KickStarter Order of the Thorne - new game from Infamous Quests

[Blaine]

Like Roxor, I feel too badly to post a frank assessment of Order of the Thorne, because Blackthorne is such a nice guy and also because I think they tried earnestly and enthusiastically.

So, all I'll say is exactly that: They tried, earnestly and enthusiastically.

You never know, you might like it.

 

[Blackthorne]

It's okay, man - not everyone likes everything; thanks for not being a douche about it, and finding positives in something you didn't enjoy. That's cool as hell.


Bt

 

[Fronzel Neekburm]

Holy hell, this came out less than 4 months ago and it's already 70% off on Humble!

 

[Blackthorne]

Yeah, it's a steal for a limited time in their Spring Sale. Honestly, I looked at the details of the sale very quickly and didn't realize the discount was THAT big. Oh well, gamers gain, I suppose.


Bt

 

[mindx2]

Not good news at all......

#85
Update for Quest For Infamy
Posted by Steven "Blackthorne" Alexander (Creator)
Hey Folks,

I know it's been a long time between updates; I want to apologize for that, but I didn't want to post something when I had nothing to report.


SHIPPING UPDATES
Due to some professional and person setbacks/issues, there's been delays on my end with some of the shipping. I'd sent out some packages earlier in the year, and a few more in sporadic doses in between, but I still have a vast majority of packages to send out. I'm very sorry about the delay. I don't want to give long explanations, but I do want to apologize and let you know I have been working on packing them up, and now - this week - I intend to send out even more. Everyone should be getting their packages between now and the end of Summer (Mid-September).

This is just a small taste of packages waiting to go out.
For several of you with larger packages and multiple items, I will contact you personally when they go out, so you can know to look for them.

Again, I have to apologize - this has been a source of great anxiety and stress to me, and I feel awful about the delays. You all have been amazing and supportive, and I can not thank you enough for that.

Which leads me into...

The Future of Infamous Quests
We've had a great run as adventure game designers; from our ambitious start as Infamous Adventures and our remakes of King's Quest III in 2006 and Space Quest 2 in 2011, to our latest games - it has been one of the greatest adventures of my life. I've met and made friends all around the globe; I've traveled, told my stories, worked with amazingly talented people and done things I only dreamed about as a kid. I never thought in my life I'd be able to accomplish so much, and yet - we did.

In 2012, we banded together - the creators and the backers - to fund our project on Kickstarter, and it was a magical time, not only for us, but for other creators and fans. It was, simply put, a magical time. Something I don't think will ever be repeated in the history of game creation and gaming culture. I have to thank you all for being a part of that and including us in it.

After the completion and releases of our upcoming games, Order of the Thorne: Fortress of Fire and Quest for Infamy: Roehm to Ruin, we will most likely not be producing any more games. Adventure games, and certainly the kinds of games we produce, are a niche market. Niche is probably a fancy and nice way to put it... we're a tiny segment of a huge and amazingly competitive market. We've been lucky enough to create the kind of games we always wanted to make and play, but - unfortunately - it hasn't been financially viable for us to do so. We just haven't been able to sell enough copies to cover our production costs, and I can't pay the talented people who make these games come to life in good wishes and moral victories. They deserve more. Like many commercial ventures, I've incurred a decent amount of personal debt on this - I rolled the dice, and sadly, it didn't quite pan out. It's not viable for us to continue on, from a financial standpoint. So, we will complete our last two games here, and continue on - many of the people who have worked on these games are already involved in other careers, jobs and projects, and are committed to finishing our games solely because of our love for the games, the genre and you, the fans. You backers have been the best - I wish there was a whole lot more like you out there. Thank you so much for everything over the past four years - you were, and are, the heart and soul of everything we've ever done.

Being a designer has been amazing, and you all have afforded me and my friends to collaborate to tell you our stories. Thank you for letting Mr. Roehm come to life, and for letting him pursue a Quest for Infamy. There was a time when QFI was just a pipe dream of some post-college kids - and you made it a reality. I wish you all the best in the future, and (again) thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

We hope you'll enjoy our upcoming games - even though they are most likely the last, I'm very excited about what they'll offer you, as adventure game fans.

