Just look at Phasmophobia: -built almost entirely with asset packs -reasonably priced and well conceived -after initial success they immediately hire a full time artist to start fixing/replacing models
This project has the stink of being put together by a "ideas man" who expects to pay their staff in experience and exposure to make the best new game in the genre. Which genre? Yes!
Worst thing about working there is that they never respected the contract signed, the internship one and the former employee. They owe me at least $5950 as of today. At first I was happy I could work on a game, time passed, no pay, last minute changes, focusing on non important stuff. I was naive since it was my first time in a job after college, I did my best everyday, like the rest of the staff, but sadly, things ended this way. If you want more info, I would love to give you some more insight from my perspective, but I'd prefer that to be in a private manner. I didn't talked earlier in steam or in koe discord for my fear of legal retaliation. I hope you see this comment eventually. Good video nonetheless, lots of things you said made me realize people judging the game way before launch were right.
@@LiliumOrientalis I concur. Whatever country you're in destroxdful, find the relevant government department and lodge a complaint. I've never had to go through this process myself so can't give any more advice but there is DEFINITELY someone you can contact in government.
@@Discoveryman29 We're doing what we can, but as of yesterday, the lawyer we were talking with said that there's nothing we can do, unless we demand the US company. which I don't think we can afford to. We're still trying to find what we can do, but there's limited options here. The discord closed, Max ran away to spain, and we don't think he's going to come back.
let me be clear this doesnt just apply to those working in indi games or start ups or even gaming in general but to every worker around the world regardless of industry: YOUR PAY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THEIR STABILITY! you can 100% be kind toward an employer and give them more time to pay you but that is not the standard and should never be considered as such. in case you want to try this out in real life, find your local loan shark and ask them how long they wait for their money back, or ask your supermarket if you can just pay next month...
Miss 1 paycheck, thats an honest mistake. Miss 2 paychecks in a row and your employer is jerking you around and you're never getting it. Happens far too often, especially in industries about delivering a product. Truckers experience this quite often, some buddies in construction went through it, and anyone who works for startups knows if the checks dont come the company is going under and any additional work for them is sunk-cost falacy.
Yes! Let me add that you are also not responsible for, say, the health and wellbeing of animals and people after you leave. Or anything like that where you'd feel guilty for up and leaving. You were hired for a job, not a volunteer opportunity. Don't let them string you along out of guilt at the expense of your own finances and wellbeing.
reboooted an MMO project I've been planning for about 10 years now, start of october, already replicated most of the infrastructure and internal systems of the likes of OSRS/runescape @@SkafosGnW
no really a few of the developers I've seen really fail impressively bad, genfanad is one example full of delusional management, which seems to be the root cause of many of these failed kickstarters as well @@illdeletethismusic
so, hey, fun fact: it is illegal to effectively replace a paid employee with an intern. That person that was basically a full time worker and receiving no education while doing the work of an actual employee could probably sue (I mean, good luck getting anything, pretty sure they're already broke af but it might be worth a shot). The function of an internship is to provide training to new graduates and current students, not to replace employees. Important to note that even if you are an intern, that doesn't mean that you _don't_ have labor protections.
7:23 Can I just say that I find very suspicious how only 177 backers raised over 37000$on one platform and 199 over 38000$ on the other? I seriously doubt each would give 200$…
Yea but there's been like 50 other opportunities to part fools from their money with this exact premise. I guess there's just more fools than we'd like to believe
@@RadmanTheWiseI mean, there's that little bit of an upside... Still a ton of money to go to waste - $40K is a pretty nice chunk of a house deposit in some areas
Callum back to his roots, a lovely day to be back on youtube. Always good to see you and the shadow kabal taking a closer look at stuff like this. I very much appreciate the work you guys do.
I've been a dev for over 20 years (now in management, but still also in the trenches). I technically have a couple drives that could hold a 500GB checkout, but if someone suggested I'd have to do that to work on any given component of a large project, all the deep breaths in the world likely couldn't prevent me from losing my shit.
Yeah I set a rule for my team that no routine workflow should take more than 15 minutes machine time. (The 15 minutes based on human context switching studies.) Literally if someone complains something took 15 minutes and 1 second to download, run, or test, it’s a bug and we get more hardware or fix bugs to drop it back to 10 minutes. (Very big jobs like AI training or renders run on servers of course, but the 15 minute rule still applies: it should only take that long for a remote worker to tell the servers to start crunching their new change.) The quick turnaround has prevented or fixed so many instances of managers panicking that it became normal in my team to know stuff has to be fast to get started with.
Are you working with Unreal Engine? I think it's very easy to get a project to the size of 500gb. If you have an installed build of UE5 with some modifications, extra build targets like server, xbox, ps4, debug symbols etc the engine itself can already be 200-300gb. Projects can also easily get into the 100s of gbs.
Worked with a guy once developing a world for a VR platform where he did just this by dumping all the asset files into a single folder and then asked me to basically do all the work so it could be uploaded under his account. I asked him to at least do something like lighting or animation if he wanted me to do all the coding, design, and Unity work and he couldn't finish a single animation let alone even try anything else. I ended up doing a solo project instead.
As someone who started a small indie studio, the whole reason why I don’t use kickstarter is to help gain consumer trust. We just made a smaller game, to show that we can make one.
great vid callum. As a 3d animator that is currently inserting himself into the market, I can say that the experiences for a newcomer a are really dire.
I think using assets itself is fine but you can't rely on only using assets. Stuff like using models is fine for smaller developer of one or just a few people as long as the game still has care and originality to it. For example my current project is a small scaled point and click horror game using two asset packs. One for a modern house and one for a Science lab. However those packs aren't the only models I use in game. All the creatures in game are entirely original with custom models, textures and animations done by a friend. As for the programming every part of it was done by me with some support from tutors. There's also a heavy focus on narrative with cutscenes and dialog playing a heavy role in giving the game it's own identity. It's not just a group of premade assets and code cobbled together like this project. As for the developer who is owed money I feel sorry for him. Getting into the industry is super difficult for newcomers especially this year with all the layoffs that have been going on. I understand why they took the role when it became available considering how difficult getting started in this business is. I hope they can find a better job at a more competent developer soon.
