Apocalypse Now - Leaves Kickstarter

Originally Posted by Ripper
So, have you guys acquired a licence from Coppola or whoever to use this IP? Or has it been freed up by some unusual copyright situation?

Personally involved. See Kickstarter Website.

Originally Posted by Avantenor
Personally involved. See Kickstarter Website.

Thanks. Not really interested enough to trawl through the campaign page myself. Just curious.

There is a video with a message from FFC, where he explains why he didn't licence it to big publishers but is trying to find another way into the games market.

I'd love to see that game. I'm very fond of Joseph Conrad's novel "Heart of Darkness". It's a great piece of literature, and Apocalypse Now did a great job in adapting that material into a film. Although FFC changed the setting, I think it's still the best adaption up to now.

There have been two better known attempts in the video games market to adapt that novel, Far Cry 2 and Spec Ops: The Line. Far Cry 2 suffered from poor mechanics, but was successful in recreating that intense and hostile atmosphere of a foreign environment. Spec Ops did well in recreating that personal horror story. Funnily enough, both games were also influenced by Apocalypse Now. So IMHO it would be interesting to see, how Erebus would transfer the movie into a game. Personally, I think a Deus Ex / Metal Gear approach would be be the most suitable way.

But to be honest, the concept and description didn't catch me yet. Compared to other crowdfunding campaigns, the handling of this project so far didn't convince me, that Eerebus is the right team to translate Apocalypse Now into the game I want to play. It's too blurry atm and imho it was revealed too early. So, at this point I'm not sure if my money would be well spent. Unfortunately for Erebus, I'm not in the mood to risk my sparetime money if it seems that risky to lose it. It was also bad timing, because I already decided to support PoE2. Don't know, how Sawyer can be involved and doesn't give them a warning that they should aim for another date.

I agree with all of that. Heart of Darkness is an excellent novel, and Apocalypse Now a good film. In theory this project could be fantastic, but I find the whole presentation very strange… something just seems off. TBH, I think it has a chaotic and amateurish look to it, and yet it has talent of Coppola's calibre on board. Odd.

Originally Posted by Ripper
So, have you guys acquired a licence from Coppola or whoever to use this IP? Or has it been freed up by some unusual copyright situation?

We've licensed the motion picture rights from Francis Ford Coppola.

This is one of the things that makes this project unique. Most major movies or books or atV series are owned by very large publicly traded companies. Those companies come with many layers of people to interact with.

Here we just show stuff to the original director that is very rare and helpful.

Originally Posted by Ripper
I agree with all of that. Heart of Darkness is an excellent novel, and Apocalypse Now a good film. In theory this project could be fantastic, but I find the whole presentation very strange… something just seems off. TBH, I think it has a chaotic and amateurish look to it, and yet it has talent of Coppola's calibre on board. Odd.

On the presentation front we're both always open to criticisms, this is a very senior team of people.

On the other hand I think people are forgetting how rudimentary Wasteland 2 or Torment: Tides of Numenera or Project Eternity or Friday the 13th or Systek Shock reboot were at launch.

Go watch the videos. 5 minutes long. No gamelay footage. Low production value.

I'm not baggning on these projects, I or partners on our team worked on all four.

1) But our launch materials are advanced from the first round of big crowdfunded games. We know because we used those earlier projects as points of reference.

2) Battletech probably had one of the most elaborate tech demos. Divinity series already had $1-2 million spent on it before going to crowdfunding. All of the "sequel" crowdfunding titles are being built ij a pre-existing game.

3) We've spent $180,000 to build an in-engine protoype, shoot promotional videos, record Francis ford Coppola speaking about the video game and develop a brand new crowdfunding platform. We built something that's a replacement for Kickstarter for $50,000. That's an incredible feat of software development.

I'd remind everyone that our executive producer Lawrence Liberty produced Fallout: New Vegas for around $9M and turned in a game that was over 100 hours long and had an 86 user metacritic rating.

Lawrence Liberty is our executive producer too for Apocalypse Now and he's got a great plan to build a great game that is about 1/5th the geographic size of Fallout: New Vegas usinf more advanced technology and just a little less money. So it's a good plan.

Originally Posted by Avantenor
I'd love to see that game. I'm very fond of Joseph Conrad's novel "Heart of Darkness". It's a great piece of literature, and Apocalypse Now did a great job in adapting that material into a film. Although FFC changed the setting, I think it's still the best adaption up to now.

I have only seen clips but the Boris Karloff/Roddy McDowell version looks amazing



Citizen Kane was not Orson Welles first movie. He tried to adapt HoD to the big screen only to run into so many production problems he scrapped the project then pronounced the whole thing "cursed". This became a Hollywood legend and part of that legend meant that the novella could never be adapted.

RKO gave Welles gave free reign to make the picture. Its shocking that after that failure they did it again with Kane.



radio adaptation:

While I'm not a potential backer, it is good to see you have a plan and are sticking to it. I will happily buy your product should it meet the quality of FNV or Fallout 3-4. I played those games and had a good time.

