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Jeff Vogel: 22 games in 22 years, mostly from his basement

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Why is he labeling the codex with piracy?
Easiest way to dismiss any criticism? It sounds especially dumb when you recall that he made a Humble Bundle with 15 of his games for like $5...

Yeah its like using "Racist" on people that dont share your views about immigrants.

Well...

Meh, i'll just pirate his remakes like usual.

LOL
 

Luzur

Good Sir
Joined
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Why is he labeling the codex with piracy?
Easiest way to dismiss any criticism? It sounds especially dumb when you recall that he made a Humble Bundle with 15 of his games for like $5...

Yeah its like using "Racist" on people that dont share your views about immigrants.

Well...

Meh, i'll just pirate his remakes like usual.

LOL

Well....

Im just a swell guy like that.

LOL

I already bought the two Avadon games, Geneforge and the 3 original Avernum games fair and square, im not gonna pay for remakes of games i already own.
 

A user named cat

Guest
Vogel is basically Michael Jackson reincarnated. Sure he changed colors and probably touches children, but he put out some good hits in his day.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I pirated all his games, only ones truly worth the money are Geneforge series anyway, rest is solid but not great and Avadon is crap and he made way too many remakes of Avernum, I mean seriously how often do you have to remake the same game.

Also his art assets are still utter poo.
 

Xorazm

Cipher
Joined
Jan 22, 2015
Messages
106
I pirated all his games, only ones truly worth the money are Geneforge series anyway, rest is solid but not great and Avadon is crap and he made way too many remakes of Avernum, I mean seriously how often do you have to remake the same game.

Also his art assets are still utter poo.

How is a game that takes 30+ hours to complete worth your time but not worth your money
 

Night Goat

The Immovable Autism
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Codex 2013 Codex 2014
I pirated all his games, only ones truly worth the money are Geneforge series anyway, rest is solid but not great and Avadon is crap and he made way too many remakes of Avernum, I mean seriously how often do you have to remake the same game.

Also his art assets are still utter poo.

How is a game that takes 30+ hours to complete worth your time but not worth your money
I really wanted to like Avernum 2: Crystal Souls. It gets off to a great start, but you end up slogging your way through trash encounter after trash encounter, robotically repeating your best AoE spell again and again until you've finally whittled down the enemies' health. Then you go into the next room and have to do it all over again.

It doesn't matter how many hours of playtime a game has. What matters is how many of those hours are fun.
 

Keldryn

Arcane
Joined
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Messages
1,053
Location
Vancouver, Canada
The guy makes a living and supports his family creating the kinds of games that he wants to.

Very, very few people can make the same claim. I'm envious.
 

Kem0sabe

Arcane
Joined
Mar 7, 2011
Messages
13,076
Location
Azores Islands
The guy makes a living and supports his family creating the kinds of games that he wants to.

Very, very few people can make the same claim. I'm envious.
If that was all that he did, people wouldn't care, but often he goes out of his way to shit on the medium, and genre that allows him that financial independence.
 

Cleveland Mark Blakemore

Golden Era Games
Übermensch Developer
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LAND OF THE FREE & HOME OF THE BRAVE
Vogel is basically Michael Jackson reincarnated. Sure he changed colors and probably touches children, but he put out some good hits in his day.

image.png
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I pirated all his games, only ones truly worth the money are Geneforge series anyway, rest is solid but not great and Avadon is crap and he made way too many remakes of Avernum, I mean seriously how often do you have to remake the same game.

Also his art assets are still utter poo.

How is a game that takes 30+ hours to complete worth your time but not worth your money
I really wanted to like Avernum 2: Crystal Souls. It gets off to a great start, but you end up slogging your way through trash encounter after trash encounter, robotically repeating your best AoE spell again and again until you've finally whittled down the enemies' health. Then you go into the next room and have to do it all over again.

It doesn't matter how many hours of playtime a game has. What matters is how many of those hours are fun.

Exactly. Spiderweb games are solid, but not that great. Geneforge series has some great titles in it, especially Geneforge 1 and Geneforge 5.
But I'm a filthy pirate who doesn't pay money for 99% of his games, unless I really feel the makers deserve my cash. And... eh. Most of Vogel's games just appear to be lazily designed, and remaking the same game 3 times is also quite the remake-overkill.

And while the Avernums were mostly solid, they aren't that great. Most encounters are trash. The stories aren't great. Not many C&C to speak of. Exploration is the only thing that's actually good.

Geneforge series is the only one that's actually good, and it's got the additional bonus of a fresh setting and unique gameplay ideas. And even that series isn't consistently great, some entries also have too much mediocrity in their design.

