BioWare Mondays
Dragon Age: Inquisition
There were previews, previews, and more previews of Dragon Age: Inquisition published over the course of the last week. As well, cinematic director Jonathan Perry let slip a few interesting details about the game in an interview. Here’s one example:
One of the things that we didn’t really talk about during the gameplay demo, was the opposite of destroying things: building things. There will be abilities that allow you to [rebuild scenery]. If you find a place you can’t quite get up to, and you can find a shattered steps or a ladder, you’ll be able to reconstruct them and gain access to that area you couldn’t otherwise get to before. It’s us thinking strategically about how we want you to be able to modify the environment to your advantage.
Interest piqued!
Ambrox X
The Kickstarter campaign for Ambrov X — which project would have featured former BioWare writer Jennifer Helper’s story stylings had it reached a certain funding milestone — has been cancelled, although it would seem that work on the game is proceeding (the Kickstarter campaign having been an interesting side project rather than something utterly critical to its continued progress).
Mmmm. That’s the same thing that Brenda Brathwaite and co. did with their Kickstarter when projections deemed it would fail. Perhaps a way to save face? “Our daily quota to reach our goal is simply out of our reach.”
I have mixed feelings about such an action. Part of me feels like it’s “sour grapes”, as in, “Well, we didn’t really need it anyway and were just fucking around.” That’s part of the problem with Kickstarter’s “all or nothing” funding model. As history (and common sense) has shown, any amount of money will help the project; the more the merrier. It’s also shown that even if the original funding goal is exceeded the project may fail, or more accurately, be given up on. Oh Kickstarter. 😉
Heh…and it gets worse still. I mean, don’t get me wrong: I’m excited for Divinity: Original Sin and it would seem that their Kickstarter has resulted in some very positive, expansive changes to what looks like a very grand college try at a modern Ultima 7 successor.
That said, they did take a fully funded game to Kickstarter, to raise money to spit and polish it. And whether or not the polish was good, there’s something troubling there.
The way I look at it, a Kickstarter should be a commitment to get the thing done if the money is raised, and sometimes even if it isn’t. The idea of taking the money and not finishing the project (even if the money runs out and you have to go into “hobby mode”), is akin to lying and stealing. I don’t know what the Ambrov devs were thinking, running a Kickstarter if they actually didn’t need the money, but I suppose we mostly only learn from our mistakes.
I’m considering (and have been for a while) giving it another run myself. The game’s about 75% done other than the tedium of asset creation. The light at the end of the tunnel is now brighter than the darkness around me. But the darkness… Things are coming apart at the seams here financially. I’m looking for a job to avoid the spikes at the bottom of the pit, but it would be nice just to work on the game and take care of Geoffrey.
Would that it were so, regarding Kickstarter. Alas, in the end, Kickstarter is simply a means of investing in a project that is beyond one’s direct control, and a means for developers to secure funding that would otherwise have to come from an established publisher. And we know how readily established publishers will cancel a project, even one near or at its gold master stage. We Ultima fans know that only too well…
It’s little different when a Kickstarter project gets cancelled; the money invested therein is just as lost. The difference, I suppose, is that publishers cancel even expensive projects so often that they don’t get butthurt about it. That, and they can typically afford it, whereas the average Kickstarter backer can’t as easily afford to get nothing for his or her investment of personal funds.
Sorry to hear that your own circumstances, in that regard, are choppy, and I sympathize with the sentiment that it’d just be nice to remain at home, take care of the kid, and work on the project. I’m less sanguine about whether that would be practical as a real-life situation; I suspect the kid would eat up more time than expected (certainly, my kids do), leaving you with no great wealth of additional time to work on the project.
That said, having the financial independence to live that lifestyle would be nice. But we are not personally so fortunate, either of us.