All my best,

Bt

(ALSO, if you need to update any shipping addresses and have not contacted me in the last several months, this is your last chance!)

Sorry to hear this news Blackthorne. I have thoroughly enjoyed your games and would have loved to continue adventuring with you. All the best of luck and blessings my friend.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Can't win 'em all, I guess. Anyhow, best of luck with further ventures Blackthorne.

 

[taxalot]

How do you feel about Pokemon Go, Blackthorne ?

 

[Irenaeus]

Well, that sucks. I was a big fan.

 

[Tramboi]

I second this, it's very sad.
Me earning relatively big bucks in the video gaming industry by not making the things I love to play, I respect you very much, BT.

 

[Blackthorne]

You know, I've not played Pokemon Go. I seriously wish I invented it, so I could swim in its sweet, sweet Pokemon Cash and then make the games I want to at my leisure!

We had a good run; we've got our last two games to finish up here, hopefully they'll be good. It's hard out there, we make a very niche product and realistically, we just couldn't keep going, doing what we're doing. We haven't even recouped production costs. (Sidebar, I have no idea how other projects that are, say, six figures in the hole are going to either....)

In the end, I made the kind of games I wanted to make, and the kind of games I wanted to see out there. That was pretty awesome - I like what we've got going for Fortress of Fire, and Roehm to Ruin is a pretty funny little game. Hopefully, we'll go out on a high note with those ones. Thanks for all the support around here, you guys are fuckin' awesome.


Bt

 

[Darth Roxor]

I liked neither QFI nor Order of the Thorne, but this still makes me sad because Blackthorne is an all around cool guy (to not only not get butthurt about cheap scorn but also fire back in kind as a gaem developer makes for a special kind of bro in my book). Good luck with all future endeavours.

 

[Blackthorne]

I didn't mean to click on fabulous, but I'm going to let it stand. My only regret is that I didn't get to create enough games to maybe land on one you didn't totally loathe, Roxor. I figured if I kept throwin' darts at the target, one might stick kind of near and edge, somewhere.


Bt

 

[JarlFrank]

Order of the Thorne was pretty meh, admittedly, but I enjoyed Quest for Infamy, so it's sad to see you give up. Considering the financial aspects, though, it's completely understandable.

Good luck on whatever other thing you're doing when this is done!

 

[MRY]

This is really sad news.

It seems to me improbable that ultra old school adventure game development is financially self sustaining. WEG doesn't sustain itself through development, but by publishing -- its best selling titles are all developed by third parties (Gemini Rue, Primordia, Resonance, Technobabylon). The in-house titles are profitable, of course (since there are essentially no expenses associated with them), but not sustainable. Dave is probably the best businessman in this niche, a Fargo-level salesman and a master of the indie press network, and if publishing is how he pays his bills, that's probably the only way to do it.

It would be particularly tragic if the brief flourishing of the commercial AGS market caused a boom-bust that wiped out AGS's robust non-commercial roots. You guys were making great games before there was a penny to be had; it's hard to imagine anyone else picking up that torch now.

My own sense is that this kind of game development really only works as an amateur avocation -- people stupid enough (myself included) to treat their time as having no value, such that they can pour an unreasonable amount of effort into projects without any expectation of back-end rewards. The problem is, there's probably a pretty narrow age range where you'll find people willing and able to do that (18 to 35 or so?), and we may be running out of people from that age bracket who have real appreciation for classic adventure games. Hence, decline.

I hope you find your way back to making games, but even if you don't, you've left behind a remarkable legacy.

 

[udm]

Was shocked to read this when I checked my Kickstarter updates. The forces of decline have won once again. Fuck this gay earth. I hope you're able to ship out the remaining packages without taking too big a hit financially. Best of luck man.

PS have you thought of shifting efforts to tabletop gaming? There's a good demand for adventures for indie games.

