Update 80: State of the Project - From Alpha to Beta

[Bryy]

Doing a kickstarter means more communication and in my opinion I think they are not doing this at all.  Again I bet they will not even allow beta streams when it is out for backers.  This alone shows how outdated their understanding is in this regard. Obsidian makes great games but they do a really ****ty job promoting it. Maybe that is why their games sadly do not sell that well in the first place. 

 

This NDA alone is just bad marketing in my opinion. And whoever  had that idea in the first place needs to be fired...

1) .... there have been 79 updates on the development of the game.

 

2) NDAs are industry standard. For any industry. Not just games. NDAs are not for marketing, but for protection. Saying people need to be fired over writing up legal paperwork just shows you have no clue what you are talking about.

 

Obsidian still runs a business, and regardless of a Kickstarter, they still need to act like one.

[Lephys]

Regarding the whole "Why does the press get to see it and we don't?!" thing...

 

It's not as if they can just prevent the press from ever seeing it. The gaming press reports on games, whether it's from a proper presentation at E3, or from a bunch of heresay and random, out-of-context crap spread all over the internet by disgruntled, entitled backers who don't know how to properly critique an unfinished product.

 

Thus, I dare say they're simply doing what's intelligent. Organizing their presentation of their game in a proper manner. We can see it after they already make sure it's presented to the general public in not a disconnected, irate fashion by random people whose first priority in life is judging the crap out of whatever they see because it makes them feel better about life.

 

To be clear, I'm not calling anyone in particular an entitled person who'd ruin the presentation of information. I'm simply pointing out that they exist, and in numbers. It's fantastic that we were the ones who collectively fronted the money to make this game possible in this form of full-control (by Obsidian) development. However, that doesn't give us the right to have free reign to trample all over their presentation of the game to the rest of the populous to maximize (reasonably) sales and product awareness.

 

We made it possible, and we get a bunch of goodies and extras for that. Doesn't mean it's not still their game, and their studio isn't still a business.

[Bryy]

When talking about the gaming press. there's a lot of horse manure thrown around about how the press doesn't care about games like this, that they only care about getting bought, or that they are simply too stupid to understand the common man.

 

When this is their job.

 

Their job is to review games, to preview games. Just like a food critics job is to eat food.

[Sherr]

Doesn't mean it's not still their game, and their studio isn't still a business.

 

They actually always say that this is our game, so why we couldnt see it, if it ours?

Just strange feeling - one day they say that we are best buddies and this is our project and how great that they dont depend from evil publishers, and next day they do close doors presentation...

[NWN_babaYaga]

well i realy think i already said enough on this topic when i recall myself :D I´m happy! Funny to be happy lol :D

Edited June 13, 2014 by NWN_babaYaga

[Lephys]

They actually always say that this is our game, so why we couldnt see it, if it ours?

Just strange feeling - one day they say that we are best buddies and this is our project and how great that they dont depend from evil publishers, and next day they do close doors presentation...

Yeah, it's our game... AND theirs. Sharing is caring.

 

I already said why we don't get to see it. Besides, we do get to see it. Just not yet. They don't get to control the industry and host their own E3, so they have to play by the industry's rules. E3 is a huge part of the industry's inner-workings, so they're dealing with it accordingly.

 

It's the same reason they're not giving out a bunch of story details. If you're going to demand that they don't decide how/when to show off game presentations, then you might as well go ahead and demand that they hold nothing back from us, ever. They should live-stream their entire development process, or they're horrible people. I want to see EVERY line the artists draw, dammit! Even though no one promised us that. But I demand it!

 

Lighten up, would you? For realsies.

 

It seems to me you guys (the ones in an uproar about this) are more drawn to the idea that you're calling a company out on some wrongdoing than you are to having an actual problem with what it is they're actually doing.

 

Like it or not, they get to decide how and when to present their game, and what parts of it to present.

 

The press is in competition, too. They deal in news (even some of them like to deal in faux-news). If it's not neatly packaged, new information, it's not very valuable to them. "Hey guys, we're just presenting a bunch of stuff everyone else already knows about! 8D!" Great. That'll keep their web-zines going.

