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The Knights of New Vegas: How Obsidian Survived Countless Catastrophes And Made Some Of The Coolest Role-Playing Games Ever

http://kotaku.com/5968952/the-knights-of-new-vegas-how-obsidian-survived-countless-catastrophes-and-made-some-of-the-coolest-role+playing-games-ever?utm_campaign=Socialflow_Kotaku_Twitter&utm_source=Kotaku_Twitter&utm_medium=Socialflow

Feargus Urquhart was freaking out.

He and his team at Obsidian Entertainment were about to take one of the biggest steps in the company's history—launching a Kickstarter for a brand new video game—but something was wrong. The button to start up their crowdfunding page had turned grey. Nobody could click it. And the Kickstarter was supposed to launch in just thirty minutes.

Luckily for Urquhart, he had contact information for Cindy Au, Kickstarter's community director, who he had chatted up extensively to prepare for their game-changing project. Au said it was a hiccup in the system, and sure enough, after just a few minutes it was fixed. The button re-appeared.

They clicked it. Waited a few seconds. Then hit refresh. They'd already made $2,000.

Fans have always oscillated between loving and hating Obsidian. They were warming to the game company again.
'DragonPlay Sounded Lame'

You might think of Obsidian Entertainment as a mistreated genius, a talented group of game-makers responsible for unappreciated gems like Alpha Protocol and Neverwinter Nights 2. Or maybe you don't have much faith in their development skills after the buggy Fallout: New Vegas and the unfinished Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II. Either way, their story is undeniably fascinating.

The story of Obsidian—a story of heartbreaking failures and record-shattering successes—begins with a company called Interplay, a game developer and publisher best known for games like Wasteland and Descent. Interplay's execs were looking to expand their role-playing game division, and in 1996, they found a young game developer named Feargus Urquhart (pronounced "FUR-gus URK-heart") to take the steering wheel.

"I was put in charge of it when I was 26," Urquhart told me as we sat in his office in sunny Irvine, California earlier this month. Urquhart, Obsidian's CEO and one of five co-founders, spent an afternoon chatting with me about his company's culture and history—which began with that small division at Interplay.

"They wanted to call it DragonPlay, and I just thought DragonPlay sounded lame," Urquhart said, laughing. "They were looking for something-Play I guess. The joke was always that the adult version of Interplay would be..."

He paused for a few seconds, waiting for me to get it. I didn't.

"Foreplay!"

Clearly that wouldn't work. So they called it Black Isle—after a Scottish landmark of the same name—and under Urquhart's leadership, the studio cranked out a number of isometric RPGs that people grew to love. Black Isle's resumé included heavy-hitters like Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment, and Fallout 2. The company also helped publish the BioWare-developed Baldur's Gate and its sequel, generally considered two of the best role-playing games ever made.

But by 2000, their parent company Interplay was in trouble. Cash trouble.

"We did fine," Urquhart said. "Our product made lots of money, and internally, the BioWare stuff made even more money. It was great, Black Isle. We were doing well."

But Interplay wasn't. "Whether it was probably some transitional stuff or some bets that just didn't pay off," Urquhart said, Black Isle's parent company was in a bad place. And as a result of their financial hardships, Interplay lost the license to Dungeons & Dragons—a license that had been used for almost every Black Isle game so far.

This made things difficult for Urquhart's team. They'd already sunk a great deal of time into Baldur's Gate III: The Black Hound—the details of which are well-documented—and now they couldn't do a thing with the D&D-packed code and ideas they'd created.

"It was unfortunate because we loved working on D&D games," Urquhart said. "We'd been working on Baldur's Gate III for about a year, a year and a half, and so that happened... That kinda pushed us out the door."

(Baldur's Gate III would be revisited again several years later, but again, it never got off the ground.)

Interplay didn't seem like a viable option anymore, Urquhart said. So he and some of the team started to think about moving on.

"We were like you know what, we're still in our early 30s," he said. "If there's a time to start a company before we get to be old and 40, then this is the time to do it."

He recruited a bunch of fellow developers: Chris Avellone, Chris Jones, Chris Parker, and Darren Monahan, all of whom became co-founders of the new company. A company called Obsidian Entertainment.
Walls of Fart Clouds

Obsidian's studio, located on the second floor of a modern building in downtown Irvine, is sleek and swanky, full of board games, couches, and high-definition television sets. Individual offices are plastered with funny pictures and game sketches. It's impossible not to stop and stare at some of the ridiculous animation and attack drawings from South Park: The Stick of Truth, the RPG that Obsidian will release this coming spring. Not a lot of offices would let their employees hang up sketches of vibrating dildo swords and fart clouds. Here, it's work.

The office is generally sectioned off by game, so it's currently broken up into three divisions: One for South Park, one for their Kickstartered game Project: Eternity, and one for an unannounced game that's still in the very early stages of production.

As we walk through the halls, Urquhart shows me some of their coolest artifacts: a soda machine that distributes beverages via scary robotic claw; a customized Obsidian arcade machine that's currently broken; Shattered Steel lunchboxes and Baldur's Gate flasks. We pass Josh Sawyer, a tall, heavily-tattooed game designer who led development on RPGs like Icewind Dale II and Neverwinter Nights 2.

"This is Josh Sawyer's office," Urquhart tells me. He points to a set of hanging dolls above the designer's desk. "And those are his Teletubbies."

"They're not Teletubbies!" Sawyer yells. "They're Pikmin!"

Urquhart laughs heartily. He's a jovial, infectiously energetic man, and I get the impression he spends a lot of time bouncing from office to office, shmoozing and goofing around with his employees. He chuckles and jokes as we pass fellow Obsidianites in the halls. He almost seems too nice to be in charge of a video game studio.
Spreading Their Wings

The first thing Urquhart did, once Obsidian Entertainment turned from idea to registered company, was reach out to game publishers to see who might want to give some cash to the newly-formed independent studio. Before they could start making games, Obsidian needed money.

They talked to EA. "I forgot what we talked to EA about," Urquhart said.

They talked to Ubisoft. "We almost did a Might & Magic game," Urquhart said. It didn't happen: Ubisoft instead contracted a company called Arkane Studios (best known for this year's hit Dishonored) to make Dark Messiah of Might & Magic—probably, Urquhart said, because both Ubisoft and Arkane are French.

"I call [Ubisoft] every year and I say ‘Hey, we'd love to make you a Might & Magic game," Urquhart said. "And they go, ‘We know.'"

Obsidian also talked to Take-Two about a game they called Futureblight. "We were gonna look at using the Neverwinter Nights engine to do a Fallout game," Urquhart said. "We thought that would be cool."

That one came close to reality, but instead wound up a casualty of the console transition cycle. "In 2003, people were very worried about where the PC was going and stuff like that," Urquhart said. "And—not that Xbox was coming to its end, but now everyone knew that there was gonna be another Xbox." So Take-Two passed.

Then they got a call from Simon Jeffrey, who was then president of LucasArts. He wanted to talk about making a video game.

"We actually talked to him about doing sort of an action-RPG Star Wars game, which I always thought would be cool to do—like a little party-based action-RPG, with first-person lightsabers and R2D2. It'd be fun. I still think it'd be cool to do," Urquhart said.

"He said, ‘Well I think that's a cool idea, but what do you think about doing Knights of the Old Republic II?'"

