Det er triste tider for spilmediet, nu hvor to af de mest kunstnertiske udviklere takker endegyldigt nej til udvikling af flere titler. Tale of Tales dropper ud af branchen.
Auriea Harvey og Michaël Samyn traf beslutningen om, at stoppe med at udvikle computerspil, efter at udgivelsen af deres seneste spil Sunset, blev udgivet til en blanding af kritisk fanfare og ringe salg.
I en blogpost uddyber parret deres ræsonnement i sagen, og forklarer hvordan reklamekampagner, og deres seneste tilbudsrunde på Steam, ikke var nok til at drive salget. Samtidig afslører de, at spillet kun har solgt 4000 kopier.
In the end, we spent more money than we had on the production of Sunset. Because we wanted to make it really good and reach a wider audience. Compared to the ambitions we had for the game, the extra $40,000 seemed like a relatively small sum. "Surely we can make that amount back in the first month of sales!"
We were wrong.
So far a little over 4,000 copies of Sunset have changed hands. That includes the copies for our backers on Kickstarter. That includes the sale. There's barely enough income to keep our company going while we look for ways to raise the funds to pay back our debts.
It's hard to deal with this intense feeling of disappointment in a context of glowing reviews and compliments and encouragement from players. A small group of people clearly deeply appreciates what we do and we curse the economic system that doesn't allow us to be pleased with that.
Parret ser nu fremad, og hvis der er en fremtid i spiludvikling for de to, så er den ikke af den kommercielle slags:
So now we are free. We don't have to take advice from anybody anymore. We were wrong. Everybody whom we consulted with on Sunset was wrong.
We are happy and proud that we have tried to make a "game for gamers." We really did our best with Sunset, our very best. And we failed. So that's one thing we never need to do again. Creativity still burns wildly in our hearts but we don't think we will be making videogames after this. And if we do, definitely not commercial ones.
<bild></bild>