Vapourware System Shock 3 by OtherSide Entertainment - taken over by Tencent!

[toro]

Stop posting: the idea of a jobless Warren Spector begging for blowjobs on the streets is arousing me.

 

[Terenty]

Stop posting: the idea of a jobless Warren Spector begging for blowjobs on the streets is arousing me.

Nice idea for an immersive sim

 

[BEvers]

Update:

 

[Terenty]

Didn't they say there were a lot of enthusiasm among publishers?

 

[MasterLobar]

OSE_Walter Feb 12

We are in the process of lining up a new publishing partner. Happily, given the pedigree of System Shock and the progress we’ve made so far there’s been a lot of interest.

https://forums.otherside-e.com/t/starbreeze-cancel-system-shock-3-publishing-deal/9855/8

OSE_Walter Feb 14

Thanks for the encouragement guys, good to see we still have some fans! (those gleefully awaiting our demise don’t count–that’s unlikely I’m happy/sorry to say) And I’m optimistic we’ll find an even better path forward on SS3, we had some great meetings at DICE this week) [...] Our meetings this week provided some good external feedback and encouragement about what the Austin team is doing.

https://forums.otherside-e.com/t/otherside-entertainment-please-do-not-do-ss3/9840/9

OSE_Walter Feb 25

Our SS3 meetings and pitches are going well so far. Those we’ve shown the recent builds to seem genuinely excited about it. I’m an optimistic and I continue to be optimistic about us finding a good partner for the game. Keep sending your good vibes :D

https://forums.otherside-e.com/t/starbreeze-cancel-system-shock-3-publishing-deal/9855/12

 

[Nano]

People aren't gonna trust OtherSide as long as they don't cop to what a disaster Underworld Ascendant was. And even then it won't do much.

 

[Nyast]

I have to admit, this shit is getting funny. And nice work exposing all of that, MasterLobar

So I guess the conclusion from that is: they need to find a publisher ( / investors ) asap otherwise they're going bankrupt. And considering their reputation with UA, getting a publisher is going to be tough.

But I wouldn't worry too much, after all they've "already secured the budget for SS3"

 

[Infinitron]

Would be funny if they end up launching a crowdfunding campaign in a last-ditch attempt to save themselves.

 

[Terenty]

Its kind of bizare how a game ( UA ) with such revered names behind it turned out to be one of the worst atrocities that came from kickstarter. Like some kind of poetic justice or smth .

 

[MasterLobar]

So I guess the conclusion from that is: they need to find a publisher ( / investors ) asap otherwise they're going bankrupt. And considering their reputation with UA, getting a publisher is going to be tough.

Finding other investors is also going to be tough.

I had another look at the SEC filing of their $3.5 million series A stock sale.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1756400/000156761918004482/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml

It reveals they found two useful idi...err...venture capital investors who were willing to invest in their company:

Michael Dornbrook whose linkedin profil says he is now a member of the Otherside board of directors.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeldornbrook

And Geoffrey Hyatt, an entrepreneur and business angel based in Boston.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ghyatt

The exact amount these two investors chipped in is not disclosed, but I would assume it is a substantial sum. The SEC filing says there are 6 investors (those two and probably OS managemen/owners), so if all paid the same amount, it's north of $500,000 for everyone.

Those guys invested in the company around the time when the catastrophic UA Beta was released. God only knows why.

But at that time, OS still had their SS3 deal. Now that it's gone, these two poor folks can expect their investment to be wiped out entirely. I'd bet they are banging their heads against the wall every day for having been so dumb to invest in this company.

I highly doubt any investor is going to be willing to throw more money in this bottomless pit.

 

[Steamboat Willie]

Update:

Thanks for the "update" Sam.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Update:

is sam a girl or guy

 

[MasterLobar]

Would be funny if they end up launching a crowdfunding campaign in a last-ditch attempt to save themselves.

Even if that campaign were as successful as the UA campaign 4 years ago which raised $930,000 (which is extremely optimistic), it wouldn't make a difference.

They have to refund Starbreeze at a rate of $200,000k per month. So assuming they could complete SS3 in 12 months, that would be almost $2.5 million they have to repay to Starbreeze alone.

Even under the most optimistic of assumptions, they couldn't even fund half of that repayment via crowdfunding.

Their initial budget estimate for SS3 was $12 million and they say the game is "more than halfway completed" (Starbreeze invested ~$7 million so far). Even if they strongly reduce the ambition level of the game, they need at least $3-4 million more to complete it.

And that, again, is very optimistic given that they have NOTHING so far apart from a 30-second trailer and a few screenshots. They probably need $5 million or more and at least 18 months, if not longer.

