4X Old World - historical 4X strategy by Civ 4 designer (formerly 10 Crowns)

[cvv]

But I'm not sure if they are shooting themselves in the foot with that approach - early access as Epic exclusive?
It's rather cheap at the moment, but who will buy it on epic while it's still not finished?

The development was a mess, Epic probably saved their bacon.

As for why games go Epic exclusives, a few devs (Coffe Stain comes to mind) said it clearly - it's a substantial sum upfront, that can even cover all development costs if it's a smaller game, and all the subsequent sales are pure profit.

I'm kindda curious about this, some of the ideas sound interesting and btw, I'm loving the classical art style, unlike Civ6 with its vomit inducing cartoony diarrhoea and goofy Disney characters instead of world leaders.

 

[ZeniBot]

UI looks bad enough to turn me off
>Epic Store Exclusive
Oh good I wasn't going to buy it anyway

Spoiler

Oh hey look its completely historically inaccurate Cleopatra. God I fucking hate developers doing this shit. GREEK DAMN IT GREEK. She's Ptolemaic dumbshits. She wouldn't be dressed like that. Actually I have no fucking idea what even her outfit is cause its not Egyptain either, it looks almost African. (Edit in post: yes I'm aware I fucked up here, the visuals scream liz taylor the text specifies otherwise)
edit. Actually I found the source image

Spoiler

They weren't even trying.

 

[cvv]

Dude, that's Hatshepsut, she reigned like 1 500 years before Cleopatra.

Altho that writing IS cringy as fuck, no way around that.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Dude, that's Hatshepsut, she reigned like 1 500 years before Cleopatra.

Altho that writing IS cringy as fuck, no way around that.

A couple of years ago, I would have thought that this was just placeholder "programmer writing", but now it's more likely that it's "writer writing" and there to stay.

 

[ZeniBot]

Dude, that's Hatshepsut, she reigned like 1 500 years before Cleopatra.

Right I read the text. New Kingdom dresses looked nothing like that. Its not even remotely accurate to the style.

Spoiler

 

[Nahel]

The dress is probably the lowest problem in that description.

 

[Yosharian]

Jesus fucking christ that writing

 

[Zann]

"Pharoah" ? Is this some alternate english spelling I'm unaware of, a typo, or a lame as fuck attempt at emphasizing the she-Pharaoh aspect ?
I fear mine is a rhetorical question, but I'm still (morbidly) curious.

And fuck, what's with this recent obsession with depicting ancient egyptians as bitchy-looking maghrebis ?

Spoiler

 

[Yosharian]

No, it's just misspelled

 

[RayF]

Honestly, this is the first Civ-style game I've seen advertised that I am pretty excited for. Can't wait to try it out for EA.

 

[Ranarama]

But I'm not sure if they are shooting themselves in the foot with that approach - early access as Epic exclusive?
It's rather cheap at the moment, but who will buy it on epic while it's still not finished?

Why not? It's fantastic for the consumer (or at least neutral for those of us who can control ourselves.)

While it's in Early Access / being developed, the temptation to buy is taken away from you. You get to hear the opinions of people who have played it (albeit people who would willingly install the Epic store, so maybe take that into account). Money gets taken from Epic and put into the hands of developers. Finally, when it comes out on actual stores the developers get a real release date rather than the wet fart of PR that "coming out of Early Access" is.

I see no downside.

 

[Burning Bridges]

There will be enough morons who buy it.

 

[Burning Bridges]

The past was brown

 

[Burning Bridges]

UI looks bad enough to turn me off
>Epic Store Exclusive
Oh good I wasn't going to buy it anyway

Spoiler

Oh hey look its completely historically inaccurate Cleopatra. God I fucking hate developers doing this shit. GREEK DAMN IT GREEK. She's Ptolemaic dumbshits. She wouldn't be dressed like that. Actually I have no fucking idea what even her outfit is cause its not Egyptain either, it looks almost African. (Edit in post: yes I'm aware I fucked up here, the visuals scream liz taylor the text specifies otherwise)
edit. Actually I found the source image

You know how they do those graphics, dont you?

They take photographs, sometimes cut & paste parts of them into layers and then use the artistic filters in Photoshop until it looks like it was painted. That's why these low-budget games look so fucking weird and amateurish. It also explains why you sometimes recognize actual people. I'm 99% sure this was the face of someone who played Cleopatra in some old movie, and got the Photoshop treatment.

 

[RayF]

There will be enough morons who buy it.

Serious question. What would make someone a moron for buying it? If they enjoy the game and can afford it, where does the moron part come in?

Being totally serious. I have no idea what is behind the hate for the Epic store. I looked them up on wiki out of curiosity and it seems like they take less of a cut then Steam, which means more money for devs. Plus anything that helps break the Steam monopoly seems like a good thing.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Soren's done some good stuff in the past but this clone of Civ5 looks terrible. Why can't 1UPT just go into a corner and die, together with 2AP nu-XCOM madness?

 

[Dakka]

Sounds cool. We need more alternatives in the strategy genre.

 

[Hellraiser]

Being totally serious. I have no idea what is behind the hate for the Epic store. I looked them up on wiki out of curiosity and it seems like they take less of a cut then Steam, which means more money for devs. Plus anything that helps break the Steam monopoly seems like a good thing.

Chinese investors, and there is no such thing as an independent "free" enterprise in China, the state always has a say. You don't know where the data is ending up or what they are doing with it.

Paying for exclusivity thus limiting actual competition and consumer choice. Real competition would be stores selling the same thing at different prices.

