The International House of Mojo

Just he and I. As Jason said, really does seem out of character for him, plus it's quite unusual that he would have actually read it so quickly (the page has several queries, questions, private messages, most unanswered). So it's altogether weird.

In any case, I agree on a few things that you said about the campaign. Actually, getting 50,000 on Kickstarter is not bad at all, it's just a shame that a game like that simply can't be made for that amount. I have Doug TenNapel on Facebook too and he was completely on top of promoting the Kickstarter for Armikrog (which only reached the funding goal a couple of hours before it ended. They were asking for 900k), posting the link all the time on both his personal Facebook and the game page (which apparently he ran himself). While A Vampyre Story's Kickstarter got launched on a Friday night (or something like that), while E3 was about to start. Not the best planning or efforts in PR and social network handling. Yet, even with their best efforts, it's hard to see it making more than 100k.

So, he either failed to find this game's audience (maybe mostly Germans, who knows), or there really isn't enough demand and interest for this game. I mean, the fact that a project failed to be financed on Kickstarter is not necessarily an indication that it wouldn't sell, but at least it should be considered.

However, if he really feels strongly about this world, these characters, etc, I think he does well in still pursing it. It's no different from certain indie filmmakers that have found a way to finance little movies that are labors of love and might not have a big enough market to make money. If that's what he is passionate about, then I'm glad he still intends to do it.

Are there more admins? Maybe one got carried away, but if not he must have done it. I know that I posted it, and not only that but I went back a bit later and slightly edited it.

You shouldn't extrapolate my opinion to everyone. I just didn't like AVS and especially GP not too much, even though they looked and sounded great.

I created the page and I'm still an admin and I can honestly say that it's far more likely that it failed to be properly posted than he having read it. I've observed that he pays really minimum attention to the page (I've been the one repeatedly posting the Kickstarter links, which doesn't speak very well of his attempts to spread the word). Also, a few other people have posted some sorts of criticism or complains and I've never seen him take them down (if anything, he sometimes replies to them).
I would be really surprised if he had actually deleted it. He is pretty honest and open about these things.

Well I think that cake was baked prior to launching the Kickstarter. He's been working on this game on and off since 2010 and he's clearly got a lot of assets finished. Considering the short length of the game he projected it would probably be too wasteful to toss it into the round file at this point.

What seems to be happening to me is that he's simply going back to working on the game between paid gigs, whereas the crowd funding would have permitted him to finish the game up on a defined schedule with a release this year.

So the focus of complaints against the two Autumn Moon games was once on the writing, but now it's just gone ahead and evolved to Everything But The Art Sucks? When did this happen? And can I get some examples of the demonstrably poor areas of the games' DESIGN in order to catch up?

The problem I see is that Bill is not really a good game designer OR businessman. He's and outstanding artist and I would LOVE to see another adventure game with him as the lead background artist. But a game completely designed by him? Meh...

Unfortunately it looks like Bill is putting his head in the sand. The kickstarter showed there was no interest in this game so why waste money on it? This pigheadedness could mean he never gets to make another game again and that would be a real shame.

And more than a bit out of character. Lame.

Well that seems a bit childish.

Heh, oh man. I voiced the concerns of my previous comment on the AVS Facebook page with a completely respectful tone and Tiller just deleted my post.

If he's not even willing to have an open dialogue about these things then I think I'm done with caring about the fate of his work. He's clearly not ready to acknowledge some of the flaws in how he's going about things.

Shame as I'll always love his artwork (at least for CMI) and I'd be delighted to see more in a viable, genuinely good game. But it's looking increasingly unlikely it'll ever happen.

To be fair, the original probably was considered to be a qualified success. I could buy the idea that the cult following for AVS could have been sufficient to make a modest Kickstarter (which I'd argue $200k was) a success. Of course, that only has a chance if you're giving that modest fanbase exactly what they want, which is the sequel. While the behind-the-scenes reasons for making this a prequel are valid, there's no way to pitch it without serious confusion/outrage, and you're starving out a lot of potential to engage newcomers. ("Why would I get excited about a prequel to a five year old game with a cliffhanger?")

So I would agree with you that if he was going to go the KS route, he would have been better off doing an original game, especially since he apparently has proposals for them lying around. I can only assume that he a) really personally wants to work in the AVS universe, b) felt that an "established" franchise would be safer, and c) thought the momentum would indirectly increase the odds of AVS2 happening.

Putting aside the baffling nature of an AVS prequel as a concept (at least at this point), the fact that the game looks great and that Bill is committed to it in spite of his luck does kind of steal my heart a bit, so I'm still hopelessly attached to the project. My primary concern is that Bill gets to keep making adventure games. I don't know how he's ultimately going to manage that but the self-funded thing is obviously not going to be sustainable. We'll see what kind of cachet this first prequel episode ends up furnishing him with. I truly believe Autumn Moon can keep refining their stuff to the point where their games will be home runs quality-wise but that requires getting to keep making games.

Say what you will about Bill, guy's got tenacity.
Then again, the kickstarter fiasco will only hinder his further dealings with finding adequate funding.

Seems to me like Tiller would be better off acknowledging the fact that demand for the IP is and always has been minimal at best. Even those who were interested in the original AVS gave it a lukewarm to poor reception if I remember correctly.

If even the demand on Kickstarter is non-existent, who does he think is going to buy this game once it is eventually made? All the fans who made the original such a success?

I really wish Tiller would go back to the drawing board, figure out something that strikes a chord with people, and see if that idea can be brought to fruition. Stubbornly pressing ahead with something that's virtually guaranteed to be a flop is not going to work out well for anybody.