Sui Generis - Post-Funding Update #26

That is right and shifts the point to determine how the expectations are being prioritized.

From the very beginning, it was obvious that this kind of project, aiming to a self generating game world, required heavy work on the engine.
Only a solid engine can enable the delivery of the game.

In this regard, receiving, at last, news on the advancement of the engine, is good news.

What was much less good news was all these updates on story, hair, combat system, animation that are all secondary to the project.

Yes, backers have expectations but they are differently prioritized, leading some to dismiss updates on the engine advancement while cheering up for updates on story, animation etc

This kind of updates should have happened some time ago instead of receiving updates on animation etc

If there is a game in the end, it wont be achieved without heavy work on building up the required engine.

Patience people, patience.. Wasn't it obvious from the campaign that it wasn't a game centered on story but on its tech? I for one am tired of continuous stream of trite or cliche story lines in RPG's anyways. I wanted to kill every blabbermouth NPC in Dragon Age. I didn't back SG, but I'm excited to buy and play it when it's ready.

@Madoc
First, you (all) should take a day off. Nobody should work 7 days a week for a longer priod of time.

Concerning your KS campaign, I don't think that anyone is really mad at you, at least I am not. You are an Indie developer, most likely with your first big project. Nothing goes as expected and you get delays. That's ok.

We backers don't have a claim to a finished and polished game at the initial release date. But I think we have a claim to getting more information from you guys. You've chosen to got to KS, so a community gets your publisher and kind of a controller. So I think we should get more information on how your game will work. Your updates have been about tech only, with the only exception being update #1 about 14 month ago, where you talk a little about story and the world.
I think that's just not enough. What about your "Believable fiction"? How can the player "interact with the world and events as he sees fit"? How exactly will "Reactive Characters" work and how will they "react to anything the player does or what tone he set"? These quotes are all taken from your KS campaign, yet 15 month later that's still all we know concerning these game mechanics. To be clear, I don't think it's necessary for you to show us actual ingame footage. It would be totally fine to just show us your ideas, your mechanics.
And the most important question is, what is your rough schedule? As I said before, if you just tell that you plan for a release in 2015, I'd say your project is in a good state.
But currently I can just be sceptical. And I actually mean sceptical. I don't say that you won't make it.

And thanks for sharing your thoughts with us here and participate in the discussion. Much appreciated!

Morrandir said:

@Madoc
So I think we should get more information on how your game will work. Your updates have been about tech only, with the only exception being update #1 about 14 month ago, where you talk a little about story and the world.
I think that's just not enough. What about your "Believable fiction"? How can the player "interact with the world and events as he sees fit"? How exactly will "Reactive Characters" work and how will they "react to anything the player does or what tone he set"? These quotes are all taken from your KS campaign, yet 15 month later that's still all we know concerning these game mechanics. To be clear, I don't think it's necessary for you to show us actual ingame footage. It would be totally fine to just show us your ideas, your mechanics.

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This is exactly how I feel about this too! And they have been very elusive (evasive?) about this from the beginning. Gives off a vibe as if they bit off a bit more than they can chew, and that they underestimated the complexities of building an actual game, vs. getting a working engine prototype running for a kickstarter. I get that the engine itself is crucial for the gameplay they' re envisioning: "If you want to make an interactive and dynamic world you _need_ lots of tech." But how about illustrating a bit of that gameplay (apart from combat) or showing examples of how NPCs' AI will have them (re)act, or just some background info on the lore and the world this engine will be serving up. And as Morrandir said, that doesn't even have to be in-game!!! At this point if I had to explain the game to someone, the only thing I could say is: you fight in a top-down view and those fights are physically simulated…that's all I know.

That is not to criticize the work you have done Madoc, because what you've shown is still impressive, but all updates just seem like -marginal- engine updates (the last update was mainly graphics for instance). Based on the information you've let out, it seems all you have is an engine and a tech demo. Nothing wrong with that by the way, but not the main reason some of us here backed the kickstarter.

Anyway, good luck with the game!

I backed them for working on technology that enables emergent gameplay. And I was always aware that it was probably the riskiest Kickstarter I backed in terms of the likelyhood of delivering a playable game. Personally I am happy as long as they use their resources to push emergent gameplay concepts and I eventually get to play around with it in some way - whether as a game or as a tech-toy is secondary to me.

