Game News Queen's Wish 2: The Tormentor Released

[Joyvankek]

Ok, thanks. I think I got a picture now.
Guy basically hit the gold when people were starved for any good RPG, and was competent enough to create something these people enjoyed. Which pumped his ego and made every bad thing not his fault, and any critique of him and his games "the work of toxic ____".
He want to do as little work as he can while maximizing his profit, while using any tactics, appealing to any ideologies/groups/whatever and do any other questionable shit. As long as, in his opinion, it will generate more profit.

So I didn't lose anything of value by not playing the rest of his games/remakes.

 

[Zanzoken]

- This links to the fact that there isn't a single point where Vogel had any insight. If you read his blog for years you realized he's not an industry veteran, he's an industry survivor.

I agree with most of what you wrote, but I think there is something to learn from Vogel in terms of how he's managed to stay in business all these years.

He survived because he releases a new game every year. And I mean literally every year... he released his first game in 1995, and Queen's Wish 2 is his 27th title. Yes, some of those are "remakes"... but still, that is remarkably consistent.

The only way you can manage to release a new game every year is to be really good at defining scope and working efficiently. I think there's a big lesson here for indie RPG devs. Know exactly what you need to do to get the game you want, and recycle as much shit as you can get away with to speed up development. The fact that Vogel works in trilogies (or more) is also a huge part of why his release schedule works.

One area where I think he fucked up is he should've been steadily working to improve the production values of his games with each new series. I know he's "cheap" and doesn't want to pay for art, but he probably would've made a lot more money in the long run if his games had evolved past looking like 90s shovelware. I know he has his reasons for why he never made any more than marginal improvements to his game's aesthetics, but I think it was a case of being penny wise, pound foolish.

 

[Zeriel]

It's not about him being a skinflint, it's about him being an actual idiot. He admitted as much recently: he doesn't even understand what looks good. So he ends up paying as much money for trash art as he could have spent on much better art. There are games with budgets even smaller than his that have better art, so there's really no excuse there, except for the fact he sucks at anything but churning out his code.

 

[J1M]

I think Exile 3 is a masterpiece but I resent reading all of those paragraphs and I have no idea how the gameplay of Wish 2 is different from Wish 1.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Vogel is a better businessman than nearly any other person in gamedev right now.
Bioware could still be swimming in gold Scrooge McDuck style if they kept making the same type of games catering to their core, loyal audience. Vogel never once tried to appeal to a wider audience or alter who his games are made for.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Check the GOG review: lol... ha!

agent_michael
Games: 306 Reviews: 21
Might even be good too bad it's unusable
August 27, 2022
Won't properly display on a 4k Monitor with DPI scaling enabled. Just buggs out and only shows 1/150% size in the center of a black void.

And he's charging $9.99 for a manual and hint book AGAIN?!!??

For shame dude... for shame.

 

[Correct_Carlo]

It's not about him being a skinflint, it's about him being an actual idiot. He admitted as much recently: he doesn't even understand what looks good. So he ends up paying as much money for trash art as he could have spent on much better art. There are games with budgets even smaller than his that have better art, so there's really no excuse there, except for the fact he sucks at anything but churning out his code.

Yes, this is true. His new games actually look quite good in terms of the graphics themselves. It's the art design that's utter shit, yet he frequently talks about how good he thinks it looks. He has no artistic taste.

 

[Correct_Carlo]

Vogel is a better businessman than nearly any other person in gamedev right now.
Bioware could still be swimming in gold Scrooge McDuck style if they kept making the same type of games catering to their core, loyal audience. Vogel never once tried to appeal to a wider audience or alter who his games are made for.

Yeah. Codex loves to shit on him, but it's amazing to me what he's created 100% on his own. The Geneforge series is probably my second favorite RPG series ever. EVER. They were made on a shoe string budget, but I somehow like them way better than shit like Pillars of Eternity or Baldur's Gate or etc that were made with a whole team of writers and way more money. I agree with others who said that even Vogel doesn't seem to realize why the Geneforges are so good, so they may be good inspite of himself, and he'll likely never replicate that level of quality again.

