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[Ludorum Rex]

Yeah, that seems loads of work for a scam worth only 80k considering how much money you can make with simple Nigerian prince letter in comparison. Cost/benefit for such scam just isn't very high.

And that's probably down to 60-70k (or even lower) after Kickstarter fees, bounced pledges and subtracting pledges made by the creators. Then we know they did contract a lot of artists, bought Unity assets and toolkits (some of which are quite pricey), there's software license fees (Adobe was mentioned), hosting costs, etc. I am very sure this was a net financial loss for them.

[ZeroGravitas]

Some of you guys are ridiculous. Seriously.

Be angry you don't have a game. Be angry you think your money may have been wasted.

But scamming? Are you high? What scammer puts out a map editor for a game they don't actually plan on making? What scammer creates a forum and fills it with 13 billion threads they actually comment in? What scammer tries to build a scenario editor for a game they're lying about making, and releases it?

Be angry. But FFS, quit jizzing into your tinfoil hat.

I think you're forgetting that all of that stuff came after the Kickstarter. They had the money; they just wanted to keep everyone off their back. If you look at other Kickstarter scams, you see plenty of signs of progress after the Kickstarter, which slowly peters out.

Again, I ask you: review the first few dozens pages of this thread. Look at posts by the KingDinosaurGames account here, describing intricate playthroughs with tons of interaction between AIs and various mechanics. Then ask: Is there any evidence that any of that was EVER real? No, there isn't. It was all lies.

[jhxmt]

Is there any evidence that any of that was EVER real? No, there isn't. It was all lies.

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence", and so forth.  Yes, it's possible it was a scam.  It's also possible that it was a genuine development attempt that ran into hideous feature creep or technical difficulties, coupled with a (now very) uncommunicative development team.

It's also possible that development is still proceeding and that the game will one day appear, although I don't personally believe that at this point.

All of these things are possibilities.  I don't believe that the scam possibility is particularly more likely than other options at this point.  As others have said, it seems like a significant amount of effort to go through in order to run (or, as per your point, maintain) a scam worth a 'mere' 80k.  Especially since, as you pointed out, that a lot of that stuff materialised after the Kickstarter when, arguably, an efficient scammer could have simply vanished, rather than actually producing something (and, yes, map editors and forums and scenario editors do count as 'something').

I'm not saying "it's not a scam".  But I am saying "it's unrealistic to say that it's definitely a scam at this point".

Also, as an aside, "stop jizzing into your tinfoil hat" is a wonderful phrase that I am going to use more often at selected people.

[ZeroGravitas]

Actually, I've never really seen the map editor / scenario editor / whatever. Were those actually working tools?

[ZeroGravitas]

Is there any evidence that any of that was EVER real? No, there isn't. It was all lies.

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence", and so forth.

Someone take this man to church! The Church of Bayes, that is.

Of course absence of evidence is evidence of absence. Every time you fail to find evidence supporting a proposition, you should view that proposition as increasingly improbable.

[ZeroGravitas]

this just in:

I didn't say the reason for cancellation [of the meeting with Josh] because it was personal and I would not cross that line and share another person's reason.

We DID however meet today for a couple of hours. I would say that generally the meeting was nice but I don't feel that we are at all or any means close to a release.

I did see a working map, working POIs, agents and combat, character creation, menus, UI - stuff like that.

I did NOT see working AI, turns passing, etc - many of these elements are threadbare or torn apart as Josh is trying to make them work.

We did agree to work more closely and have a weekly meeting to discuss what's going on and next steps.

We are also trying to have a more modular focus where we work on getting this all together piece by piece so we can get a little closer to getting something anything in people's hands.

I stressed everyone's frustration with the way communication and stuff is handled, he acknowledges it, is very focussed on working on this and getting it released, but unfortunately, he has no idea on how long it will take.

So I don't know - we're going to keep meeting weekly - he's going to keep working, hopefully we'll have something super pre alpha to show soon. I stressed that we need to show SOMETHING as proof that it's not "vapor"

well, i'd love to be wrong. argument is a win-win for me in that regard.

(edits for clarity in the post; my insertions in brackets. the cancelled meeting was discussed above, where Fenicks just announced a long-promised meeting was postponed but without explanation)

[sirvente]

The map editor is a crude tile painter, the mod tools doesn't have features that Josh talked about and just boiled down to little more than an asset viewer and the scenario viewer doesn't exist along with the demo. Whenever it comes time to show the nuts and bolts of gameplay Josh gets all shy, presumably because it doesn't really exist in any kind of usable way.

[Xgamer4]

Update on my part:
Game developer just contacted me with how he wants to proceed regarding my unban/refund request. I will update again if he actually pulls through with that plan, which he projects will be on following thuesday.

...Was Thuesday a typo on your part, or is that actually what you were told? Either way... I have no idea what happened, but you don't seem to be mentioned again in the rest of the thread. It's just bits of drama and panic, then Fenicks update that's been copied above, followed by a mix of "well, it's *something*" and "nope, not good enough".

[nenjin]

Actually, I've never really seen the map editor / scenario editor / whatever. Were those actually working tools?

