KickStarter Underworld Ascendant is a disaster

[Glic2000]

Yeah, I remember when they released that first build with the new art style and the damn art style was the only thing anyone was talking about.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting there wondering, "did anyone else notice the gameplay is a bag of wet shit?"

Priorities, man. Fiddling around with that damn art style and their stupid physics were the only things the devs seemed to care about. Meanwhile, people were asking "so is there going to be any, y'know, quests or NPC interaction or any of that stuff? Y'know, like actual gameplay?" And the devs were like, "Oh yeah, TOTALLY, we're totally doing all that good stuff too but we can't show it cuz, y'know, spoilers right." The game was months away from release and people still thought the game was going to have dialogue trees with NPCs!

Fucking liars.

 

[Zep Zepo]

For people who want to look into this, my newspost history might be useful: https://rpgcodex.net/tags.php?id=1514

tl;dr

Zep--

 

[Zep Zepo]

Don't forget the bullshit talk about "Lizardman Language" for 2 months.

Zep--

 

[Glic2000]

At least I only backed one of UA and SS3. Turns out it might have been the wrong one, but maybe neither will be the best choice. Surely you can't fuck up a remake as badly as this?

It's important to note that there are two different System Shock projects going on; the remake of SS1 from NightDive Studios and the completely new SS3 made by Warren Spector and OSE.

Thankfully, the Night Dive team already realized they were on the road to fucking up and admitted it. I think that remake is going to turn out okay.

SS3 will probably be a similar trash fire to UA, except more expensive.

 

[Child of Malkav]

So when does Otherside close down? After something like this you can't expect to actually continue in any capacity.

Even if they can deliver SS3 (highly unlikely) and is also more polished than this (very unlikely) that's kind of it, right? No more budget, no interest from publishers, negative reputation, especially this game coming out at the same time as RDR 2 (just as an example) which has an absurd level of polish, I mean their situation is pretty bad.

 

[Nyast]

I assume they didn't actually spent 4 years in active development. They did some mucking around with the engine before starting to look for a publisher, which took them months if not years. Somebody posted here about one of the developers being involved in some other game in the meantime I believe? Anyway, nothing about this game indicates that it spent more than several months in production.

Here's my take. OtherSide mucked around with the engine and released the initial prototype in November 2015, just eight months after the Kickstarter. At the time that was pretty promising - we thought they were on the right track.

I guess what they were hoping is that this would be enough to land them a publishing deal, but it wasn't. So they....just kept on working on the game on their own, trying to bring it to an advanced enough stage where a publisher would finally bite. Because the team was small, this took a very long time (21 months from prototype to pre-alpha, which is when the 505 Games publishing deal was announced).

We know that a lot of time during those 21 months was spent (fruitlessly) trying to nail down the game's art direction, something that would have been important for getting a publisher onboard. But it would be interesting to know what else happened during that period. Because this game really does make more sense if you discard those 21 months and count just the 8 months from Kickstarter to prototype and the 15 from pre-alpha to release.

For people who want to look into this, my newspost history might be useful: https://rpgcodex.net/tags.php?id=1514

Here's another take on it: they raised $860K on KS. The deal they've made with 505 is purely a marketing deal ( they've admitted to it on their forums ), so presumably they didn't get any money to fund any further development on the game from their publisher.

$860K buys you 2 years of development for 10 people at an under-industry-average $43K/year/dev.

You can tweak the numbers, and consider 5 people worked on the game for 4 years, or 10 people for 2 years, etc.. Where the numbers do not add up is 14 devs working on the game for 4 years.

What I believe happened is that a small team (3-4 people) debutted pre-production on the game in 2015, doing technical research and demo. Then in 2017 they woke up and added more people to the team. Finally, this year in 2018, they put everybody else on the project to complete it "on time".

 

[Infinitron]

Yeah they didn't expand to 14 until the last year, it was like six dudes for a long time.