It seemed like the perfect fit. The first KOTOR, developed by BioWare, had done well for LucasArts—well enough that they wanted a sequel by Christmas 2004. BioWare wanted to work on new games, and Obsidian's developers were familiar with the KOTOR technology, so in late 2003, the deal was struck. Obsidian would have 15 months to get the game out for a 2004 holiday release.

Turned out 15 months wasn't quite long enough.
Knights of the Unfinished Republic

This July, almost eight years after Knights of the Old Republic II was released, modders finished their quest to complete the game. Everything that had been left out, they put back in.

Although KOTOR II was released in December 2004, it was never quite finished. Deadline restrictions forced Obsidian to remove a great deal of content—planets, scenes, and plot points were all left on the cutting room floor. Crafty modders would later find and restore this content, as Obsidian left it in the game's source code, but back in 2004, it was all just scrapped.

So why was it all cut?

"What happened was—and as a lot of these things happen, no one means anything nefarious, no one means anything badly or anything like that—what happened was we were on the track to get done for Christmas, and the game was looking really good," Urquhart told me. "I think there was some surprise within LucasArts that we were doing as good a job as we were. I think there were some parts of LucasArts that were worried that ‘Oh, this new developer and they're gonna fuck it up like all new developers fuck everything up.'

"And so in early 2004 they took a look and they were like, ‘Wow!' Their QA was playing it, and they were like, ‘This has a lot of potential: let's move it out, let's give it time.' So they moved it out to the next year."

Urquhart was perfectly fine with that decision, and he changed the project's schedule to reflect that new 2005 release date. But he forgot the cardinal rule of dealing with executives: make sure everything's in writing.

"On our side we didn't make sure that we had the contract changed," Urquhart said. "And then post-E3 I think financially something happened—I don't know what it was. And we got the call and they said it has to be done for Christmas... Again, I don't think this is anything nefarious, it just happened. Some of the onus is on us: we didn't get the contract changed. So we had to make this decision: get in trouble or get it done."

As a new developer, they wanted to make sure their publisher was happy so they could all work together again, Urquhart said. So Obsidian sucked it up. They went through the game and cut out what they could, including a ton of scenes, some quests, and even an entire area—the droid planet M4-78. They also didn't have enough time to do proper bug testing, although Urquhart thinks people have been rather harsh on Knights of the Old Republic II over the years.

"When I talk about KOTOR II through the sands of time, some people are like, "Well, I heard that KOTOR II crashed every six seconds," Urquhart said. "No, it didn't crash every six seconds. It's perfectly playable. For a vast majority of it, it's practically bug free.

"My favorite e-mail that I ever got from someone was like, ‘I just wanna tell you how angry I am about the ending of KOTOR II. After my third playthrough, I just feel...'"

Urquhart laughed. "I'm like... if you played through three times, it couldn't have been that bad!"
The Snow White Spin-Off That Wasn't

In late 2004, as they were finishing up on KOTOR II, Obsidian got a call from the folks at Atari, the company that had snatched Dungeons & Dragons license after Interplay lost it. Atari had released Neverwinter Nights in 2002. Now they wanted to do a sequel. Urquhart was happy to oblige.

By 2005, Obsidian was stable and doing well. Despite their issues with KOTOR II, the company had grown to some 50-something employees, and Urquhart was talking with multiple publishers about making all sorts of games.

One of those publishers was Disney, who enlisted Obsidian to design a video game prequel to Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Tentatively called Dwarves, it would be a third-person action game for Xbox 360 and PS3 that focused on Snow White's seven companions. There would be a whole new story, and at the end, you'd banish the antagonist to Snow White's iconic magical mirror.

"It was a lot of fun," Urquhart said. "We feel we turned in a really cool prototype. We worked on it for about a year. It's one of the games here that the team just loved working on. And unfortunately—which, it happens in this industry—you have changes of focus at a publisher."

Those changes of focus were caused by a CEO change, which led to a total shift of direction. Suddenly Disney was no longer interested in doing a Snow White prequel. Snow White was untouchable, they said. The game was cancelled.

It was a heartbreaking experience that Obsidian—just like many other video game developers—would grow quite familiar with over the coming years. Games are always ephemeral. Publishers are constantly changing their minds about where to throw their money, and gaming trends tend to ebb and flow on a monthly basis. So independent developers like Obsidian have to stay scrappy. They have to juggle as many balls as possible, knowing that most of them will hit the ground.

"We put a lot of challenges in front of us," Urquhart said. "It's this interesting thing, I think, as an independent studio. And I'll give anybody this advice that I can. When somebody offers you something as an independent studio, you take it. You take it, because it's feast or famine. That's what we've found."

Over the next few months, Obsidian found themselves with something of a feast. While they were wrapping up work on Neverwinter Nights 2 in late 2005, Urquhart got a call from Sega's people, who were looking for a brand new original RPG. Problem was, Obsidian was all tied up. They had nobody available to work on a new game.

"[Sega was] like, ‘Why don't you come up with a concept and we'll negotiate a contract and when you're available it'll all be done?'" Urquhart said. "And we were like, ‘Ummm we're fine doing that... you don't feel it's a waste of time?' And they're like, ‘Yeah.'"

So they came up with a concept: spy RPG. They came up with a name: Alpha Protocol. And they came up with a main character, Michael Thorton, a superspy as suave as James Bond, as savvy as Jason Bourne, and as badass as Jack Bauer.

"[Sega] loved it," Urquhart said. "They said, ‘Hey, this is different. It's not dragons, it's not phasers.' You don't see a lot of spy RPGs. Sometimes we go: maybe there's a reason for that!"

And indeed, Urquhart admits that Alpha Protocol had some serious issues. The game's four-year development process was long and arduous, and the team sometimes felt like they didn't have a clear direction: was it a shooter? An RPG? A stealth game? All three?

"We meandered—I think that's the best way to say it," Urquhart said. "We meandered for quite a while on that project. It took us a long time to get to the point where we were where we needed to be."

They didn't have any sort of game specification document, Urquhart said, which is now something they require for all of their games: a listed, documented set of guidelines for exactly how a game will be designed and developed. They also didn't determine exactly who they were making the game for—action players? RPG fans? shooter addicts?—which Urquhart said was a serious detriment.

"We started getting into these arguments which were completely not helpful," he said. "Is it 70% RPG or 30% action, or is it 46% action and 50%... These things were not helpful. What we needed to say is: in a mission, Michael can do these things, you know, and this is the toolkit. He can unlock things, he can hack things, he can throw bombs, he can interact this way, he can interact that way."

Part of the problem was Sega's indecision, Urquhart said. "A great example is there was a whole segment of the game, which was really cool, and it probably cost $500,000 to make. It was a long sequence, lots of mocap and all this kind of stuff. And at the time Sega felt it just didn't fit the game... and so $500,000 cut. And you know, I understand: they pay us to make the game. It's totally their right to do that. It can just derail."

When it came out in June 2010 (after several well-publicized delays), Alpha Protocol was slammed by critics. Reviewers thought it was buggy, messy, and directionless. The game didn't meet Sega's sales expectations, and plans for a sequel were shelved.

But against all odds, Alpha Protocol (one of whose characters stars in the above image) has somehow turned into an underground hit. For every negative review out there you'll find a hundred fans who love the game, who replay it over and over just to see how their choices impact every scene and ending.

