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AudioGames.net Forum → General Game Discussion → Kickstarter Project for "A Hero's Call" from Out of Sight Games
The problem is that even with a projected release date people in this community have a tendency to throw a fit if it doesn't pan out. I've seen that happen many times.
lol orin?
I hope you know what a projected release date is? estimated release date?
Its not fixed,it can go further than that what's given. in this case june, and whilst I am not a part of the development team, I'd suggest people think its not coming out in june at all, to avoid these kind of issues at all.
Its coming out to be sure,but not in june is what I believe. 
The kick starter date is 2 months or so away (keep in mind those hardly if ever get done in that time),and here you all are,harping on about if it will be late,or not and how piss you are gonna be if it is... 
grryf
Delays happens! and I hate when people are saying something like that. It is better to wait longer and get better product instead of pushing someone to release it faster.
We'd be even more pissed if it doesn't pan out this time, as we gave them money to help with development costs.
Atitude like this is exactly what makes developers want to stop making games, and what gives blind people the entitled reputation we tend to have.
I also have a feeling it won't be June, but I will be very happy to wait for this project. If the delay means a better game for everyone, then I'm fine with that.
Hey all,
Wanted to share the full text of the recent update posted on our Kickstarter page. More to come, and please feel free to ask any questions.
Also, as a matter of housekeeping—I have been trying to remind people of this when I get the chance, but I think maybe it needs to be put a little more strongly. We never promised a June release. June was marked as the "estimated delivery date"—emphasis on "estimated." The reason I have never given a more concrete release date is because there are simply too many unknowns—not just because of not knowing how long certain things will take to get right in the game, but because of not knowing how much time our jobs, school, and families will allow us to work. Remember that game development is not a paying job for anyone on this team at present, so our progress will understandably be slower than if we were all working on the game full-time. So we are pushing as hard, and as fast, as we can, but we never made, nor are we prepared to make, any specific time-related promises. Maybe we'll make it by June—that's certainly still our goal. Maybe we won't. The game meeting the standards we've set is our primary goal, and you can rest assured that we'll release it as soon as it is ready.
Anyone who doubts that it will get released seriously underestimates the amount of time, effort, personal expense, and passion that has been put into this project. You don't work on something for four years, only to abandon it when it's almost completely done. By running a Kickstarter campaign and accepting your donations, we have made an implicit pledge to you, our backers, that this game will be released. And as you'll see below, we're taking steps to make sure that happens as soon as possible.
And to everyone who has said basically everything I just said, on our behalf, please know how much your support and confidence means to us. We're humbled by the trust you've placed in us, and the many ways you continue to serve as our advocates.
So on that note, here's the update:
When we started developing A Hero’s Call, we set out to make the best game experience we could for blind gamers. As our commitment to universal accessibility grew, along with our desire to bridge the gap between able and disabled gamers, we resolved to also release a game that could hold its own in today’s gaming market at large. Now, new and exciting opportunities have presented themselves, thanks to the generosity of our supporters during a tremendous Kickstarter campaign.
We’ve put a lot of time and thought into how best to accomplish these goals, and how best to use the funds so generously donated to this project. Now, we’re excited to share some of those decisions with you…
First, we’re thrilled to announce that composer Steven Harriton will be adding his considerable talents to A Hero’s Call. Steven will be re–orchestrating the original score that you’ve heard bits and pieces of already, breathing new life into the themes that have become part of the heart and soul of the game. He will also be adding some original compositions of his own, giving players more original music to enjoy. For a taste of what’s to come, you can check out Steven’s work on Soundcloud at the link below; we’ll also be posting some samples of Steven’s work on the score for this game, so stay tuned for that. https://soundcloud.com/stevenharriton
We’re also excited to announce that Nic Freeman will be providing the game with a full complement of graphics. This will give the game a distinctive visual aesthetic, and will give sighted players the same ease of access that blind gamers can expect to enjoy. Concept art, samples, and screenshots will be forthcoming as they become available.
