{"id":42683,"date":"2018-05-06T05:57:03","date_gmt":"2018-05-06T09:57:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=42683"},"modified":"2018-05-06T12:17:15","modified_gmt":"2018-05-06T16:17:15","slug":"nightdive-is-still-alive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=42683","title":{"rendered":"Nightdive is Still Alive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You might remember a few months ago I wrote about <a href=\"?p=42010\">the sad story of Nightdive Studios<\/a>. They got to rights to remake the 1994 classic System Shock. They made a dynamite demo and raised over a million dollars on Kickstarter. And then six months into development they threw away the demo and started over with a new graphics engine. A year later they (apparently) ran out of money and shut the project down. In the process, they laid off 15 people.<\/p>\n<p>I predicted the project was dead at this point, but it looks like I was wrong. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/1598858095\/system-shock\/posts\/2156127\">They&#8217;ve gone back to a design that matches the original demo and begun work on the low-tech version of the game they started with<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t have much to say about what they&#8217;re doing, but after writing that very negative column back in February I thought I should at least acknowledge this change in direction. I don&#8217;t know what money they&#8217;re living on at this point<span class='snote' title='1'>They worked on the game for 18 months and employed 15 people. Even if everyone was talking a very modest salary and the company didn&#8217;t have a lot of operating expenses, the initial Kickstarter money ought to be long gone by now.<\/span>, but I&#8217;m glad work has resumed on the project.<\/p>\n<p>While I still strongly disagree with their previous decisions, I think this new direction is the best possible response. I can&#8217;t think of anything the team could do at this point that would placate me<span class='snote' title='2'>Which is OBVIOUSLY their priority at this point, right?<\/span> more than what they&#8217;re doing now.<\/p>\n<p>I wouldn&#8217;t say I&#8217;m feeling &#8220;hopeful&#8221; about the project at this point, but I&#8217;m no longer assuming the entire enterprise is doomed. And that&#8217;s <em>sort of<\/em> like being hopeful. I guess.<\/p>\n<p>Best of luck to the team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You might remember a few months ago I wrote about the sad story of Nightdive Studios. They got to rights to remake the 1994 classic System Shock. They made a dynamite demo and raised over a million dollars on Kickstarter. And then six months into development they threw away the demo and started over with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-videogames"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42683"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42692,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42683\/revisions\/42692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}