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Editorial Swen Vincke reflects on the development of Div:OS, reveals that it's sold over half a million copies

TheGreatOne

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Why would they want to impress publishers? So they can give us Divinity Age 2: The dragon romance edition? Developers like Larian, Atlus, From Software, NIS, presumably inXile (and earlier on Troika&Black Isle) can make better games precisely because they're not hampered down by massive budgets&sales expectations and publishers the same way the likes of Bioware, Square Enix, Blizzard and Bethesda are
 

tuluse

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Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Vincke and Barnson are boasting a bit prematurely, half-a-mil isn't going to make most publishers turn their heads, do a double-take, and give their best impression of the Tex Avery wolf in Red Hot Riding Hood. The return of the mid-budget single-A is welcome of course.
OTOH it's going to sell as well as their real time RPGs did. So if Swen's point was "you should have let us do turn based all along", he can rub it in.
 

Abu Antar

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Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Why would they want to impress publishers? So they can give us Divinity Age 2: The dragon romance edition? Developers like Larian, Atlus, From Software, NIS, presumably inXile (and earlier on Troika&Black Isle) can make better games precisely because they're not hampered down by massive budgets&sales expectations and publishers the same way the likes of Bioware, Square Enix, Blizzard and Bethesda are
From Software are now owned by Kadokawa Corporation as of May 2014 and Atlus are owned by SEGA Corporation as of April 2014.
 

mbpopolano24

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Random question.... why does twincast browfists everybody?

To the point: I was hoping for more copies sold, but as long as they are healthy and keep improving DOS and future games, I am happy.

And today I found out that modding the main campaign in DOS is incredibly easy, so I am starting a new run with all the changes I always dreamed about...
 

TheGreatOne

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Well two of those developers are now defunct, one has only made a single good game so far, one hasn't actually proved yet that they can make a good game and the one remaining is successful due to the fact that their games are so similar that they've created their own little niche where they don't have to take big creative risks. But with the exception of inXile, all of them have made technically solid/artistically successful, challenging and risky/hard to market games at some point.
 

Brother None

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I am really happy for Larian and well-deserved it is. 500K is nothing short of a smash hit for a game of this scope, I can see why some might've been expecting more but there's no taking away from it, it's an awesome number, especially when you take into consideration that this genre is traditionally a long-tail seller, and unlike with publishers who don't care about long tails, that kind of sustained seller is very relevant to mid-sized self-funded developers (for example Bard's Tale funding a significant chunk of Wasteland 2). That plus the popular and critical response makes it a great success in every sense of the term.

I dunno if publishers will care but who gives a shit what they think.

I guess 500k sold is good, but I actually thought it would sell more. Considering how long it was on top sales. Maybe I overestimate steam.
It was a slow period for games in general really. #1 is a relative value, not an absolute one.
 

Abu Antar

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Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Yeah, the games it was competing with told me that despite being #1, the numbers were probably not great. it was a summer release after all. Games sitting at number one this fall will probably have very high numbers.
 

Korron

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Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Glad larian is doing well and glad they realize there is more to do. I've never crashed as much as this game.
 

l3loodAngel

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in a short is 500.000 good or bad??.. or not good or bad???

Good, though between retail and taxes and with debts and investments to pay off, its hard to make a buck. For themselves, I doubt they'll keep much more than Divinity: Original Sin's total budget.

Which is basically what Sven said. On the plus side, they have all the tools they developed to make Original Sin, so they won't need as much money to make their next game.

Bullshit. That's awesome. The calculation:

500,000*40*0.7=14m. Now taxes can reduce bottom line by a lot butt still. Lets assume corporate tax of 30% (which is high but not unreasonable). 14m*0.7= 9.8m . So even if they invested 5m of their own money (with debt), which seems kind of high, it's still a 96% payoff. If that is bad I don't know what is good for Sven making niche games.
 
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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Serpent in the Staglands Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
in a short is 500.000 good or bad??.. or not good or bad???

Good, though between retail and taxes and with debts and investments to pay off, its hard to make a buck. For themselves, I doubt they'll keep much more than Divinity: Original Sin's total budget.

Which is basically what Sven said. On the plus side, they have all the tools they developed to make Original Sin, so they won't need as much money to make their next game.

Bullshit. That's awesome. The calculation:

500,000*40*0.7=14m. Now taxes can reduce bottom line by a lot butt still. Lets assume corporate tax of 30% (which is high but not unreasonable). 14m*0.7= 9.8m . So even if they invested 5m of their own money, which seems kind of high, it's still a 96% payoff. If that is bad I don't know what is good for Sven making niche games.