Using store assets is fine, but relying on store assets is a little meh. And asset cramming just makes the game look ametuerish and ugly to look at. On the flip side, using script assets underneath is going to lead to a lot of trouble and make it come out like Dreamworld in the early days.
what a true asset flip is, is not just even relying on assets. it's being the assets. that it's not a piece of work relying on the assets, but that it's just the assets moved into the folder and doing the bare minimum wiring to have some of them interact.
I despise the term Early Access to excuse shit stuff because. 1: They are charging you to basically be the playtesters. 2: A company is never obliged to finish a game. Never. 3: A company is never obliged to work more on a game than they see fit. Never. Sure, early access is good when used properly. I feel Cyberpunk 2077 and No Man's Sky would have gotten a lot less flack if they said it was Early Access. But remember that the moment a company is charging money it is a product they have decided is worth selling and thus is a full product. You would never buy a book with chapters missing and the author saying "I will finish it later."
So many red flags, on both the consumer side and the production side. Really feel for the intern. I don't understand how anyone seeing "Kickstarter" and "MMO" within the same paragraph doesn't realise what's going on hahah
Interesting how asset flips moved from steam greenlight to Kickstarter, they're more polished scams now for sure. I'd be interested to see your take on a retrospective of Jim Sterling vs. DIgital Homicide, that all kicked off 10 years ago next year and you're doing a modern, MMO specific take of Jim Sterling content then, do you ever worry about coming across a dev so unhinged?
Aw man, it really sucks that people have to suffer from this kind of projects, i understand the frustration, i've been there and can say, crypto games really are just managed by people with 0 idea how to work. I really wish this person the best!!
If I had a nickle for every Kingdoms of E- game that was a complete disaster; I'd have 2 nickles.Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.
The leadership on this project should have set up a foundation first. That includes flow charts, company policy, compensation packages, and no project lead leaves the room until all questions are answered. This is where a company knows if development effort can move forward. People will find holes in your logic, and bring up unexpected situations that should be addressed. If they leave many ambiguous decisions to be made up as they go. This shall lead a project into a directionless failure.
Just because it's Early Excess doesn't mean the game has to be unfinished in the basic mechanics department. People need to stop defending such practices, and game developers certainly need to stop making that the norm.
We use Discord heavily at my place, it's our virtual office. We obviously use other platforms too, like Jira and Miro. But discord is MASSIVELY better than slack, teams etc
Five months of development before being punted into early access? GEE WHIZ! That sure smacks of a polished game! Totally isnt a sign of a rush hack job! /Sarcasm
You know, when I watch a video about Kingdoms of X in it, I kind of expect long developer filibusters on a bunch of crap that doesn't really apply to making the game they took all the money from people to make.
i use reaper as DAW for hobby recording my music... not giving your audio engineer a reaper licence (which is the most affordable of all DAWs out there being the only one at sub-100 bucks for a licence) is like having your developers work without a licence for the freaking ENGINE you're developing in. Reaper isn't so much an 'audio plugin' it is the equivalent of your game engine for audio editing and recording. (Digital Audio Workstation)
It’s infuriating that companies can completely get away with refusing to pay their employees. I wonder why companies even bother to pay workers at all. The workers have too little money to sue, after all.
It's appalling that this is any kind of norm to need to "get your foot in" in this way. $150/m is one foot in the door to slavery, not to the games industry. The sad thing is, spending 3 months unpaid creating your own game demo would probably have been far more productive.
I don't understand why people keeps funding MMO kicksarters. What is it about THAT particular genre that made people abandon all logic and reasoning and throw money at these scams?
It's insane to me how many people just fundamentally do not understand how much it costs to make video games. $35k is not a "groundbreaking MMO" amount of money of money, it's a "single developer making a small single player game over a year" amount of money. Let's do some math: Let's assume you want to form a team of 10 of the best developers available and they're all really passionate so they're willing to take an *extremely lowball* salary of $100k/year. Now, you only have 10 developers, not 300+ like a AAA game, so rather than spending 3-5 years making a AAA quality game (with tools and a highly optimized custom engine that everyone on the team is used to using), you're likely going to spend at least a year just making the engine followed by 3 years making a medium sized game with minimal content (at least compared to AAA) since you just don't have enough people to make heaps of content. This means your medium sized, but quality game takes 3-4 years to make and costs $4 million (before taxes) just to develop. This doesn't account for having to hire HR, marketing fees (which would likely double the cost), or fees for software/subscriptions like task tracking and version control. *Conservative* grand total comes to around $10 million. With that context, it should be clear why it blows my mind that people continue to see these crowdfunded projects asking for practically *nothing* and think it's reasonable to support them.
I think one reason for the lack of understanding is that many people can't think outside their own frame of reference, and that frame of reference is usually just themselves in their private capacity. For a singe individual, $35k is a lot of money, but for a business it's peanuts, if not a mere rounding error. They don't realise that it's not just one person who gets those $35k tax-free directly to their bank account without any expenses.
@@oliver_twistor Definitely. There's also the influence of phenomenally gifted solo developers who *can* make an amazing game in record time by themselves. There might be only one of those games released a year globally, but when most people will play only a handful of games every year and those standout success stories shine the brightest, it can feel like every game should be made with those tight time/money standards.
February -> November not being paid for 3 months work for just $450, which is 1 week at minimum wage most places in Canada / US. Absolutely take them to court
So the method of game dev they are describing to export assets and implement them is something we learnt back in RPGmaker days not to do, and how to control files by not forcing people who are working on the project to download the while game each time. It just isn't effective for games 200mb to 1 gig. I cannot imagine 500GB each time even on my fiber connection. Since the entire game is on that server as well, anyone can download it, another thing you really don't want available externally for people to work on that level.
