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Vault Dweller: Age of Decadence needs to sell 45,000 copies to be successful

Andhaira

Arcane
Joined
Nov 25, 2007
Messages
1,868,966
Going with your numbers, 20k/year x 6 x 4 = 480k not 4.8 mil.
.

You're right, I accidentally made the 20k/yearly salary into 20k/monthly salary, because that is what I am used to. (calculating stuff like this on a monthly basis instead of yearly) :deathclaw:

By dungeon crawler you mean the space dungeon crawler right, that takes place in a ship, that you plan to do in Unreal 4? Or is that another game entirely.

If so, have you thought about doing a fantasy rpg, party based, in the AoD engine as it is?
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
You're right, I accidentally made the 20k/yearly salary into 20k/monthly salary, because that is what I am used to.
Me too. :(

:lol:

By dungeon crawler you mean the space dungeon crawler right, that takes place in a ship, that you plan to do in Unreal 4? Or is that another game entirely.
The dungeon crawler will be a quick and cheap (probably $8) combat game set in the AoD world using the existing assets and systems. Its main feature will be a party-based system. It will be set in a prison camp one of the NPCs mentioned and you'll have to recruit other prisoners and fight your way out. We're planning to put it together in 8-10 months.

The colony ship RPG will be a full scale RPG. I'd like to do a fantasy RPG one day, if we stay in business, but that's way too far down the road to talk about it now. Overall, as I mentioned earlier, I'd like to explore 3 settings other than AoD and that fantasy game is one of them.
 

Copper

Savant
Joined
Jan 28, 2014
Messages
469
Except that particular audience will watch 5 minutes of AoD gameplay on youtube, shrug their shoulders and go back to playing Twitcher which offers all of that (plus tits and ass) in a package with very high production values and streamlined gameplay.

AoD targets a niche within a niche, a small subset of RPG players that have a boner for C&C, challenging combat, great writing, interesting setting (in this case a very well realized one that is closely tied to the gameplay), very high replayability value etc. and people who have a fondness for quirky indie games (as long as it seems different and stands out from the crowd they'll try it).

I sincerely hope that turns out to be enough in the end as I've really enjoyed what I played of AoD's early access and find Colony Ship RPG to be a very interesting concept/idea.

Sure, the literal audience of the show (and most of the book readers), but that's like focusing on 'base-management survival rpgs' rather than 'survive the zombie apocalypse' as messages for Dead State. The point is to try and take 2-5% of the people who buy the Witcher and wanted more substance and convert them to buy your stuff too, if you can find an angle to work.
 

Invictus

Arcane
The Real Fanboy
Joined
Nov 3, 2013
Messages
2,789
Location
Mexico
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Still amazing these days how some developers mindlessly flock to Steam with those terms and taxes; you end up paying half your sale number between steam and taxes, hell gog looks better and better to me all the time as a business deal
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
Still amazing these days how some developers mindlessly flock to Steam with those terms and taxes; you end up paying half your sale number between steam and taxes, hell gog looks better and better to me all the time as a business deal
I don't know about GoG, but we sold 10 times more on Steam than we did on our own when the gaming media was actually interested in AoD. Steam is an insanely powerful platform that's well worth the cut and the extra hassle with the taxes. Mind you, the cut is standard so you end up paying 30% no matter where you go (payment processing alone costs you 10%).
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
I don't know (not my area). So far we're doing ok and there was no reason to try to be creative.
 
In My Safe Space
Joined
Dec 11, 2009
Messages
21,899
Codex 2012
I'll purchase multiple copies of the game when it releases, and more if you release it on GoG too.
A true patriot :salute: .

I was recently thinking about how with increase of
zWr65Id.png
the amount of players drastically decreases. It would be great if
zWr65Id.png
gamers would at least partially compensate it with greater dedication :salute: .

