Goblinworks: the rocky road began and then a chasm opened up and swallowed Dancey

So, I received an email with Lisa Stevens' community address. It had some interesting bits this time:

1. Ryan Dancey has resigned and stepped down as CEO. He is still a shareholder. Reason for this is identified as "personal."

2. Most of the Goblinworks staff has been laid off.

3. Lisa is now acting CEO.

4. There are about 3 staff members left. The remaining PO subscriptions keep these guys employed.

5. Goblinworks is now talking with game publishers to bring the game to open enrollment. Hmmmm. I wish this said, "Goblinworks is now in talks with real game companies to license out the Pathfinder name on something that looks and plays like Pillars of Eternity." Sigh, one can dream. Also, apparently they fell 75% short of the operating budget to get this game to "open enrollment" which I will note is not the same as "completed" nor even the industry standard term used to reflect the game's phase of development (early alpha, closed beta, open beta, etc.).

Let's do some math. Assuming these three employees cost $50K annually (I am assuming wages are so-so at Goblinworks and that they are getting some sort of medical package, probably around $6-12K depending on coverage type), then maybe Goblinworks is pulling in $180K annually on PO. At $15/month that would suggest a minimum of 12,000 subscriptions active. A couple caveats: at $50K per employee that puts them at around $24/hour and I am not sure if they actually make that much, though I would hope they do that at least. They also might not actually have benefits; Goblinworks is clearly a "small employer" by Federal ACA standards so they would be exempt from the 50+employee requirement of large employers (that technically reaches that threshold next year, anyway). So it's possible that the overhead is less, or the employer splits the cost on coverage, or any number of other factors. I'm being simple and ignoring unemployment taxes, 401(k) contributions and other potential employee costs in this assessment, too...so we'll just ballpark it at around 12K. That's about what I've heard Darkfall and Mortal Online might be doing.

Of course, none of the above accounts for operating expenses, and I assume Lisa is paid out of the Paizo budget.

I wish I'd written it down, but during the first Kickstarter a few years ago I told a very optimistic friend of mine who backed it heavily that he could expect Dancey to disappear in a puff of smoke in about three years. Damn my lack of prescience at not writing that down!!!!!

It's not that I think Dancey was deliberately fleecing the Paizo crowd. But I think his MMO track record was weaker than his ability to sell it, a lesson CCP also went through with his time with EVE Online (and something that reflects much of his industry time, to be honest). With the jaded eye of one who spends far too much time watching the way the video game/MMO industry spins around on itself, Pathfinder Online has always looked like a rolling disaster....and now it's come to the brutal end. I wonder what interesting and unpleasant things he will have to say about Paizo and Goblinworks in the future.

....sigh. Look, I mock a bit, but I feel bad for the whole group. I really wish when they did that Kickstarter that no one had listened to Ryan Dancey and they had instead done what WotC is currently doing: gotten some decent licenses attached to the current revival trend for isometric RPGs, Hindsight, alas, is 20/20.

Erik may need to add this one to his Failstarter list!

A Brief Moment for Pathfinder Online

...I said I would play the free trial, and I did.

You can do the same, but I don't hate you, so I can't earnestly recommended it. Now, for a list of eleven observations about Pathfinder Online that were revealed in about two sessions of 15 minutes of game play each (the maximum time I could afford my free trial before getting annoyed and bored all at once):

1. Open quest giver does not repeat text. Could not find copy of the text to figure out what I was doing wrong.

2. I found and killed many skeletons before finding goblins. When I did find goblins there were six of them and they ganked me instantly. Unlike skeletons which I could kill multiples of before dying.

3. When the goblins killed me I didn't actually know it at first, appearing at the graveyard so quickly I was trying to figure out what happened to the fight....had I been teleported? But I was at the gravestone, so I must have died.

4. You know how in other MMOs they give you a variety of interesting queues for how long your attacks cycle, or if your target is in range? PO doesn't do that.

5. Someone forgot to remove the rod from my avatar's ass so he can run like a normal human.

6. There was an NPC titled "Starting Quest Giver" or somesuch (I deleted it already or I'd log in for the exact title) but I couldn't get him to talk.

7. The game expected me to charge out and forge my destiny. I think. I get that this is the point of the game, but I couldn't even get past the basic warrior quest to find out what was next.