So that's $3-5 million for development and $2.5-3.25 million repayment to Starbreeze. Any amount they could reasonably assume to raise via crowdfunding would be meaningless.

But, needless to say, the whole idea is a fantasy, because they have utterly ruined their reputation with UA.

 

[MasterLobar]

New details from Starbreeze, and it seems to me it looks even bleaker for Otherside now.

This is from Starbreeze CEO Michael Nermark

"I stand united with the entire Starbreeze team in the efforts to get the business in order. We have a very strong asset in Payday, which is the foundation upon which we will build Starbreeze future." (emphasis added)

https://www.tweaktown.com/news/65849/payday-starbreezes-new-hope-survival/index.html

The development of Payday 3 started in February 2017:

https://www.tweaktown.com/news/56307/payday-3-now-development/index.html

Just a month later, Starbreeze signed the SS3 deal with Otherside:

https://www.starbreeze.com/2017/03/...igns-otherside-entertainments-system-shock-3/

The CEO goes on to say that Starbreeze intend to make sure that...

"assets we have determined are unrelated to the core business are managed in a commercially viable way." (emphasis added)

https://www.tweaktown.com/news/65849/payday-starbreezes-new-hope-survival/index.html

That means, development of both SS3 and Payday 3 started at roughly the same time, but they decided to only continue Payday 3 while SS3 was nixed.

So in their view, the only "commercially viable way" to deal with SS3 was to get out of the deal ASAP, while they decided to continue development of Payday 3, which they see as a viable product.


This tells us that SS3 must be a COMPLETE TRAIN WRECK !!


But it's getting even worse...

Starbreeze decided to cancel this deal despite being totally aware that they are sending OS into bankruptcy and that they will never be paid back about $6 million of the total of ~$7 million they gave OS up to that point.

What's more, they were convinced instantly realizing a loss of $6 million was a better option than each of the following:

(1) Fulfilling the contract and continue funding this "more than halfway completed" game.

(2) Tell OS to make a much less ambitious game for let's say $3 million and launch as early as possible.

(3) Convince another publisher to co-publish the game and provide some of the funds for either option 1 or 2.

(4) Renegotiate the deal, e.g., stop any future funding in exchange for accepting a lower share of future royalties, but otherwise stay in the deal (i.e. don't force OS to refund the $7 million), and let OS find a new publisher.


Think about that !! EVEN OPTION 4, THEY DID NOT DO !!

Compare Option 4 with the status quo (immediate exit from the deal):

(a) They wouldn't get the $200,000 repayment per month until Summer when OS is going to be bankrupt, so that's $800k - $1 million.

(b) But OS would at least have a chance to find a new publisher. With the refund obligation, that possibility is zero.

So with Option 4, they could have allowed game development to go forward and participated in its launch. They did not do so. They rather took a few 100k of repayments before OS files for bankruptcy, because they knew the terrible state SS3 is in.


TL;DR: SS3 is a complete mess that will never be finished, OS will be bankrupt in a few months and everyone who takes a sober look at it knows it.

 

[Hines]

Pathetic. PC Gamer - OtherSide will self-publish System Shock 3 if it has to, but hopes someone else will do it

https://www.pcgamer.com/au/othersid...-it-has-to-but-hopes-someone-else-will-do-it/

 

[BEvers]

"We don’t have a deal right now, but luckily OtherSide is flush enough that we’re funding ourselves and can continue to do that for quite a while. Let’s see what happens," Spector said.

I wonder what "quite a while" means. Two more years of full development? Five?

 

[toro]

"We don’t have a deal right now, but luckily OtherSide is flush enough that we’re funding ourselves and can continue to do that for quite a while. Let’s see what happens," Spector said.

I wonder what "quite a while" means. Two more years of full development? Five?

eternity. for a start.

 

[MasterLobar]

Seriously, why isn't anyone asking them questions that really matter?

Here are some:


1.

“It’s going great. We’re talking to a lot of partners and we have a lot of interest." --- You are literally saying that since the day Starbreeze kicked you out.

https://forums.otherside-e.com/t/starbreeze-cancel-system-shock-3-publishing-deal/9855/8

Three months later, you still don't have a deal. "A lot of partners" and "a lot of interest" but no one wants to do it.

So what's really going on?


2.

If there is so much interest and everything is "going great", why do you have to even think about self-publishing the game?


3.

If you are even ready to completely self-publish the game, you certainly offered other publishers to share risks and provide parts of the required funding yourself. Still, no one wants to do it. Isn't that strange?


4.

