People are too impatient these days

[Catzilla01]

It seems like no one can wait more then 2 years for a game to release. People should not expect games to be finished instantly.

There are plenty of things that go on in the development process that developers need to deal with before games are finished like models, graphics, UI, sound/music, code, structuring the game, brainstorming concepts, working with other staff members, the business side of things, and other things.

[Shadows of Samhain]

I suspect that a large part of the problem is that the people saying "It's been three years, where is the gameplay? Why isn't there a demo yet? Why isn't it out already? Where is the Patreon money going?" don't understand how long it takes to make a game.

They're used to games being announced when they are only a year or two away from being released, yet what they often fail to realise is that those games were in development for half a decade or longer. I've been playing indie games for ten years, so I'm used to games taking a long time to be completed.

I'm extremely patient with Paralives, because there is a reason no other game on this scale exists besides the Sims. Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley are sometimes compared to the Sims, but they aren't as complex as Paralives is shaping up to be. I hope they take their time with this rather than trying to rush development because a handful of people can't be satisfied with just putting the game on their wishlist and waiting.

[rynwin]

What most gamers who don't pay much attention to the workings of the industry itself fail to understand is that games of this scope from major publishers are in development for YEARS before they are announced. Crowd-funded games suffer a great deal from the fact that in order to get the funding they need, they need to announce early in development and generate buzz.

In addition you have the team size. Paralives has, I believe, 10 people working on it, and it started with one person and only ramped up the team size relatively recently as the Patreon following made it possible to hire people. For a game of this scope, however, you would expect a dev team at least five times this size, and again, this wouldn't avoid the need for several years of development before a company would normally announce.

Though the Patreon funding model inherently lends itself to more sustainable development than Kickstarter, because they know what their budget is on a month to month basis, rather than having to work out how to parcel out a large lump of cash over a long-term schedule appropriate to the game's scope; indie studios are often terrible at this and even big studios with deep pockets struggle to appropriately scope their projects and predict the development time and resources necessary to deliver them. I'm sure you can think of plenty of examples of big and small studios alike making grave miscalculations here.

That being said, based on my own experience in the industry, the current pace of progress shown in their regular status updates meets my expectations for the size of the team, and after seeing the roadmap, I have more confidence in the project than when I first joined their Patreon. But these things do take time and they've still got a long way to go.

I'm among the top tier contributors, and while I will probably end up giving them more money than I've spent on the entire Sims franchise by the time this releases, it will be worth it to see a successful entry to this genre that The Sims has monopolized to the point of complacency. Looking at other prospective projects, this is the one that I feel the most confidant about the success of, by a wide margin.

[xAlphaStarOmegax]

I don't really blame people for being impatient, especially when there is kickstarters or patreons involved. The sad truth is this, there are in fact fake games out there that have no actual gameplay footage, and they are created to deceive people into donating money.

[kjconlon94]

I think that this other game might provide a bit of explanation for you with fully player financed games. Chronicles of Elyria apparently turning out to be a scam. When fully financially player backed games involve and the game design takes years on end and then suddenly cancels it creates suspicions among the potential players.

[philaletheist]

Originally posted by kjconlon94:

I think that this other game might provide a bit of explanation for you with fully player financed games. Chronicles of Elyria apparently turning out to be a scam. When fully financially player backed games involve and the game design takes years on end and then suddenly cancels it creates suspicions among the potential players.

ok but development hasn’t been canceled and there’s still monthly development updates, unsure why you brought this up

[kjconlon94]

Originally posted by xAlphaStarOmegax:

I don't really blame people for being impatient, especially when there is kickstarters or patreons involved. The sad truth is this, there are in fact fake games out there that have no actual gameplay footage, and they are created to deceive people into donating money.

Originally posted by philaletheist:

Originally posted by kjconlon94:

I think that this other game might provide a bit of explanation for you with fully player financed games. Chronicles of Elyria apparently turning out to be a scam. When fully financially player backed games involve and the game design takes years on end and then suddenly cancels it creates suspicions among the potential players.

ok but development hasn’t been canceled and there’s still monthly development updates, unsure why you brought this up

I was trying to answer AlphaStarOmegax. In providing the honest genuine unsurity reasoning of those involving games that are completely computer game players supported. And I was supporting my comment with the you tube video RIP Chronicles Of Elyria - Scam MMORPG: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfiibVaEMeY

[rynwin]

Gamers are pretty quick to cry scam when crowd funded projects don't go as planned. While there are a non-zero number of game development scams out there, the vast majority of failed game projects people accuse of this really aren't scams - they're small teams with insufficient experience, particularly where business and project management are concerned, and an idea that is too big to reasonably realize with their limitations and level of competence. They're simply too inexperienced to even recognize that they're biting off way more than they can chew in their enthusiasm to realize a dream, and end up scrabbling around in a panic when reality slaps them in the face; which leads to all kinds of further bad decisions and inept communication with their backers as they try to keep their heads above water. It's still a terrible prospect, to be sure, but crowd-funders really need to be aware that this is the kind of risk they're taking on when they fund these projects.

I followed Chronicles of Elyria and I don't think it was a scam, just a wildly over-ambitious and poorly scoped idea with little understanding of game budgeting, that was predictably mismanaged and fell on its face hard. I saw the amount of money they raised, and while laypeople were saying "why are you so slow when you have so much money?" my response was: "Yeah, how do you think that's going to be enough budget for what you're trying to do? especially since you guys are based in Bellevue, WA?" (I live in this area, it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ expensive to live here, never mind renting an office space.) That being said, the last status update on the forum was actually this April, and there's really no reason to do that if it's dead since they are not currently asking for money and even that information is restricted to a place (community forums) that only those who are still interested in the project would see it. In other words, they are not trying to generate any buzz.