It's so weird to have this game where I can read a review and the poor game is whimpering in the corner and the press guy is just beating it," Urquhart said. "And I—we get e-mails. Just the other day, someone wrote a nice, very long e-mail about how they're playing through Alpha Protocol for the third or fourth time and they just love it... That is weird, to have a game in your career where it got reviewed poorly, but then it gets on all these lists. It's on these ‘Best games you've never played' lists or ‘Poorly-rated games you really should play' lists. And I always wonder: should I feel good about that?"

Sega has no interest in making a sequel right now—development was costly and challenging, Urquhart points out—but anything could change, particularly as word of mouth for Alpha Protocol continues to spread. "It sold okay," Urquhart said. "We don't know if they made money or lost money, but we do know—and that's the interesting thing—it keeps selling."

"Now, knowing everything we know now, we would love to do Alpha Protocol 2, and everybody here would love to work on it," he said. "[Because] we now know what it is and how to do it... I'm hoping maybe in even a couple of years, [Sega] will get to kind of a point where everybody has kind of moved on, and the baggage is swept away. People are still positive about the brand. We get asked [about a sequel] all the time, still. It's become a cult classic."
Alien Encounters

In 2006, as Neverwinter Nights 2 was finished and Alpha Protocol was just getting started, Obsidian was approached by three publishers at around the same time. One wanted to work with them on an "original fantasy RPG," Urquhart said. The other was EA, whose executives likely wanted a piece of the open-world RPG pie that had been recently popularized by The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. They asked Obsidian to make what Urquhart today describes as "a big Skyrim-type Ultima game."

The third was Sega, who wanted to work on another game with Urquhart and his team: a role-playing game based on Aliens. That's the one they went with, although you wouldn't know it from store shelves: the Aliens RPG was cancelled in 2009. (Some very cool concept art from the game is still floating around on the Internet, though.)

So what happened? Urquhart said they had a fantastic prototype—"The best vertical slice [Sega] had ever received"—but they couldn't quite turn it into a good enough game. One Friday night in February of 2009, they sent a build of the game to Sega's producers. On Monday morning, they got a call saying that the Aliens RPG was cancelled. Sega didn't even look at the prototype they'd sent.

"The saddest thing was, as we were turning over everything to them, our producer [at Sega] called Darren [Monahan], one of the other owners here, and he said, ‘My god you guys did a lot of work,'" Urquhart said.

"And we were like, well yeah."
Viva New Vegas

Just as Aliens was cancelled—and right after they'd finished both expansion packs to Neverwinter Nights 2—Urquhart got a call from Todd Vaughn, vice president of development at Bethesda. The folks there had just released Fallout 3, and their internal team was moving on to Skyrim. They had something else in mind for Obsidian.

"We've talked to the Bethesda guys more than once about doing games," Urquhart said. "They called me once about Star Trek, and I was probably being a little bit too much, too arrogant of a developer... This would've been like 2007—way before the movies—and it was like, Star Trek wasn't in a good place. I don't know what I said, but I now know it probably sounded arrogant."

This time, Bethesda wanted Obsidian to work on a franchise that Urquhart, Chris Taylor, and the rest of their team knew quite well: Fallout.

"They came to us and said, ‘We think it'd be cool if you did something on the West Coast,'" Urquhart said. "We were like, ‘Sure!'"

So Urquhart sat down one night with the other four owners and started to brainstorm. They decided that the game a heavy focus on factions, as per fan request. They immediately decided to set the game in Las Vegas. They even plotted out a rudimentary intro: "What could be more Vegas than starting off the game with you getting shot in the head and buried in the desert?"

Bethesda loved the treatment and immediately greenlit New Vegas, which Obsidian released in October 2010. It was well-received—and according to many critics and fans, better than Fallout 3—but it was also full of bugs. For some people the game was near-unplayable thanks to constant glitches and crashes. Many of the game's issues have since been patched, but for fans paying $60, New Vegas was unforgivable.

"The timeline was compressed," Urquhart said. "It was a timeline we agreed to—I think we bit off a little more than we could chew, and then it was a little hard to recover... We learned some lessons about trying to make too big a game. We also learned some lessons about managing QA."

They tried to apply those lessons to their next game, Dungeon Siege III, which had its own issues, but by most accounts was relatively bug-free. And after New Vegas, Urquhart decided it was time to shed their reputation.

"We as a company got into a big room and we said, ‘We are not gonna make buggy games anymore,'" Urquhart said.

So they designed an entirely new bug-tracking system—a computerized program that automatically sends crash reports to their engineers. Their last bug-recording system, Urquhart said, involved pens and paper.

"I think that's what people are gonna see from us from now on—they're not gonna see buggy products," he said. "I dunno what the exact count is, but we're a ways away from being done on South Park and we've already fixed 10,000 bugs."

"So would you want to make a (bug-free) sequel to New Vegas?" I asked.

"We would love to work on Fallout again," Urquhart said. "Hell, we would love to work in the Elder Scrolls universe. Nothing is going on at this point in time, but we talk about it all the time... I'd love to do a Fallout: New Vegas 2. I think a Fallout: New Vegas 2 would kick ass.

"I believe New Vegas is a great, like—you have Fallout, and then you have New Vegas. They feel like separate products. Same engine, same everything, but they feel totally different. ‘Sister product' is the best way to put it."
Matt and Trey

In October of 2009, Urquhart got an interesting call. It was Greg Kampanis, a vice president of content at South Park Digital Studios, the interactive branch of South Park. He said that Matt Stone and Trey Parker—South Park's co-creators, writers, directors, and voice actors—wanted to make a video game, and they wanted to meet with Obsidian to talk about it.

"I said, ‘Sure, I guess,'" Urquhart said, laughing. He agreed to set up a meeting, not sure exactly what to think.

"What was interesting was, [Kampanis] said, ‘Put something together about your company, but know that it isn't really for them, particularly for Trey, because he already knows all the stuff that you do.'"

So that's what they did: Urquhart put together a presentation of ideas, and when they all got together, he explained to Trey and Matt how Obsidian makes RPGs.

"I went through that very quickly, and [Trey's] like, ‘I got it. I love this stuff. I don't like that and this, that, and the other thing,'" Urquhart said.

Towards the end of the meeting, Urquhart turned to the two South Park creators and said, "Look: let's pretend we can do all the RPG stuff. We can handle that. If it doesn't look like the show, all of this is pointless."

Trey and Matt agreed.

"That's our job," Urquhart told them. "We need to go and make something that looks like the show."

So Urquhart got a team together and spent a week putting together a rudimentary prototype. They got the original South Park construction paper from the folks at South Park Digital Studios, and worked to turn it into a polygon-filled interactive experience.

"We showed it to [South Park Digital Studios]," Urquhart said. "They said, ‘That's totally on the right track, once you do a little bit more.'"

Obsidian wasn't getting paid at this point, but the prospect of a South Park RPG was hard to resist, so Urquhart agreed to keep plugging away at it. They built a prototype set in a house from the show. You played as a generic kid, and you could change your race or clothes by hitting the trigger buttons. If you walked into the living room, you could find Randy Marsh in his underwear, playing Guitar Hero. If you went to the kitchen, you could pick up a spatula, which would then transform into an axe that you could use to smash things.

It wasn't much, but it was the start of a game.

