KickStarter Dead State: Reanimated

[ST'Ranger]

Talking about piracy doesn't change the past nor the future. The fact is that people that will buy your game will buy it, and people that won't will not. Better to spend energies interacting positively with your customers rather than passive-aggressively blaming them for your emotional state. Also, it helps if you don't call all your customers scumbags on Twitter - that's actually one of the reasons I haven't taken the plunge yet.

 

[Goat Vomit]

Either that or Depression Quest 2 with Denuvo DRM included and 10/10 GOTY reviews from all Gawker Media rags.

They used to work at Obsidian after all... It would make a weird kind of sense, sort of.

 

[Elhoim]

So their next game will be a free2pay online mobile game made in under a week if I read this correctly?

Either that or Depression Quest 2 with Denuvo DRM included and 10/10 GOTY reviews from all Gawker Media rags.

Yet another developer to completely ignore from now on.

Hyperbole much?

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

"We've seen some pretty egregious pirating going on, not just torrents, but with sites that look like legitimate storefronts profiting off the game."

Yep, you gotta watch out for those floppy sellers.

 

[Nihiliste]

IDK guys that seems like a pretty benign post.

 

[Mastermind]

The issue with so many people that pirate is that they swear they'll buy the game if they like it, then they finish the game and never buy it or they wait until they can pick it up for less than $5. From a business standpoint, the money we make from sales right now determines what kind of projects we can make next. I will have to sit down with sales figures at some point in the future and figure out what we have made, not what we might make, and plan a game budget around it. We're going to be releasing a demo at some point, but right now we're focusing on bugfixes and other critical issues.

We've seen some pretty egregious pirating going on, not just torrents, but with sites that look like legitimate storefronts profiting off the game. For a small developer, we don't have the means to shut them all down. The amount of piracy has made it very hard to justify doing another RPG, single-player game, or game that doesn't require some kind of online authentication. Dead State took ~3 years of full-time development and any RPG we made next would need to have an even bigger team and at least 2+ years of funding. I realize that piracy doesn't necessarily translate into lost sales (and it didn't in your case), but it certainly isn't helping our morale to see people playing a game we spent years, weekends, long nights of our life making and getting no return on that. I don't want to demonize anyone who has pirated games, and I'm glad that some sales have occurred as a result, but it's not exactly an action without consequences and it does directly affect the kinds of games we can make in the future.

Maybe you should've told your hysterical sjw wife to STFU. She pretty much guaranteed I'll never give you a single cent (didn't pirate it, will probably give the demo a spin when it comes out).

 

[Davaris]

Games and politics mix like ice cream and poo. You alienate the majority of your audience.

If they want to test if their game is a seller or not, they can put some of the data behind a server. I'm betting it won't make any difference to sales.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

So the developers of a mediocre game are going to take their ball and go home?

Nothing of value was lost. Assume that your game is going to be pirated, and make a good enough game that it will sell well anyway. They raised over 330,000 bucks on kickstarter, and another bunch of bucks from EA before they even had a game, and they are going to fucking bitch about piracy?

Fuck them.

 

[Angthoron]

Yeah yeah you're a small studio etc, still, attempting to moralize people over piracy isn't gonna win you any favors.

In the strange days when That War of Mine devs say it's okay to pirate their game and sell pretty damn well (and get good media attention) all over the place, going and blaming piracy is, well, a very weak option to say the least. Don't think I've seen WL2 and D: OS devs complaining about piracy either, even though in the grand scope of things, they're likely "losing" more money than DoubleBear. What is it with DoubleStudios? First, DoubleFine, then, DoubleBear.

It's not only that the zombie genre is oversaturated, it's not only that the game looks fairly "generic" from the first store glance, but it's also, yep, the involvement in the whole online debacle around the various -isms. Want more customers? Simply don't get involved - especially if you can't see both sides of the issue. But sure, if you want to lose money from the segment that was interested in your KS to begin with, sure, go ahead, go into political activism and try to shame people, that'll work. I took part in KS, and I don't regret it either, but I've still not touched the release, largely thanks to the aftertaste of Annie's attempts at politics. If she can't keep her ideology out of the 140 symbol chatbox, what are the odds that I'll find gospels on the topic in the game? Maybe there's zero, but hey, aftertaste!

