Future of GoldGun: Production discontinued

I’m not really surprised that this game has been suspended. I downloaded it yesterday and have stopped playing. It is extremely heavy on the steriotypes. I honestly felt as if i was stupid, or made out to be stupid by this game. It could have had so much potential and been a good game if the steriotypes were non existent and the blindness wasn’t mentioned.

It is a shame, but hopefully future games will be better.

as they explained on audiogames.net the reason for mentioning the blindness was to secure funding from some sort of blindness charity they have in Finland.
I suggested an alternative to that would have been to take the character through his morning routine getting up, dressed, getting him into work etc with common problems and solutions we have for them, I know that would have been difficult and time consuming for them, but I think it would have been a very positive way of showing how blind people manage in the real world especially with us giving input from start to finish.
As to Voice acting, the problem is the blind community has been somewhat spoiled by the game a heros call which used very good voice actors and sounds, and unfortunately I think the problem for a lot of people is once they have played that game then go on to play something else like goldgun its like driving an aston martin then having to go back to driving a ford or some other type of car.

I actually really liked the sound of the escape room game that was described on audiogames.net I think that had the potential to be really inventive and original, I would have still been interested in playing further episodes of this game though.

Well I know I posted my piece on audiogames.net and it wasn't very complimentary, mostly because I didn't read the previous posts and realize others had been talking about it, and mostly because I felt the need to make it known that perpetuating stereotypes isn't OK. That said, I'm sorry that this happened. I was a bit skeptical about future works, but still hopeful at the same time. I didn't wish you failure, and hey, this doesn't have to be that, it is still possible that you can continue at a later date.

Is it safe to assume that audio wizard won't make it to the app store either?

I like this game.
and does it mean that we will not get the future episodes?

and I suggest that the futures of the games will be a paid one.
so, you can earn some money to support your good works.
I think these kinds of great games should have great support and reward.

I do understand what people were saying about the stereotyping. And I agree that the game is not perfect, but personally, I don’t think it deserved nearly as much negativity as it got. I thought the voice acting was fine, and the sound amazing. I am really going to miss this game and it’s potential. I hope that one day it comes back, and I for one will fully support that if and when it does happen.

Hi! I'm sorry to hear that further episodes of GoldGun will not be produced any time soon, and that episode 1 is likely to be removed from the App Store, but I can understand the reasons for this decision. Even though I could also understand the reasons for the negative comments about stereotypes and so on, I still felt that GoldGun had a lot of potential, and I enjoyed playing episode 1 in spite of its imperfections. I hope that one day there will be more episodes, even if we have to wait a long time for them. In the meantime, it's good to hear that game development by MyTrueSound won't stop completely.

I completely agree with this poster's comments. I, too, thought that the blind community were way too harsh on the developer. Sure, I didn't like the stereotypical viewpoints that were shown in the game, but I also realize that it was a game and nothing more.

I think that many blind people think that the world owes them something or that they should be treated better just because they are blind. Not hardly. The poster stated that it reflects more on the blind person doing the complaining than on the thing being complained about, i.e., the complaints toward the developer, and she was right. The complainers weren't out there trying to do something productive. Instead, they just throw out hard negativity that, unfortunately, has affected this developer.

I will also be supporting myTrueSound when more content becomes available.

If I were a new dev and saw how y'all behave I would just say screw it. It's a game and free at that. Did the stereotypes bother me not really, because it's a game mainly only blind folks are going to play. No dev is ever going to get rich off of only us and honestly you guys are vishous. I'm ashamed of the way some of you behave when it comes to this stuff. I feel the same way when Marty from blindfold interacts here folks just are so rude. End of my rant thanks Roxann for saying what I was thinking also.