In order to make both of these major announcements possible, we have decided to do something a little unconventional with the game’s release. Once the gameplay functionality and audio content, including music, are completed to our liking, we will be making an initial, audio-only release available for purchase. This release will have graphics permanently disabled, but will be completely playable through audio for any blind gamers—or sighted gamers willing to learn a new way of doing things. This initial release will be made available for purchase directly from OutOfSightGames.com, and will be free for everyone who supported our Kickstarter campaign at Level 2 or higher.
While players are enjoying the audio-only release, we will continue work on implementing the game’s graphics. Once the final product is ready to ship, we will release the definitive version. All players running the audio-only release will be able to upgrade to the new version free of charge, but will retain the option of disabling graphics if desired. This final edition will also be the version included on the collector’s edition discs, for everyone who donated at Level 7 or higher, and Level 5 earlybirds.
This release strategy will maximize our workflow and budget, and will allow us the opportunity to make the best finished product possible. In addition, it will allow blind gamers to enjoy the game as soon as possible, without waiting on graphics that do nothing to improve their gameplay experience. We’re excited about everything that’s in store for A Hero’s Call, and especially for what Steven and Nic will bring to the table. Keep an eye on our Twitter and Kickstarter for more updates and content previews.
Sincerely,
The Out of Sight Games team
Follow-up: I hope my last post didn't sound harsh. I know most of you are being very positive about the whole release date question. It's just become something of a sore subject for the team because we want to release so badly anyway, and the pressure from people who reach out to us saying, "I can't wait to play this in June!" or "This will still be released in June, right?" just adds a lot of anxiety that we don't need—because we already feel plenty of pressure to release promptly, believe me.
Again, I appreciate all of you who are so positive and encouraging about the project and who respect the development process. We couldn't do this without your continued support and encouragement!
Hi,
Will it be possible to pay the game with PayPal? Because I, for myself, do not have a credit Card.
Greetings and keep on the good work on your game,
Keskorian
Yeah, PayPal will almost definitely be the payment method for purchasing the game from our website. And we're always happy to work with people if there's an issue.
@Joseph: Thank you. I think a message with that slightly more heads up of a tone was well worth it. I just hope this makes people consider just how much time it takes to develop a game. I'm surprised how many people just don't get it, and you can't just say "oh hay I don't develop gamesso I didn't realize", look at the way that developers post things for goodness sake! As Joseph has said, and I think this speaks for most audiogame developers, it's not a full time thing at all.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I'll wait for as long as it takes for this game to be developed, because something like this really, truly, takes time, and a lot of it, and I appreciate that you are really trying to push the boundaries and such. It's a bit hard for me to explain, but I really do appreciate that you are getting htis genre of game off the ground, as a story-based rpg is something we are lacking in audio, and not only that, this will allow sighted folks to play too, so it becomes more of a hybrid game.
Keep up the amazing work.
Aaron, that post meant more than you know—thank you. It's definitely a lot of time, and that makes sense when you think of the scope of the work involved. Take a single simple facet, like getting the voice work implemented (which, apart from business-type tasks, has been what I personally have spent most of my time on since January). Even after the lengthy process of listening to auditions, doing callbacks, and distributing scripts, you have to review all the submitted dialogue (around 1,500 lines of it, with multiple takes for each line), select which takes to keep, process and edit, get it plugged into the game, test to make sure it plays properly with he right timing and so on... And that's just one facet.
So honestly I'm not surprised a lot of people don't realize how much work it is, because the truth is, it constantly surprises us, too—and if anyone should be have a good sense of the amount of work needed, it would be us. And personally, I hate that I don't have 40+ hours a week to dedicate to this work. Nothing frustrates me more than getting to the end of a week and only having spent a couple hours on the game because it's all the time I could find. But hey, maybe someday we'll be successful enough that we can actually start doing this full-time, and crank out a new game every year or two. I'd be okay with that arrangement...
Exactly. June is my birth month and I'd love it if the game came out in time for that but I'm hardly going to pop a gasket if it doesn't happen that way. I always knew June was only an estimate. I was just saying that I've often noticed that some people in the community tend to have fits if the game comes out so much as an hour later than projected. It's one of the reasons I'm so ambivalent about developing games myself, even if I was able to wrap my head around all the programming concepts. At least I'm ambivalent about making any games I might develop available to the general community. But I'll definitely by the game as soon as I'm able to whenever it comes out. It sounds like exactly the sort of thing I've been sorely missing in the audio games market.
