following is way more accurrate than saying "AN is what we wanted A:C to be":

A lot of the basic mechanics in Apocalypse Now are things we felt needed to be corrected from Aliens: Crucible (first person instead of close third person for example). S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Metro, Fallout, VTMB are all just as big influences on the game than Aliens: Crucible. Many other games are too. Hitman, Splinter Cell, Arma, PayDay 2 even. Great games draw from a huge array of sources of inspiration.

I disagree with the idea that Aliens: Crucible should have been cancelled. Sega was in terrible financial shape, they had to pick one or the other.

Alien: Isolation is a better game, but it gets repetitive, but it does succeed in being authentic to the world, focusing on the right things and horror gameplay, so there are a lot of great things about it. But that's years later. In Space On Codex no one can hear you scream.

Where do the RP of G come into the picture, I wonder. It sounds like it will be as much an RPG as Stalker or Far Cry series are, meaning not really one.

Apocalypse Now game design document:
DocDroid http://docdro.id/shdCynh

I think the main GDD answers this question fairly comprehensively. I'll elaborate on any specific areas. The most fundamental things that make the game fall strongly on the side of the RPG spectrum is that your character's build and skills have more impact on the game than your ability to move a mouse quickly and a very large emphasis is placed on an interactive narrative in which player choice is almost always the deciding factor.

I'm an accountant. Same word to me.

Buy a dictionary.

https://www.amazon.com/Merriam-Webster-Dictionary-New-2016/dp/087779295X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1505410376&sr=8-1&keywords=dictionary

But on a more genteel note, I'm not mad bro. My advice is point your frustration at: http://www.bioware.com/en/ first and foremost. I'm on the side of making game great again. I'm not opposed to what we all want. I'm a part of this community since before I knew you could get paid to make a video game. I'm not your enemy. The enemy is not here. They do not post here, at least openly. I do post here openly. My username is my real name. MLMarkland. I'm not hiding behind an alias.

I want great games to exist. I work in a system where I do not see this happening ever to any significant degree. 1960s Hollywood movies were TERRIBLE for the most part. No one wanted them. Then New Hollywood came on the scene in the 1970s and made a bunch of awesome stuff.

The wheel will turn. It won't turn because of me. It will turn because of hundreds of thousands of individual game players rejecting nonsense and embracing greatness. I'm an individual game player first and a game developer second.
 
Last edited:

PanteraNera

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Messages
1,023
Wow just wow, it's at least to me, really hard to resist getting hyped by AN / sucking MLMarkland's dick.

I just started realizing that the holy grail of gaming does NOT come back in form of indie's / crowdfunding, at least from my point of view, most indie's did not deliver what I thought or what they said they will.

Like you said and what I always guessed they just don't have the money. Money stands for time, a experienced team and so on. So you are being upfront an honest about it, and I always believed that that would be the best mindset / business-model for indie dev's. Instead they try ... what ever they do, but they just don't tell you "Ey we have a great idea, we really believe in our game, but we don't have the money to do it" and release it as is. And with that they are (to me) not a bit better than tripple A dev's. How can you release something half-assed if you are truly passionate about it? To survive? I can respect that, but don't count on my money/support on the future.

So you seem different ... .

To be honest, I am not to much into AN, nor the Vietnam setting, nor 1st Person games, I watched AN once (I think) I don't remember to much about it and not even sure if I do not mix it up with other movies like full metal jacked, have to rewatch it, as I have grown older and my taste in movie's shifted. So yeah I am not thrilled about the setting, but damn does that game sounds good, from what you wrote here and what I read in the design doc.

As I stopped a long time ago pouring (wasting) every year a lot of my money into my PC-hobby, mainly because gaming got so fucking boring and I can play UFO Enemy Unknown, Jagged Alliance 2 and Fallout 1 on pretty much any system and will have more fun with them than probably any other game released afterwards, I would actually have to invest into a new PC to play AN. That would be quit an accomplishment if their came a new game that made me do that.

