NOOO! KQIX shut down by Vivendi

[Alarcon]

Just to throw in one more factoid -- I realize that if this game uses branching dialogue (there's no sign that it does, but I'd hope the designers weren't that devoid of good sense), a comparison to Xenogears is somewhat unfair, since you might not see all the dialogue in the game.  So I checked out the story to Planescape: Torment, which has branching dialogue and has generally been maligned as too text-heavy (it happens to be my favorite RPG).  PS:T has a script that's about 470 pages.  It's 170k words.  Conventionally, a page will have somewhere between 200 and 500 words on it, depending on formatting (300 is sort of the standard for fiction manuscripts; 500 for Word default settings, 200 for a more screenplay format).

Even at the extreme low-end (200 words per page), Cesar is claiming his script would be 300,000 words.  That is almost twice as much text as PS:T.  It should be pointed out that in PS:T, much of the text isn't voiced, which means that you can read it at your own pace, which is invariably significantly faster than listening.  PS:T also let you interact after every small text box by choosing where to lead the dialogue.  There were very, very few times when you watched dialogue without interacting.  Nevertheless, the game was attacked for being too plot heavy.  PS:T was also supposed to take 50 hours or so (in practice it often took much less, of course).

I mention these figures only because most game designers I've worked with view text-heaviness as the first sign of someone who doesn't understand game writing.  Either Cesar is lying about the length of his script, or he fundamentally misunderstand how games, particularly adventure games, should work.

All of the text, miscellaneous text included, in Monkey Island 2 comes to 35,00 words.   The dialogue in EMI is 41,000 words long.   (see http://lucasfic.mixnmojo.com/misc/textdump.htm)  Grim Fandango is 15,000 words for all text.  (http://db.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/grim_fandango_text.txt)   I can't find any comparable figures for Sierra games.  But I hope the point is made all the same?

[Vince Twelve]

You're doing research now?  Just to insult this guy?  Dude, why expend so much energy hating on one particular game?  Especially one that you have never, and will never, play because it will never be released?  Unless cesarbittar slept with your girlfriend or something, you need to chill out.

Don't be so insulted just because you're not in that small fraction of the gaming community targeted by this game.  There's absolutely no reason to launch a personal vendetta against this game.  The games that you enjoy aren't the only games that have merit.  The only thing that your arguments are proving is that you're a bit of a jerk.

[Nikolas]

Alarcon: It is really great having all thr grudges turn towards you instead of Vivendi. But read on, really I don't.

I can see your points and as Kinoko said you have a right to do so. It does seem that all your post are in this thread and nowhere else (except one post made about shareware...). Well this strikes as kinda weird to people (not myself), who have been here for 2+ years and love this community. I will have to quote Vince here, from something he taold me a couple of months ago and saved me :"We're all friends here, chill out."

Well you're not doing that! But I understand why you can be so upset! It feels that you just made your point clear and everyone is attacking you.

Still about KQIX: It is still and indie game. I would love to have been able to work with these guys (except I don't do Fan games...). There's nothing wrong with doing a quality indie game, why the hate really? As I think about it a always played games for a bunch of reasons. For the story, the gameplay, the music, the graphics. All these reasons, if one was not good it would turn me away from any game. But on the other hand I still play Tetris (no graphics-no music, but the gameplay, god the gameplay).

Your criticism of KQIX is rather right, from what I've seen but don't act like a jerk, don't overdo it. I also know that you don't need me to tell you what to do, but let it go... I think that we have enough evidence from you and from Ceasar to make our own judgements.

Everyone: I feel that we're caught up on a fight, ending nowhere, that no one cares...
Let's all sign the savekqix.com! I don't think it will change, not unless we get a lot of publicity! But it is worth a try...

[Kinoko]

I'll be honest with you, I think a petition would do more harm than good.

They're better off just finishing the game privately and releasing it much much later when the fuss has died down. Don't have a webpage, just leak it and let nature take it's course. Change the names and whatnot to be safe if you like.

I think the best thing we can all do is draw as little attention to the project as possible. A petition will just let Vivendi know they have a "fight" on their hands.

[Nikolas]

Last time I checked, democracy was dead.

I mean Bush is the president of the USA, and probably with less votes than his opponent, according to Moore anyway.

I don't think that Vivendi will give a shit about 100, 1000, 10000, 100000 people signing a petition, not even if Roberta herself has signed that petition. Hm, good idea, f they are to try that petition, maybe have Roberta signing it. That's a good move. 

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

I second Kinoko. Reminds me of the Garfield and Hugo affair.

[splat44]

Hi,

According to elsewhere, if we search on Virendi web site regarding king quest series, we find nothing.

