Most recent KS update

[Tridus]

That being said, I absolutely understand the whole "tedium" thing.  I cant work on something whatsoever when I'm in the state of mind where I'm bored of it at the time.  I dont know how major developers deal with it, completely forced to work on such-and-such project for huge amounts of time wether they're burned out or not.

That's why turnover in the industry is so high. People move on to other things. But until they do that, they get the work done, because that's what they're getting paid for.

Tons of people out there with jobs far more monotonous than video game developers.

[x4000]

Hoo boy.  Wow, lots of stuff in this thread.  This is part of why I've drifted away from the forums some recently, I think -- there's just so much discussion that I'm getting overwhelmed.  There's a lot of chaos in my life right now in general, and I've kind of taken it for granted that folks here are more "in my corner," so to speak, so I've neglected you and focused outward instead.  I apologize for that.

To some of the questions (and I understand I may be missing others, so please feel free to follow up):

1. No, I have no intention of becoming just a UI and graphics programmer or whatever the exact wording is.  I haven't fallen out of love with game design.

2. That said, my stamina for redoing a project that took 2+ people 5+ years to create is low if I'm having to do it by myself, yes.

3. Why is #2 the case?  Well, one big reason is Stars Beyond Reach.  I spent soooo long trying to make that work, obviously with a team that time, but ultimately it failed.  It would be really hard for me to jump into a project with that degree of longevity if I'm working on my own.  Having up-front funds would be nice in regards to taking of the pressure of "what if this doesn't sell after all this work," which has bitten me in the rear repeatedly over the recent years.  But that's only part of it.

4. In all, I really want to be able to focus on things that are more concrete and that I can polish, in the main, when it comes to my game design work.  I've had a lot of time working on really sprawling projects that always seem to run over budget and still not have the polish I want on them.  I want to be able to sit down with something and really make it more exactly what I want it to be.

5. In a lot of respects, I'm not excited by the parts of AI War where I'm locked into simply redoing work that I did before.  Keith is very much the guy for that sort of thing, because he is doing it better and more modern, and he's getting to focus on improvements and polish and all that jazz much the same as I was.  On the flip side, the parts of AI War where I'm actually allowed to innovate in various ways are enormously exciting to me.

6. You can talk about tedium in jobs all day, and that's fine.  But ultimately I've poured my soul into Arcen for a really long time, and I have to avoid doing it to that degree in the future.  It's hurting my family, my marriage, and my health.  There have been periods where I've worked 7 days a week for months at a time, as recently as August of this year.  I just can't do that sort of thing anymore.  But when it comes to the creative side of things, the parts that make a game shine and show it's crafted with love, you have to have a certain amount of gusto that is difficult for me to muster on certain parts of this project at this time.

7. There's also a question of opportunity cost.  I'm quite capable of making smaller games on my own or with an artist as the only help, and I get to be both unfettered by past expectations as well as really reveling in every aspect of the work.  I'm not sure where the idea came from that I don't like tedious things, as anyone casually observing would probably think I have a fixation on such things, honestly.   But there's a big difference between me giving you 100 tasks that will take you a year to complete, and only part of the funds and time to actually do it, versus me giving you 5 tedious tasks that you have enough time and funds for and that you can really just focus your attention on.

8. I've realized in the last few months that I'm not really burned out on making strategy games.  I'm burned out on making GIANT ones, where I'm designing the whole thing.  I'd rather build intricate, complex, and compelling smaller experiences.  The mindset of a strategy game is kind of at the core of most of my gaming unless it's just stress relief type work, though.

9. To the question of if Keith is leaving or not: no.  Someone asked why we don't delay the kickstarter for months, and my response was meant to be basically "because Keith has bills to pay, and I can't pay them while we wait during said months, so he'd have to go do something else by definition."  I apologize for being unclear.

Cheers.

[Tridus]

Okay, good.

[keith.lamothe]

Just like I love Keith and think no project can succeed without him, his lack of forum action (lately) hurts communication so much.

