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[Viken]

In the case of SotS2, the blame can be set solely upon the publisher, Paradox.  They refused to extend the developement phase, and demanded the game be released as-is, or they'd revoke their contract with Kerberos and take them to court.

Just another reason why I think its a darn good thing to cut out the middle man (i.e. publishers).  The general public and consumers are most often willing to wait longer for quality goods and services than big corporations, anyway.

[Neonivek]

Well that is because Big Publishers make a profit if their game sells with minimum funding possible

While for us we make a profit if the game is great.

It is why we are willing to wait longer. Since we don't earn anything by doing so.

[BurnedToast]

In the case of SotS2, the blame can be set solely upon the publisher, Paradox.  They refused to extend the developement phase, and demanded the game be released as-is, or they'd revoke their contract with Kerberos and take them to court.

Just another reason why I think its a darn good thing to cut out the middle man (i.e. publishers).  The general public and consumers are most often willing to wait longer for quality goods and services than big corporations, anyway.

If this is the case, then kerberos either lied to them when they told them how long it would take to make the game, drastically underestimated how long it would take to make the game, or mismanaged the project horribly.

Any one of those options makes it not solely paradox's fault IMO. I mean what do you expect, that they keep giving kerberos extentions (and possibly money) forever? At some point they have to say "no, you're cut off".

If they signed a contract to deliver a working game by a certain day, then fail to do that, how is that paradox's fault? Why is paradox the bad guy for demanding they do what they said they were going to do?

[Shadowlord]

For this kickstarter, it sounds like a fine small project for Kerberos to try out crowd-funding, and it's not like you'd be out a terrible lot of money if you sent them $10. (I don't really enjoy roguelikes, usually, so I probably won't be doing so myself)

On the subject of SotS:

I own and enjoy SotS: Complete (actually, Ultimate plus Argos Naval Yards, bought it on Impulse back when Stardock still owned them), and purchased it after the last expansion came out (when it all went on sale with a combo offer). Personally, I think it's great. Now, I haven't played SotS II, because I was properly paranoid and didn't pre-order it, and I don't generally ignore reviews and friend-game-buyers who say "Game is buggy and unfinished!", and I don't generally pirate games to try them out either.

If at some point they succeed in making it better than SotS: Complete, then I may get it during a sale, but I would probably still wait until the first expansion is released (or later).

What have I pre-ordered in recent memory? Borderlands 2. Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Skyrim. Skyrim was kind of iffy, it needed another 6-9 months of patching to be good, and I ended up playing through it on my XBox 360 (It just works) instead of the buggy crashy pc version that I had pre-ordered. So that one was probably a mistake.

Given Paradox's history of forcing developers to ship games before they're ready, and Kerberos' history with SotS I (not fun initially, from what I've heard and read, then patched and expansion'd into awesomeness), this outcome was a definite possibility (enough to make pre-order very risky). Without an additional source of money, such as expansions or DLC, I would expect Kerberos would likely only be able to fund patches for so long (unless Paradox is funding them, and then I would expect them to cut them off as well). Looking beyond SotS: The Pit, a crowd-funded SotS expansion could result in more of the revenue reaching Kerberos since it cuts out the publisher.

As long as SotS II is inferior to SotS: Complete, I don't see why anyone would feel "compelled" to play SotS II instead. For comparison, nobody should have felt "compelled" to play Master of Orion III just because it existed, when Master of Orion II was superior in every way that mattered, but MoO III was far worse and never got fixed by the developers. Infogrames (the publisher) allowed (read: funded) two post-launch patches and then dropped it like a hot potato, and it was left up to modders to try to "fix" it. I don't know if Kerberos is putting their own money into post-release fixing/improving of SotS II, or if Paradox is funding it, but either way somebody is funding it, it's not going to last forever because they can't afford to do it forever, and I'd say at least Kerberos is getting it improved instead of just dropping it.

(And nowadays there are better games than MoO II - depending on what you want, such as SotS: Complete. The AI in MoO II is incredibly bad at dealing with players using strategies which it does not understand, and it most definitely does not understand the concept of fleets composed entirely of ships with boarding pods and tractors or transporters, capturing all its ships, flying them home, and disassembling them for their technology.)

