Interview Matt Chat 283: David Shelley and Laura Bowen on the fall of SSI and going to Kickstarter

[Infinitron]

Tags: David Shelley; Gold Box; Laura Bowen; Matt Barton; Seven Dragon Saga; Strategic Simulations, Inc.; Tactical Simulations Interactive

Matt Barton uploaded the third and final episode of his interview with SSI veterans David Shelley and Laura Bowen last night. After a bit more Gold Box fanboying, Matt manages to elicit some interesting information from them in this part. After talking a bit about the Gold Box era, Dave Shelley describes the collapse of SSI as an independent entity due to the gradually declining sales of the Gold Box games (which according to him was tied to the replacement of the C64 by the IBM PC as the dominant personal computing platform), mismanagement of the Dark Sun project which was given insufficient development time, and corporate overextension which included a failed attempt to break into console game development on the Nintendo and the creation of an entire parallel development team for a sci-fi RPG that was eventually cancelled. There's also an amusing little anecdote from Laura Bowen about a particular female character she was asked to illustrate in one of the Buck Rogers games, which brings to mind certain contemporary developments in the gaming world. I guess some things don't really change.

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After talking about SSI, Dave returns to the topic of Seven Dragon Saga, and in particular, its Kickstarter campaign. Keep in mind that this interview was recorded back in September of last year. It turns out they were planning to do the Kickstarter shortly afterwards, in early October. I wonder what made them change their minds, and what they've been doing since then. Well, not enough, that's for sure.

 

[LeStryfe79]

Dude, go back and read those old posts from September in the thread. It totally sounds like they're ready to reveal a kickstarter. Then, they disappeared for a couple months and came back with DA:I reviews. That was when I lost my shit.

 

[Bubbles]

It sounds like DA:I happened. They thought "wow, this is better than what we were planning to do", then spent the next few months adjusting their project. This sort of "new-feature-must-copy" syndrome happens all the time in the industry.

 

[Dorateen]

Maybe... but if that's the case, if they were going to pander to the DAI crowd, they would have dropped full party creation and opted for pause and play, instead of turn-based combat. But they didn't do that.

 

[rezaf]

Rather sad interview when looking at this with the imminent kickstarter failure in mind.
I love it when those industry veterans talk about the olden days, but ... dreaming about reaping in millions of dollars on their good name alone (a good name that's so old, it's passport would have expired years ago) is more than a bit delusional.