The Needles: "Crowd Contributed" Game Development: A Grim Dawn Breaks

[Andy Chalk]

The Needles: "Crowd Contributed" Game Development: A Grim Dawn Breaks

The makers of Titan Quest were surprised that so many fans were interested in funding their new game, Grim Dawn.

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[Nalgas D. Lemur]

I'm still debating Grim Dawn. I'm leaning towards it, though, because I like me some Titan Quest.

Also, Hazardous Software's Achron, the RTS with time-travel, is also in an Alpha state and can be pre-ordered (And gets you access to the alpha. I bought into this one a couple of days ago and talk about a mind-twister. I haven't even been able to beat the tutorial levels yet..)

I remember watching the demo/info videos for that a few months ago. It looks like a really neat idea, but it also looks like it's going to take a good deal of work to figure out the right way to present everything so it'll actually turn out well, whether it's a better way to hide/manage the complexity of it or a more intuitive/understandable way to display/interact with it. Having worked on some weird ideas like that before, I know how much of a pain that can be to sort out (and have had to at least temporarily give up on some), but I'm still hoping it works out in the end, because I like the idea, and they've made a decent amount of progress so far from just a good idea towards something actually workable as a game.

 

[Jared]

It is pretty amazing what a community can do when it bands together. Ir jus goes to prove the power of the fans does exist out there if you get the right people

 

[The Random One]

Aye, I think it could be an excellent way for indie developers to make ends meet during, er, development. Indie games require a metric buttload less money to work, and there's also at least 22.7 metric buttloads less sallaries to pay (not sure I did the math right, there).

 

[Starke]

It's always saddened me that for all the real polish and quality that Titan Quest delivered, there were always jackasses saying that the game was shit because they'd played the cracked version, or heard from people who had.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

I never had a SINGLE bug problem with Titan Quest. Sure, it was just a Diablo ripoff but it was fun and completely unpretentious, so I've no idea why it was considered to be such a failure. It's good to see a community continuing to thrive and get behind the developers in their next project.

 

[Weaver]

Titan's quest fatal fault, IMO, was not having randomized levels. After one playthrough I didn't want to go back through again.

 

[Dirty Apple]

I had been thinking about buying Titan Quest for awhile when I saw it up for sale on steam. It's been said before, and I agree, that it's no diablo. However, I experienced no bugs or glitches, and found it a generally enjoyable game. If you're just looking for some mindless dungeon-crawling and loot-whoring, you can do a lot worse than Titan Quest.

 

[CrafterMan]

Titan Quest was still pretty awesome, and its good to see a group of people getting together to help the smaller devs.

Good article

-JB

 

[Namewithheld]

Grim Dawn sounds awesome.

I'm gonna buy it!

 

[Earthmonger]

I'm seriously amazed there's no Wikipedia entries for Grim Dawn, Crate Entertainment, or Arthur Bruno. I usually rely on Wiki much more than the flashy game sites; much easier to get to the pertinent information and avoid the hype machine.

The site isn't too flashy though, and the game sounds interesting.

 

[Hurr Durr Derp]

I loved Titan's Quest and Immortal Throne, but I've never heard of Grim Dawn.

Gonna put in my pre-order as soon as I get home.

 

[sidereal_day]

I actually stayed away from Titan Quest for a stupid reason: the name. Seriously, it was such a bland, generic name that I figured the game had to be some bland, generic RPG or something. When I actually played it it quickly became one of the funnest PC games I've played in recent years.

Anyway, glad to see that Grim Dawn is full speed ahead.

 

[sidereal_day]

Aye, I think it could be an excellent way for indie developers to make ends meet during, er, development. Indie games require a metric buttload less money to work, and there's also at least 22.7 metric buttloads less sallaries to pay (not sure I did the math right, there).

My math comes to 18.5 metric buttloads less salary to pay, but it could have been due to differences in calculation. Did you include payroll tax? And did you include benefits like healthcare in salary? That may be where we differed.

 

[dochmbi]

In my utopia in which everyone pirates 100% and the entertainment industry no longer exists, this is basically how new culture would be made, along with funding from foundations and other such things.

 

[Starke]

In my utopia in which everyone pirates 100% and the entertainment industry no longer exists, this is basically how new culture would be made, along with funding from foundations and other such things.

To think, somewhere out there Mark Helprin [http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Barbarism-Manifesto-Mark-Helprin/dp/B002XUM1UC/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265808263&sr=8-5] is looking for you.

Honestly, your utopia isn't feasible, at all. If everyone stole everything then there would be no innovation at all. We would be in a cultural backslide. No one would have any incentive to learn to program because you couldn't make a living at it. Hell, if everyone stole THIS system wouldn't work. They would simply wait for this to be released and then steal it.

Now, I'm not saying you're trolling, but posting your advocacy of this in a thread where theft fucking killed these guy's jobs once before is in incredibly poor taste. Incredibly poor taste.

 

[Andy Chalk]

I'd love to see "crowd support" become a more common phenomenon among game developers, but as Bruno pointed out, the likelihood of a fully crowd-funded game is very slim. There's just too much money required, even for a small-scale project, and for a completely unknown start-up with no history, it's going to be magnitudes of order more difficult to bring in any preorders at all. Take away the Grim Day preorders placed by the Titan Quest community and what have you got? (I honestly don't know, but I bet it ain't much.)

Speaking of Titan Quest, it didn't "bomb" in the classic sense - combined, TQ and the expansion sold more than a million copies and according to Bruno actually turned a bit of a profit for THQ. In most conventional measure it was actually something of a success and the fact that Iron Lore failed anyway is a real indictment of the studio system. But that's a tory for another day.

 

[Asehujiko]

It's always saddened me that for all the real polish and quality that Titan Quest delivered, there were always jackasses saying that the game was shit because they'd played the cracked version, or heard from people who had.

Imo it proves that the "download before buying" group that everybody denies that exists at all because "all" pirates never pay for "anything" represents a sizeable target demographic, if you at least show them a product worth buying. They get the game, they see the game is shit, they cancel their preorders. Simple as that. That's not their fault for being "jackasses" for not wanting to get ripped off by false promises, that's the developer's fault for not realizing showing half your potential customers that the game is shit will obviously deter the other half from buying it.

 

[Andy_Panthro]

I pre-ordered a while back, when they first put the option up.

One of the other great things about this project is that you get the impression they are really listening to our ideas on the development so far. I can't wait to get my hands on the alpha/beta.