KickStarter Double Fine's MASSIVE CHALICE - Released... but nobody cares

See, I really do think that they have a simple, coherent idea behind their game. Basically they want to make a short "rogue-like" tactical RPG with inevitable character death and emphasis on replayability. The idea is that with this feature set, a normal, semi-casual player might be persuaded to, if not play in real Iron Man mode, at least accept unit losses on the tactical level, so they'd actually use the strategy layer to deal with setbacks instead of savescumming their way out of everything. They never really come out and say this clearly, though - I'm just inferring it from the features they talk about, because I play tactical RPGs a lot and I see the problem and how some of their design choices might counteract it. So who knows?

What's obvious, though, is that a lot of people - particularily the ones who post on their forums - don't see it like this. Instead they appear to be convinced that it's a game where between incidental fights they get to play house with their characters, make them fall in luuuurve and get them to make babies whose growth they can minutely oversee like some kind of creepy, computerized helicopter parents. Correcting their misunderstanding at this point would just make them feel angry and betrayed, and maybe pull out their money, so I'm guessing that the devs will just wait until the campaign is finished before they make clear what they're actually doing, and throw in a couple of mostly irrelevant micromanagement features in the final game as a conciliatory gesture so they can claim that they actually listen to their fans. At least I hope so, because if they do that, the game might end up being pretty interesting.

 

This wasn't true for the Torment kickstarter at the very least. If anything, there was an air of apprehension about the whole campaign before it launched, with a lot of concerns being voiced (MCA not participating, InXile not having released Wasteland 2, among others). The reason it achieved such success, is that they managed to sell their concept successfully, and actually fleshed out the thematic scope of the game (the most important aspect of Torment, arguably) very thoroughly with updates. They also showed a bunch of concept art, two mockup "screenshots" and even their actual vision document. And honestly, I didn't notice any particular evasiveness or attempts at pandering; when asked about romance, for example, they replied in no uncertain terms that there will be no buttsex in their game, thus alienating a sizable Biodrone market segment.

Don't remember P:E or W2 campaigns that well, but they definitely gave me a better idea of what the final product is going to look like than Double Fine's new pitch.

 

Yeah, but the Wasteland 2 campaign was like, "remember Wasteland and Fallout?" DoubleFine and the people working on this game don't really have any games where they can say, "It's gonna be like this game we did here, so we know what we're doing." The difference is you have absolutely no frame of reference for these "features" they're mentioning. If it were being developed by Paradox, I'd assume it was like Crusader Kings, but these guys? Who knows?

 

Really? Depends on what you're looking for, I guess. The thing that the Torment and Project Eternity campaigns did was that they gamified the hell out of them by trickling information bit by bit and having bit stretch goals that actually impact the final product quite a bit. Project Eternity gets a pass because calling it a new Infinity Engine game is pretty clear, and they actually did end up giving a lot of concrete information. But when I look at the information we have about T:ToN, I'm just seeing this collection of complicated promised features but little in the way of concrete solutions as to how these ideas will be realized or a coherent vision of how they're actually going to be put together. They do explain plot hook and make a good case that Numenera is a good setting for a Torment sequel, which is great and appropriate, but much of the rest is basically "wouldn't it be awesome if". I'm accentuating the negative here, but I wasn't really impressed by the "what does one life matter?" thing, or the addition of new writers who keep saying how awesome and deep the narrative is going to be.

On the other hand, the Torment campaign didn't talk about pre-drawn backgrounds (which I think are a big deal in terms of art style) until the kickstarter had been active for what, almost a month? I seem to recall that it took them a week to reveal that yes, they're using dialogue trees, only improved - they're not really saying how though - and they still haven't decided what kind of combat system they're going to have, or how are skills and statistics implemented otherwise. The thing that particularily bugs me about the Torment campaign though is the Castoff's Labyrinth. It's going to be, what, twelve interlinked dungeons/locations inside the main character's head? That's not stretchgoal material, that has to be - or at least should be - a huge part of the entire game! If the original design of the game could work either with or without it, I can't help but wonder how coherent that design was.

It was a very well-run campaign from a publicity standpoint, and in the final tally there actually is quite a bit of information about the game too, but I did get the feeling that they were mainly giving out evocative tidbits about the game while not taking a clear stance on practical matters of gameplay and mechanics. I don't know if that was because they don't have it planned out yet or because they didn't want to alienate parts of the audience, but either way it's not really something I'd want as a model for all future Kickstarter campaigns. So in that sense, avoiding stretch goals is fine in my book.