 

Thus, you present it to them. Why? Because it can reach a lot more people. A ton of people shine a spotlight on E3, both consumers/gamers and industry professionals alike. So, just telling them "Oh, you can always go check out some videos on our website" isn't a very good idea. It's an annual event. So, you show the stuff there, in a controlled manner, so that it's presented neatly to the people whose jobs it is to find out about it. You get to make sure they don't get a bunch of info out-of-context, or mix in a bunch of unofficial information with their reviews/articles, etc. Then, they have the means to reach a lot more people than just your forums and self-marketing can.

 

Just look at the comments and tweets people have posted. And the comments on the youtube videos, etc. There are STILL people saying "How did I miss this? I love the idea of this game, but didn't know it existed!"

 

It's just good business. Showing it off online all casually just makes it less valuable to the press, and muddies up the information they receive.

 

Again, we don't own the game. We didn't purchase the rights to the game. Nor have we hand-crafted any of it. We made it possible to make, by voluntarily agreeing to front the money. We didn't commission the game. They're already delivering us "our" game. Doesn't mean we get to make petty demands, like "How DARE you show a formal presentation to the press in an organized fashion, so that that information can THEN be spread to pretty much everyone with any connection to any form of media? I WANT A GOLDEN GOOSE EGG AND I WANT IT NOW!".

 

That's just silly. "You should just not-care about E3 and the future success of your game with the demographic of people who didn't already back this on Kickstarter, and you should ONLY care about us, with something as silly as just who gets to see something first!"

 

Yeah... real grown-up of us.

[Greensleeve]

Thank you Lephys for writing that post in such a level-headed manner. I'm afraid I wouldn't have been able to argue that point nearly as well right now. 

 

So bravo. Have a cookie. 

[Lephys]

Haha. I don't fault the people their sentiments. In the moment, thinking about the fact that a room full of press people is sitting around viewing an elaborate presentation of God-only-knows-what information regarding the game (imagination runs wild with gameplay footage and the like) makes me go "Darnit!" It's not a pleasant thing. Pleasant would be my getting to see that stuff right now.

 

However, I do point out that further consideration is what separates us from animals, who merely react impulsively and never do anything beyond that, and I do fault people for being aware of this fact and simply choosing to ignore it, arbitrarily stick to their impulses, and continue acting as though they've somehow objectively been wronged by Obsidian.

 

I mean, do people think Obsidian was just sitting around, thinking "Hmmm... we've got a bunch of new footage... we could show it to a closed room full of press, OR to our backers, first. Who should we show it to? Let's just flip a coin!"

 

No. There are reasons for things. And calling them out based on a bunch of examples of things other companies have done is kind of pointless, too, since blindly assuming Obsidian is just like the worst example of game company you can possibly think of (in your mind) AND voluntarily giving them free money to make their game (up front, before they've even made any of the game yet) are somewhat contradictory actions. *shrug*

[Bryy]

 

Doesn't mean it's not still their game, and their studio isn't still a business.

 

They actually always say that this is our game, so why we couldnt see it, if it ours?

You're getting confused by semantics.

 

It's our game in the sense that this is what we want vs. Call of Duty 67.

[rjshae]

Summoning tempest in a teapot...

 

[Bryy]

It's not our game in the sense that we own it, just like Bob Dylan was not ours because we owned him.

[Azmodiuz]

look, bob can own himself, we just want to know when Beta's out..

[ManifestedISO]

 

 

Doesn't mean it's not still their game, and their studio isn't still a business.

 

They actually always say that this is our game, so why we couldnt see it, if it ours?

You're getting confused by semantics.

 

It's our game in the sense that this is what we want vs. Call of Duty 67.

 

 

Lephys wanted me to say CoD 67 came out only a month after Call of Duty: Route 66 Edition, Mother Road to Destruction  

[curryinahurry]

 

...