"We took it in to Matt and Trey," Urquhart said. "And Trey just grabs the controller and he's like, ‘This feels awesome!' And Matt runs up to the screen and he goes ‘That's the construction paper!' And they were like, ‘Let's do this." And that was that."

So they put together a contract and started working on the RPG. For a while, Obsidian worked directly for the South Park team with funding from their parent company, Viacom. But in late 2011, they decided to get a more experienced game publisher involved. A few companies showed interest. They ultimately went with THQ.

Not long afterwards, news came out that THQ was in dire straits. This was particularly tough for Obsidian, as they were reeling from the recent cancellation of a game they'd codenamed North Carolina, which forced the company to lay off 30 people earlier this year. For a while, all they could do was wait.

"Whenever you have to put people on the street it sucks," Urquhart said. "And so it's a big wait of like, what's gonna happen? Are they gonna pay, are they not gonna pay? So yeah, I was worried."

But the game is shaping up to be great. Diverging from the style of RPGs they'd developed in the past, Obsidian decided to go with turn-based combat for South Park—now called South Park: The Stick of Truth—and they spent a great deal of time working on creative attacks, spells, and summons that would fit the theme of the show. Trey and Matt wrote the entire script, which from what I've seen so far feels genuine and hilarious. And initial buzz for the game has been fantastic. Even if THQ tanks in the next few months, it's easy to imagine a publisher bidding war over who gets the rights to Stick of Truth.

The contrast between Obsidian at the end of 2012 and Obsidian at the beginning of 2012 is like night and day.
Next-Gen Cancellations

When I asked Urquhart about North Carolina—the cancelled project that led to significant layoffs at Obsidian earlier this year—he said he couldn't talk much about it. It was an original IP—a big, third-person, open-world game designed and created by Obsidian. They pitched it to several publishers in 2011, complete with a fancy book full of ideas and concept art. But Urquhart couldn't say much more than that.

"We went down the road with a few publishers," he said. "We did get it signed up with a publisher, and unfortunately as happens sometimes, projects just don't go. Particularly when it's been not that long, it's hard to go into a lot of detail about it. It's too bad—we thought it was really cool."

So the game was axed, and at the beginning of this year, Obsidian had to lay off a large team of people. (Earlier this year I reported that North Carolina was a first-party game for the next Xbox—codenamed Durango—and it was published by Microsoft. Urquhart wouldn't comment on whether that was true.)

Games are cancelled. It happens. But for an independent developer like Obsidian, this has become a trend over the past decade: everyone spends a great deal of time and money on a video game that never actually makes it to reality.

Even today, as Obsidian seems to be in a comfortable position, they still have to stay scrappy to survive.

"As soon as we get back from the holidays, I'm on the road looking for the next thing," Urquhart said. "We're generally always pitching. Products that are working right now for our publishers might not work, and probably people don't know a lot about this aspect, but in general, all agreements that any developer signs with a publisher have this line called 'cancel for convenience.' We could get a call tomorrow saying, 'Yeah, we don't want to move forward with product X.'"

When that sort of thing happens, Obsidian will usually get a kill fee of some sort, but that's never enough to pay everyone for nine months—the amount of time that it usually takes to put together a new deal, Urquhart said.

"It's hard," he said. "That can be done with a 75-person team. Suddenly I have 75 people tomorrow that don't have work. What do we do and how do we handle it?"

In early 2012, things were rough for Obsidian and independent developers like them. But over the course of this year, something changed. Kickstarter might not be a revolution, but it's changed the game for companies like Obsidian. And Urquhart's team has been one of the year's most exciting success stories.

How To Make $4 Million In 30 Days

It's September 14, 2012. 10am Pacific. Obsidian is going crazy.

They've just launched the Kickstarter for Project: Eternity—an original, isometric RPG that they hope to develop over the next year and a half—and nobody at the office can focus on anything else. Fans are coming out in droves to support the project, donating money to help Obsidian develop a spiritual successor to the games they made back in the late 90s. They're making thousands of dollars an hour—the sort of success that nobody at the company had anticipated.

"I'm going around the offices, people are like holy shit," Urquhart told me. "It was so crazy. I'd go in to have a conversation, and while I'm talking to somebody, every five minute conversation I had we'd earn $5,000."

At around 5pm, he realized that nobody was going to get much work done, so they all went out for drinks across the street. As they sat and checked their phones, they watched the Kickstarter continue to rake in money: something like $25,000 every half hour.

By the end of the day, they'd earned $700,000.

"The next morning I went to breakfast with my daughter," Urquhart said. "She's nine. She wanted to know, cause my wife was all excited, she was like, ‘What's going on, Mommy?" She said, ‘Oh, Daddy did this thing,' and she plays the video. And my daughter's like, ‘Can we give him money?'"

They hit a million while Urquhart was at breakfast. They met their goal of $1.2 million on day two. And after 30 days—days full of updates, interviews, and late nights spent in Kickstarter comments sections—Obsidian earned close to $4 million.

It almost feels like a fairy tale ending: after years of rushed projects, sudden cancellations, and brutal layoffs, Obsidian is suddenly in control of its own destiny. They've got two promising games on the way, and even just a few months ago, major publishers were knocking on their door: Urquhart told me he's been talking to Bethesda, Ubisoft, Warner Bros., and LucasArts.

But not everybody is a fan of Obsidian Entertainment. Some RPG fans disliked their treatment of series like Neverwinter Nights and Fallout, and some have grown disillusioned with the company after what they see as a trend of rushed, buggy software. In many ways Project: Eternity's success is now an albatross. Between the South Park RPG and the Kickstartered phenomenon, expectations are at an all-time high for the group of developers from California.

Urquhart isn't worried about the pressure. He's optimistic about the next couple of years. "I really feel that 2013 and 2014 are gonna be great years for Obsidian," he said. "For gaming in general."

He's even got a dream project: Knights of the Old Republic III. On next-gen consoles.

"I think doing something like that on [Orbis and Durango] and things like that might be—I would be disappointed as a gamer if that never got made," Urquhart said. "I think a lot of gamers would be disappointed as well."

But Obsidian has a lot of dream projects, and the 90-person studio can't get to all of them. For now, they've got a lot of work to do. South Park has to meet expectations; Project: Eternity has to meet even higher expectations; and the company has to convince the world that they can release bug-free, polished video games.

So the story of Obsidian Entertainment isn't over yet. Maybe it's just begun.



    GAMES RELEASED BY OBSIDIAN

        2004: Star Wars: Knights of the Republic II
        2006: Neverwinter Nights 2
        2007: Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer
        2008: Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir
        2010: Alpha Protocol
        2010: Fallout: New Vegas
        2011: Dungeon Siege III
        2013? South Park: The Stick of Truth
        2014? Project: Eternity



I donated to the Kickstarter, I'm excited about it.

[Lurid Sinner]

.

[Athos131]

It's a Steamworks key.

[Lurid Sinner]

.

[Athos131]

The Steam Holiday Sale Is Now Live

http://kotaku.com/5970199/the-steam-holiday-sale-is-now-live

Stockings ready? Wallets out? Steam's winter holiday sale has begun.

Right now there are sales on a whole bunch of franchises, including Hitman, Prince of Persia, and many others. You can get Borderlands 2 for $30, for example.