This is one of those times that I'd like to quietly check out of this community, I'm just so ashamed. Having been on the receiving end of this kind of vicious negativity myself I know what it feels like. All I can say is that if we keep treating the people who give their time and their talent to developing games for us like this, we'll end up with none left and it will serve us right. I couldn't play Golden Gun myself because I find it impossible to tilt my phone for long periods because of arthritic hands, but I've heard playthroughs of it, and what I heard I enjoyed. Can we try not being so angry and offended at every slightest thing all the time? Try not taking ourselves so seriously, and try being kind and constructive if there are real problems which need to be addressed rather than being rude and vicious? For myself I can only thank MyTrueSound for the work, time and effort they put into this project, truly sympathise with them that it's ended this way and hope that we see new games from them at some time in the near future.

First we complain that we don't have enough games. Then when the game comes, we complain about everything from stereotypes to voice acting to sound. My first question remains though. What of audio wizard? I won't be surprised if that game doesn't make it either. Back to text folks. Nothing quite like the vast, unstoppable power of our imaginations.

I am deeply disappointed to hear about this. While some of the criticism was warrented, it was not warrented to the degree it was given. Not a single one of those issues was beyond repair. Were there stereotypes? yes. could they have been revised? Absolutely. Blindness was an integral part of the game though and to expect it to never be mentioned would have been bad in a different way. I know on my part, the criticism I gave was only because I really wanted this to succeed, and if I contributed to the frustration and decision to quit, please forgive me. . Personally I think the whole concept has a whole lot of potential, and with a little dialogue editing it would be easy to make it just another part of his character rather than the gimic it currently is. That said, you're never going to be able to please everyone, especially the blindness community which is honestly an unforgiving tyrant, always demanding, demanding demanding!

As for the voice acting, that I can totally understand. I'm currently dialogue editor, sound designer and music producer for an audio drama, and all the voice actors present their lines with various degrees of quality. You can only do so much editing and repairing after the recording is crap. I have more to say, but not now.

I definitely agree with charles on this. The game was truely fun and I enjoyed the pilot episode, and do wish for more episodes if they ever are released. I understand the truely hardships of producing an audiogame on a limited startup budget, and would've supported this thru in-app purchases of stories/episodes/etc. And another thing, it's very, bloody difficult to get actors on a very limited budget. David and others, if you do come up with a re-release of this game, I'll be purchasing whatever you guys are selling thru the purchases if that is ever an option for you. Critics, including me were not trying to be harsh, even though it seemed that way, some of them were compairing this to the real world, this is just my thoughts,. The stereotypes were actually funny, once i got used to them, I laughed a little. Games like this aren't meant, or shouldn't be real-world games, we get enough of that crap already, they should be a sort of fictional/simulator sort of thing. I commend and solute you guys for making a great effort with your first project, and am sorry that it didn't work out in the end. I'm sad to see this die, it had a lot of potential!

I totally agree with Charles and others. People get offended so easily. It is just too bad that nice projects such as this game is being stopped because of comments who just reflect their own insecurities and complexes. They talk about stereotypes and don't realize that by complaining for every little thing they are stereotyping themselves. This is only a game, nothing more. Why would anybody take a game so seriously? Hey, I joke around with my blindness and I don't care what others think or say. Anyway, back to the card games and text games. It is very clear that we do not deserve the fact that there are people with good intentions trying to make nice games that we can play and all we do is complain, complain, complain and complain. There are times in which I think that one of the reasons why a lot of game and app developers don't want to make their products accessible is because there are many members in the blind community out there who are very ungrateful and do not appreciate other people's hard work and effort.
Anyway, if the developers of this game decide to keep on going forward with their projects, I will definitely support them and buy their games.
I know that there are some people who like to get their games for free but, I guess they don't realize that developers have to eat, pay rent, mortgages, School, etc.
Don't be so negative, guys. There is already too much negativity in the world these days.
Have a wonderful day and smile a little bit.

I'd like to go with other people who said about positivity. it is very truth that it is negativity every where, if we see in negative point of view. I also wood support them if they'll make mor eppisods.

Who is James North?

I was about to ask the same question.