Other developers do that as well. And yes i want transparency. I want something to get excited about. Something I feel good about to have backed. And sadly  I really do not get it with this game and company.  Changing skills, numbers or mechanics do not mean anything to me as long I can not see them in a video or by playing it.  So all the stuff eople discuss about is hypothetical which have no meaning as long you can not see it integrated in a game. 

 

Talking to people is fine. Even Bioware does this. The problem is showing the things you change and integrate into a game.  A visual feedback.  Again go and watch all these divinity logs and go to their forums. In their forums they do at least the same as here maybe even more. But the huge difference is the visual  approach. Same goes for Wasteland. 

 

 

Didn't back those games and could care less how they've been developed.  Again, as others have said, every company has its own approach to game development and interacting with its backers.  If a game is set up or has enough assets in place to work in the manner you seem to find favorable, that's great for you, but it's unlikely that Obsidian or any other game developer is going to change its approach to mollify your bleating.

 

 There has been both interactivity and a structured approach by Obsdiian in effort to engage its backers, not just, "talking to people."  If 79 updates and thousands of forum posts can't get that point across, then I really don't believe your complaining is about transparency but rather access and preferential treatment. 

[Darji]

 

Doing a kickstarter means more communication and in my opinion I think they are not doing this at all.  Again I bet they will not even allow beta streams when it is out for backers.  This alone shows how outdated their understanding is in this regard. Obsidian makes great games but they do a really ****ty job promoting it. Maybe that is why their games sadly do not sell that well in the first place. 

 

This NDA alone is just bad marketing in my opinion. And whoever  had that idea in the first place needs to be fired...

1) .... there have been 79 updates on the development of the game.

 

2) NDAs are industry standard. For any industry. Not just games. NDAs are not for marketing, but for protection. Saying people need to be fired over writing up legal paperwork just shows you have no clue what you are talking about.

 

Obsidian still runs a business, and regardless of a Kickstarter, they still need to act like one.

 

 

1. Other kickstarters have way more. Divinity alone has over 61 VIDEO updates which does not include the extreme huge amount of forum feedback and news as well. 

 

2. NDA's are the stupidest thing in this  Industry.  In the days of YouTube, Twitch and co  people still seem to overestimate  the power of the press. Which soon will become nonexistent in terms of writing Previews. No one reads them anymore no one cares about them anymore.  That is why more and more press people try the video and quicklook approach which Giantbomb nearly perfected over the years.  Beside that showing a small gameplay video about some random encounter and maybe with some commentary has nothing to do with NDA anymore.  Hell even South Park over all these years had more exposure than Eternity. 

 

And yes they need to act like a Business no doubt about that. But Business changes and what worked 10 years ago does not work today anymore. Even Nintendo had understand this this years E3. You can say what you want about their games but they had the best coverage and publicity of their games by actually showing stuff and people really got excited about this approach. If you think secretly is doing business maybe it is time to over think your business  practices.

 

One of the reason Obsidian games do not sell  is  because they do almost nothing for marketing at all.  No one even knows these kind of games exist. Same with Eternity. Besides hardcore fans and of course backers People do not know about this game because there is almost nothing and no video at all out there to show it to other people. I would love to show this game to my friends which are huge RPG fans but they do not care about words or little screens with nothing in it.  They want to see it in motion, take a look at the systems and so on. 

 

But yeah I get it. For whatever reason you want to protect Obsidian but protecting something you like does also mean to understand what goes wrong and how you actually could fix it.  Obsidian did not go with the time and they also have not understand the principle of kickstarter and how these projects and backers want more transparency.

[Tenebrael]

Guys, hold on for a second and let me clarify some things:

 

1. I don't think Obsidian is not transparent at all with PoE. I just say they are not transparent in this particular point (video presentation).

2. I think You have some weird view of the press people. I'm personally a gaming journalist, working for one of the polish first digital gaming magazines. And I have to tell You there is no big difference in how journalists and "normal" gamers approach games. Of course, idiots who will give the game 1/10 just because he saw unfinished alpha exist everywhere, but this situations happen also in some press texts.

