Did you watch the gameplay trailers? Spider-sense is tingling.
Also, consoles are the worst place to be if you're a horror fan now, anyway. PC has it so good.
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"Shadow of the Eternals" Development Halted...
- Thread starter Imbarkus
- Start date
Did you watch the gameplay trailers? Spider-sense is tingling.
Also, consoles are the worst place to be if you're a horror fan now, anyway. PC has it so good.
jaundicejuice
Member
When you help crowdfund something, you are championing an idea, not placing a pre-order at Gamestop.
It's a really unfortunate situation. I would love an Eternal Darkness sequel, but...man, the bad track record these guys have had to be a major factor in this campaign's failure. Even I found it hard to trust them, so I didn't donate anything...
Maybe next time someone brings up Eternal Darkness again, either from Nintendo, or these guys, while hiding Dyack's involvement or something like that, and we'll see another game...
Maybe next time someone brings up Eternal Darkness again, either from Nintendo, or these guys, while hiding Dyack's involvement or something like that, and we'll see another game...
partyphone
Banned
I hope all the devs find a job working for a project that isn't a Springtime for Hitler style scam.
blizzardjesus
Banned
Only thing that could have been better, to have come from this is Dyack leaving the industry. He is a cancer on any project he associates himself with after the disastrous circumstances of SK's closing. Hopefully his staff will find employment at more stable developers.
fabricated backlash
Member
This makes me sad.
Triggerhappytel
Member
I wonder whether Precursor would have found the support of Sony if they'd taken this to Sony Santa Monica, and agreed for the IP to become Sony's in exchange for development assistance and financial support. Much like TheChineseRoom did with Everybody's Gone to the Rapture. Maybe they tried that, although they do seem pretty determined to stay away from publishers. That being said, particularly at the moment Sony seems very supportive of these smaller projects and really building bridges with indie developers. Maybe for this game to ever become a reality on the scale Precursor want, they need to go with a publisher and give up ownership of the IP.
It's unfortunate to see the sequel to a great game being cancelled because of people's opinion of one of the creators.
I feel like there are probably hundreds of such people developing games we love, and it'd be great if people were less hot headed. Who knows, maybe Dyack learned from all the mistakes and debates around him.
I feel like there are probably hundreds of such people developing games we love, and it'd be great if people were less hot headed. Who knows, maybe Dyack learned from all the mistakes and debates around him.
frankie_baby
Member
then Nintendo sends cease and desist letters for ripping off its IP/patents
flatearthpandas
Member
I funded every attempt they made at crowdfunding.
Hopefully this game gets made in spite of all the hatred the internet has for these guys and the childish glee in the face of their failure. If the accusations against the designer are true, the law will take care of him. There's no reason for "we the (!#%&hj) people" to enact justice on his workplace.
Hopefully this game gets made in spite of all the hatred the internet has for these guys and the childish glee in the face of their failure. If the accusations against the designer are true, the law will take care of him. There's no reason for "we the (!#%&hj) people" to enact justice on his workplace.
Triggerhappytel
Member
I'm not especially familiar with the original ED, but was SotE really a clone then (based on what we were shown, obviously)? I know the church in the game which was also in ED is based on a real location, so Nintendo would have nothing there. Nonetheless, it would be simple enough to change a few details so it wouldn't infringe on any trademarks, considering how early in development the game still would be.
frankie_baby
Member
i haven't played the original so cant comment that deeply but it did start development as ED2
fabricated backlash
Member
It would've been a direct sequel in everything but name. That includes gameplay, structure, lore and mechanics.
Despite me liking ED, this is about right.
CrimsonCrescendo
Banned
That would have been worse as people would have been on even more of a witch hunt after finding out.
plantedunicorn
Member
Come on the reason people are willing to trust Mikami is because of his track record. Look at the games that he has directed. Most of them have been fucking great and one could be considered a masterpiece (RE4).
Now compare that to Silicon Knights even trying to remove the fact that people had a problem with Dyack; look at the games that have come from that studio. Their last two games were Too Human and X-Men Legacy. Of course people were gonna be apprehensive about funding the kickstarter.
Imbarkus
As Sartre noted in his contemplation on Hell in No Exit, the true horror is other members.
I'm seeing a fair amount of Kickstarters based off the nostalgia for a console title seem to fail to find their audience (obviously Mighty No. 9 is an exception).
Mutant League Football:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mendheim/mutant-football-league?ref=users
General Chaos 2:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/projects/423846/photo-little.jpg?1377823449
The Big Blue (ecco sequel)
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/annunziata/the-next-ecco-the-dolphin-adventure-game
I also think it's a shame that a few months after their first stumble splitting the crowd-funding across a site-based Paypal alternative, Kickstarter adds Canadian location direct support. Certainly there were a lot of accusations that the first funding was somehow a crooked cash grab. It was totally untrue and all donations were refunded, but it still hurt the PR.
