Wildman Discussion Thread

[Infinitron]

Basically, the problem is that Chris Taylor cannot into slam dunks.

 

[Infinitron]

Brad Wardell speaks: http://www.littletinyfrogs.com/article/439406/Some_thoughts_on_Gas_Powered_Games

Some thoughts on Gas Powered Games

I recently wrote this as a response but I thought it deserved its own post.

If you haven’t heard, Gas Powered Games led by its CEO Chris Taylor, have a Kickstarter project up for a new game called Wildlman. He recently updated it to make it clear that the Kickstarter project is do or die for his studio and in preparation to see which way things go, he has laid off most of the staff (most of whom can be recalled if the Kickstarter project is successful).

Let me tell you a little bit about Gas Powered Games and Chris Taylor.

Chris Taylor is one of the best people I've ever met. Let me tell you about the man I know and why he deserves everyone's support.

Chris Taylor has run Gas Powered Games in a way that most people claim they wish companies were run. He has always run GPG as a compassionate person who cares deeply about each person he works with.

It’s not just a studio. It’s a company that was founded by people who have seen the cut-throat ways of the game industry and decided to do things differently. They’ve made some great games over the years – Dungeon Siege. Supreme Commander and yes, Demigod to name 3.

One of the things most people don't know about GPG is that one of the biggest challenges they've had is that for every game project you hear about there's often a project that got canceled that you didn't hear about. That is, big publisher X contracts studio Y to make a game and half way through there's some re-org at the publisher and they kill the game. So what does the studio do with all those extra people? MOST studios would just lay those people off. Not Chris Taylor. He would go to heroic lengths to try to keep everyone he could. He'd find some other project for them to work on even if it meant he would personally suffer financially to do it. He really cares about providing a stable environment for his people. He puts them first over his own interests.

I've seen people online (wrongly) claim that GPG has struggled because of game X or game Y. That's that even remotely the truth. The truth is that their struggles have come from the games you've never heard of that got canceled by a major publisher leaving GPG holding the bag. It's the plight of many studios and it's why there are so few of them left. The fact that GPG has been so successful for the past decade is a testament to Chris Taylor and his management team's skill.

Chris Taylor is universally admired and respected in our industry because he's an avatar of what our industry *could* be if we treated our employees, our partners and our customers better. It's easy to stand on the outside and come up with "Well, they did A, B and C!" without realizing that behind the scenes, he was having to choose between terrible terrible options.

I hope GPG is able to keep going. It's non-trivial to put together the kind of talent that Chris has put together over the years. It would be a huge loss to our industry as a whole.

If you want to learn more about their Kickstarter project, go here.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

I dunno about that. With Obsidian or InXile, I do feel like they actually want to make these kind of games, but no publisher will actually fund them. So, if W2 or PE sell decently, they may well invest the profit into more of the same, which is good for us. With Chris Taylor, I don't know whether he'd start making good RTSes again if given the chance.

CT doesn't just make RTS, the first game he made with his new company was Dungeon Siege, wich is an aRPG. He went into heavy dept over Demigod, which is a MOBA. I don't get why you'd think GPG doesn't want to do exactly the kind of game they have been doing all along, but with OE it's all somehow different. Seems a bit retarded. Is Avellone giving you a raging boner?

You've gotten too worked up over this, raw, you don't even know who you're replying to anymore. I am willing to believe this is the game he wants to do, I just don't understand why we should care about it. Dungeon Siege is fundamentally a mediocre game, not even "bad, but with some very good parts" like Alpha Protocol, just a run of the mill ARPG. So, if he doesn't want to make RTSes, which was the only think he was ever good at, then I don't see a reason to care too much about this project succeeding.

Edit: Also, holy shit, am I actually seeing Brad Wardell show some class and good PR skills? Did someone hack his forum account?

 

[Tigranes]

I am fine with all the drama and have no problem with the emotional appeal to support independent producers. I just... it's just really hard to look forward to a GPG game. Which isn't completely fair since I haven't played half their games, but Dungeon Siege is a bitter, bitter taste to forget.

 

[Kane]

You've gotten too worked up over this, raw, you don't even know who you're replying to anymore.

I know full well who I am talking to and that response was addressed at you:

With Obsidian or InXile, I do feel like they actually want to make these kind of games, [...] With Chris Taylor, I don't know whether he'd start making good RTSes again if given the chance.

The question still stands, why is GPG doing something they have been doing all all along worse than OE doing what they have been doing all along?

