Tom Hall and Brenda Brathwaite kicking old school rpg

[youmeyou]

vimes, that's a great point. you should send that into the podcast, would make for some great discussion I bet.

My guess is that for many of these devs, the original 15 year old games were their best work, when they were fresh in the industry and had less at stake. Then they spent a lot of time getting disenfranchised by the funding process and couldn't make the same kinds of games that they first got into the business to make. Kickstarter allows them to do this. Kickstarter also allows fans of the original game to relive something that's a very core part of their gaming memory.

This does have the unfortunate side effect have ignoring all the *good* progress games have made in 15 years. Not necessarily all of it, but this desire for the retro, for the original leaves out a lot of what's changed. I noticed this playing through Black Mesa. It's a really fantastic mod, beautifully executed and succeeds at bringing Half-life up to, at least, graphical date. But a lot of the gameplay mechanics show their age. I feel like if the mods had instead taken the things that made half-life work, like interesting, well-designed massive spaces and unobtrusive environment scripting and had combined that with updated AI, shooting and movement mechanics the project would have been something more than a great way to relive a past memory.

That's my worry with kickstarting old games. Are they going to just improve the graphics and aesthetic and leave the game unchanged? Which is truly how a 15 year ago version of themselves might make the game if they time traveled to the present and continued being a dev from that point...

[elmuerte]

You really think that? I highly doubt they are going to forget all the other things they've learned and just soup up the graphics? Sure they won't forget what they learned on gamedesign, UX, writing, sound design, etc.

[youmeyou]

It's a superlative statement to be sure. But it's something I wonder about. Not so much about the technical aspects not being learnt but the differences in theory. Having nostalgia goggles for old games tends to make some fans ignore the advancements games have made in the past two decades. For example a lot of gamers say recharging health is a hindrance to modern games where I think it helps you put your focus elsewhere when playing the game as opposed to constantly hunting down rogue health packs in secret rooms. So I'm wondering if you have a developer who has the nostalgia goggles if he/she would make a game that tried to rebuild old mechanics in a new skin. I guess Black Mesa is a distant example. Maybe Serious Sam 3 is more of what I'm thinking about. Or Hard Reset.

[TurboPubx-16]

Sometimes, I'm wondering if I'm mistaking what I think industry veteran aspirations should be for what they actually are.

My initial vision of game veterans' Kickstarter was that they were going toward crowdfunding to undertake projects which, because they were conceived by people that have been 20+ years in the industry, were more personal, mature and thus less marketable than current industry output.

But there's been a string of Kickstarter by people I otherwise respect which look like they are trying to make a game that their 15 year younger self could have designed.

I'm not saying it's bad, but it makes me wonder if the game industry (or the community of game making people) somehow prevents growth and evolution.

The fault lies with the audience. Skip this post if you're not up for a healthy dose of cynicism.

I don't think developers have enough confidence in gamers to make a more personal and mature game. Maybe a $200K-$300K game could be that way, but not a million dollar game. If Wasteland 2, Project Eternity, and Double Fine's game come out and the people are satisfied, then Kickstarter will look a lot less risky, and then maybe the games themselves can be more risky.

Right now if you help kickstart a board game, the nature of the deal is that everyone who pitches in gets a copy of the game, and that's pretty much all they print. I don't really see video games going in that direction. If a developer gets the opportunity to make a million dollar game, they're going to want to sell it to regular consumers when it's done, and when that happens the first thing that gets chucked out the window is maturity and the first thing to be added is a set of cleavage.

Look at this way: there are forums like this one, where people are always looking for something new and innovative and don't mind if it's totally broken; and there are other forums, much bigger ones, where all people want is the same game as the last one but with a better interface and "more to do". How many times have you read something like this: "I work all day and when I get home I just want to click on skeletons and make purses out of scraps of leather." That's the voice of the consumer with only four hours a week to play games and enough disposable income to buy every title that comes out on Steam, but not if the game threatens him with a mature or personal story line.

Parody of a Kickstarter y/n?

If this is a failure I'll bet they'll come and say that they just combined the best (or indeed worst) elements of successful Kickstarter projects. Thinking back to Masters of Doom I can imagine an epilogue where they're sitting in a room crapping on Kickstarter games, only to dare each other into starting their own one.

[malphigian]

I'm not going to defend this thing, because it's pretty darned hard to defend. But I will say I got a few laughs out of this blog post:

http://www.eldergame.com/2012/10/the-dangers-of-a-too-statistics-driven-treasure-generator/

I say they take those pants and run with them, it's about time we had an RPG with an emotional damage type.

[elmuerte]

They're starting to release more info about the game(s): http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lootdrop/an-old-school-rpg-by-brenda-brathwaite-and-tom-hal/posts/322220?ref=activity

[brkl]

I would've responded to this better if they had used that as the damn logo or something. If they had these ideas, why did they act like they came up with doing this Kickstarter the earlier the same day in response to their electricity bill?

