Interview Paradox admit Tyranny sold below expectations, DLC still in the works

[Excidium II]

But it is. That's why the sales have normalized post-poe.

I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that all of these games are mediocre wastes of time. Pillars especially is not one half the game Baldur's Gate 2 is. This all reminds me of the legions of MMO developers who failed at copying Blizzard's success who blamed it on market forces, anything but the fact they made shitty games.

I'm tired of bringing it up, but there's a reason Divinity Original Sin smashed its competitors. Its the only isometric revival project that was actually fun to play. There's only so much grognard virtue signalling a person can do before they get tired and just want to play something that's entertaining.

DOS was p. banal. I got bored after completing cyseal and never launched again.

 

[Prime Junta]

Unengaging gameplay, half-hearted marketing, barely any community engagement, game doesn't do well. Imagine that.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Interesting. They changed this bit:

“I can play Kerbal Space Program that way, or Cities: Skylines. But if it’s Tyranny, I want to read every single word and savour the words, because I know that the team over at Obsidian put a lot of effort and love into writing those words. I want to make sure that I’m paying it the right kind of respect.”

The original article said "Chris Avellone and the team over at Obsidian" instead. I wonder if Paradox asked them to change it after realizing the mistake.

Keep in mind that the contract signed between Paradox and Obsidian required any official statements about Tyranny to exaggerate Chris Avellone's role, without his knowledge, in order to create a pretense that Avellone had a larger role in Tyranny's development than the people who were actually in charge. This apparently was one of the causes of Avellone's departure from Obsidian. It seems that Paradox would like to retain this pretense, stopped only by the undeniable fact that Avellone had left Obsidian and therefore can't have had the role in Tyranny they would like to claim.

 

[Wonderdog]

lol

 

[CRD]

DOS was p. banal. I got bored after completing cyseal and never launched again.

story was forgettable, but the combat alone deserved a playthrough

 

[Morality Games]

Tyranny's main advantage with Codexers is that nobody takes it seriously as an RPG so if by chance anyone fires it up they have zero expectations (similar to going into Dragonfall after the SRR OC). Consequently some of us actually did enjoy the game.

If they had a brain cell between them, they would have spent very little and expected low sales - if it were me I'd have thought 100k, 200k. It's bad for them that the sales couldn't meet those (appropriately) low expectations.

At 100k or even 200k you can't possibly make a game with enough budget to be worthwhile though, not with typical game company expenses anyways. Should have simply not made it obviously.

"RPGs have legs" applies here, which appears to be their attitude.

 

[Doma]

I love POE, I have multiple playthroughs of it and the expansions are great.

According to my steam, I have 2 hours in Tyrrany.

Oh well!

 

[undecaf]

Instead of some boring fantasy hellspawn, they should've made the player a nazi in a world where Hitler won. Guaranteed more general interest, media buzz and sales from people wanting to see what the fuck is going on.

 

[Infinitron]

Instead of some boring fantasy hellspawn, they should've made the player a nazi in a world where Hitler won. Guaranteed more general interest, media buzz and sales from people wanting to see what the fuck us going on.

Man in the High Castle RPG is actually an excellent idea.

 

[Morality Games]

I'm not sure what the right direction for this genre is anymore. I really don't know what will make people interested.

 

[ArchAngel]

There is only one reason why Tyranny did so badly. It was because PoE was a mediocre game and people didn't trust Obsidian blindly anymore to buy it without checking reviews and such. Then when other players and reviews said Tyranny is a mediocre game as well they didn't bother to buy it at all. "Fool me once..." and all that.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Keep in mind that the contract signed between Paradox and Obsidian required any official statements about Tyranny to exaggerate Chris Avellone's role, without his knowledge, in order to create a pretense that Avellone had a larger role in Tyranny's development than the people who were actually in charge. This apparently was one of the causes of Avellone's departure from Obsidian. It seems that Paradox would like to retain this pretense, stopped only by the undeniable fact that Avellone had left Obsidian and therefore can't have had the role in Tyranny they would like to claim.

Shit, never seen that one.

