Towns Developer Officially Abandons The Game

[Steven Bogos]

Towns Developer Officially Abandons The Game

Towns is officially dead.

Anyone who's kept an eye on the Steam indie scene would have no doubt heard of the cautionary tale of Towns [http://store.steampowered.com/app/221020/], one of the very first Steam Greenlight approved games. Towns hit Steam long before all this early-access jazz started, so customers were understandably upset to discover that the game was essentially a "paid beta". The developers have done little to fix the game's most glaring problems in the two years since its release, and now, it looks like they are simply jumping ship.

"I hope you are not too disappointed," wrote developer Florian Frankenberger on the official forums [http://www.townsgame.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=11480], announcing that the latest Towns update would be its last one, "And if you are: I'm really sorry. I'm quite new to indie game dev and I couldn't really see that the game sales were declining that rapidly. I guess if I had more experience I would have seen it comming ..."

Frankenberger said that the decision was made almost purely for monetary reasons - Towns sales have dropped considerably since it's launch in 2012 (as is the case with most videogames...) and it simply wasn't worth it for him to continue its development. "I have to pay for the rent and food and this doesn't really suffice for any of it "

However, he did have one final piece of "good" news for the dedicated Towns fanbase, namely, that a "Towns2" may be possible. "Xavi and I were talking about a possible Towns2. At the moment this is just in an idea stage and we can't really say if he, I or eventually Ben have the time to create a Towns2. As faithful fans of Towns we would of course reward you in some way, when/if the new game is released."

"I want to end this post by thanking you for reading this and for all your support in these two months. Again I'm sorry that we had to pull the plug right here, but I sincerely hope you can understand why we had to make that decision right now."

What do you think? Did you play Towns? Is it fair for the team to abandon the project, or do you feel that they owe it to their fanbase to "fix" it first?

Source: Towns Forums [http://www.townsgame.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=11480]

Permalink

 

[Exterminas]

Quite frankly, I never got what all the huff regarding towns was about. I thought It was a neat little base building game.

Though I have only played the game for about ten hours. But then again, it is a ten-buck-game. I really don't get what all the rage was about.

 

[Dragonlayer]

Well duh. The dev's wife got cancer and that bankrupted him.

Ah.

Is that true? Because if so, that really shuts up my initial snarky comment.

 

[mirage202]

He claims his wife really did get cancer, but given how dishonest Xavi has been in other respects, I'd take that with a pinch of salt.

OT: I had Towns long before it was on Greenlight and while I can understand peoples frustrations over this I personally got a couple hundred hours out of that game easy. Even as is it is alright to play and there are some great modders out there who have added a good number of features neglected by the Devs. Still doesn't excuse this behaviour from them though.

Towns 2? Sorry guys, not going to happen. First impressions last a lifetime and your debut was all told a complete shambles, I may have got more than my moneys worth buying it years ago for 7 bucks, but those post Greenlight aren't likely to forgive you or trust you again, and who can blame them?

 

[Dragonlayer]

Well duh. The dev's wife got cancer and that bankrupted him.

Ah.

Is that true? Because if so, that really shuts up my initial snarky comment.

yeah, its on the steam forums. In the game abandoned topic.

His wife's illness did nothing to stop the wave of trolls from harassing him though. Poor guy. He can't catch a break.

Everything that led to this was a series of unfortunate events. Early access coming too late, forcing him to call it "done." His wife getting cancer. Steam forums being awful, and spreading bad things about his game so his wife might be in trouble if the games sales reached too low.

and they did.

Well feth, to make one hell of an understatement - I can't exactly get worked up about this if the poor guy was dealing with the substantially more important issue of his wife having bloody cancer.

 

[Mr. Clarinet]

Well I'm pretty disappointed. Luckily the purchase is less of a disappointment than some other games.
I found a bunch of fun in Towns when I played it but I don't see myself getting behind Towns 2.

 

[Fasckira]

Theres zero mention of the cancer issue on their own forums, are you sure the Steam source was accurate? The userbase on the Towns forum seem very vitriolic and are happily pinning the blame on Xavi and not the dev who's actually posted the announcement.

Its a shame because I quite like the concept of Towns from what I've read, just never got round to trying it out. Not much point now I guess.

 

[inkheart_artist]

If you're gonna put it out there for people to buy, you need to be within full capability of finishing the project. Family crisis like that is awful and sad but if this project couldn't have been finished in two years after it went live to buy it still feels kind of like a load of shit.

I think the thing that really galls me about it is the whole Towns2 comment in that. What? Fuck you dude, if you're going to get back to developing after this crisis, you owe it to the people who paid your way for two years patiently awaiting your finished product to at least satisfactorily complete that project first. They already paid you for a finished game, now please give it to them.