I first joined this forum because Keith responded to me in an hour. Keith has fallen out of forum contact now. If I were to start on this forum, the lack of contact would have not grown me to develop here.

That's a very good point, and I appreciate your bringing it up.

There are three main reasons I've been absent:

1) My life has been crazy. Up to four daughters now, had multiple deaths in the extended family, moved to a different state this year (which was a huge saga; we had like 6 different addresses in 6 months), etc. I won't go into a lot of detail because I generally keep my personal life offline, but it was worth mentioning in this case.

2) Projects like SBR and SR really consumed all available resources. I was rowing as fast as I could to get the galley to the other side. What hours I had left I needed to put towards my family, and honestly more programming on top of all that sounded exhausting, not relaxing.

3) When Chris is taking point on a project, I generally keep quiet in public. We often have different goals and different methods for getting there, so having two "official" sources that never seem to say quite the same thing is not helpful. I often disagree with him, but we handle that privately. The alternative is chaotic.


My hope with AIW2 is to revive the game and the joint effort between Arcen (specifically me) and the player community to refine it.

I will be taking on outside work regardless of how the kickstarter relaunch goes (our current plans for the kickstarter are based around me working on it 30 hours a week), but honestly I think that's in AIW's favor because I'll no longer be using all my desire-to-work-on-games on whatever the main-burner Arcen project is at the time just to make ends meet.

I'd love to just get back to keeping up a steady rate of refinement on this. No funding drama, no wild swings in availability because of some other game project, etc. Just more dungeon-mastering >D


In practical terms that means:

1) Building a new foundation that lets us get out from under several "but the game would have to be built that way from the ground up!" situations. Multithreading, modding, 3D, etc.

2) Making some key design changes that aren't prevented right now by the technology, but would be very difficult or impossible to do right due to the sheer scale of things already in the game. Reworking the whole hull bonuses and armor thing, better balance between "glass wall" and "bend but don't break" defenses, etc.

3) Starting with a core of content, and then considering with you which pieces we want to put back first, what we wanted to change about those, and to "do it right" rather than having more layers of "some great stuff, some cruft".


Longer term, my hope is that the new model will be much easier for y'all to keep things going even if I'm not still doing this.

But for now I'm focusing on this opportunity, because I very much want to get back to doing this

[garion333]

Thanks for the replies, Chris and Keith.

To be honest, I kinda think that Chris needs to be a bit more careful about his wording and such.  I mean, he made it apparent a long while ago that he's not all that much really wanting to do strategy games at this point, having burned out on the genre a bit.... but he said that HERE.  It's one thing to say stuff like that on a forum... it's a whole other matter when you're saying it in a place like KS.  Even if that is in the comments section rather than as a part of the main post.   I'm all for transparency and whatnot, but that particular bit way up there is a bit past that.

This still strikes a chord with me. I keep feeling like some of the posts on the Kickstarter have ended in the area of damned if you do, damned if you don't. Too transparent? Damned. Less transparent? Damned. Etc.

[x4000]

I do have to be careful about that, yes.  And I did consider that, when making the comment.  However, one thing I'm really trying to do is make sure that people are clear that they're not getting a cut-rate experience by having Keith at the helm instead of me.  There's a real danger of people forming an attachment to me and being like "who is this Keith guy?  why are things so scaled back now?  aaah!"  For me, making it clear that he's more passionate about the core of the project than I am is important to me in overcoming that.  Probably could have phrased it better, though, for sure.

[Tridus]

I do have to be careful about that, yes.  And I did consider that, when making the comment.  However, one thing I'm really trying to do is make sure that people are clear that they're not getting a cut-rate experience by having Keith at the helm instead of me.  There's a real danger of people forming an attachment to me and being like "who is this Keith guy?  why are things so scaled back now?  aaah!"  For me, making it clear that he's more passionate about the core of the project than I am is important to me in overcoming that.  Probably could have phrased it better, though, for sure.

