We’ll see. Didn’t PK spend most of its first week at number one on Steam? Even now it’s number ten on global top sellers. Deadfire vanished from that list in like a day, not sure if Tyranny was ever on it.
I suspect that the ceiling for these games is somewhere between Deadfire/Tyranny and POE. The issue is that Pillars didn’t just capture a huge amount of pent up demand, I think it also put a lot of those players in isometric RTWP limbo. Not that they disliked it, because outside of this place it still seems very well-regarded. But POE was a huge time commitment that was not very engaging, especially before the expansions. There are about a million people who bought the game, played it for too long to return, and then just kinda lost interest. When they look at a new isometric RTWP RPG, many of them probably say to themselves, “I should finish Pillars before I buy another one of these,” and then they never do either.
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Roguey I enjoyed POE 3.0 just fine, and I loved a lot of things about Tyranny (Deadfire I’m having a limbo experience with—okay for what it is, but stuck at 25 hours in since June because I just don’t feel compelled to boot up the game).
Kingmaker is way, way better, though. Just playing it makes me feel a hundred times more disappointed with Obsidian. I hope that will matter to its sales because it actually scratches the nostalgia itch in a way none of these others have done.
One thing: it’s not single player RTWP that imposes the ceiling, it’s the isometric perspective. NWN2 and DAO both sold millions of units. Real time with pause is not the problem, an RPG that looks like a strategy game is. Throw in an over the shoulder camera and some cutscenes and sales would go through the roof. Of course, that shit is expensive.
If your thesis is right, these games should NEVER be made in America. They require a ton of labor and a 300,000 unit ceiling means that you can’t really make an old school RPG that’s both packed with content and profitable. Owlcat’s model is the way to go: hire a bunch of Russians and bring in one American writer like MCA as a branching narrative consultant.
There’s a reason Kingmaker looks to be two or three times the size of Deadfire.
Edit 2: old school RPGs are like sneakers or textiles—you have to be crazy to manufacture them in a first world country.
