qwurp

Holy cow. What happened to the formatting and pics? Sigh.

Why are there no Nikola Tesla video games?

I don't know. So I made one. Errr. Making one. 2D puzzle-platformer for the PC/Mac & Linux platforms!

So basically, you're Tesla. Your nemesis, Thomas Edison, has sabotaged your latest invention to reanimate the dead...

Use some of Tesla's inventions to solve puzzles, escape 1800's-era undead and confront Edison.

So, question is... what do you all think? What kind of features would you want to see in a 2D platformer like this? What features do you NOT want to see?

@believer258 said:

We have community rules against advertising of any kind - and yes, this is blatantly advertising - and advertising threads usually get locked.

If you really wanted to discuss community driven game development, you wouldn't have linked to your game page and you would have written a fair bit about your experiences with it.

I went ahead and took out the URL, despite re-searching the forums and not finding anything that mentions Kickstarter as Spam, or even anything talking about spam in this forum, or a moderator stepping in. But I took it down quite happily as promised. :)

I would assume me coming back to respond to discussion and sharing my experiences and thoughts in response to others people's comments would be seen as proof that I am interested in a discussion and that I'm not here to make link to a page and leave, which is the true definition of spamming.

To speak more to our experience thus far, it's been very positive (short of this thread). And I realize you can't please everyone, and that community driven attempts can be derailed:

-Lack of vision

-Lack of foundational development

-Pandering to every request

-Trolling

-Not knowing how to positively criticize (Hi Alexandru)

We've built out a prototype, completed the design document and started work on production. This isn't a case of "Hey everybody! Lets make a game together! Where do we start?"

This is a case of "We're making a game. Would you like to offer input? We'd love to hear it. No? Well we're still making the game."

We think more gamers should try to listen to the community and we're actively encouraging it. We're going to make this game because frankly, we want to play it. We also want to invite other gamers to come along for the ride, but that's up certainly up to them.

@Alexandru said:

why wasnt this flagged? This is clearly spam

Hello Alexandru, how is the discussion we were having above in an off-topic forum considered spam? Yes, there is a link to a Kickstarter showing our alpha title in development. Spam? No. Looking for feedback? Yes. Looking to discuss the pro's and con's of community driven game development? Yes.

If there is a forum rule somewhere that prohibits linking to a kickstarter page, Id be more than happy to take this down as I am looking to abide by the community rules. But not sure why you would have a negative reaction to me wanting to open up discourse around this. If you don't want to go to the Kickstarter page, you simply don't have to go. I feel like the post is being pretty transparent and not looking to trick anyone into clicking a link. Thanks!

Hey guys, thanks for the feedback. Those were great thoughts and I completely agree. A community driven game can't simply be a compilation of all the requested features from a community, it just simply would not work. A vision is necessary.

In our situation, we've already developed the pre-production side. Concepting, prototyping, design documentation etc. But where this leaves room for is the core functionality of the game itself. What cool features can we add additionally? What should the next update focus on addressing? What badass new idea would make an amazing weapon or location? If you have a great idea, talk about it. Let the community tell you if the idea is good. If we see a lot of people clamoring for the same idea or features, maybe we should pay attention. If people are shooting down on idea (from us or the community) then maybe it should be avoided.

In short, we're not looking to ask the community to design the game. But we want them to help us develop and flesh it out. I think it's possible, but it certainly wont be easy.

@Azteck said:

So what you're saying is that this is advertisement on the Giant Bomb forums? Hmmmm

Hello Azteck! Thanks for the response. But no, this is simply a post about a video game in a forum dedicated to video games, and in an off-topic sub-forum to insure that I'm not representing this as a complete title currently available on the market.

I'm genuinely looking for feedback on the game, features, content etc. Which is why I asked the question.

@frankfartmouth said:

@qwurp said:

I'm not looking to solicit,

Oh yes you are. And no, community driven creative projects have been tried many times before, and they always turn out like crap. Unless I've missed one somewhere.

Hello Frank. Well, we're really not looking to solicit. Our objective is to get some attention for the project sure but as a community driven game, you don't have to back the Kickstarter to have an impact in the development process.

And you are exactly correct, there really aren't any good examples of community driven games doing well. But that doesn't mean the idea is impossible. Things like social media and Kickstarter are dramatically impacting the development process in ways they NEVER have before. From transparency in the development process to having a say in features. It's certainly not a situation where every suggestion gets implemented into the game, but its a situation where people can provide feedback and then the community can decide if its a good idea.

If we're making a game for the gamers, why wouldn't we want them to have a say in the features we develop? Hopefully that makes sense and sheds some light on what we're trying to accomplish.

The question is: Is that really possible?

i.e. community driving what new maps, new weapons, new features, what gets updated next etc. It sounds good on paper, but do you think it can actually work?