Dark Matter Developer Blames Lack of Money For Lack of Ending

[Andy Chalk]

Dark Matter Developer Blames Lack of Money For Lack of Ending

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Dark Matter developer InterWave Studios says the game's abrupt "wall of text" ending, which has attracted a lot of attention on YouTube, is the fault of a failed Kickstarter and a blown budget.

About four hours into Dark Matter, a "2.5D side-scrolling survival horror game" that launched on Steam [http://store.steampowered.com/app/251410] a few days ago, something surprising happens: it stops. Utterly without warning, it just comes to a halt; the character steps through a nondescript door and suddenly several lines of text appear on the screen, literally telling the player that they have reached the end of the game. It is bizarre, to say the least.

It turns out that there's a pretty good - or perhaps more accurately, simple - explanation for the sudden stop. "No, the full story is indeed not complete yet because originally we wanted a longer game (12-16 hours) but couldnt finish it completely due to time and money (and Kickstarter failing)," developer "Viper" explained on the Steam forums [http://steamcommunity.com/app/251410/discussions/0/810938810559392924/#c810938810588841139]. "So, we choose to go with a 6-8 hour game instead to bring something out to the world and show everyone the world of Dark Matter."

InterWave ran a Dark Matter Kickstarter [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/interwave/dark-matter-1/posts] over the summer but only managed to raise £6,227 ($8523) of a £50,000 ($68,433) goal. So apparently, with no money remaining, the team decided to just throw up a stop sign and throw the game out on Steam - which, good intentions notwithstanding, turns out to be probably not the best move it could've made.

"Viper" clarified in a later post that a successful Kickstarter would have meant a longer game and expanded story, although it probably would have ended up costing more than $14.99. "The current Dark Matter on Steam is a complete game in itself though," he wrote. "There are many things to explore and many ways to go through and many things to discover. If people just run through it then yes it will be less then those 6 hours."

He added that the team plans to change the "to be continued" part of the closing message "to make sure this will be the end of the game as is in a clear msg to everyone."


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[ZeroMachine]

Nah, fuck those guys.

Fuck everything about them.

People often claim companies like EA and Activision sell incomplete games 'cause of the DLC.

THIS is selling an incomplete game.

Fuck them. Fuck their game. Fuck them blaming it on a failed Kickstarter.

Looked like it could be a good game, too. Such a shame.

... "Complete game" my ass...

 

[Rad Party God]

"The current Dark Matter on Steam is a complete game in itself though"

How pretentious can these guys be?, don't just cover the fucking sun with a finger!, tell the truth!, say you fucked up!, as it is, what little interest I had in this game completely vanished, *poof*.

I think it's worse to have a bad rep for a fuck up you sugar coat than to completely tell the truth.

Also, we're not in the freaking 80's anymore, shit like this is just unacceptable. It doesn't even have groovy music, for crying out loud!.

 

[oldtaku]

They could easily have called it 'Ep 1' and charged $5-10 and gotten enough money to finish the game. Instead they pulled this scam. Screw 'em.

 

[CriticalMiss]

I get the feeling there will be some refunds requested in the near future. I saw the game the other day and considered buying it, but luckily I didn't (figured it would just be like Dead Space with a lower budget). This was a pretty dumb move by the developers, especially since they are claiming it is a complete game when it so obviously isn't with an ending like that. I hate the ending slide-shows from the Fallout games but at least you have a final battle/event before getting there, a wall of text seems like it would be a lot more frustrating.

 

[Sarge034]

Did it say anything along the lines of...

If so, fuck em and fuck their DLC. If not fuck em. It is obviously an incomplete game and instead of charging for an incomplete game and telling people it was incomplete they want to dress this shit up as complete! Fuck em.

 

[lacktheknack]

People already complain that a game is "incomplete" if the devs sell pink armour as DLC. How on EARTH did they think they could get away with THIS?

 

[JagermanXcell]

Oh wow... and I thought EA and Capcom were the scumbags. This is isn't even vanilla Fallout 3 ending bad, this is just awful.
The worst part is there's probably people out there... defending this. How sad.

 

[Proverbial Jon]

So why make the game if the Kickstarter failed? I thought the idea of Kickstarter was to gain the necessary funds and simultaneously gauge the demand for your product. Looks like these guys were too arrogant to consider that much.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Seriously now, you got the spot light to remedy this situation and you fucking lie to customers again... rest assured from now on everyone will be warned of your shitty conduct.