Well the i might have the greatest partners of all time! Since i have a chromecast use windows and have a iphone! I have three of the biggiest companies covering me. Time to rob a bank somewhere atleast one will bail me out right ;D
Yooo!! I was offered a job here at a game jam (I'm a chilean university student)! It was extremely suspicious because none of the people working there seemed to have any real experience, plus they said they'd pay me "once the game started generating revenue", which supposedly would be in only a month or so, but when you looked at the Steam page it really look like a game that's a month from its release. I still accepted the interview and they didn't ask any technical questions or even to see my portfolio, they just told me to sign the contract and start working next monday. It all seemed extremely suspicious so I rejected it. It's shitty because some of the students working there seemed really nice and looked like they cared about the project.
People use the word "assets" like it's a bad thing. If I make a video game and I draw all the graphics myself and make all the sound effects myself, those are all assets. Buying premade assets is what's usually bad. Like the game dev saying the sound effects were "99% of it coming from assets". 100% of the sound effects are assets, in any video game.
"Fully funded" at $37,000 should have sounded alarm bells right from the start. You can't make an online RPG with a $3.7 million budget, let alone 1/100th that amount. I'm not even sure $37k would be enough to cover the cost of the asset packs they used, so wouldn't surprise me if some asset theft went on there too.
So I develop a LOT of games (though I never feel good enough about them to sell them), and I always use pretty much exclusively asset packs And the reason is: I'm a developer, not a designer. I don't have the skills to create visual assets. Using nothing but assets may mean they lack skills,but I disagree that it means they can't program. They may be a dev in over their head
its really a shame that this is still a thing that needs to be talked about. Kickstarter games and such has a bad enough rep with how many people cant manage projects. it brings down the good ones that are run by people who understand what they are doing.
I love how the game was such an asset flip that the company was fine with everyone, literally even the sound guy, downloading the entire projects source code.
Did Dream World go under? Seems like they're still chugging along. Nighmare World on the other hand, haven't heard anything about it for the last year.
I find the naming of this game interesting. Considering there is another crowd funded disaster already out there using the KoE name, you would think it'd be wiser not to use the same name.
Wait... anyone looked at a game that is obviously aiming to be an mmo that asked for 30000$!!!!! and ACTUALLY BACKED IT?! Jesus christ... how gullible and desperate are people? MMOs are notoriously expensive to make... This couldn't possibly have been anything other than a dumpster fire...
Seriously like Minecraft released first in alpha. And whilst bare bones (cuz idk alpha) everything that was there well worked… It’s not like people were falling into the void blocks didn’t drop or the crafting table didn’t work…
asset packs are useful for solo devs with little cash at their disposal. Phasmophobia was created using 100% store bought assets. the guy was learning game dev as he worked on it. premade assets dont mean the game is shit or the devs are lazy, they are an incredible tool for new developers or hobby game devs or even people just learning how to make games. please stop saying "asset pack = scam". it's unfair and untrue
I laughed so hard when you first said they raised $37,000 for this MMO 3D RPG. That sort of money for a solo dev making a 2D RPG might be ok, for 3d it would be a struggle, for any sort of MMO no chance in hell. Then I just watched the next 23 1/2 minutes as the train wreck piled up and slid down the cliff.
If I understand correctly, that's way less than even paying months' wages for all devs in a decently sized studio? Which is probably why they never did
@@1v966depwnds what average size is .. even if you only pay them 5k a month .. you couldnt hire more then 5-6 people ... and thats without additional cost and 5-6 is far away from "medium sized" 😅
Even while I was still in high school I would never have accepted a job of full-time work for 150 bucks per month. That's slavery. These American internships are crazy. I don't think this would even be legal in most (all?) EU countries. And legal or not, no one should sell himself like this. You're better off becoming a prostitute.
That's the result of Americans' seemingly near total lack of unionisation. I agree with you, I don't think there is one EU country in which a full-time job for $150/mo is legal. Sweden doesn't have a legally binding minimum wage like many other countries do, but the unions negotiate base salaries for most if not all sectors, and they would never agree on such a low wage, even if the particular worker doesn't belong to a union. Accepting low or no pay in exchange for "exposure" and experience is a trap many people in creative industries fall into (e.g. writers, artists, coders). It's important to know one's worth. Intern or not, beginner or not, your work is worth something for your employer or client. Why shouldn't you get compensated for that? What people who doesn't get paid or are paid very little should ask their employer is if their work is worth nothing, why are they asked to do worthless work? In any other sector, working for exposure would be unthinkable. I don't think anyone would expect a young carpenter or lawyer to work full-time for $150/mo. So why should people expect coders or writers to do that?
Even if the internship was $150, I need to note that as far as I know, most of us workers were from chile, where the dollar has more value, it doesn't to minimal wage, I think. But it would be money we made working on something we were passionate about, sadly... yeah... no money yet
It didn't raise any alarm bells at first but 500 gb file, Jesus that is zero asset consolidation whatsoever. Like how can you even have that be your workplace environment? Even if you have the best computer available, you are wasting time and memory looking through everything to find even a single object
People who prey on the public & those who want to work just to make a quick buck are just despicable. Hopefully justice will see everyone these people hurt get what they're owed
having a meeting saying that everything is fine only for everything to be crap a week later… my man wasn’t working in a game studio, he was just writing a Ph.D thesis without knowing!!! 😂
Why am I getting the feeling like they will use these thousands of Assets in a new Company because they "own" them in their name (no clue if that's how it's working with the access rights to those)
I hope this doesn't cause an increase in scammers excluding their website from the wayback machine. Eh, scammers probably don't do research first. I hope. Also, I get it's "the style" now for many UA-camrs but the Twitter title card just doesn't sit right with me, idk why.