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Because there are enough mobas out there, it's a bit of a crappy genre in general, and nothing particularly suggests that GPG would do a better job at it than Valve, Blizzard, and whatever the guys who made LoL are called. Meanwhile, there are barely any isometric, party-based rpgs with non-twitchy combat being released. You think Obsidian would have gotten 4m if they kickstarted Alpha Protocol 2? You're even wrong about OE "doing what they have been doing all along", since their last two games (AP and New Vegas) were nothing like Project Eternity.

 

[Weierstraß]

The difference is and RPG like PE wouldn't be possible with a moden publisher while an Action-RPG/pseudo-RTS/"MOBA"-like thing is actually what the kids these days love. I'm not going to say only projects impossible to do anywhere should be on Kickstarter, but it's easy to understand why people react differently to this compared to Project Eternity.

Lately, Kickstarter has been praised by the media as the big new thing that changes everything inside the games industry. Developers don't need publisher anymore, the gamers themselves fund projects now, everybody will be happy except investors and big bad publishers. A brave new world.

Actually, this assumption seems to be valid for a few lucky developers only. Unfortunately, Kickstarter doesn't allow me to list failed projects but I can imagine that the most recent game projects on KS failed (Gambitious and IndieGogo are failures in principle). And in contrast to GDG, the most involved studios didn't go public with their failure - they just disappeared. The kickstarter fatigue is real and the number of people who are actually willing to pledge is very limited.

That Kickstarters fail is not a bad thing, or an argument against Kickstarter. They're supposed to fail, not every bad idea deserves money thrown at it.

 

[Mastermind]

Did GPGs RTS's sell decent?

Because it appears to me that trying to create something which you are bad at, like pseudo-rpgs, is a bad move if their core competence lies at RTSes

They made dungeon siege, a technically competent but bland party aRPG. DS2 was better even though they reduced the party size from 8 to 6 (and you had to be on higher difficulty levels go get more than 4 IIRC). Then Obshitian showed up and popamoled the entire series by turning it into a shitty Diablo clone. Aside from them and Diablo 2 nobody else seems interested in filling up my aRPGs with allied NPCs though so in that regard it would be sad to see them go.

 

[Johannes]

Because there are enough mobas out there, it's a bit of a crappy genre in general, and nothing particularly suggests that GPG would do a better job at it than Valve, Blizzard, and whatever the guys who made LoL are called.

What's mobas got to do with this game, or with Blizzard for that matter?

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Because there are enough mobas out there, it's a bit of a crappy genre in general, and nothing particularly suggests that GPG would do a better job at it than Valve, Blizzard, and whatever the guys who made LoL are called.

What's mobas got to do with this game, or with Blizzard for that matter?

It was my understanding that this game is supposed to be a moba of sorts. Blizzard is making their own moba, called Blizzard All-stars. It will probably be shit, if it even sees release, but it seemed appropriate to include them among the big players on the field.

 

[80Maxwell08]

Because there are enough mobas out there, it's a bit of a crappy genre in general, and nothing particularly suggests that GPG would do a better job at it than Valve, Blizzard, and whatever the guys who made LoL are called.

What's mobas got to do with this game, or with Blizzard for that matter?

It was my understanding that this game is supposed to be a moba of sorts. Blizzard is making their own moba, called Blizzard All-stars. It will probably be shit, if it even sees release, but it seemed appropriate to include them among the big players on the field.

I would like to point out again that nowhere on the kickstarter page is the word MOBA even mentioned. Mind you that video they showed with their current gameplay looked very much like a MOBA but considering GPG haven't even said anything about MOBAs this entire time I think it's safe to say it's not a MOBA nor will it be a MOBA.

 

[Metro]

Chris Taylor and GPG do everything well... except make games.

 

[IDtenT]

(the one by Brathwaite and Hall comes to mind).

Why can't Hall just drop those fucking losers and go do something of his own? I'm sure Wiz101 made him a lot of cash and it's actually a pretty decent MMO.

Dungeon Siege 2 is serially underrated on the Codex.

 

[Stabwound]

Dungeon Siege 2 is a pretty great game, but it falls more under the ARPG/Diablo genre than CRPG. DS1 and 3 are garbage.

 

[Larendav]

Only 25 days to go & it's only 23% funded.

 

[Metro]

Granted I'm not up with funding trends but if it's 'only' a quarter funded with 'only' 25 days left it seems to be doing pretty good. Making a fourth of your goal after only five days seems pretty good.

 

[Excidium]

You seem to forget that's not their actual goal.

 

[Renegen]

Maybe what sucks is the number of backers? They only have 5,000 so far and I bet the $ amount has grown faster percentage wise than the backer amount over the weekend.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

I am fine with all the drama and have no problem with the emotional appeal to support independent producers. I just... it's just really hard to look forward to a GPG game. Which isn't completely fair since I haven't played half their games, but Dungeon Siege is a bitter, bitter taste to forget.