 

[Rainforce]

I don't quite get all the hate this now gets. sometimes a project is too ambitious, and while they could have worded it better, they still tried to sell their game anyways, in a desperate attempt to not have wasted all that time for nothing.
I agree on quite some points that were made as well, though, like how they should REALLY named it EP1 or something.
still, just screaming "fuck the game!!!" is pretty...I don't know, that's quite the poisonous reaction for a game that isn't that bad in itself and most haven't even played. And clearly all of us can sell our product and development decisions with utter perfection unlike them. I'm not even defending the guys here, I see how this is a last straw for the dev, so why oh why do they deserve all this utterly mindnumbing hate?
But then again, this is the internet, where any opinion that isn't written in allcaps is invalid anyways.

 

[NiPah]

I don't quite get all the hate this now gets. sometimes a project is too ambitious, and while they could have worded it better, they still tried to sell their game anyways, in a desperate attempt to not have wasted all that time for nothing.
I agree on quite some points that were made as well, though, like how they should REALLY named it EP1 or something.
still, just screaming "fuck the game!!!" is pretty...I don't know, that's quite the poisonous reaction for a game that isn't that bad in itself and most haven't even played. And clearly all of us can sell our product and development decisions with utter perfection unlike them. I'm not even defending the guys here, I see how this is a last straw for the dev, so why oh why do they deserve all this utterly mindnumbing hate?
But then again, this is the internet, where any opinion that isn't written in allcaps is invalid anyways.

Eh people who get shafted with a bait and switch tend to be angry, the developer took a gamble and lost and passed the buck to the consumer in a deceitful scam and only came clean when people called them out.

I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have seen this level of hate if they had come clean while selling the game, screwing people makes them angry (and makes then talk in caps).

 

[Final7111]

Thats messed up! To sit there telling people that they shouldnt be made becuase they got the full game is bullshit. I hope they enjoy whatever money they made, becuase the people they ripped off are lost customers.

I don't quite get all the hate this now gets.

Its simple really the people who spent their money where not informed that they where in fact buying an unfinished game!

 

[major_chaos]

Seriously, the dev fucked up bad here. That ending text is incredibly reminiscent of the text at the end of every episode of Doom, its just begging for the game to have been released as "episode 1" to hopefully raise enough money to continue the story. But instead the Dev had to go and say something that he really should have known would piss people off, and now any chance of seen more of what looks like a fairly well made game is going to burn away in a firestorm of forum warrior rage.

 

[Bostur]

text endings? Lots of old games had those. Even worse when they made no fucking sense at all. text endings are valid as long as you aren't focusing on story. Many games in the 90s did it, and that was the age that people called the golden age of gaming.

In fact, in the 1990s XCOM it had a rushed ending that made no sense. A huge wall of text that had nothing to do with the "story" you followed. From a character JUST introduced. It was the 1990s version of the starchild. Yet the gameplay saved it. because endings aren't the game.

There is nothing wrong with text endings, but in this case the ending seems very abrupt. It's been a while since I completed X-Com, but I seem to remember...

Spoiler

... going to the moon, assaulting the alien base, killing the super bad guy alien and getting a short comic style wrapup that matched the intro nicely.

That was not the most impressive ending ever, but it was a wrapup. It didn't end in the middle of a mission. Even by 1980s-1990s standards I would be disappointed by an ending like the one shown in the video.

 

[MrBaskerville]

That seems pretty half assed, i i don't really care about game endings, but there should atleast be some kind of peak in gameplay before it ends, a boss battle or something like that. Plenty of games have poor endings, but i've rarely seen a game that just ends out of nowhere like this, it even looks glitchy when the text pops up.

 

[Bostur]

Actually it was:

Go to mars.

ending to UFO/XCOM

You are right about Mars, I just saw it again on youtube. It was twenty years ago, memory can play tricks on you in that timespan. ;-)

I didn't claim the ending was good, I remember I felt it was a little underwhelming. And a lot of old game had bad endings. But it was an ending, and when playing the last mission it's pretty clear that the end will follow soon. If I remember correctly (and I may not for obvious reasons) the last mission was a 3-stage affair, and the only predesigned mission in the first game. It is all set up for an ending so there is more to it than the text and the still pictures. The player don't know what to expect except for a mastermind responsible for atrocities on earth. I imagine the orders would be to kill it on sight, we don't even know if it is telling the truth or if it is an attempt at psychic indoctrination. How can you trust that thing? XCOM adds a little bit of doubt to an otherwise very simple plot. The plots were mostly simple back then because games were about gameplay, but many games did include an ending. At the very least they usually had a final level or an end boss. Something that the game in this thread doesn't seem to have.

It really is quite jarring when a story or a game doesn't wrap it up. A bad ending is better than none.

I agree that gameplay is more important than story. Civilization doesn't have much of an ending except "Hurrah, you won", or "Oh no, you lost", and yet it is my favorite game. But if a save game corrupts 10 turns before the end I would be frustrated no matter how fun it was until that point. I like to see a game to it's natural conclusion, even if I know what will happen.