Interesting info on the producer, but let's not forget the work was done by some of the franchise original creators and the same person did not produce cult classics Fallout1 and Fallout2.

I'm with crpgnut here. Have second thoughts about "blind investing" but will definetly buy if any good (doesn't have to be a masterpiece).

Originally Posted by joxer
Interesting info on the producer, but let's not forget the work was done by some of the franchise original creators and the same person did not produce cult classics Fallout1 and Fallout2.

I'm with crpgnut here. Have second thoughts about "blind investing" but will definetly buy if any good (doesn't have to be a masterpiece).

We totally get that crowdfunding is not for everyone. Some people want to simply buy the game by itself when it's ready. All good.

You are correct that a lot of the same key people from Fallout were on FNV, but we've got a lot of the team members from both Aliens: Crucible and FNV on our team.

Obsidian is the best starting point for any developer to learn the ropes and get an understanding of RPGs.

Originally Posted by MontgomeryMarkland

On the other hand I think people are forgetting how rudimentary Wasteland 2 or Torment: Tides of Numenera or Project Eternity or Friday the 13th or Systek Shock reboot were at launch.

Go watch the videos. 5 minutes long. No gamelay footage. Low production value.

I'm not baggning on these projects, I or partners on our team worked on all four.

1) But our launch materials are advanced from the first round of big crowdfunded games. We know because we used those earlier projects as points of reference.

I don't find the comparison to those other Kickstarters very relevant. Those were modest projects, looking for modest budgets, to deliver games that we clearly understood and wanted. Your materials may be more "advanced", but, I'm just telling you that, for me, it doesn't really come across in a compelling way. The new site is way better than the KS page, though.

Most crucially, I don't really feel it communicates what this game really is. There's some fancy material, but we're all pretty jaded these days. I think you would do well to focus on clearly presenting an answer to the question, "So, what exactly will I be playing?"

Originally Posted by Ripper
I don't find the comparison to those other Kickstarters very relevant. Those were modest projects, looking for modest budgets, to deliver games that we clearly understood and wanted. Your materials may be more "advanced", but, I'm just telling you that, for me, it doesn't really come across in a compelling way. The new site is way better than the KS page, though.

Most crucially, I don't really feel it communicates what this game really is. There's some fancy material, but we're all pretty jaded these days. I think you would do well to focus on clearly presenting an answer to the question, "So, what exactly will I be playing?"

I want to explain everything I can. We're doing so on about a thousand websites at once right now, so help me do that.

What parts are unclear from the videos and these two updates:

https://apocalypsenow.com/updates/up…ameplay-basics

https://apocalypsenow.com/updates/up…gn-part-1-of-5

That I can help clarify immediately? Happy to do so.

As a less important side note you are heavily underestimating the budgets of all of the successful large crowdfunded video games. Kickstarter has never provided 100% of the budget for a big quality game in history.


Happy to answer any specific questions at all!

And thank you to everyone for the interest!

Well, those do give some useful information… but I didn't find them because I wouldn't go looking at the campaign updates in order to get the impression of what the game is about. I'd normally only look at updates once I was involved. I'm just trying to help you out - I think that stuff should be much more front and centre.

I think you misunderstand my point about the other Kickstarters. They had the advantage of showing us instantly-understood screenshots of a certain style of isometric RPG, and asking for sums of money that seemed realistic. This comes across to me as a far more ambitious style of cinematic game, capturing the experience Apocalypse Now, and looking for six big ones. I think that invites a bit more scepticism.

Anyhow, no point going on about it. Good luck with the project.

Originally Posted by Ripper
Well, those do give some useful information… but I didn't find them because I wouldn't go looking at the campaign updates in order to get the impression of what the game is about. I'd normally only look at updates once I was involved. I'm just trying to help you out - I think that stuff should be much more front and centre.

I think you misunderstand my point about the other Kickstarters. They had the advantage of showing us instantly-understood screenshots of a certain style of isometric RPG, and asking for sums of money that seemed realistic. This comes across to me as a far more ambitious style of cinematic game, capturing the experience Apocalypse Now, and looking for six big ones. I think that invites a bit more scepticism.

Anyhow, no point going on about it. Good luck with the project.

Thank you! For the well wishes.

I agree we need to make our updates system better, they are buried right now. But we're working on the site constantly and it will keep getting better!

Total Postscript:
(For what it's worth the promises of the big Kickstarter games were, imo, overly optimistic both in budget and ship dates, almost none of them shipped on time and they all took twice as much money to make -- I think the big crowdfunding guys learned from those early days of the wild west and have improved on the formula and gotten serious and realistic about it -- that's where FIG comes from. That's why we built our own crowdfunding platform -- everything is an evolution. I worked on five crowdfunding titles before this one and our team has worked on seven, we're intimately familiar with all of the details of the big crowdfunded games)

Originally Posted by Ripper
Well, those do give some useful information… but I didn't find them because I wouldn't go looking at the campaign updates in order to get the impression of what the game is about. I'd normally only look at updates once I was involved. I'm just trying to help you out - I think that stuff should be much more front and centre.

