They know what we are saying! They have spies EVERYWHERE ! ! ! Best not write ANYTHING! ! !
...
Not gonna happen... So my thoughts... Blahhhhed all over the page...
The issue of Amber and Andrew leaving again... As they were writers... I thought they would just be contracted to write SoD. Once it was done... Uhm... It was done? It would be like continuing to pay the script writers of a film, after the film has been released... What function could they serve? (Andrew has few functions left...)
...
I have no idea how these things work. As I said from my previous post, I do simply believe they just moved on as they said in their departing posts.
I am of an opinion that SoD was a great piece of work (Avoiding going into spoilers, it had a mummy, 5 minutes in, on the first dungeon... I literally went into hysteria mode thereafter...) I really enjoyed it... (Not even done all the quests or gained all the steam achievements yet (doing a steam achievement collection playthrough at present on the new comp.)
I understand others had a different opinion to me. That is fine. But I don't believe you can make a huge presumption that people were told to walk because of an assumed poor reception of the game.
Also to say that Trent is giving a lot of spin in his posts... The man cannot talk about his projects for lots of reasons from just plain legals, to the possibility that some may not come to fruition and worse suddenly put an expectation on the company's shoulders that it just does not need. So... When he talks, he has to be vague and walk around the houses to get to a point. Spin, in the british context of the word, is to portray bad news in a good light. I don't believe that is happening here.
...
It was nice hearing from the big guy though... I wonder where Phil is...
I didn't intend my post to sound like spin, but I did write it with an awareness that it would likely be closely scrutinized. The delay in posting was purely driven by my re-vising the content of the update quite a few times.
I try to be straightforward and state things clearly. I also don't dwell on the negative. I look to the future with an awareness of the past, but with optimism and a will to improve. The decision to lay people off was a very hard call to make, but I am confident it will allow us to succeed going forward. I am excited about the future. We've made some great changes and we've empowered a great leadership group.
With regards to "Project Beartrap", that died a long time ago. We tried to do a free to play concept and we just didn't have the will to embrace the micro-transaction economic model. Something about optimizing multiple compulsion loops just made us feel dead inside. We made the call to kill Beartrap in 2015.
2) As sad as it is to see Beamdog team members go, I get that writers like Amber and Andrew would be let go at this point. The game is written and shipped. If David Gaider has decided that he wants to bring in new writing staff (for whatever reason), it makes sense that their positions end.
Foley and Scott (... Scott Foley?) have both said multiple times that it was their choice to leave, rather than having been let go. I agree the timing's incredibly suspicious, but there's no reason not to take them at their word, especially since the end result is the same any way you slice it, Gaider's already put together his new team.
My mistake. I conflated their departures with the layoffs.
I was surprised when I saw that Beamdog was canceling their GenCon appearance this year. I figured, even if Amber had left, that someone from Beamdog would attend the largest gaming convention on the continent, especially right after dropping their biggest product release yet. I guess they decided it wasn't worth it - or that they'd just end up re-hashing the Minsc & Mizhena issues all over again.
Beamdog not attending GenCon and then Dee's departure gave me "a bad feeling about this." It made me concerned for the company and the future of IE community. Maybe I'm wrong about that. I hope I am.
Beamdog has breathed new life into the IE games, and I want them to bring us more IE (or IE-inspired) games in the future.
Beamdog not attending GenCon and then Dee's departure gave me "a bad feeling about this." It made me concerned for the company and the future of IE community. Maybe I'm wrong about that. I hope I am.
I know the feeling. I used to be optimistic about Beamdog's future; then I was forgiving; then I was despairing. Now I don't care.
The Gencon decision was based on a few things. 1) Amber was the key organizer on our side. With her leaving there were a lot of questions an a shortage of staff to work any booth 2) We had planned to sell the Collector's Edition at Gencon. With the Production delays this was not possible. 3) We are pushing back our next release, which we had planned on announcing at Gencon. With the delay, we put off the announcement. With two main drivers for attending falling through, we made the call it wasn't a good way to spend our time.
*Anduin slightly awed that Trent posted twice after his spies are watching us post...*
I cannot name one company that has the director talk direct to the customers over it's employment strategy and his feelings about it. This is openness on a whole new level.
On the Gencon thing... Announcement of next release?!?
...
By Bhaal! I am getting excited again, but have no tangible reason to be! I think it is fair for fans to feel disappointed that Beamdog won't be at Gencon. It is where you get the best, juiciest information!