They admitted it was a mistake to introduce the new company along with the Kickstarter, but this is true only because of Dyack's presence, and the lack of announced closure to the Silicon Knights story.
It was like the perfect storm of bad PR. I even think the really high quality and playable nature of their demo hurt them: people assumed it was built at Silicon Knights as opposed to being built and self-financed at Precursor for a year first in CryEngine. We fans did what we could to represent the facts of the matter as they were told to us...
...but man, if you had a grudge to air against Denis Dyack, this was just a big turkey shoot. It was just sad to watch.
Sure, I'll say it: Shadows of the Damned was not a particularly good game. The gameplay model was a tired retread of the third-person shooter we had seem a 100 times this generation. The humor was awkward and culturally-tone deaf. The game retains its texture pop-in even in my memory. The goat and baby sound effects drove anyone else in the room crazy while I was playing it, and then eventually irritated me as well. And it was pretty much RE4 in play mechanics, if not quality.
And it showed well in gameplay videos. And it sold for shit. And Vanquish bombed hard too.
If Dyack is persona non-grata for the reason that he mostly produced clunkers after the transition to the HD era, well I'd have to say the same indictment actually applies to most of Japan, as well. Mikami included.
Mutant League Football:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mendheim/mutant-football-league?ref=users
General Chaos 2:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/projects/423846/photo-little.jpg?1377823449
The Big Blue (ecco sequel)
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/annunziata/the-next-ecco-the-dolphin-adventure-game
I also think it's a shame that a few months after their first stumble splitting the crowd-funding across a site-based Paypal alternative, Kickstarter adds Canadian location direct support. Certainly there were a lot of accusations that the first funding was somehow a crooked cash grab. It was totally untrue and all donations were refunded, but it still hurt the PR.
They admitted it was a mistake to introduce the new company along with the Kickstarter, but this is true only because of Dyack's presence, and the lack of announced closure to the Silicon Knights story.
It was like the perfect storm of bad PR. I even think the really high quality and playable nature of their demo hurt them: people assumed it was built at Silicon Knights as opposed to being built and self-financed at Precursor for a year first in CryEngine. We fans did what we could to represent the facts of the matter as they were told to us...
...but man, if you had a grudge to air against Denis Dyack, this was just a big turkey shoot. It was just sad to watch.
Sure, I'll say it: Shadows of the Damned was not a particularly good game. The gameplay model was a tired retread of the third-person shooter we had seem a 100 times this generation. The humor was awkward and culturally-tone deaf. The game retains its texture pop-in even in my memory. The goat and baby sound effects drove anyone else in the room crazy while I was playing it, and then eventually irritated me as well. And it was pretty much RE4 in play mechanics, if not quality.
And it showed well in gameplay videos. And it sold for shit. And Vanquish bombed hard too.
If Dyack is persona non-grata for the reason that he mostly produced clunkers after the transition to the HD era, well I'd have to say the same indictment actually applies to most of Japan, as well. Mikami included.
So in making a sequel to Eternal Darkness, get rid of the person responsible for Eternal Darkness. That's smart.
I'd live to give the gaming community some credit and be able to respect the majority of gamers so I'll just assume that it didn't get funded because not that many people played ED. And not because people saw the name Dyack.
This is why I feel crowd sourcing really needs to be an absolute last resort. If a game fails to get sourced what publisher who may have considered it would dare touch it now? Regardless if it is a valid way of determining fan interest or not it'll be interpreted as "nobody wants it" and you can't get wash that kind of stink away.
NoirVisage
Banned
I wasn't even following it super close but i saw this coming after hearing of 2 kickstarter fails. They should have had Susan on board as an adviser.
poopninjamvc3mk
I sucked six dicks to get this tag.
Was to be expected after the child porn scandal,crowd funding failed, and previous Sillicon Knights games not being all that great.
It's not like Dyack has to be completely removed from the picture. If the man had any sense of humility and respect for his coworkers, he'd relegate himself to an entirely background role as far as the public is concerned.
But he won't because he doesn't.
Imbarkus
As Sartre noted in his contemplation on Hell in No Exit, the true horror is other members.
wtf I never heard of these before. loved general chaos and mutant league. I was on youtube writing messages to other devs asking them to ripoff a clone of chaos with online play for wii couple years ago lol. I never buy madden but mutant league is like the mario kart of football games for me.
I got juniored so I cant make new thread for them
Fairly laughable, maybe. Nevermind that in the last eight years Shinji Mikami has been directly responsible for two of the best third-person shooters ever or an amazing beat-em-up, he has a nebulous role on a project for a different company under different direction!
I have no idea why you're trying to drag Mikami under the bus in this thread. What's the relation?
