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

[Kev Inkline]

Now, to be honest, a so called MCA effect to sales cannot be very large, how many people do you reckon know him outside a very niche crowd of a very niche genre? And for a larger general audience, for how many his presence would be the reason to actually buy a game?

I mean personally I would probabliy buy a pair of sports underwear if it had his design, but exposure to Codex tends to distort one's perspective.

Kickstarter proves you wrong. Kickstarter success is mainly linked to what people they can scrape up who have some good reputation. If what you said weren't true then why would he quit? The reason he quit was he knew that lending his rep to this crap, especially falsely, would degrade it a large amount. That rep is equivalent to what chance he has for starting companies and projects, getting funded, or simply finding work at all.

The same applies to everyone as well but is mainly expressed in the form of resumes and references etc. If you have some reputation as an executive you can make millions a year in a heartbeat, if you have reputation for being a flop then you may as well retire from the industry.

But I don't think PoE degrades the rep of anyone involved, now does it? In the mainstream, it's well received and sold in decent numbers. We can only to speculate why he quit, but I think it's a quite stretch to say it was because of the end product tarnishing his rep.

 

[MRY]

MRY, if the MCA effect has such a significant impact on sales... doesn't that just make Numenera's bellyflop even more pathetic?

I realize this is facetious, but the MCA bump was realized at the Kickstarter phase. It's actually visible on the daily Kicktraq chart (right around 3/21). It looks like he immediately brought in ~1400 new backers and ~$90k, but even after that point, it looks like there's a continuing effect of about 50 backers per day.[*] Another thing is that Torment is actually the kind of game least likely to benefit from an Avellone effect because it was already drawing in story-centric folks and already had a bunch of RPG nerds and Rothfuss attached to it, so the Avellone bump was probably smaller for TTON than it would've been for other Kickstarter projects. Obviously, TTON did ludicrously well at the crowd-funding phase.

In terms of the sales phase, Chris didn't really promote the game much -- Colin and Gavin were the front men. Great guys, but less brand awareness by far. Ultimately, the Avellone effect can only take you so far, too, in the face of bad word-of-mouth and Steam reviews.

[*EDIT: Looks like I may be wrong about this. 3/21 was Rothfuss, 3/22 was Avellone, and Rothfuss almost certainly confounds any Avellone effect. Who knows?]

[EDIT 2: Hmmmmmmm. Not much impact on Divinity II: http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/larianstudios/divinity-original-sin-2/#chart-daily (9/25 is when he was announced). Nor much impact on BTIV: http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/inxile/the-bards-tale-iv/#chart-daily (6/29). So perhaps Avellone has never been more than a placebo.]

[EDIT 3: It looks like the one time there was a real impact was on Wasteland 2. http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2/#chart-daily (3/30) Following his announcement there was a huge jump in backers (about 3,000 in the first two days). So maybe this is something that has had diminishing returns.]

 

[LESS T_T]

Steamspy provides other useful tools to gauge a games' audience: http://steamspy.com/app/362960

(You should log in to see this data on Steamspy.)

Owners of Tyranny also own:

Title / Share / Avg. Playtime
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim / 75.82% / 184:05
Pillars of Eternity / 69.29% / 70:58
Sid Meier's Civilization V / 69.05% / 153:01
XCOM: Enemy Unknown / 60.74% / 58:57
Divinity: Original Sin (Classic) / 57.54% / 46:17
Divinity: Original Sin - Enhanced Edition / 57.54% / 28:55
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition / 55.32% / 24:54
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition / 55.14% / 24:43
Fallout 4 / 53.6% / 125:47
Borderlands 2 / 52.74% / 56:15

(Skyrim is the norm among all spectrum (from casual to most hardcore) of RPG players. 77% of AoD owners own Skyrim and played it 188 hours in average, though their other shared titles seem a bit more inclined to hardcore/niche than Tyranny.

For those wondering, 76.51% of Dungeon Rats owners are AoD owners.)


And this is cross analysis page for PoE and Tyranny (you should have an account to see it): http://steamspy.com/audience/362960/291650

 

[MRY]

Do you know how accurate this cross-over data is? I just looked it up for some WEG titles and it seems pretty implausible. For example, it asserts that <50% of Shardlight owners have bought any particular other WEG title. Surely that should be close to 100%. Likewise, it says that only 76.5% of people who own Dungeon Rats own AOD. Can that really be right?