Our pitch video focused on tech and core gameplay, that was a mistake we made, the original cut talked more about the concept but we removed a lot of the talking because everyone complained there was too much of it. But since? We've released 26 updates so far and they're mostly about gameplay, a good few are about story, one going into significant detail about how it works. I understand that our presentation is sorely lacking but the information is there! A lot of solid, dense information and just not much idle banter. Really, make an actually fair comparison of significant story info given with other projects before waving your by now tattered "all tech no game" banner. A lot of what is said on this thread is quite simply patently false.

Most of this so called tech is there to allow us to develop a varied and attractive large scale world, how else do you think we can do it with such a tiny team and limited resources? Making content on this scale normally takes immense resources, we are looking for ways to do it with less and benefit gameplay at the same time. You hear a word like "procedural" and think tech? You should be thinking content, potentially thousands of different characters, better immersion. What other purpose do you think these things serve? Everything we do and say is about gameplay and developing a game world. This is the only possible way we see to make the game we want to make, this is where most of our effort has gone so far.

This isn't Kickstarter, we're not being impatient with our backers. We are genuinely concerned because we are about to release something when the game still has a long way to go! This kind of prejudice could doom our game before we've had a chance to make it. I didn't ask anyone to cut us some slack, I asked to give us a chance. Perhaps we won't meet your expectations and our ideas of what constitutes a good game are just too different but this hugely dismissive and hostile attitude just doesn't seem right. We made promises and we're doing our very best to deliver on them, it seems a little early to complain about us not delivering. It isn't a game yet, of course it isn't, but that is most definitely what we're trying to do.

We're releasing something now and it's nothing but it means we've already achieved a lot of our ambitious goals which is something as far as Kickstarter projects go! From here on we will be focusing almost entirely on content and we have been developing content all along, as well as necessarily the tech.

Anyway, I've got some work to do! But please don't judge us too harshly just yet, you might be pleasantly surprised after all.

Madoc said:

Wow, just wow.

[..]We went on Kickstarter and so we're in the public eye. Let me tell you, it sucks.

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You would be much worse off with publisher chain around your neck - threatening milestones and publisher money not [100%] arriving because of not [100%] achieved agreed upon milestones - and their lawyers breathing down your neck if you don't deliver.

Madoc said:

Then we confront the public and we see that outside our little sphere of loyal enthusiasts what you get is threads like this that are almost entirely negative.

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Outside opinions are precious - you should weigh them, because backers often lie to you and to themselves - backers cannot / dare not really say to YOU, what pisses them off about Sui Generis, because belief/money given/blinders/they don't wanna hurt you.

Madoc said:

Sometimes this means your hopes and dreams collapse, all your doubts bear down on you and all the ridiculously hard work you're so very tired from doing just doesn't seem worth it.

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It was worth it, since people have something to criticize. Also you can directly weigh the value of your product by outsider opinion. Would outsiders buy it? DO they value your product? Does your product have market value in the alpha stage? Do [the majority of] people like it, are [the majority of] people pestering you to finish it already, because they wanna play - I mean non-backers.

Madoc said:

So much of what you say shows some serious lack of perspective, what standards are you holding us to, comparatively?

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Always always have in mind what is in the public consciousness. What games close to Sui Generis' genre people can play today and what is missing, what game-types people constantly complain about being totally missing from the market.

Did you position Sui Generis to fill such a void? Did you carefully analyze the market and decided this type of animation and this type of gameplay is really needed? If yes, then create a video from actual gameplay that impresses [the majority of] people. It does not have to be super-nice graphics and awesome shaders/textures. It needs to fill a void people are complaining about missing a dream game they can't play, because there is not one.

Madoc said:

What are you basing this on and what makes you belittle even what we unarguably have achieved? What's your definition of a game anyway? How often have you been able to make that distinction before you played it or even seen it, or seen a review of it? Bah, whatever.

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See at least Sui Generis is a perfect opportunity for you to learn a lot about what people like and what type of game creates positive majority feedback.

Probably people are only pissed off looking at the animation. Because your art direction on the beaches are beautiful, the castle and dungeons look really good. No problem with character models at all. So fix that darn animation and you might find surprising increase in likes and positive feedback.