 

[Nyast]

Yeah, I remember when they released that first build with the new art style and the damn art style was the only thing anyone was talking about.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting there wondering, "did anyone else notice the gameplay is a bag of wet shit?"

Priorities, man. Fiddling around with that damn art style and their stupid physics were the only things the devs seemed to care about. Meanwhile, people were asking "so is there going to be any, y'know, quests or NPC interaction or any of that stuff? Y'know, like actual gameplay?" And the devs were like, "Oh yeah, TOTALLY, we're totally doing all that good stuff too but we can't show it cuz, y'know, spoilers right." The game was months away from release and people still thought the game was going to have dialogue trees with NPCs!

Fucking liars.

Not months. Two weeks.

Like, the news that they cut off NPC interactions and dialogues came 2 weeks before the release. I was there to watch the entire shock in the community.

Just like when backers realized the levels were reset between every single mission, and that the saving system made you restart at Marcaul ( but hey, they fixed it indeed: now you restart at the beginning of the level ).

Just like I complained about the lack of an interconnected dungeon, instead we got full-retard teleporters, and I claimed it would kill immersion. The official answer was "don't worry, we have ideas, we're working on the grand staircase to link the levels together". Then a week before release, they admitted there would be no grand staircase.

I.. just... I just can't.

This is completely surreal.

 

[Zep Zepo]

Don't forget you also had to pay Waldo Spectrum (and team) for 4 years of sitting on his/their collective asses. Oh, and pay that dumb hack who wrote a book for them.

And they still have to pay for and ship all the backer rewards.

And if to be believed, they "worked" for free for the last 2 months.

Zep--

 

[Nyast]

So when does Otherside close down? After something like this you can't expect to actually continue in any capacity.

Even if they can deliver SS3 (highly unlikely) and is also more polished than this (very unlikely) that's kind of it, right? No more budget, no interest from publishers, negative reputation, especially this game coming out at the same time as RDR 2 (just as an example) which has an absurd level of polish, I mean their situation is pretty bad.

They sold 10K copies in 48h at $25 -> $250K of income.

Usually for the average Steam game you double sales over the first week, then again double over the first month, then again double after a year. But that assumes discounts and sales. Then the company loses 21% VAT on EU sales and another 30% for Steam's part. So the way it is going, they're going to get a million dollars in a year out of it - very very rough estimation.

 

[Glic2000]

...
Not months. Two weeks.

Like, the news that they cut off NPC interactions and dialogues came 2 weeks before the release. I was there to watch the entire shock in the community.
..

You're right, it was only two weeks. I thought it was longer because in my head I had figured out much earlier that there was no way NPC dialogue would make it into the game.

 

[Zep Zepo]

They sold 10K copies in 48h at $25 -> $250K of income.

10 k sold or 10 k keys redeemed? There is a difference.

Zep--

 

[Infinitron]

So when does Otherside close down? After something like this you can't expect to actually continue in any capacity.

Even if they can deliver SS3 (highly unlikely) and is also more polished than this (very unlikely) that's kind of it, right? No more budget, no interest from publishers, negative reputation, especially this game coming out at the same time as RDR 2 (just as an example) which has an absurd level of polish, I mean their situation is pretty bad.

They sold 10K copies in 48h at $25 -> $250K of income.

Usually for the average Steam game you double sales over the first week, then again double over the first month, then again double after a year. But that assumes discounts and sales. Then the company loses 21% VAT on EU sales and another 30% for Steam's part. So the way it is going, they're going to get a million dollars in a year out of it - very very rough estimation.

This isn't an average Steam game.

I think there is a good chance that OtherSide Boston will shut down (although Chris Siegel sure does sound certain that they're going to be able to coast right on to their next project) but Warren Spector's studio in Austin has its own budget. They might need to rebrand.

 

[Max Heap]

A little collection of all the twitter posts with shit that ain't in the game

Torches


This vastly superior interface


Empty bottles


fire arrows


enemies getting knocked over

 

[Max Heap]

In their defense though, not everything's been cut. This bug for example (or a variation thereof) is still in the game:


And so is this one:



Another interesting note: The twitter account was first opened 2015 and made 2 tweets by the 4th of february.
After that there wasn't a single tweet till the 17th of august, which was the announcement of the partnership with 505.

