Fallen Gods - upcoming Norse saga-inspired roguelite from Wormwood Studios

[MRY]

Ivan Ulyanov.

 

[Cohesion]

Ivan Ulyanov.

Russian guy?

 

[MRY]

Yep! We've now run the gamut of American, German, Hungarian, Ukrainian, and Russian illustrators (not to mention Brazilian and Australian). We are a veritable United Nations of starving artists.

 

[lightbane]

That reminds me: will you sell this game to Russia? I'm not sure if you can to begin with, with all of the restrictions going on.

Other devs stopped selling their game (or offering demos) to get at Putin, not sure what is your take.

 

[MRY]

> not sure what is your take

My take on Current Event X? That I normally don't have anything meaningful to add to the conversation about Current Event X, so I don't, even though there's often pressure on game devs to take one side or the other of every Current Event. The only soapbox I'll never get off is the same one I stood on for Primordia and Strangeland, and for the parts I created of TTON and other games/shows/etc.: humanism, compassion for suffering, respect for tradition, decency to others, and the belief that as terrible as the world may be, we shouldn't give up on it or the people in it. In FG, a lot of that is defined by "negative space" (i.e., look at how bad it gets when the gods are only interested in their own luxurious comfort and not in the duty that is supposed to run with power/greatness), whereas in Primordia you get a protagonist who embodies those values, but it's the same soapbox. If I couldn't preach those values in my games, I wouldn't make my games.

Whether I sell FG or give it away is still up in the air (I will probably sell it because it's important that the team get a "commercial" game credit for the amazing work they've done), whether we go through a publisher (which may have its own restrictions) is still up in the air, and I have no idea what Steam is currently doing with our other games like Primordia and Strangeland, though I continue to see Russian reviews, so I don't think sales are blocked.

 

[Tyranicon]

Whether I sell FG or give it away is still up in the air (I will probably sell it because it's important that the team get a "commercial" game credit for the amazing work they've done), whether we go through a publisher (which may have its own restrictions) is still up in the air...

Was FG not planned as a commercial product? It's surprising to hear that such important details are still being considered when, as I understand it, the bulk of the game is finished and we are awaiting launch?

Anyways, from what I've seen in Roxor's Let's Play, this appears to be a stellar game with quality writing, art and a decent amount of love put into it. You guys deserve a payday.

 

[MRY]

Always intended to be commercial, but from the outset I wanted to preserve the option to give it away. I don’t love selling games—for the most part, people who buy them need the money more than I do. But with Primordia, Strangeland, and the failed Cloudscape project, we did profit sharing. Once you do that, your teammates’ pay depends on selling the game. For FG, I’ve paid everyone out of pocket (more less ploughing whatever I made from my other game work into FG), so the only person whose bottom line is affected is me. The main reason that matters is that I have always wanted my game making hobby to be a moneymaker for my family, not a moneyloser, so if I give FG away that would limit the budget for whatever I make next.

If you told me to a certainty that 5X as many players would play if it were free, I’d probably make it free. But the irony is that free games get shunned for other reasons, so charging may actually attract more players. My hope is that the price will be low, maybe $9.99, though the upside of a higher price is that you can discount more.

 

[lightbane]

Good to know you won't go with the NPC route to piss off as many Russian customers as possible "until they rebel! They can't get away with it (TM)!!!", as some devs did. The Let's Play is awesome indeed.

 

[Tyranicon]

Always intended to be commercial, but from the outset I wanted to preserve the option to give it away. I don’t love selling games—for the most part, people who buy them need the money more than I do. But with Primordia, Strangeland, and the failed Cloudscape project, we did profit sharing. Once you do that, your teammates’ pay depends on selling the game. For FG, I’ve paid everyone out of pocket (more less ploughing whatever I made from my other game work into FG), so the only person whose bottom line is affected is me. The main reason that matters is that I have always wanted my game making hobby to be a moneymaker for my family, not a moneyloser, so if I give FG away that would limit the budget for whatever I make next.

Respect.

If you told me to a certainty that 5X as many players would play if it were free, I’d probably make it free. But the irony is that free games get shunned for other reasons, so charging may actually attract more players. My hope is that the price will be low, maybe $9.99, though the upside of a higher price is that you can discount more.

