Rampant Games - The Death of Deathfire

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The Rampant Coyote gives his opinion on the cancelled kickstarter Deathfire.

I’m saddened. Guido Henkel and the Deathfire: Ruins of Nethermore have officially pulled the plug.

The Deathfire Team: Thanks you for all your support

This crap happens all the time, really. Games get canceled, for many reasons. But in this case – with the failure of the Kickstarter and the episodic alternative – the reason is kind of depressing:

"Not enough people were interested in this kind of game to commit to providing the funding in advance."


This was, sadly, the kind of game I want to play. It was based on the same kinds of games that inspired Frayed Knights. I mean, sheesh, Guido created some of the games that inspired Frayed Knights, at least indirectly.

This really disappoints and worries me. Is there just not enough potential audience large enough to support mid-budget game development (pretty much from $100k – $1m, in my book) for this style of RPG? Is it dead, Jim? After all, we’re talking about a game style (first-person perspective, party-based, cardinal-direction movement, turn-based combat RPG) that had largely exhausted itself by the mid-90s. The audience was getting tired of the parade of low-quality, low-tech dungeon crawlers in that era, and even the giants like SSI were having serious problems. The audience was dwindling then, and I don’t suppose 20 years has done much to improve on that.
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Unfortunately the timing had something to do with the lack of interest also. A lot of people just didn't have the extra money at this time of year. I backed on KS and also in their second attempt. Very disappointing.
 
Unfortunately the timing had something to do with the lack of interest also. A lot of people just didn't have the extra money at this time of year. I backed on KS and also in their second attempt. Very disappointing.
I agree the timing was a factor but a majority of projects are struggling to get funded nowadays. I haven't seen one reach their goal in a week easily for a while. It seems people are wary of any new games, and I can't blame them.
 
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I agree the timing was a factor but a majority of projects are struggling to get funded nowadays. I haven't seen one reach their goal in a week easily for a while. It seems people are wary of any new games, and I can't blame them.

Legends of Dawn is a good example of why people are wary. The game simply was not finished when it was released. They issued a few patches, but the game has basically been abandoned. No rewards were ever sent out, and they are nowhere to be found on the official forum. I regret backing that game, as well as another that was just given early access on steam. I have doubts that it ever gets finished. "Grim Dawn" is that one. I seriously hope I am wrong. But it being months after their estimated completion date (although I am aware KS requires that, so it's definitely not accurate), and they obviously need more funding, why they released it on early access, and the fact that act 2 isn't even out yet, has me concerned.

I guess just stay away from anything with "dawn" in the title.
 
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It doesn't help that 99% of the KS RPG games have been delayed for months if not years, so after the initial rush of backing game after game, it hasn't been followed by actually playing those games yet.
 
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I agree the timing was a factor but a majority of projects are struggling to get funded nowadays. I haven't seen one reach their goal in a week easily for a while. It seems people are wary of any new games, and I can't blame them.

It's been harder to for projects to get funding but I don't think people have became wary of new games.There are still some huge kickstarter successes from unknown devs, one of brights examples is hyper light drifter and there few more similar examples in last 2 months(less but still decently successful).

Biggest reasons why deathfire wasn't successful have already been mentioned but one of big problems is also that this kind of game has fairly limited audience compared to isometric RPGs.
 
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It's been harder to for projects to get funding but I don't think people have became wary of new games.There are still some huge kickstarter successes from unknown devs, one of brights examples is hyper light drifter and there few more similar examples in last 2 months.

Biggest reasons why deathfire wasn't successful have already been mentioned but one of big problems is also that this kind of game has fairly limited audience compared to isometric RPGs.
I still stick by what I said. ;)

A few small surprises do not make up for the amount of failures lately. This is actually one of my fears when it comes to crowd-funding. People would flock to the idea at first then slowly lose interest due to sub-par releases, and constant delays.

It's already happening just by reading replies on kickstarter, and around the web. I'm sure there are other reasons also, and I don't deny that either.
 
