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Game development Canceled

Taken right from the horses mouth.

www.faceofmankind.com

 

Announcement



We all know that you are eagerly awaiting Face of Mankind: Rebirth and we are

very greatful that you stayed with us. This makes the following announcement

even more sad for us.



The development of Face of Mankind: Rebirth has been canceled. There are several

reasons for this decision, of which some you might understand and others you won't.

The main reason is the lack of financial resources to develop the game and finish

it the way we want. FoM, as many other MMORPGs today, is a game that relies heavily

on visual content. For us, being only a small development studio with very limited

resources, it would be nearly impossible to make the game we want it to be. You

might wonder what there is to change? It runs fine and works in a way. That's right,

but not the way it's supposed to. And spending so much more power and private funding

into the project made not much sense anymore. There might be a time for FoM in the

future, but it's just not now.



We thought about several ways to get the financing done. We tried finding a new

publisher or getting investments from other sources. The best solution for the game

would have been a publisher who is not solely interested in making quick money.

Especially when it comes to MMO's, that have so much financial potential, the only

way to go is careful development, testing and a well planned release. This doesn't

necessarily have to mean a big multi-million budget. Many games are just oversized

these days.



After all, this is not the end for Duplex Systems. We have tons of ideas and plans

and are fully dedicated to develop those MMO's that the current market needs.

In a certain way, I have to admit that FoM was oversized as well. We accomplished

more than we were actually supposed to for such a small company. Many wondered if

Duplex Systems was just a one-man show. Altogether this is obviously not true, but

at times it was. And it made me crash down physically by the end of 2005. Even

though I was able to bring the development of FoM to an end, it made me change my

life and the way I run business drastically.

Beyond many other ideas, I always had the idea of a game that doesn't rely so much on

graphical resources, but is more module based and generated in a way, and in the

end could be done pretty well by a one or two man team. During the latest months

I made this idea more concrete and developed a game concept for it. The result

is Nanoverse Online, a very fresh concept in the MMO realm. At this time I don't

plan to release any kind of details just yet. This is to keep our ideas safe and

unique, which I hope you will understand.



Keep an eye open at:

http://www.nanoverse-online.com



Sincerely,

Marko Dieckmann

Duplex Systems

Comments

  • rileyman1211rileyman1211 Member Posts: 65

    God damn.. this seriously made me cry.. remembering all of the good times we all had..

    You'll never find another game like this..

     

    Rest In Peace

    Face of Mankind

    “Wakka wakka wakka” - Pac-Man

  • aruthamarutham Member Posts: 63

    I cried in real life :(

     

     

    FoM was the greatest game i ever played, and for the forseeable future fom:r was the last great hope..

     

     

    abandon all hope, ye who enter here.....

     

     

    Bye FOM,

  • And another one bites the dust.

  • Jacob_GJacob_G Member Posts: 8

    Well, this sucks... 

    - Jacob Goodnight

  • Kpt_Rob_783Kpt_Rob_783 Member Posts: 3

    I feel bit strange with the idea that FoM is on a planet whe never reach.

    Al the best guys and gl for Duplex.

    This mmorpg wil stay forever in my mind.

    EC rules the waves

     

  • 8r4nd4n8r4nd4n Member Posts: 4

    I'm sure I speak for all of us who actually liked the game and didn't flame it...

    Thats some serious Bull !@#$  and Ojom needs to go !@#$%. To all who read NEVER play with Ojom they ruined quite a good game, if they only had the staff and funds to make it a titan. Well it was good knowing you all fellow fans and not so much Crispy and his gang  but it made killing you all the funner and a unique part of the game unlike any others. Anyways RIP Face of Mankind and the avatars with it.

    RIP EX Tristan de Mistral, Lion Heart, Mr. Smilez, Big Bad Dude, and other fun or suicidal anti-LED charecters

    /signed

    Just another gamer looking for something good

    Unnick named guy

    8r4nd4n

     

    P.S. just had to add some last smileyz and humor to all who didn't like those names and those who did thanks for bearing with me while I grew up or started i guess. I will miss you all and hope to see you in other games

  • ZorvanZorvan Member CommonPosts: 8,912

    After all these "improvements" they were "working" on so they could relaunch FoM, they out of the blue cancel. But SURPRISE, they have a new mmo in the works for you all!!

    I won't begrudge those of you who truly liked this game for whatever reason, but anyone who goes to these "developers" next game really needs a long vacation from gaming.....

  • mike470mike470 General CorrespondentMember Posts: 2,396

    First game in the Dead Gamess section!  Grats FOM

    As to all of you people who thought that FOM would actually relaunch, I feel bad for you.  If they can't relaunch FOM, then I doubt that we will see any of these new MMOs they speak of on the market anytime soon.

    __________________________________________________
    In memory of Laura "Taera" Genender. Passed away on Aug/13/08 - Rest In Peace; you will not be forgotten

  • aleosaleos Member UncommonPosts: 1,943

    haha face of mankind was canceled... ironic

  • warrorwarror Member Posts: 270

    This starting to happen more often these days. Same thing happened to Gods and Heros.