One concern among many: I hear that new people to the industry need to take jobs like this to"get their foot in the door. But does it? Can this sound designer really use this project in there resume given the mess that it's in, the fact the top has disappeared, they didn't even get paid, and the project looks horrible. Can they actually use this to get something better or are they back in square 1? Is this really a'what your have to do to get in' or a 'this is a trap many fall for, please avoid"
This is a trap many fall into please avoid. This is a horrible time to even try to get into the games industry right now. With so many studios falling left and right, there's a bunch of 10-20 year veterans who left to start their own indie studios suddenly jumping back into the AAA and mainstream game dev market. So new comers, or even people with 1-2 years of experience like myself are competing against industry pros for every little job offering. Kingdoms of Ereloth is the same song different dance to what's happening where I worked. Sorry I can't say more than that, but I don't want to jeopardize any of my friends or co-workers. All I will say is that it was bad enough that I'm done with the industry. I got a boring in person office job. My advice for what it's worth is that if you want to get into the games industry now, team up with some friends and make an RPG maker project or a little single player game with unreal. You can do what the Phasmophobia guy did and replace the store bought placeholder assets with custom ones later. Honestly? if you want an untapped game market just make an RTS like age of mythology, Warcraft III, there's like, 5 of those that come out a year instead of the dime a dozen KS survival scams.
It's current year. "Early Access" just means release. It doesn't matter if people say it'll be fixed later, releasing in "early access" is your first impression to your audience, and it sounds like the audience's impressions aren't good. It's also weird how a not!MMO game only needed $37k for its kickstarter funding. That doesn't sound like it's enough to pay a single developer for three months. But when you find out it's got roots in crypto, it all makes sense. It's not a product, it's just another scumbag looking to steal money from uninformed customers.
Unpaid internships should be illegal across the board. It's worse than indentured servitude, because at the very least as an indentured servant you have room and board and food. Edit: No, $150 a month should NEVER be considered "paid". That's ridiculous. That's bullshit. You can't live on 150 a month. you can't even live on 150 a week.
$150 a month might cover travel expenses... So you're at least not paying anything other than time to go there. Gas money or public transport. But in this case it sounds like work from home mostly.
If I had the money I would love to hire people who know their role well to make the game I've always wanted to play. Nothing unreasonable given what has been seen in games in the past. No mmo because those are generally live service single player games with a few multiplayer aspects. I don't even want to sell the game that is made. I just want this game to exist. unfortunatley I am not a billionare who could just hire people to do the work. I could do it all myself, but it would take far longer for me to need to learn every part of making a game. I don't like kickstarter. I definietly don't want money for hiring the people. Two reasons. I'm not in a poistion to gain income outside my current source without making my future incredibely harsh. The second, I don't like the pressure of owing someone, and it doesn't matter if I am told they are fine with not getting anything in return. So my game wont ever be created. I only hope someone out there will pull the ass out their head and actually utilized the best of what exists already putting it all into one cohesive amazing experience. That's beyond even my game's scope, but it is not unreasonable to expect this from a professional multibillion dollar company.
I funded exactly one kickstarter (Hullabaloo). And told myself I wouldn’t fund anymore until I got to see episode 1. They just dropped episode 1 this fall. Like 7 years after I paid into the kicker starter. Guess I am finally allowed to find a new project to back. Hmm…
if a game launches on kickstarter and its name has the abbreviation of KoE or Coe...that's a red flag for sure! :D
Just stick a p in there and it's the perfect name
Is this a chronicles/kingdom of Elyria reference?
yes@@AIpuchino
Transistor pfp? Yo, good taste.
HA! There can only be one true KoE! Go Caspian, tell them how it is!
Oh, wait...
Just look at Phasmophobia:
-built almost entirely with asset packs
-reasonably priced and well conceived
-after initial success they immediately hire a full time artist to start fixing/replacing models
It's a pretty good game as well
and you would sucky the cocky of that devleopy :)
This project has the stink of being put together by a "ideas man" who expects to pay their staff in experience and exposure to make the best new game in the genre. Which genre? Yes!
Worst thing about working there is that they never respected the contract signed, the internship one and the former employee. They owe me at least $5950 as of today.
At first I was happy I could work on a game, time passed, no pay, last minute changes, focusing on non important stuff. I was naive since it was my first time in a job after college, I did my best everyday, like the rest of the staff, but sadly, things ended this way. If you want more info, I would love to give you some more insight from my perspective, but I'd prefer that to be in a private manner. I didn't talked earlier in steam or in koe discord for my fear of legal retaliation. I hope you see this comment eventually. Good video nonetheless, lots of things you said made me realize people judging the game way before launch were right.
It seems like it would be worth talking to the National Labor Relations Board
@@LiliumOrientalis
I concur. Whatever country you're in destroxdful, find the relevant government department and lodge a complaint. I've never had to go through this process myself so can't give any more advice but there is DEFINITELY someone you can contact in government.
6k? That's 10 months pay in my country working as outsourcing, get the police involves when u can
@@Discoveryman29 We're doing what we can, but as of yesterday, the lawyer we were talking with said that there's nothing we can do, unless we demand the US company. which I don't think we can afford to.
We're still trying to find what we can do, but there's limited options here.
The discord closed, Max ran away to spain, and we don't think he's going to come back.
My condolences
let me be clear this doesnt just apply to those working in indi games or start ups or even gaming in general but to every worker around the world regardless of industry:
YOUR PAY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THEIR STABILITY!
you can 100% be kind toward an employer and give them more time to pay you but that is not the standard and should never be considered as such.
in case you want to try this out in real life, find your local loan shark and ask them how long they wait for their money back, or ask your supermarket if you can just pay next month...
Miss 1 paycheck, thats an honest mistake. Miss 2 paychecks in a row and your employer is jerking you around and you're never getting it.
Happens far too often, especially in industries about delivering a product. Truckers experience this quite often, some buddies in construction went through it, and anyone who works for startups knows if the checks dont come the company is going under and any additional work for them is sunk-cost falacy.
Number one rule of life: Don't fuck with someone's money.
Yes! Let me add that you are also not responsible for, say, the health and wellbeing of animals and people after you leave. Or anything like that where you'd feel guilty for up and leaving. You were hired for a job, not a volunteer opportunity. Don't let them string you along out of guilt at the expense of your own finances and wellbeing.