[darthbator]

Maybe a little off topic but I think this push back into "retro" might explode in a lot of peoples faces

But there's been a string of Kickstarter by people I otherwise respect which look like they are trying to make a game that their 15 year younger self could have designed.

I'm not saying it's bad, but it makes me wonder if the game industry (or the community of game making people) somehow prevents growth and evolution.

I think this hits really close to home to what the issue is. I think a lot of these people are just interested in revisiting the ideas they had 15 years ago with the ability to more clearly surface the core "ideas" or "themes" with today's technologies. I think the danger is that a lot of those beloved old generation games existed in a space where it was very difficult to use games as a communicative medium due to their technological infancy. Due to the primitive technology players filled in a lot of gaps with their imaginations or interpretations. And as most people know anything generated endogenously tends to have more value to a person. I think it will be really hard for a lot of "classic" designers to replicate their earlier successes unless they REALLY have the salt and have evolved with the medium.

[elmuerte]

It's not retro. It's about classic style games.

[darthbator]

Yeah I am just commenting about the resurgence of "classic" era game designers on kickstarter. I'm into enough kick starter projects at the moment that I'll pass on this one. After spending time with the Legend of Grimlock I am not so sure how hungry I am for another game like that at the moment.

[Twig]

I fully embrace the trend that is taking the lessons learned in the past couple decades of video game development and applying those lessons to gameplay that doesn't necessarily exist to the same degree it did back then.

[elmuerte]

I case people haven't been following the kickstarter, a lot of additional information has been made public.

So the old school part of the game mostly refers to the combat style, it's turn based and stuff. See update #6

[darthbator]

I can't recall if this was posted earlier but I saw this on RPS the other day.

http://www.rockpaper...ld/#more-126882

I gotta admit the world they're crafting sounds really interesting. Unfortunately I can't get all that excited about that "classic PCRPG" perspective.

[brkl]

It's now called SHAKER. Or maybe S. H. A. K. E. R. But not STIRRER. [/shitjoke]

[Murdoc]

barf.

[Orv]

Why the fuck would I ever want to play a Might and Magic-esque GUI RPG ever again?

E: Or Dungeon Master, or EotB, or whatever. That was a terrible combat system. It's like the people complaining about the new XCOM being too modern. Old games were terrible, nostalgia should not be a replacement for game design.

[elmuerte]

Shaker is going down, or it looks like it. They recognize their mistakes, but sadly, it's not going to make it. Halfway down the road and they only reached 25% so far.

I'm not really sad about Shaker getting shafted, but I am sad there isn't going to be a Tom Hall PC game anytime soon.

[Gormongous]

Well, it looks like they're going to sit on it however long it takes to come back with something stronger than "Hey guys, we were talking about making a game the other day, give us some money while we figure out what it'll be!" Which, you know, fair enough. I imagine there's huge pressure to get on the Kickstarter bandwagon and get yours before some high-profile disaster ruins it for everyone, so it probably doesn't take much to go off half-cocked.

[juv3nal]

huh.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lootdrop/an-old-school-rpg-by-brenda-brathwaite-and-tom-hal/posts/332306

[toblix]

Hey guys, did you see this hyperlink?

[Murdoc]

Link doesn't work, but I will assume it has to do with juv's post.

Well that's the great thing about kickstarter, it's a proof of concept testing ground. Concept sucks? doesn't get funded.

But to be fair, they could have just re-evaluated what they were trying to do and had made it for less money.

[Kolzig]

They went into this project way too lightly. No real decisions about the game were made before they started the campaign in Kickstarter so this was a sure way to miss the pledge. Also a million dollars as the budget goal is crazy talk especially from a company that only has produced fucking Facebook games so far. Their other game, unsurprisingly again a Facebook game was just cancelled and they fired bunch of people because funding was cut for that project.

I did give them the money for a digital version, just because I wanted to see Tom Hall make a real game again after all this Facebook bullshit he has cooked up with John Romero. I don't care about Brenda Romero being behind the game. I didn't play Wizardry 8, the only game she ever was a lead designer in and seems Jagged Alliance credits her for doing part of the game manual so that's not much. I just wish in the future there would be a time when Tom Hall and John Romero would make a REAL game again. They just need someone to control them, especially Romero needs someone to limit him in what he can do in a project.

In this "Shaker" Romero was not actively involved except just as a CEO of the company.

But it is interesting that after 3-4 days I almost thought they would get it funded. It got all the money during the first few days and after that in the next ten or so days maybe 500 dollars and then they pulled the plug.

Anachronox 2 would be something amazing, if the dev team would be something else than Facebook social game devs.

[elmuerte]

Apparently, there will be a big announcement next Wednesday

[brkl]

Maybe it's done.

[Justin Leego]

Facebook game via Unity engine.