KickStarter Telepath Tactics Liberated - deterministic tactical RPG inspired by Fire Emblem

[Infinitron]

I wasn't critiquing your graphics, I was speculation about how they are regarded.

That's fine. I genuinely want to know where that conception is coming from, though--I spent tens of thousands of dollars and untold amounts of time hiring and managing artists to produce high quality custom graphics for this game; if people can't distinguish them from RPG Maker, that poses a legitimate problem for me.

Did you see this? http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/a-pixel-artist-renounces-pixel-art.99209/

 

[Abu Antar]

I wasn't critiquing your graphics, I was speculation about how they are regarded.

That's fine. I genuinely want to know where that conception is coming from, though--I spent tens of thousands of dollars and untold amounts of time hiring and managing artists to produce high quality custom graphics for this game; if people can't distinguish them from RPG Maker, that poses a legitimate problem for me.

As I said in my previous post, 2D games and gamers of this time don't mix together that well. I love 2D graphics and prefer it over anything else when it is well done. For the average gamer, everything is rpgmaker or whatever. I've seen comments like that a thousand times. It doesn't matter how distinctive the graphics are.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I would argue the fact that you care so much about positive and negative reviews means the system works.

I care in an abstract way, same way I care about sales or movies. Sure, it would be nice to get more positive reviews, more sales, or to watch a post-1991 Terminator movie that doesn't suck. Why I lump them all together? Because I can't do much about any of that.

Neither poor sales nor negative reviews drive me or any other indie developer into action. For example, we'll continue supporting AoD for 3-4 months after release regardless of sales and reviews (but if the game sells better than expected, we'll add more content than currently planned simply because extra revenues will make this luxury possible).

Many developers would be influenced much more by their customers or ratings they receive then you are and yet.. you still know by memory negative reviews your game has gotten.

We got 33 negative review. I remember 5-6, reviews that struck me as odd, same way I remember some Codex threads. I never expected everyone to like AoD, not even on the Codex (and Steam is a much wider audience), so negative reviews don't really come as a shock to me. What surprises me are the negative reviews that aren't really negative. When Infinitron posted the article above, I checked the negative reviews and was surprised to see the same.

I don't think PoE is abandonware. I'm talking about games that release, get a few updates then just sit there lathering hoping to collect some sales before ultimately fizzling into obscurity.. A review system makes it much harder for these turds to stay afloat because they have a EXTREMELY NEGATIVE plastered on their store page in red as an instant warning bell - despite the screenshots they managed to upload that looked half decent.

No arguing here.

 

[Immortal]

I would argue the fact that you care so much about positive and negative reviews means the system works.

I care in an abstract way, same way I care about sales or movies. Sure, it would be nice to get more positive reviews, more sales, or to watch a post-1991 Terminator movie that doesn't suck. Why I lump them all together? Because I can't do much about any of that.

Neither poor sales nor negative reviews drive me or any other indie developer into action. For example, we'll continue supporting AoD for 3-4 months after release regardless of sales and reviews (but if the game sells better than expected, we'll add more content than currently planned simply because extra revenues will make this luxury possible).

Many developers would be influenced much more by their customers or ratings they receive then you are and yet.. you still know by memory negative reviews your game has gotten.

We got 33 negative review. I remember 5-6, reviews that struck me as odd, same way I remember some Codex threads. I never expected everyone to like AoD, not even on the Codex (and Steam is a much wider audience), so negative reviews don't really come as a shock to me. What surprises me are the negative reviews that aren't really negative. When Infinitron posted the article above, I checked the negative reviews and was surprised to see the same.

Not much for me to argue here.. most of this is your subjective opinion and isn't really factually incorrect. (Except the highlighted part - I would be careful to speak on behalf of the indie devs of the world)
We are just disagreeing on how negative reviews affect product owners. I have only seen positive influences from negative reviews.

• Arkham City gets pulled from Steam for being a pile of shit
• Abandonware games lose sales and sink to the bottom of the steam page
• Developers are called to tax for their bugs / incomplete games / selling out to micro transactions / shitty porting etc
  • I even see a lot of dev feedback to negative comments that sometimes leads to games changing course or becoming better.
    
  • Or the devs sperg out in their negative comments sections - which provides us all hours of reading material.. Ravens Cry?

If the review system has done some PR damage to games unjustly.. I don't know how to solve that. People are shit heads on the internet. The ends justify the means in my opinion.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Fair enough, meant indie RPG developers, which in turn meant Codex-approved indie RPG developers.

As for Arkham City, I suspect it was pulled due to the endless refund requests, which is a separate but far more serious issues for both Steam and developer.

 

[Craig Stern]

Did you see this? http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/a-pixel-artist-renounces-pixel-art.99209/

Yeah; that article just depresses me. Auro's pixel art was fantastic.