Why would you self-publish a game no publisher is interested in? Why do you think it makes sense to make this game when everyone else thinks it doesn't?


5.

What is your timetable? When do you plan to release? If the game is "more than halfway completed" as you claim, why can't you give a rough estimate for the launch date?


6.

"We’re funding ourselves and can continue to do that for quite a while." --- How? Your only game out there isn't selling. Where is your money coming from? Is the $3.5 million Michael Dornbrook and Geoffrey Hyatt gave you in August 2018 your only source of funding?

What does "for a while" mean in this context?


7.

You have to pay $7 million back to Starbreeze and you need several millions more to complete the game (original budget: $12 million). Are you telling us you can self-fund $10-12 million? Seriously?


8.

Why don't you have anything substantial you can show for SS3 apart from a 30-second teaser and a few screenshots? For Underworld Ascendant, you had a playable prototype as early as September 2015. We know how that turned out (3 years later).




9.

If you have enough money to self-publish an entire $12 million game, why did you launch Underworld Ascendant in such a terrible state?


10.

Why didn't you release Underworld Ascendant as early access? Your community manager is dancing around this issue and comes up with varying versions of bullsh*t. Real answers, please.


11.

Are your "totally separate teams" in Austin and Boston sharing codebases or aren't they?

https://forums.otherside-e.com/t/ss3-dev-team/9684/3


12.

Why can't you get done with Underworld Ascendant? Your updates seem to be introducing more bugs instead of fixing the game. How can you guarantee SS3 won't run into similar problems?


13.

You are entirely self-funded at the moment. Why do you waste money on making a console version for Underworld Ascendant - a broken game that isn't selling at all - instead of allocating these resources to SS3?


14.

Why are you censoring your own forum and the Steam forum when these and other critical questions are being discussed?



TL;DR: He is obviously lying. All publishers already declined to pick up SS3, self-publishing isn't even a remotely realistic option and OS is going to be bankrupt in a few months.

 

[Master]

This is all just speculation man. We wont know until we know.

 

[Infinitron]

Pathetic. PC Gamer - OtherSide will self-publish System Shock 3 if it has to, but hopes someone else will do it

https://www.pcgamer.com/au/othersid...-it-has-to-but-hopes-someone-else-will-do-it/

Not PC Gamer: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/system-shock-3-has-a-lot-of-interest-from-publishers/

System Shock 3 ‘has a lot of interest from publishers’
BUT DEVELOPER HASN’T RULED OUT SELF-PUBLISHING

System Shock 3’s search for a new publisher has attracted “a lot of interest”, according to OtherSide Entertainment, but the studio’s not ruling out self-publishing the game if it has to.

In February former publisher Starbreeze – which is currently experiencing financial troubles – sold the publishing rights for System Shock 3 back to developer OtherSide, in a deal which saw it recoup the finances it had invested in its development.

The game’s creative director, Warren Spector, told VGC that talks are currently progressing with several interested publishers and that OtherSide has enough capital to continue while prospective deals are discussed.

“It’s going great,” he said. “We’re talking to a lot of partners and we have a lot of interest. We don’t have a deal right now, but luckily OtherSide is flush enough that we’re funding ourselves and can continue to do that for quite a while. Let’s see what happens.

“We need somebody to say, ‘yeah, let’s talk deal terms’ and we’re in that kind of discussion with some folks. But we’re not quite finished yet.”

Spector added that he can’t rule out the possibility of OtherSide self-publishing the immersive sim, however that’s a scenario he’d like to avoid.

“The reality is, OtherSide is a company of developers who want to develop games,” he explained. “We don’t particularly want to be a publisher. [Founder] Paul Neurath and I have worked with publishers before, Origin self-published when I was there, and we don’t want to get into the market of distributing stuff.

“I think it would be a huge distraction. We would have to hire staff to do that because we don’t currently have the expertise. I hope we don’t go that way. I’ll probably get in trouble for saying that if we do.

“We’re not ruling anything out, but at this point we’re looking for a publishing and funding partner.”

System Shock 3 was most recently shown at GDC in March, when Spector confirmed it’s being made with the Unity engine.

The first series entry in more than a decade will sport the genre-blending gameplay typical of Spector’s previous games (Thief, Deus Ex), with art by former Irrational artists Robb Waters and Nate Wells.

 

[LESS T_T]

Here's another interview done in April (at Reboot conference) but published few days ago, from IGN Italy: https://it.ign.com/system-shock-3-pc/154378/feature/nella-mente-di-warren-spector

Seems pretty... juicy, if only it was published in English.

