Fletch wrote on Aug 6, 2017, 23:26:

Saboth wrote on Aug 5, 2017, 21:17:
One interesting aspect is all of the people swarming his boards calling everyone a "cuck", "snowflake" or "SJW". He must be part of some kind of right wing forum that has rushed to his defense.

Lol. Trumpsters are meme-bots. No imagination. They regurgitate the same tired phrases as if the target of their angry tirade is hearing it for the first time instead of the millionth.

Lock her up derp.

I was tempted to buy, just for curiosity, if nothing else. But, A) can't see giving Cleve a dime of my money and B) $40.00? Ya, right.

Nucas wrote on Aug 6, 2017, 04:38:
i don't even know if this guy falls on a political spectrum, after googling him he actually seems mentally ill.

You answered your own question >>> He's a Trumpster

Saboth wrote on Aug 5, 2017, 21:17:
One interesting aspect is all of the people swarming his boards calling everyone a "cuck", "snowflake" or "SJW". He must be part of some kind of right wing forum that has rushed to his defense.

Lol. Trumpsters are meme-bots. No imagination. They regurgitate the same tired phrases as if the target of their angry tirade is hearing it for the first time instead of the millionth.

jdreyer wrote on Aug 6, 2017, 03:31:

Rigs wrote on Aug 6, 2017, 01:12:
I got myself banned by ol' Cleve about two weeks ago from the STEAM forums for 'being an 'unstable element''.

You went full Cutter. Never go full Cutter.

Or full unstable.

i don't even know if this guy falls on a political spectrum, after googling him he actually seems mentally ill.

i also generally find it kind of interesting to see people's thought processes regarding what is a 'correct' price for a videogame. in one of the hellblade: senua's sacrifice posts here people were expressing suspicion that the game can't be good, it's only 30 dollars and "it looks triple A".

gsilver wrote on Aug 5, 2017, 23:17:
I looked at the reviews, and IMO, only one of the negative reviews thus far has any weight behind it (the 8 hour one). The others were 1.5 hours or less knee-jerk responses.

I'm kinda-sorta interested in the game, but I'll wait until stuff like actual professional reviews are out.

I think it's fine to not buy a game based on the dev's politics. Reviews of the game, however, should be based on the actual game, irrespective of the dev's politics.

Rigs wrote on Aug 6, 2017, 01:12:
I got myself banned by ol' Cleve about two weeks ago from the STEAM forums for 'being an 'unstable element''.

You went full Cutter. Never go full Cutter.

I got myself banned by ol' Cleve about two weeks ago from the STEAM forums for 'being an 'unstable element''. I didn't know anything about Grimoire until I saw a posting about it on a Retro news site right after it missed it's first release date in July. I then did a little digging and found that the game had been 'finished' multiple times before that and never came out. All the way back in 2003 it was supposedly 'almost done'. Then he had an Indie GoGo campaign for it a while back. Many 'regulars' had chimed in after it's missed July release that ol' Cleve had been a regular fixture on the RPGCodex boards and that most of them were sure the game would never see the light of day, if there was a game at all.

Apparently, the game had started at Sir-Tech back in 1997~ish and when Sir-Tech went under (or he left/got fired, I can't find definitive info on which), he released a 'Super Demo' and said he was finishing it himself. But aside from the demo, which was purported to have 20-40 hours of game time in it and is still available, no new screens or videos came out...for a long time. So this whole time, ol' Cleve is saying it's 'almost done' and would be released 'soon', only for years to pass and he posted nothing concrete like a video walkthrough to show his progress. You just had to go on his word...which wasn't exactly trustworthy.

So, by the time July 2017 rolls along and he's saying it's done, everyone that was familiar with it just rolled their eyes in a collective sigh. No one thought this was any different from the last 10-15 years. His odd behavior and nonsensical posting about...nothing, especially when it came to the game, didn't help. He would post like it was the middle of a much longer, more explained post but he just cut a paragraph or two out of the middle and posted that instead. It was strange, and off-putting. When it was posted it would be $40, most everyone laughed. They already knew he was crazy but this just cemented his break with reality. Who the hell was going to pay $40 for DOS-era graphics, mechanics and UI in a game? ANY game?! Even if it was GTA6 or HALO6 or the latest Bioware RPG epic, if it looked and played like a 1996-circa DOS game, no one was going to touch it except the hardcore. Some people don't care about graphics and UI as long as the game is good, and to an extent, I'm one of them, but the price has to match too. 600 hours of possible gameplay or not, $40 is just not a sane price point for something like this. The hardcore multi-party RPG playerbase is pretty niche and small to begin with, you're not going to win over the filthy casuals and their wallets like that, gameplay be damned...