There are also some big publisher bundles: $90 gets you a whole bunch of Bethesda games, including Skyrim and Dishonored. And for $70 you can get a metric ton of indie games including Mark of the Ninja and Ys Origins.

If you're new to Steam, watch the flash and daily deal sales.  Don't buy something at normal sale price until the last day, as prices can be slashed even more.  A general rule of thumb is not to buy something unless it's 50%.  This isn't infallible, but buying a game just slashed in the normal list can end up biting you in the ass.

GOG.com is having a sale through the end of the year as well.  They are older games that are designed to run on Windows 7 or 8.  Best of all they are DRM free.

You can also compare greenmangaming.com with Steam.  Sometimes they have better deals. 

Amazon.com can have good deals as well.  I've never shopped for games through them, but check it out.

These deal lists aren't always up to date, but they can give you a thumbnail:

http://www.deals4downloads.com/games/roundup

http://www.cheapshark.com/

http://isthereanydeal.com/

Finally, I'd suggest anyone hunt around youtube or use google and find a review on your game.  Buying clunkers always sucks.

[Athos131]

Game companies usually rush games out at Christmas for a cash grab. As a result many things don't work right or it's buggy.

But this ridiculous.

A man named Dean "Rocket" Hall started a mod called Day Z for the game Arma 2.  It was a mod to make a sandbox zombie survival game.  He's also working on a stand alone version.

After this a company called Hammerpoint Interactive started making claims they already had a similar game in development called War Z.  That was about 5 months ago.

To say there has been a lot of controversy about War Z would be an understatement, but things came to a hedge this week when a "foundational release" was on Steam.

The War Z Mess: Every Crazy Detail We Know So Far [UPDATE]

http://kotaku.com/5969784/the-war-z-mess-every-crazy-detail-we-know-so-far

This week's wildest story is the story of The War Z, a new Steam game that has caused a great deal of controversy for numerous reasons.

Update: This afternoon, The War Z was pulled from Steam.

Fans have come out criticizing the zombie survival game for misleading advertising, suspicious microtransactions, and forum censorship. Meanwhile, The War Z's developers have defended themselves, telling us that "93% of [their] customers like the game."

It's a bizarre mess that we've been following closely and will continue to follow as this week goes on. Here's everything we know about The War Z so far.

Controversy led the developers to change the game's Steam description.

Following yesterday's controversy—during which a giant thread on Reddit alleged that War Z's Steam description was full of lies—the people at War Z developer Hammerpoint Interactive have changed the game's Steam description to be more accurate. Hammerpoint no longer claims that the game has player skills, maps sized up to 400km, or private servers. (Private servers, the description now says, will be available "soon.")

Hammerpoint boss Sergey Titov also issued something of an apology to fans, saying that he was sorry they misread the description.

War Z looks a hell of a lot like Day Z.

The comparisons are impossible to avoid: from the name to the subject matter, it's easy to see War Z as a ripoff that sets out to cash in on Day Z's popularity. But while Day Z, a massively successful zombie survival mod for Arma II, is completely free, War Z costs $15 on Steam—and thanks to some newly-installed microtransactions, it could cost you even more.

In an e-mail to me, Titov addressed this controversy. (Spelling and grammar have not been altered.)

"As soon as we've announced game – we've received our share of hate from some of the DayZ fans accusing us of just ripping off DayZ concept to make a quick money," Titov wrote. "While over time, especially after game have been launched publicly players been able to see that those two designs are pretty different, there're still DayZ fanboys out there who just can't accept fact that similar concept doesn't mean being copycat... Interesting fact – only around 30% of our player base we have right now actually played DayZ. And 15% of our players never heard of DayZ before they started playing The War Z. This confirms that we've been able to attract new players to the survival/zombie war genre of the game."

Lots of people have been banned from War Z, both during the beta and the current release.

"Not too long ago, Hammerpoint banned roughly three thousand players, without providing any proof whatsoever, and blatantly lying about their anti cheat system being flawless," one Kotaku reader told me in an e-mail yesterday. "Today, they went back on their word, saying that a small amount of the bans were not legit, but still leaving a ton of people [banned], and almost 96 hours in queue from their support without any answers at all."

Several other War Z players have also e-mailed me over the past few days to complain about bans. A different player said he was banned a few days ago, then unbanned last night along with hundreds of others. "I've never hacked, or purposely used exploits that were in the game," he said. "They unbanned hundreds of players three days after the fact without saying a word between the events. They have been lying to the public non-stop."

Titov also addressed this during our conversation, telling me via e-mail that he thinks a lot of War Z players are lying. (Again, spelling/grammar are unaltered.)

"We also are pretty aggressive banning people who use cheats and hacks in a game," Titov wrote. "Those guys normally have paid $10-20 to purchase hacks that offered them'no hack detection guarantee' – naturally they're being extremely pissed off when we've detected their hacking activities and banned their accounts. Those guys are very active in spreading false information and lies about game."

You're not allowed to make posts on War Z's Steam message board about why you quit.

The rules, as laid out by a moderator who goes by the handle Kewk, are a little intense:



Some crafty players have found ways to circumvent this.

Check out this message, screencapped by a NeoGAFfer.



(Stumped? Try reading it vertically.)

A Valve moderator is investigating claims that people have been wrongly banned from The War Z's message board.

As the moderator writes:

    Several users have raised concerns about censorship or other posters being banned unfairly. We take these complaints seriously and are investigating the issue.

    If you have specific examples of what you feel was unfair or incorrect moderation on this forum, please post them in this thread (or on my profile) and we'll have a look. There has been a lot of traffic in this forum - a new topic every minute for the last day and a half, with thousands of replies. All that makes moderation a very difficult task.

Thousands of people are signing petitions to protest The War Z.

Some of them want full refunds for the game.

Others demand that Valve take the game off Steam.

(I've reached out to Valve to ask if they plan on doing anything about The War Z, and will update should they respond.)

The man behind The War Z helped make one of the worst games of all time.

It's called Big Rigs, and it was immortalized by Alex Navarro in this entertaining GameSpot video review. Sergey Titov was the lead programmer on Big Rigs, according to a number of write-ups on the game.

Titov most recently worked on League of Legends at Riot Games, which makes it interesting that...

At one point, the War Z's terms of service linked to League of Legends.

Although the TOS has since been changed, several months ago, it linked out to League of Legends, which seems to imply that at one point, parts of War Z's terms of service were ripped from Riot's online game.

One Kotaku reader sent in this screengrab:



The Terms of Service come with one rather interesting line.

    ONCE YOU AGREE TO THIS TERMS OF SERVICE AND THE END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR THE GAME (THE "EULA") AND SERVICE FOR THE GAME COMMENCES, YOU WILL NO LONGER BE ELIGIBLE FOR A REFUND FOR ANY AMOUNTS OR OTHER CONSIDERATION PAID BY YOU FOR THE USE (OR FUTURE USE) OF THE GAME CLIENT OR THE SERVICE.

Expect to see more and more strange things as time goes on.

The War Z mess has been rather crazy. Quite a few people seem to be unhappy with the game, and a number of readers have contacted us with strange details and stories about their experiences with it. We will of course continue to follow this story and keep you updated as more details come out about this strange situation.

UPDATE: More craziness!

Here's a post on The War Z's forums from Titov asking people to vote for the game on Metacritic, where it currently has a user score of 1.5/10.

