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[Seriyu]

What he said.

[Sowelu]

Yeah, mad props to them for having the balls to come out and say "This won't work, we are stopping".

[Neonivek]

I must say, it's quite disappointing to see a game that surely thousands of people looked forward to get put on the chopping block like this, but I deeply respect this developer for realizing the mistake, instead of pushing it through and ending up with a crappy over-hyped game.

A lot like Black and White 2... THOUGH in that case it is because that game bankrupted them.

[nenjin]

This hurts, I won't deny it. I had really high hopes for Subversion. But I appreciate them leveling with us, now. Before any money was spent or promises were made.

I guess I can only hope their next game is fun and engrossing and gives them the financial freedom to pursue something larger.

[Neonivek]

This hurts, I won't deny it. I had really high hopes for Subversion. But I appreciate them leveling with us, now. Before any money was spent or promises were made.

I guess I can only hope their next game is fun and engrossing and gives them the financial freedom to pursue something larger.

Yeah it is often hard to stay mad at people when they are honest.

Heck I don't blame Lionhead for Black and White 2 being no where close to what they promised... they explained why it was that way quite well. I blame them for pretending it was still great so that people would buy it up so they would get some of their funding back.

So they are doing all the right steps. They arn't rushing out a flawed game, they arn't lying about the reasons or quality (as far as I am aware), and they arn't... uhhh... I don't have a third. Not lying and Not releasing a bad product is good enough.

[Aklyon]

Not lying, not releasing a bad product, and having a good idea where they'll be going next is the three I'd say fit here, Neonivek.

[nenjin]

Six years though is still a lot of time spent on a project that essentially is in the deep freeze. I'm glad he took the time to say "porting over tech from Subversion", because I'd hate think of that time basically having been thrown away. If they were only a year or two in I think it would be easier. But six years? That's half the life span of DF. Even though he makes this sound like it was an easy decision to make in retrospect, I'm sure it wasn't.

[ductape]

his reason for giving up, not being able to see the core gameplay is BS, I mean that it would be easy to overcome if they wanted it to.

Just have something like LCS mashed up with The Sims as the core gameplay. You got a cell of agents, you dont have direct control over them, convince them to do their jobs. A LOT of AI programming later and you have the game.

Oh well, I like the IDEA of procedural generation just as much as anyone else, and the cities looked pretty cool. Shame to see that go to waste, maybe someday someone will do something with it. Yeah, how hard could it be to think up a gameplay mechanic for that existing work?

Never been a huge fan of  their games anyway, but I know lots of people are.

[Draco18s]

I think the underlying problem was was that they couldn't get the missions to be solvable in multiple fashions done in a procedural fashion.  Their one mission was heavily scripted and had only one solution, and not the dynamic content they wanted.

That and it was ultimately Not Fun.

[nenjin]

Sometimes people just aren't the equal of their dreams. I'm sure they looked at what it would take to procedurally generate a mission and everything about it to the degree it worked as a fun game....and they couldn't see how they'd do it. No doubt this realization probably came as they started looking at their financials too. Asking where they'd be in another year of trying to dev probably had the answer of "nowhere closer to something people will pay for."

Could they have slapped something in there? Sure. Would it have been what they wanted, envisioned, quasi-promised or people would enjoy? Probably not. They made the smart move even though it must have sucked to do so. They've probably got tech coming out every orifice at this point, pouring it into a new, smaller, concise project might be exactly what they need at this point.

We should remember, they're looking at commercial releases at this point, not the "pay $5 through our website for a lifetime license to our lifetime project" sort of deal.

[Levi]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/10/20/introversion-announce-prison-architect/

Well, I guess this is what we get instead.  Not much details yet, but the graphics certainly look cool. 

Building things is always fun.

[burningpet]

It has to have some really unique and special features to keep me interested, otherwise, prison tycoon game? not that exciting.

[LoSboccacc]

they sure won't wast all that tech developed.

even if the game idea as a whole turned out unfun the features of the tech demo are still awesome.

and they know it.

[kulik]

Hope it has multiplayer.

[lordcooper]

I've actually been wanting a decent prison tycoon game for a while.