KickStarter The Wayward Realms - upcoming Daggerfall-like RPG from original Elder Scrolls developers

[Old Hans]

Can someone give me a Tl;DR: is this some kind of slamdunk on this game, or is it somebody whining?

I did a quick read and it seemed like they spent a lot of time coming up with a name for the company, and I think someone made a website at some point.

 

[NecroLord]

How I ALMOST Made the Game of My Dreams​

I had the opportunity to work with the developers of one of my very favorite classic video games: The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall. Sadly, after 18 months and little progress, it was not meant to be.​

Indigo Gaming
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30 min read
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Sep 2, 2020


https://medium.com/@indigogaming/how-i-almost-made-the-game-of-my-dreams-da8b327e50f3

full medium from Ian

Not many of those ideas stuck, and some were so wild we rejected them outright, but one concept did have some appeal: I suggested that we could do a smaller division of the game first: a dungeon crawler-styled game, that would prove as the groundwork for the rest of the game later on.

Julian was uninterested in anything that wasn’t the full RPG game we were planning to make, or at least a subdivision of that game. So while a mobile e-sports game was out of the question, a creative, story-driven dungeon crawler that challenged the tropes of the genre was not out of the question.

After that weekend, it’s all a bit of a blur for me.

With Vijay coming on board, our new art director wanting to go on vacation and potentially leave fantasy game design altogether, stresses rising, and nagging issues not resolving, Stefan left the project on mostly good terms a few weeks after our trip, to our surprise.

Unleash… The Hype Monster​

We tried to pick up the pace so as to not lose momentum. We decided to (somewhat prematurely) start promoting and reaching out to the community — to drive interest, potentially attract funds and maybe get a bit more motivated, too!

We started using Twitter, Discord, YouTube and eventually Reddit to promote our company and the names attached.

Granted, I had my hands tied so far. I had to fight for months to get the founders to agree on a company name. Lots of ideas were discussed. Stefan suggested “EverLost Games,” but we agreed “OnceLost Games” was better, as it insinuated that there was something lost (e.g. classic game design), but we had rediscovered it.


OnceLost logo design and 3D rendering I put together for promotional material
Getting an actual working title or game name agreed upon was much more difficult. We went through dozens and dozens of names. I registered several domain names. We surveyed, looked up copyright status, and tested the Google-ability of many, many titles. A few stuck, but were too similar to other properties such as Vermintide, or locations or lore elements in the Elder Scrolls.

The name Ted and I had been working on eventually came to a head as The Wayward Realms, a name that both Vijay and Julian both didn’t really like, and as far as I know, still to this day never agreed on.

We started including it into pitch documents and design mockups. I had made a very simple, temporary website for our company only, waiting for enough resources available to actually build a full website, though I was putting together mockups of marketing materials: emails, websites, press releases, and promo images. Very little of which was ever seen by the public.

The last promotional video I produced for the project was a live Ask Me Anything, which we were answering questions from fans over YouTube
We started making YouTube videos, consisting mostly of edited talks and Q&A sessions with the founders (primarily Ted, as the other two were consistently difficult to schedule in). Our social media and Discord blitz triggered several YouTube channels and at least 20 games media websites to mention our project. Ted did an interview with Escapist magazine, and even worked with a contributing writer for Forbes, and got us coverage there.

Several notable outlets like PC Gamer and Techraptor covered us as well.

Remember, Remember the Pitch of November​

The Wayward Realms logo I commissioned from an external design house
And this press buzz led to our first serious publisher contender reaching out to us. In respect to all those involved, I will call them “X”, but I’m sure you’ve heard of them if you’re familiar with PC games.

“X” were very interested in what we were offering, and though not traditionally known for RPGs, that was a sector they were trying to expand into.

We did a virtual meeting with them (over a lunch break for me), and we seemed to hit it off well. I had updated our pitch deck before the call, and the types of game mechanics they were looking for pretty much mirrored on the pitch we had already built before talking to them. We were practically finishing each others’ sentences — a good sign!

Vijay was obviously experienced. He has 80 game releases under his belt, as producer and/or in the pitching phase. We all deferred to his judgment when it came to pitching and publisher decisions.

But Vijay was clearly not focused on this project. He was very difficult to get a hold of, he would regularly need to cut calls short, and sometimes he’d just go off the radar for whatever reason. Julian would do this as well, especially after switching jobs or looking for new employment (which happened at least 3 times since I knew him).