 

And to end the discussion (it seems we just have the different opinion on this, so no point in trying to push this further) I'm just dissapointed that press seems to be treated better than backers. Imho with KS projects it shouldn't be like that. But it's just my opinion, I have no problem if You disagree with me. Period and peace

 

EDIT:

 

And to put this in context: I don't like the situation in which we, people who actually paid for the project, have no access to the material and have to wait some time and rely on press impressions. If they had a publisher and if they told the publisher "sorry, guys, we won't show you what you invest money in, wait a week and check what press say about it" - they will be sued within a moment and all the money stream will be cut instantly, don't You think?

Edited June 14, 2014 by Tenebrael

[Sensuki]

 

 

I would love to show this game to my friends which are huge RPG fans but they do not care about words or little screens with nothing in it.  They want to see it in motion, take a look at the systems and so on.

 

Wait another month or two. Then you can.

Edited June 14, 2014 by Sensuki

[Flow]

Obsidian doesn't market anything because they're not a publisher. Any failures of marketing would have to be blamed on the various publishers they've worked with over the years. You'll notice that South Park, the Obsidian game which probably got the most marketing support, sold quite well. Can Paradox afford to dump that much into Pillars marketing? Of course not. But Pillars is a nostalgic game targeted at a very specific market. It's not going to move a million copies no matter what.

 

Listen to what people here are trying to tell you... we WILL see video from Pillars. The backers WILL get access to much more information before release. If you've backed at beta level, you WILL be able to try out the game before December. Even if you're not in the beta tier, you WILL see plenty of Twitch/YouTube streams from people playing the beta.

 

Patience is required, young one. Relax.

[ManifestedISO]

You know what we have here is a conceptual mistranslation.

[curryinahurry]

 

 

Listen to what people here are trying to tell you... we WILL see video from Pillars. The backers WILL get access to much more information before release. If you've backed at beta level, you WILL be able to try out the game before December. Even if you're not in the beta tier, you WILL see plenty of Twitch/YouTube streams from people playing the beta.

 

 

As much as I would appreciate seeing game-play footage, I'm personally much more interested in the Beta and getting a hand's on feel for the game.

 

 With regards to in-game video, I'm mostly interested in how the UI will function and how combat will work, especially with the integration of spell effects and having screen legibility.  Many of the other important issues in gameplay will be impossible to truly evaluate without actually playing the game.

[Bryy]

 

 

Doing a kickstarter means more communication and in my opinion I think they are not doing this at all.  Again I bet they will not even allow beta streams when it is out for backers.  This alone shows how outdated their understanding is in this regard. Obsidian makes great games but they do a really ****ty job promoting it. Maybe that is why their games sadly do not sell that well in the first place. 

 

This NDA alone is just bad marketing in my opinion. And whoever  had that idea in the first place needs to be fired...

1) .... there have been 79 updates on the development of the game.

 

2) NDAs are industry standard. For any industry. Not just games. NDAs are not for marketing, but for protection. Saying people need to be fired over writing up legal paperwork just shows you have no clue what you are talking about.

 

Obsidian still runs a business, and regardless of a Kickstarter, they still need to act like one.

 

 

1. Other kickstarters have way more. Divinity alone has over 61 VIDEO updates which does not include the extreme huge amount of forum feedback and news as well. 

 

2. NDA's are the stupidest thing in this  Industry.  In the days of YouTube, Twitch and co  people still seem to overestimate  the power of the press. Which soon will become nonexistent in terms of writing Previews. No one reads them anymore no one cares about them anymore.  That is why more and more press people try the video and quicklook approach which Giantbomb nearly perfected over the years.  Beside that showing a small gameplay video about some random encounter and maybe with some commentary has nothing to do with NDA anymore.  Hell even South Park over all these years had more exposure than Eternity. 

 

And yes they need to act like a Business no doubt about that. But Business changes and what worked 10 years ago does not work today anymore. Even Nintendo had understand this this years E3. You can say what you want about their games but they had the best coverage and publicity of their games by actually showing stuff and people really got excited about this approach. If you think secretly is doing business maybe it is time to over think your business  practices.