Just a thought: my pals used to play BG back in the 90ies with excitement and were well informed about computer gaming and all. We then grew up, focus shifted, jobs, kids, houses, ... - many of us still play games when they find time, but we don't read magazines, blogs, websites etc about gaming, we just play what falls on our tables or sneaks into our attention by chance, be it something new or something old, it does not matter that much.
When I met some old friends, last year, I told them about the EEs and that I'm still playing that game - none! of them had heard about it before, some were immediately interested and bought it, some found time to play it and even beat it (with a time budget of few hours a week that's good . But as said, none of them had noticed the EEs of one of their favourite games if I hadn't told them. So I think there is potential in marketing, but your nostalgia audience may not necessarily be where you'd expect them to be. Hard to find them, maybe by using social networks and sharing campaigns for some reward?
I'd rather they push it back and get it right. I'm happy to hear that, in all honesty! I wish No Man's Sky had pushed their release back a couple months tbqh (and I'm way happier with that game than a lot of people seem to be lmao)
It gives me faith in Beamdog and @TrentOster to know they and he are willing to make sure the end result is something they can be proud of and we can be excited about!
I don't think it's really fair to speculate on specific individuals leaving or being laid off, unless they are willing to talk about it
With regards to activity, I think it's pretty natural for an increase communication from devs in and around the release of new stuff, and a reduction when projects are still in the works. The same way as activity on these forums spikes around announcements, or releases of new games. If you dont have anything to talk about, you just end up with a bunch of Soon™ announcements. Having said that, it's good for threads like this to appear once in awhile of devs to say "yes were still here and doing stuff"
I'd rather they push it back and get it right. I'm happy to hear that, in all honesty!
I agree with the sentiment. Really I do. But at this point I'll also say ID:EE patch has been pushed so far back it's fallen off the cliff, into the ocean, drowned and has been eaten by T'leth.
Absolutely. Maybe burning money to hAve adverts in baby magazines is way to go ... Desperate? kids overkill? Need an escape? Your friends from the past are still around to visit in faerûn* - enhanced and alive! * Just avoid aerie, she's giving you another bundle of joy ...
I'd rather they push it back and get it right. I'm happy to hear that, in all honesty!
I agree with the sentiment. Really I do. But at this point I'll also say ID:EE patch has been pushed so far back it's fallen off the cliff, into the ocean, drowned and has been eaten by T'leth.
I think they are waiting to get all the 2.x patches finalized. IWDee seems to be their most ppolished product and waiting to get all the kinks out by seeing what problems crop out in the BG releases probably has something to do with that.
By the Gods, I applaud the decision to abandon the F2P/P2W model. It's an instant "nope" when I browse for apps. Doesn't matter what it is. Automatic "NO". I'm older school, and I'd imagine most people into the EE's are as well. I've bought the EE's on iPad, Android, PC, and now Mac. I've bought every mission pack, voice pack, etc... I don't mind because I still got the game, those are optional and I think they add value and let me support a company I like. To have to pay simply to progress, etc... um, no. So kudos.
I also applaud the new release schedule. Make sure it's right, then release. Just communicate. "We're making progress" even, every now and again. I just hope the tablet versions come out relatively soon. I have more money to hand over
I just want to add my two cents here, as a long-time consumer of PC games and meber of gaming communities.
1) Anything a developer says will always sound like spin. They can't share most of what they are working on for legal and marketing reasons, and anything they say will be subject of the most intense scrutiny. If devs don't communicate, players call them apathetic or dismissive about the desires of the community. But conversely, any words spoken by the devs will be held up as divine law, and should the devs decide (or be forced) to change their minds, the community will crucify them for "breaking their word". Communication is often a no-win situation for a developer; no matter what they do or don't say, some faction of the community will be upset.
2) It's not only illegal, but extremely rude to discuss the reasons for termination of an employee. It's not only an invasion of privacy for the former employee, but could actually affect their future career. Not only that, it's always extremely difficult for a boss to lose a team member, whether or not that loss was voluntary. Nobody enjoys laying somebody off, and talking about it in public is just as fraught emotionally as it is legally.
