Wildman - Chris Taylor on Matt Chat

Myrthos

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In the latest Matt Chat, Chris Taylor is interviewed on the current state of the Wildman Kickstarter and what happened with Gas Powered Games these weeks.
Here it is, the Matt Chat to end all Matt Chats! Gas Powered Games' latest project, Wildman: An Evolutionary Action RPG, hasn't been going well, and Chris blames himself. In this hour-long interview, we see Chris at times sad, grateful, guilty, and brilliant. Without doubt, he's a Good Person, someone that nobody should want to see fail regardless of the project he takes on. What makes the situation worse, though, is that Wildman actually looks like a great game, especially for folks like me who love Civilization-style tech building. Check out the video, and don't forget to pledge a few dollars to the Kickstarter campaign. Every little bit helps.

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I don't think it looks likely to reach the target either. But, I disagree that it looks like a great game, it looks more like a half baked attempt to come up with a game to sell on Kickstarter for bail out funding. What CT should have done is to have gone for a full blown attempt to make the Kings and Castles RTS with no apologies or histrionics and preferably before they were on the verge of bankruptcy - that could have easily blown through the $2.2m that Planetary Annihilation got…
 
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I have a great amount of respect for Chris Taylor, but this kickstarter was badly managed. I wish him the best of luck though.
 
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Wow. I just watched the whole thing. I really hope that he stays in business; he seems like a real decent guy.
 
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What CT should have done is to have gone for a full blown attempt to make the Kings and Castles RTS …

I would have thrown money at that. I really enjoyed the blog series he did for it and the game-play of it looked fun (reminded me of some WarCraft 3 custom maps I'd played).
It's a shame that game disappeared - although, in that Matt Chat he does mention that they spent 1.5 mil on it but really needed 6 mil to finish/make it good so I guess that's a bit of a stretch for kickstarter.

I'm somewhat interested in Wildman so will probably pledge for a digital copy since I don't care for extra bits and pieces. It's a shame the kickstarter has gone the way it has because I think all this crying over a lost studio/friends/whatever else has soured a lot of peoples' opinions of the kickstarter - although I'm not sure those people would have pledged anyway but bad PR is bad PR.
 
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in that Matt Chat he does mention that they spent 1.5 mil on it but really needed 6 mil to finish/make it good so I guess that's a bit of a stretch for kickstarter.

But, is Kickstarter a platform for producing budget games? I can't get too excited about supporting the kind of thing that in the days of physical media would have been tossed in the wire bucket.

I don't know exactly what was planned for K&C, and why it should be so much more expensive than Wildman, but I imagine that other teams would be able to make a decent RTS for a lot less than $7.5m - maybe without lots of cut scenes, expensive voice actors and other money sinks. Perhaps the programmers of such a game would have to hold off from buying their Porche for a year or two, before they'd completed it… But, I expect many would welcome the opportunity nevertheless.
 
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I gotta say that was an emotionally moving interview. The guy pours his heart out and tells it like it is, with no marketing BS or censoring. It was interesting to hear him talk frankly about the flaws in the publisher-based funding method. He seems like a really nice genuine guy and I wish him and GPG all the best.

I'm still on the fence about Wildman - I'm not usually big on hybrid game designs, but this interview has me keeping a closer eye on it.
 
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Let's be truly grateful that there are things underway that might make the publisher model less desirable. If we could kill it off entirely, that would be a dream come true - but that's not going to happen. But a viable middle-market alternative like Kickstarter could be a miracle in the making.

In fact, it might be better if AAA and the greed-train sticks with the publisher model - because then they can make their big bucks selling recycled pretty crap to the masses - and they won't need to corrupt the indie/kickstarter initiative.

I still have to see Kickstarter truly working, however. It can't be long before the first major title is released?
 
I have a great amount of respect for Chris Taylor, but this kickstarter was badly managed. I wish him the best of luck though.

In fact, it might be better if AAA and the greed-train sticks with the publisher model - because then they can make their big bucks selling recycled pretty crap to the masses - and they won't need to corrupt the indie/kickstarter initiative.

Exactly. This sentence should never be displayed as a feature on a kickstarted project:
fight battles against rampaging hordes of monsters

It sould be used only by fogselling publishers.
 
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An interesting insight into the harsh world of game development. It must be harrowing to see one publisher after another withdraw, knowing your company is on the brink, finally putting all remaining resource behind one last depserate attempt at KS, only to see it fail. He really seems to be a guy that cares for his employees. It a remarkable interview (although I think Matt is not a good interviewer, per se).
Unfortunately neither Gas Powered Games past games nor this one particularly interests me, so I won't be backing it.
 
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Isn't pledging for Wildman sort of like pledging for a chance that Kings and Castles sees the light of day some time in the near future?

Because the opposite is a given. If Wildman isn't successful, GPG goes under and either K&S is lost forever or it is salvaged by a dubious entity.
 
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What is Kings and Castles about? If they really wanted to make it, then they should have kickstarted it first.
 
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What is Kings and Castles about? If they really wanted to make it, then they should have kickstarted it first.

Kings and Castles was going to be a full scale RTS game, the next step on from Supreme Commander, but in a fantasy world.

What Chris Taylor said was that this was too expensive a project to get funding on Kickstarter, figures in the region of $10m needed to make it. The problem is though that I and many others, I think, don't want to contribute (at least not very much) on Kickstarter to projects that are just make work to keep the developers in business. We are looking for passion projects where the devs have vision and commitment to making something really great.

IMOP Chris Taylor should have taken a big roll of the dice and tried to make K&C. Then he could have got a lot more support. Some of the more advanced features of K&C might have been stretch goals or something. After all Chris Roberts has about $7m worth of funding for Star Citizens right now and likely that level of interest could attract even further investment.

The current campaign for "Wildman" appears half hearted and the devs hardly seem able to summon up the interest to release any sensible updates. I do notice, though, that the project gets a bit of impetus every time CT goes and online and spills his heart out. But really the kickstarter should be about the game not about Chris Taylor.
 
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I'm not sure it is half hearted. Being different it is something difficult to communicate about. For one I am kind of wondering what differentiates the main wildman character from the units that'll come out of buildings, both in terms of game options and abilities. Will there be a super wildman with hordes of less powerful minions? What commands will we be able to issue to that main character that aren't available with the others?

Still, whichever way it goes it seems an interesting enough concept to me (athough admittedly real-time stuff isn't what appeals to me most).

But there is also definitely the appeal of helping a good company and good people survive this crappy recession. I think whatever happens, more good will come out of this KS succeeding than by forcing CT and co into early retirement, or under someone else's supervision. I think that's definitely worth a $20 pledge all by itself, but that's just me.
 
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I think his timing for this also bit off too.There are currently enough aRPS on market and more upcoming and most of them sound more exciting than what he's.That said I wish him success,I still haven't pledge but I might by the end of campaign still I haven't decided.
 
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For anyone still wondering what the Wildman design concept really is, check out Video Update #4 - it clarifies a lot. He walks us through the core game design with pencil on paper. After watching that I'm a lot more interested in the concept - and I'm not even a big RTS fan.
 
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