Solution:
Estimate or count how many people have negative opinions. Compare that number to happy people. If happy people - liking Sui Generis - are the majority, continue development and ignore the minority.

I have mix feelings (as a backer). There are two kickstarts I backed that were long shots. I'm actually more disappointed with forsaken fortress which sounds truly awful. With this specific game; I was mixed because I actually prefer story driven games and this felt more like an open sandbox also the developers had no history. On the inverse they sounded like they had decent passion and were ernest and so it seems like a reasonable thing to back. While I do not expect a playable game at this point (let me explain what I mean by a playable game - a game that i will enjoy playing) I think their ideas are interesting and perhaps they will be able to use their technology to produce a decent game in the future. I.e, I do not regret backing them because at the start of the campaign I thought it was questionable that I would want to play the final product (on the other hand with hindsight I would not have backed forsaken fortress).
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With regards to Madoc's comment. The internet is a heartless place (just read some of steam's board for early access games). I don't know you and therefore your character (passions, background, living condition, effort, ability, thick/thin skin,...) but one small piece of advice is don't read threads like this one. I know it is virtually impossible to resist but no matter how level headed the replies are someone is going to say something that is hurtful - even if they try to express it in a constructive fashion and this is one of the more positive boards. The flames on steam are off the wall insulting.
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And CRPGnut is well known around here not to sugarcoat his opinions. True of some other members as well.

Just as the founders on RPGWatch here, three of us led a gaming news site from 1999 to 2012. We became famous, lots of hits per day, a giant forum, cult following, etc.. Were hated by the competitor news sites in the country for having a strong following = we were eating up their readership / number of daily visitors, regulars.

We learned during that 13 years that teenagers and young adults acquired a new world-view and a really strange value system regarding appreciation of quality in games.

Every game was harshly criticized, lots of hate and negativity - this phenomenon mirroring also social status / income / hardships of living - and only the best - AAA - games were criticized less and also praised.

I had the opportunity to work with the founder of another well known and visited gaming news site of our country, who was a game developer veteran designer/artist/musician [mainly RTS developer] and a very good one at that.
He created an indie RTS with his colleagues in their free-time and upon release received harsh criticisms.

He told me surprised and reeling from the negativity of comments:
- What the hell is wrong with people?

Well his RTS game looked good on video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLEIacK51ZQ
, wasn't my genre so I didn't try, but I confirmed for him the observed overall negativity of people during the last decade. How people expect a game to be some heavenly wonder, fulfilling all their secret dreams and wishes. When a game is not how they secretly fantasize about their dream-game [in their favorite genre], people let out an uncontrollable flow of invectives colored with vulgar phrases. Frustrated hysterical fits.

The new term trolling nowadays is badly conceived and frequently not really understood [Jungian psychology of "trolling"], but people use it nevertheless for a wide range of posters.

Sui Generis is still the game I'm looking forward to the most. Even with games like Witcher 3 and Wasteland 2 on the horizon. And I'm quite happy with the updates so far. I understand that Bare Mettle is a small team and working on the game itself comes first.

I applaud Bare Mettle for their approach, and like GhanBuriGhan I'm excited by the notion of procedural generation and emergent gameplay. I was disappointed that Bethesda didn't go that route after Daggerfall and have been waiting for a game like Sui Generis ever since.

It seems like Warhorse Studios is attempting something a bit similar with Kingdom Come too. The RPG future has never looked brighter. And like Morrandir, I think Madoc deserves a day off.

Keep the faith.

As far as criticism goes, responses this forum are generally fair and measured. I usually enjoy reading the feedback here, even when I disagree. On the Codex, they'd probably be roasted alive in boiling oil, tarred, feathered, drawn and quartered, then subjected to language worthy of a diseased pirate's brothel. I'm just saying it's best to develop a thick skin in this business.

So what do they do? If they're living destitute lives because the game is eating up way more resources than anticipated, do they scrap it and re-kickstart? Who would trust them? They're in a catch-22. I guess they can ask more from their backers, but that is likely limited as well.

crpgnut said:

I think several folks will tell you I'm kind of a curmudgeon though.

Surely you're old enough to handle criticism? Is CitizenX a dev?

