How much time for how many people do you think $275k pays for? That’s not a “smashing success” by any measure; it’s barely getting by for a team of two or three for a couple years, and a team of two or three can’t make an MMO, even an indie MMO. They were a team of 35, now they’re a team of 10, and the game had been aiming for a 2023 launch. This is a multi-million dollar project, as are a lot of indie games.
Did you mean to send that to the Might and Delight team? I definitely agree, and I’ll co-sign. Probably won’t help them much at this point, though. Anyway, we’re definitely on the same page that this was a massive management failure.
Every video game project is a big risk. Arguably any MMO is a huge risk. I don’t know enough about M&D’s revenue from past projects (of which they have many) or their savings or outside funding sources to know how wisely they gambled on this one. But that they took a risk goes without saying, and that it didn’t turn out how they’d hoped is obvious from the recent announcement.
I was reacting to you saying that a typical indie studio would consider $300k and a decent EA launch as some kind of wild success. That wouldn’t pay for (to just look at recent examples) a Solar Ash, Unsighted, Artful Escape, even Unpacking. So who are these indie studios that are celebrating having 2/3rds of a million dollars to survive on for two or three years?
Oh, I see where the confusion is. I’m saying that getting 10x what you asked for on Kickstarter and then racking up good reviews immediately should be a massive success for an indie game. If it’s not, you’re doing it wrong.
The two years of work before early access, 35 staff, and an estimated 2 more years to come is the management issue. Obviously they needed more money than that. Well, I say “obviously,” but apparently it wasn’t obvious to them.
They’re blaming “the launch,” which is ridiculous. The launch was a home run. The planning was a strikeout. Baseball!
Yeah, I don’t see the launch as necessarily a home run, and I can’t judge if their expectations were unrealistic without knowing a whole lot of inside information that neither of us knows.
Incidentally, I also don’t know their strategy with the kickstarter goal, but obviously if they had just barely passed their goal it would have funded a pitch deck to present to a publisher, not a game. I bet their rosy scenario was about $1mil and getting less than that meant leaning on other funding including the EA, all of which probably came up significantly short.
I don’t disagree that one very plausible explanation is that they were irresponsible with their project plan, but we can’t say that for sure, and nothing in their numbers says, “This should have been a success.”
In happier news, I purchased the soundtrack through Steam and the 3 tracks I’ve listened to are great
An added bonus: the soundtrack includes MP3, FLAC, and WAV versions