Lol, seeing all these funded broken games kind of brings me hope for my own games as there is no chance I can fail as hard as some of these devs
You'd be surprised.
of course you can
Nice, what sort of game are you working on?
reboooted an MMO project I've been planning for about 10 years now, start of october, already replicated most of the infrastructure and internal systems of the likes of OSRS/runescape @@SkafosGnW
no really a few of the developers I've seen really fail impressively bad, genfanad is one example full of delusional management, which seems to be the root cause of many of these failed kickstarters as well @@illdeletethismusic
so, hey, fun fact: it is illegal to effectively replace a paid employee with an intern. That person that was basically a full time worker and receiving no education while doing the work of an actual employee could probably sue (I mean, good luck getting anything, pretty sure they're already broke af but it might be worth a shot). The function of an internship is to provide training to new graduates and current students, not to replace employees.
Important to note that even if you are an intern, that doesn't mean that you _don't_ have labor protections.
That sadly would depend on where in the world that job is.
7:23 Can I just say that I find very suspicious how only 177 backers raised over 37000$on one platform and 199 over 38000$ on the other? I seriously doubt each would give 200$…
How is this still happening? You'd think there wouldn't be anyone left to fall for this kind of thing...
"A fool and his money are soon parted"
Yea but there's been like 50 other opportunities to part fools from their money with this exact premise.
I guess there's just more fools than we'd like to believe
As the old saying goes, "There's one born every minute."
Yeah well it's $40k and not $400k. So 90% of the punters have wised up to this shit.
@@RadmanTheWiseI mean, there's that little bit of an upside... Still a ton of money to go to waste - $40K is a pretty nice chunk of a house deposit in some areas
Callum back to his roots, a lovely day to be back on youtube.
Always good to see you and the shadow kabal taking a closer look at stuff like this. I very much appreciate the work you guys do.
I've been a dev for over 20 years (now in management, but still also in the trenches). I technically have a couple drives that could hold a 500GB checkout, but if someone suggested I'd have to do that to work on any given component of a large project, all the deep breaths in the world likely couldn't prevent me from losing my shit.
Yeah I set a rule for my team that no routine workflow should take more than 15 minutes machine time. (The 15 minutes based on human context switching studies.) Literally if someone complains something took 15 minutes and 1 second to download, run, or test, it’s a bug and we get more hardware or fix bugs to drop it back to 10 minutes.
(Very big jobs like AI training or renders run on servers of course, but the 15 minute rule still applies: it should only take that long for a remote worker to tell the servers to start crunching their new change.)
The quick turnaround has prevented or fixed so many instances of managers panicking that it became normal in my team to know stuff has to be fast to get started with.
Are you working with Unreal Engine? I think it's very easy to get a project to the size of 500gb. If you have an installed build of UE5 with some modifications, extra build targets like server, xbox, ps4, debug symbols etc the engine itself can already be 200-300gb. Projects can also easily get into the 100s of gbs.
Worked with a guy once developing a world for a VR platform where he did just this by dumping all the asset files into a single folder and then asked me to basically do all the work so it could be uploaded under his account. I asked him to at least do something like lighting or animation if he wanted me to do all the coding, design, and Unity work and he couldn't finish a single animation let alone even try anything else. I ended up doing a solo project instead.
As someone who started a small indie studio, the whole reason why I don’t use kickstarter is to help gain consumer trust. We just made a smaller game, to show that we can make one.
great vid callum. As a 3d animator that is currently inserting himself into the market, I can say that the experiences for a newcomer a are really dire.
I think using assets itself is fine but you can't rely on only using assets. Stuff like using models is fine for smaller developer of one or just a few people as long as the game still has care and originality to it. For example my current project is a small scaled point and click horror game using two asset packs. One for a modern house and one for a Science lab. However those packs aren't the only models I use in game. All the creatures in game are entirely original with custom models, textures and animations done by a friend. As for the programming every part of it was done by me with some support from tutors. There's also a heavy focus on narrative with cutscenes and dialog playing a heavy role in giving the game it's own identity. It's not just a group of premade assets and code cobbled together like this project.
As for the developer who is owed money I feel sorry for him. Getting into the industry is super difficult for newcomers especially this year with all the layoffs that have been going on. I understand why they took the role when it became available considering how difficult getting started in this business is. I hope they can find a better job at a more competent developer soon.
Using store assets is fine, but relying on store assets is a little meh. And asset cramming just makes the game look ametuerish and ugly to look at. On the flip side, using script assets underneath is going to lead to a lot of trouble and make it come out like Dreamworld in the early days.
@@TheGrimGary Yea I agree.
For a free or cheap (sub $5) game its okay, especially if the game was a learning project. For a major projects, indi or not it is not.
what a true asset flip is, is not just even relying on assets. it's being the assets.
that it's not a piece of work relying on the assets, but that it's just the assets moved into the folder and doing the bare minimum wiring to have some of them interact.
honestly, point and click is where you"ve made the irredeamable mistake, at that point it doesn"t matter what assets or story you have
I despise the term Early Access to excuse shit stuff because.
1: They are charging you to basically be the playtesters.
2: A company is never obliged to finish a game. Never.
3: A company is never obliged to work more on a game than they see fit. Never.
Sure, early access is good when used properly. I feel Cyberpunk 2077 and No Man's Sky would have gotten a lot less flack if they said it was Early Access.
But remember that the moment a company is charging money it is a product they have decided is worth selling and thus is a full product.
You would never buy a book with chapters missing and the author saying "I will finish it later."
Ex-worker here, the only good thing I can rescue from this is that I was able to finish my internship and with that I graduated from my career.
So many red flags, on both the consumer side and the production side. Really feel for the intern. I don't understand how anyone seeing "Kickstarter" and "MMO" within the same paragraph doesn't realise what's going on hahah
Interesting how asset flips moved from steam greenlight to Kickstarter, they're more polished scams now for sure. I'd be interested to see your take on a retrospective of Jim Sterling vs. DIgital Homicide, that all kicked off 10 years ago next year and you're doing a modern, MMO specific take of Jim Sterling content then, do you ever worry about coming across a dev so unhinged?
