Jeff Vogel Soapbox Thread

[laclongquan]

He made good point actually. The most common major problem of Western game developers is always chasing the rainbows "newer thing". They never stop to redo the old good thing. The good is enemy of the new, so to speak.

Well, look at King's Bounty guys who essentially released the same game for the fourth (or is it fifth?) time. Their first installment received some GOTY awards, but does anyone even care about the last?

His games're sold, still, arent they? Tehre's still market for it. Russian market seem not to be infected by that sentimentality "chasing the newest young thang on the block" that is loudly proclaimed from players to makers in the West.

 

[Correct_Carlo]

I still need to play that one sometime. How is it more innovative than Geneforge?

It's not really as innovative as Geneforge in terms of gameplay, setting, or C&C, but it's definitely more innovative than most RPGs in terms of storyline, structure, and setting. It's a historical RPG, set in Roman times, and depending on if you play Celts or Romans, the game unfolds and plays very differently.

Personally, I prefer the Geneforges, but Nethergate is better than any single Avernum, I think.

 

[Amasius]

I still need to play that one sometime. How is it more innovative than Geneforge?

Geneforge would be really innovative if Vogel would have sticked to the strange science fiction concept but to play it safe he introduced good old magic too. Meh.

Nethergates concept is simple: what if the old celtic fairytales of Britannia in the time of the romans where true? It's historical fantasy with a clever gameplay twist: to get the whole picture you have play both sides, romans and celts, and they play very differently.

 

[Gord]

It seems definitely a risk he's taking here. Looks more like he's counting on the part of his fans that will anyway buy anything he puts out (and don't mind rebuying and replaying a game they already own). Of course, if he says that he can't make a living at a 10$ price point he anyway has no alternative than to increase the price again.

I have to admit that I've never played a Vogel game - although the Geneforge series esp. sounds interesting.
And to my shame one of the big reasons are the graphics (at least with the older titles, the newer ones sounded a bit boring in the reviews).
Usually I have no issue playing old games with outdated graphics, especially if the game has something more important to offer (atmosphere, gameplay, story, etc.), but Vogel's games look so terribly uninspired and unpleasing to me. Can't exactly say why, but it's so sterile, somehow...
And it's not even that better (read more atmospheric, pleasing) graphics are out of question for indie-devs - there are a lot of examples that show otherwise.

So anyway, if he hires some capable artist (since otherwise I see no chance there) and updates UI and tiles, who knows, I finally might even try one of those remakes...

 

[taxalot]

A large part of my professional life now is acting as curator for the things I made when I was young. I spend my time trying to be respectful to the work of my younger self, bringing it into the modern day while preserving the stuff that made people love it in the first place.

I endorse this message. Please Vogel, respect your younger self: http://www.armory.com/~crisper/Scorch/intro.html

Q: What is your stand on the Mac/PC thing?


A: I use Macs. But it is more important that the fans of the two platforms must unite, settle our differences, and go beat the living crap out of those weenie Amiga people.

Never buying a Jefff Vogel game again.

 

[hakuroshi]

Vogel is in business for longer than almost anyone else, Indie or big game developer, because he is awoiding risks and it works. I'd rather see him making remakes than go out of business. Sure, we could hope for more innovation but how many of you fuckers have played his most innovative game (Nethergate)? As far as I know Nethergate was his least successful game.

BTW, do you (or anyone here) have a key for original Nethergate - not Resurrection?

 

[laclongquan]

I think this was inevitable, regardless of the state of the industry. Avadon sold well on steam because, within the context of steam, it was completely new. But once every Spiderweb game came to steam, the newness wore off. Likewise, the humblebundle completely de-valued Spiderweb games. Which is a HUGE problem given that they all look pretty similar due to the fact that they re-use the same assets over and over. So what motivation does someone have to buy a new Spiderweb game, when they still have a backlog of 15, huge, and very similar looking games yet to play that they got for 3 dollars in a humble bundle? Even if they missed the humblebundle, the mere fact that someone might own 1 Spiderweb game probably doesn't motivate them very much to buy newer ones that look, on the surface, to be very similar.