Love how Infinitron is hitting the citation needed button desperately and how he obviously didn't believe MCA. How could it be possible that the awesome entity of Obsidian would do something like that?????? Obviously MCA is just disgruntled for no reason.

 

[Infinitron]

There is only one reason why Tyranny did so badly. It was because PoE was a mediocre game and people didn't trust Obsidian blindly anymore to buy it without checking reviews and such. Then when other players and reviews said Tyranny is a mediocre game as well they didn't bother to buy it at all. "Fool me once..." and all that.

Codex bubble alert: http://store.steampowered.com/app/362960/Tyranny/

User reviews:
RECENT:
Very Positive (69 reviews)
OVERALL:
Very Positive (2,942 reviews)

Tyranny is not Torment.

Love how Infinitron is hitting the citation needed button desperately and how he obviously didn't believe MCA. How could it be possible that the awesome entity of Obsidian would do something like that?????? Obviously MCA is just disgruntled for no reason.

There's nothing to believe. MCA has never said he left because of that, saying it "apparently was one of the causes" is pure conjecture and requires Citation.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Well, he didn't say why, so I'm guessing then there was no reason!

 

[ArchAngel]

There is only one reason why Tyranny did so badly. It was because PoE was a mediocre game and people didn't trust Obsidian blindly anymore to buy it without checking reviews and such. Then when other players and reviews said Tyranny is a mediocre game as well they didn't bother to buy it at all. "Fool me once..." and all that.

Codex bubble alert: http://store.steampowered.com/app/362960/Tyranny/

User reviews:
RECENT:
Very Positive (69 reviews)
OVERALL:
Very Positive (2,942 reviews)

Tyranny is not Torment.

Love how Infinitron is hitting the citation needed button desperately and how he obviously didn't believe MCA. How could it be possible that the awesome entity of Obsidian would do something like that?????? Obviously MCA is just disgruntled for no reason.

There's nothing to believe. MCA has never said he left because of that, saying it "apparently was one of the causes" is pure conjecture and requires Citation.

I am not talking about the Steam score. Use your jew brain for a change.

 

[hivemind]

I got bored of tranny after like 2 hours because of the retarded rtwp combat, same as poe

dragon age origins is the one RPG in all of history that actually made real time with pause tolerable because of the camera controls and ok spell combos

 

[Infinitron]

I am not talking about the Steam score. Use your jew brain for a change.

Then what? You said "other players and reviews". Steam scores covers "other players". It's true that Tyranny's mainstream press reviews weren't as high as PoE's, but they were plenty high for PoE itself, and PoE also has "Very Positive" Steam reviews (though actually slightly lower than Tyranny!)

I get it - you think there's some mysterious unquantifiable yet highly influential group of grognards who decided PoE was a bad game and spread the word about that, which hurt Tyranny's sales (even though the people who did buy it still seem to like it!)

A fanciful theory. The reality is more likely to be this. The group of people who bought Pillars of Eternity but didn't buy Tyranny are not, for the most part, Codex-type hardcore grognards who were pissed off about Sawyerism and decided to boycott Obsidian. It's far more likely to be the opposite - that group is composed of more casual consumers who hopped on the isometric RPG bandwagon for Obsidian's flagship title, but weren't interested enough in the genre to buy the off-brand spinoff.

Basically, Excidium II and the Paradox guys are right about this, although they could have mitigated the outcome with better marketing.

 

[Wonderdog]

I love how everyone and everything is to blame except the people who made the fucking game Especially funny to think Obshitian has a huge casual following when OBVIOUSLY PoE appeal just to people who already played BG, and that company has basically squeaked out its ENTIRE existence on ever thinner and thinner old school credibility by having some black isle employees.

Success has a thousand failures, but failure is an orphan as they say.

The ultimate reason it failed is because they made a shit game, just like almost every failed game.

1. Shit art.
2. Historically laughable to a degree hard to believe. Bronze age kingdoms had just a dozen suits of bronze plate and on and on
3. No one heard of anyone involved in the game before.
4. All the marketing talks about is muh inclusive diverseness. Even among people who support that shit, how the fuck is that an actual selling point?