I did feel a little like a fraud. We weren’t intentionally misleading, or making them believe we were an established studio (we weren’t), but that didn’t negate the fact that we were just a few guys in their bedrooms/home offices, and some part-time contributors, whose faces we’ve only seen briefly over a few Skype calls.

Regardless of my apprehension toward over-representing ourselves to our potential publishers, I let it slide. “Fake it ’til you make it,” right?

Talks were going well with “X”, they were already talking about flying to us, or us flying to them for serious talks about the future of the game. Then they asked us to make a slightly revised pitch, in their format, to propose to their executives. This is where we put in a lot of elbow grease to make the game pitch as exciting and self-explanatory as possible.

Vijay worked out budget and scheduling details. Ted rewrote sections, and I spent several evenings and a weekend brushing up the design, and featuring all of our best mockups and concept art thus far.

Then we sent the pitch with our proposed budget. It took a few nail-biting days to hear back, but eventually “X” responded, saying that the initial proposal was warmly received, and the figure of 8-or-so million dollars. That’s substantially higher than we’d hope to get from a Kickstarter or other crowdfunding project.

What happened next is fuzzy, but Vijay would have the habit of sending emails out late at night, directly to “X”, without CC’ing our email addresses, or talking with us first. He did review his original pitch email with us, but as far as I can recall, the last one slipped out on his own.

Distinctly, I remember him pushing our reps at the publisher for more money than they initially offered (from what I understand, not entirely uncommon).

Paraphrasing, he said in his email to “X”…

“…We need [~$12 million] in order to compete with the upcoming releases of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Elder Scrolls VI.”

I didn’t take much notice of that statement at the time, but now that I look back, it was the reddest of flags.

For perspective, both The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, (the previous games by these respective developers) had production budgets of over 80 million dollars, EACH. And with their massive success, and us now being 1 and 2 whole console generations ahead of those games now, these new games could be DOUBLE that budget.

It was pretty clear from the beginning, this would be an independent, perhaps middle-market game, with a budget much lower than the titles released from EA, Bethesda or Activision. But we could be EFFICIENT with our budget, and get a lot more out of each dollar, than some of these wasteful “triple-A titles,” that would throw tens of millions of dollars into Hollywood actors and expensive commercials.

But the prospect of competing with games that would have over 10 times our budget was, frankly, ridiculous. We were goldfish, trying to compete with megalodons, and any publisher worth their salt would know that is a losing battle.

After that email, we had a bit of a silence from “X”, then they responded in an unusually short email. Basically to sum it up, they were no longer interested.

We asked if there was an opening for a re-pitch, and we didn’t get an affirmative. We had scared them away.

Which Comes First? The Dragon or the Egg?​

This was November/December now, and motivation was at an all-time low. It was around then, Ted decided to be mischievous and leak our working title (The Wayward Realms) to our Discord community.

On the temporary website I had designed, we had said there would be an announcement by year’s end, but we really had nothing to announce.

2020 started very slowly, but I suggested we pursue a fundraising platform that Vijay had an in on: he had previous working relationships with two of their executives.

We started pitching to them, polishing up our presentation, making an attractive one-sheet, and putting together all of our best, new images and concept art we could muster.

Early meetings went well, but the indicator that this wasn’t going to go far, was that their CEO said our project was in a VERY early stage of development. We were supposed to meet up with them again after a pilot program they were testing out was over, but that opportunity died down after that.

This ambitious, systems-driven game’s development hadn’t really begun, 18 months later (incidentally, the same timeframe it took Obsidian to start, produce and complete Fallout: New Vegas).

I had only seen a single, early bit of code (a family tree system) in the entire time I was with the project — that was programmed after-hours over a single week in mid 2019. None of the other systems for storytelling, procedural generation, factions or gameplay were ever even started, let alone being close to prototyping.

I had personally referred several programmers to our Technical Director, and would mention them in our weekly calls, but he never reached out to a single prospect.

The most noticeable progress on the in-engine development side of things was made an unpaid contributor, who had been with us for over a year. He worked on an Unreal Engine greybox prototype, with very little guidance or direction from our technical director. By the time that I left in early July, it was shaping up to look and feel impressive from what I played of it, despite essentially being a walking simulator, with no items, NPC interaction, combat or working UI at that point. That didn’t stop us from using pretty stills in our pitch decks, though, which in retrospect, made me feel even more like a fraud.

