Lords of Uberdark was the talk of the town for a bit. With press from smaller outlets like us and big names such as Kotaku it easily reached a significant funding goal of $20,000 USD. Then they vanished from the face of the internet. In this article we want to discuss what went right, what went wrong and why it is taking so long.
What Went Right with Lords of Uberdark
The game got huge promotion, funding, etc. Many people were very excited and some progress was being made early on. Indeed, updates have continued to happen into March of this year.
What Went Wrong with Lords of Uberdark
#1 Lords of Uberdark Team Members
Gleaned from various posts on forums and other places, many things went wrong. For one the team was quite small to begin with. With such a small team updates came out very slowly despite the initial push. There have also been some shifts that have slowed things down. Not having a large, competent and focused team was the first problem.
#2 Code from Scratch
Much of the coding has to be done just for this game alone. They didn’t have a platform to really build off of so Aaron is doing the coding.
#3 Money
While we have no evidence to suggest this past common sense, many fans have suggested that 20K is not enough to stretch from 2011 to 2013. While these are just rumors it does seem likely that the base funds have run low some time ago. Many are feeling (perhaps rightly) scammed for their donations.
#4 Lords of Uberdark Interrupted by Personal Lives
Several of Aaron’s quotes on the speed of the development have related to his personal life slowing it down. As anyone with any passion for the industry knows this is a ridiculous and unacceptable excuse. It speaks more to a lack of passion than anything else.
#5 A Loss of Fans
Many of those same fans who donated are annoyed by the lack of progress and have turned on the game. Others have forgotten it completely.
What to Learn from This
If you want to turn all your fans against you, by all means follow the formula with this game. There are still a few hardcore hold-outs who are still cheering for him. If you are a developer follow the example other developers put out and work all the time. Don’t let your personal life get in the way. As truly dedicated writers here we follow the same example and put something out every day for you. We expect no less of developers, and this was simply lazy. We are waiting to see whether he can up his update rate and turn around the opinion on his Kickstarter. Nothing would please us more than to see him do that, as we supported his game as well.