I can't guarantee it, and there's probably no way to know for sure, but I suspect that if you release it for free you will have much larger download numbers than as a paid product. There's a number of factors working for you, and they are important, such as you and your brand already being a known quantity with a community attached, as well as the game not being shovelware (most free games are either this or a tech demo).

The only con is that you can't set discounts on a free product, and discounts rounds are very helpful for visibility.

A case study you could look into is Doki Doki Literature Club, which while being in a very different genre, is one of the few serious cases of where a free game met popular success. The popularity of it being so overwhelming that they were able to monetize it with a paid version that has 20k+ reviews on Steam, at 15 USD. I'm not sure if that was something they planned from the beginning or not.

Something to think about.

 

[sser]

MRY doing everything in his power to not say he's working pro bono.

 

[MRY]

The three issues with a free release:

- As noted, I want the team to have a deserved commercial credit. It’s trickier for them to say “even though it’s free, I was paid thousands of bucks, promise!”

- If I want to self-fund another project out of game-dev income rather than lawyer income, there has to actually be game-dev income.

- Even if we could replicate your example, I don’t love the idea of doing anything based on a premise of selling an enhanced/expanded/whatever down the line. If the same team is doing the enhancing then that means years more spent focused on developing FG. If we farm it out, it means the “best” version isn’t the one I poured my soul into. That defeats the whole point of all the work I put into game dev in the first place. We will definitely support FG for ages (as Dualnames and I have done for Primordia and Strangeland), but if I’m still doing game dev, that has to be secondary to making new worlds and telling new stories about new characters (which is what I love). Maintenance is an obligation, but not a diversion. And to me, I just hate the idea of upselling, though I realize the shareware model of giving part away for free is different (and something I loved as a kid).

-EDIT-

sser I wouldn't say "pro bono" because while I believe that games are a public good (especially heroic games and games that let you inhabit a world/persona different from this one, for reasons I wrote about in my short obit for Arnold Hendrick), the reason I'm willing to put in the exhausting work and deal with the headaches of game development is because of the happiness it brings me. Some people get happiness out of making money from their games (and that's great), I get it out of making a connection with a player through something with my voice/vision/what have you. It was really awesome the first few times I was getting paid well to write game stories, but that dopamine hit is long gone.

 

[sser]

Always intended to be commercial, but from the outset I wanted to preserve the option to give it away. I don’t love selling games—for the most part, people who buy them need the money more than I do. But with Primordia, Strangeland, and the failed Cloudscape project, we did profit sharing. Once you do that, your teammates’ pay depends on selling the game. For FG, I’ve paid everyone out of pocket (more less ploughing whatever I made from my other game work into FG), so the only person whose bottom line is affected is me. The main reason that matters is that I have always wanted my game making hobby to be a moneymaker for my family, not a moneyloser, so if I give FG away that would limit the budget for whatever I make next.

Respect.

If you told me to a certainty that 5X as many players would play if it were free, I’d probably make it free. But the irony is that free games get shunned for other reasons, so charging may actually attract more players. My hope is that the price will be low, maybe $9.99, though the upside of a higher price is that you can discount more.

I can't guarantee it, and there's probably no way to know for sure, but I suspect that if you release it for free you will have much larger download numbers than as a paid product. There's a number of factors working for you, and they are important, such as you and your brand already being a known quantity with a community attached, as well as the game not being shovelware (most free games are either this or a tech demo).

The only con is that you can't set discounts on a free product, and discounts rounds are very helpful for visibility.

A case study you could look into is Doki Doki Literature Club, which while being in a very different genre, is one of the few serious cases of where a free game met popular success. The popularity of it being so overwhelming that they were able to monetize it with a paid version that has 20k+ reviews on Steam, at 15 USD. I'm not sure if that was something they planned from the beginning or not.

Something to think about.

Not just a different genre, but this borrows heavily from another medium: books. There are some popular titles that started out as freebies that transitioned to a paid-for model, usually while still giving it away for free. 'Beware of Chicken' and 'The Wandering Inn' spring to mind, usually stories that come from places like royalroad or sometimes even an archiveofourown – the freeness allows way more eyes-on, and people generally like to pay for things they like. Amazon itself has a subscription system where you can read anything assigned to it for free (KDP). So if an author subs their book to the program, then readers and pick it up for free (broadly speaking), and then 'Zon pays it on the back end to authors based upon pages read. I've no idea how it could be executed, but it would be cool to see such a subscription-model on stores like Steam. It would broaden the door a bit to the indie market and all those games people are reluctant to try via buy.