 

Someone is shitposting?

 

Er... I'm sorry?

 

Of course Kickstarter projects gives out information in snippets to keep the interest going and keep the project in news, otherwise they wouldn't get as many new pledgers. Do you think developers decide everything at once? If I were a developer I'd avoid setting any systems and designs in stone in case I have to change them later and potentially piss people off by not sticking to the original plan. Stretchgoals are there to get pledges and more money, if you would do Kickstarter you wouldn't try to get as much money as possible? Besides, it's much easier for devs to design the game when they know the budget they're gonna have, if they get say 2 million they then can implement certain amount of skills and skill checks because implementing those to the game will take more time aka more money, and unless I'm wrong it's probably more costly to make and have predrawn backgrounds than to have 3D-modelled (generic) backgrounds so they probably waited till they have large enough budget for them.

Making a game is (or at least should be) somewhat fluid since things you've thought up before you actually start to make and program the game doesn't necessarely work well in practice, what if they would've said exactly how the dialogue system will be better or enhanced than the traditional one and they find about it later that they have to chage or re-design it, and again potentially pissing off the pledgers.

 

Your concept of gamification is too broad. Gamification is a sistematic aproach in adding a reward system for doing actions with the objective to make people engaged in a system, the objective is to make you don't leave and to go to the competition, it engage your basic instincts and reward you with useless virtual trinkets that are easy to invent, don't have real value and don't require work to make. On Kickstarter, you have the potential of getting something worthwhile and feel good about it by helping a game that would never be made to happen. People give money to achieve strech goals (if the developers are going to deliver or not is another issue) not to get XP but to invest in future potential entertainment that feature is going to provide, not only to you but to everyone. If it was pure gamification, InExile could announce a Torment Angry Bird game as stretch goals and people would give money anyway only to fill a bar of progress.

 

Wait, isn't that pretty close to what I said earlier? Developers making a Kickstarter pitch have incentives not to provide concrete details but rather say "we'll look into it" to most suggestions. I don't even think that's wrong. As a result, though, a lot of pitches don't provide enough information to form a clear picture of what the game will be like or whether the development team has a good grasp of what they're doing. So the multi-million Kickstarters arguably do better not so much because they give more or better information about the product, but rather because they're better at getting the word out and more successful at convincing people that they're good for it.

 

I think what you're really against is kickstarters for games in the concept stage, which is a fair point to make. It's always better to have a demo or even a working prototype you can show off.

Still, for a game at this stage of development, the new Torment was as thoroughly described as can be reasonably expected. You seem to have a typical, albeit unrealistic, idea of what a creative process looks like. Stuff gets discarded and added all the time in preproduction. Experienced designers can often tell what works and what doesn't before testing, but in practice, you'll only really find out how a particular idea interacts with the rest of the game once you've actually put it there and seen what happened. This is true for tv shows, movies, and even books to some extent. You very rarely start with an extremely detailed plan and stick to it religiously till the very end - this kind of approach occasionally works for actual geniuses, but mostly results in disaster.

You used the example of the Castoffs Labirynth as an element which is big enough that it should affect the coherence of the design. I'd like to propose a thought experiment: take PST, and see how much content you can remove without damaging the story's thematic cohesion. I think you'll be surprised how much can be cut.

 

Well... I wouldn't say I'm against kickstarters without prototypes (although I do think it's regrettable that Kickstarter projects that do have one don't get the kind of boost they'd deserve), but I suppose I do have an issue with the way Torment's concept was presented. Most games that I'd call well-designed tend to have a few core elements which determine how the game as a whole plays, with other elements being secondary. For instance, Planescape: Torment partly arose from Avellone's annoyance with death in games, right? The resulting immortality mechanic is simultaneously of narrative and gameplay significance, and is the distinctive feature that much of the game revolves around. The execution is not without issues, but the basic starting concept of PS:T at least is straightforward and intuitive. The thing here is that I feel like I get what the "core features" of Massive Chalice are supposed to be, but I don't actually get that feeling from T:ToN. Of course, Massive Chalice is a much simpler game with a focus gameplay, so it's not a fair comparison, but still, by this standard, the Massive Chalice pitch doesn't seem any worse, at least.