 

One of the reason Obsidian games do not sell  is  because they do almost nothing for marketing at all.  No one even knows these kind of games exist. Same with Eternity. Besides hardcore fans and of course backers People do not know about this game because there is almost nothing and no video at all out there to show it to other people. I would love to show this game to my friends which are huge RPG fans but they do not care about words or little screens with nothing in it.  They want to see it in motion, take a look at the systems and so on. 

 

But yeah I get it. For whatever reason you want to protect Obsidian but protecting something you like does also mean to understand what goes wrong and how you actually could fix it.  Obsidian did not go with the time and they also have not understand the principle of kickstarter and how these projects and backers want more transparency.

 

You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

 

You want to see more gameplay videos, fine. But don't act like it's a conspiracy.

[Tenebrael]

 

Listen to what people here are trying to tell you... we WILL see video from Pillars. The backers WILL get access to much more information before release. If you've backed at beta level, you WILL be able to try out the game before December. Even if you're not in the beta tier, you WILL see plenty of Twitch/YouTube streams from people playing the beta.

 

Patience is required, young one. Relax.

Sorry, but do You try to listen what other people try to tell? It's not all about IF we see the video, but WHEN and WHY we have to wait, while we already spent our money on the project, when press, which haven't paid a penny, can watch it now. That's the topic of the discussion, we're not idiots and we know we'll see the video eventually. Oh, c'mon...

Edited June 14, 2014 by Tenebrael

[Darkpriest]

 

 

Listen to what people here are trying to tell you... we WILL see video from Pillars. The backers WILL get access to much more information before release. If you've backed at beta level, you WILL be able to try out the game before December. Even if you're not in the beta tier, you WILL see plenty of Twitch/YouTube streams from people playing the beta.

 

Patience is required, young one. Relax.

Sorry, but do You try to listen what other people try to tell? It's not all about IF we see the video, but WHEN and WHY we have to wait, while we already spent our money on the project, when press, which haven't paid a penny, can watch it now. That's the topic of the discussion, we're not idiots and we know we'll see the video eventually. Oh, c'mon...

 

 

Simple: So press won't get fussed about Obsidian. Press is like vermin. They want exclusive first contact on each content. If fans would be leaking more, they would lose interest in that, and possibly also other Obsidian projects.

 

Sometimes I get a feeling like there is a lot of people who have no idea how the real adult life works and how the company's and press environment co-exist.

 

Will it really hurt you that much to see a video 1 or 2 week later, when you still have to wait for the game another several months? What magic revelation you expect compared to what you already know through the Kickstarter pitch and 80 dev updates? You want to see a bit of animated stuff worth of a couple of minutes? You get more technical info on light, sound, effects, etc, through the updates... you get very detailed info on classes and roles, art style, etc... I really don't get it, what is so "critical" about the press demo, that you have to get it before the press for which it was made and complied, so they could give more publicity to the project and put more people on the hype train.

Edited June 14, 2014 by Darkpriest

[NWN_babaYaga]

we just need more drama baby. He who likes the drama is he who likes to be the next drama queen. When there is no problem we can easily create one out of nothing and we can just close our ears and shut down our mind and be immune to the wise words written down here already why they made this decission. So we have a winner and obsidian should model a unique drama queen outfit nerf nerf that has a special ability of casting confusion while the party is at rest, chilling somewhere trying to regenerate some health...

[AndreaColombo]

Honestly?

 

 

I don't care much about who gets to see a video first. I didn't back the game to see gameplay videos; I backed it because I want more isometric, party-based cRPGs to play. What happens from the moment I pledge my money to the moment I play the game is mostly academic, as far as I'm concerned. Which is not to say I don't read, enjoy, or endorse backer updates, mind you: I greatly enjoy and fully endorse them, in fact. Just they were never the point of my backing the game to begin with.

 

Happy for anyone else to have a different view on things. These are just my .02.