Takedown: Red Sabre, aka "Hardcore Tactical Shooter"

[Keshik]

So they are giving out steam codes apparently - explains why I have another 4 copies (yes I bought 4 for me and friends). Off chance anyone would be interested in trying this out ?

 

[Infinitron]

So they are giving out steam codes apparently - explains why I have another 4 copies (yes I bought 4 for me and friends). Off chance anyone would be interested in trying this out ?

Take it to the gift thread?

 

[Metro]

Keshik What Infinitron means is: he'll take a copy and so will I.

 

[Infinitron]

What Infinitron means is: he'll take a copy and so will I.

No, I don't really want it

 

[MaskedMan]

I'm interested in trying it but I'm not big on mp games so it might be kinda wasted on me depending on how the sp possibilities are. I can always wait for a steam sale and throw my own money out the window.

 

[Metro]

Man, now I don't want it, either. Bruticis will take it -- Steam count and all~

 

[MetalCraze]

I will take for steamcount

 

[Bitcher1]

I'm merely a lurker but I'd actually play it if just out of morbid curiosity as to how broken it is.

 

[Multidirectional]

I would try it out for free.

 

[Keshik]

All copies already taken.

 

[Outlander]

 

[tuluse]

I tried to play with a friend who bought the game. We were totally unable to join each others' games. Inviting someone through steam does literally nothing. There is a post from the devs on steam that says you should alt-tab from the game and join using the steam server browser, while hilarious, did not work for us. C'est la vie.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...roubled_development_of_TAKEDOWN_Red_Sabre.php

Video postmortem details the troubled development of TAKEDOWN: Red Sabre



"In July an investor went dark. It took us a while to figure out that he decided to go to Africa and import black rhinos. Or changed his mind, who knows - that's what happens when you deal with billionaires."
- Christian Allen, industry veteran and founder of Serellan, provides a video postmortem for Kickstarter-funded TAKEDOWN: Red Sabre.

Allen was previously a lead designer and creative director at Ubisoft, playing a big part in the development of the Ghost Recon series. In 2012 he founded Serellan, and ran a successful Kickstarter for his tactical shooter TAKEDOWN.

TAKEDOWN was one of the first big video game successes on Kickstarter, netting more than $200,000 during the wake of the Double Fine Kickstarter.

However, when the game launched in early 2014, it was met with numerous negative reviews from both the press and players.

Now Allen has spoken about the behind-the-scenes problems with TAKEDOWN's development, from the issues with getting investors onboard, to problems with launching on multiple platforms.

For any developers hoping to build the next big online shooter, it's well worth listening to the sorts of problems that Allen and his team faced throughout development.

http://www.serellan.com/forums/index.php?/topic/3733-takedown-red-sabre-a-video-post-mortem/

Here's a summary for those who don't have time to watch it:

In July 2012 the original angel investor went dark. Had to find new funding. In Fall 2012 signed a deal. In January 2013 started full development production, aimed for September 2013 release, XBLA concurrent release was part of the deal.

Challenges:
- Hiring solid engineers took longer than anticipated. (Due to being small team they had to be careful in hiring only top people.)
- Were stuck with old version of Unreal engine and could not use newer Steam integration support, or else would have had to redo lots of audio content.
- Originally had American and Indian QA teams, but in July 2013 the American team was dropped due to a dispute. Challenges with working the Indian team due to language, time difference, and the team was not experienced in testing multiplayer PC+Xbox games.
- Scope of the game. In Spring it was clear that AI was sucking up a lot of time. And budget determines how much time can be used. In hindsight they should have cut away the singleplayer squad-based experience; it would have been better to have no experience than a sub-par experience.
- The small game, small team message got lost. People expected Battlefield. For example had a ton more animations, but had an engineering bottleneck in getting them to the game.
- Made the mistake of handing a community project like a retail product launch. Christian was occupied by too many things (e.g. different PR for the community and the press), too little time for development.
- Added stress due to relatives dying and team members getting in accidents. With a 10 person team, losing 1 for a month is huge deal.
- Mistake: Should have switched to early access model. QA team failed to find bugs and they were released to players, so had to focus on fixing bugs instead of adding features and working on DLC and Xbox. In early access mode the tone and tempo would have been totally different.
- Mistake: Did not recognize Steam as its own community. Expected people to come to forums but they didn't, so people did not get proper answers and became unhappy.
- Were inexperienced with Xbox development and Microsoft did not have proper support for indy developers back then.
- Had challenges in making the game run outside Steam. In hindsight should have gone full Steam and worried about the DRM free version later, and offered to return money to those who demanded a DRM free version.
- Post launch, couldn't get press to have a second look at the game.
- In Spring, funding was running low. Started talking with another publisher, but they backed out. In April had to put the company on hold.

Current situation: They have a prototype of a new game, on Unreal 3. Next steps are deciding what to they want to do in future. There are new platforms. Early access and indy development has had massive changes since Spring 2012. Christian will be at the forums.

 

[Luka-boy]

Too bad it seems they won't try to use Kickstarter again to fund that new game they're making. I was ready to bring out the popcorn.

 

[tuluse]

Oh man the comments, and the devs trying to defend themselves.

It's got to be rough on the psyche to be a shovelware developer, when you can't hide behind anonymity.

 

[Explorerbc]

I was pretty pissed with them and the lack of communication when I bought this crap and realized it was unsalvageable. The worst part was reading their forums and watching the 5 fanboys that still played this, claiming everything is ok and the game is great.

After watching this though, I feel kinda bad for them.

 

[Angthoron]

Well, what a surprise, spreading thin between console and PC, ignoring the PC market specifics and watering down the goals tends to backfire.

This is one of those things that kinda makes me worried about Pathologic - their multiplatform goals may lead up to something similar.