[EDIT: I attached the purported crossover among Primordia, Technobabylon, and Gemini Rue players as a reference. Suffice it to say, this seems implausible to me, but maybe it suggests that the low-res, scifi, point-and-click WEG/AGS fanbase is actually much larger and more fragmented than I thought.]

 

[corvax]

Since I am positive that Obsidian and Paradox are reading this thread and simply cannot wait for my opinion I will reluctantly let them.

My first though when Tyranny was announced was: Why? Like most, I awaited Pillars II. Another RPG in a totally different setting using the same engine? Overkill. Paradox should have agreed instead of an Icewind Dale like game but in a Pillars setting. Keep the interest going and then go straight into Pillars II.

Sent from my HTC One M9 using Tapatalk

 

[Wonderdog]

With low sales numbers it means jack shit. You always have someone who buys because they saw it on steam and why not. The percentage of people who played PoE and then bought Tranny is much more informative, and obviously was very low.

Now, to be honest, a so called MCA effect to sales cannot be very large, how many people do you reckon know him outside a very niche crowd of a very niche genre? And for a larger general audience, for how many his presence would be the reason to actually buy a game?

I mean personally I would probabliy buy a pair of sports underwear if it had his design, but exposure to Codex tends to distort one's perspective.

Kickstarter proves you wrong. Kickstarter success is mainly linked to what people they can scrape up who have some good reputation. If what you said weren't true then why would he quit? The reason he quit was he knew that lending his rep to this crap, especially falsely, would degrade it a large amount. That rep is equivalent to what chance he has for starting companies and projects, getting funded, or simply finding work at all.

The same applies to everyone as well but is mainly expressed in the form of resumes and references etc. If you have some reputation as an executive you can make millions a year in a heartbeat, if you have reputation for being a flop then you may as well retire from the industry.

But I don't think PoE degrades the rep of anyone involved, now does it? In the mainstream, it's well received and sold in decent numbers. We can only to speculate why he quit, but I think it's a quite stretch to say it was because of the end product tarnishing his rep.

He said that's why he quit.

 

[aweigh]

i think just owning skyrim just disqualify that person as part of the "rpg market".

no true rpger/codexer would ever buy a game like that and support it financially knowing what it truly is.


[cue screenshot of someone's rpgcodex steam profile showing every single poster currently playing skyrim/cod/witcher]

 

[LESS T_T]

Do you know how accurate this cross-over data is? I just looked it up for some WEG titles and it seems pretty implausible. For example, it asserts that <50% of Shardlight owners have bought any particular other WEG title. Surely that should be close to 100%. Likewise, it says that only 76.5% of people who own Dungeon Rats own AOD. Can that really be right?

[EDIT: I attached the purported crossover among Primordia, Technobabylon, and Gemini Rue players as a reference. Suffice it to say, this seems implausible to me, but maybe it suggests that the low-res, scifi, point-and-click WEG/AGS fanbase is actually much larger and more fragmented than I thought.]

Well, as with the owner data, it's based on a ramdom sample and may be spotty for smaller titles. This is not the case for Shardlight, but it also could be skewed by bundles. For example, games included in the same Humble Bundle may show much stronger correlation than thematically similar titles.

For DR/AoD, I think it seems plausible and shows a strong correlation.

 

[Iznaliu]

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?

I got a better list on why it failed

0. It was a fund-raiser project from the start
1. low-effort project, low production standard
2. Regurgitated assets from PoE
3. Same gangrenous ruleset as PoE
4. Same gangrenous combat as PoE (except its even worse cause you fight same 3 mobs over and over)
5. binary choices
6. Liberal BS influence on world-building (almost exclusively females are land-owners while men are weak and pathetic)

What is with some people thinking that everyone agrees with them when the evidence points elsewhere?

 

[Roguey]

i think just owning skyrim just disqualify that person as part of the "rpg market".

no true rpger/codexer would ever buy a game like that and support it financially knowing what it truly is.


[cue screenshot of someone's rpgcodex steam profile showing every single poster currently playing skyrim/cod/witcher]

I bought the complete version at a discounted price and enjoyed it after its shaky start.

 

[Kev Inkline]

He said that's why he quit.

Ok, I stand corrected.

However, it does not immeadiately follow that the rep of a particular person would result in huge influx of funds towards a project, even if it means a lot in terms of current and future income for that particular person.

But I'll drop it, it's hard to prove in either way, and your point about CEO income is a good one, there's actually a classic paper called the Economics of Superstars from the early 80s that is pertinent to the question how come a few can reap so much, even if they are only marginally better the rest.

http://livingeconomics.org/article.asp?docId=150

 

[Lurker King]

low-cost, low-effort project, low production standard (this is basically synonymous with 0.)