 

[MRY]

Was thinking about this some more, and getting glummer and glummer. Wrote Steve an email. In trying to think what to say, it struck me just how random or unaccountably complex success/failure can be. From 1993 to 2014, there were no proper QFG games. In June 2014, QFI was released for $20, and it should have scratched an itch that gamers had felt for 20 years. Except that in March 2014, Heroine's Quest was released for free. I have to imagine that if HQ had been delayed for a year, QFI would've been a huge success. But timing was such that, QFI was instead constantly compared to HQ "which is free, by the way."

For example, here's the start of the Adventure Gamers review (after an intro paragraph about QFG):

Lately, however, we’ve been treated to a sudden, unexpected revival of the QFG formula. First to the punch was the outstanding freeware adventure Heroine’s Quest, and now comes the first commercial offering, Quest for Infamy.

Or Steam reviews:

Heroine Quest does everything this game does, better, for free. In terms of quality, it feels as though this is the free game while Heroine's Quest is what people should be paying for.

Maybe grab it if you're a big Quest for Glory fan and if it's on sale. Otherwise, if you're looking for a great Quest for Glory 'clone' for FREE - go download 'Heroines Quest' on Steam ... NOW.

I don't think there's any point debating the merits of QFI (personally, I'm in awe of the project's scope and ambition, the only truly classic-size P&C adventure game that I can think of in recent years). It's more that I'm just struck with how completely unpredictable things like HQ's arriving on the scene can affect one of the major architects of the old-school adventure game restoration effort.

 

[Fizzii]

Was thinking about this some more, and getting glummer and glummer. Wrote Steve an email. In trying to think what to say, it struck me just how random or unaccountably complex success/failure can be. From 1993 to 2014, there were no proper QFG games. In June 2014, QFI was released for $20, and it should have scratched an itch that gamers had felt for 20 years. Except that in March 2014, Heroine's Quest was released for free. I have to imagine that if HQ had been delayed for a year, QFI would've been a huge success. But timing was such that, QFI was instead constantly compared to HQ "which is free, by the way."

Timing wise, it wasn't ideal for QFI to be released after HQ, but it is impossible to speculate how much more successful QFI would have been if HQ was taken out of the equation. In a way, because I did a lot of work on both projects, I do feel a little guilty about QFI not doing as well as we would have liked because of HQ's release. But at the same time, I do feel like I need to be a bit defensive about HQ because that was also a passion project for me. I would argue that HQ's release wasn't unpredictable, as Crystal Shard has released original adventure games before (notably ATOTK, which took 2.5 years to make). Heroine's Quest was in development from 2010 and released on 25 Dec 2013 (not March 2014), so the time span for development was only marginally longer than what it took for ATOTK.

Could HQ have been delayed for another year? Maybe, but on the flipside, it may have come out even earlier if I joined the project earlier. We could also speculate that it would have been possible for QFI to have been released earlier had resourcing for programming not been a problem early on. That's the way things pan out with indie projects sometimes, especially passion projects like QFI, where people working on it at working for peanuts - sometimes resourcing doesn't really work out the way one envisages; sometimes you have really good, motivated team members contributing and making great progress; sometimes people become unavailable due to real life. It's all a bit of a wild card in indie game development, particularly if you're dependent on others for help, as one can't afford to pay team members a steady wage.

Regarding game reception, it certainly didn't help that a number of people did compare the two games as if one should only bother with one of them, but it is impossible to dictate what reviewers should or should not write. I can't really say that HQ would've necessarily put off people from buying QFI though, since adventure game fans will generally be happy to pay for commercial products anyway.

Heroine's Quest aside, I do think that the way QFI was published wasn't ideal - the price point, for one, being higher than other similar retro commercial adventure games. Unfortunately, after that, QFI was then bundled up with other games for very cheap, when I am sure there would have been people happy to pay for sales at 25%, 50% or 75% off first.