And here's an article from PCGamesN, who measured The War Z's first map, Colorado. On the Steam description for The War Z, the developers say that Colorado is 100 square kilometers. PCGamesN's Steve Hogarty determined that the map is actually... 9.7417 square kilometers.

UPDATE 2: And then there are the ripped images...

[Athos131]

A Shocking Interview With The War Z Developer On False Steam Store Claims

http://uk.pc.gamespy.com/pc/the-war-z/1226980p1.html

Hammerpoint Interactive's The War Z shot straight to the top of the Steam Top Sellers' list after its surprise "Foundation" launch yesterday, and it's remained there throughout today. Despite its apparent success, all was not well in this post-apocalyptic zombie survival shooter land. Steam users who've bought The War Z, and those who'd bought into the alpha/beta period via the official site, quickly pointed out that the Steam store page made a series of promises that the game itself just doesn't keep. We got in touch with Hammerpoint's executive producer on The War Z, Sergey Titov, who spoke to us via IM to discuss the situation, how this incident came about, and what Hammerpoint plans to do about it. What he has to say indicates what appears to be a combination of a not-so-firm grasp of the English language and a startlingly cavalier attitude toward truth in advertising.

Before we dive into the transcript, which we're presenting only slightly edited to repair the overlapping chaos that inevitably happens in IM conversations and patch up some broken English, here's a brief summary of the events that led us here: Where the Steam store page promised multiple maps ranging in size from 100 to 400 square kilometers, buyers found just one roughly 100 square km map. Where it promised 100 players per server, it delivered just 50. Where it promised rentable private servers, levelable skills, and friends lists, there was simply nothing available but menu screen placeholders. That means that thousands -- likely tens of thousands (based on Steam's concurrent players stats) -- purchased this game while under the impression that had features it simply doesn't.

While the store information was amended this morning to move most of those claims -- except for the 100-player servers -- to an "upcoming features" section, that's a shocking breach of trust from the Steam's store, which has in the past been reliable when it comes to describing features. We've contacted both Valve and Hammerpoint for comment. Valve has yet to respond regarding its policy for fact-checking developer-supplied feature lists. We'll keep you posted on that, when and if we get a response.

Update: Valve is now offering full refunds to all gamers who bought The War Z from Steam, and says a mistake was made in allowing it to be sold in the first place. There has still been no comment on any fact-checking policy.


GameSpy: Nice to meet you, Sergey. I have some questions about the Steam release of The War Z. It has been pretty irregular, and has raised a lot of concerns, and allegations of fraud. The description that was posted yesterday, and left unchanged for approximately 24 hours, promised numerous features that simply don't exist at the moment. During that time, The War Z became the top-selling game on Steam. So thousands of PC gamers purchased a product that made promises it couldn't deliver on. What led to those promises being made on the Steam store page, and how do you respond to people who are angry about being misled?

Sergey Titov: Our Steam store description contained information about what game features [were] planned for 2012-early 2013 content updates. Some of the features have been in game for a while, so -- actually two major things -- server rentals and Skill Trees, didn't make [it] into the game yet. This being said we've realized that layout and presentation of this information needs to be changed on the Steam page, which we did today in the morning. After we did it, we [are] still enjoying being [the] Number One top-grossing game on Steam at the moment. So my point is, yes, I'm sure that few players maybe be upset, but I can assure you that based on what we're seeing number of people who post bad comments are [a] small percentage of people who actually bought [the] game.



GameSpy: There's also the issue of the max players per server, which appears to be 50 in our testing but is still promised as 100 on the Steam page. It also claimed multiple areas of between 100 to 400 square kilometers, but delivered only one area of around 100 square kilometers. I'm sure that many people do enjoy playing The War Z, but the issue isn't whether it's a good game or a bad game. It's a matter of truth in advertising.

Sergey Titov: Max players -- I'm not sure why this is even an issue. [The] text clearly stated "up to 100 players." And 50 players [which] we have right now -- is what our players -- our community feels is comfortable level for them to play. We had it at 40, we've raised it to 70, and after that we've asked our players, "What you want this number to be for Colorado map?" Over 90,000 players took [the] survey and most of them said -- 50. This is why this number is set to 50 right now. Yet -- on your own private servers you will be able to set to 100 if you want . Size of the area, once again, come on -- [the] first map is over 100 sq km . So [the] text is right. And for our next big map, California, we're testing map size of 420sq km.

GameSpy: The original text, which was up for a day, claimed "A huge persistent world: The War Z is an open world game. Each world has areas between 100 to 400 square kilometers." "Each world" implies multiple worlds. "Areas" is plural, again implying multiple areas. It currently delivers just one area that does not approach 200km in size, much less 400. And do you not see it as a problem for the store to claim that I can play on a 100-player server, yet when I buy it, I am limited to playing on a 50-player server?

Sergey Titov: Okay -- if text is saying "up to 100 players" -- yes, I may imagine situation when somebody will say "okay it HAVE TO BE 100." "Over 100 sq km" falls in "100 to 400" right? Okay my point is -- online games are [a] living breathing GAME SERVICE. This is not a boxed product that you buy one time. It's evolving product that will have more and more features and content coming it. This is what The War Z is.

GameSpy: I understand that. It is now a common practice for a game to add more features in the future. However, that is not what happened here. What happened here is that Hammerpoint claimed, through Steam, that these features exist today.



Sergey Titov: I'm sure there'll be people who will look into small details and will say "no I was mislead," where in fact they imagined something to themselves without checking details first. I'm sure that Steam have it's refund policies that should handle those situations.

GameSpy: Steam is actually very stingy about refunds. However, in an unusual case like this, I imagine they'll be forced to make an exception. Does Hammerpoint have a system in place to refund customers who feel they've been misled by unfulfilled promises?

Sergey Titov: Hammerpoint, since its early stages of Alpha, provided refunds to players who can't play game for some reasons. We've granted refund to even those players who come top us and said -- your game is shit. And if we went and see that he played like 20 minutes, we've refunded him. Yet if somebody have played like 5-10 hours and decided he doesn't like game - we clearly didn't provided refunds to them. In [the] case of Steam -- it's up to Steam to decide if they provide or not refunds. I mean -- we do not have access to that part of the Steam ecosystem.

Let's be frank: when you read "up to 100 players" -- what does it mean to you personally? I mean, for me it doesn't mean that I will play with 99 other players. Really And yes game supports 100 players -- heck, it supports actually over 400 players per server as of today. Do we have servers launched with this number of slots? No we don't, because this is not what our players WANT.

GameSpy: Yes, frankly, it absolutely does mean that the game will support 100 players. Anything less is a false claim. You could just as easily claim your game will support up to a million players, and then say "Well, 50 is between one and a million." It would be absolutely fine for you to tune your game to what your players have told you that they want. What is not fine is for you to tell potential buyers that they will be able to do things in your game that they simply cannot do as it exists today. What you've done is the same as telling someone that the car you're selling can go 100mph, when in fact it can only go 50mph.

Sergey Titov: And we've corrected text on Steam. As I've said -- it was done less than 18 hours after we've started selling game. After that -- after text was changed -- over 7 hours passed.

GameSpy: Steam still says -- I'm looking at it right now -- "Up to 100 players per game server." That is a false claim.

Sergey Titov: Let me ask you -- what YOU think we should put there, since we do not know what number of slots will be on official servers tomorrow -- 20,30, 50, 70 or 100?