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

I almost want to pirate it out of spite. Don't even want to play the thing, but just downloading it would be worth it just to contribute to the butthurt.

 

[Norfleet]

Talking about piracy doesn't change the past nor the future. The fact is that people that will buy your game will buy it, and people that won't will not. Better to spend energies interacting positively with your customers rather than passive-aggressively blaming them for your emotional state. Also, it helps if you don't call all your customers scumbags on Twitter - that's actually one of the reasons I haven't taken the plunge yet.

There's also the fact that people playing your game at all is better than people not playing your game. You have 10000 people paying for your game and 100000 people playing it, or you can have 10000 people playing it, period. I know I, for one, would rather have more people playing my game, whether they pay or not, since the more people who play, the more of them I can subject to my subliminable messages.

Spoiler

WORSHIP SATAN! KILL YOUR PARENTS!

 

[RK47]

It's pirates fault my game is selling badly!

 

[GloomFrost]

Hahaha they release a game that plays like an alpha early access, borderline unplayable because of bugs and they DARE to complain about piracy??? Btw I did buy the game but I wish I had not. Respect your customers and maybe they will respect you.
Oh and good luck with your next kickstarter project ahahahaha

 

[Perkel]

Cut them some slack people they released game and it gone from top10 chart faster than the road runner. It is obvious there is some butthurt going on.

Also i disagree with many people here about mitsoda wife. She should be free to state what ever she wants. Just don't mix politics into your work because that will only backfire.

Also people who read twitter to be offended are fags and should be lie in mass graves along cat photos.

To the devs:

internet and dev 101:

RULE 1:

Don't make condescending comments about piracy because :

a) it won't give you even one copy sold. No one will buy a game because you said "pirates are bad m'kay ?"
b) you can't stop it
c) you can't take it down, even if you are EA size
d) people who download game torrents mostly don't play them. So if your game is downloaded 1mln times usually it means only like 10k people will actually play it. I know personally people who download every new game they can they switch it on for 5 minutes or not and they delete it.
e) torrents for most of people now are basically demo versions. If they have bandwidth to download game in few hours they will test it first if this will even run on their PC

What you should do:

a) go into pirate threads/sites/reddit whatever and simply say:
"Thanks for enjoying my game if you like it please buy it" . It won't give anyone idea that you support piracy but it will give you actual money because people will think you are cool and some of them will actually buy game.
b) release different version of torrent with for example zombies stylized as pirates or characters only saying HARR HARR after 5 day. People will be first mad then amazed and there is short way to buying game (especially at lower pricepoint) and it is good way to create publicity as gaming sites will probably do piece on that which means for you additional sales.
c) account that the more people played your game the more people will talk about it the more people will buy your game and in case of Dead State 2 # of people who played DS1 is critical. This is the real value of piracy. People who pirate your game and play it, talk about your game, create mods, vids and so on. And they have impact on your sales.
d) focus on your community. Talk with people if they have problems with game, talk about your developement, incoming changes, post-mortem pieces and other stuff that will show people that Double Bear is actually team made out of people. If people will see you are people who create games then they will fallow you. They will become your fans and fanbase currently is #1 thing you should have in mind because they are the ones that will make threads about your game, they will make other people buy your game, they will put Dead State in their top lists, they will create shitty youtube vids, they will stream your game via twitch.

RULE 2:

Don't make yourself a echobox. If people don't like something then first try them to see your point why something is this way or that way. This way you will save yourself ton of work and people will talk with other people about what you said and make them accept it (if it is logical ofc)
This will save your time to focus on actual problems that hurts your game rather than doing everything to make everyone happy.

