Game News Dead State Kickstarter Update #25: Combat Video Released

[Burning Bridges]

The noise system really does seem to work nicely

Well, it seems to work. But one small thing I noticed is that he never shut the fucking doors behind him ..

 

[tuluse]

It's alive! Now use this burst of publicity to hook more people with more frequent public updates instead of the previous campaign of silence...

Uhm, I watched the video muted because I'm in the office, so I possibly missed the explanation: do melee hits risk infection, or how does that part of the game work? It's not a proper zombie game if you don't have to preemptively soak your infected buddy in gasoline and make sure not much is left to rise...

The camera controls are already giving me a headache, but what can you do.

They said they hadn't implemented special attacks like bites yet for zombies.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I'm not sure SR has enough budget to run into 2014. Their new stated release date (June 2013) seems plausible to me.

They will get a lot of extra $ from sales after the game is finished, so when the kickstarter money is used up, they can go on for some time more without risk. Compared to conventional funding where the entire budget is a problem, they are in quite a comfortable situation, having the bulk of their budget up front, without any risk.

 

[Mortmal]

i am not glad to see progress, i am glad to see it exists at all... I almost forgot about this game. I really like what i see, but according the pace of updates i wont be surprised at a 2014 release date as well. The starting area its well done, theres lot of attention to details but how many of those areas are left to do ? Plus the pathing, all the zombies attack, recording new zombie sounds to replace annie orgasms . Oh and closing the doors too should matter , like in xcom especially when noise is so important.

 

[Infinitron]

They will get a lot of extra $ from sales after the game is finished, so when the kickstarter money is used up, they can go on for some time more without risk.

Oh god remind me never to work for a business managed by you

 

[Burning Bridges]

Not very convincing.

Or isn't it true that return comes from sales? Once they have SR out, they can sell it, produce a sequel / dlc etc, possibly raise another 1-2 million from another kickstarter, theoretically they are set for many years.
In fact they have to make sure everyone is happy with the game, for the only way they can ruin it now would be to rush out a game that sucks, which would kill all future possibilites.

They are in quite a comfortable situation with SR being mostly developed without money of their own.

 

[Infinitron]

Not very convincing.

Or isn't it true that return comes from sales? Once they have SR out, they can sell it, produce a sequel / dlc etc, possibly raise another 1-2 million from another kickstarter, theoretically they are set for many years.
In fact they have to make sure everyone is happy with the game, for the only way they can ruin it now would be to rush out a game that sucks, which would kill all future possibilites.

They are in quite a comfortable situation with SR being mostly developed without money of their own.

Funny then how people like Brian Fargo think the idea of taking a loan to keep on working on a game after the Kickstarter money has run out is absolutely horrible. They must be amateurs not to believe in the guaranteed success of a completely new and untested game publishing methodology.

 

[Zeriel]

"Let's just assume the best possible thing will happen" isn't a particularly uncommon assumption in business, but it almost always leads to disaster, yeah.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Seriously I don't get that argument. Legend of Grimrock sold over 600.000 copies, Amnesia over a million. WL2 and SR have the potential to sell several times that much.

Where is the risk when you need two, not one year(s) to make a great game, and already secured the bulk of the funds from kickstarter? Always presuming that the game in question will not suck, in which case nothing would make a difference, and their reputation would be seriously damaged.

By the way I never said that they will take until Dec 2014, I just jokingly said they won't take longer than that. Some time in 2014 is realistic.

 

[hiver]

Looks way better then i thought it would. In terms of visuals and gameplay. Loads of great options and great ideas.

Im quite surprised there wasnt any insane outcry circlejerk because of that scene of running right next to a zombie who didnt initiate combat, but i guess that everyone figured out what WiP means in this sense?

 

[Infinitron]

Maybe Brother None can tell us more about how inXile at least feels about this issue.

(It makes me sense to me because I'm a risk averse kind of guy, but CEOs often aren't that type of person.)

 

[Burning Bridges]

Let's not forget that Fargo has almost 3 million from kickstarter, plus more money from preorders (the budget HBS received is in fact a lot smaller). I think he's a long way from running out of money. And he's a businessman, so he will certainly have a plan if development takes some months longer than in the best case scenario.

But none of them will postpone their release date too far now, it's always easier to say it's coming in ca 6 months, and then postpone it one or two times for another 5 months. That's how Xenonauts is working for years now, and no one seems to care.

 

[Infinitron]

Does the Xenonauts team work for money and have offices?

 

[toro]

Does the Xenonauts team work for money and have offices?

No. They work in a sweatshop where they receive a regular beating and an occasional bowl of rice.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/about/

Goldhawk Interactive is an innovative independent video game development studio based in Hackney, London. Founded in 2009, it is currently working on its maiden title – the PC-only strategy game Xenonauts.