Yes, they were. Buggy, but functional.

[SangerZonvolt]

...Was Thuesday a typo on your part, or is that actually what you were told? Either way... I have no idea what happened, but you don't seem to be mentioned again in the rest of the thread. It's just bits of drama and panic, then Fenicks update that's been copied above, followed by a mix of "well, it's *something*" and "nope, not good enough".

No, tuesday was what he told me. He also gave an plausible explanation why he had to wait till then, which I donīt want to disclose here before I donīt actually know if what he told me will actually happen, because I donīt feel like pssing him off again since I donīt have any real position of power to demand anything.

Interesting. I would have though that all my posts disapeared would alert someone, but seems like no one cares if people get arbitrarily permabanned.

[Xgamer4]

Oh! No, they seem to have learned how use their forums since the prior banning saga. Your posts weren't deleted at all.

And no worries there - I'm comfortable with things remaining private. I just wasn't sure about "Thuesday" because it's both an easy typo, and a potential slap-in-the-face depending on where it originated. And honestly, given that this is the 4th of July weekend, I'm not surprised nothing is happening.

[Cruxador]

Let us know if the unban deal goes okay or if things go to shit again. Even if the details are personal, a "things are good" or "things are not good" is still useful information.

Here's a question...

As a backer of over 10 KS games now, having watched the sausage get made on various games at various states of development....

Let's say the game does eventually come out. Do the missed deadlines, compromises, rushed things, taint the entire game experience? If it released would you even be able to enjoy it the same way as you might have if it hit all its deadlines (or at least most)? Would you, generalized you, be able to step back from the months of disappointment and judge the game strictly on its merits? Or is all this pre-release stuff part and parcel of the game experience and judgments about it?

I think people generally care most about the concept that got them involved. If the game is true to that, the troubles in development melt away like butter in the California sun. If the game is adulterated, well, Spore.

You know, after having watched the internet develop since early 1990s, I've come to the conclusion that the social side of the internet is very toxic. Negativity, trolling and vomiting your traumas/mental problems/whatever on others is just... the norm. People are expected to live with it instead of treating others positively like in real life. Maybe it is partially because people unable to interact in real life pour all their social needs out here. Maybe it is because of the nerd fallacies regarding acceptance, where nerds accept behavior unacceptable elsewhere since they know themselves what exclusion is like.

Or maybe it's just a difference in culture. People indigenous to communities, even those renowned for negativity (4chan, as an example) aren't really harmed by it. The harm comes from clashes between this mileau and that of modern western public culture, which is greatly concerned with maintaining a faįade of positivity.

So yeah, if I was a indie dev, I'd actually avoid interacting with fans too much. (Or alternatively, hire someone to do that interaction for me and try to avoid reading shit too much.) Support is great, but fanbois can make you blind to your faults while toxic community can poison your motivation.

Yeah, being a large-scale public figure and maintaining a personal presence online isn't a helpful option to everyone, and a lot of naïve devs fall into a trap here. There's a lot of good to be gleaned from it, but doing so effectively takes skill and experience.

I'd be damn upset If I found out that Toady One hadn't been working on DF for 6 months.

Honestly, I would be super concerned to the point that there's no room for anger. But that's a totally different situation, Toady has shown us that does put in work consistently, he's been doing it for a decade, and it's the focal point of his life.

Kickstarter is whatever suits your current argument the best.  They took 80,000 dollars of other people's money and have nothing to show for it.  There is nowhere else in the universe but video game kickstarters that people would try to defend that.

...
protection money
...

I don't know how things work in your community, but where I'm from, if you pay protection you get protection. Of course no protection is perfect, especially if you're doing something illegal and want protection from the police, but you get a legitimate effort made.

[ZeroGravitas]

Actually, I've never really seen the map editor / scenario editor / whatever. Were those actually working tools?

Yes, they were. Buggy, but functional.

So I hear this but I also hear this:

The map editor is a crude tile painter, the mod tools doesn't have features that Josh talked about and just boiled down to little more than an asset viewer and the scenario viewer doesn't exist along with the demo. Whenever it comes time to show the nuts and bolts of gameplay Josh gets all shy, presumably because it doesn't really exist in any kind of usable way.

So I mean it's kind of tough to credit Josh with actually having created working tools and the content he claims to have created.

[Cthulhu]

The mod tools were basically an asset viewer, an assortment of images with dialog boxes and variables you could edit with little else.

[Malus]

I hope we can read a post-mortem someday. A truthful one. Like, what really happened? I have trouble believing it's a scam since it just doesn't make sense to string people along for 2 years. Did Josh just vastly overestimate his programming ability and get in way over his head?

At some point, I feel like you have a moral (if not legal) obligation to your backers to release the work you've done. I guess this is kind of the issue with crowdfunding -- the backers don't have any ownership over the product. If he released a demo that was playable -- even if it was kind of buggy or crashy, the features didn't all come together, whatever -- I'm pretty sure people would be singing a different tune. Alternatively, show the source code to some of the backers and demonstrate that there's some real gameplay logic, not just pretty mock-ups. And for the love of god if development ceases, just open the floodgates and release everything you have.