It’s shit like this that makes me afraid to invest in any indie project. I’m absolutely terrified of being scammed.
It's one of several reasons why you should never give a penny to anyone that doesn't have a completed product.
"Lord help me" was my mantra throughout the video.
Aw man, it really sucks that people have to suffer from this kind of projects, i understand the frustration, i've been there and can say, crypto games really are just managed by people with 0 idea how to work. I really wish this person the best!!
If I had a nickle for every Kingdoms of E- game that was a complete disaster; I'd have 2 nickles.Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.
The leadership on this project should have set up a foundation first. That includes flow charts, company policy, compensation packages, and no project lead leaves the room until all questions are answered. This is where a company knows if development effort can move forward. People will find holes in your logic, and bring up unexpected situations that should be addressed. If they leave many ambiguous decisions to be made up as they go. This shall lead a project into a directionless failure.
I have a weird feeling that Caspian was either the mastermind behind the whole scam or was somehow involved (in one way or another).. 🤔
I know his mic is in the background but I like to think he just has the worlds tiniest mic
hahahah! i never even thought of that. sofa mic is looking real tiny
Just because it's Early Excess doesn't mean the game has to be unfinished in the basic mechanics department. People need to stop defending such practices, and game developers certainly need to stop making that the norm.
We use Discord heavily at my place, it's our virtual office. We obviously use other platforms too, like Jira and Miro. But discord is MASSIVELY better than slack, teams etc
New game: Watch Callum's back catalogue and take a drink whenever the scam Kickstarter game turns out to be an Unreal asset flip.
Five months of development before being punted into early access? GEE WHIZ! That sure smacks of a polished game! Totally isnt a sign of a rush hack job! /Sarcasm
You know, when I watch a video about Kingdoms of X in it, I kind of expect long developer filibusters on a bunch of crap that doesn't really apply to making the game they took all the money from people to make.
The fact that the Reaper wasn’t just a pirate copy, geez.
60 grand for an MMO, without mentioning any other sources of income/funding outside of two fundraisers... THAT was the first red flag.
More like Kingdoms of Fail-a-lot amirite?
The "Contact Us" link on their homepage conveniently leads to a 404 page lol
Depressing really, but I feel the most for those that worked on this without ever getting paid.
5:34 I legit exclaimed crypto out loud like a small child watching a cartoon.
i use reaper as DAW for hobby recording my music... not giving your audio engineer a reaper licence (which is the most affordable of all DAWs out there being the only one at sub-100 bucks for a licence) is like having your developers work without a licence for the freaking ENGINE you're developing in.
Reaper isn't so much an 'audio plugin' it is the equivalent of your game engine for audio editing and recording. (Digital Audio Workstation)
If any company EVER tells you you may or may not get paid for your work, run. Find literally any other job. It's not worth the investment.
It’s infuriating that companies can completely get away with refusing to pay their employees. I wonder why companies even bother to pay workers at all. The workers have too little money to sue, after all.
It's appalling that this is any kind of norm to need to "get your foot in" in this way. $150/m is one foot in the door to slavery, not to the games industry. The sad thing is, spending 3 months unpaid creating your own game demo would probably have been far more productive.
I don't understand why people keeps funding MMO kicksarters. What is it about THAT particular genre that made people abandon all logic and reasoning and throw money at these scams?
i will never understand how everyone JUMPS into "survival MMOs" O_o
It's insane to me how many people just fundamentally do not understand how much it costs to make video games.
$35k is not a "groundbreaking MMO" amount of money of money, it's a "single developer making a small single player game over a year" amount of money. Let's do some math:
Let's assume you want to form a team of 10 of the best developers available and they're all really passionate so they're willing to take an *extremely lowball* salary of $100k/year. Now, you only have 10 developers, not 300+ like a AAA game, so rather than spending 3-5 years making a AAA quality game (with tools and a highly optimized custom engine that everyone on the team is used to using), you're likely going to spend at least a year just making the engine followed by 3 years making a medium sized game with minimal content (at least compared to AAA) since you just don't have enough people to make heaps of content.
This means your medium sized, but quality game takes 3-4 years to make and costs $4 million (before taxes) just to develop. This doesn't account for having to hire HR, marketing fees (which would likely double the cost), or fees for software/subscriptions like task tracking and version control. *Conservative* grand total comes to around $10 million.
With that context, it should be clear why it blows my mind that people continue to see these crowdfunded projects asking for practically *nothing* and think it's reasonable to support them.
I think one reason for the lack of understanding is that many people can't think outside their own frame of reference, and that frame of reference is usually just themselves in their private capacity. For a singe individual, $35k is a lot of money, but for a business it's peanuts, if not a mere rounding error. They don't realise that it's not just one person who gets those $35k tax-free directly to their bank account without any expenses.
@@oliver_twistor Definitely. There's also the influence of phenomenally gifted solo developers who *can* make an amazing game in record time by themselves. There might be only one of those games released a year globally, but when most people will play only a handful of games every year and those standout success stories shine the brightest, it can feel like every game should be made with those tight time/money standards.
Crazy idea... people wanting to get paid for their work... Never heard that one before...
February -> November not being paid for 3 months work for just $450, which is 1 week at minimum wage most places in Canada / US. Absolutely take them to court
Wow, I can't believe Kingdoms of Elyria is FINALLY being made!
So the method of game dev they are describing to export assets and implement them is something we learnt back in RPGmaker days not to do, and how to control files by not forcing people who are working on the project to download the while game each time. It just isn't effective for games 200mb to 1 gig. I cannot imagine 500GB each time even on my fiber connection. Since the entire game is on that server as well, anyone can download it, another thing you really don't want available externally for people to work on that level.
That development "work"flow sounds insane.
