Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pre-Release Thread

[Sjukob]

There's quite a bit of it and It goes from things like a race's physiology & how they handle crime all the way to their attitude to other cultures or their sexual mores

Huh . So paying with your body is an option after all , good , very good Larian . I like that .

 

[Roguey]

I hope the dwarves and undead are still homophobic.

 

[Saxon1974]

No new info on the composer as far as I know.



The idea is that it's cheaper to KS it now than to buy it on release. But if you're going to wait a year for a sale or don't care about the stretch goals, then obviously there's no reason for you to pledge.

If they were a small startup company with a great idea and needed the funds to just to make the game it would make more sense. But in this case, Larian had the cash and name to make the game anyway. I understand supporters wanting to put more cash into their pockets to make the game bigger and better though. Given my situation with tons of backlogged games and little gaming time it doesn't make much sense for me now. Also the fact that they are all mostly releasing improved versions later it makes even less sense. I like physical stuff like lore book, nice printed map but not for over 100$.

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

If they were a small startup company with a great idea and needed the funds to just to make the game it would make more sense. But in this case, Larian had the cash and name to make the game anyway. I understand supporters wanting to put more cash into their pockets to make the game bigger and better though. Given my situation with tons of backlogged games and little gaming time it doesn't make much sense for me now. Also the fact that they are all mostly releasing improved versions later it makes even less sense. I like physical stuff like lore book, nice printed map but not for over 100$.

IIRC, if Larian did not meet the kickstarter goal that they had placed, they would not make the game.

 

[Infinitron]

Hi Codex: http://www.lar.net/2015/09/07/where-are-the-women/

Where are the women?
Posted on September 7, 2015


One of the blind assumptions I’ve always made about Divinity: Original Sin is that many women play it. I never had any doubts about this because I saw my partner play D:OS for many hours. She’s quite picky about her games and likes RPGs, so I figured that if the game would be unappealing to her (or womanhood in general for that matter), she would’ve told me right away.

My feeling that many women play D:OS is further reinforced by the people I meet at trade-shows. For every two or three male fans, there’s always at least one woman. Based on that, my lazy mind concluded that at least 25% to 33% of our audience is female, if not more (given that trade-shows are not exactly gender balanced).

I never really questioned this number because it fit with the split I saw for events like PAX. According to this report for instance, 35% of PAX visitors is female, and I think of PAX players as players who would typically enjoy D:OS.

But then this morning, I saw a number that didn’t compute at all. According to the Google analytics page for our Kickstarter campaign, only 4,19% of the page’s visitors is female versus 95.81% male! WTF?

That didn’t match at all what I thought. My instant reaction was – “oh really, so there’s not a lot of women on Kickstarter. Interesting, I always thought ….”

At which point I did the sensible thing and googled “kickstarter gender distribution”.

The first result I found showed that indeed, Kickstarter is more popular among men (70% male vs 30% female) but that still didn’t really explain the 5% I was seeing. So I reasoned that perhaps there are other Kickstarter categories that are more popular among women, and that games just aren’t that attractive to them, at least as something to crowdfund.

So I went to our Facebook page.

Turns out only 9% of the people following us there are women! I went WTF again! That really didn’t match my expectations. Where were my at least 25% to 35% women? What about my scientifically sound and completely unbiased sampling results from those fan encounters at trade shows? Could it really be so low?

So I delved into the Steam analytics.

Sadly, there I couldn’t see any demographic data. This seriously sucked, because it could’ve validated (or invalidated) an idea that had formed on our group chat i.e. The women who play our games will play the hell out of them, but they will only take an active interest when the games are released or about to be released. Our male audience on the contrary might be more interested in backing us sooner, for what I guess will be a variety of reasons.

This at least fit with my own observations. My sampling subject at home certainly won’t bother reading a lot of gaming previews or watch you tubers, at least, I think she doesn’t. But she will buy a game that comes highly recommended and looks like she’ll enjoy it.

After some more discussion, our hive-mind came to the conclusion that even if we’d know the gender distribution on Steam, we wouldn’t have been able to make any conclusions, because many couples share their Steam accounts (at least, we assume they do). And so any conclusion based on Steam stats would be wrong.

At which point someone else said we shouldn’t based important decisions on data as shaky as Facebook or Google analytics.

