Human Resources - Uber's next RTS

[KingIsaacLinksr]

'Funding Canceled Funding for this project was canceled by the project creator about 9 hours ago.'

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/659943965/human-resources-an-apocalyptic-rts-game/posts

Not really surprised at all. Not delivering on promises with your first game you KS and trying to start up another one was a recipe for failure. After all, we've heard the song and dance that companies can build two+ games at once but rarely is it followed through. They should focus on making PA as good as possible and then come back and try again with a new project. Because the hardcore fans were probably too pissed off to want to help fund it. I've found PA to be too imbalanced and incomplete to continue trying to learn it and be good at it.

I'm moving to other RTSes such as AI War and SupCom. It's time I got back into the RTS game.

[Wingflier]

'Funding Canceled Funding for this project was canceled by the project creator about 9 hours ago.'

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/659943965/human-resources-an-apocalyptic-rts-game/posts

Not really surprised at all. Not delivering on promises with your first game you KS and trying to start up another one was a recipe for failure. After all, we've heard the song and dance that companies can build two+ games at once but rarely is it followed through. They should focus on making PA as good as possible and then come back and try again with a new project. Because the hardcore fans were probably too pissed off to want to help fund it. I've found PA to be too imbalanced and incomplete to continue trying to learn it and be good at it.

I'm moving to other RTSes such as AI War and SupCom. It's time I got back into the RTS game.

It's really sad actually. I was really, really looking for to Human Resources. It was just such an awesome concept. But yes, I think the PA Community has just been disgusted/completely let down with how Uber handled the entire situation with that game, and I don't think anybody can blame them. I think if they had worked on PA for another year and made it a really solid product, THEN pitched the idea for Human Resources, maybe it would have worked out better, but I really don't know. <3

[Mánagarmr]

Not surprised. They burned a LOT of bridges with PA and it was released in a woefully incomplete state with huge balance issues and unfinished features. I fail to see how launching a new kickstarter so close to the PA release was a good idea. It's probably the worst PR move I've seen in a long time, and just shows that UBER have a pretty big disconnect with their player base.

[chemical_art]

Alright, I decided to split up my overview of kickstarter and HR into two works, and that made things just so much neater that I am happier with.

The kickstarter one is going through a second person to edit and will be posted later tonight, and the HR one in particular will come in a few days.

[keith.lamothe]

I didn't want to see the HR KS fail, but I hope Uber takes the opportunity to learn from that failure.  None of the problems I've had with them are unsolvable.

[Misery]

So that whole thing fell though then?

Hm, yeah, with everything that happened with PA and how they handled all of it it doesnt surprise me.

Too bad though.  I didn't agree at all with how they'd been running things from the start, but there was no doubt that the game really had a ton of potential.  They definitely should have given it time to hit that potential before starting another one.  I wonder what the heck they were thinking with that?

[TheVampire100]

Money. I suppose.
It just seems really weird for me that they started directly a new Kickstarter campaign when their last title just hit the stores. Liek they couldn't wait for the next game.

In my opinion they should focus first on their last game AND look if they can fund their project with the profit of PA before theying "We cannot fund ourselves, we need Kickstarter".
Kickstarter is not a site for every little thing you want to get done, it is if you are new or are certain that you cannot fund it yourself.
And the developers of PA just show us with this that they don't even try to look if they can handle that themself.

[Wingflier]

I was talking to my cousin about this last night, and he made a pretty good point.

Why did they do another RTS? They already have an RTS that they just finished. I mean if they had done a game from a different genre, which didn't seem in direct competition to the game they just *made*, and which people were, in general, pretty unsatisfied with, it would be a different story.

The fact that it had so many similarities to PA, seemed to fix a lot of the problems with PA (multiple races and flat maps), had such a similar art style to PA, and was of course the same genre as their original game. I think to most PA backers, it was just a slap in the face. It's like, "Let's make an RTS to replace the failed RTS we just made."

I'm sure that wasn't their intention during the development/Kickstarter process, but that's how it came off.

He made a pretty good analogy. PA is like a girlfriend that you're already in a relationship with, HR is like her sister who is trying to flaunt herself and get your attention. Why would you leave the original girl to be with her sister? Seems like a betrayal.

[keith.lamothe]

I don't think companies should never use Kickstarter for projects they can fund themselves.  It helps them understand whether there's an audience for the project, and helps build up a community around the product.  And even if they could have funded it, the extra money can make the game even better.