I suppose it's entirely possible that the new generation of gamers just has no visual lexicon for distinguishing quality 2D pixel art--which would suck, because pixel art is far and away the easiest mode in which to create high quality, smooth frame-by-frame animation in 2D.

 

[Infinitron]

Re: graphics, what you guys will want to keep an eye on is how well Pyke's STASIS does. That's an indie game from a niche genre which is more-or-less as obscure as your game is, but with a far more contemporary graphical appearance. That'll give us some measure of how much of an effect sheer graphics can have.

Although now that I think about it, we already have Eisenwald for that.

 

[Immortal]

Fair enough, meant indie RPG developers, which in turn meant Codex-approved indie RPG developers.

As for Arkham City, I suspect it was pulled due to the endless refund requests, which is a separate but far more serious issues for both Steam and developer.

No doubt. Warner Brothers couldn't give a fuck about people ranting in reviews.

I believe that bad reviews directly correlate to lost sales in games with less of a following / fan base / established lp
Which in turn usually makes people who are only motivated by money to invest more time in their product.

I agree that to someone who considers game making a labour of love and not a quick buck - negative reviews are more meaningless (unless several users were reporting a bug or something)
But I am still glad they are there, I think having a 5 point rating system would make it more convoluted without solving the issue (which is people are vindictive assholes sometimes)

 

[Abu Antar]

Fair enough, meant indie RPG developers, which in turn meant Codex-approved indie RPG developers.

As for Arkham City, I suspect it was pulled due to the endless refund requests, which is a separate but far more serious issues for both Steam and developer.

No doubt. Warner Brothers couldn't give a fuck about people ranting in reviews.

I believe that bad reviews directly correlate to lost sales in games with less of a following / fan base / established lp
Which in turn usually makes people who are only motivated by money to invest more time in their product.

I agree that to someone who considers game making a labour of love and not a quick buck - negative reviews are more meaningless (unless several users were reporting a bug or something)
But I am still glad they are there, I think having a 5 point rating system would make it more convoluted without solving the issue (which is people are vindictive assholes sometimes)

The problem the way it is now is that there is only "Recommend" or "Do not recommend". If we skip players that only play something for 30 minutes and then give up; If I play a game for 40 hours and love the shit out of it but it has some technical issues, I will be disappointed but I sure as fuck wouldn't click "Do not recommend". I'd recommend it and then write down what I liked and what I disliked. (When I say technical issues, I don't mean that the game is a total technical train wreck.)

 

[Immortal]

Fair enough, meant indie RPG developers, which in turn meant Codex-approved indie RPG developers.

As for Arkham City, I suspect it was pulled due to the endless refund requests, which is a separate but far more serious issues for both Steam and developer.

No doubt. Warner Brothers couldn't give a fuck about people ranting in reviews.

I believe that bad reviews directly correlate to lost sales in games with less of a following / fan base / established lp
Which in turn usually makes people who are only motivated by money to invest more time in their product.

I agree that to someone who considers game making a labour of love and not a quick buck - negative reviews are more meaningless (unless several users were reporting a bug or something)
But I am still glad they are there, I think having a 5 point rating system would make it more convoluted without solving the issue (which is people are vindictive assholes sometimes)

The problem the way it is now is that there is only "Recommend" or "Do not recommend". If we skip players that only play something for 30 minutes and then give up; If I play a game for 40 hours and love the shit out of it but it has some technical issues, I will be disappointed but I sure as fuck wouldn't click "Do not recommend". I'd recommend it and then write down what I liked and what I disliked. (When I say technical issues, I don't mean that the game is a total technical train wreck.)

Like I said.. the system works if used correctly (not the way your describing).. I highlighted the reason it breaks down in case you missed it.. I don't know how to fix -that- problem.

 

[Abu Antar]

Fair enough, meant indie RPG developers, which in turn meant Codex-approved indie RPG developers.

As for Arkham City, I suspect it was pulled due to the endless refund requests, which is a separate but far more serious issues for both Steam and developer.

No doubt. Warner Brothers couldn't give a fuck about people ranting in reviews.

I believe that bad reviews directly correlate to lost sales in games with less of a following / fan base / established lp
Which in turn usually makes people who are only motivated by money to invest more time in their product.

I agree that to someone who considers game making a labour of love and not a quick buck - negative reviews are more meaningless (unless several users were reporting a bug or something)
But I am still glad they are there, I think having a 5 point rating system would make it more convoluted without solving the issue (which is people are vindictive assholes sometimes)

The problem the way it is now is that there is only "Recommend" or "Do not recommend". If we skip players that only play something for 30 minutes and then give up; If I play a game for 40 hours and love the shit out of it but it has some technical issues, I will be disappointed but I sure as fuck wouldn't click "Do not recommend". I'd recommend it and then write down what I liked and what I disliked. (When I say technical issues, I don't mean that the game is a total technical train wreck.)