3) There is no such thing as bug-free software. If you try to wait for a release until the product is absolutely bug-free, you will never have a release. Developers have families to feed, and eventually the company has to start actually trying to recoup the costs of development. The logistics of a major project release are not something you can easily alter on the fly, so there eventually comes a day when you have no choice but to push the hatchling out of the nest. It is completely impossible to anticipate and recreate every possible end-user scenario in internal testing, and open betas are not the most productive of testing environments, most of the time. Let's be honest here, most players just treat betas as early-access sneak-peeks, and even those with testing skills and good intentions still lack the ability to communicate directly with the team and iterate quickly enough to be very effective. Most of the major bugs in SoD were fixed very quickly, and none of them that I noticed really affected core gameplay much. There just comes a point where further debugging is no longer economically feasible, and you just have to drop it and pray. There will be bugs, and players will get annoyed by them, that's as certain as death and taxes. Even if there are no major, game-breaking bugs, some vocal faction of the community will treat what issues do exist as the end of the world, regardless.
4) SoD's writing was hardly sub-par. Personally, I think most of this sentiment comes from nostalgia goggles. The BG series is definitely among the best RPGs ever produced, but let's not pretend they were Shakespeare. There were always some cringy moments, transparent pop culture references, and one-dimensional characters. SoD is unique in that its narrative had to act as a bridge between two existing stories, while simultaneously providing a unique experience of its own. It chose to do this by embracing a more linear, large-scale campaign than the rest of the BG series. Some claim that this departure from the open-ended, character-driven stories of the other games was a mistake. I think it added some welcome variety to the series, allowing it to exist as its own entity with an identity that isn't diluted by trying to emulate its venerable predecessors.
When I met some old friends, last year, I told them about the EEs and that I'm still playing that game - none! of them had heard about it before, some were immediately interested and bought it, some found time to play it and even beat it (with a time budget of few hours a week that's good . But as said, none of them had noticed the EEs of one of their favourite games if I hadn't told them. So I think there is potential in marketing, but your nostalgia audience may not necessarily be where you'd expect them to be. Hard to find them, maybe by using social networks and sharing campaigns for some reward?
I myself only discovered the EE by chance when, during a break in paper writing in 2012, I felt rather nostalgic and did a Google search on Baldur's Gate.
Is the reduction of contractor expenses and LadyRhian going M.I.A. on 20th of May connected? If not, whatever happened to her, and why no new moderator has been appointed to the Roleplaying forum in her 3 months absence?
If there is an issue in any of the forums please let any of the current mods know. You can PM any of us or use the flag in the problem post.
I can't speak to LadyRhian, but on this and other forums I have been a mod for it is a volunteer basis. I do look at the role-playing forum as well as many others and I didn't see spam so moved on.
I just started a new job at my current company so I will be busy for a couple months but I will try to make more time in there, maybe try to start a game. I used to enjoy DMing in my group of friends tabletop games until we all ended up moving away. No promises, RL is tight right now but maybe I can work something in.
Yay - Beamdog is alive and kicking I'm quite amazed by the open communication from the team - awesome!
Really looking forward to the new projects Hoping for the best for Beamdog!
Oh and I'm glad the trap has been defused - I passionately hate f2p games. They're a service that's provided for as long as the provider sees fit. Also they're engineered to trick people into paying money. I'd rather pay 100$ for a good game and get a complete experience that's designed to be fun than waste my time with a f2p game!
The fact that you decided against f2p definitely speaks for you - you have my support!
I can't speak to LadyRhian, but on this and other forums I have been a mod for it is a volunteer basis.
Still, it's not like her to just up and disappear without a word to anyone for this long. Even when she was feeling sickly, she always popped in on the Castle Greyhawk adventure to let everyone know what's up. It's definitely weird, and I hope she's okay, whatever's going on.
Both her and her father were going through some health problems. All we can do is wait for her to come to the forum and tell us what happened.
Concerning the moderation of the Role Playing forum, moderators are not limited to a single section of the forum. If any problem happens contact one of us or use the report function and it will alert all of us.
With regards to "Project Beartrap", that died a long time ago. We tried to do a free to play concept and we just didn't have the will to embrace the micro-transaction economic model. Something about optimizing multiple compulsion loops just made us feel dead inside. We made the call to kill Beartrap in 2015.
Gah! I am mortified to learn that you have even considered such an abomination -- and very relieved that you have abandoned it.
Charge me $40 for an honest new game with good writing (and another $20 or two for well written DLCs). Just please don't waste your time and my time with such unholy contraptions.
Beamdog has accumulated some hard earned trust. No one here would want it go down the path of those despicable companies that are now blacklisted by their former fans.
I wouldn't even mind some good quality content, I don't need a huge new game. Even some plug in adventures (pretty much what tales of the sword coast is to be honest), official npcs, official classes, races,. I'd pay for a 3e conversion.