Now that you talked about assetsflip and crypto, been wondering about Dreamworld and E2😆
yeah I'm partnered with Microsoft .. I use Windows
Well the i might have the greatest partners of all time! Since i have a chromecast use windows and have a iphone! I have three of the biggiest companies covering me. Time to rob a bank somewhere atleast one will bail me out right ;D
I have a UA-cam Channel, therefore Google has my back!
Chronicles of the Kingdoms of Elerium, on the Day Before Ereloth
Yooo!! I was offered a job here at a game jam (I'm a chilean university student)! It was extremely suspicious because none of the people working there seemed to have any real experience, plus they said they'd pay me "once the game started generating revenue", which supposedly would be in only a month or so, but when you looked at the Steam page it really look like a game that's a month from its release. I still accepted the interview and they didn't ask any technical questions or even to see my portfolio, they just told me to sign the contract and start working next monday. It all seemed extremely suspicious so I rejected it.
It's shitty because some of the students working there seemed really nice and looked like they cared about the project.
By the way, the one who made the interview I'm pretty sure was the CEO, and the interview lasted less than 20 minutes.
People use the word "assets" like it's a bad thing. If I make a video game and I draw all the graphics myself and make all the sound effects myself, those are all assets. Buying premade assets is what's usually bad.
Like the game dev saying the sound effects were "99% of it coming from assets". 100% of the sound effects are assets, in any video game.
Naming your game so closely to Kingdoms of Elyria is a ballsy move
And it seems like a scam too.. I'm worried Caspian threw this up on Kickstarter himself.. XD
I'm curious as to the current state of Earth2. It's always a fun topic
genuinely exactly the same. nothing has changed. even a lot of the shills disappeared from the reddit. it's only their dev bot posting threads now
Dreamworld seems to be on the up & up after the initial flack. I'd love an update
Bruh I'd have quit day one if I had to download an entire 500GB project just to change one file every time.
"Fully funded" at $37,000 should have sounded alarm bells right from the start. You can't make an online RPG with a $3.7 million budget, let alone 1/100th that amount. I'm not even sure $37k would be enough to cover the cost of the asset packs they used, so wouldn't surprise me if some asset theft went on there too.
Jesus, those poor employees.
So I develop a LOT of games (though I never feel good enough about them to sell them), and I always use pretty much exclusively asset packs
And the reason is: I'm a developer, not a designer. I don't have the skills to create visual assets.
Using nothing but assets may mean they lack skills,but I disagree that it means they can't program. They may be a dev in over their head
Once again, I am made thankful for the fact the few things I have ever backed on kickstarter have actually released and been good.
22,222 views - 22 hours ago. (Actually it was 22,212 but you know, close enough). Fascinating tale, thank you!
its really a shame that this is still a thing that needs to be talked about. Kickstarter games and such has a bad enough rep with how many people cant manage projects. it brings down the good ones that are run by people who understand what they are doing.
I love how the game was such an asset flip that the company was fine with everyone, literally even the sound guy, downloading the entire projects source code.
I will never trust a game with Kingdom in it's name.
What!? You aren't interested in my indy game titled "Kingdom - Kingdom of the Kingdom" ?😂🤣😂
Kingdom of alamur was a very decent AA game right? I believe that was reasonably well recieved. It even got a series x/ps5 remake.
Guessing you didn't like the new Zelda then.
@@TheSmart-CasualGamer I didn't enjoy Breath of the Wild so I didn't bother getting it.
Kingdom Hearts 4: y'all hear something?
Can't wait for him to do one of these on Nightmare World since they apparently just dumped it right after Dream World went under....
Did Dream World go under? Seems like they're still chugging along. Nighmare World on the other hand, haven't heard anything about it for the last year.
I find the naming of this game interesting. Considering there is another crowd funded disaster already out there using the KoE name, you would think it'd be wiser not to use the same name.
Seems the only skill the project "managers" had was to write the cryptobro tripe found on the Wayback Machine.
Wait... anyone looked at a game that is obviously aiming to be an mmo that asked for 30000$!!!!! and ACTUALLY BACKED IT?! Jesus christ... how gullible and desperate are people? MMOs are notoriously expensive to make... This couldn't possibly have been anything other than a dumpster fire...
I've heard that the parents/family of the higher ups backed that amount one of the last days.
And there's worst things that I've heard recently
Seriously like Minecraft released first in alpha. And whilst bare bones (cuz idk alpha) everything that was there well worked…
It’s not like people were falling into the void blocks didn’t drop or the crafting table didn’t work…
asset packs are useful for solo devs with little cash at their disposal. Phasmophobia was created using 100% store bought assets. the guy was learning game dev as he worked on it.
premade assets dont mean the game is shit or the devs are lazy, they are an incredible tool for new developers or hobby game devs or even people just learning how to make games. please stop saying "asset pack = scam". it's unfair and untrue
I laughed so hard when you first said they raised $37,000 for this MMO 3D RPG.
That sort of money for a solo dev making a 2D RPG might be ok, for 3d it would be a struggle, for any sort of MMO no chance in hell.
Then I just watched the next 23 1/2 minutes as the train wreck piled up and slid down the cliff.
If I understand correctly, that's way less than even paying months' wages for all devs in a decently sized studio?
Which is probably why they never did
@@1v966depwnds what average size is .. even if you only pay them 5k a month .. you couldnt hire more then 5-6 people ... and thats without additional cost
and 5-6 is far away from "medium sized" 😅
Callum, you should get a windbreak for your mic. I can hear puff/pop sounds sometimes when you make a P sound.
The first clue was in the name 'KoE'...
"They were charging - up until the day before yesterday". I see what you did there.
Even while I was still in high school I would never have accepted a job of full-time work for 150 bucks per month. That's slavery. These American internships are crazy. I don't think this would even be legal in most (all?) EU countries. And legal or not, no one should sell himself like this. You're better off becoming a prostitute.