However, while his other games may be somewhat generic, I nonetheless play every single one because they just scratch an itch that no other games being made right now scratch. I know exactly what I'm going to get when I play a new Spiderweb game, but that's precisely why I play every single one. It's like slipping on an old, comfortable, shoe.

Queen's Wish is no exception. In scope, it reminded me most of Nethergate, and it played mostly like the Avernums in terms of combat. There were enough new things to add some spice to the usual meat and potatoes, but not so much that it becomes nachos or curry. I don't want nachos and curry from Vogel, I want fucking meat and potatoes, and he does meat and potatoes well.

I almost never play Vogel's games on release anymore, but I always play them eventually. It's become a tradition for me that usually every May I'll play whatever he released the previous Fall, and it's always time well spent.

 

[Bohrain]

It's not about him being a skinflint, it's about him being an actual idiot. He admitted as much recently: he doesn't even understand what looks good. So he ends up paying as much money for trash art as he could have spent on much better art. There are games with budgets even smaller than his that have better art, so there's really no excuse there, except for the fact he sucks at anything but churning out his code.

How many of those have outsourced art though? Bit of a different case than doing something with a programmer and artist duo.

 

[Roguey]

It's not about him being a skinflint, it's about him being an actual idiot. He admitted as much recently: he doesn't even understand what looks good. So he ends up paying as much money for trash art as he could have spent on much better art. There are games with budgets even smaller than his that have better art, so there's really no excuse there, except for the fact he sucks at anything but churning out his code.

The tragedy of Vogel is that he could have paid supervoid in potatoes to deliver art with far better quality than what he usually does after void went through the trouble of enhancing his graphics for free: https://www.moddb.com/mods/geneforge-1-graphics-enhancement https://www.moddb.com/mods/geneforge-2-graphics-enhancement https://spiderwebforums.ipbhost.com/topic/21737-geneforge-graphics-enhancement/

 

[luj1]

Vogel will never surpass Escape from the Pit

 

[Modron]

But he already did with Ruined World.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

But he already did with Ruined World.

 

[Ruslan]

I wish he had chosen to focus entirely on remaking his older games instead of wasting time on increasingly simple new IPs with increasingly bizarre and unrealistic world maps. I guess it's better to be too ambitious rather than not ambitious enough, but the QW games look a lot worse than the newer Avernums/Avadon/G1M and the new fort mechanics are underdeveloped and add surprisingly little despite being the main new feature that he wanted to show off.

I liked the fact that you could oppress women while brofisting fantasy Muslims, but other than that, QW2 was a real struggle to finish. In his defence, Jeff does a good job of making you commit to a course of action and leaves little room for pussyfooting around trying to please everyone. Some seethers on the forums have discovered that if you try to placate both opposing factions, things go to shit and you get a terrible ending.

Nethergate: Resurrection remake when

 

[HiddenX]

New Jeff Vogel Interview at RPGWatch.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

New Jeff Vogel Interview at RPGWatch.

RPGWatch: You mentioned during the development of Queens Wish that the trilogy would probably be your last? Has that opinion changed?


Jeff Vogel: Not really. I am well into middle-age. I don't have that many working years yet. There are a lot of remasters I want to do. At some point, almost every creator has to say, "I have said what I wanted to. I'm going to close out my career touring and playing the old hits."

 

[Zed]

New Jeff Vogel Interview at RPGWatch.

RPGWatch: You mentioned during the development of Queens Wish that the trilogy would probably be your last? Has that opinion changed?


Jeff Vogel: Not really. I am well into middle-age. I don't have that many working years yet. There are a lot of remasters I want to do. At some point, almost every creator has to say, "I have said what I wanted to. I'm going to close out my career touring and playing the old hits."