I wouldn't even mind some good quality content, I don't need a huge new game. Even some plug in adventures (pretty much what tales of the sword coast is to be honest), official npcs, official classes, races,.
Hey, count me in! More quality in-game content is what I've always wanted for BG1 and BG2. Not a new campaign, just more stuff to do in the amazing game worlds that are already there.
Comments
They know what we are saying! They have spies EVERYWHERE ! ! ! Best not write ANYTHING! ! !
...
Not gonna happen... So my thoughts... Blahhhhed all over the page...
The issue of Amber and Andrew leaving again... As they were writers... I thought they would just be contracted to write SoD. Once it was done... Uhm... It was done? It would be like continuing to pay the script writers of a film, after the film has been released... What function could they serve? (Andrew has few functions left...)
...
I have no idea how these things work. As I said from my previous post, I do simply believe they just moved on as they said in their departing posts.
I am of an opinion that SoD was a great piece of work (Avoiding going into spoilers, it had a mummy, 5 minutes in, on the first dungeon... I literally went into hysteria mode thereafter...) I really enjoyed it... (Not even done all the quests or gained all the steam achievements yet (doing a steam achievement collection playthrough at present on the new comp.)
I understand others had a different opinion to me. That is fine. But I don't believe you can make a huge presumption that people were told to walk because of an assumed poor reception of the game.
Also to say that Trent is giving a lot of spin in his posts... The man cannot talk about his projects for lots of reasons from just plain legals, to the possibility that some may not come to fruition and worse suddenly put an expectation on the company's shoulders that it just does not need. So... When he talks, he has to be vague and walk around the houses to get to a point. Spin, in the british context of the word, is to portray bad news in a good light. I don't believe that is happening here.
...
It was nice hearing from the big guy though... I wonder where Phil is...
I try to be straightforward and state things clearly. I also don't dwell on the negative. I look to the future with an awareness of the past, but with optimism and a will to improve. The decision to lay people off was a very hard call to make, but I am confident it will allow us to succeed going forward. I am excited about the future. We've made some great changes and we've empowered a great leadership group.
With regards to "Project Beartrap", that died a long time ago. We tried to do a free to play concept and we just didn't have the will to embrace the micro-transaction economic model. Something about optimizing multiple compulsion loops just made us feel dead inside. We made the call to kill Beartrap in 2015.
https://9to5mac.com/2016/09/01/app-store-spring-cleaning/
I was surprised when I saw that Beamdog was canceling their GenCon appearance this year. I figured, even if Amber had left, that someone from Beamdog would attend the largest gaming convention on the continent, especially right after dropping their biggest product release yet. I guess they decided it wasn't worth it - or that they'd just end up re-hashing the Minsc & Mizhena issues all over again.
Beamdog not attending GenCon and then Dee's departure gave me "a bad feeling about this." It made me concerned for the company and the future of IE community. Maybe I'm wrong about that. I hope I am.
Beamdog has breathed new life into the IE games, and I want them to bring us more IE (or IE-inspired) games in the future.
1) Amber was the key organizer on our side. With her leaving there were a lot of questions an a shortage of staff to work any booth
2) We had planned to sell the Collector's Edition at Gencon. With the Production delays this was not possible.
3) We are pushing back our next release, which we had planned on announcing at Gencon. With the delay, we put off the announcement.
With two main drivers for attending falling through, we made the call it wasn't a good way to spend our time.
I cannot name one company that has the director talk direct to the customers over it's employment strategy and his feelings about it. This is openness on a whole new level.
On the Gencon thing... Announcement of next release?!?
...
By Bhaal! I am getting excited again, but have no tangible reason to be! I think it is fair for fans to feel disappointed that Beamdog won't be at Gencon. It is where you get the best, juiciest information!
...
Time to speculate further... Ah. At the temple getting a friend resurrected. Must have been a tough battle... The friend has been reduced to a single bleached femur!
When I met some old friends, last year, I told them about the EEs and that I'm still playing that game - none! of them had heard about it before, some were immediately interested and bought it, some found time to play it and even beat it (with a time budget of few hours a week that's good
So I think there is potential in marketing, but your nostalgia audience may not necessarily be where you'd expect them to be. Hard to find them, maybe by using social networks and sharing campaigns for some reward?
It gives me faith in Beamdog and @TrentOster to know they and he are willing to make sure the end result is something they can be proud of and we can be excited about!