The main selling point to me is: AN as I understand it, is a mature adult game, with a serious tone, well written. Or in other words, not childish, brainless trash that make's no fucking sense and is all about "AWESOME! STUFF! HAPPENS! EXPLOSIUHNS! just don't think about it". Damn I am waiting so long for something like this. Bit butt hurt that it's a Vietnam game and not the true successor to Fallout 1, but hey we can talk about that after AN :P.

I think it is a risky move to do a game like this, one can say that games like AN do not exist as there is no interest (profit) in them, I really hope that it's just that no one has the balls to develop a game like this and it sells like crazy.

Some questions:
- What games are in your opinion well written?
- Why doing a AN game, if you could have just made an Vietnam game inspired by it? From what I understand, because you really want to make a faithful adaption. But why? How much does the license cost? Little extra OT question, why do you think Bethesda bought the Fallout license?
- How will be the 5,9 $ be spent, I mean art, sound, music, writing.
- How much of your personal money did or will you invest into AN?
- The KS campaign was never serious right? Just collecting data / market-analysis?

Also:
Damn a game with a soundtrack like that and others you listed on KS stretch-goals, they have to make it in!
 

boot

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One problem I see: the protagonist was not in any combat, he wasn't killing people during the movie. It all happened in that one moment at the end. Filling the game with combat encounters will change the tone.

I just started realizing that the holy grail of gaming does NOT come back in form of indie's / crowdfunding, at least from my point of view, most indie's did not deliver what I thought or what they said they will.

I don't know how anyone ever thought these things would turn out well. I remember lurking when infinitejew first came spreading the word about this new kickstarter thing. Never bought it. A willingness to whore your project out means it can't be worth very much.

I'm sure this one will be different, of course.

:troll:
 

MLMarkland

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One problem I see: the protagonist was not in any combat, he wasn't killing people during the movie. It all happened in that one moment at the end. Filling the game with combat encounters will change the tone.

Have you read the design document?
 

boot

Prophet
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Messages
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Bartow, FL
So, you're basically mooching off the name of something far more successful than you have ever hoped to create... e-begging for the money needed to pay people's salaries... then proclaiming you're a leader, a visionary... blah blah... I see why the mexican has gotten butt blasted.

I will leave it there. Your posts read like marketing speak.
 

MLMarkland

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e-begging for the money needed to pay people's salaries.

We don't charge you when you pledge.


100% true shit

Having worked on both AAA 1st/3rd party games and Kickstarted games, everything you say about those things is 100% true. Also everything else is true (except I think the Vietnam setting is a very interesting and underutilized setting -- we've got a thousand games in WW2 / modern Middle East)

What games are in your opinion well written?

On an absolute scale, zero. Not a single game in history is actually well-written in all significant regards (yet). We're at the stage of "game business" comparable to when "talking on screen" was first introduced to movies. Modernity bias is a bitch.

On a relative scale, maybe two dozen. Avellone written games in particular (PST, sections of Kotor 2/Fallout series). A fair number of games have great worlds and characters but not great or outright bad dialog (STALKER, SOMA, Fo1/2/NV, Metro, Deus Ex, System Shock, VTMB, Spec Ops: The Line, Half Life 1/2). Game dialog is almost always way overwritten and lacking in subtext and full of unnecessary exposition (with some mostly Avellone/Mitsoda exceptions).

- Why doing a AN game, if you could have just made an Vietnam game inspired by it? From what I understand, because you really want to make a faithful adaption. But why? How much does the license cost?

The license costs us nothing because we directly engaged with the owner and creator.

To license a movie franchise generally speaking, five years ago it was probably usually around 12-15% of the net profit with a $250,000 to $500,000 MG for EA/Activision/Ubisoft. Probably half that much now. The big publishers will generally use creative accounting and assign all of their executives to the movie licensed titles to "eliminate" profit. And keep their margins very high on owned IP. There are exceptions, like Star Wars is a huge brand so it's going to command a higher price.

