The thing that kind of separated the ongoing bullshit that comes out of Chris Roberts around Star Citizen and Camelot Unchained was that at least the latter had not gone down the rampant feature creep path.
Because, otherwise, there are a lot of similarities between the two projects… and the two personalities. Even their previous games were failures that they blamed on their corporate overlords, but now that they run the show the projects keep spinning out into infinity and you start to feel their overlords might have had a point. With nobody holding them to their plans they do as they please.
And then yesterday Mark Jacobs told the world in an interview over at Massively OP that his company, City State Entertainment, has been working on another game for the last half of a year. It is named Colossus or Ragnarok or something… it isn’t clear… and boy was it a surprise.
If that isn’t the ultimate in feature creep, I don’t know what is. They now have two in development games with no ship date instead of just one. This is not progress.
In the interview Mark says in the same sentence that the new game both has and has not slowed down Camelot Unchained, which means that it has and he is just spinning bullshit now. He learned well from his time at EA I guess.
I thought maybe his bit of pre-Kickstart campaign self-flagellation about Warhammer Online, where he sort of took a bit of the blame on his shoulders, meant something. But it clearly didn’t. In looking back I had forgotten how, despite everything, he still clung to the Metacritic score the game got at launch, like he was holding out for a “Best Score for an Otherwise Failed Game” award at GDC or something.
So now Camelot Unchained is just fantasy Star Citizen in my eyes, minus the broken alpha demo content you can play. It is put up or shut up for them both. Until they ship something real it is all just bullshit.
The difference for me is that I am in on Star Citizen for the minimum bid, but I pledged a lot more for Camelot Unchained and I am feeling all the more the sucker for the faith I showed.
I want a refund.
City State Entertainment says on their FAQ page that they will give people refunds. Just send an email to support@citystateentertainment.com asking for one. You won’t get the full amount back. They will subtract the fees the incur giving you the refund, but at least you ought to get something back. And it is about the only message one can send that Mark won’t just hand wave away.
We shall see what I get in response. I expect them to stonewall me on the request. And I will certainly post updates here on how it goes.
I had already pledged never to Kickstart an MMO again, so I cannot really swear further on that. But this certainly hasn’t done anything to soften my view on this.
Finally, I am curious that he went to Massively OP first for this announcement. It isn’t like a gaming site with a bigger audience wouldn’t have been happy to have the scoop. Did he expect it would slip by or that he would get a more favorable response going there? The big sites will pick up the story anyway.
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The Ancient Gaming Noob 
Meh. I have no stake in this but this doesn’t sound good. Good luck with the refund.
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@Nogamara – I was willing to go with the flow for a years on this so far obviously, but this just just pushed things over the line for me.
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Definitely with you on the “no backing MMOs on Kickstarter” front. I’ve had great success backing games with pretty clearly-defined scope, like Pillars of Eternity and Bard’s Tale IV. But I’m not touching these endless pipe dream MMOs.
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After a certain point, this becomes less about feature creep and more about the inability to complete a project, with an unhealthy sprinkling of ADD. I’m not a big fan of corporate overlords, as anybody who knows me can attest, but when you start to make corporate overlords look good you’ve got a big problem.
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One of my favorite long time posts at my blog is calling out former “Rockstar” CEOs who had a single hit at some point (timing, luck) and are using that to fund vaporware dreams. Not one has had a follow up title of significance – yet somehow we treat them like creators who have had some sort of consistency (in a market driven by inconsistency). Mark, Lord British, Brad (may he rest in peace) all fall into this category. Heck, The Bioware Doctors should be on that list too.
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@Isey – Yes, I have a post in my drafts folder with the title “second acts” that was starting off to look at that sort of thing, how somebody gets a hit and we take that as an indicator that they will always make hits and have some deep insight when it isn’t as likely as we might think. It is a common thing in tech, where a startup happens to be at the right place at the right time with the right idea and makes bank… Google is a good example as they pretty much still only make money on search and ads… but never make anything that is anywhere close to as successful or successful at all ever again.
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Mark’s comments about Colossus reminded me of Daybreak’s nonsense about Everquest Landmark. Second unfinished game to complement and speed up the first unfinished, far beyond deadlines/budget title. I ain’t buying it. I’m pretty sure Daybreak also pulled the “well not everyone will be happy but SOME of our community will appreciate having two games to play.”
You only get an additional game to play if both games actually come out. I didn’t back CU but if I had this would be the point I ask for my money back.
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@Connor – I think it was Mark Jacobs spinning this as doing the backers a favor that really broke the camel’s back on this one. And I quote:
“Legally, there was nothing stopping us from working on multiple games nor any requirement to give our current Backers any discount on it.”
It was like we should all be grateful he has even deigned to keep working on the game we backed. There is, after all, no legal requirement that he do so. It irks me no end.
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Have any of that crop of kickstarted MMOs launched successfully? I didn’t fund any of them myself, but I remember there being a lot of optimism around the idea of a whole new bunch of games targeted at different niches and free of the commercial pressures of wanting to be the next WoW. Looks like a bit of commercial pressure and people telling you to just finish and launch may actually be a requirement for all these devs?
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@Shintar – I would give Project: Gorgon a pass on this, as it is pretty much up and playable and keeping a small fan base happy. I’ve not gotten around to playing it, but that is on me. It has been playable in some for since its first Kickstarter attempt.
And Shroud of the Avatar did go live, but it ended up as a shambling wreck of a game. It appeals to a very narrow demographic and has seemed on the verge of collapse for about a year now, certainly ever since Lord British officially washed his hands of the whole thing. (Though it felt like he was done with it long before then.) But it did ship.
Otherwise it is mostly just unfulfilled promises and code you wouldn’t dare call finished.
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