I'll buy only one copy, but only because I live in potato and it costs 141pln which costs as much work as 141$ in USA.
I remember that when I bought Fallout, I paid 165pln which was an equivalent of todays 325pln (Imagine paying 325$ for a game... Yes, it felt worth it). Playing new games in potato requires great dedication.
 
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a cut of domestic sheep prime

Guest
Promote as fallout 1 meets dark souls via let's plays by youtube personalities.
Buy traffic for the trailer/a landing page with a link to download the demo behind an email capture on bing ads and youtube ads (both are very, very cheap, targeted traffic sources).

Don't do GoG until you have exhausted all other means of generating sales. As much as I like it, it's just asking for your game to be pirated. It's so niche and unknown that it will be a while before someone will care enough to crack it, but with GoG, it's like distributing the crack yourself.
 
Self-Ejected

Excidium II

Self-Ejected
Joined
Jun 21, 2015
Messages
1,866,227
Location
Third World
Don't do GoG until you have exhausted all other means of generating sales. As much as I like it, it's just asking for your game to be pirated. It's so niche and unknown that it will be a while before someone will care enough to crack it, but with GoG, it's like distributing the crack yourself.
That'd be p. dumb lolz. They'd give up on upfront sales when the game is hot for that. Doubt many people give enough fucks to pirate random indie game #481385 this month to begin with.
 

a cut of domestic sheep prime

Guest
That'd be p. dumb lolz. They'd give up on upfront sales when the game is hot for that. Doubt many people give enough fucks to pirate random indie game #481385 this month to begin with.
Given that I've seen dozens of "random indie game of the month" games on pirating sites, yes, they do.

I guess it's really about how much you fear piracy vs how much you need new sales.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
It probably sounds cliche-ish, but when you have to pick between something that truly matters to you (aka your dream) and a paycheck, trading your dream for money is a very shitty deal that you're bound to regret later on.
It's an easy thing to say, but a hard thing to do -- I remain quite impressed at your having the guts to actually make that switch. For me, at least, it's not just a paycheck (which I've found reasonably easy to walk away from); it's the superstructure built up around the paycheck, namely that the genius of the market and the consensus among successful people is that such-and-such profession is what you're best at, and most useful at, versus the objective proof of the market and the subjective opinion of authority that such-and-such dream is frivolous and not particularly called for, and in any event you're not even that good at it. I'm speaking here of myself, not of you, but my recollection is that you were hailed as the youngest, greatest sales VP in Canada -- in my mind that's what you're walking away from, a third-party rebuttal to the voice inside you saying you're worthless. Once you're clearing necessities, that's the best thing a paycheck provides. But maybe you've no such affliction; in which case, count it among your blessings.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
It's an easy thing to say, but a hard thing to do
Very.

I'm speaking here of myself, not of you, but my recollection is that you were hailed as the youngest, greatest sales VP in Canada
I've never claimed that. I was the youngest VP in the company, which is usually the norm as sales execs tend to be much younger then their production counterparts. When I mentioned it, my point was that at 40 I was the youngest, meaning that everyone else was a walking dinosaur (we were talking about men who run companies). VP Production was 54, for example. I was pretty good at what I did but I wasn't the greatest in Canada, or Toronto, or even the ad industry.

-- in my mind that's what you're walking away from, a third-party rebuttal to the voice inside you saying you're worthless. Once you're clearing necessities, that's the best thing a paycheck provides. But maybe you've no such affliction; in which case, count it among your blessings.
No such affliction.
 

oscar

Arcane
Joined
Aug 30, 2008
Messages
8,036
Location
NZ
What is the best way to promote this game to rpg-interested (but by no means of the hardcore or old school crowd) friends in people here's opinions? Emphasis the choice and consequences and reactive plot line?
 
Self-Ejected

Bubbles

I'm forever blowing
Joined
Aug 7, 2013
Messages
7,817
What is the best way to promote this game to rpg-interested (but by no means of the hardcore or old school crowd) friends in people here's opinions? Emphasis the choice and consequences and reactive plot line?

Say that it's like Fallout 4, but cheaper.
 
