Codex Interview RPG Codex Retrospective Interview: Guido Henkel on Realms of Arkania

[General Maxson]

I admire that despite being one of the old dogs, he sounds completely in touch and up to date with times and grounded in reality, regarding both past and the present.

And I bet the majority of the hipster faggots who donated to PE won't spend a dime for this. And it's one of the leads behind Realms of fucking Arkania we are talking about. Fuck you, Codex.

I will donate to this baby, even if I starve to death and the project fails. But there is truth to what you say unfortunately. Not only concerning the Codex, but whole "kickstarter crpg community".

 

[Cosmo]

I hope he can count on his pals at Obsidian to donate and give him a little publicity, but even then, will it be enough ?

 

[crafthack]

if it's presented well there's no reason that it would fail, now that I think about it the only ks video games that failed or are going to started off only presenting a vague concept, with no specifics on how the game would play, it's so simple yet so many ks projects didn't do this. Mr Henkel should be really specific and confident in his game design, I mean how can people pay for a game if they don't at the least have a decent idea how it will play?

 

[Mackerel]

Foraging for food and water was one thing, but things like treating wounds to prevent tetanus, wearing warm clothing and using sleeping bags in cold conditions to avoid contracting colds/frostbite, or actually being able to use the rope ladders and pitons in the mountains really blew me away at the time. One of my favorite RPGs for sure.

XP penalty for saving was negligible, it was like 50 xp for an outside save (temple saving was free) which was the minimum xp awarded for a fight.

Yes, in the English version.
In the German version all XP rewards were divided by 50 compared to the English ones.
So the minimum XP for a fight was 1.

Saving cost 50. It was a big deal. A huge deal.

They multiplied AP by 50 and called it XP to not confuse people unfamiliar with the German PnP version, it's still just 1 AP to save outside temples in the German version.

 

[made]

I don't recall what the exact cost was in the Amiga version, but I do remember that it was trivial. The bigger problem was spreading AP such that only one char ever leveled up at a time, so you could reload and not waste too much time when the RNG screwed you over.

 

[Jasede]

It was enough to make you reconsider.

 

[Dorateen]

Realms of Arkania party:

Dwarf
Hunter
Ice Elf
Rogue
Magician
Druid

Took our party from Blade of Destiny, straight through to Shadows over Riva. The tradition of importing a party of characters between titles is something you don't see anymore.

I really want to re-create our party, or a proximation of it, in this type of project. Just sayin'.

 

[Gurkog]

9. If you had to guess, what would be the main reason why we aren't seeing games like Star Trail anymore?

These were niche products. It is easy to glorify these games in retrospect with nostalgic glasses on, but the fact of the matter is that compared to many other games and genres, games like Star Trail simply did not nearly make as much money. As a result publishers turned their backs on these kinds of hard core games and instead went down the path of streamlined mainstream products, especially since Baldur’s Gate proved very clearly at the time that there is a market for light role-playing games.

And retarded illiterates ridicule me when I say IE games were light casual games that dumbed down RPGs for years to come, with nothing hardcore or oldschool about them. Fucking spoiled kids of the yesteryear whose entire experience of CRPGs derive from a few shitty games that started life as RTS-derivatives.

My first real RPGs were BG and Fallout (never played any PnP games), but even someone with my low IQ could tell they were stripped down versions of their PnP counterparts. I enjoyed them for what they were though and that was well balanced compromise between the micromanagement of the tabletop with the instant gratification of computerized action. They were shallow enough to not bog down new players for long, but deep enough to keep interest after playing for lengthy sessions.

 

[Tramboi]

I didn't even know "Spirit of adventure" existed. Is it any good?

 

[Charles-cgr]

if it's presented well there's no reason that it would fail, now that I think about it the only ks video games that failed or are going to started off only presenting a vague concept, with no specifics on how the game would play, it's so simple yet so many ks projects didn't do this. Mr Henkel should be really specific and confident in his game design, I mean how can people pay for a game if they don't at the least have a decent idea how it will play?

I see it the other way around. I think Shaker failed not because of vagueness but for a lack of authenticity. Also it was partly Cleve's doing. The projects that went into the millions were vague. Why? There's part of the answer on this page.

Choose step by step grid based movement over topdown (or vice versa): lose half your pledges.
Announce detailed micromanagement (or vice-versa): lose half your pledges.
Show grimdark, nextgen 3D graphics (or cartoon): lose half your pledges.
Give it a title, theme, setting... Well, it'd better not be too original like Conquistadors or you'll lose half your pledges.
...

The "leave it to people's imagination" and they'll idealize the result still applies imo, and the day it really stops working is the day we will never see projects break a million again. Unless tons more people join the crowdfunding party.

 

[kaizoku]

I disagree.


I think that when you have street credit (like Obsidian and DF) you can afford to be vague.
But if you don't have a highly visible street credit nor a working prototype, the best thing IMO is to be as specific as possible.

Shaker (old school RPG) failed because they went full clown mode on the KS.

Sui Generis is a good example of what happens when you're vague and don't have any history in videogames. (there is little information on the gameplay, so people are not willing to commit)

 

[Charles-cgr]

kaizoku We're actually in agreement. Street cred was a given in my post since I was referring to the million dollar projects.

Antharion is specific as hell and can't seem to get $15K. They announced 4 player parties and lost half their pledges. Big heads and lost another half...