But at the same time, we're in a world where almost everything on the planet is owned by 9 media companies. So these days licensing agreements are mostly intraparty, like when Disney runs Star Wars ads on ABC/ESPN. There's a cost, but it's internal and it's just an accounting process, it's all the same company.

- Little extra OT question, why do you think Bethesda bought the Fallout license?

Same reason I worked with Atari to make a Planescape expansion for Neverwinter Nights 2 in 2008 (nixed by Hasbro/WOTC at the time because "Planescape" was a "dead license"). The guys at Bethesda knew Fallout was a strong name from the point of view of players. Fargo knew it too, that's why he crowdfunded Wasteland (the precursor to Fallout). The original two post-apocalyptic brands are always going to be the strongest post-apocalyptic brands (unless someone fucks up massively). Coke & Pepsi. Star Wars & Star Trek. 1st and 2nd place in the mind = brand strength.

- How will be the 5,9 $ be spent, I mean art, sound, music, writing.

These are straight up ballparks. We've got a detailed budget, which we'll post online some time before the end of the year.

70% on game development (66% of that on art, animation and design; 33% of that on programming)
10% on music & sound (which is way more than is usually spent on music and sound)
10% on writing (which is way more than is usually spent on writing)
5% on general, administrative & legal (which is way LESS than is usually spent on G&A)

Check Atari's financials.

They spend 50-60% of their revenue on general, administrative, legal and debt service. Any publicly traded game company you can find this information on. The game companies are super top heavy (and that's why a lot of them went bankrupt in the past 7 years and most games have been garbage).

- How much of your personal money did or will you invest into AN?

All cash, equity and debt sources more than half a million, less than a million.

All sources including the time cost against my average hourly rate (opportunity cost), around $2,200,000.

- The KS campaign was never serious right? Just collecting data / market-analysis?

We spent a year building the website and it was supposed to launch before the Kickstarter page (I'm the director, I don't control everything).

The general thinking was that people would see the website, the whole budget, the whole plan, the year long timeline and have an understanding of the big picture and then the Kickstarter was an opportunity to specifically address the Kickstarter-focused audience (which is 50% international and domestically skews heavily to California, Washington, Oregon and New York). I did not expect the Kickstarter to be a huge success; the last real game to raise $900,000+ on Kickstarter without massive paid advertisements and other grey hat marketing techniques was either Battletech or Friday the 13th in 2015, two years ago.
 
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Some of the general collection of documents ended up being the basis for parts of Alien: Isolation. No one ever saw the actual stealth gameplay design document (which wasn't just about stealth but also about horror and being authentic to the Aliens franchise, recon, traps and many other things -- and no one ever will probably because it's covered by an NDA and anyone in possession of it abides by the principles of those documents.

[...]

So design elements of Alien: Crucible ended up in Alien: Isolation. Art for Aliens: Crucible was used for Aliens: Colonial Marines, etc. Which is fine. But A:CM never would have shipped without the Obsidian art and animation assets.

Thank you for the comprehensive reply.

That is quite the claim. I am asking just to make it super clear; are you saying that actual design from the Alien: Crucible ended up in Creative Assembly's hands who then knowingly used those very design elements in Alien: Isolation? That Alien: Isolation has Crucible in its DNA? We can quote you on that and Creative Assembly no doubt would confirm (unless they were lying sacks of shits)?

Out of curiosity, could you tell which parts of it made it into A:I? Setting deterrents and divergents? The Alien AI? Actual sneaking? Really curious about the history here.

About stealth;

I remember that in a thread from 2009 about the game's cancellation, you had mentioned the "stealth" elements in A:C and a lenghty section of the design document dedicated to it, whereby "stealth" was used to mean a wide range of activities and not all of them necessarily associated with the traditional usage of the word, especially as far as "stealth" as a strong and well established term in the greater context of gaming is concerned (and in fact, rather contrary to it). There were major disagreements, arguments and a lot of name-calling.