 

[Child of Malkav]

So when does Otherside close down? After something like this you can't expect to actually continue in any capacity.

Even if they can deliver SS3 (highly unlikely) and is also more polished than this (very unlikely) that's kind of it, right? No more budget, no interest from publishers, negative reputation, especially this game coming out at the same time as RDR 2 (just as an example) which has an absurd level of polish, I mean their situation is pretty bad.

They sold 10K copies in 48h at $25 -> $250K of income.

Usually for the average Steam game you double sales over the first week, then again double over the first month, then again double after a year. But that assumes discounts and sales. Then the company loses 21% VAT on EU sales and another 30% for Steam's part. So the way it is going, they're going to get a million dollars in a year out of it - very very rough estimation.

Yeah but didn't 505 give them 1.5 millions or something like that? Either way I don't think they get their investment back.

 

[Nyast]

They sold 10K copies in 48h at $25 -> $250K of income.

10 k sold or 10 k keys redeemed? There is a difference.

Zep--

Sold. It'd be like 15k with KS backers keys. But that also is an estimation. Nobody but Valve has the accurate numbers.

 

[Max Heap]

Just like I complained about the lack of an interconnected dungeon, instead we got full-retard teleporters, and I claimed it would kill immersion. The official answer was "don't worry, we have ideas, we're working on the grand staircase to link the levels together". Then a week before release, they admitted there would be no grand staircase.

The most bizarre part about this is: There is a teleporter room with I believe 7 teleporters.
Which for me kinda implied these will open up during the game and you'll hop in here and there doing missions.

But they completely abandoned the teleporter room as well.
Instead it is one teleporter and one mission in the midnight forum.

Why the hell is there a teleporter room?
You get out of missions there as well.

Why not just appear in the midnight forum again?
Why wander around the whole damn city first?
Why is the midnight forum closed until you claim your reward?
What the hell is happening in that program code?

 

[Glic2000]

That picture of a hand holding a torch is especially infuriating, because that's the number one thing you'd expect to be in an Underworld game and it's not in there.

 

[Zep Zepo]

Sold. It'd be like 15k with KS backers keys. But that also is an estimation. Nobody but Valve has the accurate numbers.

Something I've been curious about for a while now. If you're correct, and they also gave out 5k keys for kickstarter backers. Do they have to pay a % for those keys to Valve to be able to issue them in the first place?

Anyone know?

Zep--

 

[Zep Zepo]

I doubt you know, Infinitron

You're full of hot air and butthurt most of the time.

Valve is not a devs personal bandwidth and key charity. And I often see devs say something to the effect of, "we have no more keys to give away!", so obviously there is a limit on giving shit away, even, presumably, kickstarter keys.

Zep--

 

[Infinitron]

I do know because this is something we've asked the indie devs who post here many times over the years, notably Vault Dweller

 

[fantadomat]

Yeah they didn't expand to 14 until the last year, it was like six dudes for a long time.

It was one guy and yet we have underrail!

 

[Zep Zepo]

So, I somehow trick Valve into letting me "sell" my shovelware on their platform.

I manage to sell 10 legit copies and give away 100,000 self generated keys.

I doubt Valve is letting that happen.

Zep--

 

[ShaggyMoose]

The most bizarre part about this is: There is a teleporter room with I believe 7 teleporters.
Which for me kinda implied these will open up during the game and you'll hop in here and there doing missions.

But they completely abandoned the teleporter room as well.
Instead it is one teleporter and one mission in the midnight forum.

This is both nonsensical and hugely disappointing given the successful history of the Ultima series with such concepts.

• Every (?) Ultima had moongates (or the serpent gates).
  
• Underworld had the grand staircase (not complete, but at least it had contiguous levels).

I don't want to play a fragmented set of levels, I want to explore the Abyss...