I'm not remotely optimistic that even their extremely scaled-back project to try to deliver on at least some of their promises is going to be at all successful, or any good if it is completed, but I still check in occasionally out of morbid curiosity. Their near radio-silence and refusal to allow people to comment is not great, but let's be real - people can only deal with so much hostility without having a mental breakdown, and this is probably a better approach than actively trying to engage and justify their situation. Better to just shut their mouths and ears and let the result, whatever it is, speak for itself. Since they seem to only be doing quarterly updates, and the last was in April, the next update would be expected sometime next month.

[Furiant]

Thank you for telling us how people are these days, and how they should be. Very informative.

[kjconlon94]

Originally posted by rynwin:

Gamers are pretty quick to cry scam when crowd funded projects don't go as planned. While there are a non-zero number of game development scams out there, the vast majority of failed game projects people accuse of this really aren't scams - they're small teams with insufficient experience, particularly where business and project management are concerned, and an idea that is too big to reasonably realize with their limitations and level of competence. They're simply too inexperienced to even recognize that they're biting off way more than they can chew in their enthusiasm to realize a dream, and end up scrabbling around in a panic when reality slaps them in the face; which leads to all kinds of further bad decisions and inept communication with their backers as they try to keep their heads above water. It's still a terrible prospect, to be sure, but crowd-funders really need to be aware that this is the kind of risk they're taking on when they fund these projects.

I followed Chronicles of Elyria and I don't think it was a scam, just a wildly over-ambitious and poorly scoped idea with little understanding of game budgeting, that was predictably mismanaged and fell on its face hard. I saw the amount of money they raised, and while laypeople were saying "why are you so slow when you have so much money?" my response was: "Yeah, how do you think that's going to be enough budget for what you're trying to do? especially since you guys are based in Bellevue, WA?" (I live in this area, it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ expensive to live here, never mind renting an office space.) That being said, the last status update on the forum was actually this April, and there's really no reason to do that if it's dead since they are not currently asking for money and even that information is restricted to a place (community forums) that only those who are still interested in the project would see it. In other words, they are not trying to generate any buzz.

I'm not remotely optimistic that even their extremely scaled-back project to try to deliver on at least some of their promises is going to be at all successful, or any good if it is completed, but I still check in occasionally out of morbid curiosity. Their near radio-silence and refusal to allow people to comment is not great, but let's be real - people can only deal with so much hostility without having a mental breakdown, and this is probably a better approach than actively trying to engage and justify their situation. Better to just shut their mouths and ears and let the result, whatever it is, speak for itself. Since they seem to only be doing quarterly updates, and the last was in April, the next update would be expected sometime next month.

But still it is genuine concern since in other areas there is plenty of examples of real life scammers going on including discussed on the news. Including there was someone who had somehow acquire one of my brother in laws's email and attempted at pretending to be someone that he personally knows by trying to acquire some steam gift cards physical and/or digital by providing a sob story in why he needs to for something like gas and or groceries and the scammer hadn't even considered that as far as I know you can't even convert the steam gift cards back to physical cash to use for something else similarly to how apparently you can do that with other types of gift cards all you can do is purchase games through steam and/if you try to resell those very same games dishonestly wouldn't steam already be on the scammer any ways. That particular scammer I thought rightfully should go on the tv show America's dumbest criminals.

[rynwin]

Originally posted by kjconlon94:

But still it is genuine concern since in other areas there is plenty of examples of real life scammers going on including discussed on the news. Including there was someone who had somehow acquire one of my brother in laws's email and attempted at pretending to be someone that he personally knows by trying to acquire some steam gift cards physical and/or digital by providing a sob story in why he needs to for something like gas and or groceries and the scammer hadn't even considered that as far as I know you can't even convert the steam gift cards back to physical cash to use for something else similarly to how apparently you can do that with other types of gift cards all you can do is purchase games through steam and/if you try to resell those very same games dishonestly wouldn't steam already be on the scammer any ways. That particular scammer I thought rightfully should go on the tv show America's dumbest criminals.

That's a pretty blatant apples-to-oranges comparison.

[SourceUnknown]

Is this the soapbox thread?

[Tyler Zeta]

Originally posted by Shadows of Samhain:

I suspect that a large part of the problem is that the people saying "It's been three years, where is the gameplay? Why isn't there a demo yet? Why isn't it out already? Where is the Patreon money going?" don't understand how long it takes to make a game.

They're used to games being announced when they are only a year or two away from being released, yet what they often fail to realise is that those games were in development for half a decade or longer. I've been playing indie games for ten years, so I'm used to games taking a long time to be completed.

I'm extremely patient with Paralives, because there is a reason no other game on this scale exists besides the Sims. Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley are sometimes compared to the Sims, but they aren't as complex as Paralives is shaping up to be. I hope they take their time with this rather than trying to rush development because a handful of people can't be satisfied with just putting the game on their wishlist and waiting.

Those people also forget that there was a pandemic so many devs had to take care of themselves and their families while also working from home.

[[Daos]BLACK KNIGHT]

"This days"?! lol
this days people are not impatient, the games are just announced in pre production... and it takes 3-7 years for a release...
also a lot of scam projects, a lot of cancelled and unfinished projects...

[XeraN^]

the problem is that the game says coming soon for ages now...

[Aturchomicz]

Originally posted by XeraN^:

the problem is that the game says coming soon for ages now...

lol no it just says "To be announced"