
A tale of indie RPG development - danso
http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,6621.0.html
======
thenomad
One of the big things they clearly did right, which when I was in the middle
of a half-decade project I did very wrong: they kept communicating.

I went dark - stopped blogging, stopped Tweeting - because I figured it was
better to spend time on making my thing (the film Death Knight Love Story)
than communicating with no deadline in sight. That was a major mistake - "out
of sight, out of mind". I'm digging myself out of that hole now, and it's
tough.

If your project's ETA starts running faster than you can catch it, DO NOT make
my mistake :)

~~~
Udo
That's an important point. I was immediately reminded of Limit Theory (
[http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/04/08/mia-limit-
theorys...](http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/04/08/mia-limit-theorys-josh-
parnell-has-gone-quiet/) ), where the creator went dark suddenly early this
year.

I think this might be a psychological hole creators can fall into. Maybe it
starts out with them not wanting to communicate, _one more time_ , that the
project will take a while. Meanwhile ongoing development has hit rock bottom
in term of perceived (or actual) speed. Then former fans start getting
anxious, or upset, or leave - and this actually _raises_ the bar you need to
pull yourself over in order to start communicating again.

~~~
TeMPOraL
It might be. I know I fall into it all too often. When the only thing you can
write is "I missed the deadline. Again.", writing a report suddenly becomes a
big psychological pain. But of course if you don't communicate, you're digging
a deeper hole for yourself, with every missed status e-mail it becomes harder
to write the next one (unless you suddenly succeded with everything, that is,
but in my experience, when you end up not writing those reports then the
problem is usually deeper than missing a date by a day or two).

Since then I learned to force myself to write something, anything, just to
keep people in the loop; it makes things easier for everyone, even if it hurts
your self-esteem.

~~~
Udo
That's exactly how I imagined it, thanks for sharing your experience.

From the fan perspective I have to say that I don't care whether the creator
missed a deadline or not. I just want to know that, somewhere, someone is
working hard on making something cool. If you share a screenshot or a video
every once in a while I'm happy pretty much indefinitely.

Of course there are always people dissing you for every conceivable move, but
I suspect the majority of backers understand the modalities of what they're
backing.

------
erikb
I'm not so sure. I think it should be possible to get something done with 2-3
people in 3 years, not 10. But before I start a serious attempt I'd certainly
want to learn basic things first, like how to make a fighting system. These
things are only hard and time consuming when you figure them out the first
time. The second or third time you are much faster.

One example I have from own experience is that one topic like that for the
program I wrote in my thesis: Took me 3-6 months depending on how you count
start and end date. But last week I had to do the same thing for another
project and it only took me half a day. I didn't need to google anything, I
didn't need to compare different variations. I knew what worked, what were the
disadvantages of the most common options, choose one in 5 seconds and got it
implemented. I didn't run into any of the things that took days to debug in
the first attempt, because I knew where the problem areas were.

Therefore I would assume that while the first attempt of an RPG for a group of
noobs might take a year or three for a prototype, a small team of experienced
developers can put together a basic prototype in a few weeks.

~~~
louhike
The problem is that a prototype is not equivalent to a real fighting system
you will put in a game. You will need a lot of testing so the game is
challenging is fun. And it must be challenging and fun during all the game
(30+ hours).

EDIT: To give an example, see a website. A small website to show some
prototype will be quite quick to do. But when you need to do a website used by
hundreds to thousands persons with a lot of use case, it gets far more
complex.

~~~
erikb
I'd still disagree but I can see your point. It's not just the basics. A real
system needs some things you can't learn from a book.

------
nallerooth
Thanks for an interesting post. I'm impressed by the fact that the developers
kept going for ten years, when their first estimate was a lot shorter.

~~~
louhike
Yes, people tend to underestimate how long it is to do a RPG. I'm currently
composing music for a RPG two of my friends are doing in their sparetime. It
is in development since 9 years. It is really hard to make it interesting and
fun to play. We hope to release a demo this year.

~~~
ido
Not just an RPG :)

~~~
louhike
Yes, it must be true. I mostly have experience with RPG.

------
torgoguys
Great read.

Awesome to read about a decade long resolve to see it through. Instead of Iron
Tower Studio, they should have named their company Iron Will Studio.

------
georgeecollins
As a professional game developer I have so much respect for people who do
things like this out of passion and achieve the miracle of actually shipping.
Finishing any game under these circumstances is an accomplishment. This is a
huge accomplishment and I hope they are very proud.

------
DanBC
Would it have been easier to include modding tools and then releasing earlier?

~~~
erikb
If you don't have anything to catch people's interest for some time there's
not much reason to add modding support. Modding support is another area of X
things you need to add, change, debug, test, adapt to feedback. And without a
game in the first place nobody will even look at your modding tools.

------
dameyawn
What game is it?!

~~~
dameyawn
Here you go, found it for you:
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/230070/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/230070/)

~~~
mattmanser
It's interesting to read the negative reviews, most of them are so incredibly
ridiculous.

Several people complain there's not enough content, but each one of them had
put 30 odd hours into the game. Almost everyone else is complaining about the
difficulty, which the steam page makes clear is a selling point of the game.

Bizarre.

~~~
ido
I've seen steam comments (in other games) complaining about the game being
boring & not having enough content made by people with 100+ hours in-game.

~~~
talmand
It seems these days comments and ratings are almost useless. I wish the demo
would make a big comeback so I can determine whether I like a game for myself.

~~~
danneu
Steam recently started no-questions-asked refunds which is often better than a
demo.

[http://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds/](http://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds/)

    
    
        > You can request a refund for nearly any purchase on Steam
        > —for any reason. Maybe your PC doesn't meet the hardware 
        > requirements; maybe you bought a game by mistake; maybe 
        > you played the title for an hour and just didn't like it.
    

Been using it successfully. Just can't have more than 2 hours played.

~~~
talmand
Yeah, I know. I'd still rather have a demo. I don't like the idea of using my
credit card as a means to demo a game I might be interested in. If a game I
wanted doesn't meet my expectations after purchase, then that's a different
matter.