Now there are actually several major, variously distinctive features in T:ToN that have been mentioned. You're a newborn being without memories of your own, there's an angel of death entropy pursuing you, you can gather and use mysterious items that belonged to your creator, you can enter other people's minds, you can transmit your pain in battle to other people around you, and when you die you enter a dream world where you can talk to visions of your companions and gather pieces of your memories, and somehow your various choices will determine your standing in regards to various metaphysical forces as well as your "legacy". All this will add up to a story-heavy RPG with a lot of reactivity. To me, this game actually sounds pretty different from PS:T, and not quite as intuitive. Which of these are the distinctive "core" gameplay features? How will they add up in terms of actual gameplay? It might turn out to be obvious once the game's out, but as it is, the "high concept" is kind of vague, and more of a narrative rather than a mechanical one. In an RPG, it'd of course ideally be both.

Maybe that's my problem. When I think of the Castoff's Labyrinth in terms of PS:T, what comes to mind is not, say, the Modron Maze, but rather the Tomb of the Nameless One, times twelve. That's certainly part of the mandatory path in PS:T, and I agree that PS:T does have a lot of stuff that could be cut while preserving the game's essence. My point is, in a narrative-based RPG; being able to meet reflections of companions and NPCs and find out new things from them from a different perspective doesn't sound like something that could be called an extra dungeon along the lines of the Endless Paths. Actually, just that alone strikes me as a feature that you could build a whole RPG around if you wanted to.

 

Frankly, the whole death thing is only peripheral to the core of PST, imo. What's really important is the implications of it, that you've had previous incarnations whose actions affect you in a significant way. You could have just shown a game over screen after death, and the game wouldn't lose much. And frankly, the whole "You're not losing your memories upon death anymore because someone predicted it so there you go" is kind of a plot hole. So that's actually an example of a "core element" getting sidelined in favor of other things during the development process.

The reason I think the T:ToN pitch was better, is that while it didn't provide extensive info on all the gameplay systems, it focused on the most important ones. The game is supposed to be a successor to PST. What's unique about PST? Thematic consistency and gravitas, philosophical exploration of the world's metaphysics and their effects on its inhabitants, a weird and unusual setting, C&C, and an emphasis on the written word as a way of delivering all of that. Combat in PST was peripheral, mostly skippable, and kind of bad. The character system was painfully inadequate, and only used due to the licensing agreement. So, to me, it made perfect sense when that pitch went "Hey, these are the important features of PST, and this is how we're going to do it in our game. Combat? You guys can vote, we'll cope. Also, we're using Numenera tabletop rules which we'll modify to best serve the important parts." And throughout the campaign, they've mostly talked about tides, npcs, locations, c&c, and so forth.

It's a bit unfair, but if Obsidian say "hey, we want to make a game like BG2" or if InXile say "hey, we want to make a game like PST", that already carries with itself a ton of information. What's left is to flesh out the important parts, which both campaigns did quite well. Both of them (and the Star Citizen campaign as well) gave me a strong feeling that these people have a strong vision of what they want to make. Compare that to MASSIVE CHALICE, and the recent update basically goes "We have no idea what we're doing, so come and watch us as we play games vaguely similar to our idea, and try to come up with something."

You could easily cut the Tomb of the Nameless One. It'd be a pity, since it's a very cool location, but not much more than that. All of the information gathered therein can be communicated through different channels.

To be fair, I do think the labirynth was a "Hey, I have this awesome idea, let's use it the same way as Obsidian did for the Endless Paths!", and they didn't really expect it to grow so big. But, again, at that point it's relatively normal for big pieces to be moved around. Don't you think that the difference between having 1 and 2 major cities falls under the same cathegory? For example, BG2 is very clearly a game built around the idea of one big city acting as a central location everything revolves around.

But hey, we have InXile bros on board, so let's ask. CMcC ksaun Adam Heine Brother None, what say you? Was the Castoffs Labirynth a last-minute addition, or was it planned from the beginning in some form or another? (Colin always ignores me, but I will not be spurned so easily)

 

We always planned to do something like PE's Endless Paths, both because it was a good idea and because all of us were totally suckered in by the mechanic. At the same time, we didn't want to do exactly the same thing, so we had to think of a similar slow-reveal type area that (a) wasn't a mega-dungeon and (b) suited Torment. Thus, the Castoff's Labyrinth.