Anyway, I guess my point is that there are several factors that likely make it unsustainable for IQ to keep going. If the indie market wasn't getting so competitive nowadays (in terms of getting exposure), and there was similar interest in OOTT as there was with QFI, I'm sure it would be a bit easier to keep creating projects of medium - full length scope (as long as costs were kept under very tight control). Unfortunately, with the current market, it's harder to carve out and maintain that fan base nowadays because there are so many other games being released.

 

[Infinitron]

Heroine's Quest aside, I do think that the way QFI was published wasn't ideal - the price point, for one, being higher than other similar retro commercial adventure games. Unfortunately, after that, QFI was then bundled up with other games for very cheap, when I am sure there would have been people happy to pay for sales at 25%, 50% or 75% off first.

Cripes. Some of these indie publishers are a menace. I'm reminded of something I read the other day on Eurogamer, about publishers who promise to take you through Greenlight:

There are "publishers" who don't fulfil any of the roles of actual publishers but take a cut of a developer's sales money all the same. They promise to help get a game through Greenlight but can barely muster more than a tweet about it.

They operate in a way that's a far cry from the more established publishers (or labels as some like to now be known) like Team17, Devolver, Adult Swim and so on, who work closely with developers. Whilst some of these non-publishers are more notorious amongst developers and certain quarters of the press than others, the playbook is pretty similar across the board. Sign a game, if they do anything at all it's to spam a huge contact list with vagaries about the game, sit back as nothing much happens. I've heard this method described as "defying math" by one so-called publisher, as it costs absolutely nothing, aside from a few minutes of emailing, and so any sales/votes made on the back of it are considered a success.

If, through a quirk of fate, a title happens to make it onto the store, the not-publishers price low and then regularly drop the prices further. Through constant deep discounts, the sales numbers go up, but between Valve's cut and a publisher cut, there's little money to be seen at the end of it all. In effect developers are paying people to undervalue their work and to sell their work for next to nothing all in exchange for some hope that they can leave Greenlight soon.

There are giveaway groups who ask for keys once the game has launched in exchange for publicity to help a title pass Greenlight. They'll cheekily ask for cash for publicising a game, too. They have no reach, no contacts, they do nothing even the smallest developer couldn't do themselves for free.

There are terrible contracts, the likes I haven't seen in games since the heady days of dodgy retail publishers.

Around a quarter of games that passed Greenlight have been bundled before making it onto the store. A depressing side effect of no-one paying attention is that slight gestures can move the needle. A few hundred quid earned in exchange for thousands of promised Steam keys can be enough to trigger a pass through the system. It can be tough to make up the cash shortfall once a game's finally launched on the store.

(somewhat ironic because my impression was that QFI took a publisher because they wanted to avoid using Greenlight entirely)

 

[Irenaeus]

Who wants to play as some woman instead of a righteous dude?

QFI >>>>> HQ

 

[MRY]

Fizzii Oh, I wasn't saying HQ did anything wrong or anything of the sort -- just that it's a bad sort of coincidence from the standpoint of QFI.

 

[Blackthorne]

Cripes. Some of these indie publishers are a menace. I'm reminded of something I read the other day on Eurogamer, about publishers who promise to take you through Greenlight:
(somewhat ironic because my impression was that QFI took a publisher because they wanted to avoid using Greenlight entirely)

Yeah, at the time - we were offered the chance to get on Steam without Greenlight by a friend of ours at Phoenix Online; I had already secured deals with GoG and Humble on my own - at the time, everyone was screaming "STEAM STEAM STEAM!" and I figured rather than spend potential months slagging it out in Greenlight, we'd go on through them. What was a simple deal got complicated when others got involved, and convinced me that the price point should be $19.99 rather than my preferred $14.99. Who knows, this is all speculation anyway - we had a good time with them promoting at GDC in San Francisco, and that was cool - but I felt QFI went to shitty bundles like Groupees a bit too early. So when OotT came around, I had GoG working with us already, and Humble, and we did Greenlight - got approved in less than a month, too.