8. Player introductory rules are found in a PDF at the loader screen.

9. The character animations are...ah....okay--for a budget indie title. This is a budget indie title, right?

10. The game's main problem is it is trying to compete in a dominion of space where few have succeeded, and the ones that do are massively developed monster games like WoW, Guild Wars 2, and The Elder Scrolls Online. Just playing PO made me appreciate GW2 and TESO a lot more, actually. Making a game like this that's fun is hard.

11. And finally! I can't say Pathfinder Online had much to brand it as a Golarion setting, but those goblins definitely looked like PF goblins, so kudos for that.


So....I'll keep this on the radar, and am interested in what it looks like in another year or two after it moves from "early pre-alpha" to maybe an early beta level of testing.


ONE MORE COMMENT:

I actually really wanted to be surprised by PO, as technically I am a frontline candidate for a Pathfinder MMORPG. I would love to play something with a recognizably Pathfinder experience tied to it. But I am not an EVE Online fan, and not a fan of the concept behind open-world sandbox pvp games (at least, not presented as MMOs; the concept works great in the "other open-world sandbox" genre of games which drop you on desert islands filled with zombies, pirates, dinosaurs, cannibals and murderous co-players.)

So I am sad to see that PO in its current state seems to have very little invested in the front end of the experience...I get that it may be designed to appeal to the hardcore who want no hand-holding, carebears beware and all that....but right now I wouldn't even say that the opening events are "hardcore"....they're just unpolished. Rough. There's a lot missing, and it's not just some hand-holding.

Pathfinder Online now offers $0 entry and 15 Day Free Trial

Goblinworks just announced the change in their approach to accessing Pathfinder Online. Now you can try the game out at zero cost for a 15 day trial and there is no purchase price. This is a smart move; the market is so flooded with Unity-Powered games of quality ranging from "okay" to "induces blind rage at how bad it is" that it's a good idea to demonstrate your product so people can judge it for what it is and not what it's competition looks like.

That said, I have had my reservations about Pathfinder Online, and doubt it could be worth a regular subscription price....but thanks to the 15 day trial I can find out first-hand whether these suspicions are true or not. Considering some of the awful stuff I've been trying lately, it can't possibly be any worse...right?

I'll report back once I've had an opportunity to actually play it.

You know what? Pathfinder Online may have a chance...

I've previously harped a bit on Pathfinder Online's likelihood of success. As a MMO sandbox game with a couple mil to development and a modest design team, it didn't look to me a year ago like it stood much of a chance.

But you know what? I kind of think it does now.

There's some details about it here on Massively, and a video of recent footage is out and about now:



Now, the graphics here aren't all that exciting, but they are competent. The game looks a bit better than other known Unity Engine RPGs like Ravensword: Shadowlands (which I am playing and enjoy the Ouya version of). On my first view it drew an unhealthy comparison to Dungeon Lords (if you've ever played that game you'll know what I mean...also, I'm so very very sorry for you). The character animations need work; the graphics I can accept, they look good enough, but realistic motion these days is almost a necessity, and I can't imagine there aren't developer resources out there that have mocap packages they can buy, or something....anything. Right now it has a very Vanguard sort of feel to it, something I think is tripping off alarms in those who watch this and cringe.

The thing is, when Pathfinder Online was announced it sounded (to me) very pie in the sky. But a year later this sort of game is rapidly becoming the norm, if Steam's calvacade of indie survival games is anything to go by. I think Pathfinder Online is not actually even remotely in the genre of World of Warcraft or Elder Scrolls Online...it's going to be sitting next to Rust, DazyZ and other survival/crafting group games that are springing up like flies on the triple A carcass of the gaming industry.

This sort of thing is great for the generation that loves this stuff. Personally it just means I have more free time and money to engage with other hobbies, because I really can't get into the competitive pvp-meets-crafting genre, but I really think Pathfinder Online has a chance to swing in and take the crown on this one...not to mention, its got the fantasy genre locked down here, since most crafting/competition pvp games are either very abstract or set in some sort of zombie or monster apocalypse.

The Pathfinder Online Horse Race

I've been having fun watching this one. I have no stake in it--their design goal is a big step away from the sort of game concientous "casual" carebears like me want to participate in...i.e. fantasy Eve is not a selling point for me--but I still like the concept of Pathfinder and pretty much anyone succeeding at what they attempt. I admit to being skeptical of their business model....their manpower....their goals...and even why this game is called Pathfinder, a game which bears little actual resemblance to the thing PFO is described as setting out to be. But anyway....seven days left!




