Company News JoWooD Spent Their Last Quarter Randomly

[Jaesun]

Let's play a game, you and I CreamyBlood. It's called Devil's Advocate Developer and Publisher model choose your own adventure game™.

JoWood and Piranha Bytes sign a contract to develop Gothic 3. JoWood provides money to develop Gothic 3 to Piranha Bytes and have it finished at a mutually exclusive agreed upon date.

3 Months upon the date that the game was agreed to be finished by, Gothic 3 is in the state is was at release.

Do you:

1) Release the game as is, to recover your losses.
2) Continue to fund Piranha Bytes to finish the game, even though they failed to provide a finished game by the contract as signed.

 

[racofer]

3) Nuke both, loot their remains and score some whores.

 

[Jaesun]

3) Nuke both, loot their remains and score some whores.

Duh Melca.... WAIT! YOU ARE NOT MELCAR!!!111

 

[CreamyBlood]

It doesn't matter. I bought a broken game that didn't work from the publisher. I'm not talking about game mechanics, I'm talking busted peice of software that didn't work. It's irrelevant to me who Jowoods sub-contractors are and what their excuses might be. I bought a broken toy, Jowood knowingly sold it to me in that state, not PB.

Hence, I felt ripped off and scammed.

 

[Jaesun]

Was Knights of the Old Republic your first RPG you played CreamyBlood?

 

[CreamyBlood]

No Jaesun, it was the first RPG I never finished. I believe I made it all the way to the last planet but just couldn't be assed to kill/loot/continue anymore. I was so bored of it by then.

I have to admit, I did enjoy it for many hours even after I realized how shallow it was.

I'm not sure what my first RPG was, besides PnP D&D around thirty years ago. I played Star Trek on an IBM mainframe and Hunt the Wumpus when I was eight years old. I also really liked Dungeon Master when it came out on the Atari ST. I even learned C just so I could code my own sci-fi version of it.

Recent games I liked are Dark Messiah (I'm an FPS guy too), Divine Divinity and both Gothics. Plus all of the usual. I think Bloodlines will be next (it's nice to have stuff to play that you haven't played before). Then Risen.

I just thought that Jowood released a busted peice of software, knowingly, and didn't care. There's nothing wrong with being a pissed of customer when the product is broken. And that's why I have no sympathy for them. If you sell shit don't expect to be succesful. Pretty simple.

 

[Luzur]

Gothic 3 was actually playable (atleast for me, i didnt have any problems with it except some minor stuff) and looks even more inviting now that Gothic 4 have been revealed.

 

[commie]

I don't see anyone else publishing these types of games, except the new Gothics (Risen). JA3, originally slated as a TB system...no publisher. Arx Fatalis 2...couldn't find a publisher. Etc, etc...

The rest of your post talks about what Jowood became. I agreed with this and it was never part of my point.

Well Jowood didn't publish JA3 or AF2 either. Gothic was originally published by Egmont and then Xicat for North America. It was their incompetence that partially led to the low sales of Silent Storm and Gothic when they did get the publishing rights for it. They were out of their depth and preyed on small developers like PB and Nival with promises they couldn't keep. Yeah of course you could blame the developers for being naive, but even so, those games were good enough to have found other, better publishers. Just look at the crappy and cheap box design of those Jowood titles. Even good games looked like low budget crap thanks to Jowood.

 

[TsongaKralj]

If they go down,good riddance.Real Gothic 4 is Risen anyway and it did well enough that PB are developing a sequel so who cares.

 

[Azrael the cat]

If they go down,good riddance.Real Gothic 4 is Risen anyway and it did well enough that PB are developing a sequel so who cares.

Best thing about that was that they had a hit despite being slammed by retarded profeshunal game reviewers, who couldn't handle the fact that wandering off the path into the wilderness (despite being repeatedly warned by NPCs that doing so too early will get you wtfpwned) had the exact result that the NPCs told you would happen. The inability to button mash your way through each and every bit of the game world at any level meant the game was shite in the eyes of western game journalists. It was an incredibly healthy sign that enough folks aren't swayed by those idiots that a game can actually make money despite them.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

If they go down,good riddance.Real Gothic 4 is Risen anyway and it did well enough that PB are developing a sequel so who cares.

