Company News Taking Care of Business - Iron Tower Studio 2018 Business Diary

[Jaedar]

Darkest Dungeon, as no-name as it gets, sold 1,730,190 ± 40,837 with 94%(!!!) players, blowing all 3 out of the water.

Shit game, with incredible presentation.

Not surprised to see it sell like hotcakes.

 

[sser]

The percentage is the # of players who actually played the game?

 

[Bohrain]

One person was convinced that we made Hard and Normal too hard on purpose, to humiliate players and force them to play on Easy (as if we have nothing better to do). I tried to explain that Hard is for people who like challenging fights but that upset him even more, as if he wasn't good enough. So he couldn't play on Hard but refused to play on Easy or Normal. Oddly enough, quite a few players felt they were humiliated.

The way I see it is that there are two things going on here for those familiar with behavioral economics.
First of all, anchoring. The initial value the customer is making his comparisons to is the hardest difficulty. Since the hard difficulty is actually hard on your product unlike in AAA titles, they are going in with vastly overestimating their skills.
Second, loss aversion. After hitting a wall in the hardest difficulty the bloke finds it infuriating to try a lower difficulty. This is because he bases his comparison to the anchored value (hardest difficulty) and it's a well known fact that that an absolute loss has a higher marginal impact on subjective wellbeing compared to the effect of a similarly sized gain. Meaning people feel more infuriated by stepping down in the difficulty ladder compared to pleasure of going up.

If this is the underlying problem, I have my doubts about the benefits of difficulty customization or renaming the difficulty levels. The best solution I could think of would be making it harder for people to act upon the overestimation of their ability. Maybe something like initially only giving the easy and normal option, and unlocking hard after reaching some point in normal using below some threshold value of reloads or consumables.

 

[Infinitron]

Idea: Replace discrete difficulty levels with a slider that lets you select number of starting skill points (or some other numeric value that tracks closely with difficulty) starting from a certain minimum. That'll probably change people's psychology. Only the true grognards will select the minimum value, the guys who think they're good enough to play on Hard but actually aren't will go for the middle of the slider.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Another idea: don't change anything except
1) Let the player tone the difficulty down. If the player hits a a brick wall on his chosen difficulty level, let him change the difficulty to an easier mode instead of forcing him to start over or stop playing.
2) Unlock psycho only after beating hard once. That way everybody already has an understanding of what they can expect.

 

[SausageInYourFace]

Maybe I am a simple man but I think many complaints could be avoided by just clearly calling the difficulties 'normal, 'hard' and 'very hard'. In addition, above suggestion to have the highest difficulty only unlock after a playthrough will further mitigate the problem of players misjudging their competence. Average players would then probably just pick the 'normal difficulty' naturally, even though its technically the lowest. Its just a semantic trick.

I don't think the somewhat obfuscating names of the settings helped and maybe the tranparency on what the difficulties actually do was also a bit of a disfavor. If I remember correctly, it states a big to-hit malus that the enemies get. I can imagine a lot of players see that (seemingly) huge to-hit minus and feel too proud to play on that lowest setting.

If you offer two big buttons which simply state 'Normal' and 'Hard' and nothing more then the casuals and average players will pick normal and roll with it. No need for sliders or some such.

Of course, what I am suggesting limits choice and transparency so its ultimately dumbing down but since it doesn't really change anything at its core (difficulty remains the same) I think its justifiable.

Alternatively, you could use the the difficulty setting of the quite excellent Dungeon of the Endless, which is a pretty hard game by the way:

(j/k wit this btw)

 

[hivemind]

In addition, above suggestion to have the highest difficulty only unlock after a playthrough will further mitigate the problem of players misjudging their competence

dont do this

 

[Azarkon]

So has anything changed since that discussion: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...atalism-can-hardcore-rpgs-sell-better.106182/
??

sser Azarkon

I don't recall what the discussion was about, but the first post didn't age well. No-brand Pillars vastly outsold Wasteland 2 and newTorment, which is one of the biggest and most respectable names out there, not to mention Cook and Numenera backup hype:

Pillars - 1,202,413 ± 34,061, players 81% players
Wasteland 2 - 759,818 ± 27,088, players 39%, which is a very low %
TToN - 158,232 ± 12,369, players 74%, got a free weekend deal to boost sales which didn't result in any miracles.

Darkest Dungeon, as no-name as it gets, sold 1,730,190 ± 40,837 with 94%(!!!) players, blowing all 3 out of the water. Banner Saga 2 didn't live up to the original success, selling half as much and with only 46% players.

I remember the discussion, and in retrospect, I think both sides need to give ground.

From what I remember, you claimed that hardcore CRPGs just don't sell well, because their market is niche and people don't like "difficult" or "punishing" mechanics. Yet, we have had several examples of hardcore CRPGs that have sold, even without name recognition. Darkest Dungeon is such an example - from what I remember, only 1% of its players even finished the game. Another, more recent example is Kingdom Come, which succeeded despite punishing mechanics and a terrible save system, though it isn't turn-based, so I guess you can use the old argument that it's a first person 3D CRPG and therefore automatically more mainstream.

