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SOMA (Frictional Games)

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
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how come you dont like it then
 

AN4RCHID

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lol... Tobii eye tracking. Not VR, but "Tobii Eye Tracking". I'm sure that will bring in literally tens of sales.

This game is crying out for a VR edition, come the fuck on Frictional :argh:
 

Aeschylus

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Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Divinity: Original Sin 2
lol... Tobii eye tracking
Haha, what? For those to work with any degree of accuracy you have to keep your head completely still and at a fixed distance, basically in a loose vise. I can't imagine many less fun ways to play a game that aren't deliberate torture.
 

Ivan

Arcane
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Jun 22, 2013
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California
HALP!

I reached THE ABYSS and everything is going fine. Game is atmospheric, sound is great, nothing too scary, but plenty disturbing. HOWEVER, I just glimpsed an anglerfish and if there's one thing I cannot stand in vidyagames, it's underwater levels, why? FUCKING sea creatures.

I made some progress, noticed little fishes swimming over me and thought HOLY MOTHERFUCKING SHIT, HERE IT COMES, so I hid inside a storage crate and quit the game.....does this shit get worse? MUCH WORSE?
 

Ivan

Arcane
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yeah I don't think I'll be returning to this until the sun comes out...holy shit I've never been so afraid. the sea bed in this game is fucking impeccable.
 

Ivan

Arcane
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Jun 22, 2013
Messages
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California
I apologize for any spoilers this may contain.

I've been saving this one for a while since I wasn't satisfied at it not being at a locked 60 FPS. Reinstalled and found it wasn't that bad. Now that I've finished it, here are some thoughts:

The experience was more in line with Penumbra than Amnesia. While the latter feels like a haunted house built on top of a hellish dungeon, this is more centered around narrative and place.

Theme: The notion of being, whatever the capacity, will assert its right to exist regardless of its corporeality. It was pretty fascinating to see this right off the bat with Carl. And it's funny looking back how odd I thought it was. How a robot felt so entitled to its identity, sentience warrants humane treatment. On the flip side, it was unnerving to see Catherine disassociate herself with her body. She seemed more disappointed in how she died than that she had died. That was probably the most important tell of the story: sentience will trump the realities of the form it embodies.

I'm still left with questions: was the WAU sentient or was it just a cancer? who was the being guiding Isaac to the heart? were Catherine's colleagues trepidatious about launching the ARK because they couldn't stomach the idea of there being other selves? was the entity guiding Isaac the one responsible for implanting his scan onto the first cadaver?

Ending: I thought it was a bit cheap and convenient that we switch to Simon's 4th self, however, when we see the shot of the ARK I realized that it was just to show that the most important self that matters is the one we find ourselves in. This is the only time we escape Simon and see that the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Simon did not survive, but this 4th Simon, artificial as it may be, for the moments we were him, felt real. The final survey was a testament to my reaching this sentiment, as opposed to the first time I took the survey and said "get me the fuck out of this shell"

Obviously, the game and its themes are worth ruminating over and that alone makes this a pretty stellar experience.

Are there any things, threads you think I missed, should have picked up on? What were your questions, findings?

Criticism: the monster sequences were pedestrian, most involving luring them out and running around them. The underwater sections became tame and pretty boring until The Abyss, that stands as the most horrifying I've ever experienced in a game.
 

Wirdschowerdn

Ph.D. in World Saving
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The biggest blunder in the story is the whole thing about the "Continuity" and the suicides in the pilot scan chair. I mean it wouldn't occur to Catherine to simply tell them "Nope, it's a copy. If you kill yourself, u r dead for good." Even after several suicides, the misunderstanding still remains. No checks before a scan by security either whether somebody hides cyanide or a maser with them. And then the cover up of one suicide. I mean lol. Really really sloppy.
 

AN4RCHID

Arcane
Joined
Jan 24, 2013
Messages
4,714
I mean it wouldn't occur to Catherine to simply tell them "Nope, it's a copy. If you kill yourself, u r dead for good." Even after several suicides, the misunderstanding still remains.
Why would Catherine tell him that if it meant her plan would be aborted?

I agree that it stretches plausibility that Simon takes so long to understand his situation, but that's kind of a theme throughout the game. The other robots you meet want to believe that they're normal humans despite all the evidence to the contrary.
 
