Vaporware

Vaporware - noun - "Computer Slang. a product, esp. software, that is promoted or marketed while it is still in development and that may never be produced." quoted from dictionary.com. Probably you heard this word before. This word, vaporware, have tight bond with games like "Duke Nukem Forever". That game is like god of all vaporware games. On the other side there are some software that is called "Redemptive", those are titles which were called vaporware for a long time, but on the end they were published. Half-Life, Half-life 2 and so on. Even Guild Wars 2 was called vaporware by some doomsayers, but after trailers they were left silent. Anyway, this isn't post about Guild Wars or Duke Nukem it is post about one game that fired up tiny flame of hope inside all of us, fallout fans, it was called Bourgeoisie. Ring a bell? No? OK, it changed it's name after a while, and it is now called Afterfall. They promised so much, oooh, we were so naive. I thought that it will be the best cRPG out there! Year, after a year, after a year they were talking about their game. But all of us wanted more and we got concept art, yeah that is all. After all that, in February this year(2009), they forgot to pay for their domain, or something like that. Anyways, afterfall.pl was down, we buried all our hopes and left to find new ones. In meanwhile, they gave one statement about all that talk about afterfall death. It proved correct after they bought new domain, afterfall-universe.com.

Afterfall is not only a few games placed in a post-apocalyptic world. It is a huge project, in which we have put our hearts and effort. For many years we have worked on a universe that will be bigger, better, and more interesting than any game-world ever before. Now we can freely say “We have done it”, and we want to show you the results in several different projects. The most important of them will be Afterfall cRPG (and by RPG we mean Role-playing game, not a game with RPG-elements only) and its sequel. Apart from that, we are planning to develop many games (and maybe not only games) representing various genres. One of them is RASCAL, a survival horror which will introduce you to our amazing Universe. Universe, where the only limit is your imagination. Read more...

After(f)all, we got survival horror. And besides that we got whole universe, wooo. Whole universe of nothing. Really great. I understand that they want to take money with this RASCAL title, so they could have enough big budget for cRPG. But do you think that they will finish RASCAL in time... or whenever?
Here is quote from NMA forums, from poster TheSarge:

Ah, vaporware. What a really easy way to make money.

All you need is:

1) A good con artist to act as your VP of financing. His job is to convince investors that your product is for real without ever showing them said (non-existent) product.

2) A web artist to make you a really good website. This is essential to create the illusion that your company is for real.

3) A lot of dumb suckers who will give you money.

Want to start a new vaporware company? Just send me $29.95 and I'll start development* on an incredible** package of instructional videos*** that outline how to be a successful**** vaporare company, all from the comfort of home!*****

*That means I'll think about it.
**Incredible, as in: Not credible.
***Some imagination required.
****Some failure may occur.
*****By "From the comfort of home" I mean that I will sit at home, in comfort, as you send me money.

For the end, here are some afterfail links:
www.afterfall-universe.com - offical website
www.afterfall-universe.com/devlog/en/ - devlog of nicolas intoxicate
Afterfall forums on NMA