Sui Generis - Story and the World

Myrthos

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The first update for Sui Generis, which is still quite a bit away from their 150.000 pound goal, is about the story and the world.
You start the game as apparently just a common villager but someone obviously disagrees, this puts your village in danger and you are exiled. You will be thrown into a hostile world you know nothing about and be forced to fend for yourself. As an unworldly villager you will discover this land and learn of it's history and current affairs, of the primitive people living in awe of a misconceived past. It soon becomes clear that you are no ordinary villager and indeed have some highly exceptional qualities. Dark, ominous events are rapidly transpiring throughout the world, a terrible conclusion beckons on the horizon. You may be the only one with power enough to prevent catastrophe but it all hinges on whether or not you choose to intervene, freedom is king here and there will always be numerous ways to achieve any desired outcome, or fail in the attempt.
You will find yourself in a large open world that you can explore freely. A rich detailed terrain features many interesting locations. A vast sprawling underworld, a source of terror for the people but filled with ancient treasures, tells strange stories of the world's past.
The world features a feudal society dissolving under the pressure of thaumaturges, once benevolent miracle workers who have now turned to dark and cruel activities. Thaumaturges wield great powers, they can manipulate many aspects of the world with their minds. A recent shift in their agenda has led them to cruel experiments and dangerous incursions into the underworld, causing it's dormant threats to stir.
There will be other races besides humans but they will be very much nonhuman, more like creatures or mutants. The demon image and the ogre (we call him porky!) in our videos will hopefully give you some idea of the type of thing we have in mind. These creatures will have their own social structures but ones dramatically different and alien to those of humans. There are no elves, orcs or other common fantasy races (we use ogre as a descriptive term), all creatures are original.
The story unfolds in a hugely dynamic fashion and events will transpire even without your intervention. Your lack of involvement may lead to truly disastrous consequences for the world, the game will not end but the world may become a very inhospitable place. Even if you try your best you may not succeed, the game does not revolve around completing tasks and progressing stages of the plot. Success or failure are of equal value, the aim is to have fun.
There will be a great many unique non player characters in the world, whether they become friends or enemies or are simply indifferent is completely circumstantial. The game is not specifically designed to have a persistent party of companions, though some characters may choose to follow you and may be predisposed toward this role. If they perish they will not return to life, or at least not as they were. Ultimately no character (or creature) is special, all are subject to the same rules and the physical laws of the universe.
The Sui Generis game experience plays hugely on the element of mystery. The idea is that you are thrown into an unfamiliar fantastic world for you to discover. It's history is not understood by it's inhabitants and trying to piece it together will be an important element of the game.
More information.
 
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it looks pretty interesting, it's defenitely more promising than DA2 was at similar stage :p
 
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There might be a constant inflow of pledges to lead that KS to success as the word goes around. The amount of pledges is increasing steadily.
 
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I'll back this tomorrow when I get paid. For whatever reason, my wife prefers me to wait till paydays to spend money. I think it's from the days when we lived paycheck to paycheck, but if it keeps her happy.... :D

It looks kinda fruitless at this point. They're not promoting this heavily enough to make it. I wonder if Desslock could do an interview/write-up. I'm not sure if he's freelancing anymore since the writing demise of PC Gamer.....
 
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Looks like there's a lot of frustration around this project from all angles. There's alot of (legitimate) fear among the backer community that this project won't get funded, which results in suggestions and criticisms about the way the kickstarter was launched, which I think adds to the frustration that the devs are feeling about the lack of momentum around the project, resulting in some defensive responses to those criticisms. It's not a very positive environment in the project's comments.

In particular, this comment from the dev struck me:

As for showing much more of our game, if we could then perhaps we wouldn't be here. This is Kickstarter, we don't have a game yet, that's why we're asking for your help. Compared to many other Kickstarter projects we're showing a lot already, both in terms of actual game and concept. While our concept is hugely developed and the result of many years of work and inspiration we're not going to exhaustively explain every detail. Hopefully you have sense for our vision and you can take a leap of faith just as you do in backing other projects or even purchasing a released game.

When we were growing up the people who designed the games we played weren't celebrities or even acclaimed designers and they made some truly fantastic games. This is more than we can say for modern games where design has new goals such as mass appeal, lucrative business models and effective marketing.

The problem I see is that they're comparing themselves to other games on Kickstarter, but the vast majority of indie games from brand new developers ask for a fraction of what these guys are asking. Not that I think they're asking too much for what they're offering, but it requires a lot of buzz, and that isn't created out of thin air. I think they're learning the harsh lesson that a tech demo isn't enough to do the job either. People want something tangible about the gameplay.

It's a shame, because I think this is the kind of project that needs to find a way to be consistently successful on Kickstarter. Right now, it seems that the Kickstarter model supports only the extremes: either a blockbuster million-dollar project that's done by established industry veterans that everybody knows, or piddly $15k projects that are done by a single person.

I think that having a ~3-5 person team funded with ~$100k-$300k is the sweet spot for a good, quality indie game, and right now those are very hard to get through unless you're pretty much 80% done and have a great demo to show off.

I understand the dev's frustration in the quote above, but at the funding level they're seeking, I think they need to bake their project some more and create a vertical slice of real gameplay to try and get folks excited… I wish it weren't so, and a dev could say, "Support us because we're the next Richard Garriott" and it would just happen, but the KS model isn't quite robust enough for that yet…
 
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You start the game as apparently just a common villager but someone obviously disagrees, this puts your village in danger and you are exiled…

Haha, seriously?

Compared to many other Kickstarter projects we're showing a lot already, both in terms of actual game and concept.
'Concept' is the single cheapest and easiest thing in the entire world of game development. Every single person who has played a game has a concept, usually several, right in his pocket. Everybody has those, and I don't care if you've been working on yours for ten years, it just doesn't impress.
 
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Haha, seriously?


'Concept' is the single cheapest and easiest thing in the entire world of game development. Every single person who has played a game has a concept, usually several, right in his pocket. Everybody has those, and I don't care if you've been working on yours for ten years, it just doesn't impress.

True, but how many of these people have a tech demo at this level of quality?
 
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I can show you a massive dictionary too, but it doesn't mean I have the skills to put those words to good use. Technology isn't sexy, and it doesn't sell by itself. It has to be dressed up. Story is the dressing. We haven't seen a concrete example of their writing and the programmer's prose is extremely dry.

Perhaps Sui Generis needs to merge with Tortured Hearts. TH has a story, but no technical skills to build the game. Sui Generis has an engine but hasn't shown a story that anyone would invest their time and money for.

That said, I'm backing the game as soon as I get home tonight.
 
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