Reverse AI War? Please don't do that.

[Xgamer4]

I wouldn't go so far as to say that this shouldn't be mentioned at all on Kickstarter, and I don't agree with part of what chemical_art is saying, either (If something's gonna fail, I like to know about contingencies or plans. It helps me move from a fan of the project to a fan of the team, and it helps show that the devs aren't delusional).

That said, I can agree with the perspective on people contemplating backing. At least this last update, and likely the last two, should probably have been backer-only updates with generic titles. Maybe "Contingency Plans" for Update 8 (though the current title is probably fine) and "As Requested, Elaboration on Contingency Plans" for Update 9.

[Xgamer4]

Comments aside, you deserve massive kudos for putting up with our backseat driving, and you are still gaining backers, so something's happening at least.

[x4000]

Cheers everybody.   The comments are taken in the spirit they were given.  On that note, though, I'm done talking about Reverse AI War for a few weeks at least.  I'm not going to be working on it or discussing it.  It exists as a contingency, you guys know what it is now, I think it's neat, but as folks have pointed out "now is not the time."  I'm not completely sorry I brought it up, but I have a much better focus now thanks to a long talk with the kickstarter folks.  I had a meeting with their head of games, along with our own rep, and they were able to give us customized, detailed, and fully-knowledgeable (no armchairing or inferring, but actually based on data in this specific market segment) advice.

You'll be happy to know that they echo a lot of things that are said here, and things that we were already doing, but they also had a lot of other things that I'd never thought of.  And in general some things that I wondered about the usefulness of they were able to confirm either yes or no it has an effect in this area.  This gives a lot better focus for us going forward, and you can expect to start seeing changes to the campaign tomorrow.

They were also hugely positive on the campaign in general: acknowledging that it's going to be a tough battle, but it's also not something that has like a 4% chance of success or whatever.  We're very much in a "normal zone" for a lot of campaigns that fund successfully but have a tough time up until the end.

As I noted yesterday, we still have plenty of time to maneuver, but now the shift in thinking is largely coming around to how to really maximize everything in this campaign itself... and not on the various contingencies if our existing plans don't work out.  Basically our various existing plans are all still in progress, but we also have a lot of other new things to work on.

[kasnavada]

I agree with chemical_art. On the Kickstarter page, an entire update about some other game just sends the wrong message. The message I get from it is "we're interested in making this other game". That is the absolute wrong message to be sending.
I get that contingency planning happens. That's fine. You shouldn't be advertising it. You really sholdn't be using a sales pitch for game A to talk about game B. Potential backers hate that. It's a mixed, confusing message. Either you're pushing this Kickstarter, in which case you should be pushing it, or you're pitching a different game, in which case you should cancel the Kickstarter.
There's such a thing as too much transparency. You're on the wrong side of the line now. It's hard to encourage friends to join me in backing this when they turn around and ask if this is for AI War 2, or "Reverse AI War".

+1 to that.

Again, I understand too the contingency plans. But... you do sound like you've given up and are going to another project. A KS ain't the forum.
On the KS speaking about other project is basically euthanizing your own KS. Same with being overly apologetic and pessimistic, which is a huge issue actually. A lot of the comments and updates actually sound like you and the others don't believe in the project.

I understand that the situation's complicated. And possibly you're actually really working on the KS. But when I look at the KS pages ? Until the latest update I could believe you were spending most of your time on it, and now I don't believe you spend more than a third of your time on it. Reading the KS page only, what I think is that you don't care anymore - but once called on it you tried to rectify.

I've seen a lot of posts around "the indy situation is hard, blablablah". What I think is that there was a switch in how to reach your customers, and Arcen completely missed it. Arcen's got a good presence on its own forum, but minimal at best outside of it. And how this KS is run kind of showed that, in a rather bad way.

Speaking of which, you really need to address this part:

Always with the [redacted] around here.

[Redacted] is fun.  [Redacted] is life.

Actually no. It's only fun for the 2-3 people involved. Everyone else just sighs and rolls their eyes and the smug "neener neener I know something you don't neener neener".

This post is surrealist. I'm 100% behind Mánagarmr on this, but the very fact that he and others had to type it baffles me.

Cheers everybody.   The comments are taken in the spirit they were given.  On that note, though, I'm done talking about Reverse AI War for a few weeks at least.  I'm not going to be working on it or discussing it.  It exists as a contingency, you guys know what it is now, I think it's neat, but as folks have pointed out "now is not the time."  I'm not completely sorry I brought it up, but I have a much better focus now thanks to a long talk with the kickstarter folks.  I had a meeting with their head of games, along with our own rep, and they were able to give us customized, detailed, and fully-knowledgeable (no armchairing or inferring, but actually based on data in this specific market segment) advice.

You'll be happy to know that they echo a lot of things that are said here, and things that we were already doing, but they also had a lot of other things that I'd never thought of.  And in general some things that I wondered about the usefulness of they were able to confirm either yes or no it has an effect in this area.  This gives a lot better focus for us going forward, and you can expect to start seeing changes to the campaign tomorrow.

They were also hugely positive on the campaign in general: acknowledging that it's going to be a tough battle, but it's also not something that has like a 4% chance of success or whatever.  We're very much in a "normal zone" for a lot of campaigns that fund successfully but have a tough time up until the end.

As I noted yesterday, we still have plenty of time to maneuver, but now the shift in thinking is largely coming around to how to really maximize everything in this campaign itself... and not on the various contingencies if our existing plans don't work out.  Basically our various existing plans are all still in progress, but we also have a lot of other new things to work on.

In any case, that part is nice to hear. Looking forward to the rest.