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Wirdschowerdn

Ph.D. in World Saving
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Why would Catherine tell him that if it meant her plan would be aborted?

I agree that it stretches plausibility that Simon takes so long to understand his situation, but that's kind of a theme throughout the game. The other robots you meet want to believe that they're normal humans despite all the evidence to the contrary.

This whole process is just amateurish. Why lying about it? I thought these people were scientists, they'd surely grasp the concept of multiple egos existing in different realms. It was just so phony that there was no proper communication going on.

As for Simon, one plausible explanation would be that he simply keeps forgetting (remember, he got brain damage and therefor a faulty memory)? That's why he got so angry at Cath when copying from Simon-2 to Simon-3. And again at the end when the ARK was launched. I mean he *was* told at some point before in the story how this process works, so why repeatedly getting upset about it again?
 

Zenith

Arbiter
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Apr 26, 2017
Messages
296
was the WAU sentient or was it just a cancer?
Sentient cancer, that was sort of the point - "thoughts" of an organism with a wildly different physiology and priorities would be unfathomable to a human, and consciousness as something definable is a lie we keep telling ourselves.
As for Simon, ... , so why repeatedly getting upset about it again?
Well, he's some kind of barista or w/e, not anything like a scientist. I thought deliberately making the protagonist dense was a pretty good decision on Frictional's part. It also (probably unintentionally) adjusts your expectations of the game: first couple of hours Simon doesn't talk much, so you actually have to piece the backstory together yourself, very System Shock-like. Then the game starts spelling everything out, so you know not to expect "smart" sci-fi anymore and just enjoy the ride.

I was kinda lucky to realize in time that despite quoting Dick in the prologue, the devs must have been more influenced by Watts and don't seem to have read Egan (they wouldn't dwell on the copy/original "continuity" thing for so long otherwise). So I stopped waiting for any further development of the main idea, adjusted my expectations and wasn't really disappointed in the end.
 

Boleskine

Arcane
Joined
Sep 12, 2013
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4,045
http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2017/09/soma-two-years-later.html

SOMA - Two Years Later





It's over two years since we released SOMA, so it's time for another update on how things have been going.

First of all, let's talk about sales. As I've said many times before, sales are not straightforward to count, and the number you come up with is reliant on many different factors. For instance, SOMA was part of the Humble Monthly Bundle, which meant that everybody subscribing to that service was able to download a copy of SOMA. These are not really "sales", so should we count them? It's also worth noting that pricing differs a lot between different sales. A single unit sold at full price means more than one sold when the game is 75% off. I think it's important to think about these things, and remember you can't directly compare the sales of two games.

With all that said, what I'm going to do here is to basically take every single download of the game as a sale. Doing so gives us a total of 650 000 units, a 200 000 units increase since the the same time last year. This is a very good result.

It's interesting to compare how sales have changed across the two years for SOMA. The normal day-to-day income, when there are no discounts or anything, is 33% of what it was the same time last year. However, when the game is at a discount (such as a Steam summer sale), the generated income is about 75% of what similar events generated last year. This means that discount events are extra important this year.

Taken as a whole, the sales that we make from all our games will cover all our expenses every month, and even make us a profit. This is quite amazing. Given that we currently have about 16 people working with us full time, we have a pretty high burn rate, and to still be able to support all that on your ongoing sales is great.

This means that we still have a good buffer from our launch sales. While it will by no means last forever, it gives us peace of mind and lets us take the time we need. While we'll continue to generate income next year too, I'm not so sure it'll be enough to cover all our costs. This is when that initial buffer comes in handy, and will let us continue working on our projects without any monetary worries. To put things in perspective, it is worth noting that most companies start using up their buffer just a few months after release, so we are in no ways in a dire situation right now - quite the opposite!

However, this also makes it very clear that we need to be able to release games at a more regular rate. We were lucky that SOMA was a hit, and that the money is easily able to sustain us for the time we need to complete our next project. Had SOMA been a flop, the situation would have been a lot worse now. That's why we are focusing on becoming a two project studio, and the goal is to be able to release a game every two years. Had we managed to set that up prior to SOMA, we would be in the process of releasing a game right now. Needless to say, it would makes us a lot more financially stable, and able to handle a less successful release. In turn this should allow us to take greater risks, which I think is a key element in being able to create great games.