Some kind of porn actor I think.

hi! all,
I agree all the comments above.
and I think that as we are blind and visually impaired gamers.
we don't have too much games for us to play.
and it is easier to lose some of the great games.
the story of the sixsense and audio defence and... esectra.
is a sample.

even the audio games industry is a very small market.
but, we have to support the great peoples who are still thinking of us and willing to produce great games for us.
I hope the goldgun willbe start again. and I don't mind that the future of the games from My true sounds.
will be a paid one.

keep the good work.
we are looking forward your great release in the future

If you are a person who is hungry and complains you have nothing to eat. Then, a good neighbor cooks you a hot homemade meal and brings it to your house. Are you going to complain that it tastes a little bland? Answer. No way. Not in less you are a damn fool. If that same neighbor ever sees you in need again. Do you think they will ever help you again? Answer. No way. Not unless they are a damn fool. I want to thank my true sound developer team for creating quality games for our community. I also want to apologize on behalf of the negative critics also known as haters. They have no idea what it takes to create develop and release a game project. They have no idea how much passion it takes to keep going even when everything is going wrong. How much heart it takes to motivate your team when they all want to give up. We promise to support your projects as long as you keep the enthusiasm you had when you first started out. Thank you very much. You guys rock.

James North was one of the very first audiogame developers for Windows. He created several of the very first audiogames that actually had stereo sound, self-voicing, a dynamic real-time nature, and along with several other iconic developers including GMA Games, Philip Bennefall and Liam Erven himself, he basically laid the ground work for what most blind gamers, even young kiddos, imagine these days when they hear the word audiogame. Many of the concepts James North and these other first pioneers introduced are being used even in today's audiogames, are being considered the golden proven standard, but above all, nothing better working has been thought of to replace most of them yet. Yet, he basically rage quit any and all audiogame development whatsoever because he could no longer stand the community's way of wording their criticisms. It was around the year 2000 or 2001, I believe. Who knows what other cool, innovative, fun and ahead of his time games he could have come up with if he had stayed.

That said, I myself know I reacted quite harshly in the beta testing feedback form because I was actually honestly frustrated with the game since the very beginning. I tried not to be too negativistic or rude but the plain truth was that I had way greater expectations of the game, for which the devs themselves are to blame, and the reality proved a huge disappointment to me. I'll get to that in a bit, though. So, yeah, I guess some of my frustration could be clearly noticed in the tone of my feedback, although I refrained from generalizations or putting them down, because that's just how I genuinely felt at that moment. Being decent and not overly negative is one thing, and yes, it's nice and an intelligent civilized being should always know how to act in that way, but on the other hand I didn't want to lie about my feelings either. I should add that I have actually overcome my initial impressions after the game was publicly released and did muster enough patience to eventually complete it after all.

I personally understand why there is a very limited number of audiogames for either platform available. I'm not saying I'm okay with it, I would of course have wished for the situation to be quite different if we lived in an ideal world, but I'm just saying I do understand the reasons. However, I would rather have this limited quantity of audiogames to play rather than a wast number of non-unique, non-original, poorly executed, rushed, half-baked products. I know this might sound harsh, I know the community is probably going to lash back at me for daring to state my actual opinion in the public, but this is the way I personally actually am, no pretence or hypocricy. I've long been oversaturated with such unremarkable creations. Maybe this is the way the older audiogamers feel, those among us who still remember the times of James North and others. The games that were being released those days were not magically superior to today's games by any means in some cases, they also had their fair share of shortcomings and deficiencies, and most audiogamers who have seen things like Papa Sangre or triple A mainstream games would probably laugh at them whole-heartedly. But back then, developers rather avoided or delayed the release of something if they were not actually satisfied with the result. They were much more demanding and perfectionist about their own work. Back then, every single audiogame was unique in some regards, and was a true gem in its own right, in its genre and for its time. How many current audiogames can you actually say something like that about?

There is a huge difference between being a single enthusiastic but unexperienced guy hacking away something dirty and quick but playable in BGT, and between trying to be, or trying to act like, a professional experienced developer whose individual team members have some long years of real world experience to back them up, daring and qualified enough to tackle the challenging world of audiogaming on today's smartphones. Heck, a single guy was able to come up with better playable, more enjoyable and better sounding stuff back in the late 90's and early 2000's than even a team of several today.