Anyway, after posting my opinion on the forum a few times (not nastily, I might add), I found I'd been permanently banned from them within a week and a half of joining them. I was half-tempted to email Jim (Fucking) Sterling (Son) but I just said the hell with it and carried on doing something productive instead. When Aug. 1st came around (the second release date), I checked in to see if he'd actually been truthful this time about it being 'done' and yet another excuse was posted to the forum, this time blaming it one STEAM, of course. I chuckled and went about my business. Imagine my utter shock when I saw it listed on TPB earlier today! Not because it was on TPB, but because it was out at all! Thankfully, I don't have to carry out my end of the deal I made with the 'beclevers' if he actually released on Aug. 1st...I said I'd eat my underwear. Live. On Twitch. Thank God for perfectionists!

=-Rigs-=

As for game length, I recently heard the best explanation of why overly long games are bad when listening to old episodes of the TOVG podcast: It's very much like a clingy relationship.
"Come on. I just want to try other games"
"No! You have to spend all your time with me! Over 100 hours!"

And then, if you do take a break and go back, you find that the relationship is gone.

I looked at the reviews, and IMO, only one of the negative reviews thus far has any weight behind it (the 8 hour one). The others were 1.5 hours or less knee-jerk responses.

I'm kinda-sorta interested in the game, but I'll wait until stuff like actual professional reviews are out.

Wow...Cleve finally released it. Last I heard about this was at least 7 or 8 years ago and he was still programming it in DOS or FreeDOS.

If you're really bored you can dig up literally decades of his 'interesting' posts on the internet. And yes, he's definitely very far right. From what I'm told his neighborhood has a lot of Afrikaners that fled after Apartheid ended so I suppose at least he's surrounded by like minded indviduals.

Stupid trivia. He did do some work with Sir-Tech and there's a theory the mine foreman Calvin Barkmore in Jagged Alliance 2 is based on him.

eRe4s3r wrote on Aug 5, 2017, 14:44:
Well, you really gotta be an eccentric loony to spend 20 years on a game...

That's what Chris Roberts said.

One interesting aspect is all of the people swarming his boards calling everyone a "cuck", "snowflake" or "SJW". He must be part of some kind of right wing forum that has rushed to his defense.

Ahh 40 for that???
Nope.

The developer seems like a fucking moron. Not to mention his game sucks especially in comparison to something like Tower of Time which is a decent RPG to tide me over until DOS2 comes out, and ToT is only $15.

Cutter wrote on Aug 5, 2017, 12:25:
20 years and 40 dollars for that? Yeah the guy obviously is a loony.

Heh, many have thought that for years. I'd forgotten all about Cleve and Grimoire till now. If I remember right his big crusade was against piracy and game pricing, but its been awhile. The political battles now don't surprise me as he used to be on the Quarter to Three forums a lot over ten years ago. Ruffled many feathers especially the hard core lefty types there.

So, $40 for Grimoire doesn't surprise me but sure does seem stupid. His project though.

Whenever I see a developer selling a game for $X, when it could sell 5 times as many copies for half that, I can't help but think of how terribly ignorant they are. Economics much?!

This price is hurting him, everyone who bought the game, and everyone who didn't because the price was too high.

Pull your head out of your butt.

eRe4s3r wrote on Aug 5, 2017, 14:44:
Well, you really gotta be an eccentric loony to spend 20 years on a game...

Well, they changed the graphics engine very often (started with the Doom 1 engine, now they got the latest Unreal engine), also OS compatibility had to be worked on when Windows 95 got axed by M$, then there were new stretch goals that had to be written, and the change from singleplayer to MMO, and the source code had been stolen from Gabe's compu... ahm... Sorry, am I mixing stuff up here?!

MoreLuckThanSkill wrote on Aug 5, 2017, 14:39:

Saboth wrote on Aug 5, 2017, 11:51:
2. The developer is supposedly far alt-right, with a doomsday bunker, etc., so people are using that against him.

I am not interested in this game, especially with D:OS2 around the corner, but surely that would be a valid reason for not supporting this game, if somebody disagrees with the maker(s) politics?

Reading random excerpts from his blog, he seems like an insane person. Nothing supposedly about it, unfortunately.

It would be how he presents himself with his politics. I never got into this whole thing here, but what I did hear it was substantial. Sort of like a Derek Smart type figure with his own ways. Sometimes the person does affect the product.