 

[Infinitron]

If you have a small project, you need to be specific, but you also need to stand out.

 

[Charles-cgr]

If you have a small project, you need to be specific, but you also need to stand out.

Once again I'd say the exact opposite. With an isometric, party based and turn-based RPG they're probably standing out too much. It's not like there's even one such game competing for pledges at the moment.

 

[Infinitron]

If you have a small project, you need to be specific, but you also need to stand out.

Once again I'd say the exact opposite. With an isometric, party based and turn-based RPG they're probably standing out too much. It's not like there's even one such game competing for pledges at the moment.

"Standing out too much"? What does that even mean?

 

[Charles-cgr]

If you have a small project, you need to be specific, but you also need to stand out.

Once again I'd say the exact opposite. With an isometric, party based and turn-based RPG they're probably standing out too much. It's not like there's even one such game competing for pledges at the moment.

"Standing out too much"? What does that even mean?

You really think you can't stand out too much? Be too different from people's expectations and what others are doing? Well apparently that is the problem they have, other than street cred. With no one else doing what they're doing they're not exactly blending in.

 

[Infinitron]

You really think you can't stand out too much? Be too different from people's expectations and what others are doing? Well apparently that is the problem they have, other than street cred. With no one else doing what they're doing they're not exactly blending in.

That's not what I call "standing out". Standing out is having people pay attention to you because you bring something uniquely desirable to the table. If you're too weird, they don't pay attention, they shut you out of their minds because TOO WEIRD.

 

[Charles-cgr]

That's not what I call "standing out". Standing out is having people pay attention to you because you bring something uniquely desirable to the table. If you're too weird, they don't pay attention, they shut you out of their minds because TOO WEIRD.

If uniquely desirable was a pre-requisite for any kind of commercial success all the big names in just about every industry would be long forgotten. And how is the game we are talking about in the wrong thread too weird? Big heads?

To get back on topic, I think we'd all like to believe that a specific KS will be more successful but we might be misleading ourselves. It is much more about whether or not you trust the guys behind the project or are willing to take a chance by giving them creative leeway than it is about inspecting and approving each mechanic ahead of time.

 

[Infinitron]

To get back on topic, I think we'd all like to believe that a specific KS will be more successful but that we might be misleading ourselves. It is much more about whether or not you trust the guys behind the project or are willing to take a chance by giving them creative leeway than it is about inspecting and approving each mechanic ahead of time.

Not really helping the Coles though, is it?

 

[Charles-cgr]

Not really helping the Coles though, is it?

Weird big-headed project with the first large open-world, turn-based combat, party based RPG in two years: 11K
Coles : 311K

I think it is helping them plenty.

 

[Gord]

It is much more about whether or not you trust the guys behind the project or are willing to take a chance by giving them creative leeway than it is about inspecting and approving each mechanic ahead of time.

Indeed. It's probably one of the biggest potential problems with Kickstarter.
With Kickstarter, everyone backing the project is a bit like a publisher, or in other words many feel like they could and should influence the project.
Just like the whole world is made up of soccer coaches during the world cup, it's also made up of game developers on Kickstarter.

 

[kaizoku]

kaizoku We're actually in agreement. Street cred was a given in my post since I was referring to the million dollar projects.

Antharion is specific as hell and can't seem to get $15K. They announced 4 player parties and lost half their pledges. Big heads and lost another half...

I don't want to offtopic, so I replied here

 

[MMXI]

Choose step by step grid based movement over topdown (or vice versa): lose half your pledges.
Announce detailed micromanagement (or vice-versa): lose half your pledges.
Show grimdark, nextgen 3D graphics (or cartoon): lose half your pledges.
Give it a title, theme, setting... Well, it'd better not be too original like Conquistadors or you'll lose half your pledges.

I agree with this. You can see lots of examples if you read Kickstarter topics on general gaming forums. For example, when people thought that Shaker was going to be a first person RPG (like Wizardry), a lot of people rejected the game because they wanted something isometric, claiming that first person is too modern (funny how that works). Similarly, from the Wasteland 2 forum you can see that a large number of backers want the game to be something it's not going to be, because the pitch was rather vague back then. Perhaps these people wouldn't have backed the game if they had more information.

There's a really fine line between revealing too much and too little. If you give away no details (especially if you're a nobody in the industry) then no one will back you. If you give away too much (even if you are a well known entity) then more people will find "fault" with your pitch. At some point, the more you reveal the more you divide your potential audience. Turn-based versus real-time, story heavy versus simulation heavy, full party creation versus fixed party recruitment, first person versus isometric. These are all things that, upon revealing, cut off large chunks of potential backers.

 

[crafthack]

you're over-thinking it, that "Old-School RPG" project failed because it was a joke, Conquistador didn't go that good because it's setting is uninspired and boring, and Antharion failed because it looks like a cheap amateur game that should be 4.99 on iOS. There's no reason a well presented kickstarter RPG that was specific on details, would not do massively well

Also, Wasteland 2 was not unspecific, it was just going to play like the original Wasteland but with modern graphics, that is specific enough. Same goes for project eternity, just imagine Infinity engine with modern improvements, the imagination does the rest.

 

[Bruma Hobo]

Conquistador didn't go that good because it's setting is uninspired and boring

Ok, I really want the anti-brofist button now.