I interpreted Sven as saying the company had unspecified debts separate from reimbursing investors, but I guess they could have been the same thing.
 

l3loodAngel

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I interpreted Sven as saying the company had unspecified debts separate from reimbursing investors, but I guess they could have been the same thing.

You can treat 5m as development costs with debt.

Perhaps. I sort of assumed that Dragon Commander outright tanked and put them in the red.

My first rule of analyzing anything is to eliminate white noise and Dragon Commander is the white noise in this instance. Thus, I am talking about DOS.
 
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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Serpent in the Staglands Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
I interpreted Sven as saying the company had unspecified debts separate from reimbursing investors, but I guess they could have been the same thing.

You can treat 5m as development costs with debt.

Perhaps. I sort of assumed that Dragon Commander outright tanked and put them in the red.

My first rule of analyzing anything is to eliminate white noise and Dragon Commander is the white noise in this instance. Thus, I am talking about DOS.

My rule is to assume that everything will be much more expensive than your maximum projections.

The original narrative was that they had accumulated enough profit over working with publishers to make their own game. That might have been true for Dragon Commander, but you have to wonder whether they incurred the same sort of debt producing that hybrid as they did with Original Sin. If so, you also have to wonder if they would have been able to pay off that debt when evidently Dragon Commander definitely didn't sell enough to prevent Original Sin's reliance on private investors. The fact Sven has shared information relatively free about Original Sin's success but has said very little about Dragon Commander is a telling detail.
 

Saark

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A Beautifully Desolate Campaign
I wonder if not having reviews done by "professionals" before the official release actually helped them selling their game.
We all know that most reviewers have no spine. In this case the people giving the first impressions were mostly those who kickstarted the game themselves or went out on a limb and bought early access. Those people already had faith in the project and are obviously biased themselves. I'm not quite sure which type of review I'd actually prefer, but as long as it keeps supporting the "right" people I suppose I don't really care. I guess having spineless reviewers who only follow suit has its advantages, because I can actually imagine quite a few labels who would've given D:OS less than 80 points just for not having gay sex and/or being turnbased.

He also talks about community feedback delaying the actual release. Seeing how more and more games get some kind of early access version nowadays (every other game on the steam frontpage has early access right now), I begin to wonder if bigger companies will have to follow suit in the upcoming years because the players came to expect an early-access version. So far it's mostly smaller games offering it, while bigger companies still only offer pre-purchases with like included DLCs or some shit, but that could very well change in the future.
Even then, I don't expect publishers to realize that early-access is supposed to help develop the game and raise funds, but instead they will probably try to milk this "feature" by basically outsourcing the QA department. But if only one publisher realizes that this is how its done in the near future, and they actually give the game developer a little more leeway for reacting to the feedback instead of pressing for a timeley release, this might still be a good thing.
 

Abelian

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Swen Vinke said:
Between “it’s ready when it’s done” and actually following up on that mantra, there unfortunately lies a big gap that can only be bridged with financial stamina.
Ironically, Swen already learned that lesson from the development of Divine Divinity:
Swen Vinke said:
I refused to accept that I had no budget anymore, and spent everything on trying to finish the game as good as we could.
I remembered it from in this RPG Codex editorial article about Swen's blog.

I'm not knocking him for it since I tend to be a perfectionist myself. Fortunately, it worked better for Larian this time around.
 

buzz

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I hope InXile and Obsidian will put out their sales numbers as well. It will be curious to see how much they sell during the busier seasons.
 
Weasel
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My first rule of analyzing anything is to eliminate white noise and Dragon Commander is the white noise in this instance. Thus, I am talking about DOS.

The original narrative was that they had accumulated enough profit over working with publishers to make their own game. That might have been true for Dragon Commander, but you have to wonder whether they incurred the same sort of debt producing that hybrid as they did with Original Sin. If so, you also have to wonder if they would have been able to pay off that debt when evidently Dragon Commander definitely didn't sell enough to prevent Original Sin's reliance on private investors. The fact Sven has shared information relatively free about Original Sin's success but has said very little about Dragon Commander is a telling detail.

Well I agree with l3loodAngel that Dragon Commander is irrelevant to determining the success of DOS. But in terms of whether DC added to the "debt" that DOS needed to pay off, actually Swen said that Dragon Commander was selling quite well and he was reinvesting those proceeds to increase the budget of DOS. Then in his previous post he also posted this:

Dragon Commander and Divinity:Original Sin are the first in the set of these games, and I sincerely hope there’ll be many more. Dragon Commander (which to my own surprise looks to be on course to outsell The Dragon Knight Saga) created a lot of opportunities for Divinity:Original Sin and I’m burning a candle that Divinity:Original Sin will be creating even more possibilities for our next game.
 

