I think his point is if 100% of people followed that line of thought, great Kickstarter projects would never have come to pass. I don't doubt at least some of them would have been able to secure funding without a crowdfunding platform, but not everything.
I think I almost backed this. It sounds like I dodged a bullet. Glad all I've backed is Bloodstained. I had a former co-worker who did a Kickstarter, got his money, then just flaked out and abandoned it. He hasn't posted an update in four years. His backers still post wanting to know what's going on with it. It's super sad. Some people are just horrible business people and won't have their shit together no matter how much money you throw at them.
I made the mistake of backing a kickstarter game in H-hour and learned my lesson. Never again. It's really sad that these stories seem like they're coming out over and over again.
I backed Torment, Pillars of Eternity, Double Fine Adventure, and Wasteland 2 and have been extremely pleased with the results of all of these projects. That being said, Project Phoenix had an aura of overselling itself from the start without anything really substantial to back it. The project leader being only known for music production and not game production should have been obvious warning signs, even if he had experience in video game music, because those are two different beasts altogether. Budgeting games is hard and Project Phoenix, as well as the broken promises of other Kickstarter projects (even those I mentioned!) should be enough proof for that.
someone made a response by the name of TINY METAL PROGRAMMER on KS comments. https://www.kickstarter.com/project...nix-japans-indie-rpg-feat-aaa-talent/comments
Sounds believable except when he keeps plugging TINY METAL every other sentence. Whole situation is a mess. The developer may cery well be getting screwed here but they havent exactly earned the consumers trust on this one. I have seen many a developer sabotage their project on their way out the door though, so this is tricky.
So Project Phoenix was announced in 2012 and to date, five years later, after numerous vague and half-baked status updates, all that was ever shown was concept art? The post in the OP is hardly a warning call then, red flags should have been flying for years.
Admittedly, the fact that they insistently capitalize it was was the first thing I noticed. I feel like they hit the caps lock key more times in a post than I do in a year, and I'm pretty anal as a rule.
You do realize I wrote "quite a few" not "a few" right? "Quite a few" means a significant number. Doesn't change the fact that some kickstarters don't work out(for many different reasons ) and you ended up wasting money.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm still totally undecided on this. I'm not going to claim that they're plant because of capitalization, that'd be goofy. But as soon as I look at the posts, my eyes are immediately drawn to the recurring caps lock words that are splattered all over them. It's feels really weird to read.
Dodged the bullet on this one. Their KS smelled funny. It's quite frustarting for people that supported them and been waiting for years. Some legal countermeasures should be put in place.
So will we still be able to purchase Tiny Metal or what? It was just about out. Shame even if it does make it out, I highly doubt there will be any patch support if it's needed. Kinda joking. Would only think about buying if it's really good. Maybe.
I know Tariq. He’s a pretty great guy and extremely passionate about games. Although I’m not sure as to what has happened, this definitely won’t have been a petty way of getting back at a company over something. This definitely sounds like something, Tariq has thought about and thinks needs highlighting. Hopefully will get to chat to him about it soon.
"You haven't seen any proof" Hey the fact that the game had a 2015 release date and we've yet to see any proof that any actual game development happened thus far is the only proof I'll ever need.
Considering there's been more than one account on knowing the guy I am more than willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Just to confirm, was it already known that Project Phoenix and Tiny Metal were connected? I did a very brief google of the two names together, and what I found were the comments on the Kickstarter, a random post from the old site saying that Tiny Metal looked like a scam liked Project Phoenix (no connection implied), and a few other things like that post.
Project Phoenix's website in May (or thereabouts) hinted that they were working on another game. Around September/TGS Yura did indeed start posting more about Tiny Metal publicly on social media and the like. Tiny Metal does indeed look great, but I personally have doubts that it'd come anywhere close to salvaging Project Phoenix barring some kind of miracle/reboot.
It was definitely news to me that the two were related. I'd been aware of Tiny Metal since at least the spring, but I didn't realize that the team was the same as Project Phoenix. Seems like the project lead is at least a somewhat known figure, so it should have been easy enough for any games journalists to put the two projects together but somehow nobody seemed to do so (think emoji). It's completely unsurprising that this isn't something they'd be actively advertising, as Project Phoenix has turned out to be more of an albatross, and they wouldn't want that hung on their necks in the public eye. (Seriously, how the hell did nobody at any of the outlets make that connection?)