Low cost and low effort? How many developers worked on this thing for how many months? They worked for free? No, they didn’t. It wasn’t low cost.

low production standard.)

Implying that PoE sold more because it had better looks. XD

Regurgitated assets from PoE. Same gangrenous ruleset as PoE. Same gangrenous combat as PoE (except its even worse cause you fight the same 3 mobs over and over). binary choices falsely presented as "good storytelling". Liberal BS influence on world-building

Somehow you forgot to include the ridiculous price tag.

You just described what most Obsidian cRPGs will look like from now on, shitlord. Enjoy your world of decline and shit.

 

[Lurker King]

My first though when Tyranny was announced was: Why?

Cheap slam-dunk to cash in on reused art assets, engine, etc; and keep them afloat while developing another bigger project. I don’t understand why people keep saying it was a flop. It wasn’t. More than 100k for a game that was made in a hurry, with a ridiculous price tag.

- The fact that he is constantly used in marketing materials, Kickstarter pitches, and convention panels means that people who are paid to help sell products believe his name is known.

- A Google News search for Chris Avellone yields 3,060 results, although Google's result count is pretty dodgy.

Let’s be honest. Obsidian is trying to please the ex-fans from Bioware that enjoyed BG2. That’s it. Whether they are also fans of Chris Avellone and games such as PS:T, etc.; is open to debate.

 

[Mastermind]

tyranny sold poorly because the combat was so boring it made Pillars' combat feel like you were simultaneously fucking a half dozen whores high on coke while riding on the wing of an airplane.

 

[Fairfax]

[EDIT 2: Hmmmmmmm. Not much impact on Divinity II: http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/larianstudios/divinity-original-sin-2/#chart-daily (9/25 is when he was announced).

3 days after he was announced $92,629, and the 3 days before raised $56,271. 64.6% increase.
1893 x 1041 backers in the same periods. 81.8% increase.

Oh, and the Codex fundraiser got another $2k the day MCA was announced.

That's a significant impact. I've posted numerous KS campaign analyses on all of the big RPG ones +others (btw you're welcome, Swen ), and very few stretch goals/add-ons were nearly as effective as MCA being added to WL2, TTON and D:OS2. The effect on D:OS2 doesn't look as significant because the campaign was heavy on its first and last few days, which is a different % for each campaign for various reasons.

 

[MRY]

[EDIT 2: Hmmmmmmm. Not much impact on Divinity II: http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/larianstudios/divinity-original-sin-2/#chart-daily (9/25 is when he was announced).

3 days after he was announced $92,629, and the 3 days before raised $56,271. 64.6% increase.
1893 x 1041 backers in the same periods. 81.8% increase.

Well, every Kickstarter gets a boost at the end. There was only an $11k bump on the day he was announced, and most of that looks like it's just the upward trendline for the last few days. It's not nothing but it's not much.

 

[Invictus]

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.

Agree completely

the setting was good but a bit too bland; I kind of was expecting Mordor looking setting with depressing decaying towns roamed by dessolate humans and ruled by monsters or even a middle eastern or egyptian vibe setting...what we got was not very memorable

There was literally no marketing at all behind this, no youtube heavyweights doing lets plays, not buzz at all

The pricing was horrendous, this is exactly the kind of $25 $30 game that would have sold much better at a more competitive price and yeah that doesn include taking into account the timing.
For the prize of Tyranny I could get 4 or even 5 very decent games at full price or 7 or 8 during the Holliday sales
Had it been priced more competitively it would have maybe less profit per unit but more overall sales

The combat was good I liked it (not loved it) but at least the magic system was fucking excellent.. too bad not many people gave it a chance

The story was ok with some truly "evil" choices more interesting that beign just a psycho and a dick... you could play people, be righteously evil or murder or maim to your leisure

The fact the "to be continued" ending and the limited length of the game (although it has some nice reactivity) was the final nail on the coffin for this

I genuinely enjoyed the game maybe even better than Pillars and feel that with a simple adjustment to the price point would have been enough to incentivize players to actually buy the game and enjoy it... too bad Paradox seemed to throw the towel on the promotional stage and the marketing

 

[Prime Junta]

The combat was good I liked it (not loved it) but at least the magic system was fucking excellent

 

[Delbaeth]

Paradox mostly have two kinds of die hard fans:
-the "grognards" who hate Turn Based system and everyone who don't chose their nation in game and fight against each other on Pdox forums like politics militants would do on reddit*
-those who don't care about strategy but are Game of Thrones fans and play extensively CKII (note that most of them don't know there was a CK1, remember that feeling?)

