Ashes of Creation
- Thread starter Tearofsoul
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moonarchia
The Scientific Shitlord
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Burns
Avatar of War Slayer
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In the non-MMO non-indie scene, there have been some successful AA studios that used crowdfunding, but I don't remember them all. Of the three I do recall (Obsidian, Owlcat, and Larian), Larian with Divinity: OS 1 and 2 were probably the most successful, monetarily, which allowed them to make the big bucks on BG3.
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Gravel
Mr. Poopybutthole
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Like
rhinohelix
stated, they're all trying to launch with a decade of content to compete with something like WoW. It's a massive mistake.It's something I mentioned in the MnM thread a long time ago. They all like to brag about how huge the world is, but 90% of your world will be abandoned as people figure out the ideal leveling path. It's all wasted effort and it ends up consuming so much of their time.
moonarchia
The Scientific Shitlord
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You need someone who isn't shit at budgeting who also has management experience and is highly creative. You need an engine either built from scratch, or one that is finely tuned to the art style you plan to use, and has the flexibility for modding and tools so you can create your own subsystems for things like questing and UI elements, etc.
Figure out the costs for all that, and enough devs to make it happen in 5 years or less, and that's your cost of entry. If you can get a bank or investment group willing to fund you without taking control, then you can get it done.
Getting the engine done with a starting zone and some basic quests would be proof of concept for a decent business plan to present to people. If you have a coherent story and world already written out, with some early concept art, you have a solid start.
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Ambiturner
Ssraeszha Raider
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Yes, which is why calling it a scam is retarded. It's just good old fashioned incompetence
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Pretty much. Someone that was definitely and obviously not in the position to make the shit happen. Wasted tons of money and 10 yrs of peoples labor to make something that is like 25% done, lol.
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I learned long ago not to put any money into upcoming games and to just wait to see how it ships.
jayrebb
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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Case by case refunds can be done if Steam agrees access was an issue. Being unable to access or play the game ( assuming you have a very low play time, like 6-12h max) can get you refunded.
Happens all the time with other games, it's not impossible. The instability and queues should be enough to get low hours players refunded due to unable to play. Obviously the tens of hundreds of hours guys are shit out of luck completely.
rhinohelix
Dental Dammer
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The originals were delivering a base level of functionality in a static, theme park world. What Steven and Intrepid were trying to create is massively, massively more complex, involving destructibility, weather, seasons, day/night cycles, player building, PVP, and evolving world, etc et al AND fun.
You have to make a smaller game and build in hooks and level your game up and out. One thing (old) Blizzard did really well was the basics: Their networking was ultra-top notch and their basic game design was amazing, and FUN. Their design esthetic was fantastic, recognizable, and simple to render. They didn't try to do everything at launch; they made a 2nd/3rd gen MMO that beat the pants off the current market leaders by being a step up in every way, with all the (old) Blizzard hallmarks.
Steven tried to build Next-Gen 2028 Even Bigger WOW all in one go and those ever expanding goalposts and ambitious design goals fell in on the whole studio.
Edit:
I can't remember what I said at the time when I played but when I got my alpha key and ran through the tutorial area I was severely disappointed. I played for a couple of days but I thought it was terrible. I mean, I have seen alphas before and realize there is a massive ton of things that still need to go in but I had a bad feeling right then. I thought, I will come back for the Beta and see if it improves. I know a lot of people played and had a great time but that wasn't my experience at all. I was so hyped for this, as much for exploring the world as anything else. I thought their world concept had so much promise.
At some point, someone should have sat down and said, "We need to launch by X date, what can we realistically put in by then?" and then dramatically scaled back the promises. One continent, 5 races, one ocean area, player ships, and dynamic weather and player towns to level 3: Everything comes later. Or whatever worked for them, Feature prune and pushed to xpac, otherwise the whole thing dies. They were in trouble when they started selling alpha/beta access and I guess the spin was so successful no one wanted to see it.
Steven should have reached out to Chris Roberts for a loan or to have Intrepid be bought out by Cloud Imperium Games.
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Kirun
Buzzfeed Editor
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I think people underestimate how much the definition of "finished" has changed.
Those early MMOs (EQ, DAoC, AO, even early WoW) were absolutely built with worse tools but they were also far "simpler" games. Content density was low, assets were reused constantly, systems were loosely coupled, and grinding was the content (or constant repeat PvP "grinding", as was the case with DAoC). A zone could be "done" with a handful of mobs and a dungeon and that was acceptable. Player expectations were also way lower. Broken quests, bad balance, downtime, missing QoL, shitloads of bugs, missing/non-working content/zones, crashing, etc. - all of that was "tolerated" because you didn't know any better yet (they were novel) and there wasn't much competition. A game being "90% working" after a few patches was fine. Today, a launch like that gets obliterated on Reddit, Steam, and YouTube in 24 hours.
Modern MMOs also have way more going on under the hood. High-fidelity assets, complex animation systems, server-side simulation, anti-cheat, analytics, live-service infrastructure, regional compliance, etc. Better tools don't cancel out the fact that each asset and system now takes far more work than it did 20 years ago.