RULE 3:

Don't say: "used games are bad", "always online is good thing", " DRM is a good thing "

RULE 4:

Update your game regularly with awesome stuff (if you can). This doesn't mean : new skin pack dlc or new paint color. This means for example: "now you can have a chance to find "the chosen one" when traveling map.

SPECIAL RULE 5:

If you are creating an RPG and you have experience notch on your belt then you should already know that RPGs have fucking long legs. Especially CRPGs. Just because your game isn't in top10 for a week it doesn't mean it will sell like shit over longer period of time. So choose your actions wisely and nurture your fanbase.


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If you do above then you have option that only recently gone boom. Crowdfunding. It means even if your game failed to sell a lot you can turn to crowdfunding and make another game with cost payed upfront. You can do it as long as you achieve what you promised and build your fanbase without pissing them off.

So Double Bear. If your game sells not so hot then don't complain and prepare new kickstarter. You did your ks for DS before double fine craze and now it is safe to say it will give you a lot more than you achieved earlier. Just promise you will still patch DS and set your goal realistically so that you won't need to scrape for sheckels by end of development.

 

[Angthoron]

All this aside, can someone spoil me the reason why there's an abortion being performed in the first place? Is the babby a zombie? What's the context? The reason? I mean yeah, here you are, in a post-apoc world where (probably) handfuls of people remain on your entire continent, and the first thing you come up with is an abortion? What's even going on?

 

[Volrath]

Should have stayed vapourware.

I'll have to quote myself.

 

[oscar]

Not a big point at all but what's up with the portraits? I sure as hell hope you guys didn't pay much for them

- All the races have the same noses, eyes and features which means that everyone looks mixed race or just bizarre. The 'Asian' (unless they were meant to be Caucasians with brown eyes, black hair and yellowish skin, I couldn't really tell) characters have European eyes, everyone has a really broad and bulbous nose (what looks fucking weird on the Caucasian portraits), only the African characters look accurate
- Why do a good 50% of the portraits have glasses? A shame as they're the better drawn ones generally. Couldn't you simply have thrown spectacles on/off as an accessory and given a wider range?
- What's with the shitty tattoos? I finally found a half-way normal dude and he's got some gay ass video game power symbol tattoo
- Why do all the males look so androgynous? As one steam user put it they look like they're halfway through sex re-assignment surgery
- The above is not helped by the weird and a bit pathetic facial expression they all have. Like a sad puppy that's just been kicked or something

It's also strange as the NPC portraits are generally fine. Did you just lump all the rejected ones and out-takes on the player?

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

All this aside, can someone spoil me the reason why there's an abortion being performed in the first place? Is the babby a zombie? What's the context? The reason? I mean yeah, here you are, in a post-apoc world where (probably) handfuls of people remain on your entire continent, and the first thing you come up with is an abortion? What's even going on?

Spoiler

It's some chick and her boyfriend. She was leery about having a kid before the zombie apocalypse, and then after the zombie apocalypse she says she's sure she doesn't want a baby. She says BY GOD I'M GETTING THIS BABY OUT OF ME BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY ALSO I KNOW OF A SUPER SEKRIT ABORTION CLINIC AND KNOW WHAT TO DO SO EVEN WITH NO MEDICAL SKILL IT'LL BE FINE and then you either get the shit she wants and abort it which pisses the boyfriend off, or she takes a bunch of pills and shits it out and then she and the boyfriend both hate you and destroy the shelter with their bad vibes. Not even really worth spoiler tagging but what the hell. Not sure if you actually CAN talk her in to keeping it or not, I half-assed savescummed that quest a bit just because I was curious with what they would and wouldn't let you do (Like not being able to tell the boyfriend). Didn't suddenly max negotiation though so maybe if your talkies skill is high enough you can talk her out of it. And maybe since it's Dead State you're supposed to be able to tell the boyfriend but my scripts were bugged. Who knows? I'm even a baby strangling librul when it comes to abortion but the seeming lack of options in that quest seemed weird. Sorta wish I left a save there so I could've messed with the quest more but oh well, such is life.

