StarDrive: Invasion of the Space Bears.

[keith.lamothe]

That does beg the question, why build a engine/model not from the ground up with multiplayer, when the game was promised multi-player from the start.

It's possible he had no idea going in how much of a bear (no pun intended) multiplayer can be.  Or it's possible that his engine and model _can_ support it, but he still discovered it was much harder than he thought.

I find the whole post interesting...at first says don't buy it because it is dead...then says the original game is perfectly fine and from there a tirade of excuses of why he is not wrong for the most part.

Yea, he's clearly disturbed by the whole thing and doesn't know how to cope in a healthy fashion, and is acting somewhat erratically.  Though I'm not sure he was saying don't-buy-it so much as the poster that included his comments did... though I didn't see the original thread.  That the dev deleted.  That the dev started.  As I said, erratically

[Mick]

I've learned that when I look at feedback on a game, to treat "potential" as a dirty word. That seems to be the battlecry for people defending a game that is broken and/or unfinished.

And hey, sometimes unfinished games become finished and awesome, but "potential" is a very poor indicator on if that will happen.

[Wingflier]

I think I would have respected him more if he had issued an actual apology instead of going into full-defense "frack you all" mode. Things like this happen, but he could have said, for example, that anybody who owned a copy of his current game would get the next one for 75% off (or free even) - or he could have said he's accepting refunds for people who still had their receipts.

The way he handled it was so apathetic and childish that it left a really bad taste in my mouth.

[Mánagarmr]

Yeah, my biggest reaction was with his attitude to the whole thing. If he'd just explained it more properly instead of "It's done. Shut your piehole, I'm not doing anything."

[eRe4s3r]

I would spill a single tear were the game any decent... though for me not having MP is actually a selling point, as games designed for MP will always be inferior in SP. Sadly this game is inferior in SP even without MP.

Anyhow.. a KS is not a list of legally binding promises. You donate money, and whether you get what's written in the blurb is completely random. You get what you pay for, and you should read the description of the pledges carefully and realize that just because something is promised in the project updates doesn't mean that it will be in the project at all. Kickstarts are donations, not purchases or pre-orders. And there is no legal way to demand anything, as you are not an investor. You donated money.

That's not a reason to not pledge on KS, but it is something you should know before you do it

And hey, nobody with any passing coding or game developing knowledge expected this to get MP in a later patch. So my surprise is as limited as the tears I spill over this dead 4x ,)

[keith.lamothe]

Anyhow.. a KS is not a list of legally binding promises. You donate money, and whether you get what's written in the blurb is completely random. You get what you pay for, and you should read the description of the pledges carefully and realize that just because something is promised in the project updates doesn't mean that it will be in the project at all. Kickstarts are donations, not purchases or pre-orders. And there is no legal way to demand anything, as you are not an investor. You donated money.

FWIW this is not how KS sees it, or represents it:

Is a creator legally obligated to fulfill the promises of their project?
Yes. Kickstarter's Terms of Use require creators to fulfill all rewards of their project or refund any backer whose reward they do not or cannot fulfill. (This is what creators see before they launch.) We crafted these terms to create a legal requirement for creators to follow through on their projects, and to give backers a recourse if they don't. We hope that backers will consider using this provision only in cases where they feel that a creator has not made a good faith effort to complete the project and fulfill.

http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/kickstarter+basics?ref=faq_nav#Acco

[eRe4s3r]

Notice the wording It only talks about rewards. Aka, what is written in the pledge description.

The rest of the terms are even more vague and only talk about the project as a whole, not things that are added as stretch goals or in updates (the posts on KS that are called that, anyway). And after release all is lost anyway.

[keith.lamothe]

Is a creator legally obligated to fulfill the promises of their project?
Yes.

Of course, people wiggle out of things tighter than that.

In this case I guess it depends on the specifics: was the game a reward for any of the tiers?  Was multiplayer part of the original feature list or was it a stretch goal?  If part of the original feature list, then I think the backers at a tier including the game would have grounds for suit.

And while I don't think getting their money back is really all that worthwhile, if the dev won't even admit wrong they should be sued.  Admit fault, and that's... well, not fine, but we should be gracious with each other.  But do something like that and then publicly justify and defend your actions?

[eRe4s3r]

Of course it's a sucky thing to do by dat dev But let's be realistic.. 670 backers and $17k does not ever buy you MP in a complex game like a 4X. Especially since the original goal was exclusively for ART.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1319847883/stardrive-a-4x-action-strategy-game-for-the-pc

It says Multiplayer in the description. With just 670 people.... it's also doubtful very many of those are around and even still care ;p

While he does list a great many "nice to have" features, he also says this

The funds that I hope to raise will go almost exclusively towards paying for more art.  Great game artists are very hard to come by and I feel very lucky to have such a talented artist on my team.  By funding this project, you are really funding him!

Which already tells you everything. I doubt any court would accept this as it's a clear risk of game development. It was a SP at heart and the KS was about Art. Which is why I feel little reason to get all hyper about this. One just needs to actually read the KS before pledging .. ;P

I wouldn't mind an European court establish some kind of precedent for KS projects though. Currently it's all grey goo and nobody knows what is law and what is just wishful thinking.

[keith.lamothe]

Ah, ok.  Yep, in the specifics   From what I know the art was very much delivered, fwiw.  So it may not be quite a 100% delivery on the part that might be considered binding, but probably close enough that it's not really actionable.

Anyway, it'd be nice if this curse-of-the-4X thing would stop being so consistent.

[Wingflier]

I wish developers would just abandon the genre and let it die. Every new attempt seems to make it worse.

[eRe4s3r]

"3 moves ahead" made a nice podcast about the topic, called "lost in space"
https://www.idlethumbs.net/3ma/episodes/lost-in-space

And it echoes my opinion...  I don't want it to die, because it is already dead. The 4X genre was dead when MOO2 came out. After that no developer ever took a step BACK and looked at the thing objectively. Instead they all cloned MOO2. Very few exceptions (Distant Worlds (which just needs a better engine and some actual gameplay) and SINS (which is an RTS, but has 4x elements)) but sadly I don't like these games for various reasons. Distant Worlds because of the insane price, and SINS because it's just plain boring to me.

But the future of the genre is to NOT clone MOO2 / Ascendency. By the way, to me Ascendancy was the best 4x ever made ;p It felt so, complete.

[Mánagarmr]

I wish developers would just abandon the genre and let it die. Every new attempt seems to make it worse.

This is true. There hasn't been a decent 4X since...Space Empires V?

[eRe4s3r]

Meh, Space Empires 5 has the same problem as all other 4x games, it bogs down once the scale exceeds the dev's design goal. No abstraction, no good automation... and no story/immersion/progression

[Mánagarmr]

Err. 4X games need a story? When did they ever have a story?