This leads me to another thing that's been on my mind. A few months back someone asked me: "How do you get people to buy your game?". This is a fairly basic question, but it really made me think. When it comes to sales made during launch, the answer feels quite self-evident. We generate a lot of buzz, there are reviews, let's plays and so on. There are a number of fairly obvious ways that people learn about our game.

But what about the customers that buy our game two years after release - why do they do it? That's a much harder question. I think most of this is via word-of-mouth recommendation. When the right circumstances arise (e.g.: "I feel like playing a game tonight") and when external influence (e.g.: "your friends said they liked our game") is strong enough, that's when a sale happens. I know that Steam and other stores have some forms of discovery tools, but I don't think they play a major factor. What really matters is not a single source, but the slow build-up of good will around a game - eventually this will make a player consider buying it. Discovery tools, such as "you might also like"-adverts, surely help, but they are just part of a much larger process [1].

Because of this, and considering the sheer number of games that are currently being released, I think the best strategy is to focus on unique experiences. You want to create the type of experience that is not only hard to get elsewhere, but also leaves a mark on those who play it. This is now a core philosophy here at Frictional. I guess we sort of always had it unconsciously, but we have now made it official. Our goal is to create games that are more than forgettable escapism. We want people to come out of their experiences feeling changed. A lofty goal? You bet. While it'll be impossible to make sure every single player has this type of experience, it feels like the perfect thing to strive for.

Now I will round of this post with a brief discussion on the status of our current projects.

The first project is in full production, and about 80% of the team is currently working on it. The focus for most of this year has been on creating the first few maps of the game to create a solid vertical slice based on our experiments last year. However, we recently came up with some new avenues that we wanted to explore. The stuff that has come out of this recent detour is feeling really great and I am certain it'll make the game feel very special. All of this came out of what I just discussed: our focus on making games that leaves a mark on the player. I'm not sure we would have gone down this route if we hadn't explicitly stated that goal, which makes me confident it's a really good way of thinking. I'm afraid I can't go into any details on this, other than to say that the project will be horrific in nature. There will be no release this year, but we hope to announce something during the first six months of next year.

As for the other project, that's also going well. We've been a bit delayed due to new tech taking longer than anticipated to develop [2]. The upside of that has been that the game has had more time in pre-production than any of our previous games. This has been incredibly valuable, as the things we aim to tackle in this game are quite difficult, and allowing it all to brew for a bit has meant many of the basic aspects are clearer for us. This game will be less about direct, visceral horror, and more about the player gaining an understanding of different concepts. This can, as we know from working on SOMA, be quite tricky to get right and requires a slightly different approach than when working on a more direct horror game. Release for this game is quite far off though, so don't expect to hear any concrete details in the near future.

That's it for this update. I'm incredibly excited about the things that we have planned, and I'm very eager to give you all more updates. I also want to thank everybody for the support over the years, and rest assured that while we might not reply to every single mail, tweet, etc. that you send us, we make sure to read every single one!

Notes:
1) For games that are heavily based around online communities, such as a Rocket League, I think things work slightly differently. There is still a word-of-mouth zeitgeist going on, but a lot of it comes from your game become a habit for your players, something that they participate in on a daily basis. This forms a feedback loop that helps drives new buyers, which I think is quite different from how our games work.

2) We are currently working on the fourth iteration of our HPL engine for this game, and due to some of the things we need to be able to do for the game, we've been required to make some major adjustments. These things take time, but luckily we have most of it done now.
 

Wirdschowerdn

Ph.D. in World Saving
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Edit: Screw you Boleskine

Bullet points:

.) SOMA sold 650k units to date.
.) Next project will be announced in H1 2018; will be horrific in nature.
.) Second project in pre-production and still ways off.
.) They are working on HPL 4 engine, which is now mostly done.
.) Their intention is to release a game every two years.
.) :bounce:
 

SumDrunkGuy

Guest
I've been craving a replay of this lately, might save it for halloween. I love the story, environments, and the central relationship between Simon and Cath. It's the only walking sim I've ever been able to really get into.
 

Wirdschowerdn

Ph.D. in World Saving
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SOMA is coming to Xbox One! Experience critically-acclaimed existential speculative horror that'll change you forever. Dive into the depths from the 1st of December - with optional Safe Mode, giving you the chance to explore the story without being eaten by monsters.

With optional safe Xbox gamer mode!
 

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