Hype shrouded in mystery

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MusicallyInspired
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Re: Hype shrouded in mystery

#51 Post by MusicallyInspired » Fri Aug 15, 2008 3:34 am

I'll have a vanilla...

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Re: Hype shrouded in mystery

#52 Post by Tehseen » Fri Aug 15, 2008 3:37 am

Tehseen wrote:
MusicallyInspired wrote:I told you what I wrote and it was the honest truth. If you don't believe me I don't care.
whatever, i don't care either. I'm here for AGDI not for some ill-mannered fool.
i think i have said too much . its not that you win or something , its just its not my thing to insult anyone and i was not feeling good about it.

I'm Sorry MusicallyInspired.

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Re: Hype shrouded in mystery

#53 Post by MusicallyInspired » Fri Aug 15, 2008 3:42 am

No problem. Have a milkshake!

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Re: Hype shrouded in mystery

#54 Post by Brainiac » Fri Aug 15, 2008 3:53 am

I'll have a few of my usual apple juice shots, if you please. :lol

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Re: Hype shrouded in mystery

#55 Post by christl13999 » Fri Aug 15, 2008 4:12 am

If've readed this threat and it's really harsh how people react on simple normal questions.
Poor Wayninja...

I was really exited when I saw the site change after all those years.
But now...

Without a realease date, it was a very unprofessional move.
That now people ask questions is logical. And that they get frustated by no answer, too.
Only a miniority of them will post here in the forum, and they shouldn't get shouted at.

It would help if you put something on the frontpage like "Released, when it's done.", but I wish it would read "Coming this Fall"...

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Re: Hype shrouded in mystery

#56 Post by wayninja » Fri Aug 15, 2008 4:18 am

Meh. It doesn't matter to me. There are hardcore fanboys in any forum that freak out and over react when anything disturbs their perfect sycophantic world.

It's funny that I'm accused of being a broken record... when those type of statement far outnumber and outpage my questions (which was pretty much answered by devs, mind you). "Why do you keep asking!?!" They moan. "Why can't you accept things as they are!" they whine no matter what has been asked, answered and accepted long ago.

For some people, there is simply no right way to ask a question.

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Re: Hype shrouded in mystery

#57 Post by Tye » Fri Aug 15, 2008 4:29 am

christl13999 wrote:If've readed this threat and it's really harsh how people react on simple normal questions.
Poor Wayninja...

I was really exited when I saw the site change after all those years.
But now...

Without a realease date, it was a very unprofessional move.
That now people ask questions is logical. And that they get frustated by no answer, too.
Only a miniority of them will post here in the forum, and they shouldn't get shouted at.

It would help if you put something on the frontpage like "Released, when it's done.", but I wish it would read "Coming this Fall"...
I would agree that people have been far too harsh on Wayninja. And I believe that fellow forum members could have responded in a more positive (and therefor productive) manner.

As for it being an unprofessional move, I would have to say that that's very debatable. I don't agree, but it all comes down to what you define as "Professional". I think that AGDI has handled this very delicately. If they were to put "Coming this Summer" It would cause a negative fan impact if it were to be released this Fall. At this very moment, Fall is approaching, and while the game itself is ready, they may not be ready to release it until then.

There are no specifics that AGDI can give us right now, just as they have already told us. They have a release date in mind, but to give that to the general public could easily create a taboo if anything was to go wrong.

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Re: Hype shrouded in mystery

#58 Post by christl13999 » Fri Aug 15, 2008 4:35 am

@ wayninja
Yes, that's exactly what I thought, too.
But I was afraid too write it...

Hope we don't get beaten up by them now...

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Re: Hype shrouded in mystery

#59 Post by christl13999 » Fri Aug 15, 2008 4:42 am

But it's unprofessional...
It frustates and confuses people. People who know the project less,
people who don't know the project at all more.

Besides the whole website is down, which means no King's Quest 1, no King's Quest 2+
and no info about the company...

And this situation can last to an undefined limit of time...

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Re: Hype shrouded in mystery

#60 Post by oxygen1234 » Fri Aug 15, 2008 4:51 am

It seems to me that this is pretty standard in the video game industry. All too often release dates get pushed back and people get angry. It is much safer to just not release anything until a certain degree of certainty is reached internally.

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Re: Hype shrouded in mystery

#61 Post by Tye » Fri Aug 15, 2008 4:52 am

Again, that depends on your definition of "Professional".