Though I understand why you use stealth to mean what you do in your internal communications (and I call that professional deformation), I still find it absolutely inane that you get to swing the word around so casually, expecting people to understand it the way you do despite the historical gaming context of the word disagreeing with you.

So every time I see anyone associated to some degree with Obsidian talking about "stealth" in their game, I know they are not to be trusted because they have a completely deformed understanding of the word, used in ways to mean things other than what "stealth" means in any other game.

And Anthony Davis had acknowledged the critical difference early during that discussion:

"For example. stealth to other people means Thief, or some other game. Stealth for us meant scouting, avoidance and traps."
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/aliens-rpg-now-officially-canceled.33947/

Only ever bringing this up here to clarify the source of discomfort/distrust with your usage of the word "stealth".
 

PanteraNera

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Messages
1,023
On an absolute scale, zero. Not a single game in history is actually well-written in all significant regards (yet). We're at the stage of "game business" comparable to when "talking on screen" was first introduced to movies. Modernity bias is a bitch.
Perfect answer to me. So you have to guts to say, with AN that changes? From what you are talking it does look like it, what got me interested in this project.

Mitsoda exceptions
I just say Dead State, damn still butt hurt about that one, because it had such big potential in my head, but I am a dreamer.

The license costs us nothing because we directly engaged with the owner and creator.
He doesn't wants anything in return? No strings attached?

But at the same time, we're in a world where almost everything on the planet is owned by 9 media companies. So these days licensing agreements are mostly intraparty, like when Disney runs Star Wars ads on ABC/ESPN. There's a cost, but it's internal and it's just an accounting process, it's all the same company.
Well not only in the media sector ... . We life in an interesting time to say it mildly. It's all about they money, no remorse, no integrity, cheat your way to success.
You know the game oh to well and people like boot rightfully question if you are not one of them ;). I can't blame him! Like I said, I am a dreamer, I believe in the best in humanity or at least try to :).

Same reason I worked with Atari to make a Planescape expansion for Neverwinter Nights 2 in 2008 (nixed by Hasbro/WOTC at the time because "Planescape" was a "dead license"). The guys at Bethesda knew Fallout was a strong name from the point of view of players. Fargo knew it too, that's why he crowdfunded Wasteland (the precursor to Fallout). The original two post-apocalyptic brands are always going to be the strongest post-apocalyptic brands (unless someone fucks up massively). Coke & Pepsi. Star Wars & Star Trek. 1st and 2nd place in the mind = brand strength.
Thanks for the insights! And just to make it clear, it's obviously not about the lore that was before, but the brand name. Crazy. On the on side you got some old fans really butt hurt (like the fine folks at nma) and on the other side you got millions of Bethesdatards. Strange, strange world.

So AN is a strong brand name, that's one reason you have chosen it.

These are straight up ballparks. We've got a detailed budget, which we'll post online some time before the end of the year.
Really think that's the best strategy these days, being open about pretty much everything.


They spend 50-60% of their revenue on general, administrative, legal and debt service. Any publicly traded game company you can find this information on. The game companies are super top heavy.
The whole fucking world is super top heavy :). Games are just business as everything else.

All cash, equity and debt sources more than half a million, less than a million.

All sources including the time cost against my average hourly rate (opportunity cost), around $2,200,000.
Guessed so. People should know that, but saying so upfront looks like bragging to most.
So AN is more a passion than a business opportunity to you, or something in between?

We spent a year building the website and it was supposed to launch before the Kickstarter page (I'm the director, I don't control everything).
So far in my humble opinion it's the biggest mistake so far, first the KS page was really bad (gave me a "shady" feeling), not enough detail on the actual game, second it "failed".
 

majamaja

Augur
Joined
Jan 10, 2014
Messages
288
On an absolute scale, zero. Not a single game in history is actually well-written in all significant regards (yet). We're at the stage of "game business" comparable to when "talking on screen" was first introduced to movies. Modernity bias is a bitch.