Specialising in low-cost game development, Goldhawk uses digital distribution and remote working to produce commercial quality work on indie budgets. The decentralised team are spread across the world and number anywhere between one and two dozen at any time, although there is a group of eight or nine developers who form the core of the team and between them have contributed the majority of the work delivered so far.

This low-cost development model allows Goldhawk to bypass publishers and fund development entirely through community channels. We operate an alpha-funding model for our games, allowing users to pre-order the game and recieve the latest development build to test and play themselves. We read our forums religiously and are well known for our strong community engagement, working with the pre-order community to fix bugs and polish the experience into the fun, stable experience that we all want from the game.

So basically they're like ITS. Or at least they were until the Kickstarter.

 

[Burning Bridges]

The Xenonauts guys are probably receiving low wages, and only since they got some money from KS. Discussing Goldhawk will not get us very far, it was just an example how things can drag on.


As to inXile and HBS I think it's a good question, actually. They will have expenses to pay, and I don't know how much they pay, but it cannot be exorbitant. Normally they should have an agreement that the real money is going to come only when the game is finished. If Fargo had offered you a job on that terms, most people would probably not hesitate.

 

[Excidium]

Fog of war is a shit way of simulating los. Do like what I already see implemented in the demo video with buildings and general area being visible but items and npc's not. I'd hate for the boring 'run over the entire map to get it out of the grey fog of nothing' shit to return.

Seriously, anyone who has played BG or TOEE should know better than to want that to return.

Fog of war is retarded (and ruins the game with my OCD) but not being able to see enemies the characters can't see should extend to the enviroment, in an unknown place the vision should be limited by corners and shit to make scouting important. Circling a building looking for a backdoor would certainly be more fun than just moving the camera around. Or running from combat and not knowing if it's a dead-end around this corner. Or if you take an NPC that already knows the area then parts of the enviroment would be revealed depending on his familiarity...

 

[Quigs]

I'm kind of done with the whole Zombie thing, I don't know if it's me getting older or the genre getting stale, but... yeah.

That said, I'm still going to pick this game up. Survival games appeal to me. I worry that the lack of advancement from combat will make the gameplay experience more negative then it needs to be. You're risking the lives of your characters getting into combat anyway, and with an assumed lack of meaningful loot coming from zombies, I fear the game is going to railroad you into playing sneaky lockpick guys or bust. Fun for a bit, but with limited replay value.

 

[Brother None]

Awesome combat demo. Lovin' it.

Maybe Brother None can tell us more about how inXile at least feels about this issue.

What issue? If inXile should take out loans in expectancy of future profits? We probably wouldn't work that way even if the Kickstarter sales market was a known estimable market, and it's not, there's really no way of telling how well Wasteland 2 will sell, so that would be a somewhat immoral method of operating (and please don't cite sales numbers from a game that went into the Humble Bundle. I'd love to know their revenue, but that number is completely meaningless). What's more, inXile does not have a running income that can cover its operating costs fully for any extended period of time, and no bank is going to borrow to a company with that kind of operating sheet unless it is for extremely unfavorable terms. That's pretty basic...

As a business, of course there are contingency plans for delays. I assume the same is the case for PE or SR. But you can't magic up money. The delays have to come either from within the budget (tricky) or from running income (we can do that, but I don't know if Obsidian or Hare Brained can). Delays coming from within the budget as Burning Bridges implies is not impossible if you're talking about weeks or maybe two months, but if you really think $1.5million will comfortably cover another year of development for a game that was fully planned and budgeted, then you really just don't understand how budgeting works. Sure they could've planned for that timeframe ahead of time, but then development and staff would have had to be scaled for that, and as far as we know they weren't, which means there simply isn't a budget to push back the game that far. The money does not exist.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I must say I'm a little bit surprised. It's no problem for me, for it can only mean the games will be finished soon-ish, but according to that kickstarters fall into into two different categories.

 

[JarlFrank]

I'm kind of done with the whole Zombie thing, I don't know if it's me getting older or the genre getting stale, but... yeah.

The genre has never been anything but stale.

 

[Gozma]

This is actually kind of uninformative about whether I'll dig the game or not, because it's really gonna hinge on how well the overgame is integrated with the looting/fighting stuff. It has the potential to have an X-Com vibe where you are always worrying about the overgame when you are in the tactical game and always worrying about the tactical game when you are in the overgame.

 

[MapMan]

ITZ COMING

 

[some guy]

This one's coming along pretty nicely! Can't wait for them to fix a pre-order option so I can part with my money as soon as possible! Couldn't spare to during the Kickstarter phase.

 

[Kirtai]

What's more, inXile does not have a running income that can cover its operating costs fully for any extended period of time

I'm curious, do inXile see themselves as building up a bigger running income by building up a stable of games that sell modestly well for long periods? (As opposed to the huge initial sales + steep dropoff method of the big publishers)