In the end, we sell better on GoG. Funny, eh? I get bundle groups asking me for OotT all the time, but it hasn't even been out a year - I'm not going to bundle it to get like .07 cents a copy just yet. Even if we aren't making the stellar indie cash, I'm not selling for pennies yet. Maybe that's hubris, I don't care...

I like my friends in dev. over at Phoenix, but publishing is another deal and sometimes it's better NOT to be friends!!

In any case, I mean - what chance does a small group making retro adventure games stand? We get shit coverage from game media, we have dick for a promotional budget, and when I ask people for $10 for our games, they act like I've sodomized their wallet. This is the world we live in - we had a good run, and I met some awesome people, regardless, who liked the kind of games I liked, and played the shit out of the games I made. I almost died a crazy fucking death years ago, anyway, so everything since the kidney transplant is gravy, I suppose.


Bt

 

[JarlFrank]

Sounds like the best way to publish an adventure game like this is to either go full indie and self-publish through greenlight and hope to get on GoG, or go with the one publisher in the genre that know their shit: Wadjet Eye.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

This sucks.

I will pour one out for Infamous Games tonight.

 

[Fizzii]

Fizzii Oh, I wasn't saying HQ did anything wrong or anything of the sort -- just that it's a bad sort of coincidence from the standpoint of QFI.

I wasn't taking your comment quite that way (because no one actually did anything wrong by making games!), more that I was trying to make the point that it wouldn't have just been HQ that factored on QFI's profitability. As to how much can be attributed to bad timing, it's hard to say, because we don't really know how many adventure game fans would have not purchased QFI altogether just because HQ happened to be available. I know that if I were a big adventure gamer (which I'm not, because I spend my time making games instead of playing them), I would have purchased QFI at some point regardless - because it's a different game, and adventure games are only replayable to a certain extent.

That said, QFI's lack of profitability probably isn't the driving factor in IQ not creating more games - OOTT: KOS hasn't sold as well as it needed to, and it really struggled to get decent exposure (I note that it is likely that HQ wouldn't have been noticed by as much media if it were released on Steam this year - reason being that previously, new games were listed on the front page; nowadays, new games are relegated to some obscure location and only feature if the developer/publisher drives the exposure upfront to get people on Steam talking / buying the game as soon as it is released). The market for indie game developers is certainly getting more challenging, and it really means one's game has to stand out amongst all the others in some way.

In terms of making games profitable, because exposure is not so easy to get (especially when going it alone), indies really need to go low on costs. Which means smaller teams, developers working long hours with no expectation for salary-level earnings at the end of it. Or else making games as a hobby. Only when one has an established, dedicated and large enough fanbase may it be possible to earn decent money and make a real living out of indie games. And usually that takes many years (and churning out the games in the meantime to maintain interest), which isn't sustainable for most people.

I do wish that IQ was able to become self-sustaining (I mean, I worked on every one of their projects from even when they were IA as well), so am a little sad that things will likely come to a halt after the next two games. Regardless, I think Bt and the rest of the team should be very proud of what they've done over the years - two remakes, two original games, and two more original games in the pipeline in the span of about 10 - 12 years is definitely no mean feat, especially when considering these projects weren't worked on full time.

Sounds like the best way to publish an adventure game like this is to either go full indie and self-publish through greenlight and hope to get on GoG, or go with the one publisher in the genre that know their shit: Wadjet Eye.

Agree; indie game developers need to be careful with who they are dealing with if they decide to get someone else to publish their game - publishers' jobs really should be to drive publicity and sales (not just units moved), but unfortunately, like with a lot of other things, there are a lot of dodgy operators around. Crystal Shard was approached by a publisher earlier this year for one of our smaller adventure games, but they haven't kept their end of the bargain so we won't be going with them and will eventually go to Greenlight ourselves (once Radiant finds some time to prioritise our unreleased adventure games over our current project).

 

[Archibald]

I think its really sad that people are genuinely discussing if HQ had an impact of QFI not selling well. What you are basically saying is that this niche is so small that it can't support two games (one of them is FREE game) released at around same time. If we are to assume that then this genre basically has no commercial future.