For company owning such right, they are certaintely not putting any efforts in selling those series!

Try search on vu website to see the proof.

Link: http://www.vugames.com

[Kinoko]

I love when people start posts with "hi".

[MrColossal]

Can you imagine the energy that kind of fanbase would give to developers making interesting, fun games, rather than meldromatic wanna-be anime cutscene fests?

Can you imagine what your enthusiasm to harm would be like if you turned it towards developers who need helpful crit?

Since this project is, as it seems, dead, what's the point of any of this?

Why not go find some people making a game that you think are doing a good job and offer them helpful crit and stop making huge assumptions on a game that you practically know nothing about.

Also, you claim that the KQ team was draining resources from other developers but... This is just a wildly awkward opinion that makes no sense... It's like saying when Ghormak helped Helm on Gladiator Quest he was draining the Ghormak from the community who could be doing something else... He chose to work with Helm just like these people chose to work on KQIX... And as far as eroding the fanbase... Turns out I can be the fan of many games at once! I don't just have to post on one forum or support one team. It's a little quirk I have.

Also, you claim

"But the hypocrisy I noted earlier, of indie gamers bitching about how all game publishers care about is glitz and then turning around and slobbering over games like this, gets me agitated."

I look forward to your crusade against good looking AGS games. Would you like to start with Apprentice? You'll notice many people posting how much they love the art and how pretty the graphics are when they hadn't even played the game yet.

"It bothers me that well-written, well-designed games that don't have sexy graphics and don't bootstrap themselves to famous IP get entirely overlooked, or at least relatively ignored"

Can you name a few?

Also, from that last comment... This is a shot in the dark but you wouldn't happen to be a member of The Hidden team would you?

Either way, if you want to crit the team in this way why not email them? You'll get a better response than putting your comments on some random site.

[IM NOT TEH SPAM]

Last time I checked, democracy was dead.

Well, that's optimism for you.
And don't listen to Moore.  He's a fat moron, no matter what political party you back up...
And he won the popular for the second term (not trying to start a political discussion so don't respond to that)

More to the point however, democracy doesn't apply to this, and Vivendi isn't going to do anything even with half of the globe sending emails--Except for mabye make an automatic emailer and put up a stronger firewall.  It's different from other successes in petitions.

QFG 5 was made because lots of people emailed them, which made them think "Hey!  This will be a lot of money for us!"  It's not going to work that way this time.  They have nothing to gain from a fangame.  In fact, they probably think that they have something to lose.

Alacron, just stop.  Please.  No need to crap on the dead game.  It's almost like it's a dead man.  You're defiling a grave.

[Kweepa]

http://www.adventure-eu.com/index.php?option=com_repository&cat_id=3&game_id=42&file_id=31
The only character who really looks anime-ish is Alexander.

I have now completed my extensive investigation and I can safely say that none of the characters in this game look remotely anime.

[mcomp72]

since I'm sure you other post will be deleted, since we dont allow double posting here, ill write my response here.

Whats wrong with letting them just change the names of the characters and locations, and then release the game that way?

Nothing is wrong with it perse, but it is a HUGE amount of work.  Almost all of the art would need to be changed, dialog re-recorded, scripts rewritten.

Someone else mentioned that they should just release the game anyway, sometime in the future.  That would mean BIG TROUBLE for the KQIX folks.  Vivendi has said stop via their cease & desist order.  Even if they were to wait a year, and then release the game, the lawyers would know exactly who to come after.  It doesn't matter if they "leak" it on the net via Bittorent or whatever else.  As soon as Vivendi found out about it, the lawyers would pounce, and it wouldn't be pretty.

We're hoping that Vivendi will change their mind if they recieve enough letters from fans.  We know it's an uphill battle.  No question about that.

Remember, the original Star Trek TV show was saved (for one season, anyway) by a letter writing campaign.  Family Guy was saved, due in part to a letter writing campaign.  So these things CAN be effective.

We can either do nothing, in which case the game will not be released.  Or we can try, and then perhaps the game will be able to be released.  We choose to try.

[IM NOT TEH SPAM]

No, they probably wouldn't have to change the scripting or the artwork, just the names of the characters.  So it would work, only thing is most people won't realize it's a KQ game.

[Snarky]

Changing the names would definitely NOT be sufficient. You think it's not copyright infringement just because it's (say) King Liam instead of King Graham, if he looks exactly the same, lives with a family that is exactly the same, in a castle that looks exactly the same, in a kingdom that looks exactly the same? Ever heard the phrase "characters and their likenesses"? Plagiarism is still a violation of copyright, and Vivendi's lawyers aren't stupid (at least not in this way). Since it would be easy to show that they are in fact the same characters, only under different names, just renaming them would have exactly zero effect on the legal situation.

