Vae on 17/2/2018 at 00:50
A message of buffoonery, from Nightdive Studios...(
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598858095/system-shock/posts/2115044) https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598858095/system-shock/posts/2115044
Quote:
Sometimes You Need To Take a Step Back In Order To Take Two Steps ForwardKickstarter Update from Stephen Kick, CEO of Nightdive Studios
In March of 2016, Nightdive Studios released our video of our vision of System Shock Remastered. Done in Unity it was an immediate hit with almost a half million views on YouTube. In June of 2016 we launched a Kickstarter campaign to make the vision into a reality. It was tremendously successful with over 21,000 backers contributing over $1.3 million to the campaign. We put together a development team and began working on the game. But along the way something happened.
Maybe we were too successful. Maybe we lost our focus. The vision began to change. We moved from a Remaster to a completely new game. We shifted engines from Unity to Unreal, a choice that we don't regret and one that has worked out for us. With the switch we began envisioning doing more, but straying from the core concepts of the original title.
As our concept grew and as our team changed, so did the scope of what we were doing and with that the budget for the game. As the budget grew, we began a long series of conversations with potential publishing partners. The more that we worked on the game, the more that we wanted to do, and the further we got from the original concepts that made System Shock so great.
Ultimately the responsibility for the decisions rests with me. As the CEO and founder of Nightdive Studios, a company that was built on the restoration of the System Shock franchise, I let things get out of control. I can tell you that I did it for all the right reasons, that I was totally committed to making a great game, but it has become clear to me that we took the wrong path, that we turned our backs on the very people who made this possible, our Kickstarter backers.
I have put the team on a hiatus while we reassess our path so that we can return to our vision. We are taking a break, but NOT ending the project. Please accept my personal assurance that we will be back and stronger than ever. System Shock is going to be completed and all of our promises fulfilled.
Stephen Kick
As I've mentioned over and over again...If you kill the goose that lays the golden egg, you'll lose every time.
This is because it's not simply about "trying to make a great game"...it's about making a great game that incorporates the core design principals which made it great to begin with, so as to be a great
System Shock game.
Such an error in judgment inevitably brings strife and sorrow.
icemann on 17/2/2018 at 05:48
I think where they went wrong was trying to turn the gameplay into that of SS2. The first game is quite different and trying to change that was always going to piss a fair few people off.
Change something too much and you'll be left with an end product that is nothing like the original. I think much of the alluded to "loss of focus" was down to that, as once you start changing core mechanics then your basis of comparison starts to diverge a fair bit, which makes porting/bringing over stuff that bit more harder.
And then you have the visual changes with the new enemy looks and types. I think they would have been better off, having it be a new System Shock entry rather than a reboot. Would have given them FAR more freedom and as we're already set to get SS3 people would be MUCH more willing to accept divergences in gameplay.
Starker on 17/2/2018 at 05:52
It's their first game and game development is rarely silky smooth. I think they deserve some slack, especially when they are willing to respond to backers' concerns to such an extent.
Oh, and I'm a backer, btw, if that matters any.
Renault on 17/2/2018 at 06:06
This is really disappointing. I'm guessing most projects like this that go off the rails like this never recover. Sounds pessimistic, but to go so public with this means there are likely some serious or fatal issues, or they'd just handle it all in-house.
The thing I don't get is, and granted I'm not 100% sure on when the project changed, but... They sold it via Kickstarter as a remake or remaster, and that's the premise that got them all of their cash. So why change the scope of the project after that? All you can really do is piss off our supporters in that scenario. I'm not a backer, but if I had threw in 50 bucks or whatever for an SS remake, and then it suddenly changes after the campaign is over and money is collected, I wouldn't be too happy. Especially with Otherside already handling the "new SS story" part. Not sure what they were thinking here.
Starker on 17/2/2018 at 06:41
A lot of projects go off the rails like this. In fact, Thief: The Dark Project started out as a very different game.
I guess they could just not have informed the backers and put the project on a hiatus without telling them, but isn't that even worse?
Pyrian on 17/2/2018 at 07:12
Dammit man you promised a faithful reboot and could've accomplished that if you'd stayed focused.
icemann on 17/2/2018 at 09:25
Damn straight.
ZylonBane on 17/2/2018 at 18:33
The moment the words "dismemberment system" left someone's lips was the moment they should have realized they'd gone off the rails.
Trance on 17/2/2018 at 19:41
I'm happy to be proven wrong in this, but I'm going to call it now: they aren't going to reassess and resume development. This was to head off any future inquiries about the progress of the remake and get people to forget about it. This project is dead.
I suppose it's a good thing that they came to realize that they didn't actually understand the original game well enough to do a faithful remake of it, and rather than charge ahead and put out something which shit on its memory, they showed restraint. But from the beginning a System Shock remake felt to me like a "too-good-to-be-true" scenario, and I'm not particularly affected by news that it's not happening.
Deepens my pessimism about System Shock 3, though.
Pyrian on 17/2/2018 at 20:29
Quote Posted by Trance
...they aren't going to reassess and resume development.
Yeah. They'd need a fresh infusion of capital to even start, and with the Kickstarter money already gone but the debt to backers still there, they'd need to convince someone to pony up enough money to do the project with a large chunk of its returns already realized and spent.