He's got the bag too early. He's like that Patreon game Developer that made it big in year 1, develops the first halve of the game in 1/2 years and then proceeds to milk the remaining 50% for years because they no longer have the financial incentive or the moral compass to deliver on what they promised (if it doesn't get stuck on development hell lol). I was endorsing a guy like that on Patreon (Redamz), his game got really big real quick and he got a ton of Patrons paying 10 bucks per month. After a couple years of development, Redamz had some problems with Patreon's TOS and removed the game from that platform entirely, and, unsurprisingly, the game has been untouched since then. Also, the guy straight up decided to shelve the project unilaterally and lied about making other games related to that game. It's been like 4 years since he announced those other games and there's nothing to show for it (outside of roadmap that looks like it was made on Paint by a 12 year old), so the original game won't ever be finished neither will the other games he promised. He actually had a Tier that was, IIRC, $20, that granted you access to some cool stuff that you'd only receive once the game was finished. Needless to say he never returned a cent of that, so you just wasted money for an hypothetical that you're never going to receive. If you go to his Discord and ask for updates or an explanation on the og game getting shelved, Redamz himself and his friends will just cuss you out. This guy is essentially YandereDev's pupil, I don't know which one is scummier. If you want to know a person's real nature give them a lot of money, see how they act.
Yes, exactly, Redamz is YandereDev's cousin. The only difference is that as soon as he ceased his connection to Patreon he stopped developing the game. Didn't look for another service to fund his game or try to deliver on his promises. Just straight-up dropped the game and stated it was finished lol, but at that point the guy had already made hundreds of thousands. I figure he was satisfied with the money he had received thus far and called it a day not caring for the fact he had scammed thousands of Patrons who had supported him for years. Hell, I'm sure he was relieved that Patreon gave him trouble, it gave him an excuse to bail (I remember the Patreon thing being completely blown out of proportion over something very minor that could've easily been adjusted. It literally saved his scummy ass from having to finish the game).
It's so funny how star citizen was being compared to NMS and everyone saying "Star Citizen is just better"
NMS launched, failed, got fixed, and then got insane post launch support for 0 extra money and now they are developing another fucking game and Star Citizen is still in the limbo
I was pleasantly surprised by how much support No man's sky got post launch after the lackluster release. Really kudos to them for trudging on despite the poor reviews they got at the start!
Well Game development is not a single handled venture when it comes to creating more what's promised. There's no incentive if he's paid up front and patron get their cut.
What they should do is mile stone release. For example funds are released once a milestone is passed. The best way would be for the guy to hire out a team, give the users milestones and l payment on completion.
It's human nature. The incentive is the money, if you hand therm money straight away it diverts their attention, ambition and need, it's happened so many times with so many products.
The product should have milestones. The money should be released on the completion of agreed stages. It incentives the person to be productive. If I hand you money each month based on some vague promises we are never going to get their. I don't understand why u users are so gullible, I don't blame the developer as he is only human and money removes drive and ambition.
You should pay for the finished product, or milestone. If it's not met, payment should be stopped. That would solve all these half finished products that people pay for based on faith the person won't be distracted suddenly having hundreds of thousands in their account.
How does money remove drive and ambition? You know what actually removes drive and ambition? Not being held accountable at all.
It has less to do with "omg I've got tons of money. I lost all drive" but rather "I got tons of money and my backers are happy to wait and wait and wait as long as I provide tiny improvements every other month"
If there's a literal chance of him going to jail if he does't meet their goals, you can bet they'll be meeting them. Even if it's crappy. That, or return the bulk of the money.
After many years yeah, i was an original backer who lost interest after like year 5 and more and more promises but nothing to show for it.
What I don't get is if the game was built for top of the line hardware in 2014, Star Citizen should work just fine today in something like a 5700XT. What happened?
Content bloat and perfectionism. Sadly i was blinded by chris roberts name to really know his reputation as a game dev. (I loved his earlier games).
Chronic lateness, had to be bought out of projects for them just to release. Those are all traits chris roberts had.
Kept adding more and more backer goals but never produced any results worth a damn. In those years, then did the ultimate rugpull, started their own backer website.
A mostly playable product after blowing through a billion dollars, being in production since 2011 and missing the nov 2014 release date by over 12 years and counting, with no end in sight. LOLOLOLOLOL
I'm shocked that he is still getting support for his game. I feel like someone could get a much more functional game by just modding Hitman or something.
