Towns Drama

[Infinitron]

Seems like there's some drama surrounding the indie city-builder "Towns", one of the first Steam Greenlight games to be released. It has apparently been abandoned by its creator.

Have a look at the forums: http://www.townsgame.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=8

From the "I resign" post:

Today, I came to a decision on something that’s been playing at my mind for a few months now. I am resigning from my position as moderator on these forums.

It’s not a decision that came quickly or easily. I’ve invested hundreds if not thousands of hours into these forums, this game, its community and developers. I’ve met lots of great people, people I still talk to now.

The reasons for me leaving are long, and have played out over a long time. Although I signed no NDA, and thus there are no legal barriers preventing me from telling the world gossip from behind the scenes, I will not. That would go against my morals. Some of the decisions made by Xavi in the past year have been less that optimal to say the least. I do not feel that it is fair that myself, or any of the other moderators of these forums, take the heat for poor decisions, when Xavi himself no longer visits. I have always tried to be open with things, and have always tried to answer questions to the best of my ability. However now, with Xavi almost impossible to contact, I don’t feel that is possible.

I apologise for any part I may have directly or indirectly taken in any decisions made in the past year. I will probably still visit these forums, but not in any official capacity.

I wish you all the best in the future.

Tom

I learned about this from a Reddit conversation with the game's artist: http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comme...eas_new_dungeon_keeper_try_a_free_mod/cfacmut

while its every bit as true, i also think that i am justified for a detailed explanation of the situation that happend with Towns, since i have been saying it a lot these past days, i will copy paste some of it.

Me being an Ex part of Towns had absolutely nothing to do with how Towns turned out to be.

I have fought for more than a month to try and convince Xavi (Towns lead dev and the man who retained absolute control) to not release the game prematurely to steam, but ultimately, i had zero decision power whats so ever, as evidently, he went and released the game anyway while i was on my honeymoon.

You can try and blame the pre-release or the lack of updates on me, but eventually, a freelancer graphic artist that only got a fraction of the revenue can not complete a game on his own, not one that the lead dev who has complete control of the game has decided that the game would not be finished.

Furthermore, the only reason Towns got any updates at all after the steam release was because i had to struggle against his desire to quit working. this was an uphill battle against someone who has fought back and tried to drag everything down.

I did not leave Towns to work on Dwelvers, i left Towns the second Xavi Canal (The main Dev of Towns) told me that he doesn't want to hire a new programmer to replace him (since he stopped working altogether, i urged him we should hire a new programmer) and that he sees the game as finished. i couldn't accept money for an unfinished game.

If you, or anyone for that matters, wants to begin and understand what went on, i invite you to look over some more details here: http://townsgame.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=11382&start=50

Let me also add that the situation here is vastly different than in towns. Rasmus (Dwelvers Dev) is an experienced dev and his development style is vastly different than what has been presented in Towns. this can be shown very clearly in his engagement with the community, his emphasis on developing the game for players with his mind and his utterly sincere personality. (copy pasted from another reddit comment)

If you like what you see, want to support Rasmus and Dwelvers but don't want me or xavi to get any penny, you can pre-order it directly from rasmus and we wont see a penny from it. our deal was confined to if/when the game gets sold on steam. do not punish the innocents here.

Dramariffic!

 

[Haba]

There has been plenty of drama, for years now. Especially heated now that it had the steam release. This game never had very stellar pace of progress.

Fucking lazy Spaniards.

 

[set]

It really shouldn't come as a surprise. Notch set the trend with early access / alpha titles -- so if the guy who strikes gold runs away with all your money, how can we expect any better from a developer who's making significantly less?

 

[Emily]

it baffles my mind that these people are paying full price on unfinished product. Leaving no incentive for creator to finish it.
It seems that this no-risk-early-access thing has exploded in recent months

 

[Xor]

Hey, it worked out for Minecraft. And gamers are used to paying full price for a game months in advance thanks to the industry's love affair with preorders. Early access was just the next step.

 

[Zarniwoop]

First they thought of DLC to get money for half a game and then more for the finished product. Then came pre-orders where you pay a few weeks/months before the game is even released. Now we pay years in advance when there's only a few concept drawings on Kikestarter. This is the first step in the next chapter of game monetization, where you pay and no game actually ever comes out. This is also the only way to cut down on the QA budget even more than it already is. Of course, the steady stream of Doritos will ensure that the non-existent games still receive scores in the high 90's.

 

[Drax]

Meh, I got it for tupence in one of valve's sale orgies, so no trouble. (I think I played it for about 2.45 minutes)
At least Notch hired people to keep working on his game, which is IMO the only reasonable thing to do other than open-sourcing the hell of it.

 

[Whiran]

This doesn't surprise me. Towns hasn't had an update in forever and the forums on Steam have been decrying it for a long time.

What did make me laugh was just before a major Steam sale Towns had an "update" just to make it look like the game was active.

I am curious what, if anything, Steam will do about this. The game remains in early.. oh, wait, I just checked on it. It is now in "released" state on Steam.

When did that happen? Or is that what sparked these "revelations?" Maybe it's been "released" for awhile now and I just never noticed.

Edited to add: Maybe I didn't notice that the game was always in a release state? I just thought it was early access because of how it was?