On top of that, the business reality changed. Early MMOs were made by smaller, risk-tolerant teams. Modern MMOs are $100M+ projects with publishers, investors, and retention metrics driving design. That leads to feature creep, endless iteration, and risk aversion. Everyone's afraid of shipping something that isn't perfectly "safe." The real irony is that we did reinvent the wheel, in a sense. Because monetization, retention, and "having a unique hook" keep forcing redesigns of proven systems.
So yeah, in theory we could make a solid MMO faster by copying what worked and accepting rough edges. In practice, modern expectations, tech complexity, and corporate fear make that almost impossible.
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Daidraco
Avatar of War Slayer
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I think it rings more surprising simply because the game is for the most part, playable. I didnt mind putting my money towards the game because I saw a product that I thought could eventually exist in its own space.
The backend architecture with that server to server thing that basically segmented the load into smaller and smaller units, was it really necessary? It still, to this day, doesnt work "well" - and theyve been working on that for years. Then, the storyboard mechanics where each and every province would have its own story and quests. A lot of work and spinning wheels just to get shit ready for zones that havent even been created. The city thing was unique and novel, too. Where the whole settlement would go through layers of transition, and it would basically just load different "chunks" depending on its level. But that didnt work well either, as even in the steam release - you're falling through into the "hole" that those chunks resided in. Never mind the whole idea behind the city, built on the backs of PVE, being destroyed by PVP as people have mentioned. (New World, Im looking at you too.) Then, as far as individual mechanics where your caravan would transition to a raft and back again.. How often that mechanic, and mechanics like that.. how often would they be used? But you put a lot of dev time into that to make it work? We can literally go back to most of the videos of touting a new feature of the game and see how they just were, for the most part, reinventing the wheel or worse, putting the cart before the horse in terms of what should be developed first.
Never mind that the entire noobie experience is just awful. Even after the bit of refinement they did after steam launch - it just sucked. There are so many Quality of Life additions that happened in the genre since its inception that going back just kind of fucking sucks. Even with the very, very limited hand holding they do - it abruptly ends at roughly level 5 and then they expect you to "find your way." The map is awful. No LFG tool. Dropping items on death in a PVE death, never mind the exp loss and repair. Gearing in general just being awful. Spreading people out HOURS apart with no quick travel? "Hey man. Want to come up to the most northern part of the world, that is literally an hour+ to get to and exp with us?" Expect the response "Hey man. We're going to call it. Sorry!"
I could go on and on about my dissatisfaction with the game, and I just dont think Im alone. For the amount of money they put into the game, I just dont think I would have made anywhere near the same choices that were made. Or in other words, if I was putting a huge portion of my net worth into making a game - I would have made a game a fraction of the size and perfected that core experience. I mean think about the sheer size of the team that Shariff had going for this game? Wasnt it HUNDREDS of people? Just pure disappointment that this game didnt deliver.
I think this games fault was mostly scope creep and trying new things that havent been done before. Scott reminded me a lot of Todd Howard when he talks about Fall Out or Elder Scrolls etc. Every time I turned around over the last, what, 9 years, the ideas became more and more grandiose.
The backend architecture with that server to server thing that basically segmented the load into smaller and smaller units, was it really necessary? It still, to this day, doesnt work "well" - and theyve been working on that for years. Then, the storyboard mechanics where each and every province would have its own story and quests. A lot of work and spinning wheels just to get shit ready for zones that havent even been created. The city thing was unique and novel, too. Where the whole settlement would go through layers of transition, and it would basically just load different "chunks" depending on its level. But that didnt work well either, as even in the steam release - you're falling through into the "hole" that those chunks resided in. Never mind the whole idea behind the city, built on the backs of PVE, being destroyed by PVP as people have mentioned. (New World, Im looking at you too.) Then, as far as individual mechanics where your caravan would transition to a raft and back again.. How often that mechanic, and mechanics like that.. how often would they be used? But you put a lot of dev time into that to make it work? We can literally go back to most of the videos of touting a new feature of the game and see how they just were, for the most part, reinventing the wheel or worse, putting the cart before the horse in terms of what should be developed first.
Never mind that the entire noobie experience is just awful. Even after the bit of refinement they did after steam launch - it just sucked. There are so many Quality of Life additions that happened in the genre since its inception that going back just kind of fucking sucks. Even with the very, very limited hand holding they do - it abruptly ends at roughly level 5 and then they expect you to "find your way." The map is awful. No LFG tool. Dropping items on death in a PVE death, never mind the exp loss and repair. Gearing in general just being awful. Spreading people out HOURS apart with no quick travel? "Hey man. Want to come up to the most northern part of the world, that is literally an hour+ to get to and exp with us?" Expect the response "Hey man. We're going to call it. Sorry!"
I could go on and on about my dissatisfaction with the game, and I just dont think Im alone. For the amount of money they put into the game, I just dont think I would have made anywhere near the same choices that were made. Or in other words, if I was putting a huge portion of my net worth into making a game - I would have made a game a fraction of the size and perfected that core experience. I mean think about the sheer size of the team that Shariff had going for this game? Wasnt it HUNDREDS of people? Just pure disappointment that this game didnt deliver.