I don't think it's really fair to speculate on specific individuals leaving or being laid off, unless they are willing to talk about it
With regards to activity, I think it's pretty natural for an increase communication from devs in and around the release of new stuff, and a reduction when projects are still in the works. The same way as activity on these forums spikes around announcements, or releases of new games.
If you dont have anything to talk about, you just end up with a bunch of Soon™ announcements.
Having said that, it's good for threads like this to appear once in awhile of devs to say "yes were still here and doing stuff"
* Just avoid aerie, she's giving you another bundle of joy ...
I also applaud the new release schedule. Make sure it's right, then release. Just communicate. "We're making progress" even, every now and again. I just hope the tablet versions come out relatively soon. I have more money to hand over
1) Anything a developer says will always sound like spin. They can't share most of what they are working on for legal and marketing reasons, and anything they say will be subject of the most intense scrutiny. If devs don't communicate, players call them apathetic or dismissive about the desires of the community. But conversely, any words spoken by the devs will be held up as divine law, and should the devs decide (or be forced) to change their minds, the community will crucify them for "breaking their word". Communication is often a no-win situation for a developer; no matter what they do or don't say, some faction of the community will be upset.
2) It's not only illegal, but extremely rude to discuss the reasons for termination of an employee. It's not only an invasion of privacy for the former employee, but could actually affect their future career. Not only that, it's always extremely difficult for a boss to lose a team member, whether or not that loss was voluntary. Nobody enjoys laying somebody off, and talking about it in public is just as fraught emotionally as it is legally.
3) There is no such thing as bug-free software. If you try to wait for a release until the product is absolutely bug-free, you will never have a release. Developers have families to feed, and eventually the company has to start actually trying to recoup the costs of development. The logistics of a major project release are not something you can easily alter on the fly, so there eventually comes a day when you have no choice but to push the hatchling out of the nest. It is completely impossible to anticipate and recreate every possible end-user scenario in internal testing, and open betas are not the most productive of testing environments, most of the time. Let's be honest here, most players just treat betas as early-access sneak-peeks, and even those with testing skills and good intentions still lack the ability to communicate directly with the team and iterate quickly enough to be very effective. Most of the major bugs in SoD were fixed very quickly, and none of them that I noticed really affected core gameplay much. There just comes a point where further debugging is no longer economically feasible, and you just have to drop it and pray. There will be bugs, and players will get annoyed by them, that's as certain as death and taxes. Even if there are no major, game-breaking bugs, some vocal faction of the community will treat what issues do exist as the end of the world, regardless.
4) SoD's writing was hardly sub-par. Personally, I think most of this sentiment comes from nostalgia goggles. The BG series is definitely among the best RPGs ever produced, but let's not pretend they were Shakespeare. There were always some cringy moments, transparent pop culture references, and one-dimensional characters. SoD is unique in that its narrative had to act as a bridge between two existing stories, while simultaneously providing a unique experience of its own. It chose to do this by embracing a more linear, large-scale campaign than the rest of the BG series. Some claim that this departure from the open-ended, character-driven stories of the other games was a mistake. I think it added some welcome variety to the series, allowing it to exist as its own entity with an identity that isn't diluted by trying to emulate its venerable predecessors.
Is the reduction of contractor expenses and LadyRhian going M.I.A. on 20th of May connected? If not, whatever happened to her, and why no new moderator has been appointed to the Roleplaying forum in her 3 months absence?
I can't speak to LadyRhian, but on this and other forums I have been a mod for it is a volunteer basis. I do look at the role-playing forum as well as many others and I didn't see spam so moved on.
I just started a new job at my current company so I will be busy for a couple months but I will try to make more time in there, maybe try to start a game. I used to enjoy DMing in my group of friends tabletop games until we all ended up moving away. No promises, RL is tight right now but maybe I can work something in.
Really looking forward to the new projects
Oh and I'm glad the trap has been defused - I passionately hate f2p games. They're a service that's provided for as long as the provider sees fit. Also they're engineered to trick people into paying money. I'd rather pay 100$ for a good game and get a complete experience that's designed to be fun than waste my time with a f2p game!
The fact that you decided against f2p definitely speaks for you - you have my support!
Concerning the moderation of the Role Playing forum, moderators are not limited to a single section of the forum. If any problem happens contact one of us or use the report function and it will alert all of us.
Charge me $40 for an honest new game with good writing (and another $20 or two for well written DLCs). Just please don't waste your time and my time with such unholy contraptions.
Beamdog has accumulated some hard earned trust. No one here would want it go down the path of those despicable companies that are now blacklisted by their former fans.
Lots of possibilities.