(I have no idea what Fort Zombie is, I ignore all zombie games because I have been tired of zombies for years)

[Tellemurius]

Fort Zombie was their attempt to create a third person-rpg-survival-management game. Idea was you were a guy that hunkered down in a building, collect supplies, find people, build stuff around your building for defense, live it out to the ending. My main issues with the game was buggy as shit (the horrors of zombies going through the walls), the formulas in the game were pretty up screwy and still required some rebalancing, ai was sort of retarded, in the end the game starts lagging like shit due to the massive zombies number to render. Honestly the concept was good, i did enjoy playing it for a bit but damn theres more work need to be done and unfortunately no dev work has been done since SOTS2 release and such, i doubt anymore work will be done on this game.

[motorbitch]

I don't generally pirate games to try them out either.

As long as SotS II is inferior to SotS: Complete,

Without an additional source of money, such as expansions or DLC, I would expect Kerberos would likely only be able to fund patches for so long

Fort Zombie

erinys, the writer of the kerberos staff, made an interesting comment on demos and pirating....
good and bad the pirate scene stopped "supporting" sots after some 8 patches. i guess the update pace is the best copy protection ever, but on the other hands, there are many guys out there still rate the game on a year old build.

for sots2 being inferiour to sots: complete, imo sots2 has all sots prime had at the end... and more. its true, the ai is not as strong yet, and the ai realy is one of the greatest assets of prime. but its getting stronger, and the prime ai did not start where it ended neither.

about the funding of sots2 developement, kerberos saied many times that there is no danger for the project to be terminated. they claim indefinite support is secured, so are future expansions.

and fz... yeah, it has quirks. but then, it always was a 10$ game, and after kerberos lost such a big part of the team in 2010 and the sots2 difficulties, i guess there just was no manpower to develope it since. i would not be to suprised to see if fz gets some love in the future, though.

[motorbitch]

i have another update .
this time, first impressions of people already playing an early build of this game. so... its pretty save to assume that concerns, kerberos may just snatch the kickstarter money and abandon the game are bullshit.
it rather looks like they make this game, if the campain succeeds or not.

edit:
another first impression thread with more ingame images

[MagusPrimeX]

I gotta say, kerberos has the biggest balls of any studio I've ever seen, I gotta give them that.

Release an alpha (or if you are feeling generous, and early beta) as a finished, working game... then manage to even fuck that up (first release was an even more broken alpha). Take about a year to get the game working halfway decent, though it still runs like a pig.

Then, have the sheer audacity to beg the same community they shat all over with sots 2 for more money... in a flexible funding campaign.

Damn kerberos, have you no shame?

More like: run a studio with only 10 to 15 employees, compete and actual reach a playing field with the ludicrously more well funded AAA companies, push a development cycle with heart and soul for a genuine game they care about, suffer unforeseeable levels of in house tragedy which are only amplified by the small team size, remain in a terrible position in relation to release date and developer obligations, then suffer with eyes wide open the rightful blowback of a disappointing launch...and then continue to nonstop continue to work in a game they care for, that for reasons outside their control was getting lambasted from every corner of the internet to never be considered again, STILL work on it while doing everything in their power to make things even with every customer including no questions asked full refunds, ultimately receiving not a cent, but again STILL work on the game until they can finally realize what it should have been and STILL making concessions to the player base the entire way.

So, prove a damn near unquestionable level of support to your flagship game despite overwhelming negativity and lack of monetary incentive.  And then they decide to run a kickstater for what looks like will shape up to be a really neat little game at a small reasonable price.  They have balls, I'll agree with you on that. 

[Vel]

In the case of SotS2, the blame can be set solely upon the publisher, Paradox.  They refused to extend the developement phase, and demanded the game be released as-is, or they'd revoke their contract with Kerberos and take them to court.

Just another reason why I think its a darn good thing to cut out the middle man (i.e. publishers).  The general public and consumers are most often willing to wait longer for quality goods and services than big corporations, anyway.