GameSpy: I think you should put the minimum you can deliver. If you deliver more, that's a bonus that no one can claim they were misled about. If you deliver less, you have failed to deliver on a promise.

Sergey Titov: Okay good point -- so you think that if we'll have server with 100 players up and running it means we've delivered even if everybody will hate it ?

GameSpy: If you believe everyone will hate it with 100 players, it is totally reasonable for you to turn down the maximum number of players. It is not reasonable for you to tell me I can play with 100 players and then only allow me to play with 50 players. Who is responsible for updating the Steam page text? Hammerpoint or Valve?

PR Rep: They do the actual updates based on info we send.


Some parts of The War Z are still labeled with "alpha test."

GameSpy: So, will you be sending them an updated version of the text that specifies that A) the current player cap is 50, and B) that this is a "foundational release," and not what people have come to expect of a finished product?

Sergey Titov: We have several private servers with over 100 slots on them. I think we [will] just tune it down to 100 slots and make it available to public. This is right thing to do as I think. We have demo servers with 130 and 150 players on them. But it's internal at the moment. I've asked if we can add them quickly to public pool.

Update: 100-player servers are now confirmed online.

GameSpy: That would be good. Will you be issuing an apology to people who purchased The War Z under the impression that features that are planned for the future exist today?

Sergey Titov: I think we'll do that by sending them personalized emails and explaining what to expect from the game now and in upcoming weeks/months. Bottom line - this is issue that affected at most few percent of active War Z audience and thus it should be dealt with on [a] case-by-case basis.

GameSpy: So, no public apology for misleading people on the Steam store page?

Sergey Titov: Actually we've already posted explanation on our forums that is available to public.

GameSpy: This post doesn't address the fact that there were false claims made.

Sergey Titov: I think there's difference between false claims and perception of the text.

GameSpy: There does not appear to be a reasonable way that this could be read any other way, when the sections are titled "About the game" and "Key features," and both contain things that do not yet exist.

Sergey Titov: Ah ok. Yes we're going to post about fact that information on the Store page was presented in incorrect format/layout. That was our mistake obviously. Which we've corrected early morning today.

Update: Titov has posted a new apology on The War Z's forums. However, it claims that we "misread information about game features," not that Hammerpoint incorrectly stated that features would be included.

GameSpy: Mostly corrected. Again, the Steam page still makes no mention of the fact that this is a "Foundation release." It is simply labeled as "The War Z."

Sergey Titov: What's difference ? I mean -- I'd love to adjust that BTW -- I just personally don't see what difference does it make? Ie -- THIS IS "THE WAR Z" game. It's not like there'll be "final release" or anything like this.

GameSpy: Then why was the press release sent out calling it a Foundation Release instead of simply a release?

Sergey Titov: This is what we call it. There's no such thing as "Release" for an online game. More important - you can't just add "foundation release" or any other words to the title of the game on Steam. It's like -- The War Z is a title of the game. We can of course add VERSION in ABOUT GAME section....

GameSpy: So as far as you're concerned, The War Z is officially out of beta and fully released, correct?

Sergey Titov: Nope - there's no such thing as "fully released" for online game. As far as I'm concerned The War Z is in stage when we're ready to stop call it Beta. This is basic version - bones that we're going to add more and more "meat" - features and content in a coming months and hopefully years.

GameSpy: By "fully released," of course, I mean as released as any online game is at its official launch. For example, when PlanetSide 2 removed its beta label and opened its doors to the public, it was considered fully released even though it will obviously continue to evolve.

Can you tell us where we should direct players who are upset about inaccurate promises should go to request a refund? Should that be done through you, or through Steam support?

Sergey Titov: They should contact Steam support - we can't refund Steam payments since we do not have access to Steam for that. The way Steam works -- they're acting like any other retail outlet -- they sell the game, get payments from customers, they process refunds, fraud, etc and once in awhile they send us money with reporting on how many units were sold, fraud/refunds, etc... If [a] player bought [the] game from us directly -- they should use e-mail, phone numbers, or support website that's included on their receipts -- this is due [the] fact we're using numerous of payment providers.

GameSpy: Alright, thank you Sergey. We will pass that along. We appreciate your time.

Sergey Titov: As for information about Steam webpage -- we'll post [an] official explanation to our forums, and yes we'll apologize for presenting information in a way that allowed different interpretation. Such as "up to 100 player' issue -- clearly you think about it one way, myself and other people I just asked think it's totally acceptable to say this. But once again -- I personally think that bottom line is -- do we have happy players or not. At the end this is what we're aiming for.


Yes, we can all agree that happy players are the end goal of any game developer. But how you get there does matter, and this kind of behavior, whether it's negligence and miscommunication/mistranslation or (less likely in this case, because if so, why would he even talk to us?) a scam -- is completely unacceptable from game makers. What's even worse, though, is that Hammerpoint has cast a shadow of doubt over the other Steam store pages. Are they really not policed at all? It would seem not. Again, we'll let you know if we hear from Valve on that.

The other burning question right now is: is The War Z any good? Our thorough investigation -- aka "review" -- is underway now, so we'll let you know ASAP what we think of it. It should be noted, though, that even this kind of shocking behavior won't automatically deduct points from its score. Especially now that the Steam store page will (hopefully) be accurate by the time our review is posted, the review and score will be based on the condition of The War Z at the time.

[Athos131]

After many complaints, Steam removed the game from sale, and started issuing refunds.

The War Z interview: Sergey Titov responds to backlash, sale removal from Steam

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/12/20/the-war-z-interview-sergey-titov-backlash/

On Monday, zombie survival shooter-MMO The War Z became available on Steam as a “Foundation Release.” The same day, complaints began to arise that the game’s page in the Steam store misrepresented and exaggerated its content by mentioning features that weren’t yet integrated. This morning, Valve took the game off sale, admitting that a mistake was made in “prematurely” making The War Z available for purchase. Valve has extended an invitation to refund purchases through Steam Support, an exception to Valve’s usually-rigid refund rules. Those who bought the game through Steam are still able to play it, and The War Z remains for sale on its website.

Following these events, I contacted executive producer Sergey Titov via email to ask about The War Z’s troubled release on Steam, if he agrees with Valve’s decision to take the game off sale, and what he expects the game’s immediate future to be.

Sergey’s comments are presented unedited and as they were provided to us from The War Z PR.

PCG: As of this morning, The War Z is no longer purchasable on Steam. Was this a surprise to you, or has Valve been in communication with you after release?

Sergey Titov: No surprise, Valve contacted us to let us know their concerns based on some of the info circulating in the press and we completely understand their need to sort things out and make certain we are communicating correctly to their audience before we relaunch with them. They have an obligation first and foremost to their customers and we recognize that.

Do you agree with Valve’s decision to temporarily unpublish the game from Steam?

Titov: Yes, we think this is the best way to serve their customers and we respect their decision. As you know we’ve been publicly available since October 15. Over that time I think we (the developers) got used to and took it for granted that players knew what state the game was in and how it was a constantly evolving project, with new features being added on and ongoing basis. Clearly the release on Steam introduced the game to players who never followed War Z and we made the mistake of not communicating effectively to the Steam community. Also, during our pre-holiday crunch time with development extending late into the night, there was a major disconnect between our development team and marketing team that resulted in some of the “coming soon” features being listed as current features on the Steam sales page. Namely the following:

1. Servers being able to support up to 100 players—This is actually true, but at the moment we launched the servers were capped at 50 as a result of an in-game survey we had conducted. That information had not been communicated properly to our marketing team that was handling the Steam integration. Currently the servers support both 100 players and 50 players.