Best thing about that was that they had a hit despite being slammed by retarded profeshunal game reviewers, who couldn't handle the fact that wandering off the path into the wilderness (despite being repeatedly warned by NPCs that doing so too early will get you wtfpwned) had the exact result that the NPCs told you would happen. The inability to button mash your way through each and every bit of the game world at any level meant the game was shite in the eyes of western game journalists. It was an incredibly healthy sign that enough folks aren't swayed by those idiots that a game can actually make money despite them.

Sounds exactly like what happened to Hammer and Sickle in the reviews department.

Constant warnings to act like a secret agent around Police and American/British troops = Reviewer starts major firefights with them instead and begins WW3 = "This game is the worst in history! And it is so short! LOL".

 

[TsongaKralj]

If they go down,good riddance.Real Gothic 4 is Risen anyway and it did well enough that PB are developing a sequel so who cares.

Best thing about that was that they had a hit despite being slammed by retarded profeshunal game reviewers, who couldn't handle the fact that wandering off the path into the wilderness (despite being repeatedly warned by NPCs that doing so too early will get you wtfpwned) had the exact result that the NPCs told you would happen. The inability to button mash your way through each and every bit of the game world at any level meant the game was shite in the eyes of western game journalists. It was an incredibly healthy sign that enough folks aren't swayed by those idiots that a game can actually make money despite them.

Yeah,Risen did prove that there's still a market for Gothic type games as it sold well despite almost zero hype and average scores in western reviews which is pretty significant as we might see more developers go down the route of trying to make a reasonably challenging ARPG without ridiculous level of handholding,quest compasses,regenerating health and similar nonsense which is present in vast majority of modern mainstream games.Although you have to consider that PB has an already established solid base of fans since Gothic 1 who simply wanted(and got)more of the same with some improvements(better combat,graphics etc.).

Risen was by far the most pleseant surprise and most fun I had with a game in years,I mean I would have considered it a great game even if it came out during a better gaming period(not the equal of G2NOTR but say on the level of G1 and better than G2 vanilla)but given the state of gaming industry today even with its usual PB games flaws it's a fucking priceless gem.Piranha Bytes remains my last vestige of hope among non-indie developers and I'm seriously hyped for Risen 2,the only game I'm really looking forward to.If they don't fuck up and deliver another Gothic 1 type game I'll be more than content but if they somehow pull of a G2NOTR equivalent to Risen(which is possible even if the chance is small)I'd be excstatic.

 

[Darth Roxor]

But you know what angers me? Arcania will probably sell well and it's gonna get 9/10s all across the media. I can already see the reviews. "Arcania retains the spirit of the original Gothic series while doing away with all the annoying features that nobody liked anyway and allows the player to immerse himself in the wonderful experinahdjgahahw'

 

[Morgoth]

I see this differently. Arcania has no marketing muscle whatsoever, hence it will also get low review scores. Hype/whores/free barbecues for journalists buys you high review scores, see Bethesda.

Arcania will have a metactritics of some 69% and probably sell 300k. Months later, NoGood will be a goner.

 

[zeitgeist]

Sounds exactly like what happened to Hammer and Sickle in the reviews department.

Constant warnings to act like a secret agent around Police and American/British troops = Reviewer starts major firefights with them instead and begins WW3 = "This game is the worst in history! And it is so short! LOL".

Oh my. Any chance of a link to the specific review(s)?

 

[Fens]

jowood recently dropped out of the vienna stock exchange prime market segment (september 20th) into the mid market one, because the tradable shares were no longer worth 20 million euros. this happened about a year and a half after they bought back about 11k shares.

should arcania fail, they'll probably just re-issue the shares (and some more) at a loss to get back into business. the only way they'll go belly up with this is if their other ventures ( shareholder report Q1 2010 ) fail simultaneously.