That's the worst take on working late in a career (not that "well into middle-age" should be considered "late" for a person working with computer software) that I've ever heard. It's like he's a big fan of some old dinosaur rock band who lost their song writer in the 80s so they only tour with old hits; and that's how he measures success or something.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Does Cleve mock Vogel?

 

[Mortmal]

New Jeff Vogel Interview at RPGWatch.

RPGWatch: You mentioned during the development of Queens Wish that the trilogy would probably be your last? Has that opinion changed?


Jeff Vogel: Not really. I am well into middle-age. I don't have that many working years yet. There are a lot of remasters I want to do. At some point, almost every creator has to say, "I have said what I wanted to. I'm going to close out my career touring and playing the old hits."

That's the worst take on working late in a career (not that "well into middle-age" should be considered "late" for a person working with computer software) that I've ever heard. It's like he's a big fan of some old dinosaur rock band who lost their song writer in the 80s so they only tour with old hits; and that's how he measures success or something.

Hope for him it works, but i have absolutely no interest into remasters.

 

[newtmonkey]

He's only 52! How does he not have many working years left? It's not like he's a professional wrestler or deep sea fisherman.

 

[Alienman]

Yeah, when he speaks it's like he is 70 or something. 52, pffft. Is he going to be retired for 40 years?

 

[JarlFrank]

It's not about him being a skinflint, it's about him being an actual idiot. He admitted as much recently: he doesn't even understand what looks good. So he ends up paying as much money for trash art as he could have spent on much better art. There are games with budgets even smaller than his that have better art, so there's really no excuse there, except for the fact he sucks at anything but churning out his code.

Jeff Vogel is artistically illiterate.

I am willing to bet 100€ on the statement that he probably never looked at a painting for fun ever in his life. He just doesn't get it. Art and composition are not things his brain can understand. It would not even occur to him to go to an art gallery and look at renaissance masterpieces just to enjoy their beauty. To him, that concept is as foreign as reading Chinese is to people who don't speak it.

To him, "good graphics" is current year AAA production values because he only looks at things from a technical perspective. So unless it's high poly 3D with lots of effects, it's not "high quality". He does not understand the difference between good and bad isometric 2D graphics. All isometric 2D graphics are the same to him, because he only understands them from a technical perspective. And yes, technically there is little difference between something like Shadowrun Returns and his games. Say what you want about SR:R, but its graphics were pretty atmospheric, and not much more sophisticated than his own from a technical perspective. But his just look like trash because he doesn't understand colors and composition.

When he hears people say "Please improve your graphics", he doesn't think about something like Shadowrun Returns which has a technologically similar level but better art direction, he thinks of expensive high poly 3D graphics because to his mind, the technology behind it is all that matters.

 

[Sardine Dev Poster]

You know the obvious answer we're missing is probably that this is way of saying "Queen's Wish is about family for a reason, and it's because that's all I care about, now."

Having kids does change things. Why, if he were the chad turbovirgin basement dwellers you guys are, he might be here upping the ante in the art department. You're all quite the bad influence on him, so buy his game won't you?! SmugMLPreactionpicture.png

 

[Zeriel]

You know the obvious answer we're missing is probably that this is way of saying "Queen's Wish is about family for a reason, and it's because that's all I care about, now."

Having kids does change things. Why, if he were the chad turbovirgin basement dwellers you guys are, he might be here upping the ante in the art department. You're all quite the bad influence on him, so buy his game won't you?! SmugMLPreactionpicture.png

He's had his kid(s?) since early Exile days. The empress in 3 was named after her afair, or was it some other NPC? Something along those lines.

 

[Alex]

All I played from him was Geneforge 1 remastered.
So I don't really cared about that dev before.
Could you give me TL;DR on what happened here?
Did dev became a self-hating neo-marxist and if so, then why?

You can freely ignore the usual suspects crying /pol/ buzzwords on the thread: culture warriors are bothersome and boring. (snip...)

Said the openly commie poster...