The original composer for The Elder Scrolls: Arena and Daggerfall came on board, and though he received practically no direction from the founders, he created over 20 minutes of quality music for the game, that was perfectly reminiscent of the original games, but in higher fidelity, of course. Other than myself, no-one else from the founders group even answered him, over the 2–3 months before I quit the project. I apologized, made excuses to him, and brought up the music a few more times during our weekly (or bi-monthly) meetings. I don’t think it was malicious on the parts of the others, I think it was just absent-mindedness, or perhaps apathy.

I don’t think we, as the founders and supposed directors of the project, were taking the game seriously enough.

I recorded and released several videos and updates for the game on our company YouTube channel I started for our company (a few videos nobody has seen due to technical issues on the other parties’ ends, lack of meaty content, or being too afraid to announce details due to our constantly changing plans).

Through the articles in 2019, our videos and social media presence, we got a mailing list, Discord, and YouTube channel with several thousand followers. We really needed tens of thousands, but then again, we literally hadn’t even released a single trailer up to this point.

Despite being the Marketing Director, I was probably the most skeptical person in the world about this game — But I needed to be enthusiastic, shouting loud from the rooftops. I needed more written material, and more game content to actually finish and releasing the the multiple trailer drafts I had started.

The game needed a cheerleader, and I was not it.

If I had to pinpoint the dire mistakes we made from the beginning, they would be:

In Memoriam​

Death screen in The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall
This has become much more long-winded than I expected, but I think it’s important for me to share the most important facts surrounding the project. If only to give myself a some closure.

I should have seen the signs a long time ago, on how we couldn’t really work as a team under the easiest of conditions, no oversight, no investors, no deadlines, no expectations. One could only imagine how bad things could have gotten had we really been under pressure.

There was an ongoing debate about the graphics style. Julian was convinced a more photorealistic style was not only more ideal, but cheaper than a stylized style. At a few points he suggested that we could build the entire game using Unreal Engine Store-bought assets, which caused quite a debate.

Toward the end, there was no clear direction, or singular vision. What started out fairly clear, was continually challenged, questioned or debated. Lots of ideas came and went, but it seemed like not all the founders believed our idea was enough. It needed something else, in some people’s eyes.

By the time I left, we had only pursued two funding opportunities:

1. One sent directly sent to our email inbox from a publisher.
2. My recommendation to approach an investor group.

We didn’t have an active producer, someone who could really schedule out, plan, manage and motivate our team (which was growing to well over a dozen contributors). And we did very little to actually curate, verify the identity of, or actually get a real agreement with our contributors. One time, a mapmaker was recruited to our team, only later to be discovered to be an underage teenager, who then started leaking details about the game to the public. Ouch!

Was I going crazy?

Here I was working with several 20 to 30+ year veterans in the gaming industry, and it felt like we had no idea what we were doing. What’s worse, every step forward was met with criticism, devil’s advocate arguments or nagging debates that went on for weeks or even months.

To make an unsolicited Star Wars analogy…

I felt like Luke Skywalker in Dagoba, trying to force-lift the X-Wing out of the swamps, if Yoda was actively force-pushing it back down into the muck.

I sent an email in June 2020, where I voiced my numerous concerns about group motivation, updates and the massive budget we now were shooting for, despite the sparse progress.

One of the newer founders (another Daggerfall veteran) agreed with me, and due to his massive workload due to COVID-19 related demand, he didn’t feel he could continue on the project with the time and dedication it needed.

I could no longer stomach the poor communication, lackluster updates, and black-hole-sized void of leadership and direction, things that an ambitious, unfunded project like this needed in spades. Every week, I began to dread our meeting. Sometimes it would be cancelled, delayed, or postponed multiple times if one of the founders was MIA. One weekend it practically took all day to finally land a meeting. It was just madness.

I was thinking about the project constantly, worrying, stressing out, not sleeping well. I had (in my own mind) shouldered the responsibility the estimated budget had grown from a Kickstarter goal starting at about $300–500K, to nothing less than 10 million, while the development stagnated.

I realized then, that you can’t pitch a 10-million-dollar game based on an hour-a-week Skype call. You need some serious motivation, lots of hard work, and unfortunately, lots of unpaid progress until we got funding.

I left the project in early July, turned over all the accounts and administrative access I had set up for our various services, and cancelled all of the project’s subscriptions, of which I was paying for out-of-pocket.

I was weary, unproductive and cynical due to the lack of communication and updates, I went ahead and backed up all of our services, shared drives, documentation and emails and shared the archive links, in case nobody thought to read my emails and make sure the Google and project management services didn’t cancel.