Triggerhappytel
Member
No it's not. Emphasis on the word 'most' in Unicorn's comment.
How is this relevant? Are sales figures coming into the discussion now? Because Dyack will hardly come out of that discussion above Mikami, now will he?!
FrontalMonk
Banned
Like most, I'm not terribly surprised, after two failed kickstarters.
Personally, my reasons for not supporting the project came from the entire Too Human fiasco and the huge number of failed projects entailed in Mama Robotnik's incredible Legacy of Kain retrospective. It really painted a picture of a development team that had egos way too big for the projects they could handle.
Personally, my reasons for not supporting the project came from the entire Too Human fiasco and the huge number of failed projects entailed in Mama Robotnik's incredible Legacy of Kain retrospective. It really painted a picture of a development team that had egos way too big for the projects they could handle.
Imbarkus
As Sartre noted in his contemplation on Hell in No Exit, the true horror is other members.
I'd have preferred to explore the future of console survival horror coming from the roots of Eternal Darkness gameplay and expressed through what has been shown by Precursor Games and Denis Dyack.
Mikami's new work is being heralded as the savior of survival horror, or at the very least being published, in part because it is a shooter, and that's exactly what I'm sick-to-death of in my horror gaming.
And I didn't play Vanquish any more than I played Too Human. Horror games, that's what I give a shit about.
Resident Evil 4 has had enough spiritual successors already.
wtf I never heard of these before. loved general chaos and mutant league. I was on youtube writing messages to other devs asking them to ripoff a clone of chaos with online play for wii couple years ago lol. I never buy madden but mutant league is like the mario kart of football games for me.
I got juniored so I cant make new thread for them
The Mutant League thread:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=679025
The General Chaos 2 thread:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=671481
There's just not enough interest there, man. Threads hardly even have any posts.
The Shadow of the Eternals thread? LOL if number of posts correlated with number of donations, I'd have the idea I wanted to see explored funded and supported.
It tests the old saying that any PR is good PR, when in reality, in some scenarios, controversy is poisonous.
Besides both games being horror there are so few connections between these games that bringing it and Mikami up only makes you seem sour as hell. Come on.
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
lol
Motley Grue
Banned
Completely agree, but it seems GAF was against the game and that doomed it. I think politics killed it too.
That's one of the reasons I went PC.
Sho_Nuff82
Member
Eternal Darkness is just as much a shooter as RE4, especially later in the game.
Crowd sourcing is the rawest form of popularity test that a game can have, and asks fans without ambiguity to put their money where their mouths are. The disconnect with games like MML, Mutant League, Eternal Darkness, or something like Shenmue, it's that the fans are so vocal that their actual piece of the revenue pie is overstated. A Shenmue sequel would never sell enough to justify a $50 million dev budget.
If you take your game to every publisher on the planet and they say no, and then you take your game directly to gamers and they say no, what it means is precisely what it implies: there is no interest. It's purely a vanity project. Inafune pulled in two weeks what these guys wanted for months, because there is actual substantial interest in 2.5D action platformers.
Crowd sourcing is the rawest form of popularity test that a game can have, and asks fans without ambiguity to put their money where their mouths are. The disconnect with games like MML, Mutant League, Eternal Darkness, or something like Shenmue, it's that the fans are so vocal that their actual piece of the revenue pie is overstated. A Shenmue sequel would never sell enough to justify a $50 million dev budget.
If you take your game to every publisher on the planet and they say no, and then you take your game directly to gamers and they say no, what it means is precisely what it implies: there is no interest. It's purely a vanity project. Inafune pulled in two weeks what these guys wanted for months, because there is actual substantial interest in 2.5D action platformers.
Bel_Air_Jeff
Banned
the reason that this game failed to get funded was solely on the fact that Dennis Dyack's last two games were major disappointments.
Ninja Scooter
Member
Ding Ding Ding. We have a winner. It's not rocket science here, folks.
Imbarkus
As Sartre noted in his contemplation on Hell in No Exit, the true horror is other members.
I don't agree. Mikami makes a great foil. Both game creators have had commercially unsuccessful ventures with their last two attempts, both their HD generation attempts. Both are remembered as pioneering creators of great Gamecube-exclusive (at the time) horror games.
Damn, at least Dyack has tried to make a different type of game since then. Regardless, these two game makers are comparable. It's not much of a point in logic for you to concede, man.
You'd think I got Voldemort-style-funk all up on precious Mikami by comparing him with He-Whom-Must-Not-Be-Named or something.
Also disagree. Aiming down gunsights is never a gameplay element that enters into the game. When you target enemies, you never miss. No crosshairs. It's almost just a ranged extension of the melee combat.
