Areal (aka S.T.A.L.K.E.R. / Metro 3.0)

[Gormongous]

I guess they didn't expect to be attacked?

 

Well, nota bene that posting a Kickstarter for a "spiritual successor" to a game that already has at least three other spiritual successors in existence makes you a subject of scrutiny, I guess. I'm not saying I condone it, but I honestly don't know what West Games expected to be the response.

[Bjorn]

I think their Risks and Challenges section really tells you all you need to know about the likelihood of this succeeding.

 

We are an experienced team who have worked on many AAA projects, with some of them being S.T.A.L.K.E.R. There are always challenges and obstacles that you need to deal with when making video games or any media really, but they are easy to overcome.

[Nachimir]

If Areal is genuine, then my heart absolutely bleeds for them, and most of those developers should be getting very fucking far away from whoever is handling the campaign for them. Questions they're still dodging, from updates to that Forbes article:

 

1. Do you have actual gameplay footage and/or screenshots and if so why haven’t you shown them yet?

 

2. Did you really create a proprietary engine for the game and if so can we see that in action?

 

3. You have said Leonid Kovtun is a “partner” but in spite of an outpouring of questions about his relationship to the game, you refuse to tell us anything else about him. Why is that?

 

4. How are Leonid Kovtun and Maximillian Kovtun related?

 

5. Your project is asking for just $50,000 despite this being a vastly more expensive project. How do you plan to fund the remainder of development? If the game is far enough along that $50,000 is all you need, why haven’t you shown us any of the actual game yet?

 

6. Did you work on the game that became Survarium or was that a translation error?

[feelthedarkness]

There is just a fundamental perception difference between going to a publisher to ask for money, where you have to be there, and putting out your hand to the public with a previous entities publicity photos. 

 

Saying you're making a new engine, and then using Unity Assets with mild photoshopping is just bad juju.

[Cordeos]

Until this gets sorted out I won't be backing it. Too much strangeness. Even if they just made a bunch of silly mistakes and oversights, that still speaks to their quality as a company, which is also worrisome. 

[singlespace]

Until this gets sorted out I won't be backing it. Too much strangeness. Even if they just made a bunch of silly mistakes and oversights, that still speaks to their quality as a company, which is also worrisome. 

I'm pretty much of the same mind right now. There's just too many unanswered questions and odd issues to have much confidence in the project.

[Dewar]

I kinda want to see what happens.

[namman siggins]

Posting for updates.

I hope this all gets settled and that this is the real deal. I hope.

[singlespace]

No major developments as far as I can see, but it seems pretty clear that they're much earlier in development than was stated. Looks like their plan is to produce as much pre-production material as possible before the end of the Kickstarter to try to prove that this is real and they're serious.

[Badfinger]

Yeah I've backed off a little on my fired up state from "this is very clearly the scammiest scam" to "this is very clearly a doomed Kickstarter to back, regardless of legitimacy".

 

Which is a shame, because it's not like the world can't have two different takes on branching out from STALKER.

[Erkki]

Q: Wait, but what if I really really like STALKER, shouldn't I still back this?

A: No.

[Architecture]

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/07/08/former-stalker-survarium-lead-designer-joins-areal-development-team/

 

I am strangely mesmerized by the way this is all unfolding. Just when you think that you've seen it all, something else goes bonkers.

[Erkki]

One legitimate guy comes in, offers them something that is really simple and surely makes the project more likely to succeed, such as "multiplayer combined with deep story". Doesn't make any of it more likely to succeed IMHO, maybe a bit less likely a complete scam.

[singlespace]

One legitimate guy comes in, offers them something that is really simple and surely makes the project more likely to succeed, such as "multiplayer combined with deep story". Doesn't make any of it more likely to succeed IMHO, maybe a bit less likely a complete scam.

 

All of them seem credible at this point, but it doesn't address many of the unanswered questions about the project.

[singlespace]

The saga continues, they quickly threw together a prototype video in two weeks:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1577656602/areal/posts

 

RPS points out they're using an asset pack:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/07/18/stalker-kickstarter/#more-221271

 

I don't think that's a big deal per se given it's just two weeks of work, but good lord was this campaign a complete and utter mess.

[Dewar]

Getting more tempted to throw a couple of bucks their way just to see it crash and burn.

[namman siggins]

http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/21/5922179/areal-developers-allegations-scam-kickstarter

[Badfinger]

I think they buried the lede on that article. The biggest piece of news is that the project got funded over the weekend, and they suddenly jumped 30k in donations while doing so. It didn't just squeak by the goal. In relative terms it's flown through with ease.

 

 

vvvv Ahhhh I was looking for that and couldn't remember which Kickstarter tracking website had that daily graph. Even more telling is that it appears to have only 2 backers for the weekend. I wonder how many kickstarters have had negative net funding on 5 separate days and still met their goal.

[Bjorn]

The Kicktraq chart for it tells a story all its own:

 

 

 

[singlespace]

If you assume that each person is just paying the minimum for each tier you come out with about $38,740 for the supporters between $5 - $250, which is pretty much what they had for the majority of their entire campaign. Once you add the $250+ backers, it jumps to the $60,240. That's pretty suspicious.

 

I wish there was a dump of the number of backers per a tier on a daily basis available -- that would clear up just what happened.

[Erkki]

Curioser and curioser

[JonCole]

The Kickstarter got suspended and now they're soliciting funding on their own site. I imagine it was cancelled by Kickstarter because of the scam allegations and potentially devious donations behind the scenes.

[Bjorn]

It seems like in the wake of some of the controversies a year or so ago that Kickstarter has become a lot more sensitive about sudden and surprising funding jumps late in a project. 

[Cordeos]

http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/22/5927175/areal-kickstarter-suspended-stalker-west-games

This just keeps getting stranger. Now its suspended and I'm super happy I didn't fund it.

[feelthedarkness]

Is this just horrible timing? Kickstarter as far as I can tell isn't terribly vigilant about projects, so I don't think this is the result of exhaustive research or anything. It remains suspicious that they say they're using an original engine but keep showing unity assets, though is it possible they're pulling assets into their engine, like I could use any .jpg or .psd as a texture?