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Invictus

Arcane
The Real Fanboy
Joined
Nov 3, 2013
Messages
2,789
Location
Mexico
Divinity: Original Sin 2
I say that the only thing here is to worry about making the best possible game, the rest usually takes care of itself. If the game is good it will make enough good word of mouth to have good sales, taking the early access as an example of sales is a mistake since only the hardcore gamers want to do that but once the game is released then it almost becames an impulse buy for $25. I truly belive this is a niche among niches but belive me 30k sales is well within reason give the enourmous number of users
 

SniperHF

Arcane
Joined
Aug 22, 2014
Messages
1,110
I don't know about GoG, but we sold 10 times more on Steam than we did on our own when the gaming media was actually interested in AoD. Steam is an insanely powerful platform that's well worth the cut and the extra hassle with the taxes. Mind you, the cut is standard so you end up paying 30% no matter where you go (payment processing alone costs you 10%).

This is actually something I was wondering about. Why was the media more interested in the first place a few years back?

It seems like AoD got a disproportionate amount of press coverage over the years compared to other indie RPGs. Now that seems to have died down with both general indie fatigue and the early access conundrum of having two releases.
 
Unwanted

a Goat

Unwanted
Dumbfuck Edgy Vatnik
Joined
Jun 15, 2014
Messages
6,941
Location
Albania
Promote as fallout 1 meets dark souls via let's plays by youtube personalities.
Promoting :obviously: RPG's through youtube is quite hard to be fair - most youtubers/streamers won't want to play it because it requires stops for reading and so on.
Games like this are fun to play but not very fun to watch(like watching other people play games is fun in the first place...).
As much as I like it, it's just asking for your game to be pirated.
Search "Age of Decadence" on public trackers and tell me that steam makes games piracy-resistant.
 

Goral

Arcane
Patron
The Real Fanboy
Joined
May 4, 2008
Messages
3,552
Location
Poland
What is the best way to promote this game to rpg-interested (but by no means of the hardcore or old school crowd) friends in people here's opinions? Emphasis the choice and consequences and reactive plot line?
Say that it's like Gummi Bears and children will want their parents to buy it for them. We have ancient, advanced and forgotten technology here, we have a backstabbing monarch who wants to grab the power by using shady methods (Antidas/Duke Igthorn), we have a loremaster (Zummi), a sceptical craftsmen (Gruffi), an alchemist (Grammi and her super juice), a mercenary (Cubbi), Lady Lorenza (Calla), a bootlicker (toadie), neurostimulant (gummi juice), mantra, oracles duping the feeble minded, tortures, poison etc. Maybe this is why I love this game so much?

Disney lawsuit in 3...2...1..
:troll:
(...) Don't do GoG until you have exhausted all other means of generating sales. As much as I like it, it's just asking for your game to be pirated. It's so niche and unknown that it will be a while before someone will care enough to crack it, but with GoG, it's like distributing the crack yourself.
You're totally wrong. Even now (almost) every version of AoD can be pirated (there are even faggots on Youtube who make videos and post links to torrents) without any DRM since game can also be bought via BMT Micro. AoD being on GOG will generate a significant profit IF it will be properly exposed and if GOG users will advertise it on the forums and in their GOG reviews. In general GOG consumers do not care about graphics (which I believe will be the main deterrent for gamers who are used to Witcher graphics and expect at least Skyrim/Fallout 4 level, that and a price) and they can appreciate a truly brilliant game.

It's unlikely that the sales will be bigger than Steam ones but maybe the GOG-Steam ratio will be closer to 40-60 than 30-70 as it is in Serpent in The Staglands case.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
This is actually something I was wondering about. Why was the media more interested in the first place a few years back?

It seems like AoD got a disproportionate amount of press coverage over the years compared to other indie RPGs. Now that seems to have died down with both general indie fatigue and the early access conundrum of having two releases.

In the past, other indie RPGs tended not to exist.
 

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