Via Google Translation:

Clearly, he told from the stage, to continue, push, find satisfaction, it is necessary to succeed, to organize projects that reach their audience and sell. You can't go around it: sales are needed and, he pointed out, those who say they want to target the smallest possible audience are crazy. Unfortunately, however, the failures captain and Spector, at different levels and in different measures, also lived his own, of which I asked him: "Regarding Deus Ex: Invisible War, frankly, I think it was a better game than people he acknowledged. Then, for heaven's sake, we made mistakes, no doubt, but I think the way people remember him is worse than reality. "

And the problems encountered with Underworld Ascendant? "The team was too ambitious! And we are an independent studio, we had a specific budget to work with. I think the team in Boston (it's not mine, I was working on System Shock 3) tried to do too much and finished for not being able to do well what he managed to put into the game. Also, they had very tight time limits, great pressure ... I don't want to make it too big on this point but let's say that the game came out when it had to come out. And I think everybody knew that it was probably too early, but I also think it's important to acknowledge the team that they continued to devote themselves to the game after the launch, they changed a lot: the game structure, the rescue system,

But Underworld Ascendant had another big problem: the project was born on Kickstarter, a platform that is sometimes a bit misunderstood. "You have to tell people what you're doing before you do it. And it's crazy, because video game development is an incredibly iterative process, in which games change all the time. People expected us to do exactly what we said during the campaign on Kickstarter. And at the time, basically, we said: "We will do the first Ultima Underworld, we will offer you that experience", but then we realized that we didn't want to offer that experience. It's a game from 1992! expectations, and I'm not necessarily talking about quality, that's another story, but we generated expectations about the game we would develop and then, to be completely honest, we didn't meet them. If you put these factors together, the game had to come out, we had limited resources and we didn't offer the game we promised ... the players get angry, it's obvious ". By the way, this talk is part of the reasons why we don't know anything yet specifically on System Shock 3, despite the fact that Spector proposed articles and covers from various publications: "I am not yet ready to talk about the game, because we are still in the midst of that iterative process where we change our mind about things, while we build them, while we create systems. When we have the chance to play with it, the design changes. The story changes to reflect the things that can be done in the game, and we know that it is possible to do only now that it exists in a playable form ".

Another problem, which also refers to Spector's intervention on stage, is that of recognizing the merits and therefore giving the right satisfactions to the developers, not to mention that, if your work is recognized to you, you enjoy better weapons to bargain your value. But it doesn't work that way, we tend to identify games with one, up to two figures, thinking that Underworld Ascendant is a Warren Spector game despite having developed another studio, while he was only a consultant and was already working on System Shock 3 And his opinion, expressed several times, is very clear: "It's crazy. Without Doug Church, Ultima Underworld and System Shock would not have existed, no matter how much he influenced them and how much he contributed to them. Without Harvey Smith, Chris Norden and others, Deus Ex would not have existed. I had the original idea, I had a vision, I closed my eyes in 1997, I said 'This is the game I want to create' and three years later it existed. But they made it happen. I sometimes joke that I haven't really worked for twenty-five years: those people accepted my vision and brought it to fruition. In short, I am given too much credit. Then, of course, when the game doesn't work, I get all the blame, so maybe it balances, but we need to recognize the team's work, especially the leads. I work a lot through them ".

 

[Infinitron]

but then we realized that we didn't want to offer that experience

These guys.

 

[MasterLobar]

At its core, it already feels like a System Shock game

https://forums.otherside-e.com/t/starbreeze-cancel-system-shock-3-publishing-deal/9855/7

"That is, unless we realize we don't want to offer that experience."

 

[Terenty]

we generated expectations about the game we would develop and then, to be completely honest, we didn't meet them.

So he is not completely senile, good news

 

[LESS T_T]

https://nordicgame.com/warren-spector-announced-first-ng19-speaker/

First NG19 speaker Warren Spector

It’s a great pleasure for the organisers of Nordic Game 2019, 22-24 May in Malmö, Sweden to announce Warren Spector as the first confirmed speaker for next year’s conference.

Something different for a change: https://conf.nordicgame.com/sessions/narrative-traps-and-how-to-avoid-them/

NARRATIVE TRAPS AND HOW TO AVOID THEM
UNREAL THEATRE - 23/05/2019, 10:00-11:00

There has been some controversy over the years about how effective games can be at telling stories (or whether games should even try to tell stories at all). Thankfully, it’s now generally accepted that game designers can tell stories as well as “authors” in any medium. Still, we’re new at it and have much to learn. This talk will cover the need to tell stories in ways that exploit the unique qualities of our medium as well as some traps we fall into and how to avoid them.