When I purchase a book I explicitly trade money for that book. Not the book before, not the book after, specifically that book.
When I donate money via Patreon or similar services I do it to support a creator not as part of an exchange for a product or service.
In both instances there’s perhaps a hope for more attached to it but that’s roughly where the resemblance ends.
They said, I don’t think it’s a matter of GRRM being too busy counting his money.
He clearly still likes being involved with the universe seeing as he’s working on all these ASOIF projects.
I just think the show’s ending put a domper on it for him, especially since his writing method is very much driven by his own curiosity in wanting to know how things develop and having the story come together organically.
I do think its valid to say everyone's crash out about how the show ended probably capped his pen. And the crazy thing is the show ending honestly wasn't bad at all. It was a bit rushed, yes, but it mostly made sense to me.
Why are people still treating crowdfunding sites like shops?
When you give money to someone on patreon or kickstarter or gofundme or whatever the fuck, you are making a no strings attached donation with no guarantee of anything in return. The owner has zero obligation to fulfil any of their future rewards.
Like that's literally the point of the platforms, to support creators who don't have any finished products to sell. It's not a pre-order. If you're expecting something guaranteed in return you need to wait until the product is finished and just buy it.
Except this guy had a Tier that was literally a Pre-order. It's the one I mentioned and it was clearly more expensive than the other ones. You were guaranteed a digital copy of the finished game and your name in the credits.
Also, it's a question of morals. If you're developing a game and asking for financial support, it's entirely reasonable to expect a finished product at some point. A lot of developers being scumbags and leaving the project as soon as they've earned enough doesn't make it right. Yeah sure, it can happen, but doesn't mean it should. We're just enabling bad practices with that kind of mentality. I'm not buying it.
Except this guy had a Tier that was literally a Pre-order
He can write whatever he wants on the page, doesn't change that that's not how patreon works. It's not a shop. Nothing is guaranteed.
If you're developing a game and asking for financial support, it's entirely reasonable to expect a finished product at some point.
It's also entirely reasonable to expect no product too. You're investing, not buying. That means assuming the risk that there will be no product ever.
Most business ventures fail. You need to get out of the mentality that these sites are for customers. You're not buying anything, you're donating to these people.
If you don't like that risk then don't give them money. And I say that sincerely.
I mean sure - people need to be aware about the risks. That doesn‘t mean you can‘t complaint if a dev fails to deliver though. Especially if it‘s obvious they just lost the Motivation b/c they already collected a lot of money.
Wilful ignorance is donating money on a donation site, ignoring the terms and conditions that explicitly say that the money you give is a donation, that you're not buying anything and that nothing may be delivered and then complaining when nothing is delivered.
That‘s not what kickstarter does by the way. Kickstarter requires creators to complete their projects or issue refunds to backers, classifying these promises as a legally binding contract between the creator and the backer.
They don’t enforce this themsleves but you can still take legal actions against obvious scam projects.
While it's true supporting someone on patreon grants no guarantees for a product to be delivered, if the tier advertises something will be delivered and then it ends up not, that might be considered breach of contract. But that would be a civil case, so you'd have to sue the person and prove it to actually be the case. IANAL so I don't know if such a case has any real chance of succeeding, or if it would be worth the cost.
Again, IANAL, but I don't think that would prevent a lawsuit. Sure, proving the delivered game doesn't meet the specifications of what was promised is probably a lot harder than just proving nothing was delivered, but if a dev releases something either unplayable or missing major gameplay features that were promised, that doesn't prevent a breach of contract claim.
It still depends on what was promised and what was delivered. And, of course, whether any case would be financially viable.
While this is all true, business ventures failing for legitimate reasons is not the same as gathering huge amounts of cash from people and then just deciding not to bother doing anything as you already got the bag.
Is that question rhetorical?
If not its for the same reason people pre order from actual triple A game studios who often also turn out unfinished buggy slop that needs years worth of patches to make viable.
Or hell actuall investors in venture capitalist companies.
Because they like whats promised and if it turns out to be crap thats still a risk people take.
For most of these, losing 2, 5 or 10 bucks a month sucks if you get nothing out of it after years but no one is losing shirts over it.
