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'Areal' Kickstarter Finally Gets Some Gameplay Footage

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This article is more than 9 years old.

There's an expression: Better late than never.

But it's not always true. It's not always better to be late. There are times when you should simply not show up at all. There's a time when you should just pack up your things and go home. Maybe reschedule. Take a rain check.

After seeing the first gameplay footage for Areal, the "spiritual successor" to the STALKER franchise, I can't help but feel like rescheduling would have been preferable to showing up late.

Backers and the press---including yours truly---have been urging developer West Games to give us some screenshots and gameplay footage from Areal instead of just concept art and footage from STALKER. It's taken weeks at this point, but the final results are in.

Here is Areal, though only in prototype:

So...as a prototype it's fine I suppose. At least it's something. The problem is, we were told going into this Kickstarter that the game was in "pre-alpha" meaning there should be lots of early footage already made prior to the launch of the crowdfunding campaign.

However, West Games says in the update: "The first video shown above was made in two weeks." I interpret this as meaning "over the past two weeks" since, honestly, why wouldn't they have shown it to us from the outset unless it was just created?

Which leads to the second question: The proprietary engine West Games claims to be working on isn't finished---Eugene Kim told me that "we have stated that we are working, key phrase, working on a proprietary engine" implying that it was not yet complete.

So is this prototype footage from the new engine? Wary backers say it looks like more Unity assets:

Right-click to open image in a new tab and see it fsull-size.

It's not a slam dunk, by any means, but we have at least a handful of examples of West Games using Unity assets to show off their game in the past. For instance:

The track record here is a problem.

For their part, West Games finally owns up to some of their own foibles in this disaster of a Kickstarter campaign:

We know how to make games and are very passionate about Areal. What we've found out though, is that making and launching a Kickstarter is much harder than actually making the game! One of the biggest mistakes that we made was focusing too much on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and not showing footage of Areal itself. This raised a lot of negativity in the community, and many accused us of being a fraud. We just wanted to show people that we were responsible for creating S.T.A.L.K.E.R.. We were completely unprepared for the wave of negativity that surrounded our Kickstarter and honestly, were more than a little discouraged.

But that did not break our will to make Areal, and it did not break our desire to create an awesome game that players around the world will enjoy. Within our game, you'll have to dare yourself to encounter various hostile flora and fauna that has been irreversibly mutated because of the events surrounding Areal, and which live by their own rules. You'll try to wield unheard of power that was created by a renowned fantasy writer, and adapted into video game form by developers who were responsible for creating a defining cult-hit video game series.

It's not enough, of course. West Games came to this Kickstarter utterly unprepared. Whether they're fraudulent is hard to say, but nobody can doubt the amount of incompetence on display here. When first accused of being frauds, this was the video we were shown of the team:

Not particularly professional. No indication of the game itself or that anyone is working on it. Not terribly comforting for suspicious backers.

It wasn't until the latest update, with less than a week to go in the campaign, that we see footage or a professional video of the team, at least ostensibly working on Areal. And hey, one guy has a big gun on his desk, too:

While I'm glad they finally did come out with this update, it's too late for this campaign. Trust has been broken. Hostility festers in the comments---and with good reason---and West Games has abandoned the comments section altogether.

This Kickstarter is in a shambles and it's time to call it quits. If West Games is serious about making Areal they need to regroup, dip into the savings account they keep talking about, and come back fresh in a few months with a new pitch, lots of gameplay footage and screenshots, and an entirely new and improved attitude.

But I say all of that here in my tips for Kickstarter campaigns articleAreal has been essentially the antithesis of a good Kickstarter. But it's never too late to pick yourself back up, bandage yourself up, and get back into the fight. If West Games is serious about this, they need to come back to the table and eat their crow, duly humble and---most importantly---prepared.

Perhaps just as importantly they need to be honest. If they are in prototype/conceptual phase and don't have screenshots yet, just say that from the outset. If they are using Unity instead of a proprietary engine, just say that. Give a detailed budget from the beginning, and set reasonable goals to achieve such a major project. It's going to be an uphill battle, but it's the only way West Games has even a tiny chance at crowdfunding and actually completing this game.

You can read my half-finished interview with West Games chief Eugene Kim here. (He never responded to my follow-up questions.)

You can read the ongoing saga of the Areal campaign here, in my regularly updated account of the Kickstarter fiasco.

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