Like I said.. the system works if used correctly (not the way your describing).. I highlighted the reason it breaks down in case you missed it.. I don't know how to fix -that- problem.

I know, and I don't think you wrote anything that I disagree with per se, it's just that when vindictive assholes can abuse the system, does it really work? I feel like it really doesn't. To add salt to injury, some people aren't even vindictive, they're just plain old stupid.

I'm against censorship, but maybe some cleaning up of some obvious troll reviews or other asshole reviews is in order.

 

[Immortal]

Fair enough, meant indie RPG developers, which in turn meant Codex-approved indie RPG developers.

As for Arkham City, I suspect it was pulled due to the endless refund requests, which is a separate but far more serious issues for both Steam and developer.

No doubt. Warner Brothers couldn't give a fuck about people ranting in reviews.

I believe that bad reviews directly correlate to lost sales in games with less of a following / fan base / established lp
Which in turn usually makes people who are only motivated by money to invest more time in their product.

I agree that to someone who considers game making a labour of love and not a quick buck - negative reviews are more meaningless (unless several users were reporting a bug or something)
But I am still glad they are there, I think having a 5 point rating system would make it more convoluted without solving the issue (which is people are vindictive assholes sometimes)

The problem the way it is now is that there is only "Recommend" or "Do not recommend". If we skip players that only play something for 30 minutes and then give up; If I play a game for 40 hours and love the shit out of it but it has some technical issues, I will be disappointed but I sure as fuck wouldn't click "Do not recommend". I'd recommend it and then write down what I liked and what I disliked. (When I say technical issues, I don't mean that the game is a total technical train wreck.)

Like I said.. the system works if used correctly (not the way your describing).. I highlighted the reason it breaks down in case you missed it.. I don't know how to fix -that- problem.

I know, and I don't think you wrote anything that I disagree with per se, it's just that when vindictive assholes can abuse the system, does it really work? I feel like it really doesn't. To add salt to injury, some people aren't even vindictive, they're just plain old stupid.

I'm against censorship, but maybe some cleaning up of some obvious troll reviews or other asshole reviews is in order.

Stupid people exist everywhere.. Look at Amazon / Ebay / Any other successful store. It's a free market at work. Give buyers more credit then that. When negative reviews are all by whiny assholes who have 600 hours of playtime logged. Just pretend potential buyers can put the obvious elements together.

The alternative would be much worse. If someone has paid money for your game, they have earned the right to write what they want about it. If other people agree with what you write, then your review deserves to be displayed more prominently. I can't think of a better system that I would want.

 

[Craig Stern]

The bigger issue with negative reviews isn't whether buyers know when to disregard them--it's that a game's proportion of negative to positive reviews affects visibility on Steam. Get enough baseless or ill-conceived negative reviews, and would-be buyers won't even see the game (or the reviews) in the first place.

 

[Immortal]

The bigger issue with negative reviews isn't whether buyers know when to disregard them--it's that a game's proportion of negative to positive reviews affects visibility on Steam. Get enough baseless or ill-conceived negative reviews, and would-be buyers won't even see the game (or the reviews) in the first place.

Yea in most cases that is good. I want abandonware trash to sink to the bottom.. Now is Steam perfect for finding new titles or diamonds in the rut? Absolutely not.. They could do a much better job displaying games / categorizing games and I do sympathize with the indie dev who has no marketing budget.. but if it was easy then AAA companies wouldn't invest twice their dev budgets into marketing..

The sad fact is that Video Games is a competitive market. Many people would kill to have the coverage you have had Craig.. It sucks but it's true. Don't blame the review system. It's doing it's job without bias - if a game has a shitty rating it falls down the totem pole of visibility. What else should it do?

 

[Craig Stern]

Oh, I don't blame the review system at all. The game came out with some serious flaws, and as the developer, it was ultimately my responsibility to catch them and fix them beforehand. I accept full responsibility for that. Granted, it's emotionally difficult to watch people who clearly love your game still not recommending it because of some issues you let slip through, but I certainly can't blame them for offering their honest opinion.

 

[mindx2]

I personally loved the game. In fact, it's one of just a very few that I actually finished in a relatively short time after release. I eagerly await your next project Craig Stern but curious if you'll want to return to Kickstarter knowing the hurdles you went through on your 1st (unsuccessful) and 2nd (successful) try?

 

[Craig Stern]

Thanks! I appreciate that.

curious if you'll want to return to Kickstarter knowing the hurdles you went through on your 1st (unsuccessful) and 2nd (successful) try?

