How do these guys manage to have so much drama from their shitty projects? I want some of that shine on my projects, how do I do that? How do I manufacture drama?
Aside from the sure solution
ERYFKRAD provided (as I'm sure you're actually wanting a game developed vs whatever the fuck Bloodlines 2 multi-million dollar dev clownshow was supposed to be) it's even more simple and you can do it all on your own:
Take a bunch of money saying you'll do a thing and then completely fail at it to the point you're unable to talk about it anymore, naturally drawing curiosity of those who are familiar enough with healthy game development - and who have dealt with "professional" poster problem children like David Allen in the same way - to know the signs when something is clearly fucked. It also helps if you're absolutely new to actual game development to have shipped nothing ever in the years of "development" and so you're effectively crowdfunding your education of learning the worst practices and having nobody guide you through learning better from them.
There's also the fact that there's enough nostalgia suckers around who will buy into anything with enough name-dropping despite the clear absence of cited previous work history around those Kickstarters, or even previous titles, and they don't like being reminded of this, every time. (Even after their big man of cargo cult of personality personally fucks them over in begathons while he fucks off to the far corners of the Earth. Hopefully he'll go back into space and keep going, preferably taking the last of his cult with him.)
Another bit of advice is present that you don't know that even you know what you want your game to be. When the "
movable objects demo" popped up to show how proud they were at engine basics and the "Fight in exciting REAL TIMES battles" (
) screenshots were using a different cut of the same angle, I knew we were in for a real treat each times. It symbolized how actual devoid of content this was if they couldn't even give a varied visual description, much less... holy shit, that description. So add "insultingly bad descriptions that would have been rejected from the back of a SNES box".
The landscape swaps in the demo added just a bit more.
It's also in contradiction to the Kickstarter itself:
This is a shift from many modern RPG's in which character progression and combat are very clearly the main focus. Don't get us wrong, we love those games too, but we want to focus on what made games like Ultima V, VI and VII so great.
Then why any mention of Diablow? Popular or not, it practically invented the click-and-receive loot ARPG for the design ethos the lead Corven dev just rubbished. And this dude is supposed to be doing a spiritual Ultima game all by himself with some art and sound by others and Lord Brexit looked over that shite intro writing and said "Yup, that's Ultima."? Dude, get more popcorn going. If he knew anything about the design of the games he's name-dropping then "Ultima VII combat" or "Baldur's Gate combat" would have worked far better for a supposed emphasis upon characters.
Put a lot of dev time into a demo bait. From the progress seen elsewhere, the time from the movable objects video to the demo was probably entirely spent on the demo. Anything from him since besides demo updates is a mystery, as the only shown things are backer portraits and Ultima 6 remixes.
Blatantly use someone else's IP, especially after having just accused someone else of ruining another game by doing the same thing. This will work well around notoriously-litigious corporations.
At some point when the money is obviously running dry, go communication dark. When pressed for details say it was a personal problem and you don't want to talk about it, even though problems with development would have to be disclosed at some point, versus going into the whole silent treatment from developers, and would actually garner forgiveness and understanding because there was good faith show of information.
It certainly worked for September 2021 to cover for otherwise vague details. Then hope nobody notices for many more months.
Claim substance where there is none and "involve" the community by asking for assets from them. "I like to have screenshots with my updates, but I don't feel comfortable showing off stuff that is too far off of what I want it to look like in the end. I don't want anyone to get a wrong idea or be disappointed because of something I know is by far not finished." And then after that promote even more legal liabilities on top of unlicensed remixes while never posting anything close to another screenshot ever again.
Your marketing needs to be contradictory as well.
Try first to save what happened with Lord Begathon's cult and be asked to leave, then go into
a period of loathing while calling out scam to then then DFE everything to suck up to Lord Behindhand to do the Exact. Same. Thing. It would be like Chris Roberts giving Derek Smart a hand with an in-game version of himself in LoD MMO or Alganon.
The funniest part?
The "thanks for the computer upgrade" update was the best details Corv ever gave for anything.
That,
and a European vacation per the last update, seem to be what people really bought here except for some new avatars at a premium price.