One bit I find interesting is that they've announced they are using the Unity Engine to design Pathfinder Online. This is an engine which I was unfamiliar with until literally a few days ago, after buying my Nexus 7 Tablet. It turns out a lot of Android/iOS and indie games are designed using Unity (including two recent new faves of mine, Dead Trigger and Shadowgun), which is a weird sort of deal, because it seems to me its a decent enough engine to design games that need to look good on small screens with tablet-level processing power, but not so sure it's going to look as good as...say...the next generation or two of MMOs that are going to be coming out between now and the prospective 2015 release date for PFO.

Wednesday Blaaaaaaagaggghhhh! Rage: The Scorchers, Goblinworks Begs for your Money and more

This is one of those "filler" blogs to keep up with my personal quota, so no cool game articles, no controversial off-the-rails rants (unless it just happens, heh) and only a little bit of news. First off:



Rage gets "The Scorchers DLC

So id, now owned by Bethesda, has been quietly trying to get more DLC ready for release for Rage, a beautiful looking game with some very, very tight shooting mechanics strapped to the rotting skeleton of a Fallout 3 wannabe environment, with some "so-so kinda okay but not really" driving events tied to it. I downloaded it last night, but it essentially tacks on a new campaign and opens the game up for some modest open-world post-endgame continued gameplay. I somehow still haven't gotten to the end of this game, so I have no idea how that meshes, but the existence of this DLC smacks of Bethesdian influence on id, and also suggests that a future Doom 4 might look less like the conventional style of shooter that id has refined to the point where it is methodically by the numbers and may instead have a dash of Fallout and Skyrim mixed in. Hopefully more than a dash...either way, imagine a Doom 4 which provides for the open-world environment of Fallout....hmmm. It could be cool, but I admit, I'm suddenly having a hard time imagining Doom in an open world environment. Maybe Quake, yeah, but Doom....? Naaah.



Goblinworks Needs Your Money

The Goblinworks Kickstarter Round Two is still going and just under halfway through with less than half its goal of One Million Dollars. Lots of discussion about this on rpg. net, but I have to say, the more Ryan Dancey discusses the Pathfinder Online plan the less I care about it. I'm not a hardcore PvPer (despite what my wife's Rift guild thinks....they are constantly making me PvP on my Bahmi rogue to earn their guild quest goals) and in fact have found every conceivable description of the old days of Ultima Online or more recent games like EVE to be unpleasant, to say the least. Call me a carebear if you like, but unless hardcore PvP comes with hardcore consequences (i.e. when you die your character is permanently deleted and you are kicked from your account permanently) then we'll never have a game environment which can even come close to creating the sort of immersion and visceral sense of realism that I feel such an element could otherwise achieve. Then again, the hardcore PvP crowd that likes this sort of thing could care less for immersion, so I may be missing the point of what games like Pathfinder Online, Darkfall, EVE and others are trying to achieve, anyway. Which still makes me "not a part of their target demographic" despite the fact that I would love to play a Pathfinder MMO that...you know...actually felt like Pathfinder the RPG that I've enjoyed for a few years now. But what I play at the table bears not even a glimmer of similarity to what Ryan Dancey is describing in his discussion of this game.

Either way, the current MMO kickstarter keeps heaping the promise of book content for money. It seems that motivation and interest in the MMO alone is not enough to motivate donations. Still, it is about halfway there...almost...and has several weeks to go.

Resident evil 6 Campaign #2 Update

I'm playing through the Chris Redfield campaign now, and making good progress since I set the game to "casual" mode. The description of casual mode is basically, "You just want to enjoy the ride." The game suddenly got fantastically more fun and engaging without the stress. I am now remorseful that I didn't play the Leon Kennedy campaign on casual mode, because I suspect my aggravation with it would have been considerably less. Anyway, a proper review of the second campaign soon!

As an aside, RE 6 for the PC is slated for March 22nd next year. As an aside, the earlier RE game from this year, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, recently got its DLC released for PC as well, and has been showing up discounted in various areas. Despite assertions by some that it wasn't that great (expectations will influence this view) I found the game to be quite enjoyable. Then again, I rather liked the idea of playing as a squad of Umbrella mercenary black ops agents, and also expected the game to be exactly what it was: a co-op themed riff off of the Left 4 Dead subgenre. As a result, I've actually enjoyed RE:ORC more for its game play than RE6, because RE:ORC at least handles third-person action smoothly (and better on PC, I should note) than RE6 does (at least until I flipped the casual switch on).



Okay, enough ranting for Wednesday!