On a relative scale, maybe two dozen. Avellone written games in particular (PST, sections of Kotor 2/Fallout series). A fair number of games have great worlds and characters but not great or outright bad dialog (STALKER, SOMA, Fo1/2/NV, Metro, Deus Ex, System Shock, VTMB, Spec Ops: The Line, Half Life 1/2). Game dialog is almost always way overwritten and lacking in subtext and full of unnecessary exposition (with some mostly Avellone/Mitsoda exceptions).

:lol:, I hope you know more about videogames than you do about movies else this ain't gon' age well. Within a decade of the mainstream inception of sound film we had some all-time great movies (which, needless to say, AN isn't) by people like Mizoguchi, Ozu, Lang, Ford, etc. etc. It's been 36 years since Wizardry came out, so add a few more decades of exceptional filmmaking to see how little water this analogy holds. I appreciate the swagger anyhow, and will look forward to seeing how well you back it up.
 

MLMarkland

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Messages
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Location
Malibu, CA

Most historians would point to 1893 as the first public exhibition of a motion picture.

The Jazz Singer is the first "talkie" and was released in 1927.

That's 35 years give or take.

Roughly equivalent to the point we're at in the game industry right now.

Maybe people could argue Pong etc.

But you could counter it with examples of the Zoetrope (not even the American Zoetrope)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoetrope

"William Ensign Lincoln invented the definitive zoetrope in 1865"

I agree there were great movies in the Silent Era. But none of them were great because they had great dialog.

I also agree there have been great games; but all of the great games so far would have benefited from improved writing. That does not diminish those games; they were made in the context of their time.

Thank you for the well wishes.


The word "Stealth" appears 32 times in the Apocalypse Now game design document. Everyone can read the document and draw their own conclusions.

So you have to guts to say, with AN that changes?

Yes.

No strings attached?

American Zoetrope's interest is in the gross profit of the game. We've cut the publishers out. That's one reason why some people do not like what we are doing and saying.

If you're not directly working on the game, you're not getting paid any fees before the game is fully-funded and ready for commercial release.

Thanks for the insights! And just to make it clear, it's obviously not about the lore that was before, but the brand name. Crazy. On the on side you got some old fans really butt hurt (like the fine folks at nma) and on the other side you got millions of Bethesdatards. Strange, strange world.

I don't think in a large corporate environment it's that simple. There will have been lots of people inside Bethesda pushing to get the Fallout license from Interplay because they (individuals working at Bethesda) were specifically Fallout fans. There were probably also fans of Earthworm Jim somewhere saying "go get the Earthworm Jim license!" At a large company it takes both passionate people AND the financial & legal division to make something happen. The people passionate about Fallout were able to make a business case to the financial executives at Bethesda.

Executing on a recent iteration in a new and compelling way is another challenge and hurdle. But that challenge is mostly the same regardless of whether it's a new intellectual property or a pre-existing one. The audience's perception can be radically different due to the proximity of a pre-existing IP.

No one cares if someone makes Macbeth different from the way Shakespeare made it.

Everyone cares if you screw up Star Wars.

You can make something that is good & faithful, something that is bad & faithful, something that is objectively good but unfaithful (this is where everyone loses their mind) and something that is bad and unfaithful (this is where everyone loses all their money).

We're making a good and faithful Apocalypse Now video game or we're not making it. The other three boxes are not part of a reality we would accept.

So AN is a strong brand name, that's one reason you have chosen it.

On the contrary, I think AN is a probably a weak brand name in the game space. I chose it because I like it. If I wanted to work on a strong brand name, I'd go work on Call of Duty. Chinatown would be a weak brand name in the game space too, but it doesn't make it "less" interesting. I think a Chinatown game would be awesome. Some of the people that worked on LA Noire would probably agree.

I have worked on other things with very strong brand names. Usually, I ask for more money and not to be credited in those cases. This last phenomenon is fairly common, both in games and movies.

Really think that's the best strategy these days, being open about pretty much everything.