Perkel

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Vincke and Barnson are boasting a bit prematurely, half-a-mil isn't going to make most publishers turn their heads, do a double-take, and give their best impression of the Tex Avery wolf in Red Hot Riding Hood. The return of the mid-budget single-A is welcome of course.

Who gives a shit about publishers anymore ? What matters is if game is created or not. Also 5mln€ is not even A game now. Middle budget is something more like 25-40mln now where AAA games can be at 40-50mln+. And that is not even counting marketing which is often many times bigger than dev cost.
Developers thanks to DD finally can cut middleman and eat all profits creating portfolio of games that can sustain them even if they will take 2-3 bad games.

DOS

they sold in two months 500k coppies. Game costed around 5mln€ to make.
If you can count:

500k * 30€ = 15 000 000 € - 30% steam cut = 10 500 000€ probably some taxes (if they are profitable).
In two months they got whole game dev budget + ton of money to devide it for them-self and investors.

And that is just two months without any sale. RPGs have very strong legs and most of them are still bought well over decade (especially if game is good). With few more months they could easily fund not one game but even two games that cost 5mln€. And that is funding game alone without investors or KS. If they would again reach to KS and investors to partially fund their next game they could as well do 3-4 games.

Next up is team experience in DOS creation and tools/toolset they created and have experience in. Cost of creating DOS2 should be a way lower than DOS due to team getting experience in creation of that game, better workflow and so on. That is naturally if game will be same content wise but i bet they will make it even bigger.

So they are boasting because they should. They secured their future on market creating RPG for almost next decade with, they build actually community around their game and with glowing reviews from users DOS2 should be smash hit.

All of that with measly 500k on steam.

PoE

On other hand DOS experience and Vinke post tells us much about what is coming to Obsidian in near future. Because they got 4mln$ they have bigger fanbase and game is much more talked about (same with W2). Later part about experience and toolset also does count for Obsidian so making PoE2 should be faster/better/cheaper same content wise. If they sell 1mln in 2 months it will secure PoE2 and 3 and could be enough to set whole Obsidian on self funded RPGs without Armored warfare bullshit or sucking publishers money making dick.

Obisdian with 2-3 ind. RPGs like PoE should be profitable enough for their size.

W2

And finally Wasteland 2 which also generated money and backers + more media coverage. After DOS it is pretty safe to say that they will also secure their nearest future and that future will be full of RPGs. Even if W2 will be good to mediacore they can always improve and i don't see problems with their team trying to for example put in cinematics at cost of gameplay.
 

SausageInYourFace

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Perhaps. I sort of assumed that Dragon Commander outright tanked and put them in the red.

(...)

The original narrative was that they had accumulated enough profit over working with publishers to make their own game. That might have been true for Dragon Commander, but you have to wonder whether they incurred the same sort of debt producing that hybrid as they did with Original Sin. If so, you also have to wonder if they would have been able to pay off that debt when evidently Dragon Commander definitely didn't sell enough to prevent Original Sin's reliance on private investors. The fact Sven has shared information relatively free about Original Sin's success but has said very little about Dragon Commander is a telling detail.

I was looking for some information on that too. The only thing I could find was this.

Dragon Commander outsold Dragon Knight Saga 3 to 1 in its first month and will be profitable
 

otsego

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The overall feel and impression I got from this blog post was disappointment and defeat. It's like their foray into being independent and making 'what they wanted' didn't quite pan out into what they (Swen) hoped it would be.

Did I miss something here? I guess I expected a very enthusiastic and victorious account, but ended up with the feeling "we tried and we KIND OF succeeded"."
 

grotsnik

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The overall feel and impression I got from this blog post was disappointment and defeat. It's like their foray into being independent and making 'what they wanted' didn't quite pan out into what they (Swen) hoped it would be.

Did I miss something here? I guess I expected a very enthusiastic and victorious account, but ended up with the feeling "we tried and we KIND OF succeeded"."

I think it's all in there. The work was incredibly hard, their creditors were increasingly aggressive and combative, and he was so wound up mentally by the game that he couldn't even relax and enjoy his holiday once it was released.

I don't think we should take it as disappointment and defeat - D:OS clearly exceeded expectations, and even though it was 'all in' financially, he's talking openly about the profits funding their next proect - just that he's still worn down by it all, and the various cuts and bruises of development are still a bit too raw for him to start smiling about them. Poor bloke.
 

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