[FILLED] Looking for artist(s) to develop new style for A Valley Without Wind.

[Goncyn]

Chris, reading all your posts about the art creation process and the cost of producing your games has been fascinating. Thanks for being so verbose! FWIW, I think the articulated-sprite style of animation would suit this game very well. Looking forward to the kickstarter.

[x4000]

It's my pleasure -- I always try to be as transparent as possible, while respecting the privacy of third parties.

[SerratedSabre]

I have no doubt in my mind that whatever y'all pick as an art style is gonna be awesome. The only thing I ask is that the caves in the ocean shallows still look like the interior of a conch shell. It's a nice unique touch that should be carried over.

[Mánagarmr]

Holy baloney this turned out to be quite the project! But, I got a nice fat salary this month, so bring on the Kickstarter! ^_^

[orzelek]

It looks like a good time to finally get a kickstarter account. I already missed few things like Grim Dawn there so it would be about time

[Aklyon]

I won't be able to do much, but if i spot something nifty in the lower tiers I'll toss my (potentially pixelated) hat in.

[goodgimp]

I signed up for a Kickstarter account for this. I've been tempted in the past but this put me over the edge. I actually like the current art style, but if this can A) Improve it even further and B) make the game reach a larger audience and provide more money for Arcen to make more games, I'm all for it.

[Professor Paul1290]

I'm going to have to share some of Professor Paul1290's concerns about publicity here.

It seems like soliciting money for a major refactoring of a major aspect of a product, that by many people's standards, should of been done right in the first place (or right enough such that a new "project fund" had to be created to "fix" it) isn't something that will inspire much confidence.
An art revamp of this magnitude (assuming an major art revamp is what is chosen) without declaring it a new product line I rarely see outside of free software projects, where that culture is much more willing to embrace the idea of art and the game engine being developed separately.
(EDIT: Note, this implies that this is in large part a problem of unrealistic expectations of many consumers of games, aka, a cultural problem, not a developer competency one)

Now, as a long time "lurker", and as someone who has seen this product evolve from its brainstorm phases, to its first public beta release, to where it is now, I know that the primary focus of the funds has been into R&D. The art, while by no means neglected, didn't get as much of a percentage of the funds as many people might expect in project, and that this new initiative is primarily here to help give the art the extra "oomph" to sort of "catch up" from that earlier decision. (BTW, I think focusing on the engine and gameplay first was the right decision, even if it lead to tricky issues like what we have now) (EDIT: And you guys did a great job with the art even as it is now. This whole initiative seems to be about fixing some inconsistencies and gaps in the current art, that due to both stylistic and unforeseeable technical reasons, will possibly turn out to be expensive to fix)
However, this would be VERY hard to communicate to someone who hasn't been seeing the history of this product as long in a convincing enough way to overcome that initial negative first impression.

(EDIT: Semi-ninja'd by Chris)

This is pretty much what I'm worried about.

At the risk of again sounding really negative, there's also the fact that most Kickstarters have a positive image or no image to start out with.


There's the fact AVWW's image outside of its fans just isn't very good at all. I would even go so far to say it's quite negative right now.

The opinion among most observers outside these forums is that "AVWW was a failed project and in a few months Arcen is going to whine that they've run out of money again".
That doesn't hold water in a lot of ways, but that's more or less what a lot of people think right now.

I can understand that rationally, a Kickstarter doesn't indicate anything like that. The problem is that the public isn't really rational and often can't be bothered to look into details. A Kickstarter may reinforce this negative image unless it's done really well.


I'm not saying it shouldn't be done, in fact I think this is something that should at least be given a try. I'm just saying you're going to have to be really careful with how this is going to be presented.

[x4000]

Unless you've been following all our press very closely, I think your perspective is skewed by whatever bits you have read.  To refresh:

Kotaku, Joystick, Boy's Life, and Tom Chick have said really positive things about it.  Big, big, big.

Most smaller indie sites have given it at least 4/5 stars, a couple a perfect 5/5 stars.

Most of the "middle of the road" size sites that are on Metacritic but not huge, and then also some of the larger sites like IGN, Gamespot, and Eurogamer and RPS, actively disliked it or at best gave it 6/7 out of 10.  A lot of the complaints that they had at 1.0 we addressed with 1.1, and RPS recently wrote a much more positive article about it.

Beyond that, our main problem isn't that people think bad things about the game -- it's that they have no clue it exists.  And beyond that, I can't control people's perceptions.  We're not asking for general-purpose funding.  We're doing fine on that point.  But a certain contingent of people are griping that they want us to add something expensive to the game that is beyond our budget, and then they'd enjoy it.  Well -- we're giving them, as a group, the opportunity to fund that themselves.  Whether they do or not makes little difference to the future of Arcen, but I should think it's far preferable than our just saying "sucks to be you, we call all the shots" like a big studio would.

If you look at anything Arcen has done, it's all been statistically unlikely.  AI War?  Who would have thought there would have been so many units of that sort of game sold, and yet most people still would never have heard of it?  Everything is unlikely until it happens, and then it's 100% likely because it's happened.