Wow, I hope that isn't true. They could very well recycle loads of the game and use that in Project Phoenix and then it wouldn't be as unique as we hoped.
Except that if you never preorder or kickstart anything, and everyone takes that lesson to heart, amazing games like Thimbleweed Park never exist. So yeah, it sounds like a great lesson in hindsight, but doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. I'll let you guys know what I can. It's likely I won't be able to say shit.
Tiny Metal is fronted by Hiroki Kikuta, not Hiroaki Yura. edit: See http://nichegamer.com/2016/10/12/se...-advance-wars-spiritual-successor-tiny-metal/
Project Phoenix doesn't have a known team, AFAIK, but the project lead, Hiroaki Yura, is absolutely the same for both Tiny Metal and Project Phoenix.
The tiny Metal site has ©2017 HIROAKI YURA at the bottom. EDIT: He also claimed the project in the post where he gave Project Phoenix backers access to the Tiny Metal beta/demo, as quoted here: Project Phoenix scammed us? Creative Intelegent Art Fraud? EDIT2: Tiny Metal is mentioned in his Japanese twitter bio, but not his English one.
"Yes, we used Kickstarter money. But by the way, let me use this moment to make a pronouncement: I'm gay" * edit: just in case this is not extremely obvious, this is a reference to Kevin Spencey
I do appreciate Tiny Metal Programmer responding to us peacefully, even if it is unusual. So this seems like they weren't hiding the connection, then? Even if they weren't actively promoting it (which, I mean, I totally understand).
Right, no, I'm not saying Yura isn't involved. If you read the post I quoted, I was responding to the notion of 'how come people didn't instantly link the projects together'? Tiny Metal was initially marketed as having not much to do with Project Phoenix, except perhaps in terms of "we're a bunch of japanese veterans" and Tomoki Miyoshi (bless him) doing the music.
Yeah, looking at it now it seems like they may have been intentionally obfuscating things with western outlets... (see what I added to that post about his twitters) ((this is exactly the sort of thing that journalists are supposed to be looking for))
Some of the best con men have lots and lots of friends, are charming and people would vouch for them blindly. Not saying he is one, but several accounts of knowing him means absolutely nothing, just that he knows his way around people.
I backed PP too, and lost most of my believes after all the delays... that said, until we have solid proof of it, I prefer not to believe to accusations. Sure this should be investigated after all this time and these things written, but too often on the internet peoples talks shit because they know how to make people angry.
I'm a backer, and I'm pretty sure the emails I've been getting for Project Phoenix have been mentioning their connection. I'll see if I can find anything in my inbox. EDIT: Based on my quick look, it seems like the development of a smaller side game was first mentioned on April 23, 2017, and that TINY METAL was first mentioned by name on August 15th.
Lol. He (Hiroaki this time :-)) did come up with the current game though at least. Clearly there was serious mismanagement of Project Phoenix, I'm just not at all certain it was intentional. To me the other guy (not Hiroaki...) does sound like a disgruntled (full of himself) person out for revenge. I guess time will tell.
Hang on, so they have now delayed a game that was supposed to come out in two days because of this? This all seems rather surreal.
Is the Tiny Metal delay really because of this? Or just that something last minute was discovered, preventing release? The game hasn't had complete info on the eshop like other games do that are about to release. And I feel like it wouldn't get pulled a day in advance just because its developer is worried about a controversy most people aren't even aware of.
They're based in Japan, it was presumably supposed to have launched here within the next 16 hours or so. They had a "seven days until launch" tweet last week, which pretty strongly implies that they thought all systems were go for a launch tomorrow. This is really weird.
Jason already has a article on Kotaku about the "PP" kickstarter from a few months back. I imagine a follow up article wont be far behind.
On one hand, I genuinely don't see how this would lead to a delay even if it's true. On the other hand, that is some suspicious timing, yikes. Maybe they want to address this and are pushing the date over so that launch isn't dragged down by these rumours? It's the only thing I can think of. Weird is a good word for all of this.