BryanP: That'd be awesome if we could get it out for your birthday—what a way to celebrate! And yeah, we definitely don't want to lose the goodwill of the community...but at the same time, I hope that if we do push release back farther than people would like, nobody's going to be so mad at us that they refuse to buy the game when it does come out. That would be kind of counter-intuitive, wouldn't it? "I want to play this game so badly that I refuse to buy it because I couldn't play it when I want it!"
But anyway, I totally get the impatience and desire to play the game as soon as possible. It's the same desire that has kept me going through such a long development process—the desire to make the kind of game that I've been wanting to play since I lost my ability to play mainstream games. It's a powerful drive—but at least I have an outlet. For someone who doesn't have that outlet, the waiting must be even worse.
Good leaders and inovaters always display a decent amount of transparency, and I, for one, appreciate how transparent the team has been with keeping us up to date. Anyone who gives up on buying this simply because of an unmet release date will do themselves a great disservice. This is the most innovative audiogame in the English speaking market for a long time, and especially with the release model of audio first and a free upgrade to the graphics-included copy that's mentioned in the campaign update, this is more than satisfactory for me! The amount I put in to back this project is most certainly proving to be worth it!
Joseph,
Thank you for the update.
I got it as an email but I'm glad you posted it to this forum.
Many if not most audio games have a small group of beta testers to try out the game before release.
This usually happens a few weeks before release to test out the game on a group of different versions of Windows.
Some games are released without beta team testing but allow bug fixes by the way of download patches.
Some companies take a beta version of a game that isn't quite ready to a blind convention, usually in early July to demonstrate the game to thousands of possible customers.
Have you considered these possibilities?
They already have a beta team that has been involved with the game for a lengthy period of time.
Hey Phil,
We have a small squad of beta testers at present, and plan to expand that squad for a larger scale, intense beta testing period when we're a little bit closer. The reason we haven't had more people beta testing yet is because we're still at the point of development where we're often breaking things in order to fix them, which really means a lot of the beta tester's time and effort is wasted because they're giving feedback on mechanics that we are already in the process of tweaking or changing wholesale. But we are figuring out the best way to get more testing feedback as we work toward release. And either way, we do plan to fix any issues that arise by pushing updates.
In fact, that's another good example of why sometimes we'll go a while without any updates on game progress. I remember spending a lot of time working on the way that we handle updates to the game so that we could ensure that we can push updates to users without breaking their saved games. That required a lot of messing around, testing of different scenarios, and so forth, to make sure we'd be able to do it—but it doesn't provide any fun or interesting demo material for us to share with you all, other than just saying, "Still working on saved game update stability. Wheee." Stuff like that isn't too exciting, but is very necessary.
Yeah. My birthday's at the end of June and this would make an awesome present, but as I said I'm certainly not going to blow a gasket if it can't come out by then. Heck, I might not even be able to buy the game right away since as I've said before other matters have financial priority, but certainly as soon as I feel I can spare the cash.
Hi.
This just gets better and better! I can't wait for a hero's call. I love the demo recordings, I'd wait another five or six years if I really had too lol! I still can't believe we're getting something so revolutionary!
Ok, that's a promise I do feel comfortable making: I promise you will not have to wait five or six years!!!
thanks for the update joseph, i'm looking forward to playing this game, but am willing to wait for it, and i know from what i've seen of the demo's it's goin gto be well worth the wait
It'll surely worth the wait as it seems. Joseph, how will the registration system look like, and will the game offer a demo to play? I'm a backer myself though, but I'm just curious .
At this point I can't answer either of those questions in detail—the truth is I don't know how the registration system will work, nor do I particularly care, because I don't know anything about that sort of thing, and so long as Ian tells me it will get done and will work, that's good enough for me. As for a demo, I can only say that there's a very strong likelihood that we will not have a playable demo. We think the price point of this game will be low enough that a demo is pretty counter-intuitive, especially considering the statistics that show that playable demos hurt game sales, and the amount of let's play and other demo material I'm sure will be available for people curious about the game.
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