Also, it would help if Vogel increased his production values ever so slightly and get some better-looking graphics. And proper paperdolls. And in-game music.
But no, he's been recycling the same shitty assets for 10 games. Well, at least he's replaced some of the shittier art with better stuff in his last few games. But they still look bad. Compare that to other indies like Eschalon, or even some free roguelikes that manage to look better than this shit.

Most of his games really give off the impression of being made by a lazy designer.
 

rezaf

Cipher
Joined
Jan 26, 2015
Messages
650
Most of his games really give off the impression of being made by a lazy designer.

I recognize your point, but I think lazy isn't really the term one should use for a person who single handedly churns out full featured RPGs. If he were lazy, he'd not make 'em games at all.

Since he DOES make the games, and since he's but a single guy, he's got to be efficient with his time if he ever wants to actually ship the games. So he reuses stuff whenever possible. Since he is still in business after 22 years of doing this, and since he managed to create a game each year on average, things seem to be working out for him this way, I guess.

Now, I'm not a Vogel apologist by any stretch of imagination - in fact I'd say none of his newer games are REALLY worth buying. Maybe looking at one Geneforge game is in order (he usually has demos which allow players to get a good glimpse), and you can buy it if you really like it ... beyond that I felt all Geneforge games felt kinda similar.
His only series I considered to be pretty great were the Exile games in all their top-down 2D glory.

Still, calling hiim a lazy designer makes my no-fair sense tingle a bit.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Most of his games really give off the impression of being made by a lazy designer.

I recognize your point, but I think lazy isn't really the term one should use for a person who single handedly churns out full featured RPGs. If he were lazy, he'd not make 'em games at all.

Since he DOES make the games, and since he's but a single guy, he's got to be efficient with his time if he ever wants to actually ship the games. So he reuses stuff whenever possible. Since he is still in business after 22 years of doing this, and since he managed to create a game each year on average, things seem to be working out for him this way, I guess.

Now, I'm not a Vogel apologist by any stretch of imagination - in fact I'd say none of his newer games are REALLY worth buying. Maybe looking at one Geneforge game is in order (he usually has demos which allow players to get a good glimpse), and you can buy it if you really like it ... beyond that I felt all Geneforge games felt kinda similar.
His only series I considered to be pretty great were the Exile games in all their top-down 2D glory.

Still, calling hiim a lazy designer makes my no-fair sense tingle a bit.

Sure, he's only one person and if I were to make RPGs as a single dude or a tiny indie studio, I'd reuse the fuck out of my assets, too. But with a steady stream of income and comparatively low production cost due to asset reuse, I could also buy new ones to bring more variety to the table. Oh, and I'd try to get some assets that actually are pleasing to look at. Again, compare Vogel's games with, say, the Eschalon series. They also reuse assets, but at least they look nice. And have music, which Vogel's games lack. They actually put some effort into presentation. Or look at Underrail, looks much nicer too. Or Serpent in the Staglands. Many one-man or two-man or husband-and-wife-team projects out there that manage to look thrice as good as all Spiderweb games combined.

And yeah, he does create one game each year in average. But is that a good thing? Isn't that what we all hate about EA, releasing copypasta sequels every year? You said it, even the Geneforge series games, which is his most interesting, feel kinda similar to each other. While there's no problem with games sharing the same engine and many of the assets, they shouldn't feel too similar. There should be something fresh - maybe in the story, in the mechanics, in the encounter design, in the setting. But nah, he prefers to make "yet another game like the previous one I made" without really offering anything worthwile. That would be okay if, say, the encounters were good - I'd take countless KotC or ToEE clones with good encounters without complaining that it's becoming stale. But I don't really remember any memorable encounters from his games. The design is usually rather meh.

No doubt, he knows what he's doing, and he's efficient at what he's doing, but what he does can legitimately be called lazy, from a design-perspective. Or, if you want to call it by a different name, "playing it safe". Which, yes, is a sound business decision for a one-man-team relying on his fanbase that knows what to expect and wants him to deliver familiar sequels. But he could invest a bit more time, effort and money into quality, and that fanbase might grow quite a bit.
 

buzz

Arcane
Joined
Apr 1, 2012
Messages
4,234
I'm gonna pirate JarlFrank's book, and share it with other 20 people or so. I mean look at the production value of this cover
XGBRfch.jpg

Terrible.

Also, it has no english translation. That's a legitimate sign of laziness.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
Patron
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Sure, pirate it, I'm not one of those guys who complain about the evil of pirates. Pirates exist, they will always exist, and there's nothing you can do about them. Gotta live with that fact as a creator of entertainment or art or whatever.