That said, there are also significant downsides to doing a KS, as Uber is in a position to know.

From my perspective their next step should be to build up a positive reputation by making PA into a more solid product.  Obviously that will be costly and could require changes to their company to make it feasible, but I think ultimately just trying to plow forward with their current reputation would be more costly in the end.

Though I admit that there's a significant segment of the audience that they'll probably never win over even if they work on PA for the next 10 years, so the decision isn't clear cut by any means.


(As for why they tried another RTS, I'd say the cost and time savings of using the PA engine was fairly decisive)

[Wingflier]

(As for why they tried another RTS, I'd say the cost and time savings of using the PA engine was fairly decisive)

Perhaps this is true (I thought about it a lot as well).

However, if they had done it 6 months down the road, after PA was in *much* better shape than it currently is, and had they marketed as a *HUGE STANDALONE EXPANSION* to PA (optional, obviously), adding new races and the city maps etc., I think people may have gone for it. Then it doesn't seem like a betrayal anymore, but an extension of an already awesome product, and since it's using the same engine and art style, it's not much of a stretch to present it that way.

Sometimes I wonder about the PR departments of these companies. I'm not professional by any means, and like I came up with that in 5 minutes.

[keith.lamothe]

I do wonder about the PR folks, yes.  In Uber's case especially: any one of the PR snafus since the start of PA's life make sense as simple (and readily pardonable) mistakes when taken individually, but I'd assume that Uber would notice the pain involved in those events and get extra-special-careful about them in the future.  Particularly after the second or third time.  But simple things like "maybe we better make sure our previous kickstarter is a net-positive to our reputation before starting another kickstarter" seem to continue eluding them.

Possibly they've found that even the negative PR is overall a net-win for them.  But that doesn't make sense in the case of a company that seems to clearly have the resources to get positive PR.

[Cyborg]

Maybe there is a disconnect in the way that companies perceive their kickstarter patrons. Are these investors who are getting discounted deals, or are they going to have some of the role of being "the boss." Maybe uber thought that kickstarter is just a money tree instead of honoring the relationship that it entails.


I think that a lot of the people investing money up front feel like they have more input than they actually do, but debatably should.

[Mánagarmr]

Maybe there is a disconnect in the way that companies perceive their kickstarter patrons. Are these investors who are getting discounted deals, or are they going to have some of the role of being "the boss." Maybe uber thought that kickstarter is just a money tree instead of honoring the relationship that it entails.


I think that a lot of the people investing money up front feel like they have more input than they actually do, but debatably should.

I can only speak from my own experience, but in my personal opinion I felt that Uber didn't follow up on either the pitch, promises or features they spoke highly about in their Kickstarter campaign and even afterwards. For instance, they claimed that the graphics were placeholder and were to be greatly improved. It still looks the same as in their early videos. They spoke of 40v40 player games in a "massive" solar system. The game barely handles eight players total right now, and with several slowdowns. In addition, they promised huge planets and solar systems with a great amount of planetary bodies. Planets are relatively small right now, even when dragged to their max radius (1300) and a solar system can only contain up to 16 bodies, moons and asteroids included. Offline play weren't in at launch, neither was ranked, both of which are finally making it in. LAN support is, as far as I know, still missing.


I wouldn't have felt like this if Uber hadn't gone out with such a huge blast going "PA IS RELEASED, YEAH!" and bragged about it, when half of the promised features weren't even in the game yet. So far I haven't even talked about actual gameplay which is still severely lacking as far as balance and variety goes.

[doctorfrog]

It's really sad actually. I was really, really looking for to Human Resources. It was just such an awesome concept. But yes, I think the PA Community has just been disgusted/completely let down with how Uber handled the entire situation with that game, and I don't think anybody can blame them. I think if they had worked on PA for another year and made it a really solid product, THEN pitched the idea for Human Resources, maybe it would have worked out better, but I really don't know. <3

The theme looked interesting. The concept didn't seem very novel or fleshed out (har har). Pretty things, with a bland and vague mechanical underneath. This, coming off of the lack of good will surrounding PA, and yes, you're right, another year would have been better.

Video Game People tend to look at a theme and say "Best Thing Ever!!!!" It's not bright. Not saying this about you, Wingflier, just video game enthusiasts in general.

[Wingflier]

Not to self-mutilate here, but I do like shiny things <3, at least where RTS games are concerned.