Look at Somethin' Else. Their games have not been surpassed on iOS up to this day, they were an instant success in the audiogaming community, they worked perfectly and were incredibly well produced and voiced, and they were genuine fun to play. Look at The Great Toy Robbery and Liam's other works. TGTR is playable on both Windows and Mac, it's absolutely free, yet it has support for messages of the day, update notifications, and a score board that's viewable right from inside the game, and again, although it's small, for its genre it's an absolute blast to play. Look at Aprone's Swamp years of history and surprising numbers of devoted fans. Look at A Hero's Call, how it tried to match the quality of mainstream RPG's, although from a slightly older era. Where is it today, though? Have you heard of any recent developments lately? Where is the update that would add graphics for the sighted as promised? Do you know the reason for this and for why Somethin' Else had to announce they would stop developing any more audiogames? In two words, it's limited resources. In a couple more words, it's losing money instead of earning any by making this stuff, and limited time and manpower. And one more reason is that audiogames will never ever be able to break out of the tiny niche market that blind gamers, not to mention exclusive audiogamers, present.

That's the reason why I never attempted to produce a larger audiogame. I have several smaller things in the works that try to focus on uniqueness and complex gameplay rather than on fancy sounds and story telling, something like the first devs were trying to do, but that doesn't belong here. I never tried to come up with anything bigger because I know I would either fail miserably right from the start, or that the community would tear me to pieces if I tried to release something and it didn't meet their expectations. That's just the way things are. And I do know for sure I absolutely lack the energy, knowledge, experience and commitment to try to raise some Kickstarter funds or get local investors, and especially to manage and run my own single-person business with everything that it involves in order to be legally safe and clean.

In my opinion, the single worst mistake that you, My True Sound, did with Gold Gun was the huge hype you gave it. You used big words like revolutionizing the audiogames market, being something new, huge and unique, I believe you perhaps even compared yourselves to Somethin' Else at one point. I know I'm not quoting you precisely but basically this is how your propagation sounded to an outside listener. I knew better than to believe these words until I saw the thing in action, but most others don't. In this regard, some members of the audiogaming community are still hopelessly naive and immature. In this harsh world that's focused on power, efficiency, speed, productivity, dynamics, and especially as large verifiable results as possible with as little investment and in as little time as possible, you should have avoided such big words until you actually released the thing and saw the initial reactions. The bigger the hype, the bigger the audience's expectations, and the bigger the outcry if they have not been fully met or even exceeded. There is nothing wrong with being enthusiastic and passionate about your work. If you weren't, the game would never see the daylight, I'm well aware of that. I'm also aware that it would sound a lot worse if instead of what you said, you said something like: "Ok, guys, here we are, a small indie team with our first ever audiogame. We have no idea what we are doing as we have big plans and ambitions but basically we are still only learning as we go. This is our first pilot project, basically just a proof of concept and possible ground work for the future. We know this is not going to be great, and we do realize what needs to be improved even now, but this is what we have so far, take it or leave it." But you should have done better than that. I know, if you don't shout loud enough to gain enough attention, you basically get lost in the world and noone cares about you, cause why should they. It's hard to find a sort of a middle ground, but I believe you see where I'm coming from by now. The way you phrased it, it could have sounded as arrogance and overconfidence to many.

If you ever want to release a huge, remarkable, unique audiogame that could truly be viewed as a milestone in audiogaming history, would revolutionize the field and satisfy the majority of its players, you might want to consider trying the following advice and recommendations. If you would be satisfied with creating smaller titles that the community just likes enough to play, refrain from huge stories and voice acting. Look at Feer, Knight Commander, King of Dragon Pass and others for an example.

1. Get a different spokesman for the company, either a native speaker or someone who is better at English than you currently are. Either that or perhaps work hard on your own English. Again, this might sound harsh and arrogant when I'm not a native speaker myself either, but you should realize that the majority of your players are going to speak English as their first language.

2. Do whatever you can to raise more money, through local investors and things like Kickstarter. Then, analyze how much money, time and effort you can afford to spend on each aspect of the game.