Pretty much. Supreme Commander was the only particularly good game from GPG (Supreme Commander 2 being declined popamole in comparison except for the AI (And to be honest supcom1 still has a lot of faults)), and Wildman doesn't really float my boat.

Dunno if I could say the lack of interest is due to Kickstarter fatigue/jewish conspiracy or simply because it's an uninteresting game pitch from a mostly mediocre studio. I mean shit, Obsidian's game pitch was even more vague than this and they did quite a bit better. It may just be that more people trust Obsidian to make a decent game. I'm sure as hell not interested in Wildman enough to put up $20.

 

[DemonKing]

You're betting the company on a kickstarter? Maybe if GPG had ever done anything to inspire confidence that they were capable of producing anything other than mediocrity I'd think about it, but the GPG brand alone is not enough to get me to punt any cash on something as underwhelming as the poorly-devleoped Wildman concept they are trying to push.

 

[Metro]

You seem to forget that's not their actual goal.

True. Still odd to emphasize the 'only' in terms of the time frame. It started 4 days ago.

 

[tuluse]

This kickstarter is really depressing.

 

[Kane]

Because there are enough mobas out there, it's a bit of a crappy genre in general, and nothing particularly suggests that GPG would do a better job at it than Valve, Blizzard, and whatever the guys who made LoL are called. Meanwhile, there are barely any isometric, party-based rpgs with non-twitchy combat being released.

See, this is a proper point that isn't just spergposting. It has nothing to do specifically with CT or GPG though. MOBAs sell, it's simple. Isometric RPGs don't sell or at least OE is about to find out wether they sell. And finally, Wildman isn't a MOBA and even if it was, it's nothing out of the ordinary for GPG, who have done MOBAs before.

You think Obsidian would have gotten 4m if they kickstarted Alpha Protocol 2?

Alpha Protocol was exactly the same self-funded mess that Demigod was. It's bizzare how similiar these two companies are, even down to a detailed level. I doubt they would have been able to raise 4m, but I think sheeple would've kickstarted it.
But that's not even relevant, because an established company will not Kickstart a megaproject and/or an IP that is dear to them. You Kickstart out of a position of shit hitting the fan, and you need low risk, low complexity, low production cost titles like O:E or Wildman.

You're even wrong about OE "doing what they have been doing all along", since their last two games (AP and New Vegas) were nothing like Project Eternity.

Yes, OE absolutely didn't want to do AP and New Vegas, evil publishers forced their hands. Oh wait, no they didn't. OE has been doing what they wanted to do all along and they failed horribly at it (AP). New Vegas is really their last rope, if that had failboated there would be no OE today.

 

[Arkeus]

Yes, OE absolutely didn't want to do AP and New Vegas, evil publishers forced their hands. Oh wait, no they didn't.

There was nothing about them being forced to do those games- it's about how their Kickstarter was about games that we, as fans of those types of games, wanted to see more of.

Given that the last rpg even remotely resembling this genre was published 8+ years ago, there was a public that felt a new one was needed, and as OE have experiences to do such games, they were a good choice to propose this.

GPG, however, chose to do a "currently popular" style of game mixing ARPG and Moba (or at least that's what their gameplay video looks like), and we already have our opinions about what GPG is good for- not ARPGs.

Hell, we already saw what kind of reaction a TA/Supcom clone would have on kickstarter. They just chose the wrong genre.

 

[Kane]

There was nothing about them being forced to do those games- it's about how their Kickstarter was about games that we, as fans of those types of games, wanted to see more of.

No. The question was why GPG kickstarting a game that fits their schtick is bad but OE kickstarting a type of game that fits theirs is good. The answer is of course: it isn't, it's just the usual codexian spergposting.

Given that the last rpg even remotely resembling this genre was published 8+ years ago, there was a public that felt a new one was needed, and as OE have experiences to do such games, they were a good choice to propose this.

Again, the claim that P:E is actually wanted by the public remains yet to be proven; yes the codex wants it, everyone with more than 3 braincells can figure that one out - but you can't run a company on the backs of a few nerds posting on www.rpgcodex.net.

GPG, however, chose to do a "currently popular" style of game mixing ARPG and Moba (or at least that's what their gameplay video looks like), and we already have our opinions about what GPG is good for- not ARPGs.

Others will disagree. Fact of the matter is that GPG is an established aRPG developer aswell as MOBA developer. Plus MOBAs sell like hot potatos, in case you haven't realized that yet.
Finally there is also a thing that is speaking strongly against Wildman even being a MOBA (and i was waiting for someone actually pointing that out): The game is single player. You guys are really good at posting, no really.