This is why I stopped partaking in this paid beta/early access thing. You're paying full price for a game that may never actually see the finish line. The more ambitious the project, the less likely it'll see the light of day. These devs don't need early access to drip feed them through the development process, they need to reduce the scope of their first projects so they can be finished before they come out.

Again, it's a terrible thing that this guy's wife got cancer. What he's at fault for is teeing this situation up, subsisting on what amounts to peoples' charity for two years since they won't see the finished game, and then threading his resignation letter to his patrons with a "oh, but there'll be a sequel!" line. That's where I take issue.

 

[CriticalMiss]

Why would he go off and make a sequel rather than finish the first game? If sales are low then do some marketing, release a big update/expansion/DLC, ask fans to spread the word, have a discount for a while. Just dropping the game isn't going to give people much confidence in your next project. It's almost as bad as big publishers holding sequels to ransom by saying they need good sales of [insert game here] to show there is a market for it (I'm looking at you Ubisoft).

 

[Kenjitsuka]

If they abandon it they should make it open source. No doubt a single super talented fan will bring out an update that fixes EVERYTHING within 24 hours. Remember that this happened with Dark Souls on PC, and that wasn't even free of massive copyright strings and a fully 3D complex "AAA" game... !

 

[Amaror]

I never got the reason behind towns.
The basic idea behind seems to be "Dwarf Fortress with graphics", but there are a lot of DF tilesets out there, most of which look better than towns graphics.
And since it's so "new" it doesn't have as much content as Df.
This actually reminds how amazing the fact is that the Dev for DF can survive, not even by selling the game, but only by accepting donations from people.

 

[Shadefyre]

This is the flipside to game development being so much more accessible, without a publisher there's not actually anyone forcing a developer to finish a game. Even the Early Access system on Steam doesn't seem to force the developers to have any sort of release deadline or plan, so there doesn't seem to be much stopping a dev from slapping Early Access on game and letting the money roll in till bad press stops it. However, with the recent takedown of that 2066 scam game, there's some hope that Valve might take a more active role in policing this kind of thing.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

At least he was open and honest about it, rather than obfuscate the truth or flat out lie like many developers these days.

 

[Jessta]

Why would he go off and make a sequel rather than finish the first game? If sales are low then do some marketing, release a big update/expansion/DLC, ask fans to spread the word, have a discount for a while. Just dropping the game isn't going to give people much confidence in your next project. It's almost as bad as big publishers holding sequels to ransom by saying they need good sales of [insert game here] to show there is a market for it (I'm looking at you Ubisoft).

I don't think it's really as bad as when big game companies do things like that seeing as how for him it's pretty do or die at the moment and a big rework for the game two-three years down the line really isn't going to cut it to make it an actually popular game. For them it's just trying to make a bit more cash, for him it's trying to continue his career after having to leave it for a bit because his wife got cancer and his first ever published work isn't enough to pay the bills 2 years down the road.

honestly if it came down to paying for someones cancer treatment and a few thousand kids having to deal with the fact that their five dollar several year old game is a bit buggy or 'incomplete' I would side with the former 10/10.

 

[Lono Shrugged]

Maybe I am watching too much Jim Sterling, But why do I get the feeling that "reward" Town 1 players will translate into pre-order bonuses. And equally, while his wife (possibly had cancer) it doesn't change the fact that the customer base was unhappy with the game and it did not meet promised standards as a product. I buy your game, not a share in your personal life. I am starting to see a worrying trend of kickstarters being halted because "I did not anticipate/expect/lack experience." And just throw up their hands and give up. It's inherent in the whole Kickstarter system. I can just see it being a REAL problem in the next few years. People need to stop seeing lack of foresight, vision, quality control and management as AAA game problems and see them for what they are: business problems. And when you are investing in a game, you need to invest in more than the concept art. This argument has been made to death in early access stuff and will be made again and again as games crumble. Not everyone is cut out to be a developer. Same way in movies, not everyone can direct and not everyone was born to play hamlet.

 

[Fasckira]

Clockwork Empires, maia, rimworld, banished, a game of dwarves, foresaken fortress, and gnomoria. Gnomoria is the closest.

I've had my eye on Clockwork Empires for some time, cant wait for it to come out (love a bit of Cthulhu goodness!). Will check out the others you've mentioned though, thank you for that.

 

[Karadalis]

EDITH:

Just read the thing about his wifes cancer.. guess he gets a free pass.

But this shows just how problematic early access and paid beta releases are in the end. After a while the sales dry up.. the market is satiated.. and the game is still only half way done or worse.

No incentive to keep working on the game.