The pressing concerns about game development, regular and indie...

Don't know if you may notice, but lately, I've been feeling some great concerns about the state of the gaming and game development industry.

While game development can be neat, invigorating, and thrilling to take on, I know of many obstacles that lie ahead, such as planning, pre-production, publishing, licensing, all the works, etc., etc., you know. Yes, even tools & programs are required, but, not a lotta people have to do it through programs with subscription-based models. We have alternatives that work just as well without needing to pay a dime on 'em and with great reliability. Why shouldn't more people follow through on that?

The concerns I have been feeling in my heart and mind lately are many devs lacking communication between players, fans, even devs themselves, their own work ethic and knowledge, progress reports to people waiting on their game's development, and coherency to any game's intended, original vision, especially towards the indie gaming dev industry.

One such concern I've stated, for example, is the lack of communication, evidently by reading a few comments in a post about Atooi's unfavorable direction its heading presently. People have said the lead behind the indie company has been throwing their fans under the bus by shutting people out about constantly shifts focus on other games rather than continuing on with games already announced that have been put in the back burner for too long, including the long-awaited adventure, Treasurenauts, the hi-def remake of a Nintendo 3DS game, Hatch Tales, and NO ABSOLUTE mention of Mutant Mudds 3, the game we thought we're going to see as a continuation from Mutant Mudds: Super Challenge. Well, actually, I thought of its name, but, you get the idea.

Some people have tried talking to the lead of Atooi about Hatch Tales' progress, but they get silenced the moment they were waiting to get their answers. That speaks toxic behavior between the dev and the players to me. It is not right, I say.

Then, of course, there's Freedom Planet. The game had many promises laid out upon its funding, and while many have been met, I got concerns of how those promises have been doing. Then came the sequel, Freedom Planet 2, and through those long, agonizing years, people have been wondering about the promises the previous game had set, some had thoughts it would be a while, others to finish the sequel before going onto those promises, then, of course, there's people that have already came to their conclusion that those promises would never be made because the only lead dev there would rather have the sequel made and finished rather than complete those promises, case in point, the Spade and Torque campaigns, promised to be DLC later on.

Shortly upon the sequel's launch, the lead dev answered the exact question about Freedom Planet's DLC being the next focus. The answer was, of course, the obvious, like some people thought... "NO". Yes, that answer is, indeed, no. Meaning, there will not be DLC for Freedom Planet. At all. PERIOD.

Why? I have come to that conclusion why. Because, not just the dev couldn't do it by not reworking the engine from CF 2.5 to a more robust engine for better efficiency in development, but because it is my understanding that the once promised goals, along with patches to mend the story in Freedom Planet, which I have remembered upon reading comments from a once-active forum board about the game a long while ago, have rather been deemed pointless in the late years of Freedom Planet 2's development timeline, which took far too long to the point where people had just given up interest and moved on to other things in their lives, thinking it would be cancelled completely. Without those promises being complete, the game's story has been splintered, leaving it to have a sequel that goes with whatever has been remained incomplete in that game.

I used to believe the company, GalaxyTrail, would complete those promises, but I now have opened my eyes to the truth. I got so naive about that. Never again will I fall such falsehoods in that company or any that tries to do the same to their fans, too.

That's no way to have a game that goes with where the splintered story ended! It hurt me in my heart as a gamer that expected such games to adhere where the completed stories went in there. No gamer and dev-to-be should ever support such a company that does such an unjust move.

Why, at the time of its announcement, the game was about 1% complete, and almost a year passed then, which is highly unacceptable for any game to make little progress then stop for something else. A far too early announcement to a game not even complete yet, let alone hardly complete. That's just plainly unacceptable in my perspective.

Then, came other games that changed priority focus from that sequel to finishing other games, then back again to slowly make progress on it. And how long did it take to actually complete it? Almost 7 LONG YEARS! Seriously! Its not because of love and caring given to finish the sequel, but rather the lack of actual focus, coherence, and determination to finish right to the very end.

That game, which would have waited until all promises of Freedom Planet would have been actually delivered, could've been done in FAR LESS the time. Maybe it would've been better noticed, but the opposite has been proven, and far less people notice it today. Never still liked the art direction and character redesigns, too. Made them far too unrecognizable. Kinda eye hurting, too. Don't care what people say about changing what made the characters recognizable, better to stay with what worked, no matter what they say. I don't mean from the fangame design roots, about the designs changed in the first game that made them acceptably recognizable and stood out well from the Sonic series' character design.

Who could also forget the huge failure of Mighty No. 9? A lot can't. That game was to be an alleviation to the lack of new Mega Man games, but loads of mishaps on many fronts, even marketing and advertising, all lead it to be a complete flop. Why, even the game had overpromised a lot on console versions that took too long to meet each and every one of 'em, all while adhering to the same engine it was built on. That was way overambitious to me.

Sorry if my post got a bit long. Had to get that out of my mind and heart. More I'll say shortly...