If many people didn't think gambling without guarantees is worth it then casinos or betting shops would never have worked as a business
Everyone wants to believe that includes me that that we want and will get a finished product, sadly like you said this isn't an investment that we can get any guarantee since the creator isn't legally bound to do it.
He's like that Patreon game Developer that made it big in year 1, develops the first halve of the game in 1/2 years
What's crazy is the first five books took the amount of time it has been to write "the last one" (now maybe last two). Took him a good 15 years to get the bag after writing 80% of it and can't be assed to just get it over the finish line.
Did you see his house or car ? You really think he is in it only for money ? We will have to accept he will not write rest of the books, but it's not because of money.
As someone who began working with an indie dev, the amount of money presumed to be needed and to be enough is always less than imagined which is why this keeps happening. A team of 40 working on a game the size of say dark souls 1 for example would cost well over what most would assume. A Kickstart for one got 200k, that isn't remotely enough to begin. That's 5000/employee. If you're being cheap that's 2500/employee for 2 months. And games take YEARS to develop. At 2500/month for 40 employees and let's say 2 years, you'd need over 2mil. And this is lowballing your employees.
I don't think this is the same kind of situation.
G R R Martin was pretty comfortable long before the show. The problem is that he wrote 1 really good book. Book 1 and the twist of that book (Neds death) was so popular that he over used killing off main characters.
Every time he wrote himself into a corner rather than revise or revisit he just flipped the board and killed off the character. Making you audience aware and always on edge because plot armour straight up isn't a thing in your books is great writing, Martin flipped too far the other way and fucked himself over in doing so. When he needed to tie to story together and end it and all the pieces he needed were dead.
If like Neds death he had paced himself and made sure the death served a purpose to the story then he'd have been able to finish the books. But he can't work out a way to write an ending that isn't shit, and he would rather leave the story unfinished than release something garbage like the TV series ending.
That entirely depends on the passion the creator has for a given project. While skilled, he seeks to have treated the books as a job rather than overarching passion, so his progress fell off.
If you follow me on YouTube, you can follow my game dev process for free. Will be a a retro style horror action dungeon crawler. Seriously I’m very excited about it.
you described darkcookie, the creator of summertime saga mf was making $100k per month from donations and subscriptions at the peak but still doesn't update the game timely, months go by before a good update comes around
I would loose interest to work if I had the money to not work. I bet alot think the same way. His motivation stopped when he no longer has to worry about his financials. Difference is he got money based on promises.
GRRM doesn't exactly strike me as a person who writes just to pay the bills. He is (was) clearly passionate about the series and the story, and it paying the bills was more of a happy accident.
I think it's more about expectations and analysis paralysis. The story has already ballooned in scope to cover continents and centuries which makes it difficult to focus on any one thing.
We also all know how the show panned out. With reception that rancid, I can't imagine he's super enthused to take a whack at it himself, especially since the twists he likes so much are now out in the open.
People usually don't quit their daily jobs just because they lose interest. They stay in those jobs because it's a source of income.
I would say he was on a regular job, he could have found a better offer, but a game project with investors is different. Dude totally ran with the money.
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u/Dull-Yak3671 6h ago edited 6h ago
He's got the bag too early. He's like that Patreon game Developer that made it big in year 1, develops the first halve of the game in 1/2 years and then proceeds to milk the remaining 50% for years because they no longer have the financial incentive or the moral compass to deliver on what they promised (if it doesn't get stuck on development hell lol). I was endorsing a guy like that on Patreon (Redamz), his game got really big real quick and he got a ton of Patrons paying 10 bucks per month. After a couple years of development, Redamz had some problems with Patreon's TOS and removed the game from that platform entirely, and, unsurprisingly, the game has been untouched since then. Also, the guy straight up decided to shelve the project unilaterally and lied about making other games related to that game. It's been like 4 years since he announced those other games and there's nothing to show for it (outside of roadmap that looks like it was made on Paint by a 12 year old), so the original game won't ever be finished neither will the other games he promised. He actually had a Tier that was, IIRC, $20, that granted you access to some cool stuff that you'd only receive once the game was finished. Needless to say he never returned a cent of that, so you just wasted money for an hypothetical that you're never going to receive. If you go to his Discord and ask for updates or an explanation on the og game getting shelved, Redamz himself and his friends will just cuss you out. This guy is essentially YandereDev's pupil, I don't know which one is scummier. If you want to know a person's real nature give them a lot of money, see how they act.