Six Days in Fallujah

I have zero doubts about the artistic and technical excellence of those working on this game. You guys are top tier, and have beyond earned my respect and your paychecks. I am an artist too, and empathize with the grind of creation and coding. I know each and every one of you have immense experience and possess resumes that will get you work anywhere. I would gladly buy each of you a beer for your work so far, and am humbled at your talent.

That said, Six Day in Fallujah has got to be among the biggest fumbles I have ever seen in video games. The revival sent shockwaves among the gaming community and beyond. The excitement the team fostered for this project back then is long, long dead. As a former Marine Grunt I genuinely believed in this project - now I don't. What we once believed would spark conversation now sparks nothing anywhere except milsim Youtube channels and your discord. Challenges? Contests? What the fuck happened to the game that would ask hard questions? What happened to the idea of questioning the portrayal of war in video games? What happened to empathy? How can you take an experience like Fallujah and turn it into something like this? I don't have words to express the disappointment I feel with what this project has become - milsim porn. It's disgusting, and I've recently even debated against this games existence - a position I never thought I'd take.

I am aware I am among milsimmers and those who just want to have a nice time playing with their friends. Granted, that is an acceptable position - but one I am staunchly opposed to for a topic like this. Perhaps when things get rolled out more, some excitement and remnants of the original pitch might return - but this song and dance has been on repeat for 3 years. Now there is news this isn't even coming to consoles until 2025? Frankly, even if the promised features are rolled out, I don't have faith the project will garner attention past the Discord community and Youtube content creators. Worse, I don't believe it will hold a candle to any of the books or documentaries that have discussed Phantom Fury. I believe this game is headed by people who will lead it to failure.

I again emphasize my utter respect and admiration for the artists at work here. You guys are the real ones. I appreciate the magnitude of the challenges you've faced in game development, and in no manner whatsoever am attacking the artistry and technical excellence as a result of your efforts. If the day comes Victura pulls a rabbit out of the hat, I will eat my words and have seconds - but I don't believe that day will come.

Hey aggi,

Thanks for the thread. I want to remind everyone that we're still in Early Access, barely scratching the surface of what the final version of Six Days will offer. I'd estimate we've released 10-20% of the final version of the game. And, we're using this period as a means to test what's working for us and what isn't.

Of course, new content is top of our priority list, but we found the core experience needing more work first. As a result, we issued two quality updates with very little marketing and focus on player acquisition. The foundation needed to be improved, and now that it has, we're beginning to shift into our next major content update which will bring one of the most anticipated features of the game into player hands (friendly AI teammates).

This goes without mentioning the single-player narrative experience we're building, which will ask the difficult questions as we place players directly into the simulation. I think this is what will spark the most conversation and attention, and we have absolutely no plans of abandoning this feature.

We're a smaller team with the same targets we launched with, and we're working on it. In the meantime, community events, contests, and challenges are designed to drive some engagement. It may not be for everyone, but we issued first-ever exclusive, physical medals to winners of our Jolan Park Challenge, for example, and I think that's pretty cool for an indie studio.

This is exactly why EA titles need to go bye-bye. And in the end, its a $40 video game.

I have faith they are not even close to being complete with their narrative, at this time, I think they're just focusing on building a functionally working video game. In which eventually they can build the narrative into. I think most of the community wants bug fixed, more variety, more missions etc. The devs need to earn money to work, which means they need to appeal to the masses first. Once they have the actual (financial) scale to produce what they want, it will get done I think. this project is also unique in its documentary approach, which is likely further costly and time consuming.

Amper,

I think a good way to make use of this passionate community is to engage them directly with the specific design and or technical aspects of the project that are causing the team delays. One 100-word post with a screenshot or two of "work in progress" by a different team member each week. Proprietary concerns can be mitigated by focusing on narrow topics. Your team owns the copyright to published media so hiding unfinished work has no strategic value at this point.

LittleWars wrote: Sat Aug 10, 2024 4:54 am Amper,

I think a good way to make use of this passionate community is to engage them directly with the specific design and or technical aspects of the project that are causing the team delays. One 100-word post with a screenshot or two of "work in progress" by a different team member each week. Proprietary concerns can be mitigated by focusing on narrow topics. Your team owns the copyright to published media so hiding unfinished work has no strategic value at this point.

Thanks for the suggestion on this. Pulling members of our team off development isn't always the easiest thing to do with deadlines, but I'll take this to our leadership.

I've said it before that we only have one real chance to showcase a demonstration of Marine AI in action before folks decide whether our most anticipated feature is worth it or not, and we want to ensure things are in the best possible state before doing so (there are exceptions here, of course).