In the world I live in, you produce at a high level or you get fired. That's the way it works for most adults who are in a career. I'm not going to hold back my opinion on forums that are specifically made for discussing crpgs.

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Not a developer- I have been reading rpg.w for years and following the development for Sui since I first heard about it. Decided to post as the overwhelming negativity and attacks seemed to be moving into "Lord of the Flies" momentum.

Constructive criticism is just that, constructive. Hostile, rude, agro, whiny comments are just that too, and hardly constructive. Perhaps the "high level" fear induced world you choose to live in, slaving for your corporate masters while eating their shit and treating those "below" you worse is your thing and has accelerated your curmudgeon world view? It's not the world I choose to participate in or condone.

I choose to treat ALL people with dignity and respect from the start, to a point, and then I too will not hold back my opinions. It hardly seems the harshness and tone is warranted towards this project and its developers, especially at this stage.

I work with a broad range of the public, for some reason those with more $$$ seem to think its ok to treat ppl like shit and swagger around with self importance as if they are then entitled to "more" of whatever. Similarly those who fund a kickstarter seem to infer its some sort of co-op where they are entitled to a bigger piece of the prize or profits (Booboo) or snarkiness. I disagree.

I see it as backing another's ideas that may or may not come to fruition. Or commissioning a piece of art from an artist- which again, may or may not result in how you envisioned or how the artist described the end piece. It's a gamble with no guarantees, its not a legally binding business contract. I'm surprised (not really) that you can't make a distinction between the two based on your analogies.

We're talking about a GAME here, something for fun and entertainment. Lighten up.

Being a backer does not mean yielding all expectations.

The game is experimental but developpers must strive to keep the lines.

Updates are useless to backers. They are more a way to keep the developpment team concerned, under public accountability.

crpgnut said:

So what do they do? If they're living destitute lives because the game is eating up way more resources than anticipated, do they scrap it and re-kickstart? Who would trust them? They're in a catch-22. I guess they can ask more from their backers, but that is likely limited as well.

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They get greenlighted on Steam, the backers promote the game in every forum they can and the team collects new funds.

Citizenx said:

Hostile, rude, agro, whiny comments are just that too, and hardly constructive.

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I hardly see any of these comments on this board. Well, you actually didn't claim there are some here, but I just want to point this out.

Madoc said:

Our pitch video focused on tech and core gameplay, that was a mistake we made, the original cut talked more about the concept but we removed a lot of the talking because everyone complained there was too much of it. But since? We've released 26 updates so far and they're mostly about gameplay, a good few are about story, one going into significant detail about how it works. I understand that our presentation is sorely lacking but the information is there!

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Ok, I took my time to read through all of your 26 updates again and indeed I need to revoke some of my criticism. There are indeed updates where you talk about stuff like NPC interaction, reactive gameworld, that's update #1 (as mentioned before), update #4, update #15 and update #25.
And perhaps we have a misunderstanding here. You indeed sketch how your non-linear-story-sandbox-npc-(inter)action-quest-stuff is planned to happen, and indeed it sounds fantastic (to me).
My problem is, that you don't point out, how you are going to make this happen, how you will implement it. In update #15 (the Forbes interview) you say: "Who knows how much we can actually do but we have to try! We do have serious ideas about its implementation." That has been 14 month ago, but still you haven't told us more about what you can actually do and how your implementation ideas are.
In update #25 you talk about "large complex systems that can deliver content more efficiently" and "until these systems are complete there's not much to see". So instead of in in-game footage why don't you show us some work in progress of these systems, show us how they work?
You mentioned looking at other campaigns/games when it comes to give information (although in context of story). Well, indeed your description of how your game world will react reminds me of Kingdom Come: Deliverance. They've recently pointed out how theirs will roughly work and (to me) it sounds convincing.
But look at their budget. They have already spent $1.5 million, their kickstarter will give them another $1.5 million and they have a private investor with virtually arbitrary funds. Your budget is… well, less. So I wonder how you can achieve similar things when it comes to a complex system as a simulation of a medieval world? (Which in fact both concepts are like.) I mean, I'm really curious. You are a damn ambitious project, and most likely you won't be able to realize everything you mentioned. And of course this would be ok, noone should really be disappointed considering your budget.
But still I think you should communicate your plans to us.