And I'm sure there's a reason for everything. Only patience through time will be rewarding. ;)

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Re: Hype shrouded in mystery

#62 Post by wayninja » Fri Aug 15, 2008 4:57 am

Actually, that was the one bit that I found out with this thread that I found most interesting. They have not decided if a release date will be give at all.

I also want to point out that it's not really fair to compare this project to 'the industry'. Not to take anything away from AGDI's professionalism, and I know they've released a commercial game before, but this project is just that. I'm sure the lack of monetary compensation influences dates and decisions far more than a similar company being paid to produce a game.

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Re: Hype shrouded in mystery

#63 Post by oxygen1234 » Fri Aug 15, 2008 5:19 am

wayninja wrote:Actually, that was the one bit that I found out with this thread that I found most interesting. They have not decided if a release date will be give at all.
I don't see much motivation for them to give a date. Because they are doing it for free, they don't have anyone they need to answer to. No shareholders, financial plans or customers to take into consideration. If they give a date, there is not much benefit for them, but there is the risk of not making the date. I would not be surprised to see it released without any notice given.
wayninja wrote:I also want to point out that it's not really fair to compare this project to 'the industry'. Not to take anything away from AGDI's professionalism, and I know they've released a commercial game before, but this project is just that. I'm sure the lack of monetary compensation influences dates and decisions far more than a similar company being paid to produce a game.
Even some companies that are doing this for profit are reluctant to commit to dates until the last moment possible lest they miss them. So, again, no surprise that it should happen here from what I've observed.
8o

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Re: Hype shrouded in mystery

#64 Post by Blackthorne519 » Fri Aug 15, 2008 5:23 am

No, it's not that I'm sycophantic, but I'm supportive of my fellow game developers who donate their time (and often money) to create these free products as a labour of love.

It's one thing to ask for a release date; it's another to levee charges of "unprofessionalism" against a group of people who are nothing BUT professional. I'll express my distate for that kind of behavior with as much zeal as I have for playing and remaking these games.

Bt

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Re: Hype shrouded in mystery

#65 Post by wayninja » Fri Aug 15, 2008 5:32 am

oxygen1234 wrote:I don't see much motivation for them to give a date. Because they are doing it for free, they don't have anyone they need to answer to. No shareholders, financial plans or customers to take into consideration. If they give a date, there is not much benefit for them, but there is the risk of not making the date. I would not be surprised to see it released without any notice given.
True, but that does work both ways. While they have nothing to gain, they also really don't have anything to lose. You could argue that you risk the enmity of those following the project, but again you also could be rewarded with their adoration.
oxygen1234 wrote:Even some companies that are doing this for profit are reluctant to commit to dates until the last moment possible lest they miss them. So, again, no surprise that it should happen here from what I've observed.
8o
Sure, it's not often that companies are willing to commit to a release date until development is near completion. And even then those dates are missed. However it's unheard of for a company to release a game without ever announcing a date beforehand. But again, it's not apples to apples.

What my biggest confusion was when starting this thread is that as far as I can tell, the game is complete. I haven't really heard confirmation one way or another, but there are hints that the game is done and only tertiary goals are being worked on in preparation for release. If this is true, which again I don't know if it is, it seems strange that a more narrow timeframe hasn't been given. Clearly I don't have the full picture, however, which is what questions are for... :p

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Re: Hype shrouded in mystery

#66 Post by christl13999 » Fri Aug 15, 2008 5:48 am

But it seemed to me that the new website should look professional and Himalaya Studios is a company.
So let's say it was not unprofessional, but it was a bad move to "hype" without a release date none the less.

I mean the whole website is offline without apparent reason for an unlimited amout of time.
For example all links from wikipedia or google about your King's Quest games go to a random "Not Found"-Page.

The new startpage gives no info of the actual project, not even a short description. So new people are confused about the project. And people like me wo check this website every 2 months since 7 years, are looking for the release date on the website, but are frustated that they have to look as usual at the forums.