Actually, we won't really know this unless we see an effort put forth without the negative PR and controversy associated with Denis Dyack. That's why it would have been nice if people could have set that aside, so hopeful fans could even just gauge response to the game itself. Read this very thread for all the " I wanted the game but I didn't trust Dyack or the pitch" truth of that matter.
I don't believe Dyack has to be off the project for that to happen, but clearly he has to earn the good will first, one way or another. How? It's an industry, and beyond that a popularity-based industry. All it takes is success to wipe away a lot of doubts, and a good game to win a lot of gamers' favor. However, right now I'm not sure anyone over there's getting back in the saddle again, which is a shame.
The merits that make Eternal Darkness worth following up are endemic to the game itself. Not everyone appreciates them as much as others, but I don't think its potential, and the potential of where a follow-up to it can take the kind of stagnated and uninspired horror genre on consoles, is something that hopefully won't be lost for good because of this. Because if it is, that will be a shame, too.
If Nintendo can't fund it on Kickstarter, you know, after they're broke, then I will give up on a follow-up to Eternal Darkness...
Ninja Scooter
Member
That's never going to happen. The entire point of kickstarters and crowd sourcing is people trading on their reputations. You can't pick and choose which parts you want to remember and which parts you want people to forget. It's game developer saying "See, you like these games I used to make, give me money and trust that I will make another game you are going to like". But you have to have some sort of history and credibility to make that happen. Your reputation is ALWAYS going to matter. Dyack has a crap reputation. In the last 10 years he's been known more for message board shenanigans, lawsuits and awkward podcast appearances than he has for his actual games.
frankie_baby
Member
pretty much the only hope for eternal darkness now is for Nintendo to get another dev to make ED2, but theres almost no chance they'll ever bother
Nostremitus
Member
Imbarkus
As Sartre noted in his contemplation on Hell in No Exit, the true horror is other members.
Yeah that's more than clear to me now. I may differ from the conclusion philosophically. I'm just more comfortable being an evangelist. boosting something up, cheerleading and generating excitement, than being skeptical or critical or spending my time and energy on something that I'm not excited to have happen.
I also believe a creative enterprise is inherently full of risk, and that creative people who make great games are also people who go off on strange rants. We as gamers always say we want our creators to try something new, but it would be kind of hard not to be risk-averse if two poorly received titles (along with bad PR decisions he owned up to in interviews) ended your career. We didn't do that to Bryan Fargo, Lord British, lots of others when they asked for money, after unsuccessful efforts. Dyack was different.
The message board hijinks, the podcasts. My PR instincts say these are the things that really killed this funding, and things that were all from the past. That's why his focus on the specific content of the Kotaku article was kind of perplexing and ineffective: this isn't about facts, man. This is about antipathy!
And he was a reasonable and decent guy in all the recent appearances and correspondence... I'm not sure how you're supposed to demonstrate that you've changed in the court of gamer internet consensus. He is literally the only litmus test of an industry guy who unwisely picked a fight with NeoGAF. Jeff Bell has moved on in life. I don't think he cares what anyone here thinks about him anymore.
But as many have suggested, a string of good work, like a few small titles with smaller scope and ambitions that hit the mark, will wipe clean a lot of doubt. I don't blame any of them for not wanting to do anything right now, but I do hope none of them, including Denis Dyack, give up making games.
Robert at Zeboyd Games
Banned
More like "Of course we don't want to work with you. Your company went bankrupt, you're under the shadow of lawsuits & scandals, and your last two games were poorly received. We're going to attribute Eternal Darkness' cult success primarily to our involvement since everything you've done after our partnership has been a disaster."
I think you'll never support a game via crowd-funding because you don't understand it's basic concept. First, you're not buying the game, or investing. You're giving people money so they can try to make a product that normally won't get made. Secondly, not a single cent is taken until the goals are met. So if the project fails to get funding, no money is taken.
Crowd-funding can get projects off that would never ever get a chance to be made. At it's best it's the community driven product desire, and it's awesome.
Imbarkus
As Sartre noted in his contemplation on Hell in No Exit, the true horror is other members.
Geez, man. "Poorly received" is part of the territory if you're going to take risks, sometimes. How did Penny Arcade #3 do compared to the first two? What if Tell Tale made the same claim? That's just harsh, revisionist kind of stuff from a fellow developer, essentially wiping away the quality work they did, based on the controversy since then...
Lord British told everyone that you suck at game development. Funded. I don't understand it.
Actually, I do. Have Lord British exactly the same as he is now but with a huge, embarrassing fight with NeoGAF which got him banned years ago, and my guess is he would not be currently funded. Add just a failed lawsuit with Epic to Lord British and I don't think you'd get the same result. The fight with NeoGAF is what did Denis Dyack in.
Just a theory. No evidence and I can't argue it. But I think it's true anyway.