In my judgement, Tom has found the most fair approach in this tricky
situation. It all started out because he wanted to save those of us who had
waited ages for James North to finish Raceway and Montezuma's Revenge from
the crushing disappointment we faced when he decided to pack it in. That
attempted good deed has brought him no end of grief since. Everyone has had
to compromise somewhat. We, the customers, won't be getting precisely what
we originally paid for. However, Tom is going to give us a new and improved
platformer so we'll at long last end up with a good one of those which is
fully accessible. I've long felt that this genre would be spectacularly
suited to blind people and be helpful to people just getting used to
computer games as opposed to a fully 3d adventure. I'm profoundly grateful
to Tom for deciding to do this. It wasn't an easy decision for him to reach
and I know he has his own dreams he'd rather be working on. Although he has
a lot of creative latitude now, I believe he would rather work on fully 3d
games. Ultimately, I believe we'll end up with a spectacular platformer as
long as we give Tom the patience and good will that he needs and deserves.
Due to this whole episode, I don't believe we'll see any developer put a
game up for pre-ordering again. Too much distrust and damage was done to the
whole concept for it to work in this gaming community. It can work for the
sighted gaming world because the companies producing their games have the
financial backing to handle things if projects go bad on them. For us, we're
just too much at the mercy of the personal life circumstances of our
developers. That's a sad thing because it could have helped established
developers finance better assets such as sound effects and music to put in
to their final products. I've just begun working on an accessible game which
I believe will take me something like four years to create. I'm engaged to
be married in around a year's time to a wonderful woman I've had the good
fortune to find. Anticipating tougher economics after we're married, I
decided to purchase royalty-free music while I still have my own source of
income. That way, she's not going to have to sink any of her income into
what is essentially my dream. In total, I've spent a little under $400 on
the music. During my last attempt to create a game, I spent around the same
on the SFX kit from Sound Ideas. That has around 20000 sounds I can legally
use. Altogether then, I've spent around $800 on my dream of creating an
accessible game. It helps a lot that I'm currently single and don't have
other financial responsabilities. Most developers aren't in my somewhat
unique circumstances. Unless I ultimately succeed in creating the game, I'll
never see a dime of that investment.
What happened to Tom was a stroke of tremendous bad fortune which has had
repercussions for everyone connected with accessible games. I believe that
it has lowered the sense of trust and solidarity in the community as a
whole. It has put everyone more on a business footing but somewhat reduced
the overall feeling of community developers could once have enjoyed. This is
ultimately a good thing as we'll see a lot less hopes being dashed due to
developer burn-out in the future. However, new developers may find
enthusiasm for their ideas somewhat more lacking. Less attempts at creation
mean less successes as well as less failures. This community can't afford to
lose any more game developers for any reason. Games take too long to create
and we don't have that many who are known to be working on new games. That's
also a sad part of the fallout from this whole episode. Developers are
likely to be a lot more careful about what information they release than
they were before all this happened. This means less information for Audyssey
issues and less community discussion of fresh ideas that are actually being
worked on. Dry spells will seem a whole lot longer due to this.
As members of this community, we likely don't have the ability to
financially support new game developers other than to purchase their games
once created. However, there's a whole lot that we can do to support
developers who we already know about and encourage new people to take a
crack at making accessible games. We can be patient and offer moral support
while a developer works on a project. An encouraging email can count for a
whole lot when you're slogging through the long dull aspects of creating
your masterpiece. It makes such a nice change from "When's the game going to
be ready?" When we see evidence that people are pirating games, we should
take that evidence to the developer so they can take countermeasures. We can
also be ambassadors to people about accessible games and help spread word
about the games which are out there. Over the past while, I believe I've
noticed a number of new members. That's a good indication that we're at last
moving forward as a community. We also have at least one new developer
working on a project that I know I'm going to love. A sound-based rpg is
certainly going to go down my gullet nicely. It's Thanksgiving Day here in
Canada. A very appropriate time to say a public "thank you" to Tom and all
other developers who are working away. Games are a very powerful art form
and you bring that splendidly to a group of people who otherwise would once
again be stuck on the sidelines. I salute you all and hope one day to add my
contribution to your own.
Michael Feir
Author of Personal Power:
How Accessible Computers Can Enhance Personal Life For Blind People
2006-2008
www.blind-planet.com/content/personal-power
A Life of Word and Sound
2003-2007
http://www.blind-planet.com/content/life-word-and-sound
Creator and former editor of Audyssey Magazine
1996-2004
Check out my blog at:
www.michaelfeir.blogspot.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "dark" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Gamers Discussion list" <gamers@audyssey.org>
Sent: Sunday, October 12, 2008 6:23 AM
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] To the developers of Montezuma's Revenge
Hi Jason.
As I wasn't around at that point, i can't comment on the preorders to
James north of Alchemy games. but as someone who actually payed for a
preorder of thom's game, hestarted taking preorders on the basis that the
game would be released officially a month afterwards.
Sinse I know a lot of accessible game devs get absolutely swamped with
orders which they then have a huuuuuuge time filling once a game gets
released, preorders, ---- so long as they're not massively before the
release date, actually make sense as a congestion fixer.
In thom's case as well, sinse the demo of the full game would only allow
non-paying customers to play one level, it was also a good way of getting
public betas with more levels (but not the complete amount), play tested
before hand.
for a while it was literally a sense of one beta a week, each with one or
two extra levels.
this also would've prevented a huge amount of bug issues with the levels
not available in the demo coming up on other people's computers after
buying the game.
I really do think this was just a case of severely bad luck, ---- not just
in that thom couldn't release the game he was planning to, but in that it
happened at such an unfortunate moment.
I however deffinately agree with the statement that however good the
finished new version of the game is, it would be rather nice for people
who paid to be able to play the old levels which thom already got
finished, ---- hence my suggestion of an expantion pack.
that way people would get at least %50 (going on number of levels), of the
thing they paid for, pluss a lot more new game content as well, and thom's
work wouldn't be waisted.
Beware the Grue!
dark.
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