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Re: Hype shrouded in mystery

#67 Post by oxygen1234 » Fri Aug 15, 2008 5:50 am

wayninja wrote:True, but that does work both ways. While they have nothing to gain, they also really don't have anything to lose. You could argue that you risk the enmity of those following the project, but again you also could be rewarded with their adoration.
I don't see how they would get admiration just by publishing a date and sticking to it. It doesn't seem like it matters much to me. So, I disagree; they have more to lose than to gain.
What my biggest confusion was when starting this thread is that as far as I can tell, the game is complete. I haven't really heard confirmation one way or another, but there are hints that the game is done and only tertiary goals are being worked on in preparation for release. If this is true, which again I don't know if it is, it seems strange that a more narrow timeframe hasn't been given. Clearly I don't have the full picture, however, which is what questions are for... :p
Tertiary for you perhaps. Evidently the website and everything else is just as important to them as the game itself, so they will take their time to get it right.


My prediction is Aug 29th btw. Just a shot in the dark.

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Re: Hype shrouded in mystery

#68 Post by wayninja » Fri Aug 15, 2008 6:03 am

oxygen1234 wrote:I don't see how they would get admiration just by publishing a date and sticking to it. It doesn't seem like it matters much to me. So, I disagree; they have more to lose than to gain.
By that logic, I don't see how they would gain enmity by publishing a date and not sticking to it, considering it's a free project. But we can disagree as long as we understand each other's postion. The bottom line is that no money is at stake. So they cannot lose more than 'feelings'. You assign whatever value to that you want.


oxygen1234 wrote:Tertiary for you perhaps. Evidently the website and everything else is just as important to them as the game itself, so they will take their time to get it right.


My prediction is Aug 29th btw. Just a shot in the dark.
Well, what's most important? The game, right? Without the game the website and forums are basically meaningless. So it's at least secondary. But I know they will do whatever they feel is right and important. I never thought or said otherwise.

Aug 29th is a good guess I think if you are using the progression of the courses as a meter.

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Re: Hype shrouded in mystery

#69 Post by Sierra-X » Fri Aug 15, 2008 7:18 am

christl13999 wrote:But it seemed to me that the new website should look professional and Himalaya Studios is a company.
So let's say it was not unprofessional, but it was a bad move to "hype" without a release date none the less.
Just today, Warner Bros. announced that they were not going to release the next Harry Potter movie on November 21 of this year, but instead were pushing it to July of next year. And that's a pretty heavily hyped movie. You think fans weren't angry?

This is similar, but on a smaller scale. If they announce a date and miss it, the fans get upset. If they announce a date and push that date back, fans get upset. If they just wait and announce a finalized date as close as they can while knowing they're going to make that date (which is the plan, from what I've gathered from reading the forum), everyone walks away happy, except for the *very* vocal minority. You can't please everyone.

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Re: Hype shrouded in mystery

#70 Post by Erpy » Fri Aug 15, 2008 7:41 am

I see this threat being pretty heated in a short period of time.

To the regulars...let's give the newer folks a bit of leeway. We all know that these arguments have popped up ad nauseum, but there's no way for them to know.

To Wayninja...trust me, you definitely gain enmity by announcing a date and not sticking to it. We've experienced this over the course of the game's development many times. People do get disappointed when we promise a release date/release year and can't stick to it. People do take predictions serious enough to feel let down when we can't make it. Experience has told us that "more to lose than to gain" is definitely true here. Whether the stuff that's left to do is primary, secondary, tertiary or tararaboomziary...it's stuff that has to be out of the way before we can go through with the release. Let's say the game is done and the site isn't. Does that mean we should just upload the game, post a link in the forum and make that the official release while the site remains work in progress? I can't see that as making a good impression.

We have been working with timeframes, but we haven't made them public in order to avoid causing disappointment if those timeframes weren't accurate.

To Christl13999: we have been working with private deadlines and timeframes ever since the buzz started, but things took longer than initially planned. Had we set a public release date at the start of it, it certainly would have been overshot and it would have probably resulted in negative reactions. We never intended to "take things down" for an undeterminable amount of time...we had a clear view of what exactly was left to be done all along, but it took longer than we predicted it'd take to be done. As far as announcements went, we've been erring on the side of caution.

Yes, KQ1VGA and KQ2VGA are offline right now, but that was a concious decision. Even the pre-release buzz has already attracted new people here and we didn't want potential newcomers to download games that would be outdated in a matter of months. When the main site goes up again and the game's available for download, newcomers who don't have the first two games yet will at least see a notification that the games are undergoing tweaking and that they should check the site regularly in the near future. It's true links to the game pages themselves no longer work, but I'm afraid any overhaul in the website (which has been unchanged for years) would have resulted in that. We recommend people to link to the main page in order to avoid that. True, the main site gives no info about the project itself, but the journals definitely do. Well, except for a release date, which we've ommitted for the reasons I've already explained.