If this is the case, then kerberos either lied to them when they told them how long it would take to make the game, drastically underestimated how long it would take to make the game, or mismanaged the project horribly.

Any one of those options makes it not solely paradox's fault IMO. I mean what do you expect, that they keep giving kerberos extentions (and possibly money) forever? At some point they have to say "no, you're cut off".

If they signed a contract to deliver a working game by a certain day, then fail to do that, how is that paradox's fault? Why is paradox the bad guy for demanding they do what they said they were going to do?

To be honest, I'm in agreement with BurnedToast. Kerberos is not some lilting maiden who only made one mistake and was hammered for it; SOTS was released rather barebones, and their next project after that was a complete and total disaster which, as far as I know, was entirely due to shoddy construction rather than being pushed out of the door early. They never even fully fixed it as far as I know, as it became clear it was fundamentally broken after a couple patches. I'm pretty suspect about the 'It's all the publisher's fault!' excuse for SOTS 2.. several developers have been published by Paradox just fine without creating a broken product. Magicka was buggy on release, but I don't recall the developers blaming Paradox for that, and the game was patched to a functioning state pretty expediently -- and their next product wasn't a buggy catastrophe.

[Nelia Hawk]

i guess all the "problems" with SotS and SotS2 did lead to this:

The Pit Is Part of the Plan
Our plan is to start small and work our way to bigger things.
 
We want to develop a catalog of games which are completely independent and self-published. We're starting with small projects, games with smaller budgets and faster turn-around times.
 
Over time we'll build up to bigger, more ambitious games. Small projects like The Pit will teach us what we need to know about publishing and distributing our own games and merchandise.
 
Once we have a few successful self-published games under our belts, we'll be ready to launch something bigger and more involved, like Fort Zombie 2 or Northstar.

so sounds like this time they want to start small with a few little games like "SotS: The Pit" to get more experience.

and after a while they go to bigger projects again like SotS was... like they said maybe a Fort Zombie 2 or so.

[motorbitch]

They never even fully fixed it as far as I know, as it became clear it was fundamentally broken after a couple patches.

bullshit.
we have seen 2 patches a week for almost a year, only recently tuning down the pace a bit. just because the warez szene stopped uploading patches for their releases after a couple patches, it does not mean that kerberos stopped the developement.
but yeah, after a couple of patches - the last version you could download at rapidshare - it still was still fundamentally broken.
also kerberos never blamed paradox for anything and still says they are happy with them as publisher for sots (2) and that paradox will stay the publisher for future sots2 expansions.
in fact, they never blamed anyone, just made some very hounest posts about how unhappy they where that things had taken this way, but that there was no other choice but stopping the project.

personally, i enjoyed the last year, though i could not play the game for the first 4 month as it realy was unplayable. unlike basically any other open beta i ever seen, in this involuntary beta phase the devs realy listened to the player feedback, and very often - if not most of the times - reported bugs where fixed within one week after being reported.

[Vel]

I was talking about Fort Zombie, not SoTS2. I know they pretty much had to keep developing for SoTS2, but they threw Fort Zombie under the bus as quickly as they could pretty much.

Edit - It would not surprise me if they'd have dropped SoTS2 too if not for the enormous public backlash against it.

[motorbitch]

ok.. missunderstanding then.

but na, they did not throw fz out of the bus.... but it was a small 10$ side project. it was never planned to have expansions or anything like that for it. so yeah... the developement of fz had to stop at some point, proably a bit more early than planned due to the problems they have been in to.

[Tellemurius]

ok.. missunderstanding then.

but na, they did not throw fz out of the bus.... but it was a small 10$ side project. it was never planned to have expansions or anything like that for it. so yeah... the developement of fz had to stop at some point, proably a bit more early than planned due to the problems they have been in to.

It was originally $30

[Brons]

Lol @ blaming Paradox for the disaster that was SoTS2. I mean, Kerberos went over their deadlines several times already and what could Paradox do? Shovel money at them for another year (at which point the game's still not finished). Paradox did the right thing here and gave all kinds of free stuff and I believe even refunds.

Paradox is to blame for something, and that's signing these incompetent fools in the first place.