 

[Grauken]

Instead of some boring fantasy hellspawn, they should've made the player a nazi in a world where Hitler won. Guaranteed more general interest, media buzz and sales from people wanting to see what the fuck is going on.

When I first heard about tranny I though it would be like Cook's Black Company, which would have been fantastic, when I actually saw the first screens and more infos I was bored to tears

 

[undecaf]

Instead of some boring fantasy hellspawn, they should've made the player a nazi in a world where Hitler won. Guaranteed more general interest, media buzz and sales from people wanting to see what the fuck is going on.

When I first heard about tranny I though it would be like Cook's Black Company, which would have been fantastic, when I actually saw the first screens and more infos I was bored to tears

Sounds familiar. Well, I didn't think of specific setups back then, but still... Can't think of too many ways how they could've made it more boring.

A wasted opportunity since the "evil won, be evil" concept is actually an interesting premise.

 

[Goral]

Success has a thousand failures fathers, but failure is an orphan as they say.

Fixed.

 

[Iznaliu]

The ultimate reason it failed is because they made a shit game, just like almost every failed game.

Success has little to do with quality above a certain market size; whether Tyranny's market is above that size is debatable, but PoE's definitely is. Even then, success and quality aren't that connected.

1. Shit art

The art style is not a locus of criticism of Tyranny

2. Historically laughable to a degree hard to believe. Bronze age kingdoms had just a dozen suits of bronze plate and on and on

Other games are historically inaccurate to a similar degree, yet no-one cares; In fact, if a game is too accurate, people may see it as boring. The only designer in the industry who cares somewhat about verisimilitude is Josh Sawyer, who AFAIK wasn't involved in Tyranny.

3. No one heard of anyone involved in the game before.

PoE was like that to people outside the Codex, yet it still sold almost a million. People outside the Codex also buy into the cult of the creator far less.

4. All the marketing talks about is muh inclusive diverseness. Even among people who support that shit, how the fuck is that an actual selling point?

The marketing doesn't mention anything like that whatsoever, and even if it did, most people wouldn't care.

Here's why I think Tyranny failed:

1. Lack of marketing; people said that they had never heard of the game. This is why PoE2 used a Kickstarter Fig campaign.
2. What marketing did exist was misleading and failed to really capture the essence of the game
3. The game was too off-the-wall, especially setting-wise; people couldn't go 'if you liked [x], play Tyranny', since it wasn't something that had been done before/
4. The game was overpriced for the content included.
5. Other games being released at the same time.

A lot of this comes down to Paradox's involvement. Paradox's marketing acumen is subpar, but that has been masked by their other advantages.

 

[Severian Silk]

“Obsidian did a great job of capitalising on the timing of Kickstarter and the wave of nostalgia for these type of titles,

I hate people who think recent isometric RPGs return to popularity is caused mainly by nostalgia.

But it is. That's why the sales have normalized post-poe.

D:O2 will show you how normalized RPGs sales look like
Tyranny and TToN were just flukes.

What if Larian seriously fuck up D:OS2 somehow?

 

[Infinitron]

1. The game was too off-the-wall, especially setting-wise; people couldn't go 'if you liked [x], play Tyranny', since it wasn't something that had been done before/

They could have said "if you liked Pillars of Eternity, play Tyranny" but they barely even did that. There was exactly one Pillars of Eternity Kickstarter update about Tyranny (here) and it wasn't when the game was released. There are more Kickstarter updates about PoE2.

A cynic might theorize that Obsidian may have been happy not to cannibalize the PoE audience too much with Tyranny sales, since they wanted those people to save their money for the PoE2 Fig campaign which came a few months later.

 

[Iznaliu]

What if Larian seriously fuck up D:OS2 somehow?

D:OS2 is available as an alpha beta right now. You can see for yourself. (personally, I found it to be somewhat unrewarding and hard, but I think the balance has been tuned in subsequent patches since I played it, and I missed a whole chunk of content, so it's probably at least decent now; this was also before they added most of the game's headline features)