Oh, yeah--there's no question. From a business perspective, Kickstarter was far and away the single most successful thing I did during the process of creating and launching Telepath Tactics. It funded the game's development, it was an invaluable source of user feedback, it was brilliant for marketing, and it gave me what amounts to a mailing list of 1,700 interested fans. I have a hard time thinking of something better short of Richard Garriott personally rolling up in a limo and throwing a sack of million-dollar bills at me.

 

[Kos_Koa]

I believe the Steams user review system worked the best when it didn't combine the votes into a percentage score. When they made that change it took a lot of the nuance away from the reviews, since most people will simply look at the percentage score without ever reading the reviews. Regardless, I don't think user reviews are as important as some people make them. For example Darkest Dungeons 89% compared to Age of Decadence 86% (a couple weeks ago it was 88%) isn't the only reason why DD sold 403,910 and AoD sold 13,667.

Craig Stern Regarding the pixel art. They are beautifully done and carry a lot of charm, but I think the high viewpoint is the main issue, since it really pulls your eyes away from the great character art and settles them into the bland background. I'm sure you've noticed this, since your trailers are very zoomed in.

Compare this...


to this...

 

[Craig Stern]

Regarding the pixel art. They are beautifully done and carry a lot of charm, but I think the high viewpoint is the main issue, since it really pulls your eyes away from the great character art and settles them into the bland background

Yeah, that had occurred to me; it's just hard to scale pixel art without messing up its appearance, and AIR doesn't support forcing the user's monitor to adopt a different resolution. Luckily, I was able to find a fix for this, one which should be in the next update.

 

[pakoito]

Are you going to keep using AIR for your next projects?

 

[roshan]

Craig Stern what are your thoughts on putting up Telepath Tactics on torrent sites? I mean not in terms of morality or philosophy, but the practicality of it. And not necessarily by you, more of just "What if it was there?" in general.

 

[Zombra]

So you have a game with phenomenal gamepay, complex tactical combat with more tactical depth than all your favorite games combined, but it runs slowly, so it gets a negative review. I'm fine with people disliking games for any reason but when they praise a game to high heaven and then downvote it, it's like, what the fuck?

To me that reviewer is very conscientious. Remember that the framing of the down/upvote is "Do you recommend this game to others?" If a game doesn't run, it doesn't matter how brilliant its systems are: you're a jerk if you recommend it to friends. At the time of the review, the game ran like crap; the guy did the right thing calling it out. Of course we all hope that post-patch he'll revisit his review ... I wouldn't count on it, but we can hope.

Anyway, speaking for myself, if I see that a review is out of date and that patches have gone up in the meantime, I'll certainly take that into account when considering a title. Maybe I'm special in that I look at more than just the big thumb up or down, but for me the Steam review system has been really helpful.

 

[mindx2]

So you have a game with phenomenal gamepay, complex tactical combat with more tactical depth than all your favorite games combined, but it runs slowly, so it gets a negative review. I'm fine with people disliking games for any reason but when they praise a game to high heaven and then downvote it, it's like, what the fuck?

To me that reviewer is very conscientious. Remember that the framing of the down/upvote is "Do you recommend this game to others?" If a game doesn't run, it doesn't matter how brilliant its systems are: you're a jerk if you recommend it to friends. At the time of the review, the game ran like crap; the guy did the right thing calling it out. Of course we all hope that post-patch he'll revisit his review ... I wouldn't count on it, but we can hope.

Anyway, speaking for myself, if I see that a review is out of date and that patches have gone up in the meantime, I'll certainly take that into account when considering a title. Maybe I'm special in that I look at more than just the big thumb up or down, but for me the Steam review system has been really helpful.

You're much more of a discerning gentleman than your average (or even above average!) Steam user my friend...

 

[Craig Stern]

Are you going to keep using AIR for your next projects?

I'm planning to move on to another platform before I release any new video games.

Craig Stern what are your thoughts on putting up Telepath Tactics on torrent sites? I mean not in terms of morality or philosophy, but the practicality of it. And not necessarily by you, more of just "What if it was there?" in general.

I'm not sure I follow you? Nothing about people distributing my game for free when I am offering it for sale strikes me as practical.

 

[roshan]

Craig Stern what are your thoughts on putting up Telepath Tactics on torrent sites? I mean not in terms of morality or philosophy, but the practicality of it. And not necessarily by you, more of just "What if it was there?" in general.

I'm not sure I follow you? Nothing about people distributing my game for free when I am offering it for sale strikes me as practical.

That does generally seem to be the common stance among developers... It does help with generating exposure and word of mouth though, and nowadays almost everyone uses torrents as a "try before you buy" mechanism.