*: something that shows that even the Codex is more sane than Pdox forums (naturally when it comes to strategy, but even coming to the RPG, Codex is less full of hate). Funny that the Codex is judged by other people as "the guys who hate everything", where Pdox forums are full of "people who hate everyone and everything - as far as it isn't labeled Pdox, because there, they are blind worshipers".

So, to appeal the die hard Pdox fans, in a non strategy game...
You have to flatter the nationalist vibe for the "grognards" and give very explicit sex romances for the GoT fans.
But then you had a fantasy world - the "grognards" don't care if it's a dark world, they want to rise their own flag on it - without soft porn scenes.

Sure there aren't any of that kind of scenes in CK2, but the GoT fans accept that because it's a game of avatars and screens, for them. But if the character moves like it does in a RPG, they are expecting for more.

Sure again, the DLC wave can reminding them browel things, but they won't pay for their fix that way, especially if the game is short. Who will pay more to f*ck during a shorter time?

Think like they think and you will understand why the old Pdox guard** didn't care about Tyranny.

**: it isn't the real old guard of course. The old fans from early 2000s aren't like that for the most part. Well, to make a comparison, when thinking about die hard Pdox fans, think about the BSN die hard fans.

Pdox fans would only move from their strategy games if you could f*ck while listening your national anthem.

 

[Prime Junta]

Pdox fans would only move from their strategy games if you could f*ck while listening your national anthem.

They're Swedes, aren't they?

 

[Delbaeth]

Always find funny that the "censored" tag isn't above the finn's naked body.

 

[Fredward]

I liked Tyranny more than I liked unpatched PoE. It probably didn't sell well because marketing was non-existent, there was zero hype for this game (disregarding the Codex), it's short and I dunno if this would influence sales but the C&C were overstated. It functions as window-dressing mainly and they really shot themselves in the foot by then circumscribing the endings so they more or less all wind up in the same place so they can bait DLC.

I did like the magic system though. And the characters were memorable. I also don't know why not all cRPG's have been using that hovertext thing for info you'd think your character would know. It seems like a very 'duh' option in retrospect.

 

[Prime Junta]

The magic system had potential. It's just too bad it overlapped with and was overshadowed by the half-arsed animu talent trees.

 

[Flou]

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.

I wouldn't use the word failed when it comes to Tyranny. The game is probably making profit already for Paradox, just not as much as they hoped for. Money they could have used to launch World of Darkness game from Obsidian.
DLC's will hopefully bring in more money, as will Steam sales eventually. Paradox was hoping the game to be an instant hit like Cities:Skylines and Stellaris and in that sense it did fail.

But like you said, marketing and price are big factors when it comes to Tyranny selling only 200k units. Paradox uses a lot of streaming and streamers when it comes to their marketing. You can't really do that with a game like Tyranny.
Just look at Stellaris or Cities marketing... it's streams after streams building up the hype just before release date. They don't have the budget bigger publishers have, so I get it and it obviously works for most of their games. They need to come up with a way to promote games like Tyranny with the shoe string budget they have, as well as they promote their strategy games if they expect huge sales for those games.

Asking 45 dollars/euros is also a bit of mistake from their part, but then again they are happy with the numbers they see from Steam (wishlists etc). So they probably wanted to get full price from those grognards/fans who won't wait for the price to drop to 20-30 dollars and are perfectly fine with people wanting to wait for the Steam sales to get the game.
You could already see a boost from the all the coupons from PoE2 campaign, so it is highly likely the sales will get a nice boost during summer sales.

 

[Flou]

Since I am positive that Obsidian and Paradox are reading this thread and simply cannot wait for my opinion I will reluctantly let them.

My first though when Tyranny was announced was: Why? Like most, I awaited Pillars II. Another RPG in a totally different setting using the same engine? Overkill. Paradox should have agreed instead of an Icewind Dale like game but in a Pillars setting. Keep the interest going and then go straight into Pillars II.

I'm fairly sure Obsidian wouldn't have wanted to make an other game in Pillars setting at that point. They should have done something other than fantasy, though I'm not sure if the costs would have gone up from having to revamp the engine even more in such case.

I did like Tyranny, though not as much as Pillars and I will end up buying the DLC's for it (just not the portrait ones).