In order to escape the clammy grip of copyright law, you would have to retool the whole game so that it could not be identified as a King's Quest game. That means not just the characters, but all the locations as well (Chessboard Land, anyone?). And not just graphics, but also the identifiable personalities of the characters, and recognizeable story elements. And of course you could have no explicit hooks back to the original games. Since this project started life as a King's Quest game, Vivendi could probably put the bar quite high if they wanted. Something as trivial as the dog-headed guards might be seen as a violation.

This would clearly be a major effort (and even just changing the names would mean having to re-record much of the dialogue, perhaps all of it if they couldn't get the same actors that were cast in the first place), and you would have to ask yourself if it's worth it. It's been very clear for a long time that KQIX is a FAN game. Rejoining the characters from the earlier games, revisiting locations recreated in more detail, experiencing a story that ties together the events of KQ 1-8, tying up loose ends and making goofy in-jokes... these are the pleasures of the fan-game sequel. None of them make any sense when deprived of their resonance back to the originals. Suddenly, a huge chunk of backstory is unaccounted for. The main characters are just random strangers with exceedingly convoluted resumés.

Even if the team could change the game while keeping the same story and gameplay, it wouldn't be anything like the game they had intended, because being a King's Quest game was so integral to the game design.* Why even bother?

* Admittedly, my interpretation based on things like the first script excerpt Cesar posted.

[Radiant]

Unfortunately, Snarky is entirely correct about the copyright issue. You make a game about King Maharg, Regor Wolci or Thruybush Geepwood, it's copyright violation. The only way you might be able to get away with it is if it were a parody, but even then it's possible they take you to court in order to argue about that - after all, QfG4.5 and QFO were taken down and they can reasonably be considered parodic.

[Nikolas]

I will agrre completly with Snarky and Radiant.

Now, I fearsome thought has crossed my mind.

How would eceryone feel, if we found out that after 1000s of letter to Vivendi, they decided to make KQIX commercial?

I mean would you be happy, that we won?

Or would you rather feel exploited after pwrticipating in an "advertising scheme"?

Just a thought don't kill me...

[modgeulator]

Or would you rather feel exploited after pwrticipating in an "advertising scheme"?

...And maybe it would turn out that the entire KQIX fan-based project was in fact an elaborate hoax concocted as a part of that scheme?

[Snarky]

I'd be pleased as punch.

It is their property after all. If they want to sell KQ games, that's fine with me, couldn't be happier. What pisses me off is that they're killing a fan game that would cause them no real harm, fucking over all the players and fans who have been looking forward to KQIX, for stupid corporate reasons.

Why couldn't they let us have our KQ fan game? It's really not going to affect Vivendi's profits in any way. Are they planning to make another KQ game? Obviously not. It's not going to compete with any game they sell. It's definitely not going to hurt sales of the KQ Collection, if they ever release it.

Instead of a petition, I think we should propose a deal to Vivendi. We'll license the KQ property, for some small sum like $5,000 or $10,000. I think we could raise that much. I'd certainly be willing to pledge ten bucks to revive this game, and I hope a few hundred other people would, too. Since the game is not going to be commercial, I don't think Vivendi ought to demand more. The game will include some statement on startup about how it's not an official game, not "canon", and how the only official KQ games are the ones released by Sierra. The title can be changed to something like "Every Cloak Has a Silver Lining: An unofficial King's Quest game". Vivendi can veto specific elements of the game if they like. The game can only be distributed for free on the website, not sold or physically distributed. Phoenix Entertainment can not make any other games (so that they can't use KQIX to publicize their other efforts).

I think that would be a fair deal. The terms are severe enough to discourage other fan-game makers (probably a concern for Vivendi), but not so hard that they can't be met. We get our game, Vivendi confirm their ownership of KQ, everyone is happy, no one boycotts anybody. Sounds good?

[Nacho]

How have you reached to the conclussion that a Fangame wouldn't hurt Vivendi? I won't play Vivendi's game anyway. I don't like modern adventure games. But the fangame should be free, I would download it. the fangame wouldn't hurt Vivendi if everybody was like me, but...

I guess there must be people who likes modern adventure games more than I do, but not enought to buy the price of Vivendi's game if they're stuffed of King Graham by playing the fangame.

Sorry to argue about that point, I might agree in all the rest, but I think that the stalement is incorrect.

[Snarky]

When was the last time Vivendi published an adventure game?

They're not in competition with amateur adventure game makers. That's just absurd. Besides, there are so many free amateur games available already (including two King's Quest titles) that stopping this one particular one isn't going to keep players from gorging themselves on indie games.