I didn’t even get a reply from all of the founders, which I was used to at that point, so it didn’t shock me.

It’s been a good two months since I left in early July. One of the founders tried to call me, presumably to talk me out of my decision, but my mind was made up. The problems we were facing were deep, and not easily fixed.

I didn’t want to stir the pot, or damage the team’s chances of getting their act together and make this game a reality, but I wanted to put the facts out there. To both clear my name, and to be more transparent with the community of thousands I helped foster: what happened, why my life and YouTube channel took a hit, and why I’m writing this postmortem, rather than releasing an exciting trailer (like I had planned to).

I firmly believe that Ted, Julian, Vijay and the others are entirely capable of making a truly fantastic game. Julian is an AAA-level engineer, thinking on levels most programmers truly cannot fathom. Vijay is an incredible fiction writer, and his excitement and experience would be a perfect fit for a classic-reborn kind of title as this one. Ted was truly the glue of the group, and he would regularly round all of us up for a call or meeting, and his incredible weaving of fantasy, classic literature and real-life folklore and history was enthralling.

This WAS the dream team to make this game, and I still believe 100% in our design concepts — but not under these circumstances.

Not without direction, a firm producer, a plan, motivation and a plan for funding. Basically, we needed an experienced CEO with firm direction, that could hold everyone accountable to do their part in making the game.

If the folks at OnceLost Games succeed and make a fantastic Kickstarter project, or get the game published and successful, I’ll be first in line with my money to support it. But after 18 months of “development”, I’m highly skeptical. Without some very strong leadership and attitude changes, I do not have faith that it will happen.

I sincerely hope they prove me wrong.

Can someone give me a Tl;DR: is this some kind of slamdunk on this game, or is it somebody whining?

It's well worth a read. Original Creators of Elder Scrolls proved to be complete boomer buffoons. This controversy is from ~4 years ago. This thread is 5 years old. Game is still in pre-production

A shame that nothing at all ever materialized.

 

[luj1]

Maybe it will

I really liked their seed/subseed system for dungeons

 

[agris]

Poking the skellies in the face just seems rude to me.

*Angry Daggerfall Skeleton noises

You have to really ponder how them skeletons are screaming.

A rare 11/10 mod

https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/503

 

[SharkClub]

It's sad that if this game ever somehow manages to shit itself out it's almost guaranteed to be an Underworld Ascendant level disaster, I would really like a new game with a Daggerfall world simulation dungeon crawling design philosophy behind it.

 

[HoboForEternity]

It's sad that if this game ever somehow manages to shit itself out it's almost guaranteed to be an Underworld Ascendant level disaster, I would really like a new game with a Daggerfall world simulation dungeon crawling design philosophy behind it.

The daggerfall unity guys are making a new game so i'll just be betting on that

 

[NecroLord]

It's sad that if this game ever somehow manages to shit itself out it's almost guaranteed to be an Underworld Ascendant level disaster, I would really like a new game with a Daggerfall world simulation dungeon crawling design philosophy behind it.

The daggerfall unity guys are making a new game so i'll just be betting on that

Really?
Exactly what kind of game?
I'm guessing a dungeon crawler?

 

[unseeingeye]

I feel like I read somewhere that the game the Daggerfall Unity guy is developing is not going to be like Daggerfall because he wanted to move onto something novel after spending so many years on that project? But my memory is notoriously poor, I might have even dreamed that up or something. I could have sworn I read something to that effect, though.

 

[Alienman]

I feel like I read somewhere that the game the Daggerfall Unity guy is developing is not going to be like Daggerfall because he wanted to move onto something novel after spending so many years on that project? But my memory is notoriously poor, I might have even dreamed that up or something. I could have sworn I read something to that effect, though.

I hope it's a dungeon crawler, though.

 

[unseeingeye]

View attachment 48246

I hope it's a dungeon crawler, though.

I would be devastated if it turned out to be anything other than a dungeon crawler!

I'm trying to recall where I think that I read that; could have been on the DFU forums, or maybe he posted it on Twitter and somebody forwarded it (I don't have Twitter so I would have seen it elsewhere). But I do cherish my dream symbolism, that image is perfect for me.

 

[Infinitron]

Kickstarter in May:

 

[NecroLord]

"A Vision Becoming Reality".
Let's not get ahead of ourselves here...