In short, epic store can go fuck itself because it goes against my interest as a customer.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Real competition would be stores selling the same thing at different prices.

The prices are set by the publishers, not the stores afaik and it's the publishers' decision if they want to share the money they save by the lower cut Epic takes with their customers. Currently they don't do that, because they want tier 1 stores to have the same prices. Different prices happen through official third party key sellers.

 

[RayF]

Chinese investors, and there is no such thing as an independent "free" enterprise in China, the state always has a say. You don't know where the data is ending up or what they are doing with it.

Are you worried about your game-playing data? I mean, I totally understand data privacy concerns but it seems like your gaming activity data is pretty far down the list compared to all of the social media logging, internet activity and GPS tracking that is already being done everywhere.

Paying for exclusivity thus limiting actual competition and consumer choice. Real competition would be stores selling the same thing at different prices.

They are trying to break the Steam monopoly, though. The problem is that the vast majority of gamers don't give a shit if Steam is screwing developers because there is no competition among game delivery platforms. They just want their games at the cheapest price. But because Steam takes a bigger cut from the devs, they will always be able to sell games at a lower price than potential competitors because they are taking the money straight out of the game developer's pockets.

In short, epic store can go fuck itself because it goes against my interest as a customer.

It's my understanding that the exclusivity deal with Epic is what allowed the devs for "Old World" to finish the game. So without the Epic Game store, there would be no Old World for you to get at all... thus less choice.

 

[barker_s]

They are trying to break the Steam monopoly, though.

That's great and I'm all for it, but they're using all the wrong methods. If Epic want my money, then they should offer me something more than Steam, instead of artificially locking me out of certain games. Take a look at GOG - they found their niche, they took abandonware, made it run on modern systems out of the box and bundled it with goodies like pdf scans of manuals and so on. Then they started selling DRM-free modern titles. Next, they started giving you certain titles for free if you already own them on Steam. That's consumer-friendly. Holding a game hostage is not.

 

[Hellraiser]

Are you worried about your game-playing data? I mean, I totally understand data privacy concerns but it seems like your gaming activity data is pretty far down the list compared to all of the social media logging, internet activity and GPS tracking that is already being done everywhere.

Billing information and card data. Also I don't use social media, similar to the bulk of TV it is utter brain rot mostly aimed at delivering mind-numbing advertisement. The only thing I really do not have a say over is internet activity, but that is an unavoidable necessary evil to gain obvious benefits of internet access. Phone has been purged of all trackware/bloatware possible.

Epic is going about this the ass-backwards way, instead of winning market share by winning potential customers over with a better deal, they are screwing with the "supply chains" of competitors (not just steam) with the exclusivity. The better platform doesn't win, just the one that has more money to be able to limit consumer choice and fuck up competitors with less money. I can bet that they are burning Chinese money at the moment and not making any profit and at some point they will need to raise their cut to become more profitable. A business model where they are paying devs up front, giving away free games and having a low margin (price for hosting/selling games) is not a very viable one. To me this reeks of price dumping, which is illegal at least in the EU (and also not easy to prove).

As a customer it is not my problem if publishers are not making enough money per sale on a given platform. Either the 30% cut and other conditions of steam are worth the increased revenue from better exposure or whatever else valve gives for that price, or they should just offer the game on another platform or sell it by themselves and bear the fixed costs of maintaining servers and other by themselves. Publishers in particular have a choice here and some negotiation power.

If indies have a problem they can band-up and form a union, nothing is stopping them from trying to negotiate as a group to make their negotiation position better. Same goes for publishers.

Lastly, if developers cannot finish their pet projects and sell them with the resources they have, it is a management problem on their end. Either scam people star citizen style to fund it, downscale where possible/sensible (pointless AAA fidelity) to end up with some final version that is deliverable and can sell, or just admit the plan was doomed to fail from the start due to being too ambitious. It is not the customer's role to subsidize business-illiterate developers that hope the resource issues will solve themselves.

 

[RayF]

Either the 30% cut and other conditions of steam are worth the increased revenue from better exposure or whatever else valve gives for that price, or they should just offer the game on another platform

Isn't that what is essentially happening here? They're selling on a different platform and now everyone is mad at the platform because it's not simultaneously available on Steam.

I mean, the EA for this game will still be available to everyone. Using Steam does not preclude you from using Epic, so the "exclusivity" argument rings kind of hollow.

I do get the data privacy concerns. Anyway, thanks to everyone for giving me straight answers.

 

[JarlFrank]

Steam's 30% cut being unfair is a very recent complaint among developers, mostly indies. It's industry standard in several branches of the entertainment industry, not only games. In fact, in book writing it's considered a super good deal. Amazon's self-publishing service, for example, pays 70% royalties to the authors and that's way better than you could ever expect with a publisher. (also it's framed positively as "author gets 70%" rather than negatively "storefront takes 30%)

It's a damn good deal compared to old brick and mortar stores. All things considered, getting 70% of the profits directly into your account is awesome especially for indie devs who have no publisher middleman.

Add to that all the cool stuff Steam offers developers. Regular sale events where people buy tons of games, frontpage features if your game gets a lot of traffic, early access, wishlists, workshop integration for modding, easy distribution of patches, integrated user forums, in-store reviews, etc etc.

This is much, much better than anything indie devs had access to in the 90s and 00s.

 

[vonAchdorf]

The 30% used to be a good deal, especially compared to the olden times, but times are a-changing and now the 30% don't look as good as they used to. Other digital stores have also come under pressure (e.g. Apple's App store) for adhering to the baseline 30% cut.