I think he'd get a bigger pay off if he spent some actual money and redesigned the look of his new games, giving each series its own art style, rather than being such a tight ass in the graphics department.

That said, I'm probably the biggest, unabashed, Spiderweb fanboy on these forums. So I'd actually pay way more than 20 dollars for a new game, and with that in mind, I don't think this is a bad strategy. I think it all just depends on how many of Spiderweb's core base of rabid fans are left post Steam, GOG, and Avadon.

He made good point actually. The most common major problem of Western game developers is always chasing the rainbows "newer thing". They never stop to redo the old good thing. The good is enemy of the new, so to speak.

This is true. Vogel very much learned to make games by just making games at a consistent rate, rather than spending tons of time developing the one perfect game. So many indies aim waaaay to high and try to develop the perfect, most ambitious, game of their dreams right out of the gate, and choke. But Spiderweb games have always been about developing formulas, and getting better at them over time. I don't think that applies to the Avernums necessarily (which are pretty spotty quality wise later in the series' run), but I do think the Geneforges progressively get better as they go along.

Not a perfect single game. He perfect the game over several tittles in a series. There's a difference.

 

[Baron]

For a guy who's lasted this long in the industry I'm not blaming Jeff Brogel for being pragmatic. The pricing strategy, the re-use of graphics, remaking games to save creating new stories and characters, and the realisation (as Amasius said) that his creativity is not rewarded with an increase in sales are all necessary compromises to stay self employed. Gotta admire him for still releasing games in a massively saturated market.

Plus his self deprecating press release was pretty funny. Happy to fork over a $20 for one of his games.

 

[TigerKnee]

I would hand over $20 for one of his games if he stops dumbing the Exile series down.

I endorse this message. Please Vogel, respect your younger self: http://www.armory.com/~crisper/Scorch/intro.html

Hey, this isn't another the game with tanks and angles at all.

 

[mondblut]

So many indies aim waaaay to high and try to develop the perfect, most ambitious, game of their dreams right out of the gate, and choke.

I know that one person...

But Spiderweb games have always been about developing formulas, and dumbing them down over time.

Fixed.

Vogel has hit his ceiling with Exile 3. Since then it was a consistent slide down into irrelevancy. Storyfags' mileage may differ, but their opinion is irrelevant to begin with; the misguided CYOA fanboys are eager to suck off a donkey if it offers them a "brancheeng storee".

 

[almondblight]

Case in point: Fallout. F1 is okay. F2 is great. But do they expand it? No, they just have to jump to Fallout Tactics and Fallout Brotherhood. FT is good, dont get me wrong. Great, even, successor to Jagged Alliance 2. But the fact FT is not F2 successor make fanbois jump up and down frothing at the mouth. I remember the phenomemnon "pink dreathclaws!!!!". In a JA2-successor game who give a fuck about pink deathclaws? What's wrong with making a proper game set after F2 one or two decades? And it has to wait until that atrocity of Fallout 3 by Bethesda..

Except he didn't make Exile 4 which would have been awesome, he remade Exile and then remade it again. So it's more like if they remade Fallout in the Fallout 3 engine, and now said they were busy remaking Fallout in a brand new Bethesda engine. Or, at best I guess it can be viewed like BG:EE, if they announced that after making BG:EE they'd be making BG:EE:EE. Hey, if BG is a good game why not make it better?

 

[Applypoison]

let's look on the flipside, maybe the bottom line of his message it that it isn't necessary to re-invent the wheel to make a great game!

 

[Jaesun]

It really is an awful looking UI. Green slime everywhere.

Oh indeed it is. I was actually happy he is doing one of his older games in the new engine. Though I wonder what he changed, as it seems the party size is now smaller (from the original game). Dunno what else.