I second that. Missed them, too.

In the end, most people are not interested in too many details about inside problems, but a proof that you already named them and that you have a plan how to solve them. I'm also no fan of reputation arguments, because a single failure can destroy that credibility and often it's complicated to explain the reasons for that. Tim Schafer, Peter Molyneaux and several others demonstrated that even experienced poster boys of game development can fail miserably. Many are still waiting for Purgatorio, although it was promised several times to release, no matter what. So, I think real production insights are worth more than backlogs to get an idea about your approach and if I'm confident.

Pillars was a no-brainer. That wasn't far from what they did permanently. The people behind the infinity games wanted to recreate the infinity games. Or make NWN2/KotOR2 with painted backgrounds. Recreating a linear action / war movie as a non-linear CRPG is rather unique. Alien was cancelled before it could gave proof of the concept.

Originally Posted by Avantenor
I second that. Missed them, too.

In the end, most people are not interested in too many details about inside problems, but a proof that you already named them and that you have a plan how to solve them. I'm also no fan of reputation arguments, because a single failure can destroy that credibility and often it's complicated to explain the reasons for that. Tim Schafer, Peter Molyneaux and several others demonstrated that even experienced poster boys of game development can fail miserably. Many are still waiting for Purgatorio, although it was promised several times to release, no matter what. So, I think real production insights are worth more than backlogs to get an idea about your approach and if I'm confident.

Pillars was a no-brainer. That wasn't far from what they did permanently. The people behind the infinity games wanted to recreate the infinity games. Or make NWN2/KotOR2 with painted backgrounds. Recreating a linear action / war movie as a non-linear CRPG is rather unique. Alien was cancelled before it could gave proof of the concept.

All great points.

I would point out that we don't rely on a single reputation. We have a very senior team of people, almost all of whom have served in a lead capacity before and none of whom have "ego issues."

Purgatorio was blocked by Hasbro-WOTC.

Lawrence Liberty while at Atari intended to release it as a Planescape expansion pack for NWN2.

We negotiated deals, it almost got there.

But Hasbro-WOTC said the "Planescape brand was dead and no one wanted it."

Then five years later inXile raised $6-9 million over four years for Torment.

Life's funny sometimes.

Larry, the EP of FNV, has provided some details on the production plans. He will provide more. And we'll release everything, milestone schedules, production plans, etc. That's a nice thing about doing it this way.

No one gets to tell us now that we cannot release some information to the public.

Which means we can be completely transparent.

Which rarely happens.

Interesting aspect.

One last question: Did the 1 $ / 5 $ tiers not pay off during your past campaigns? From my limited perspective I always thought people who are willing to pay for an email subscription and small rewards like wallpapers are at least a potential you can stay in touch with and maybe convince in the long tail to spend more?

To be honest: I'm not sure who is the target audience?

Young ones: the do not know the movie, know Mr Coppola by wine, know nothing about Vietnam (the Kimjongun guy lives there, yes?), or war in general, and just want to go gangsta with GTA. And no Diplo, so it should suck anyway.

Older ones: the know the movie much too well, anything that is not on par with their original experience is eeevil, do not like GTA, no Marlon, etc (for more, see this forum, heh-heh)

Soooo… I'm genuinely puzzled.

Originally Posted by Avantenor
Interesting aspect.

One last question: Did the 1 $ / 5 $ tiers not pay off during your past campaigns? From my limited perspective I always thought people who are willing to pay for an email subscription and small rewards like wallpapers are at least a potential you can stay in touch with and maybe convince in the long tail to spend more?

I understand the question.

We support people becoming engaged in the community for free. It costs nothing to join our Discord chat channel. We don't do a regular email blast, but if we did it would be free to subscribe to. The updates and the videos and all the other info is free.

So to join the community in our case all someone needs is interest.

We looked at the $1 tiers on the projects we worked on and others and noticed they never much more than $500 total.

So just opening up the community made more sense to us.

Great question!

Originally Posted by duerer
To be honest: I'm not sure who is the target audience?

Young ones: the do not know the movie, know Mr Coppola by wine, know nothing about Vietnam (the Kimjongun guy lives there, yes?), or war in general, and just want to go gangsta with GTA. And no Diplo, so it should suck anyway.

Older ones: the know the movie much too well, anything that is not on par with their original experience is eeevil, do not like GTA, no Marlon, etc (for more, see this forum, heh-heh)

Soooo… I'm genuinely puzzled.

Guess I'm somewhere in the middle. Think I saw just part of the movie in a film class in college over a decade ago. Just not sure how you adapt that into an RPG although I'm somewhat intrigued because a VietNam war RPG would certainly be something different. I guess it sounds good on paper, but not necessarily exciting enough that I'd be inclined to back it without first actually playing a demo or seeing the game in action.