Vapourware The Mandate - LOL DEAD

[Alienman]

Sorry to bring hope to people by resurrecting the thread

But do anyone know what happened to these devs? Studio is dead, but are the people that was working on this still in the industry?

 

[Blaine]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1964463742/the-mandate

 

[Infinitron]

Sorry to bring hope to people by resurrecting the thread

But do anyone know what happened to these devs? Studio is dead, but are the people that was working on this still in the industry?

The Kickstarter comments may be of some interest: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1964463742/the-mandate/comments

 

[Blaine]

Oh yeah, I just remembered why and when I last received a "subscribed thread bump alert" from this thread.

That combat video. Hooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooly FUCK that was bad, Jesus Christ.

 

[oscar]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1964463742/the-mandate

 

[HoboForEternity]

rip 700k US dollars

 

[Blaine]

oscar Yeah, I was thinking of that, too.

At least people can actually sign up to go play in our hyper-realistic neverending strife simulator.

 

[Alienman]

A mod for the Mandate web portal wrote this in the comments:

A view from a moderator {and fellow backer) on the Mandate web portal: there does not seem to be any devs involved anymore as most things are just drying up and blowing away in the digital wind. We have made many inquiries and have turned up next to nothing. We are looking into having the Kickstarter entry turned off but that has implications and consequences that perhaps there is no one around to face. We do not know who is funding the Mandate IP--perhaps running on autopilot and funded by a credit card on file--it only costs $30 US and we considered funding it ourselves. We have no permissions to do anything save whack the bots and spammers that hit the site, alas we have no power to block them. It also seems there is still a way to 'back' the Mandate as a few people still fall into that pit. We have tried to turn off that function but have not found all of the routes. It does seem that Ole H returned to his roots at the Norwegian FUNCOM and is working Conan: Exiles. On wasted assets--a few die hard fans have saved the web based material and an effort to create a game is underway by a few of them. Check the Mandate portal for the forum threads and locations. We are also not sure who owns the material but assume it is Eurovideo as the publisher. We tried to ascertain that also but lots of rabbit holes and no firm answers. Most of the moderators were also relatively 'big' backers so we all had skin in the game and are most certainly just chasing the wind. We do still check this site periodically and the same for the forums. I think this was the 'perfect' game of our fantasy and we are genuinely disappointed that the production did not even consider taking the long slow road like Elite: Dangerous or Star Citizen or some others that are still plugging along and churning out more content with a very small team (the two mentioned are well funded and have good size teams).

It's basically an undead game that still sucks in money from randoms.

 

[Infinitron]

A big enough game journo outfit like Kotaku could probably find out what happened here, but I guess nobody cares enough lol.

 

[Alienman]

Yeah, I forgot about it too, but someone made a joke about it in the Shroud of the Avatar thread and it got me curious. Talk about going out in a whimper...

Edit:

One guy is really pissed in the comments:

Man it would be such a shame if someone paid someone to find out where they lived and for an accident to happen to the tune of 701,010 dollars. These people have homes and one may have just upgraded their car and home...just saying.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Daily reminder that point&click adventure from Space Quest guys is still in development after 6 years.

 

[Haba]

Why do those fools announce the project being over?

Just release a KS update once every 6 months saying that you are working on the game. Hell, you can even automate the whole thing. Or hire a Wyrmlord to write them for you.

 

[veevoir]

Or hire a Wyrmlord Cleve to write them develop it for you.

At least it would get released. One day.

 

[Infinitron]

New decade vaporware checkup.

There have been a few posts running around about crunch and about Game Dev horror stories and this one won't be new to many of you so here we go.

In December of 2016, something was very wrong at Perihelion Interactive / Matsuko.

For 3 years I broke my back working on The Mandate with a lot of people who I have a ton of respect for. We had deadlines, milestones, things to do and we got them done. Over 1000 individual assets.

Since Matsuko is in Slovakia, they were several hours ahead of us, and the end result for me was that I was never "off the clock". I would get messages all times of the day and I would work on whatever needed to get done in an effort to make sure we were making the best game we could.

I believed the people who were in charge had the best of intentions, and that they were striving to build something fantastic.

But after spending years making art and struggling to meet the schedule that had been presented to us, an ever increasing scope of work; 9 factions, 6 military branches, 5 ship classes. 4 planetary types, 3 unit types per faction and 1 massive space station per faction, people started to leave and they were unhappy. But I believed the game was going to be great and that we were making something that would be talked about for years. We had started talking about expansions.

And then payments started coming in late. My art director at the time talked about it like this: "A late payment is like a cat, you can have a cat. But if you have 5 cats? That's a lot of cats."

The game would be great. I knew it.

In September of 2016 Matus, the CEO of Matsuko asked me if I wanted to come to Slovakia with my art director for 3 months and I jumped at the opportunity. I made so many friends but the payments were late still. Lots of payments. $8,000 that was just up in the air.

During one meeting my art director passed me a sticky note covered in drawings of cats. Dozens.

He was gone within a week and all that was left was me. They asked me to stay. To come back and work at Matsuko permanently. And because our game was going to be great I agreed.

After 3 months I went home. I expected to come back. We were art complete and we would finish the game and it would be amazing.

I never returned to Slovakia and I remember speaking with Matus on the phone when he said it was over. And I remember calling my mom and sobbing on the phone because I didn't know what I was going to do. There was no game. It would never be released. We were 100% art complete and 30% feature complete. The game was never going to be finished.

It's taken me years to financially recover and I still have that drawing my AD drew of the cats and what each of them took from me.

It took $8,000 from me. A job offer from Telltale, an offer from Hi-Rez, it cost me my relationship, it took 4 years from my career.

