BotColony

I know how it feels for having been there, so I can sympathize with Peter Molyneux. We thought our game would take one year, and it took seven (we only completed 2 episodes out of 12). I've also sunk my money (probably more than the $6M quoted in the interview of own money Peter Molyneux invested) into this game - which cost $20M for middleware and $3M for the game. Details are here http://steamcommunity.com/games/263040/announcements/detail/139944866943306342

We also tried a Kickstarter, but differently from Peter Molyneux - our Kickstarter only got to $2,000 and I pulled it, so we don't have furious backers. Like him, we tried to do something revolutionary - in our case, build a game where you can converse with the characters in English, and they understand you and speak back. We achieved some success, but we almost died in the process - the update proving the technology works was launched after we had to let go 40 members of the team. Now, I'm selling eBooks and Steam keys to keep the servers going in the hope we'll be able to rescue it.

The fact is that to do something truly new and unique, you need big software, and that is complicated, long to write, costly, and almost impossible to estimate.

It is very risky and dangerous to be a trail blazer.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/263040/discussions/0/606068060819321750/

Chika Ogiue was the first player on the planet to discover (and document, above) the 14 Robot Visual Memories (RVM’s) in the Intruder episode of Bot Colony. This is meaningful because RVM exemplifies new, genre-defining gameplay – non-linear story discovery through conversation – which is currently only possible in Bot Colony - where you can converse with the characters using free-form English. While in other games you’d have to navigate dialogue trees. In Bot Colony, you discover story elements, such as the RVM’s, by conversing with the characters, asking questions and (usually :) getting answers to them.

I hope that Chika Ogiue will share her impressions of the RVM gameplay on the Bot Colony Community page. What did it feel like to discover the story in this way? Was it easy to put the story of the family together in your mind? Was Jimmy robotic enough?

This was a recently updated version of the game (which will unfortunately shut down on March 15). The shut down was covered on Giant Bomb and Game Informer http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2015/01/29/north-side-forced-to-pull-plug-on-bot-colony-due-to-poor-sales.aspx

@joshwent: I am not criticizing the criticism and willingly admitted to the flaws the game had. It is true that if the game didn't have these flaws, it would not have attracted the criticism it did. The game was (and it still is, though not accessible for purchase any longer) an Early Access game. Objectively, what caused it to die was lack of sales. It is objectively true that Vinny's review, and the Mixed reviews, didn't help sales. Did the game deserve the criticism? Yes. Did it deserve to die, after all the hard work, investment, and potential to be a game changer for video games as we know them, if and when it worked? I'd say no, and I hope that anybody who tried the update (the RVM gameplay) will see the potential. Details of execution killed something fairly important, but that's how life works.

@the_nubster: I'd concur, and being a positive person, I believe they are solvable. There a lot of focus here on 'voice tech', because that's how people think of it. The front-end is voice tech - it takes an acoustic signal and outputs a string of characters. That part could have worked a lot better with better tech - eg, Nuance Dragon that we were bundling initially, instead of Microsoft. VInny DID do training, so he was entitled to better STT results, more precision.

However, 99% of the software we do that powers this game is NOT voice tech, but rather NLU (Natural Language Understanding). WIth good NLU, you can even correct lousy Speech-to-text. We had a severe problem in something called 'co-reference resolution' (co-ref). When Vinny would say 'go to the shelf', we still resolved 'the shelf' to the original shelf, and Mike (the baggage room robot) would turn to face it. We have improved co-ref since, though it's a complex area (in 'go where I told you before', or 'why did you do that' it's harder to resolve to a location or action)..

I believe the the investigative gameplay in the new update is really ground breaking. This game deserved to live. Unfortunately, Vinny's videos, while entertaining, did not really help sales. Other people had similar problems, and the game - which only has 16 reviews from players - is now Mixed. That did not help sales either. Even though a gigantic amount was invested, we ran out of money when it actually started improving and had a chance to become a good game (look at the video of Episode 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW0uA6_8MfU that won't see the light of day). I'll upload a video describing the story of the entire game (all episodes) as a parting gift to this community.

@jeremyspittle: Would you like to make a bid (offer X dollars) for someone to do a gameplay video on RVM, and I give Steam keys to both of you? Everybody wins, and the community can watch it.

@geraltitude: I would have preferred that people watch a video of an RVM playthough - it really shows how far dialogue has advanced. If there's anybody who's seriously interested to do such a video and post it on Giant Bomb, I will gladly provide a Steam key - you can't buy the game anymore as of today, but I still have some Steam keys. I'll put one aside for Vinny.

Some time ago, Vinny Carvella reviewed Bot Colony. If Vinny wants to review the last update (and type!), I'll be happy to send him a Steam key. Here's the announcement to the Steam Community

http://steamcommunity.com/games/263040/announcements/detail/139944866943306342

@renahzor: The Rock, Paper, Shotgun is now the ONLY quote on Steam. I gave the link of the article by Todd Ciolek just to clarify where that quote (that has since been removed) came from.

And actually found this very old quote, which proves I've been acting in goodwill all along and didn't post from my own blog.

March 3, 2009 - Todd Ciolek

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/113463/QA_Unraveling_The_Mysteries_Of_North_Sides_Bot_Colony.php

"That’s exactly what Montreal-based developer North Side has been doing for the last five years, and the fruits of those labors are apparent in Bot Colony, a sandbox-style adventure game set on a tropical island full of robots, all of them capable of conversing with players on a ground-breaking level.

@mrsmiley: I actually very much appreciate the advice of the community and have followed it. I have removed the quotes that related to the Bot Colony concept. The only Review currently displayed on the Steam page of Bot Colony is from here

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/07/07/bot-colony-alpha-review/

and it says:

Despite...my occasional exasperation with Jimmy, it turns out I enjoy the hell out of telling robots to do things and then watching them do things. When it works, it’s oddly satisfying. When it doesn’t work, it’s generally amusing.

I think this is fair.