3. Get professional voice cast and a voice composer. There is nothing wrong with them being blind themselves as long as they have some real experience, an impressive bio, and best of all real work behind them that you can listen to and judge their quality based on that. Do auditions for the voice actors and don't be satisfied with anything sub-standard. Hugo, for example, is voiced so poorly that it's next to impossible to understand him at all because of his actor's strong accent.

4. Avoid sponsorship from blindness organizations. You just saw what happens if you don't. They can and often will give you conditions that may in fact have a negative influence on the game overall.

Lukas

I too am disappointed that future episodes of GoldGun will be discontinued. The game certainly had great potential. I personally wasn't offended by any of the game's content. After all, it's only a game, and games are meant to be fun. I will also be supporting Audio Wizards and Music Maze. I wish you the best of luck with these.

I'm sad that i'll never get to try this game. I was so excited for it because it was unique. We already have dice games card games, but nothing like this. .

Some of the feedback this game received was put in a very inflamatory way, as though the writers were enjoying being as negative as they were being. That said, I completely disagree with those who suggest that as we have so few audio games out there, or at risk of putting off other developers, or as the game is free, we should restrain ourselves. This is where the comparison with hot meals etc. totally misses the point. Deliberately inflamatory feedback isn't right, but there's nothing wrong with negative, and indeed very negative feedback. For myself this game was not a game I enjoyed playing. i found the acting poor, the stereotypes cringeworthy and pointless, and the idea just failed to grab me. That is very negative feedback borne of a very negative experience. Other readers of this forum, including the developer, are surely entitled to know that I thought this. Yet the hot meal argument closes that feedback down.

To end on a positive, I would say to the developers: i didn't like this game for all the reasons I've given, but that does not mean I am ungrateful for your efforts. I might like your next one. Perhaps I am just not your target audience for this one.

I grabbed this game before it went down. I really am having a hard time figuring out why everyone is all up in arms about the "stereotype" thing. Granted I played this without headphones, so I perhaps could've missed something. If now that I think of it, we are talking about the part where he asks to touch her hair? Give me a freakin break! You know how many times people want me to touch their faces, bellies if they're pregnant or in one extreme case, someone's completely metal leg? Yeah that happened. Why are we a bunch of snowflakes? On to the acting. The actors though one with a thick accent for me were not hard to understand at all. I'm sure the audio was substandard, unless you have gold wave, audacity if that still exists or other sound editing, it won't be perfect. To give a slightly different example, when someone does a podcast on here, or anywhere, I don't care for the people who have their phone up at max volume and it just doesn't sound good to me. Having said it, I appreciate their contribution even if I am not interested in the demo or ap. For the developers, all you can do is go up from here. To the last poster, I respect you weren't a fan and still came out on top.

Hi Charles. Granted English wasn't their best language but I got the feeling, if they can find voice acting, perhaps something soon, we might get another episode. I was under the impression that episode two or whatever had already been written. I don't want to say this is true since of course I'm not the developer. I will say while this is open. The person who suggested that the native speaker needed to reninforce their English speaking, I don't agree with that. Yes the accent is thick, it's no different then any other non native English speaker. Anyway hope we get something soon, an answer I mean.

Hi Charles, my reasoning for suggesting the game could feature real world problems was because the original episode funding stipulated that the game had to mention blindness as a condition for getting the funding. so my suggestion was meant as a way that the game could meet that funding condition, talk about blindness but do it in a positive way that could be both fun and educational whereas the episode didn't really impart any information of value about blindness though it did mention it. Granted blind people are the only people who are going to play this game so stereotypes probably wouldn't be heard by sighted people but if possible they should be avoided that's all.
anyway the developer has apologized countless times for the dialogue and I think we should all try to let this topic drop, as I bet you can be sure they will be working very hard to make sure they don't have stereotypes or controversial stuff in future titles. Personally I wasn't offended by the stereotypes but I didn't find them easy to listen to, as if I am playing a game and I am supposed to be playing a particular person I do want to at least try to see some of myself in that character.