That's the result of Americans' seemingly near total lack of unionisation. I agree with you, I don't think there is one EU country in which a full-time job for $150/mo is legal. Sweden doesn't have a legally binding minimum wage like many other countries do, but the unions negotiate base salaries for most if not all sectors, and they would never agree on such a low wage, even if the particular worker doesn't belong to a union.
Accepting low or no pay in exchange for "exposure" and experience is a trap many people in creative industries fall into (e.g. writers, artists, coders). It's important to know one's worth. Intern or not, beginner or not, your work is worth something for your employer or client. Why shouldn't you get compensated for that? What people who doesn't get paid or are paid very little should ask their employer is if their work is worth nothing, why are they asked to do worthless work?
In any other sector, working for exposure would be unthinkable. I don't think anyone would expect a young carpenter or lawyer to work full-time for $150/mo. So why should people expect coders or writers to do that?
Even if the internship was $150, I need to note that as far as I know, most of us workers were from chile, where the dollar has more value, it doesn't to minimal wage, I think.
But it would be money we made working on something we were passionate about, sadly... yeah... no money yet
No, it's actually worse than slavery, because slavers had to feed and provide healthcare for their slaves.
The MMO community is starving if they keep pushing these things
It didn't raise any alarm bells at first but 500 gb file, Jesus that is zero asset consolidation whatsoever. Like how can you even have that be your workplace environment? Even if you have the best computer available, you are wasting time and memory looking through everything to find even a single object
"well it's early access"
That just made my brain scream "there's a reason you don't start Early Access THIS early" lol
People who prey on the public & those who want to work just to make a quick buck are just despicable. Hopefully justice will see everyone these people hurt get what they're owed
lol. I guess buying a new domain was too much of work.
having a meeting saying that everything is fine only for everything to be crap a week later… my man wasn’t working in a game studio, he was just writing a Ph.D thesis without knowing!!! 😂
Ngl, was expecting a Caspian cameo lol
Most online teams work on Discord as the central hub. No issue with that.
I'm shocked! Shocked!
If Scammed Citizen can tap into shocking levels of The Braindead....you get the picture ;)
I'm stealing "Higglety Piggelty"
Why am I getting the feeling like they will use these thousands of Assets in a new Company because they "own" them in their name (no clue if that's how it's working with the access rights to those)
I hope this doesn't cause an increase in scammers excluding their website from the wayback machine.
Eh, scammers probably don't do research first. I hope.
Also, I get it's "the style" now for many UA-camrs but the Twitter title card just doesn't sit right with me, idk why.
One concern among many:
I hear that new people to the industry need to take jobs like this to"get their foot in the door. But does it?
Can this sound designer really use this project in there resume given the mess that it's in, the fact the top has disappeared, they didn't even get paid, and the project looks horrible. Can they actually use this to get something better or are they back in square 1?
Is this really a'what your have to do to get in' or a 'this is a trap many fall for, please avoid"
This is a trap many fall into please avoid. This is a horrible time to even try to get into the games industry right now. With so many studios falling left and right, there's a bunch of 10-20 year veterans who left to start their own indie studios suddenly jumping back into the AAA and mainstream game dev market. So new comers, or even people with 1-2 years of experience like myself are competing against industry pros for every little job offering.
Kingdoms of Ereloth is the same song different dance to what's happening where I worked. Sorry I can't say more than that, but I don't want to jeopardize any of my friends or co-workers. All I will say is that it was bad enough that I'm done with the industry. I got a boring in person office job.
My advice for what it's worth is that if you want to get into the games industry now, team up with some friends and make an RPG maker project or a little single player game with unreal. You can do what the Phasmophobia guy did and replace the store bought placeholder assets with custom ones later.
Honestly? if you want an untapped game market just make an RTS like age of mythology, Warcraft III, there's like, 5 of those that come out a year instead of the dime a dozen KS survival scams.
the problem is the people running these companies never get punished so why would they stop
It's current year. "Early Access" just means release. It doesn't matter if people say it'll be fixed later, releasing in "early access" is your first impression to your audience, and it sounds like the audience's impressions aren't good. It's also weird how a not!MMO game only needed $37k for its kickstarter funding. That doesn't sound like it's enough to pay a single developer for three months.
But when you find out it's got roots in crypto, it all makes sense. It's not a product, it's just another scumbag looking to steal money from uninformed customers.
Unpaid internships should be illegal across the board. It's worse than indentured servitude, because at the very least as an indentured servant you have room and board and food.
Edit: No, $150 a month should NEVER be considered "paid". That's ridiculous. That's bullshit. You can't live on 150 a month. you can't even live on 150 a week.
$150 a month might cover travel expenses... So you're at least not paying anything other than time to go there.
Gas money or public transport.
But in this case it sounds like work from home mostly.
Reaper is DAW and it’s free for 60 days
This is all mainly responsability of the Ceo and his bad decisions
The MMO experts on youtube are mostly British
If I had the money I would love to hire people who know their role well to make the game I've always wanted to play. Nothing unreasonable given what has been seen in games in the past. No mmo because those are generally live service single player games with a few multiplayer aspects. I don't even want to sell the game that is made. I just want this game to exist. unfortunatley I am not a billionare who could just hire people to do the work. I could do it all myself, but it would take far longer for me to need to learn every part of making a game.
I don't like kickstarter. I definietly don't want money for hiring the people. Two reasons. I'm not in a poistion to gain income outside my current source without making my future incredibely harsh. The second, I don't like the pressure of owing someone, and it doesn't matter if I am told they are fine with not getting anything in return.
So my game wont ever be created. I only hope someone out there will pull the ass out their head and actually utilized the best of what exists already putting it all into one cohesive amazing experience. That's beyond even my game's scope, but it is not unreasonable to expect this from a professional multibillion dollar company.
I funded exactly one kickstarter (Hullabaloo). And told myself I wouldn’t fund anymore until I got to see episode 1.
They just dropped episode 1 this fall.
Like 7 years after I paid into the kicker starter.
Guess I am finally allowed to find a new project to back. Hmm…
177 backers? 37k? what the fuck