Oh, and you could only call me lazy if I made 10 other books with roughly the same story and same low quality of cover art. Or if I re-released that same book two times with only few changes. THEN you can compare me to Vogel :M
 

buzz

Arcane
Joined
Apr 1, 2012
Messages
4,234
Don't worry, I can call you a lazy asshole simply for not playing the games and doing any sort of research or just generally spewing the same cliche bullshit without grasping the context of these games.
 

Dayyālu

Arcane
Joined
Jul 1, 2012
Messages
4,466
Location
Shaper Crypt
To be honest, Vogel was in my list of "developers to pay when I can" (Illwinter, Taleworlds, Paradox).

I always thought that GF was graphically weak because he needed to keep everything simple to permit choice and variety. For the same reason that voice-acting is bad for RPGs, right? If you only have to type, you have many more choices, a lot more freedom. As I played Avadon, I realized that... well, Vogel is somewhat lazy. He recycles art assets and even boss fights often. When he got out a Bioware-derivative game, goshdammit it was too much.

The problem is that when I could buy his games, he not only stopped making the thing I appreciated (GF and Nethergate) he did mediocre and lazy stuff (Avadon, Remakes of Remakes) that I cannot be bothered to spend money on. Plus, his childish posts about the Codex were inane, and he lost a customer forever. Me. A pity, as I bought everything else from the developers I respected.

But we all forget a simple thing: the greatest boost that Vogel ever had for sales was not quality, was exposure: Steam. Nethergate, his most original and creative game, failed hard. He has no reason to be creative or to improve: greater exposure through online sellers is everything he needs, so quality improvements for "fans" are useless compared to selling it to the online platforms.

He needs 'em borderline graphically acceptable (for screenshots). I of course, would kill for a Nethergate 2 (he could easily make it historically accurate thanks to the Net, go to a forum of no-life wannabe historians and you can get all the bibliography that a man can ask for, playtesters for free and anything else) but he's old, tired and that would require effort. Vogel now is the equivalent of newspapers comic strips: enduring on repetition, customer loyalty and piggybacking exposure.
 

buzz

Arcane
Joined
Apr 1, 2012
Messages
4,234
Yeah, people don't get that he's been making video games for about 20 years or more. He went through a lot of shit, from being mentioned in the same breath as Wizardry and Fallout, sitting in the middle of the big cRPG drought of the 00s and now being outclassed by other indie devs who can get money beforehand to improve their games and shit. Very few even mainstream devs could claim they have his track record, let alone indies who remake the same one-hit wonder platformer for years and years.
He served his time as a good RPG developer more than enough, all things considered. I don't like his new shit but I don't care, I got my money's worth with his stuff before 2011.
 

Avellion

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Jan 9, 2014
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Why is he labeling the codex with piracy?
For the same reason Scientologists call me a racist, misogynist or a criminal of some kind/Biodrones call me a racist, misogynist, homophobe or idiot.

Because mindlessly throwing baseless insults, namecalling or association with something bad is a a lot easier than properly challenging the arguments other people make.
 

Agesilaus

Antiquity Studio
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Developer
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Messages
4,456
Grab the Codex by the pussy Codex USB, 2014 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I of course, would kill for a Nethergate 2


At the very least, he could remake it again rather than focus on the endless trash mobs of avernum and avadon. I have only completed Nethergate as the Romans, and need an excuse to complete it with the Gauls.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Don't worry, I can call you a lazy asshole simply for not playing the games and doing any sort of research or just generally spewing the same cliche bullshit without grasping the context of these games.

I played the games. I liked some of the Geneforge games. I reasonably enjoyed some of the Avernum games. Overall, I find them to be of average quality and often too similar to each other. Except for Geneforge 1 and 5 I never finished one of them, either, because I grew bored towards the end. Meh.
 
Joined
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Glass Fields, Ruins of Old Iran
I pirated all his games, only ones truly worth the money are Geneforge series anyway, rest is solid but not great and Avadon is crap and he made way too many remakes of Avernum, I mean seriously how often do you have to remake the same game.

Also his art assets are still utter poo.

How is a game that takes 30+ hours to complete worth your time but not worth your money

Time is only worth something if you're planning to do something useful.

General RPG Discussion
Your forum for all your RPG needs. From old school games to new stuff, including roguelikes, indies, KickStarters and the like.
Moderators: JarlFrank
 

Gozma

Arcane
Joined
Aug 1, 2012
Messages
2,951
I want Vogel to do a "pay for new tile art" kickstarter because my eyes can't take ancient Geneforge 1 tiles zoomed out to a sixth of their original size so he can use them in up-res'd games
 

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