So I started thinking: I’ve never cared for analytics before, so why do I care now? The most I’ve used it for in the past was to see if the PR people we hired in different territories were doing their jobs. To give you an idea of how much I use it, I actually had to ask someone to tell me how to access my gmail account before I could see the current data because I was curious about how people discovered our kickstarter page.

At which point I reassured the team that we weren’t going to let some fancy numbers affect any decisions. We’ll happily continue making games we care about and would like to play ourselves. Which reassured them because they were starting to worry after I didn’t stop asking questions about this

But of course, that didn’t mean I wasn’t curious and actually also a little bit worried.

Because if we indeed have as many women players as I think we do, does that mean we are communicating on the wrong channels about our games? Obviously we’d like them to know about what we’re making. So how do we talk to them? According to this report, we should at least be seeing a 50/50 split, not a 5/95 or 10/90.

So, since quite a few among you work on the dark side, I figured I might as well just ask you. You boys & girls must have data about this. I’m particularly interested in learning if other CRPGs have the same pre-release gender split like the one we are seeing on Facebook & Kickstarter, and if that then settles out into a 50/50 when the game goes on sale. Or is the analytics thing just broken, and am I making a big fuss over nothing? Or, are we really doing something wrong? And if so, what?

All input more than welcome!

 

[Nael]

Hi Codex: http://www.lar.net/2015/09/07/where-are-the-women/

What a moron. He actually thinks a majority of those females at PAX are there for the video games? Everyone knows the reason most women are there is because they are tagging along with the neckbeard in their lives.

And the ones who are there for the games are usually about as unsexed and loathsome as the bachelor neckbeards in attendance.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Women are found at KS campaigns like this:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lucky-cheeks/lucky-cheeks-g-strings-made-in-france

 

[Weirdstuffinspace]

Women want men to pay for their stuff. News at 11.

 

[Bubbles]

Reminder that this is how google analytics determines whether a viewer is female:

Sarah's favorite hobby is gardening. Many of the gardening sites and blogs on the Display Network that she visits have a majority of female readers. Based on this, Sarah's browser could be added to the "female" demographic category.

Somehow I doubt that google assigns RPG websites a 50/50 male/female split by default.

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

Reminder that this is how google analytics determines whether a viewer is female:
Somehow I doubt that google assigns RPG websites a 50/50 male/female split by default.

So basically, If you're a female and you visit 'male websites' then you'll be classified as a male by the browser. Correct?

 

[Bubbles]

Unless you register your gender on google+, of course.

 

[twincast]

many couples share their Steam accounts (at least, we assume they do)

THOSE VILE CRIMINALS!

 

[Roguey]

For publicity targetted at women you could try reaching out to pop culture blog The Mary Sue.

Fuck off, Kevin. Don't do this, those people are terrible.

 

[Stabbey]

Women are found at KS campaigns like this:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lucky-cheeks/lucky-cheeks-g-strings-made-in-france

Huh. It's not everyday that a lingerie ad features a murder.

 

[Abu Antar]

Will you guys really allow the Watch to beat the Codex in the amount of money given to this game?

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

Will you guys really allow the Watch to beat the Codex in the amount of money given to this game?

I'll pledge some more to the Codex drive when payday comes around. $510 on the KS atm, and $90 for the codex.

 

[Shammy]

Will you guys really allow the Watch to beat the Codex in the amount of money given to this game?

All our money goes to complaining

 

[Anthedon]

Expect the amount to rise once the negotiations are over and it's announced officially.

 

[buzz]

I think I'm going to pirate any game that uses Avellone as their little mascot from now on. It's getting embarrassing already, and you're not helping matters by overhyping the fact that Chris is writing some fucking text blurbs or some meaningless NPC in some games.

If you really gave a shit, we should have pushed for a project where Chris Avellone is lead designer, or creative lead. Otherwise he's just acting a glorified publicity scheme nowadays.

I wouldn't have minded it so much if he actually took part in projects that fit his style of writing, instead of generic fantasy nr 500

 

[Outlander]

Kickstarter is just a glorified pre ordering service where I hope lots of people waste drop down $100+

 

[SniperHF]

Any burning questions for the Devline thing tomarrow?

 

[Infinitron]

UPDATE: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/larianstudios/divinity-original-sin-2/posts/1344083

 

[Abu Antar]

Talks about add-ons being added, stream tomorrow or whenever the fuck they said, and new stretch goals are to be expected.

 

[Bubbles]

The Codex fundraiser is officially live.

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

Divinity: Original Beach: 2?