And they suffered no repercussions. Matus and Matsuko are still in business and they got away Scott-free without a single fuck for the people they took advantage of or the fact that they damaged the lives of so manv devs.

BTW the official website finally went down at some point.

 

[Old Hans]

12 pages in 7 years. im sure everyone here on the codex will shed a tear that this kickstarter failed

 

[Peachcurl]

This one still smarts a bit. Kickstarter was a new concept back then (well, at least for me), and this mess looked so very promising. Man-date. Should have tipped me off, really. It was just a few bucks, not $8k, but still ... a lesson learned.

My art director at the time talked about it like this: "A late payment is like a cat, you can have a cat. But if you have 5 cats? That's a lot of cats."
...
During one meeting my art director passed me a sticky note covered in drawings of cats. Dozens.

Sounds like a good guy. Hope they managed to find greener pastures.

 

[Saduj]

Actually there was a bigger thread in the news forum and lots of people here were really hoping they would be able to pull this off. This would have been lots of Codexers’ dream game. But they bit of more than they could chew, which was the fear all along.

At least Stellar Tactics is still going strong...

 

[Zombra]

12 pages in 7 years. im sure everyone here on the codex will shed a tear that this kickstarter failed

I shed a tear and $20

 

[jungl]

Its Eastern Europe that is where you have best friends promise to make a business with each other then one of them scams the other 2 and buys a jeep with over a decade stolen salary. The kickstarter backers are going to get nothing back and then some.

People too naive backing stuff on Scamstarter. They see a really cool game idea and make a giant gaping soy face and click donate. Being completely ignorant that thousands of people start up businesses that run for a half a year what they know is going to fail to steal investor money. But because they see their favowite game with wizards dragons space ship my little ponys that can't possibly happen to them they can't get scammed, wrong!

 

[Tito Anic]

It was like... zero cult classic games produced with a help of Kickstarter. Grimoire, Underrail, AoD were all self found.

 

[Zanzoken]

Condolences to anyone here who lost out, but if you got hooked by this one then you only have yourself to blame.

The list of features on their initial Kickstarter pitch wouldn't have been realistic for a major established studio, much less a bunch of upstarts.

 

[RNGsus]

Are there any games about becoming a space ship captain and commanding your crew on voyages of discovery?

The only one that comes to mind is Spelljammer, but I actually want to give orders to lieutenants and helmsmen.

 

[Zombra]

But because they see their favowite game with wizards dragons space ship my little ponys that can't possibly happen to them they can't get scammed, wrong!

Please. News sites and backers alike were very vocal about "This is way too good to be true." I admit I gambled and lost - but don't think that all the backers were unaware of the odds.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

It was like... zero cult classic games produced with a help of Kickstarter. Grimoire, Underrail, AoD were all self found.

Grimoire attempted a kickstarter, it failed.

 

[Infinitron]

One of my favorite moments from the old Bubbles/BEvers Gamescom reports was when he incited a lethargic gaming journalist against this game: https://rpgcodex.net//content.php?id=10082

Bubbles: Your game is really extremely ambitious. Many people feared you were going to cut down on some features -- instead, you've been announcing new ones. Do you think you have a handle on feature creep? Should we be worried that this game may end up running out of money?

The devs smiled and said that they had this well under control and were well funded. As they were speaking, I noticed a sudden movement from my right: my Eurogamer colleague had stopped packing and was now leaning forward in his seat, staring straight at the developers with a strange, hungry look in his eyes. He interrupted their answer: "You know, I'm not impressed by what I've seen here today. I've seen failure many times, and this looks like failure to me." Mr. Eurogamer went on to explain that he considered the scope of the gameplay to be vastly unrealistic; a game like this had "never been achieved before", and the devs had not convinced him that they could achieve it. The Mandate was "at least three games in one." (By the way: one of the presentation slides had also mentioned planetary exploration and away missions, although the devs had not been eager to talk about those aspects of the gameplay.)

Our interview partners did not seem prepared for this change in atmosphere; they were dead silent for a while, just listening to my colleague tearing them to shreds. If the Codex had made a remark like this, they could have just shrugged it off, but this was Eurogamer – they could not ignore him. They tried multiple angles to defuse the situation: first, they mentioned that they were currently working with "8 or 10 development tools" and were committed to getting them all "working perfectly for the community" at launch to enable easy modding and further content creation. However, this unfortunately required more development time. That little factoid didn't really address any of Eurogamer's concerns, so instead they tried to argue from a position of experience: "We haven't discussed this openly, but many of the people on the staff are veterans from other games [this means MMOs, mostly]. One of our guys has worked on the Assassin's Creed games." Again, I fail to see how that was meant to reassure us in any way; as far as I'm aware, none of the Assassins Creed games were funded through Kickstarter, and none of them promised full moddability, simultaneous fleet and boarding combat, or a revolutionary RTS AI. Then they took their final stab by explaining how the game would be financially viable despite its large scope: "we have a publisher" [EuroVideo, who according to a Kickstarter update also allows the developers "full creative control. Full stop."], which meant a lot more funding. The Mandate was really a long-term investment: "we're also laying the groundwork for future RPGs with this release." This was a slightly more convincing, although it didn't address the problem of the massive delays in the game's development schedule. The fact that a game of this scope was originally announced as going into beta in January of 2015, 12 months after the start of pre-production, strikes me as utterly absurd. Since then, the game's alpha has been postponed twice, and is currently scheduled for "we will get back to you." Unfortunately, the devs had nothing more to tell us, so we had to take our leave. They made sure to bribe me with a shoulder bag and a bunch of cheap swag, including a USB stick in the shape of a star ship. My colleague from Eurogamer was a bit too old for swag, so instead they invited him to next year's Gamescom, where they expected to have "more stuff to show." Naturally, The Mandate does not have an official release date yet.