100% agree. The Internet's greatest feature is a double edged sword. It makes it very easy to push propaganda but it also makes it very easy for individuals to find out the truth.

The whole fucking world is super top heavy.

True. Though it is in the process of self-correcting I believe. I think that process is going to take a long time.

Guessed so. People should know that, but saying so upfront looks like bragging to most.
So AN is more a passion than a business opportunity to you, or something in between?

Indeed. That's why I don't talk about it. Thank you for asking.

And yes, we would need to sell around 1.4 million units in 2020 for me to break-even. Most of our forecasts hover in the 750,000 to 1,250,000 range.

Though maybe we are being conservative. Friday the 13th sold over 2 million units and it is a demonstrably bad game.

So far in my humble opinion it's the biggest mistake so far, first the KS page was really bad (gave me a "shady" feeling), not enough detail on the actual game, second it "failed".

I agree 100%, but as the director it is my job to never quit and I never will.
 
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Quillon

Arcane
Joined
Dec 15, 2016
Messages
5,214
Read half of the ddoc. too lazy to read the other half. Everything's so perfect, especially rpg elements. How the hell will you make all those traits, skills and whatnot and support them with content with a budget I don't know what, 1? 2? even 5 million? And all will be done in expensive first person perspective...Today's AAA games don't even attempt to make that rich gameplay. Its like reading Cyberpunk 2020 rulebook and wondering how the fuck CDPR will make all that work? Even with an army of devs they are building.

Also how is judgment an attribute? Win button? Judging if something's really happening or not? :P

And nice info on Obs '08, :salute:
 

MLMarkland

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Dec 12, 2006
Messages
1,663
Location
Malibu, CA

The budget is $5,900,000

(But we've also spent an additional non-trivial amount of money already prior to and on top of the public budget).

For context FNV had a budget of $9,000,000 and we are using game technology and tools that are 15 years more advanced (at a minimum).

The game is deeper, but the world is smaller and the technology is better. The budget is estimated by the same guy who produced Fallout: New Vegas.

Sometimes unlimited money and people don't actually help solve problems; they create problems.

(See Star Wars prequels and most blockbusters post-Matrix, i.e. most movies and large budget games since the late 90s).
When you hear about massive budgets for something like CoD series, it's because they are driving out a huge SP+MP operation every 18-24 months so their only option is to throw bodies/money at the problem.

Edit 1: [That should say abbreviated "Singleplayer & Multiplayer" but I like the way it ended up so leaving it]

With Apocalypse Now we don't answer to anyone except ourselves and our audience, and we never will. If we need to push the release by a year to ensure it is good we will, and our audience will want us to.

And we'd tell everybody about such a move a year in advance too because we plan very very very far ahead.

EDIT 2:

Additionally, I really cannot express the level of stupidity and wasted money and time that occurs on most game productions. However bad you think it is, it is much much much worse.

The money wasted on terrible ideas, flawed logic and emotionally-based irrational choices could fly an entire game studio to Mars and back.

We, on the other hand, do not waste money. We are uncompromising. And we never will compromise in this particular regard.

Also how is judgment an attribute?

Substitute the word "Wisdom" and include it's impacts on dialogs, recon, stealth, combat and available options in all areas of gameplay.

And nice info on Obs '08, :salute:

1dtw.jpg
 
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Lahey

Laheyist
Patron
Joined
Jun 10, 2017
Messages
1,467
Grab the Codex by the pussy
A part-time developer and master shitposter with a storied past slowly realizing his dream project whose ambition is matched only by the passion of his supporters and detractors alike.

Monty or Cleve?
345-monty-markland.jpg


Have you read the design document?
 

Blaine

Cis-Het Oppressor
Patron
Joined
Oct 6, 2012
Messages
1,874,662
Location
Roanoke, VA
Grab the Codex by the pussy
*walks onto page 12*

Hey guys, what's going on in h—

a062a82edf.jpg


*backs slowly out of the thread, into the forum directory, out of the tab, closes the browser, and leaves the house*
 

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