 

[Haba]

There was no early access back then, methinks. Oh well, I paid $2.50 so I don't care too much. But still a shitty thing to do, taking the money and running.

Hello everybody,

I login to the forums to make you all know the current game situation. Have to say that this news won't like the most of you.

Towns v14b will be the last build we will release as SMP. I have no words or response of why I didn't post this months before. The only thing I can say, and I understand you don't care about it, is that I'm burned, really burned about the game and all it involves. I don't have the strenght to continue with it.

At some point we tried to hire someone to continue with the development, we also did some interviews to some nice coders. But at the end I messed that, because I'm so burned to show the code to other guy and explain him how all works. So we cancelled the hiring thing.

Not sure you will agree with me that v14b is a pretty good build, it solves some issues and add some new features. Adding more features won't change the game to a "finished" status, this is a never-ending story. So, I had to stop at some point and consider it finished, and I did that.


So, about the future.... we are still considering what can we do to make you happy, one of the possibilities means to make the code open source, but not sure that is a good option and we are debating what can we do.


I make this post "replyable" so you can post anything you want to, I will read and reply it.

Thanks and sorry.
Xavi

Still, a cool $2 mil., that'll buy some beers for a while.

 

[laclongquan]

 

[set]

I can sympathize, two milion dollars just isn't enough to make an indie sprite game these days. You need at least eight million dollars. It's no wonder they abandoned the game.

 

[Drax]

one of the possibilities means to make the code open source, but not sure that is a good option and we are debating what can we do.

Oh just release it already for fuck's sake.
You got your money, if you are going to fuck off at least allow your players to finish the game for you.

 

[Konjad]

I was sure and was sharing my thoughts how will this game end long time ago - when it was still in "full development" (if you can even say it ever was). It was so obvious I couldn't understand why it is selling so well. Nobody listened to me, because derp derp graphix Dorf Fortderp and a better one than Gnomoria because Gnomoria is still tileset-like. Better buy this, it looks prettier.

At least 9 codexers bought it (according to my Steam friends list, and I don't have everybody added).

Well, there you go, I feel good you were ripped off, tards.

 

[Infinitron]

That YetiChow guy on their forums has reached Team Gizka levels of cultism. Fucking creepy.

 

[Haba]

At least 9 codexers bought it (according to my Steam friends list, and I don't have everybody added).

Well, there you go, I feel good you were ripped off, tards.

P. sure most got it from that bundle.

If someone paid the full price, that'd be stupid though...

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

That YetiChow guy on their forums has reached Team Gizka levels of cultism. Fucking creepy.

Speaking of which, is the Team Gizka cult still around?

 

[Xor]

That YetiChow guy on their forums has reached Team Gizka levels of cultism. Fucking creepy.

Speaking of which, is the Team Gizka cult still around?

I was just wondering the same thing. Do they still stand around and tell everyone who will listen that the next patch will be out soon?

 

[Gord]

I think not. IIRC the forum vanished after the only remaining dev (and much fellated lead of the project) admitted that he hadn't done anything in months and was too busy fucking his new girlfriend to bother with it in the foreseeable future.
He even said that he didn't care anymore if it was released in the current version. I guess that was too much to accept for the cult and it imploded soon after.
Also the release of TSLRCM made TSLRP obsolete anyway.

*Fun fact: the TSLRP thread on this site was how I found the Codex, it provided so much glorious internet drama.

 

[Direwolf]

That YetiChow guy on their forums has reached Team Gizka levels of cultism. Fucking creepy.

He sounds like he came straight from tumblr.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Hey guys, we cancelled the hiring thing.

No worries ey?

 

[Infinitron]

Hey guys, we cancelled the hiring thing.

No worries ey?

Actually, they didn't: http://www.townsgame.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=11405&sid=9972028104c42ad6b2fd704021f276f1

New guy in charge.

 

[MoLAoS]

I was banned from that forum. I think I said some other game was meh and dev burningpet banned me. He didn't wanna ban me for criticizing him because he thought he was too classy for that, so he banned me for some random crap and then still felt good about himself. I'm kinda sad that Muzzy is getting on bored with the new dev thing. Honestly, Towns is a crappy game with shittily organized code and uses Java anyways. It would be easier just to start over. Does anyone know if Townies still fight by furiously humping enemies? I haven't played it in ages and I've been banned from the forum for a few months.

 

[DalekFlay]

Gamasutra link: http://gamasutra.com/view/news/217154/Alphafunded_Steam_game_Towns_abandoned_by_devs.php

A day after Valve was forced to remove a game from Steam for deceitful marketing, the company now has another dilemma on its hands, as the team behind a well publicized alpha game has decided to pull the plug.

Towns, a city building/management game with RPG elements, first launched on Steam at the end of 2012 as an in-development game (this was just before Steam Early Access launched.) It was one of the very first games to pass through Steam Greenlight, as it was voted through in the first batch of 10.

Now developer Florian Frankenberger, who joined the team only months ago, has admitted that the game isn't selling as well as hoping, and that development has now been abandoned.

Welcome to the wonderful world of buying games before they are finished.

 

[Angthoron]

This thing was still in alpha? Wow.

 

[Astral Rag]

This is like that thing Brian Fargo and Valve were talking about.

Valve has said Early Access is the way games should be made.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/towns-drama.89794/