 

[Maxie]

you may derive whatever positive emotion from gamedev if you like, but market-wise - someone with an income outside gamedev, and a p respectable one at that, judging by your lawyer accolades, is leading the race to the bottom. you can accept lower margins, but devs as a whole won't, especially in the current economy.

 

[MRY]

That’s a fair concern but I don’t think anything I do is “leading” any race anywhere. If you go on Steam and examine the volume of “free to play” or “freemium” or very inexpensive games, I think the market is what it is. On its best day I don’t expect FG to occupy more than a minuscule portion of the market, and only a tiny percentage of developers and players will have heard of it.

Of course if charging more for my games could save us from the flood of asset flips, Skinner boxes, fan-scamming, etc. I would happily charge more. I just think it won’t, and I should do what is best for the game, the players, the team, etc. and let the market do what it will

 

[AdolfSatan]

people who buy them need the money more than I do.

If anyone’s spending living money they don’t have on games, you releasing it for free won’t cure their imbecility, that money will go to waste somewhere else.
The poor downtrodden that can’t afford but aren’t dumb will pirate it as they do with everything else, you’re not changing anything. Wanna help them? Upload a clean torrent yourself somewhere.
But putting your game up for free won’t help anyone monetarily, set a price.

 

[MRY]

Yes, I know no straw ever actually broke a camel's back. All the same, and Socrates notwithstanding, at some point the tolerable life depends on respecting your superstitions, rituals, and traditions rather than trying to coral them into reason. But, anyway, that particular discomfort is offset by the other considerations listed above, so I think it is more likely than not that we will charge something, be it $9.99 or $4.99 or $14.99 or whatever, I'm sure it will arbitrarily end in 99 cents because god forbid we have round numbers.

 

[huskarls]

you get tired of these group therapy sessions after 9 years?

 

[lightbane]

Will this game have expansions after release?

 

[CryptRat]

Did anyone ever write any article about games which are sold on Steam but available for free elsewhere, like traditional roguelikes and whatnot? I don't know how bad of a business model it is for people who don't give a shit about business models to begin with and just want people to pay for their games but in the same time not really.

 

[lukaszek]

Did anyone ever write any article about games which are sold on Steam but available for free elsewhere, like traditional roguelikes and whatnot? I don't know how bad of a business model it is for people who don't give a shit about business models to begin with and just want people to pay for their games but in the same time not really.

never saw one, perhaps one can compare available TOME numbers? Its successful title so it should be meaningful

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Did anyone ever write any article about games which are sold on Steam but available for free elsewhere, like traditional roguelikes and whatnot? I don't know how bad of a business model it is for people who don't give a shit about business models to begin with and just want people to pay for their games but in the same time not really.

never saw one, perhaps one can compare available TOME numbers? Its successful title so it should be meaningful

I think ADOM is the most notable example.
Probably Dwarf Fortress and Cataclysm: DDA too.

 

[lukaszek]

Did anyone ever write any article about games which are sold on Steam but available for free elsewhere, like traditional roguelikes and whatnot? I don't know how bad of a business model it is for people who don't give a shit about business models to begin with and just want people to pay for their games but in the same time not really.

never saw one, perhaps one can compare available TOME numbers? Its successful title so it should be meaningful

I think ADOM is the most notable example.
Probably Dwarf Fortress and Cataclysm: DDA too.

dunno how to use proper tools, but according to wikipedia(citing steamspy), in 2016, on steam, tome4 sold about 150k copies.
Even though it did offer game for free

 

[MRY]

Will this game have expansions after release?

I want to release the best game I can. I’m sure we’ll keep supporting it and adding smaller stuff. A larger expansion would depend on whether there’s an audience and what the appetite is (including with the actor who does the VO, I suppose).

Honestly I would like to move on to making a new world with different narrative/stylistic constraints. But if players craves an expanded FG, it would feel incumbent to try to deliver. Unlike Primordia and Strangeland, which felt over and done with narratively, FG could always have more events, victory conditions, followers, etc., at least to the extent there is suitable thematic material for them (easier said than found).