As for how much it's going to overwhelm other elements of the game, well, this is one of the weird things about Kickstarter. We say, "We have writers!" and some backers go, "Oh, God! The entire game is only writers!" We say, "We have a major city," and they say, "What about all the other locations? Aren't you going to do anything else?" We say, "Look! Castoff's Labyrinth with many fathoms!" and they say, "What? But I thought the game was taking place in Major City? Why is the whole game a surrealistic nightmare? DON'T YOU PEOPLE UNDERSTAND ANYTHING?!"

I'm exaggerating. Obviously. But this is sort of how KS campaigns go. You can't reveal anything without people thinking that what you revealed is 100% of the game (and if we actually did reveal 100% of the game, then we're being spoilery -- you can't win).

So, yes, the CL is bigger than the Immortal's Tomb was in PS:T, but it's not something we're tacking on just to look cool. It will be integrated into the story, but it won't be the story.

Does that diplomatic ambiguity answer your question?

 

"We have mature adult relationships and intrigue."

"What? You have buttsex?!??!"

 

With trannies, no less.

 

Actually, I think that in addition to recovering memories and uncovering things about the past incarnations (which is mostly exploration), a lot of the great gameplay moments in Torment are related to the immortality. Of course, they're few and far between (and many are just selecting a dialogue options), but like I said, the execution as a whole wasn't great. Still, I think they add a lot to the ambience of the game. One of my favourite memories of PS:T was getting killed by thugs somewhere in the Trash Warrens and waking up in the morgue of the Buried Village. Sure, I missed out on some EXP along the way, but hey... an emergent solution! PS:T would be a better game if it had more of those and in a more systematic way.

Well, yeah, having a clear model for the game lets you get away with not giving out some basic information. That said, though, when InXile talks about making a Torment successor, it's really the ambience of the setting and the sophistication of the narrative that they're talking about. Granted, those are the best and most memorable things about PS:T, but it doesn't really tell you much about the game design itself, does it? For instance, reactivity. It's probably the feature that gets talked about the most in the T:ToN videos, yet Planescape: Torment doesn't actually have much reactivity, does it? It's notably linear for a CRPG. So it seems like T:ToN will be quite different as a game, but the "how" is not so clear.

You could say that much of the gameplay of PS:T, especially combat, was peripheral to the game, but to an extent I disagree. It's peripheral because people tend to try and ignore it while playing because it's not great, but it's still there. Now, I did back T:ToN just on the information that it would work hard to emulate and preserve the narrative and ambience that made PS:T great, so clearly saying that was good enough, but since PS:T already exists, I believe that doing it again is possible. What I really wanted to know is how they're going to improve on the weak aspects of PS:T and integrate them into the narrative experience. I'd be much happier if the pitch video had said, "yes, this is what PS:T did badly, and here's how we're going to fix it". Actually, that's more or less what the combat video did say, just not with a lot of detail. Unfortunately, I suspect that it would not be good marketing to start the campaign by saying that the Holy Grail of CRPGs wasn't that great and requires a major overhaul to be a good game. For my part, though, I'm just really hoping that T:ToN will be, if not a better narrative, at least a much better game than PS:T.

Right, well. Having another major city is a major addition, but then again, some games should have a carefully measured length and scope, while others can be expanded and scaled up elegantly. Who knows which category T:ToN falls into? I zeroed in on the Castoff's Labyrinth because it seems to me that it's not "more of the same", but rather, relies on a different type of gameplay than the rest of the game. I believe puzzles were mentioned. Of course, we don't actually know what that means, so I'm just making some guesses here for the purposes of a point. Is it a single-character area like the Tomb of the Nameless One? It doesn't have to be (it's inside the main character's head, it could be anything), but if it is, it means that the game will hopefully incorporate twelve "fathoms" worth of decent single-character gameplay.

Now if this area makes substantial use of the RPG mechanics and the skill system, the game's system too has to be robust enough to account for the inclusion of an expansive single-character area during stages of the game in which you (maybe) normally have a party. What about the experience or abilities you get there? In PS:T, a large area you could visit at any time outside the otherwise fairly linear structure of the game would have been a big thing just in terms of balance (well, if game balance actually mattered in Torment). Of course, the Castoff's Labyrinth could also be more of an adventure game within an RPG, without the RPG mechanics being the point, or hey, maybe you do have a party (a different party, even!) and you get to fight against extra bosses, which is what it would be like in a JRPG. My point is that this seems like something that would impact the structure and design of the game as a whole, instead of being an extra.