And unrelated to all that, do have to agree with Oscar on the portraits. The PC portraits are all pretty awful while the NPC portraits are fine. Definitely not a huge issue but it is sort of weird.

 

[MrBuzzKill]

This game seems to have bad reviews on Steam, so I'm on the fence about buying it. Is it interesting to play?

 

[Cassidy]

Wait for the first demo release and try the demo before deciding whether to play it or not. By then the worst bugs will probably be fixed. Probably.

If Age of Decadence is finally released by then, you should definitively buy it instead of this.

 

[Zed]

So piracy affects the kind of games they can to do in the future. I would like to know what game they would like to make?

I did back the game on KS, but I haven't played it. It's not that I've been turned off the game or anything -- just a lack of time and I've got so many other games to play.

SJWife was really annoying for a while. She went all Brenda Romero. She's not doing Double Bear many favors among the bitter old-school conservationist crowd, which is a crowd they dearly need I think. But again I don't know what they want to do in the future -- maybe it's something not at all appealing to the crowd that SJWife is putting a distance between.

 

[Perkel]

This game seems to have bad reviews on Steam, so I'm on the fence about buying it. Is it interesting to play?

from what i played it is great rpg.

 

[Roguey]

:D

IMO indie devs can and should do whatever they want. Be as grognard/jouisseur or as conservative/liberal as you want to be, but to quote the great Josh Sawyer, don't expect anyone to pay or respect you for it.

Yup and it cuts both ways. I remember Rougey refusing to pay for Knights of the Chalice because of the creator's libertarian views (though at least those didn't influence his games in any discernible manner).

Whoa now, I bought Chalice Knights.

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It's his future games I said I wouldn't buy, and that's a very easy statement to make considering he's likely never going to release anything else, and he's still using OGL 3.5 for which I now have very little tolerance.

 

[Angthoron]

All this aside, can someone spoil me the reason why there's an abortion being performed in the first place? Is the babby a zombie? What's the context? The reason? I mean yeah, here you are, in a post-apoc world where (probably) handfuls of people remain on your entire continent, and the first thing you come up with is an abortion? What's even going on?

Spoiler

It's some chick and her boyfriend. She was leery about having a kid before the zombie apocalypse, and then after the zombie apocalypse she says she's sure she doesn't want a baby. She says BY GOD I'M GETTING THIS BABY OUT OF ME BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY ALSO I KNOW OF A SUPER SEKRIT ABORTION CLINIC AND KNOW WHAT TO DO SO EVEN WITH NO MEDICAL SKILL IT'LL BE FINE and then you either get the shit she wants and abort it which pisses the boyfriend off, or she takes a bunch of pills and shits it out and then she and the boyfriend both hate you and destroy the shelter with their bad vibes. Not even really worth spoiler tagging but what the hell. Not sure if you actually CAN talk her in to keeping it or not, I half-assed savescummed that quest a bit just because I was curious with what they would and wouldn't let you do (Like not being able to tell the boyfriend). Didn't suddenly max negotiation though so maybe if your talkies skill is high enough you can talk her out of it. And maybe since it's Dead State you're supposed to be able to tell the boyfriend but my scripts were bugged. Who knows? I'm even a baby strangling librul when it comes to abortion but the seeming lack of options in that quest seemed weird. Sorta wish I left a save there so I could've messed with the quest more but oh well, such is life.

And unrelated to all that, do have to agree with Oscar on the portraits. The PC portraits are all pretty awful while the NPC portraits are fine. Definitely not a huge issue but it is sort of weird.

Thanks. That does sound like poor design. I mean, sure, on one side I get it, "What kind of a world will my baby grow up in?!". On the other hand though, well, you got a society to rebuild and you kinda have an obligation to mankind now, the shelter bigwigs should at least be able to have some say in it. In fact, it could be a pretty interesting morality debate with different characters having different views, then being able to, say, cite some of those views to sway the couple one way or the other.

Too bad piracy killed off the chance for that, I guess.

 

[Helton]

Asking a favor from the Codex: Guyz mor moniez plox n no criticism yeh =D