Another sad news for all of us adventure gamers

http://gamepolitics.com/2012/04/30/report-dtp-entertainment-filing-bankruptcy

Now we have to wait and to see what the outcome will be , I'm thinking at all the beautiful adventures already planned, as Memento Mori 2, Haunted and Lost Chronicles of Zerzura...

What a shame. I hope they can be revived. Thanks for the news Carla.

Ana

This is sad news indeed. I hope they manage to reorganize and come back even stronger.

Sad, sad, sad...

Well, I guess kickstarter projects will make it even worse... of course I support the kickstarter idea, but lots of people will lose their jobs, I guess.

Very unhappy to hear this, Carla, but thanks for letting us know

Very Sad indeed!

Yep, very sad indeed.

sad very sad

This is terrible news. Does anyone know what this means for the games that were supposed to come out? We were so close with Haunted after so many delays, and I was really looking forward to the other games, too.

What awful news Carla. I appreciate your letting us know.

Tomer, why will Kickstarter make things worse? I suppose I naively thought Kickstarter will at the very least show that adventure games have supporters and thus probably a market larger than people willing to shell out money to make them possible. Is this not the case?

@8dognight,
well, on the one hand, you're right. On the other hand, the big game creators apparently no longer really need the publishers, cause they can raise money with their fans, which is probably much, much better for them (to not have a publisher telling them what to do).
But you're right, it could work both ways.

Honestly, although there are many adventure KS doing well, I'm not sure the publishers are impressed by the sums arrived. Jane Jensen herself hardly got 450K. To me it sounds like a lot of money, but the game budgets I keep hearing of are often millions of dollars! I wonder what this means.

Tomer, I guess that the game budgets with millions of dollars are high-profile games such as the Call-of-duty games. It doesn't really matter whether it's a good game or more of an interactive movie (as I think those games are); a lot of people will buy them anyway. Game budgets for more niched genres are smaller I guess, because these games aren't required to be something akin to a movie delivered to your PC.

But hey, Brian Fargo raised almost 3 million dollars for Wasteland 2, so with an enough interested audience I think there's enough money to raise.

I'm a bit split about Kickstarter; on one hand I absolutely love the idea that developers can be free of the typical restrictions and make just the kind of game they want (like Wasteland 2), but on the other hand I don't want everything to become a kickstarter-project either.

Re: Kickstarter and Adv. games
I agree with both sides that KS is A) Excellent for small developers, individuals who want to create games and B) As for bigger companies creating games by digging into their own pockets, Why would they or should they?, when they can now use KS and have the people who want to play the games fund it, it is a Win Win solution for all, you pay we make, and if the game is a bust, we the creators don’t loose a cent. To be honest, I know if I was in the business this is what I would do.
So hopefully the games that DTP where going to create will be picked up or continued via KS.

What would we do if DTP went on Kickstarter to get themselves out of bankruptcy? Would we support them? I would have saved Microïds and White Birds Productions if I could have.

Also, the latest successful projects on Kickstarter were mostly aimed at nostalgia gamers from eras like Sierra. That age group (us I guess), has money to risk. However the whole game market outside adventures is aimed at kids, and they appear to have lots of money, buying games in the millions as if there was no recession.

Will it only work for established authors that we admired in the past? Will it only work when there is already something out there that we really really liked? It might not work for everyone, but only in certain circumstances. It appears that Kickstarter is the last port of call, when no publishers will invest in your projects, perfect for adventure game developers.

I can't see myself sponsoring them all though, so far I have only pledged on Jane Jensen and Pinkerton Road Studio. It would have to be something I really want to see happening before I sponsor again. But then, I don't have much money, it might be different for others.

It is very interesting to see how all of this will develop. This is the industry reorganising itself following all these publishers that went bust whilst creativity and demand are still going. Something had to happen, can we survive long on all these indies coming out?

Give me a massive game adventure production any day which runs more like a film (in story and dialogues), with a minimum amount of puzzles well integrated in the story and where I don't die or make fatal errors every minute (I still love those Nancy Drew games though, the characters are so funny because they wear their heart on their sleeves. They don't hide who they are unlike most human beings. It helps my study of human nature a great deal.)