 

[almondblight]

Sure, we could hope for more innovation but how many of you fuckers have played his most innovative game (Nethergate)? As far as I know Nethergate was his least successful game.

Nethergate was also the game where he went from nice overhead graphics to really bad isometric graphics, cut down the party from 4 - 6, cut down the spells, and cut down the exploration element. It wasn't a bad game, but I wouldn't be surprised if people wanting Exile 4 got turned off when they first tried it.

 

[Zeriel]

Well, look at King's Bounty guys who essentially released the same game for the fourth (or is it fifth?) time. Their first installment received some GOTY awards, but does anyone even care about the last?

It's not the same people.

When you see a franchise being milked, it's usually because the franchise has been bought/acquired by someone else.

I'm not sure there's anything quite so sad as its original creator doing the milking, as is the case with Vogel.

 

[NotAGolfer]

Sure, we could hope for more innovation but how many of you fuckers have played his most innovative game (Nethergate)? As far as I know Nethergate was his least successful game.

Nethergate was also the game where he went from nice overhead graphics to really bad isometric graphics, cut down the party from 4 - 6, cut down the spells, and cut down the exploration element. It wasn't a bad game, but I wouldn't be surprised if people wanting Exile 4 got turned off when they first tried it.

If he would remake Nethergate and add some more layers of depth while making it prettier too it I would def. buy it on day one. The setting is very apealing and I wonder why so few games use it instead of the same retarded Tolkien copypaste snoozefest.
...
Wait what?! He actually did, lol.
Will buy right now.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Well, look at King's Bounty guys who essentially released the same game for the fourth (or is it fifth?) time. Their first installment received some GOTY awards, but does anyone even care about the last?

It's not the same people.

When you see a franchise being milked, it's usually because the franchise has been bought/acquired by someone else.

I'm not sure there's anything quite so sad as its original creator doing the milking, as is the case with Vogel.

source on the KB team changing?

 

[Twiglard]

Who wrote the code anyway? Jeff or some J. Random Subcontractor?

This pertains to Android port lackage as mentioned in the original post.

 

[StaticSpine]

source on the KB team changing?

Katauri (King's Bounty: The Legend, King's Bounty: Armored Princess, King's Bounty: Сrossworlds, Royal Quest) was closed in 2013. So the other KB games (Warriors of the North and Dark Side) were not made by them.

 

[Baron]

If he would remake Nethergate and add some more layers of depth while making it prettier too it I would def. buy it on day one.

So you'd be happy to pay $40 instead of $20 for the longer development time and increased costs of puchasing art?

I don't know how many times he can say it. He's a one man developer working with limited resources yet still releasing games unlike (cough Grimoire). Everyone is asking for more content, prettier art, occulus rift popamole support in a market where a huge chunk is shifting to mobile phones and tablets, where there's been an explosion in indie dev competition, this is the industry in which he's gloriously managing to make a living. It's the fact that gamers are blobs of red bull soaked spastic that leads me to believe game development decisions are best left with The Vogel.

No offence to anyone in the thread, just the unreal expectations of gamers in general.

Also, posted from my iPhone... sorry Jeff.

 

[NotAGolfer]

If he would remake Nethergate and add some more layers of depth while making it prettier too it I would def. buy it on day one.

So you'd be happy to pay $40 instead of $20 for the longer development time and increased costs of puchasing art?

40? I bought Nethergate Ressurrection on Steam after posting this yesterday. Was 5 bucks (€ though). I would pay up to 20 for his games ... would be $27 or so. But only if he did something new for a change. For one of his umpteenths iterations I wouldn't pay more than the 10 Euros they cost on Steam, sorry.
And that does have nothing to do with me being a blob of red bull soaked spastic or unreal expectations. He doesn't have a studio full of people he needs to pay, he recycles the same games over and over again which should lower development time and dev. costs quite a lot. His art looks ... functional at best, and besides maybe Geneforge he didn't exactly reinvent the CRPG formula, his games are pretty much standard fare.

