Then that's what would be sold on Early Access. If the game was that bullshit, people would call them on it like they have in the past and Valve would pull it.
Greenlight is now crowdfunding. It can be a nice complement to crowdfunding efforts, but it alone will not generate crowdfunding to build the game unless you have something that can already be sold on Early Access.
If they can't launch a successful crowdfunding campaign, then they're basically shit out of luck unless they can find a publisher/investor or win the lotto to fund it, or have volunteers make it. Basically end up doing what Brad McQuaid did when Pantheon failed its Kickstarter hard, he took a large advance from what money they'd crowdfunded through his site and his developer friends bailed, and his begging for an angel investor didn't pan out. He's now got his own money invested and a bunch of volunteers (and I think like 1-2 actual paid employees) working on the game, and is making super slow progress.
Though he has the benefit of having worked on 2 major MMO's, one a success and one a failure.
Oh I remember hearing about that advance he took for himself, pissed people off royally from what I remember.
But yeah in the case of FC they have no experience with anything and no rockstar angels have come down to save them. I'm curious what 'plan' they are going to try though, haha.
According to Brax, the sheer magnitude of the announcement necessitates it be done over a long timeframe.
BRB, making more popcorn.
Introduction from the 2 new 'devs':
http://trialsofascension.com/forum/t...oduction.4826/
http://trialsofascension.com/forum/t...verybody.4827/
Mr. Maddox seems pretty legit and he appears to know and work with Mr. Sims. Should be interesting to see what develops.
Still, if the Three Stooges are planning to remain at the helm, it's difficult to imagine this working out well.
Eh? That Geoff guy is a "chief-software architect" specialising in full stack C#/.net development. In the UK he'd be on comfortably over £100k, how the heck do ToA afford someone like that or are these guys on-board as "hobby" programmers and working for ToA alongside their day jobs?
Well, don't know how in the heck they got someone like this:
but yeah. That's pretty legit. No game development experience, but his technical experience is real cred.Geoff Maddox, Chief Software Architect, Projecis
Geoff Maddox is a software and graphic design specialist. As chief software architect at Projecis, Geoff oversees internal software development including research, design and development. He specializes in C, C++, C#, ASP.NET, PHP, XML, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL, SSIS, SSAS, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, UNIX, Perl, Shell Scripting and Compiler Development.
Prior to working with Projecis, Geoff worked at Synteract, Inc. from 2003-2010, where he was a Senior Software Developer. There he managed the design and development of internal software projects, and handled research of third-party software purchased for in-house. At Synteract, Geoff also held the positions of Software Developer II, Application Developer II and Application Developer I. Prior to Synteract, Geoff completed an internship at Intel.
Geoff received his degree in Computer Science from Stanford University in 2003. He is a California native and was raised in the San Diego area. In his spare time, he enjoys working on electronics, FPGA design and woodworking. He also keeps his Xbox 360 warm much to his wife Rachelle's chagrin, and has weekly D&D meetings at his residence.
Though if you think about it, it makes sense. All of the current 'devs' say they have real jobs and don't have time for ToA. The main person now 'working' for them clearly is doing it as a hobby. Welcome to 2015, the year that completely developing an MMO is now a 'hobby'.
BAD WOLF
In separate news, you may remember that the Greedmonger public 'stress test' was originally supposed to occur on April 25th and was postponed to the following week (May 2nd) because their forums suddenly went offline for several days. Well, the forums came back, and May 2nd came and went without a word, prompting 1-2 posters to ask what happened.
Here's James Proctor's response:
Sound familiar?Like I said else where I was sick yesterday and ran into some issues with the build. We will be having some news this week though so stay tuned.
But he was a for really reals PROGRAMMER. I mean, that's the same thing, right?!?
Yeah, definitely getting a hobby vibe on all this. I dunno what Brax promised them, but I somehow doubt two guys doing all the grunt work is going to get them any closer to a functional MMO, especially if they're not full-time on this. I have a suspicion the Stooges are trying a 'just make it enough to get it up for sale on Steam' push with their cash, which as we've said before is just a charge headlong into a brick wall.
Sounds like they just outsourced work to their 'fan base' and likely guaranteed them cuts of profits instead of real money. This way they are motivated to do work for free, essentially trying to earn money from a hobby. Meanwhile the 3 stooges still sit around doing nothing like they always have.
I'm willing to bet we see another cash shop very soon to start tossing money to the ways of these starry eyed forum programmers to keep yanking them along. Essentially the people running FC are Social Engineers, which is not a good thing.
BAD WOLF