The other thing is reactivity with the rest of the game. It's an area you can visit and revisit at will to gain new information? That's interesting, but only particularily cool if it's well integrated with the rest of the game. You know how in Planescape: Torment, you can find and talk to Xachariah if you have Stories-Bones-Tell and catch Dak'kon hiding something while making him translate Fell to you? It's actually one of the hardest-to-find things in the whole game, but finding it doesn't really have much impact either in terms of gameplay or narrative. It's a nice bonus, but doesn't create any new opportunities later in the game, which is a shame. My worry is that a lot of the feature set in T:ToN, Castoff's Labyrinth included, sound like they might end up the same -

Oh. OK. Faith restored! Carry on.

That said, though, since it's integrated to the rest of the game (as it should be), it seems to me that without it, the game would be (substantially?) different. Now of course, at the time the Castoff's Labyrinth stretch goal was announced, it was pretty clear that the campaign would get there, so it was going to be in the game anyway. Then again, it's not like inXile couldn't have adjusted the design to work without the CL if it came to that. So is the CL a major feature of the game or an extra, or something in between? Or could it have gone either way at the early development stage Torment was in when the Kickstarter was launched? I still can't quite tell.

This was originally about what Kickstarter campaigns should be like. There's an article where the developer of Monaco says that stretch goals are total "bullshit", because the appropriate size and scope of the game is part of the design, and shouldn't be left up to how much money the project gets. To some extent, I agree. Now, I've been told that this is a highly idealistic (and unrealistic) approach to game development and design, while in the real world it's more of an iterative process. Well... yeah, and it's mainly indie developers with tiny, tiny teams who would say something like that. Of course, having that sort of design focus is also one reason why they occasionally end up making good games. Although actually, Saunders says in the new Vault Dweller interview that "design by dictatorship" is the way to go, so clearly a cohesive vision behind the game as a whole is desirable.

I said earlier that I don't think that the T:ToN Kickstarter is a model I'd want all Kickstarters to follow, because it's hard to tell just what kind of game T:ToN will be, except more Torment in a new, cool setting (which is good enough, really). But really, I'm OK with anything that makes the developers money while not hamstringing them so they can make a good game, and if stretch goals and being somewhat vague about parts of the game are the way to do it, so be it. At the same time, in a perfect world more games would have pitches like Banner Saga, where they had example footage, finalized art and a pretty clear idea of how the game turn out as a whole, overall structure and gameplay mechanics included. Of course, I seem to recall RPGCodex panning the project when it turned out that that the combat mechanics weren't 'd enough for this place, so maybe that's not the way to go.

 

Double fine is a hell-of-a-lot more trustworthy than inexile. Also, unlike inexile, they also know how to make a funny video without telling jack-shit about the game.

 

Keep on shitposting, gaudaost. Always good for a chuckle.

 

Man, this is a surprise. They still haven't broken through 1 million $. I guess people aren't as stupid as I thought (or obviously they). They could have at least do some research before putting up another kickstarter. Not just: "we'll show Tim Schafer and rake in money like the first time".

 

Based on what? Whatever the fuck game is this is as far from what they previously did as is W2 from what InXile previously did. Or if you consider the individuals, not the company as a whole there's no fucking contest. Double Fine is out of their league.

Which is the most important thing next to shoehorning Felicia Day or some other gamer-gurl "celebrity" in your game.

 

Worst of all is the updates. How about 40 min of: "That is cool, that other thing is cool too, this is very cool, that thing is very rad, even more rad and it is cool too.", really talking 40 min and managing to say nothing is a skill, really this generate alot of confidence on Brad Muir intellectual ability.

 

I don't see how you can't. First you can always put into the update something like "one of the parts/dungeons/locations we now present". As for the big city it is even easier as you say "The game will have a big city as base with some/several/many location to visit around it." Whoever don't get that probably never played an RPG.

also, you shouldn't worry so much about one/a few persons that don't get these things. as a you can't tell them they are morons you just have to explain it. Which hardly takes a majuscule effort.