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It doesn't help that 99% of the KS RPG games have been delayed for months if not years, so after the initial rush of backing game after game, it hasn't been followed by actually playing those games yet.

Yeah… I think if Guido could have launched the Deathfire KS back in spring 2012 he probably would've easily met his $400 K goal. We need some more of the big Kickstarter RPGs to be released (and well received) in order to restore people's faith in the crowfunding model… I really love the idea of crowdfunding games and there was a time when I was backing almost every cRPG on KS that looked halfway decent… But I'm much more catuious these days as I'm still waiting for everything I backed with the exception of Battle Worlds: Kronos and SRR.

The Banner Saga and Shadowrun: Dragonfall expansion are due out in January, Wasteland 2 and Dead State should be out in a couple of months, as is Divinity: OS (although it seems that game would've been made with or without the KS). Pillars of Eternity will apparently be released in Winter 2014 according to Obsidian's site… Then there's a few that didn't receive nearly as much crowd-funding like Lords of Xulima and Days of Dawn.
 
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The Banner Saga and Shadowrun: Dragonfall expansion are due out in January, Wasteland 2 and Dead State should be out in a couple of months, as is Divinity: OS (although it seems that game would've been made with or without the KS). Pillars of Eternity will apparently be released in Winter 2014 according to Obsidian's site… Then there's a few that didn't receive nearly as much crowd-funding like Lords of Xulima and Days of Dawn.

I'm looking forward to everyone of those games. The only two games on that list that might receive huge delays is Wasteland 2, and Dead State.

They all better turn out good, or it will get worse for future projects. So in the meantime I will keep my fingers crossed.:fingerscrossed:
 
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People would flock to the idea at first then slowly lose interest due to sub-par releases, and constant delays.

I was just looking at list of released crowdfunding games and solid releases largely outnumber flops so I don't think quality of games so far is issue.True there haven't been many gems(but there are few).Delays have been big issue and will continue to be, but I am sure if W2 and D:OS meet expectation KS will receive second wind, at least for RPGs, I think that adventure game wouldn't have as much problems even now due to successful revival of Broken sword and Larry.
 
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The project was interesting for me but I was not excited about it for the following reasons:

1) I knew that MMX will be released in January and that had mostly favourable reviews and tons of gameplay is already on display, and

2) I am waiting for Legend of Grimrock 2, and judging by how much I enjoyed their first game, I am expecting similar if not better experience.

Hence there was no reason for me to be excited about Deathfire (even though I back it). I guess it might be the same situation for those few interested in 1st person party based rpgs.
 
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I haven't yet played a KS game that I really thought was well made and worth the money. However, my tastes are almost pure crpg and so I haven't played several games that were of mixed genres. The best of the KS games that I have played was SRR and it was better than meh, but not great. Blackguards is a great tactical combat game, but it isn't a crpg. It is a battle maps game with very very little story. I guess I'm waiting for a Baldur's Gate or Skyrim, albeit with a smaller budget. If Sui Generis is great, then that restores some faith. If Eternity makes it, that would be a little help too, though Obsidian is already a proven dev, so if they have success it is expected. Also, most of these games have needed several patches to be up to snuff. That makes me want to just wait till release and not back.

I believe part of the problem is we get some greedy folks with almost no plan putting up kickstarters in the hopes of getting fools to buy in. These normally fail, but the damage is measurable to those who may have had something real to offer.
 
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I've supported all Kickstarters that produce the types of games I like by groups that I thought could pull it off, and I will continue to do so. Unfortunately those only come along 2-3 times a year. It's not a surprise that a number of Kickstarter proposals fail—the same thing happens in the commercial market with released games. It's a good thing for an unappealing idea to fail before a big wad of cash is blown on development.

To me there's no need for all the negative speculation regarding the future Kickstarter. It's just following the standard hype cycle and in time it will stabilize.
 
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