I am sorry to hear about the very negative comments about this game, however like others have said, time to move on. I hope this will be back soon. I only just started to play this and its a very good game. It will be interesting to sea what the developers will come out with in the future.

Thank you David for clarifying everything. Hopefully this will put everything to rest. I do have one final thought on this which was inspired by Lucas and a couple others.

I agree with the nature of the niche market of audio games. It's so small, and so many of the gamers who do exist are unwilling to pay for a quality product. There are a lot of hindrances to making an audio game, but occasionally something comes along that tries to be better than the generic stuff that exists. I personally applaud Mytruesound for attempting this. Limited resources are definetly a problem, but you'd be surprised what you can still accomplish with the right people and opportunity. I definetly think there is room for a narrative driven experience like GoldGun. The biggest problem was, I think the game just wasn't ready to see the light of day quite yet. But I will also add that they did warn us. They warned us this was a pilot episode, and what's more, despite their limited resources, they gave episode 1 away for free. Heck, they even gave the first season away to a couple choice people among us, even though they probably need all the revenue they could get. The cynical part of me wonders if those very people were some of the more negative critics, but I have no way to know that. In other words, people lost nothing at all for giving this a try.

No, the problem wasn't what they did. Any mistakes they made could have easily been rectified in an update, and in subsequent episodes. No, the problem was the way it sounds like so many treated them after the fact. Constructive critisism makes things better. Negative backlash and people being offended does not. I'm not saying we shouldn't be critical, but I want to reiterate that there is a constructive way of being critical that doesn't make a person sound like a grumpy entitled wanker. The thing is, when you have a developer willing to listen to feedback and take ideas into consideration, you'll both get your voice heard, and get a better end experience in the longrun. What a concept! But there's nothing more miserable than spending your hard earned time and energy on something you believe in, only to have a bunch of unhelpful critics drop a monumental dinosaur duce all over it. I'm not saying there couldn't have been improvements. I was another of those who had some critisism. The difference is, I tried really hard to offer solutions, and I kept my emotions out of it. I saw what could be, not what is. This game has potential. I'm not knocking some of the games Lucas mentioned - heck, I haven't played any but Papa Sangre and Hero's call, but I do think any developer wanting to make an audio game should be encouraged. Because let's face it, compared to the sighted worled, a lot of audio games are lackluster. While I don't know where the developers planned to go with the story and gameplay, I know that I love audio theatre, and there isn't a lot of interactive audio theatre out there. I play games for the unique ways they can deliver compelling narrative. You can tell stories in games in ways you can't with books, TV or movies. That alone makes this a developer worth following. Competetive gaming is all well and good, but there is something to be said for what this game was trying to accomplish. This game was ripe with the potential to tell a deep, gritty sci-fi story focused on one of the more notorious aspects of the internet. And it featured a character who, let's face it, probably wouldn't be given the chance to do that kind of work in reality. At least not in this day and age. The developers just weren't there yet and had - once again - limited resources. But with a little support, I think this could be a story worth telling. I mean who among us doesn't love a good audio drama? - Okay I'm sure there are some, but I think a lot of us can agree they are generally pretty great, and I certainly think it would be nice to be able to play one. Some of my favorite types of videogames fal within the "interactive movie" label, so I see absolutely nothing wrong with this. So keep your baby sim games, your blindfold this and thats, and your dice world etc. They're great. But this could be great too, all be it in a different way. So I look forward to seeing where the developers take this concept one day.

I was very sad when I read this. I love the game and I was looking forward to buying the next episode. You mentioned earlier that you needed voice actors. I would love to be a voice actress and I could submit recordings of my voice if you are interested . I really hope that production will be continued someday and I am very sorry to see this game go. Thank you for all of the work you have done to bring it to us.

After reading all the comments on this forum, lots of you should be ashamed. Here we have a company who's willing to bring us something in the world of exciting audio, and then what happens? The complaints start rolling in like heavy rain and a bad thunder storm. With that said, I downloaded the gold gun game as is right now before the game goes away in the app store. I would also like to volunteer myself as a voice actor if this game comes back in the future.

I hope the game will be up and reproduce again !