Industry Lamentations

I was just doing a quick update on my upcoming games list (here's hoping the Shadow of the Colossus remake doesn't suck), and ... well, there wasn't much to update.

It feels like most of my list has been shifting from "releasing this year" to "releasing next year," over the past several years.

  • A.N.N.E. looked like a cute, little game on Kickstarter in May of 2013. The campaign page still estimates delivery in March of 2014. Their December 31st update says "2018 will be the year."
  • I backed Bloodstained on Kickstarter in September of 2015. As of a couple weeks ago, "No official release date beyond '2018' yet."
  • Chasm, like A.N.N.E., looked like a fun little Kickstarter in May of 2013. Campaign page says estimated delivery in May of 2014. Their current estimate is "TBD."
  • I rarely spend time on Early Access games, but CrossCode had a good demo and hooked me ... in November of 2015. Their last release-date estimate, from May of last year, targeted Early 2018.
  • Factorio similarly wowed me with its pre-release demo. That was in November of 2014. Their roadmap looks like it's close to completion, but there doesn't seem to be a formal release date estimate.
  • Indivisible had a pretty cool demo while it was up on Indiegogo, in December of 2016. "Indivisible will be released in 2018."
  • Even in the initial May, 2014 Indiegogo campaign, Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn seemed like a bit of a joke. The campaign's last update, in December of 2016, said "we're 99% there."
  • I liked the look and description of Timespinner in their Kickstarter campaign. That was in August of 2014. As of September: "For awhile now I've said that I hope to release in 2017 and it's looking like that's less likely to happen."

Game development is hard; it is known. And scheduling things is also pretty hard. Even the industry's heavy-hitters screw this pooch with some frequency. But ... come on, really guys?

It feels weird to praise Yooka-Laylee for anything, but at least those industry vets knew how to schedule themselves; they only had 2 years from Kickstarter (May, 2015) to release (April, 2017). And to be fair, Bloodstained and Indivisible aren't doing all that bad, either -- projects which are similarly staffed by game development veterans.

I hope that these Kickstarter indies, and anyone looking to follow in their footsteps, have come to understand the precarious position of years-long hype periods. Games like Chasm and Timespinner looked fresh and exciting when they were announced, but now their community interest is all but gone. Factorio's mechanics were brilliant, when it was new; now its competitors have had years to copy and iterate on its ideas. Several of these games have even had to change their targeted platforms, the Wii U having come and gone.

And if a game in development for three, four, or even five years is even slightly underwhelming, well... may Gunpei have mercy on the developers' Twitter accounts.

For my part, these release-date fails (especially A.N.N.E. and Chasm) have taught me to be much, much more discerning about what I crowdfund. Which, for the sake of nascent developers and their ideas, is kind of a shame.