 

[shihonage]

Jeff Vogel's perspectives as of late have this certain je ne sais quoi of a large ass imprint in a worn-out chair.

 

[Raghar]

As far as english speaking people are concerned, this is spoken by snooty types as to sound more sophisticated than they are, used humorously as such by people who *do* know what it means, and spoken by French when they need to say "I don't know what" in French.

I looked at meaning, and while I can see this phrase to be used on his early games, I think only women or Jaesun would be qualified to say if it really applies to his ass.

 

[Infinitron]

He's baaaaaaack: jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2014/12/how-youre-going-to-price-your-computer.html

How You're Going To Price Your Computer Game.


For the purpose of this article, I am going to assume you want lots of money. (Image stolen from here.)
Yes, it's time for another post about setting a price for a game. It's lame that I'm writing more on this, but things are really in flux in the game biz and a lot of people (developers and consumers) seem to be confused about how things work now. Here's my up-to-date take on it. I'll try to make it funny so it's less boring.

This is mainly about indie games, but, honestly, AAA games are in the same boat. The time scales and initial price are both bigger, but the pattern is the same.

So suppose you're a small developer and you wrote a game and you want to make lots of money off it. In 2010, it'd be easy. Get onto Steam, price it at $10, and buy a house made out of yachts.

Sadly, getting a time machine is not a viable option because physics. You'll need to do marketing and come up with a price for your game. Since my hot new indie RPG Avernum 2: Crystal Souls comes out soon, I’ve been thinking about this a lot. The pricing part, as thinking about marketing makes me break out in fear hives.

How Much Should My Game Cost?

Do it like the pros. Flip a coin. If it's heads, $15. If tails, $20. Done!

Ha ha. I'm just kidding. (I'm not kidding.) Right now the sweet sustainable-business price for indie games looks like $15-20. This range is cheap enough to feel affordable and high enough that you can make a living. As for which one you pick, look at your competitors, and do what they already did.

Granted, some rough riders want to send out their game at $10. This is still feasible, but with one warning: Look at your game and ask, "Can I honestly ask $15 for this?" If the answer is no, you need to look at your work REALLY hard. Figure out if you've made a quality product that brings something distinctive to the marketplace that a competitor can't easily clone. Be ready for a long, sleepless night.

(Obviously, I’m mostly focusing on personal computer games here. Pricing for mobile is an entirely different topic that has been extensively written about elsewhere.)

One more caveat, which is entirely my own opinion, if your game costs more than $10 per hour of gameplay, please reconsider your price. Not for your sake, but for those who write indie games after you. Charging $20 for your elegant 90 minute art piece might trick people into buying their first indie game, but it hurts the chances of their ever buying a second one.

Hokay. You have a number. Now ship your game! Isn't this exciting?


In Stage 1, this is how you see your game.
Stage One. "Will everyone please help me stay in business?"

The first couple months that your game is out, it'll always be at or near full price. A 20% off sale the first week can do really well to goose sales and bring in the undecided, but, otherwise, stick to your guns. Demand money.

The first month or so your game is out is key. It's the time when your game is most visible and people who are really jazzed about it will pay full price. This is why developers go so insane with worry about proper release press, Steam placement, and everything going perfectly.

Here is a very important rule of thumb:
The people who love your work enough to buy it right away at full price will provide you with most of the money that keeps you in business. So you need them.I can't stress this enough. I've had disagreements with my fans, but I am infinitely grateful to them for rushing in and paying full price. It keeps us making games. Period.

Hard question time again. Are there people out there who'll care enough about your product to buy it right away for full price? If you aren't sure, you may have a rough road ahead of you. Bundles are nice, but you won't make your living off of them.

Anyway, if things go accordingly to plan, you'll get a ton of sales the first week/month and be thrilled and optimistic and float on rainbows. Then, a month or so in, your sales will fall off a cliff. Don't worry. It's nature's way. Just don't let it surprise you or send you into a depression spiral. It's just life.