2. Map Size—We have always stated that our maps would range from 100—400km squared and that we would launch with one map “Colorado,” and then follow up with additional maps in the first quarter of 2013. Nothing has changed, however I believe the wording on the Steam page could have been interpreted as there currently being more than one game world available.

3. Server Rental/Strongholds and Skill Tree—Again, this was not communicated correctly to the marketing team and once it was realized it was corrected.

We recognized the above quickly and made the update to the Steam page within the first day of going on sale, however we completely understand that players were upset and felt that we mislead them. We absolutely take responsibility for these inconsistencies. Ultimately, despite all the controversy that has surrounded The War Z – even since the early Alpha launch, we have cultivated a large and loyal player base that is very active in the game and we want to make sure that new players coming into the game now will be satisfied and feel that they are getting a great game experience.

When will The War Z be purchasable on Steam again? When you do relaunch the game, how will The War Z be different?

Titov: We are working currently with Steam to ensure that they are comfortable that all of our communication is accurate—which it currently is. As for differences—this will be the same WarZ game as available on our own website. For Steam version—our goal right now is to clear up all support requests and refund requests for Steam users.

From our very first hours of being available on Steam and right up until sales were disabled, The War Z was the number one top grossing game title on Steam. We really feel that this is not only a testament to the game’s popularity, but also largely due to our loyal and vocal community. We are looking forward to getting things sorted out and being available again soon.

The War Z is still purchasable and playable through thewarz.com, correct? Will the game continue to be playable through your launcher?

Titov: Both the Steam purchased and standalone versions are available to players without any restrictions. That is, anyone who purchased the game through Steam can obviously continue to play it through Steam.



It’s since been updated, but why did the game’s initial description on Steam not reflect the content of the game? Who’s responsible for that error?

Titov: Ultimately, it’s our responsibility and no fault of Steam at all. The description on Steam was basically reflecting a list of all the features that either our engine is capable of ( like number of players per server—which can be much higher than 100 for example) as well as our immediate development tasks. The big problem was with some internal communication. As a result of this mistake, our company board reviewed the situation today and we will be making some changes in our structure and with some of our key team members.

The current version of the game changed the amount of time players wait to respawn individual characters from one hour to four hours. You also introduced a paid method for instant respawning. These are significant changes to make as the game appeared on Steam—how would you defend these design and business model decisions?

Titov: Actually this was part of the original design we did for Normal and Hardcore modes. In Normal mode you die and you have a cooldown period before you can play using the same character again. Our original plan was to have this cooldown period be 24-48 hours, but we’ve lowered it to 1 hour during alpha and beta periods. We conducted a large group survey and asked players what they feel cooldown time should be—starting with 1 hour and up to 24 hours. Most users said that it should be 4 hours—40% out of over 80,000 respondents.

As for ability to revive your character using micro transactions—okay once again that was a convenience feature that we planned from the start. So neither of those features were actually tied to the Steam release itself.

What does your roadmap look like for features in The War Z—what do you expect to add to the game in the next three months?

Titov:

Dec 2012-early January:

    Leaderboards
    Improvements in Clan system

January 2013:

    Server rentals, introduction of Stroghold maps to public.We’re going to basically introduce whole new meta gameplay for War Z, which we hope will change the game dramatically for those who are looking for a more engaging PVE type of experience.
    More “barricade” types and new “building blocks” items that will allow you to customize your Stronghold experience.

February-April:

    More stronghold maps
    More characters
    More items, weapons, content updates
    Skill Trees

For the time it was available, The War Z was at the top of Steam’s top sellers list. How many copies did you sell?

Titov: We can’t really comment on this yet, however the game performance on Steam exceeded our expectations. Overall this is a very good thing for us—even with all the bumps, The War Z proved to be a very attractive game for players. Good thing is that our daily performance indicators—number of concurrent users, number of daily players are growing—despite all the negative press recently. I can tell you that as of today we have close to 700,000 registred players, with close to 180,000 players playing the game daily.

The Steam release was labeled as a “Foundation Release.” Why did you make the decision to call it that, rather than a continuation of the beta, or full release?

Titov: Basically as all buildings have foundations, every online game has what you can say is a critical set of features. We feel that we’ve reached this stage. As we move forward—we’ll be adding new features to the game to expand on that foundation. The War Z is a game that we will never call “final” because we will continue to develop and add new features based on community feedback.

How would you evaluate the quality of The War Z right now?

It’s definitely a very fun game, though it lacks the polish of titles like COD, Far Cry, PlanetSide 2, etc.—but it’s very solid, stable and fun game. And we’re working non stop with frequent updates to make it even better. From the feedback we’ve received from the vast majority of our players, they like the game and feel that it is a good value. I think as we continue to add features that sentiment will grow and we will continue to attract more and more players to The War Z.

How do you intend to win back the trust of players who feel misled by the way the game was initially represented on Steam?

Titov: Well—we really hope that those players will understand that we weren’t looking to intentionally mislead anyone. I personally hope that they will give the game another look and find that it actually is worth the purchase—or maybe talk to some of the people playing the game that are really enjoying it.

We are already talking internally about some things we can do to reward those that have been loyal to us and also to help mend the relationship with new players. I’m glad I had the opportunity to do this interview and hopefully explain the facts (without being defensive) and have the community understand that we don’t take this lightly.

[Athos131]

Please don't support companies like this.  Always do your research before you buy.  What gets me upset is there are probably people who bought this, can't get a refund for whatever reason and have inadvertently got screwed by this company. 

[Lurid Sinner]

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[Athos131]

No.

[Lurid Sinner]

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[Athos131]

Ok.

[coacheric]

Play nice boys. Each one of us here has the right to post the way they see fit. And each member here has the right to read, or not read whatever post they want. You don't like his posts, skip over them.

I tend to post the story also along with the link. I give the reader the option of not following the link and possible dealing with pop-ups that go along with that page

[Lurid Sinner]

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[Lurid Sinner]

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[Partner]

Not to be 'that guy', but there is a danger with copy/pasting wholecloth.  Since the material is usually copyrighted, it opens up the possibility of KB getting a lawyer letter asking to remove the posts.  It's also a courtesy to the OP to let people go to their website to read the material.  That way, the original site gets the clicks and the resulting ad revenue, which is a cheap and easy way to show thanks for the content.

Just my $0.02.

[Athos131]

I could really care less about other websites getting advertising revenue.  I'll post how I like, you post how you like. 

[Lurid Sinner]

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[Partner]

I could really care less about other websites getting advertising revenue.  I'll post how I like, you post how you like. 

Perhaps I didn't come across well.  I get twitchy with copied copyrighted material because I've seen sites shut down for that before.  It's almost always a temporary thing, but it's very annoying.

But I certainly didn't mean to come across holier than thou, or like I was trying to moderate or anything like that.  Trust me, that's the last thing I want to do here.  How you post is none of my business and never was.  And how the mods feel about your posts is their business and none of mine.  They haven't worried about it yet, so how could I?

Trust me, we're cool.  I never tell people how to post.