 

[Tyranicon]

1. Video is very clear that the kickstarter's goal is "bringing you an Early Access release" of the game.

2. Implies later on that they will need to seek a publisher.

That plus the fact that the gameplay looks like a unoptimized Unreal template project made up of blueprints isn't very confidence inspiring.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

The kickstarter was their vision

 

[Bulo]

Is Julian Lefay even involved with this anymore?

 

[Harthwain]

1. Video is very clear that the kickstarter's goal is "bringing you an Early Access release" of the game.

2. Implies later on that they will need to seek a publisher.

That plus the fact that the gameplay looks like a unoptimized Unreal template project made up of blueprints isn't very confidence inspiring.

At this point I am amazed they got anything going.

 

[grimace]

Let's accelerate this steam engine and see how fast and furious the funds can come in. Fleece the true believers and let the volunteers leak all the inside drama.

My wife is on the team. I have had the honor to sit in and listen to the development meetings. Every meeting is a wildfire of ideas being shared, of new and old friendships and ends with everyone saying "love you guys". No one person ever seems to control the board, it's a true equality of thoughtful ideas and design. This project represents decades of imagination waiting for the technology to catch up to show it. This game means so much to the team and by extension they want it to be something that means so much to us. We will be supporting the kickstarter and I hope every true lover of the genre is willing to do so as well. Because it is long past due we had something like this again, real adventure.

• Every meeting is a wildfire of ideas being shared
• ends with everyone saying "love you guys"
• a true equality of thoughtful ideas

Alright, you talked me into the kick starter. Usual I'd rather play a game once it's complete. But if it means helping the team

Welp, here it is: first time I'm supporting a Kickstarter campaign

Will be the first kickstarter I support

Plenty of first timer rubes who were underage during the first round of Kickstarting 10 years ago.

Why do you need a Kickstarter? I thought you were almost done with this?

@OnceLostGames

No, we have always been pretty upfront that we still have a long ways to go. It is a very systems heavy game. We have been doing it completely on a volunteer basis, so the Kickstarter will allow us to work full time on it and get an early access version out to players.

You must think that letting this guy talk will have some positive influence on your game. Do people know details about him? And how many wokesters do you think you have in your followership, who loves a MEDIEVAL game? Warhorse studios does it so much better. Absolutely without

@OnceLostGames

Not sure what the criticism is here?

 

[HoboForEternity]

They wont even meet the campaign goal if all they have is concept art and few seconds of """"gameplay"""" video

 

[The Wall]

I just deleted long and funny post about how much Devs for this game are incompetent, Reddit atheist, tranny looser zoomer and about Ted Peterson's adopted black son and his daily apologies for giving Redguards in Daggerfall decreased intelligence on official Discord etc etc

I'll let you all discover on your own how much hilariously disfunctional and turbo woke this game is. Only glue is Julian LeFay's programming and remaining Ted Peterson's writing genius coupled with few good old concept artists. Read care-full-y comments below their Kickstarter announcement and pick up the vibe. Yeaaah. Enjoy the approaching shitstorm

 

[The Wall]

I'll just say: Infinitron posted the news about Kickstarter. All you need to know, really

Maybe I'm wrong. Many hilariously turbo to the max WOKE zoomer/millenial unpaid tranny Devs (read: Skyrim modders) do work on this for a fact. Ted Peterson & Julian LeFay are old school liberals, they could make something GLORIOUS. Problem is: there's no Captain of the ship

Will be interesting to watch Kickstarter. Who knows, mayhaps Wayward Realms will surprise us all

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

Uh oh!

 

[NecroLord]

about Ted Peterson's adopted black son

Wait, really??


Sheeeeeeeeeeeeit.

 

[gurugeorge]

I'll just say: Infinitron posted the news about Kickstarter. All you need to know, really

The fuck else is he supposed to do? This is a gaming website with gaming news after all.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

I have no horse in this race, but to see something still in early stages come back 5 years after it was announced is dubious, at best. Can we gift Codex potato? It would be fun to start a betting pool on projects like these.

 

[Tyranicon]

I have no horse in this race, but to see something still in early stages come back 5 years after it was announced is dubious, at best. Can we gift Codex potato? It would be fun to start a betting pool on projects like these.

All-volunteer team.

Non-gamedevs probably won't understand how distasteful the concept is seen in the wider game-making community. A lot of us started out on these hobby projects with super poor organization and "rev-share" type deals. It's the mark of an amateur.

Talented people should be paid. People who have a good sense of their own self-worth will demand to be paid.

It's no coincidence this team seems to be on younger side.