Yes, definitely on the phrasing part.  There is such a thing as oversharing when it comes to the sausage factory part of making things. When in doubt, try to be succinct and to the point. Something like "For the next project, Keith will be taking a more visible role. He was the one responsible for AI War's last three expansions, so he knows the game backwards and forwards, and is excited to work on all the new things coming."

Sound like marketing speak? Kinda. But that language exists for a reason. This is a sales pitch: emphasize the positive. Every word there is absolutely true. The KS page doesn't need to know all the nitty gritty.

[x4000]

There's a difference between the main KS page and the KS comments.  The latter are important as well, but the nitty gritty are more important there.

They absolutely do need to know some about what is going on and why, in my opinion, because I've seen too many other developers get burned by KS backers feeling upset that they were misled about who was being involved in what, or how money was to be spent, or things being switched on them without notice (and the switch being a negative thing), or the same developers running more kickstarters without delivering on the first one yet.

To those points:

1. For someone who doesn't know Arcen, if they just liked the idea of AI War 2 and backed it, but then come to find out that the main face of the first campaign is much more absent in the re-launch, what's the deal with that?  Start giving me marketing speak and I'm hanging on to my pledge, personally.

2. For someone who doesn't know Arcen, once again: who is Keith?  Just because he knows what is going on and was really involved in the later expansions isn't the most exciting thing.  Some of the expansions for Empire Earth were a good example of how that sort of situation led to a poorer sequel after meh expansions.  It can seem like people are getting a second-rate alternative in terms of developer if it isn't presented right, but actually they're getting the best out of the bunch of us for this job.

3. Similarly, there's a good chance I may launch a kickstarter for something else in January or sometime in Q1.  If that's the case, then people need to be crystal clear that these are separate things and why.  We're not using the second one to shore up funds for the first one (ugh), or vice-versa, etc.  It's just two different fully-competent designer/programmers inside one development company, working separately.  This is super important to be laying the groundwork for now, in my opinion, because this isn't the sort of thing you can belatedly pop out with and not have a sour taste in people's mouths.

4. We have yet another group, the Starward Rogue "freaking volunteers" who are likely to run their own kickstarter for an expansion to help fund them.  It won't be under the Arcen company account, so that's more separate, but it has to be made clear that here again that's a completely different group of people just in the same rough collective.

There is definitely such a thing as over-sharing.  I probably crossed that line in that original post, or at the very least chose some wording poorly.

Sound like marketing speak? Kinda. But that language exists for a reason.

Generally speaking that exists either to build hype or to obscure meaning.  I am trying to do neither thing in my comments that explain to a backer what is coming with Keith.  I'm doing something much more akin to public relations, where I'm trying to get across information and keep them from getting mad while at the same time understanding my position.

This is a sales pitch: emphasize the positive. Every word there is absolutely true. The KS page doesn't need to know all the nitty gritty.

This applies to the body of the kickstarter page, and to most updates in general for the kickstarter, for sure.  Some of the very last updates in a failing campaign I think can be less sales-y or else you just start looking like a moron.  I've seen people who have smiled happily and seemingly obliviously all the way into the brick wall, and it just looks so cartoonishly blind.

The short answer is that I'd rather say something that is true and have to explain it further than I would obscure something that is potentially unpleasant and have that blow up later.  When the guy who wrote 50 pages of responses on a reddit AMA is no longer at the helm of a re-launch, that's an enormously hugely worryingly giant red flag for anyone who puts that together.  They need a candid answer on what's going on if they're going to make any decision based on that.  Ultimately I could be salesy about it with them, but I think that erodes trust fast. Certainly on the new KS that's not something I'm going to address in remotely this same way, but for anyone who wants more information I'd be happy for them to know the full story a bit better.

I've just been lied to too many times by companies, marketers, and executives in my life for me to want to do anything remotely along the lines of what I've seen them do.  I'd rather be a bit on the unprofessional side and stand apart from them.  If that loses me a few customers, so be it -- but honestly I think if anything that seems to inspire more confidence, and it certainly would if other companies would treat me that way too.