If I was the sort that got scared out of doing things because somebody on the Internet might think badly of me, I'd never be in this business.  Some people are going to think badly of me no matter what I do, and I just have to let that go.  Acting from a position of fear, or "let's only do things that have worked for other people already" just isn't my style.

[Nanashi]

I think he's more referring to the amount of negative comments there are on such sites. I always take a glance at the vox pops too (even if just out of morbid curiousity), and even on the site that you linked earlier (Indiegames) there seems to be an overwhelming amount of negativity. (I think Mr Park's cat probably set Amanda Chen's house on fire).

ProfessorPaul seems to have actually posted there in order to ameliorate some of the negativity, but fighting jaded people is a waste of time.

[keith.lamothe]

Bashing AVWW has been a recreational pasttime for some sections of the internet gaming community since very early pre-alpha coverage on RPS, and they've never really kicked the habit.  Actually, one of the reasons given for the abuse was that we were bothering them with such an early version of a game.  And yea, the chen was one of the recreational-abuse participants there, though I think that came later.

I don't have much of an idea how many distinct people are represented in that "following", or how much their comments reflect how other people feel, etc, but in general I don't worry about it.

[x4000]

I think he's more referring to the amount of negative comments there are on such sites. I always take a glance at the vox pops too (even if just out of morbid curiousity), and even on the site that you linked earlier (Indiegames) there seems to be an overwhelming amount of negativity. (I think Mr Park's cat probably set Amanda Chen's house on fire).

ProfessorPaul seems to have actually posted there in order to ameliorate some of the negativity, but fighting jaded people is a waste of time.

Oh, that?  Welcome to the Internet.  AI War and everything else we've ever done has usually had that sort of vitriol in comments.  It amounts to nothing.  Amanda Chen in particular seems to make a habit of bashing lots of things in overly negative ways on RPS and now apparently other sites, as I've seen her post with that same level of vitriol many times unrelated to my own stuff.

People read too much into comments -- for good or for ill.  For everyone that posts something nice or something nasty, there are hundreds of people who either don't read the comments, don't bother to post, or whatever.

If I had listened to RPS comments during alpha for the game, I should have just given it up and not ever made AVWW in the first place.  But it's been selling 3x faster than AI War ever did.  See what I mean?  People in comments can say what they like, but they thankfully don't get to set the rules of reality.  Neither do I, of course.  But the point is that fearing the vitriol of commenters is futile at best -- they'll hate you unless you have the courtesy to drop dead or stop making games, and nothing short of that will stop all of them.  Some get converted one way or the other (liking you after not, not liking you anymore after they did for a while), but this isn't a popularity contest.

At the end of the day, we hang our shingle out and make what interests us, and if enough other people also are interested that they want to support us, then we stay in business.  When we stop making interesting things, people will go away and that will be the end of us.  All the rest of that stuff is sound and fury.

Know the only two things that have had a measurable sales bump in our income?  Being mentioned on Kotaku and Total Biscuit.  Nothing else had any measurable short-term effect, in either a positive or a negative sense.  Though we did see another sales bump recently when the 1.1 trailer was on the front page of Steam.

My opinion is that the majority of the people using the Internet are smarter than we give them credit for.  They stay out of the flamewars and spats, they keep their own counsel after reading what various parties say, and then they do what they feel is best.

[Nanashi]

Oh, I don't doubt that at all. I never played AI war because it's not my kind of genre (I'm quite sure it's excellent, I've even seen videos of it and it's beautiful, but I don't really like RTSes because I prefer my strategy turn-based) - but when I heard about AVWW, I was instantly hooked into the basic idea of it because I'm a RPG/Platform addict.

I didn't expect you to take the comments seriously either - ProfessorPaul just seemed a bit worried on your behalf, and that's really a nice thing to know, because he loves the game enough to take such ill-spirited trolling to heart.

Otherwise, I'm really glad to hear AVWW is selling well! I hope you keep improving the game - I really love the direction you're taking AVWW with the next patch - and from what I hear (from trusted sources), Arcen has quite the reputation for intelligent and interesting development.

What something is doesn't matter so much as what it's striving to be.

[x4000]

I'm definitely always really moved whenever someone cares that much on our behalf -- that anyone is that worried about our continued survival as a company other than those of us working here is kind of surreal to me.  So it's always appreciated when people are looking out for us, and goodness knows we can use the support in comment threads and whatever else because otherwise the trolls just run rampant.  Which isn't the end of the world, as I already noted, but sure stings.

Anyhow, I'm not trying to slap down the opposition to the idea of the kickstarter, but this is actually an idea I've been toying with since way back into beta, and it's something that we've discussed internally from time to time.  We made the decision to give it a shot at this particular timing knowing that there are certain risks, but that they seem acceptable compared to the potential gains.

[BobTheJanitor]

Oh come now, some of us spend so much time living on these forums that of course we'll grow to care a bit. If I were ever in the right part of the country for it, I'd love to just buy one of you guys a beer or beverage of your choice and hang out. But enough sentimentality. A question: If and when the kickstarter... er, starts do you plan to offer a reward tier with the game in it? And if so, when will people get the game? Most kickstarters don't actually have a purchasable product ready to go, so people are happy to wait. But you don't get the money until the funding is done, so will people have to wait until then? Or will you recommend they just go buy the game instead of donating?