I claimed that the problem was not with the difficulty or the hardcore mechanics, but the lack of name recognition - hardcore CRPGs don't sell because creating new franchises without substantial marketing $$$ is difficult. Torment is an obvious counter example, though you should admit the original Planescape: Torment was also a niche game, and the poor initial word of mouth hurt the new Torment significantly. Still, I think recent CRPG events have shown that independent studios can still create wildly successful franchises - relatively speaking, since we're ignoring the AAA market - by hitting the right design notes and running an effective word of mouth campaign. Presentation, as mentioned above, might be key - not so much as having AAA graphics or an user friendly interface, but in creating a cohesive vision that marries the different aspects of visual, audio, and conceptual design to generate an unique and compelling style.

In retrospect, the success of the first Banner Saga might have been due to the same factors, and the same could be argued for other independent successes like Bastion and Cuphead. Of course, sequels don't sell nearly as well for the obvious reason that, from an experiential perspective, it's fresh only the first time.

I guess the lesson is that, should you want to develop a commercially successful hardcore CRPG, you should aim for an original vision with bold aesthetics... Or, failing that, ride on the historical nostalgia of a mainstream game like Baldur's Gate, instead of a niche title like Planescape: Torment.

 

[JarlFrank]

I guess the lesson is that, should you want to develop a commercially successful hardcore CRPG, you should aim for an original vision with bold aesthetics... Or, failing that, ride on the historical nostalgia of a mainstream game like Baldur's Gate, instead of a niche title like Planescape: Torment.

Or just make sure you don't overpromise and underdeliver, and have an absolutely terrible project management that scraps good things and replaces them with bad things (like the portraits) and eads to a half-assed game which disappoints all the people who were originally hyped for it, causing it to fail due to bad word of mouth in a genre that is pretty much reliant on good word of mouth.

Step 1: make sure your game doesn't suck. Everything else is secondary to that.

 

[Fenix]

Darkest Dungeon is such an example

It's a bit special because it's meme generator game. Look at threads on 4chan - tide that turn as quickly as chopper's blade, pics with nude characters etc.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Darkest Dungeon is such an example

It's a bit special because it's meme generator game. Look at threads on 4chan - tide that turn as quickly as chopper's blade, pics with nude characters etc.

And all that the threads /tg/ makes mimicking the narrator.

 

[Whisper]

Pillars of Eternity is uber-generic typical fantasy, with bland skills and spells (super-balanced). I remember some hard limits on using skills/spells, so you basically auto-attacked all time.

And accuracy was super-important, it didnt only mean you can hit but also will you crit or glance.


Repeative, boring game, with nothing in it. It is so popular because there is not much competition.

You get half-decent fantasy crpg maybe in 2-3 months, at best.

 

[hivemind]

Pillars of Eternity is uber-generic typical fantasy

how the fuck are fampyrs and ducs generic?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

fampyrs

Oh, toothless vampires, how original.

ducs

If it's dukes, that generic as fuck.
It it's ducks, they're just copying Glorious Glorantha.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[hivemind]

wycts

so generic

 

[Lycra Suit]

Are the revenues he lists before or after steam's cut? If we account for that and assuming VD has a good accountant and their business is based in Canada which sports favorable corporate tax policies they got around 1 000 000 in total. Not bad for an indie but split among the entire team that certainly doesn't amount to a very profitable lifestyle, granted each team members would have made around 500 000 net working as a developer in an established company over the development timespan.

If I were them I would use this success as a portfolio to break into the mainstream industry and afford a comfortable career or find an investor to do something with a wider appeal but I guess they're dedicated to the ideals of oldschool RPGs which is admirable. Still I wonder if they just benefited from a passing fad or if the business model is worthwhile in the next decades of their active lives.

 

[Tigranes]

Are the revenues he lists before or after steam's cut? If we account for that and assuming VD has a good accountant and their business is based in Canada which sports favorable corporate tax policies they got around 1 000 000 in total. Not bad for an indie but split among the entire team that certainly doesn't amount to a very profitable lifestyle, granted each team members would have made around 500 000 net working as a developer in an established company over the development timespan.

If I were them I would use this success as a portfolio to break into the mainstream industry and afford a comfortable career or find an investor to do something with a wider appeal but I guess they're dedicated to the ideals of oldschool RPGs which is admirable. Still I wonder if they just benefited from a passing fad or if the business model is worthwhile in the next decades of their active lives.

Making games for a 'comfortable career' is like becoming a rock star for the stable family lifestyle

 

[Lycra Suit]

You get the comfortable career once you hop into the software industry after the mandatory 5 years of crunch time for popamole games.