[Sounds]

...

They absolutely do need to know some about what is going on and why, in my opinion, because I've seen too many other developers get burned by KS backers feeling upset that they were misled about who was being involved in what, or how money was to be spent, or things being switched on them without notice (and the switch being a negative thing), or the same developers running more kickstarters without delivering on the first one yet.
...

This.

After being burned by another developer using KS to promote and promise one thing and only to deliver something else has left me completey cold on backing anything else.

This type of transparency is the reason I backed the KS, but I can't see myself backing any other developers without a history of openness and integrity, which Arcen has done as a whole from the first day I was aware of them.

[x4000]

I, too, have felt burned by a lot of kickstarters.  It obviously hasn't soured me on the whole platform, but my pledges in recent years are a lot fewer than a few years ago.

[Cyborg]

4. We have yet another group, the Starward Rogue "freaking volunteers" who are likely to run their own kickstarter for an expansion to help fund them.  It won't be under the Arcen company account, so that's more separate, but it has to be made clear that here again that's a completely different group of people just in the same rough collective.

Maybe it's time to retire the "freaking volunteers" label? Especially if they are doing a kickstarter?

[Chthon]

I, too, have felt burned by a lot of kickstarters.  It obviously hasn't soured me on the whole platform, but my pledges in recent years are a lot fewer than a few years ago.

I think the main problem is funders getting burned on bad or poorly thought out projects. Funding under runs, features never getting added, etc. It makes those who once donated shy away, and makes it harder for better projects to get ahead.

Then again, I think we all know that by now.

Just reminding you. I'm willing to work on stuff for you for free. Willing to sign an NDA or contract saying "No I won't steal your code."

[Draco18s]

I'd also be up for giving a hand where I can.  I've been a little demotivated lately, so helping Arcen would be just the thing to perk me back up.

[NichG]

I guess I've been lucky (or wise?), since I've only been burned once. In that case, it wasn't dishonesty or grab-the-money-and-run or anything like that, but it was a dev team that had what seemed like a bunch of good ideas, but terrible execution in terms of making a game that wasn't clunky, slow, crash-ridden, etc. The developers were honest people and realized this, and took a year to make a polished-up sequel which was distributed for free to all the backers and owners of the original, but I still feel a bit soured on that game. Compared to that one, I've had good experiences with 6 other delivered projects, and I'm waiting on completion for 2 more (one has reached public beta stage and I basically don't want to spoil myself on it, other is still in dev). So basically a 86% hit rate. No idea if this is a usual KS experience for other people though.

Anyhow, nothing in Chris' comments changes my intention to back this one.

[Draco18s]

Lets see...games I've backed that I haven't seen anything from. Not many.

That Which Sleeps*
Elysian Shadows*
Hero-U*
Net Gain: Corporate Espionage (Developer AWOL since July '15)
*Still chugging, posted an update recently, I just haven't been reading them.  That said, Hero-U had a one-room demo a while back and my initial impression was "eugh!" as it was not pretty, handled like ass, and did not seem to be the game I'd been told I was backing.  Related, maybe? In the way that Chess and Risk are both war games...

There's also a few delivered products that were finished, but lackluster:

Sheltered was a bit of a disappointment, but the game was what they set out to make.  I guess it just wasn't as replayable as I'd have liked. I dunno.
The Enchanted Cave 2 was...well, exactly what it was. It was definitely more than the first game (which I beat) but the difficulty ramped up hard and I got burned out.
DwarfCorp I should peek at again, had some issues last time I played it.

All told I've gotten my money's worth out of things. Every book I've backed has been delivered (and the one I've actually read was really good--I need to get to the sequels!).  The one that I was ordering actual hardware is fantastic.  They apparently came out with a "version 2.0" last week (mind, the one I got from the Kickstarter was delivered over a year ago) with better sensors and improved functionality.  Not going to drop another $100 for the new one, but hey, I'm happy with what I did get.