  • SioBabbleSioBabble Member Posts: 2,803

    From the announcement:

    The best solution for the game would have been a publisher who is not solely interested in making quick money.

    Well, there's the problem with all MMO development in a nutshell.

    Unless you can guarantee WoWlike success, the investors (who more often than not are looking exclusively at numbers, not the actual product, no matter what industry it's in) are not going to be interested.  There are very few rugged indivduals out there who see a product, think "wow this is cool!" and throw money at the developers to make it a reality.  More often they're grey men and women in grey suits who work for an investment firm that deals strictly with numbers, not dreams.

    MMOs to be good have to be about putting people into a dream.  This is incompatible with ruthess American-Ferengi capitalism, which is about wallowing in money.

    CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.

    Once a denizen of Ahazi

  • HelternHeltern Member Posts: 193

    Hahah, good read! Don't want another WoW, you mean don't want to make $$ = flop!! Did this board recommend the games direction?  Hahah, to funny!

  • JephirJephir Member Posts: 36

    WHAT THE FUCK

     

    The only MMORPG that I know of that has:

    - No quests, only player-made missions

    - No leveling, only promotion based on social actions

    - No grind, no NPCs, no boring shit

     

    Is dead.

  • ToxiliumToxilium Member UncommonPosts: 905

    RIP FoM. One of the best MMOs I ever played.

    image

    image

  • RubycatRubycat Member Posts: 223

    Fom didn't have enough content, and the game before even hitting Milestone 1 was getting stale.

    A lot of Foms charm was solely based on "what if" in terms of potential for the game and was in no way a "great" game.

    Perhaps its because it was so focused on player content (if you can call it that) that the game died, because its community for the most part is and was garbage -as fully seen at Ikoru's forums-

  • MikeyReignMikeyReign Member Posts: 56

    Although it was expected, it still is very sad to hear that such a great game which was once at it's absolute prime before it even launched was one of the best MMORPGs I ever played, is now at it's end.

     

    The concept was there, the design just took a wrong direction. Such a shame that a game like that is no more.

  • ZeroTMZeroTM Member Posts: 3

    Well that blows.

  • FickeyFickey Member Posts: 33

    I think we all knew it was coming... but either way it sucks. This was a great idea for a game and while I played it I had a great time and to me it was one of the best MMOs I have ever played.

    Who knows... down the road they might get back up on their feet and try it again... that would be nice ^_^

  • AgricolaAgricola Member Posts: 10

    FOM started to die at the the end of Open Beta when developers and publishers never listened to the players.  The article mentions graphics, why is it all developers etc seem to still think that graphics are the most important thing in a game?

     

    In Beta we were all happy with graphics, then someone decided to update the graphic engine just after we all spent months of ironing out all the graphic gliches and bugs. The change was for the worse, we still had the old style background and objects, but a totally new carachter frame which ruined the look and feel.

     

    The point with FOM was that most of the roleplay went on outside of the game environment,  this was one of the few MMORPGS which encourages proper politics, relations, interaction , espienge, spying , inflitration , promotion, careers and so on.

     

    FOM could have improved in a number of areas and been even better, another mistake was to turn it into a FPS game, which again was wrong, a direction that we could see in BETA. 

    I had the joy to be invovled in closed beta right through to end of open Beta, it was the best MMORPG experience i have ever had.



    RIP FOM

     

  • Reborn17Reborn17 Member Posts: 414
    Originally posted by SioBabble


    From the announcement:
    The best solution for the game would have been a publisher who is not solely interested in making quick money.
    Well, there's the problem with all MMO development in a nutshell.
    Unless you can guarantee WoWlike success, the investors (who more often than not are looking exclusively at numbers, not the actual product, no matter what industry it's in) are not going to be interested.  There are very few rugged indivduals out there who see a product, think "wow this is cool!" and throw money at the developers to make it a reality.  More often they're grey men and women in grey suits who work for an investment firm that deals strictly with numbers, not dreams.
    MMOs to be good have to be about putting people into a dream.  This is incompatible with ruthess American-Ferengi capitalism, which is about wallowing in money.



     

    I'll be quoting this post in my design document.

     

    "The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion." -Edmund Burke

    Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?"
    (Psalm 94:16)

  • PolarizationPolarization Member Posts: 1,410


    I also enjoyed my time during closed beta immensely, no point trying to explain the reasons why, either people understand or they don’t, it was a paradise for role-play within a fps sandbox world with player generated content (what little there was of it).

    But at the same time I never had any allusions about what a complete failure this game was destined to be from the start, it had virtually zero content and the tools to support player content generation were Spartan and entirely inadequate.

    And its only really significant feature and unfortunately the games total emphasis was its poor FPS element, that was quite lackluster.

    The developers never listened and they seemed to be completely naïve or ignorant about what would happen when open beta started and then launch, and their priority's seemed to be opposite to that of their community's.

    I tried on numerous occasions to explain to them in excruciatingly simple terms but they never seemed to even be capable of making small changes based on are feedback, let alone the fundamental core changes and additions that were required for this game to ever of had any realistic chance at even niche market appeal.

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