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Re: Hype shrouded in mystery

#71 Post by Angelus3K » Fri Aug 15, 2008 9:05 am

+1 what Erpy said.

We're not giving a release date just to be cool, or to create hype or anything like that. Its purely for you guys benefit and obviously ours to that we don't dissapoint anyone by missing a release date.

Yes the game is in a playable state but there are still things being tweaked all the time while we prepare the website and things behind the scenes for the launch.

Be assured that everyone on the team is giving 100% as they always have to get this game out to you guys. Everyone on the team has sacrificed their personal time to do this for you guys and for themselves.

All they're asking is for a little patience. You guys know this game is gonna rock your socks so it'll be well worth the wait.

I think regulars need to chill but equally new people should search existing threads for questions that have been answered many times already.

This community wasn't built on hostilty so lets not let it go that way now.

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Re: Hype shrouded in mystery

#72 Post by Anonymous Game Creator 2 » Fri Aug 15, 2008 9:24 am

Some food for though: John Carmack of iD Software is the person who originally coined the phrase "When it's done." And he's hardly what you'd call unprofessional.

When the game's out, all this nonsense will sink to the bottom of the forum and will become totally moot. The professionalism will show in the game and in the final website, and not in some transitional stage where people are eager to play the game. Everyone needs to cool it. As we've said, it'll be done SOON. ;)

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Re: Hype shrouded in mystery

#73 Post by Kloreep » Fri Aug 15, 2008 11:22 am

I'd just like to say: wayninja, you are indeed hitting your head against a brick wall if you think you might get a release date out of AGDI. :) But everyone else: no one's forcing you to watch.

Anyhow, a strawberry milkshake sounds good for me.

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Re: Hype shrouded in mystery

#74 Post by darkgamorck » Fri Aug 15, 2008 11:40 am

I think what AGDI doesn't realize is this: Some of us have been following this project for eight years. Some of us have been salivating for it. The fact that I've come hear to check out the dev journals/updates once a week like clockwork since this project started is enough to prove that. Those of you pointing to movies and saying "but but teaser trailers" are missing the big picture. Show me one movie that has released teaser trailers over the course of eight years and the comparison will stand. Betcha can't though.

So after eight years, we get confirmation through various forum posts from the devs that the game is done. Done. Done. Done. After eight years of waiting for it, we are finally to be rewarded.... oh wait. Now we have to wait on the new website. Whats that? Oh the other games are gone now too because AGDI decided now was a perfect time to go ahead and update them despite the fact that they still haven't released QFG2. Oh wait, there is a manual in the works as well. Oh and if your order a copy of Al Emmo now.... you can get the poster we are working on! (But apparently haven't finished yet as I've received no notice of shipping since placing my order).

So I've said it before, and I'll say it again: You have finished and yet you all seem keen on dragging this out. Having a basic website was fine and dandy for your earlier two free games, so why not for this one as well? Manuals? Those are for sissies. Besides we've all played the original game before, or we wouldn't be here. While I'm sure the manual will rock on many levels, it is something I have no intention of actually reading. I just want to play the damn game.

So to sum it up: Eight years of commitment and fanboism have now been rewarded with.... oh... nothing. Just the torturous knowledge that the holy grail of gaming is finished and sitting on a server somewhere while a bunch of other somewhat-related, non-required filler items are being completed. No offense to Eriq of course - his work is clearly awesome - but that doesn't change the fact I view trying to market a freely obtained game as a waste of time.

What really kills me the most is that after eight years - the best description of a release date we can get is "Coming Soon". Well shit, that's quite the update. That could actually mean another 6 months or another year. That's pretty much the same status that has been applied to the game since it went into beta testing. Couldn't you guys at least give us a target month? Surely that provides enough leeway in which to operate. Especially given the fact that the game is done. Done. Done. Done.

Sorry for the rant. I just felt that I could add to wayninja's extremely nice and tolerant posting style with a bit of a rant on the subject.

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Re: Hype shrouded in mystery

#75 Post by Angelus3K » Fri Aug 15, 2008 11:47 am

This is a free game, the AGDs don't owe anybody anything, if you knew the amount of work they have done to get this game to the amazing quality it is, you'd be ashamed of what you've said.

I think the team have made themselves quite clear on the status of the game and it's release so I see no further reason to continue demotivating them.

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