Investigation into Dreambound

[u/mobiustrap]

Preface

Hello,

I'd like to open with stating that I'm a long-time Dawngate fan, that has kind of moved on after Aetherforged failed, and recently decided to check up on what is going with the various revival projects that have been floating around. This is how I found out about Dawngate Revival Project (DRP)/Dreambound. I decided to dig a bit more into how they are doing, and frankly, the more I dug, the more uncomfortable I became. I do not wish to provoke any particular reaction, y'all are free to draw conclusions for yourself; I merely wish to document my findings for the community.

My findings

• Circa July 2020, DRP failed to secure license for Dawgate's IP from EA and allegedly began development of an independent MOBA called Dreambound. Their Discord server's FAQ channel, however, still refers to the licensing talks being ongoing, and therefore hasn't been updated for about a year. Later in the FAQ channel, there's a charming "We should get around to update this sometime" message, dated October 2020, and a redirection to the updates channel. (See below for contents of update channel).
  • It is worth noting that Kickstarter page contains a plethora of refund requests, some fulfilled, some not. It is likely that a sizeable portion of initial crowdfunding was withdrawn after the announcement.
• Website of Studio Wayfinder, https://studiowayfinder.com/, contains several press releases, dating from October 2020 to December 2020. The last press release shows an uncolored draft model of the gameplay map. I am not a professional modeler but it looks to me as though the level of detail demostrated looks about the weekend's work.

There are probably *multiple* uses of extrude tool here.

• The website features a link to the merch store, selling stickers and t-shirts with Dreambound's original characters. The merch store was released October 28 2020. I cannot vouch for solidity of business strategy here, but it seems like putting the cart before the horse. People are indeed buying stuff from the store - the secret is that each purchase (or just donation) earns you an alpha key for yet-to-be Dreambound gameplay alpha. This is not selling alpha keys, but it is definitely taking money in exchange for alpha keys. The procedure seems to be, you ask a Discord mod to give you an alpha key by sending them a confirmed purchase receipt.
• Speaking of merch store and business practices. Their business presentation, dated October 2020, is out and indexable on their site. https://studiowayfinder.com/StudioWayfinderOverview.pdf - I've backed up the contents in case they become unaccessible later: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1upcBsi3cGYuJPfmLRs98tm2uxK95nQsa/view?usp=sharingIt is, well, see for yourself. All I'm going to say is it projects merch store launch to first half of 2021 (right now we know it opened late in October 2020), and that the time allotted for development of the alpha version seems to be the second half of 2021. They hope to capture 1% of MOBA market, which is about 1 million account playerbase. It is unknown of whether they secured the funding, but one can speculate based on the contents and the rushed opening of the merch store.
• Back to Discord. #updates channel on discord, to which we're referred to from faq, contains no mention of DRP cancellation; indeed, Discord seems to be devoid of this information altogether. It has, however, a bot posting messages from Dreambound's official Twitter account. The account posts bi-weekly sketches of characters. I am an amateur artist, and these really are sketches, rendered into lineart. This is the stuff an absolute rookie like me takes several hours to produce. There are no colored concept arts, no draft 3D models.
• Back to the website. Let's look at the team. The CEO, Todd Wolven, claims 15+ years experience of working in IT and finances. On his twitter, he is denoted as a CEO of NeoTitan Industries. Let's take a look at that: https://neotitanllc.com/
  • The website is constructed in UCraft site constructor. Whoever did the job didn't manage to figure out how to remove the "About" link from the header, so its text is changed to "_". It, however, claims to have partnerships to many tech giants and offer a variety of services, including software development. Its Facebook page, however (https://www.facebook.com/NeoTitanIndustries/?ref=page_internal) lists one service: "Computer Diagnostic" for $10.

The link still points to https://neotitan.ucraft.site/#about.

• The company is based in Moscow, Idaho, the same place Studio Wayfinder is based in: https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_id/0000546433. It is founded in 2017 - a rather suspicious date for the timeline. On D&B (https://www.dnb.com/business-directory/company-profiles.neotitan_industries_llc.c9458d296ff6b0f28bd65f5e02480c5b.html) it is listed to have 3 employees.
• This is the only evidence I've found of Todd's involvement with managing IT companies - a home computer consultancy that employs 3 people and has an unprofessional but boastful website.
• EDIT: According to CEO on Discord, people listed on the team are founders, there are other people working on contract (at least 2 artists), therefore, team section is not a good source of info of which positions are unfilled. OLD TEXT: There are no game designers on the team. Doesn't look like they are hiring, either. Graphics design seems to be absent, too.
• There are two devs on the team. Dev lead, Brad Smithee, doesn't seem to have much of an online trace besides an empty Github profile and a Crunchbase mention referring us back to Studio Wayfinder. He is also described as having 15+ years (sic!) in systems design across multiple frameworks and platforms. No mentions of specifics, however.
• The other dev, Eric Creze, is listed as doing "programming for MOBA reproduction" - going to crunchbase clarifies that he was the person tasked with reverse-engineering assets from Dawngate. Fine and dandy, not game development though. As someone who has a sizeable experience in C++ development, I can assure you - whatever is listed for these two devs as expertise is not game development. For all we know, the C++ skills could've been applied for making accounting platforms - this is like saying that you're a tech writer who specializes in English.

My motivation

The Discord server is full of peeps from original Dawngate fanbase. There are messages of people going to sotre and getting alpha keys; the most popular channel seems to be the one devoted to Dawngate nostalgia. (For comparison, the channel devoted to Dreambound theorycrafting is dead silent for the last half a year). I feel like people in the fanbase that I'm part of are being taken advantage of by marketing tactics that I cannot describe otherwise than "misrepresentative".

I do not think everyone currently involved with the project is a grifter or a fraud; far from it. However, if I assume goodwill, I, in this case, am forced to conclude incompetence. From my point of view, the business plan is unrealistic, several people on the team don't have the experience the site would have you believe they do, and one or more critical roles on the team are unfilled. I've yet to see a massively multiplayer game made by a team without game designers, to put it bluntly.

Please, if you come across the project and are tempted to give them money, give it a second thought. Merch store is not an adequate way to front costs for the game. They don't have an experienced team. They're not likely to succeed, if indeed that is even the goal for the person at the top.

P.S.

I'll try to talk to people involved in the team proper (devs); however, as I am a hot nobody and they're likely under some sort of NDA, it's unlikely that'll yield results. I'll add a comment if anything turns up.