And now, this:

That’s one of the Project Zomboid devs posting on Twitter upon learning that two of the team’s development laptops had been stolen right out of his bedroom. Those laptops contained both the most recent build of the game, as well as the team’s back-ups of that build. Upon hearing about this, fans of the game reacted with torrents of abuse, prompting Chris Simpson (a.k.a. Lemmy) to give up his position as the public face of Project Zomboid.

The fan reaction to this unfortunate turn of events irritates me. On a general level, it is a pretty miserable thing to heap abuse on someone when they’re down. With indie developers, however, treating them this way also threatens to destroy one of the very things that makes indie development so wonderful: the close, open relationships indie developers tend to enjoy with their fans. Watching this latest incident with Project Zomboid is like watching one of those lovely, open relationships disintegrating in slow motion:

I’m stopping this blog, I’m keeping twitter closed, steering clear of the forums. The other guys can do interviews and deal with the emails. No one put ‘must have thick skin’ (or ‘must make nightly off-site backups, for that matter) in my game programmer job description. People assume I ‘should have thicker skin’ but there you go, I don’t. I got into this because I love making games and none of those skills relate in the slightest to being able to withstand torrents of abuse, and despite the support and the attention it’s made me scared to open my e-mails. I sit there with the ‘new email’ notification haunting me, and I’ve been guaranteed to read something that makes me want to cry every day for the past few months. This is only going to be 100x harder now, so I’m bugging out of all that. It’ll kill me otherwise.

Could the Project Zomboid team could have done more to back up their game? Absolutely. But this is a small team working out of an apartment, not a professional organization with sacks of cash and personnel to throw at protecting against wild contingencies. The PZ team was victimized by criminals: to respond by attacking the developers is a pure, stomach-turning example of blaming the victim.

Being an indie developer should not mean having to deal with a constant, unrelenting tide of insults and personal attacks.

Remember, folks: developers are just people who happen to be making (extremely complicated) programs for your enjoyment. And what’s more, they will read your remarks. It’s easy to forget that when we post online, we aren’t just venting privately to friends: we’re making a permanent, searchable record that anyone in the world can read. The subject of your rant is almost certain to find it. Every comment you make offers up a right behind you moment. So, if you have feedback to offer, type it out with the expectation that the person on the other end of the computer is going to hear and be affected by what you say.

Or, as Bill and Ted once succinctly decreed: be excellent to each other.

The Rampant Games Blog reports on the death of long-awaited indie RPG The Broken Hourglass.

The official site contains the following announcement:

Planewalker Games LLC is formally abandoning development of The Broken Hourglass as a commercial product. I have concluded that it is infeasible for PWG to deliver the game promised, and unacceptable to try to market a product that would not meet expectations. I take full responsibility for this decision and the factors leading to the conclusion.

It is my intention to release the game materials for TBH and the underlying WeiNGINE game code in some open source/open content license model which will permit the ongoing exploration and development of the game as a non-commercial, community project. The exact licenses and scope of this public release have not yet been determined, and there is no specific timetable for this public release to happen. The intention will be to give the greater community the best chance possible to explore the potential of TBH and to honor the efforts of the dozens of people who have been involved with TBH’s development over the years.

Support from RPG players and press has been overwhelmingly positive and constant during the long development cycle of TBH and I am extremely grateful. It remains to be seen if PWG will attempt a commercial project of more manageable scope in the future. Until that day, please accept my apologies for coming short of the mark, and my thanks for your interest.

- Jason Compton

It seems that personal difficulties in the lives of the game’s developers may have had a role to play as well. One of the game’s artists has her own thoughts here.

Vohland writes:

I’m sorry to say so but it turned out that I won’t have more free time on my hands in April. There have been changes in real life and I simply don’t have the time and the energy to continue my job in project management. That’s why I’ve decided to ship this first techdemo release of PARPG and retire after that.

As with all ambitious RPG projects, initial optimism can easily turn to failure, especially when the project depends upon a team of people whose only contact is via the internet. To keep PARPG from meeting that same fate, however, Vohland seeks someone to take his place as the guy responsible for getting the game finished:

The reason why I’m announcing my departure now, is that the increased public interest due the recent release hopefully helps to find a new maintainer for the project. I do still strongly believe in the concept of an old school isometric 2d RPG but unfortunately time for me has run out.

Unfortunately not many of the formerly involved devs are still active at this point. But I’m sure that a new project manager can find a new interested developers for such a project.

Here is a video of the tech demo showing how far along it is–most basic systems seem to be in place, though I don’t see any combat, theft, or sneaking:

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Vohland has compiled a list of project manager responsibilities. If you’re interested in taking on the project yourself, you can get in touch with him via IRC or email.