(It will surprise you and send you into a depression spiral. No mental preparation is adequate to protect you when you see that sales chart line slam downward.)

Give it a few more months for the diehards to trickle in and pay the full ticket. You'll need that money. Then, eventually, sales will be slow, you'll be three months into the long tail, and it'll almost be time for your first Steam sale.

It's time for Stage two.


In Stage 2, this is how you see your game.
Stage Two: "Will you take 25% off? How about 50%? We're pricing to move!"

Once a few months have passed and sales have trickled off, there is no longer anything to gain from always keeping your prices high. It's time to take advantage of Steam and other sales.

(Oh, you are on Steam right? At this point, if you aren't there, you have real problems. Get on it. The standards are way looser than they used to be. Put your game in Greenlight and get your Great Aunt Millie to vote for you.)

You're going to want to have sales. The key for the sales period is to take it slow. For the first sale, 25%. When the next sale comes along in a few months, 50%. And so on. (On Steam, you can also beg a super high discount to get a Flash Sale. Be aggressive for this. Being promoted by Steam makes the big bucks.)

Putting your special little game on sale can be an emotionally wrenching experience. Everyone wants to protect their baby. However, by this time in the process, I'm usually entirely sick of seeing my baby and don't mind tormenting it a little. Try to cultivate an emotional environment of cold brutality.

This process will go on forever, and you have a lot of freedom. You can be 50% off one sale and then 75% the next. Nobody will notice. You have room for some trial and error to find out what makes the most money.

But at a certain point, your work will be old and musty enough that even sales won't make a ton. It's just too buried in the game stores, and too many of its target audience will own it.

Then it's time for the deep discounts. The bundles. The hard sell. Or, to put it another way ...


In Stage 3, this is how you see your game.

Stage Three: "LET'S STRIP MINE THIS BAD BOY!!!!!"

A quality game can continue to generate income for a surprisingly long time. And why shouldn't it? If it's fun, it never stops being fun. However, at a certain point, your game will make the transition from "My darling baby that must be loved and cherished." to "An aging asset that must have its value ruthlessly extracted."

That's where the bundles (Humble Bundle, Indie Royale, Groupees, etc) come in.

Putting a game in a bundle in its first year is a mistake. You'll irritate people who paid a high price, and you’ll lose opportunities to sell the thing at a higher cost.

Once it's been out a year, things are different. Then your game is old news, and you're probably more focused on pushing your next title. In this case, bundling is terrific. It brings in more packets of money. It serves as a demo, bringing you a lot of attention which helps you sell your next game. And, surprisingly, past experience has shown that being in a bundle doesn't do a lot of damage to ordinary sales.

Actually, this isn't that much of a surprise. For even the best known indie, the population of gamers who have never heard of you will always be huge. Anything that gives you a bump in visibility will expand the fan base you need to continue as a business. Being in a bundle is perfect for this.

Sadly, bundles don't make as much as they used to. Humble Bundle still does well, but the million other bundles rarely generate much cash. It's another way in which the glory days are gone. Bundling does still increase your visibility, though. So it's still a good idea. Think of it as getting to charge for your demo.

Most people don't play games they get in bundles anyway. They're too busy trying the titles they got ten bundles before.

And Then It Goes On Forever

Since the Indie Bubble popped, getting a small game company to profitability has become far more difficult. In this super-competitive environment, it's tough to build a loyal fan base willing to pay full price. You need a really good title that earns a lot of visibility.

However, once you are making a living, it appears to be easier to stay in business. Thanks to sales, bundles, and the ever-ubiquitous Steam, a good game can continue earning for a lot longer than you might think. And that's even before you start porting it to new platforms, releasing Deluxe Editions, DLC, rewriting it as a Remastered edition, etc.

The Game Industry is changing really fast. I hope all this keeps you up. I'll probably write a new version of this article in six months, when Steam invents a way to beam games directly into your brain.

 

[Siveon]

Okay, seriously, what the fuck is up with the ponies?