Unhealthy interest in sales figures

[Fenix]

I would like to release 4 more updates assuming the game keeps selling. I have a very interesting idea (in my opinion) for the updates but I don't want to say anything before we commit to it.

If I'm able to experience the feeling of love today, I'm feleeing it now! )

 

[Vault Dweller]

I'm not actually sure that I would consider AoD a hardcore RPG. There's so much loaded in even broaching the question that I don't want to create a brouhaha, but part of why I liked the game is that it actually lacks (or lets you bypass) a great deal of the cruft that some would consider a big part of hardcore RPGs. Maybe this is a debate over the meaning of "hardcore," though, which is silly to have. In my mind, the combat is very demanding and the game does have the possibility of dead-ending yourself with a terrible build or whatever, but there are other ways in which it felt considerably streamlined to me (in a good way).

Hardcore in a sense that it has complex mechanics and you can't get far until you master said mechanics, as of opposite to games like, say, Mass Effect where you don't have to master anything but click random buttons. It's more of a warning than a boast.

The only way these projects are justifiable are basically as some mix of escapism, vanity, passion, and marketing.

Passion is the best reason of all, no?

The real risk with FG is not that it doesn't make money but that people are so offended by things like baby-eating witches and slave-taking raiders and giving a comely maiden to a wurm in exchange for lore and so forth that it brings me public grief.

The answer to this complex moral dilemma is "who gives a fuck?" These days someone is always offended by something. You start paying attention to it, you'll never get anything done.

Besides, it's not like you'd be inventing some horror for shock value. From the bronze age's sea people to the vikings, mongols, and arabs, slave taking was as a common practice. The wurms did have a well documented fondness of comely maidens and so on.

 

[Fenix]

These days someone is always offended by something.

Judging by something that what happens now in american campuses, like Yale university (case with Nicholas Christakis) and what processes are behind - it only will happen more and more.
Looks like Era of Complete Unanimity lies ahead.

 

[MRY]

Hardcore in a sense that it has complex mechanics and you can't get far until you master said mechanics, as of opposite to games like, say, Mass Effect where you don't have to master anything but click random buttons. It's more of a warning than a boast.

I dunno, I remember wrangling with a lot more systems in Mass Effect than in AOD, but that's because I played AOD as a talker.

The answer to this complex moral dilemma is "who gives a fuck?" These days someone is always offended by something. You start paying attention to it, you'll never get anything done.

It's not a moral dilemma so much as just a worry I have. But I don't really have the constitution or the circumstances that can withstand stirring up a mad mob. Obviously FG's content is meant to capture pre-existing folkloric and historical facts, and you'd think that would carry some weight int he analysis, but who knows? Anyway, it's not a reason not to make the game, just a bigger worry to me than whether I make money.

 

[Cadmus]

Hardcore in a sense that it has complex mechanics and you can't get far until you master said mechanics, as of opposite to games like, say, Mass Effect where you don't have to master anything but click random buttons. It's more of a warning than a boast.

I dunno, I remember wrangling with a lot more systems in Mass Effect than in AOD, but that's because I played AOD as a talker.

The answer to this complex moral dilemma is "who gives a fuck?" These days someone is always offended by something. You start paying attention to it, you'll never get anything done.

It's not a moral dilemma so much as just a worry I have. But I don't really have the constitution or the circumstances that can withstand stirring up a mad mob. Obviously FG's content is meant to capture pre-existing folkloric and historical facts, and you'd think that would carry some weight int he analysis, but who knows? Anyway, it's not a reason not to make the game, just a bigger worry to me than whether I make money.

The only way to avoid the pitchfork mob is to add a tasteful rape, you know it.

 

[MRY]

I realize that AOD represents exactly the kind of economy that can't scale up, but every time I see that it's made well over a million bucks, I'm struck by the sense that it really isn't impossible for a developer to make money off non-cinematic RPGs.

The one thing I should add to this, on reflection, is that my post may have been a little bit like the people back in the day who said, "If Jaime Escalante can teach calculus to at-risk students, every at-risk student should be able to learn calculus from every math teacher, provided they follow Escalante's curriculum." It may be that it's not just that you can't scale AOD into bigger-budget RPG but also that you can't replicate AOD even on its current scale because VD and his team are themselves impossible to replicate.

 

[Cadmus]

I realize that AOD represents exactly the kind of economy that can't scale up, but every time I see that it's made well over a million bucks, I'm struck by the sense that it really isn't impossible for a developer to make money off non-cinematic RPGs.

The one thing I should add to this, on reflection, is that my post may have been a little bit like the people back in the day who said, "If Jaime Escalante can teach calculus to at-risk students, every at-risk student should be able to learn calculus from every math teacher, provided they follow Escalante's curriculum." It may be that it's not just that you can't scale AOD into bigger-budget RPG but also that you can't replicate AOD even on its current scale because VD and his team are themselves impossible to replicate.

If I was VD I'd be slowly shitting in my pants from all the praise he's been getting. How possibly can the generation ship game reach this level of critical acclaim? I bet he freaks out and makes the game totally casual, changes the engine to Gamebryo, introduces a new challenge system with no-fault choices without consequences and implements an awesome take-down button.

 

[MRY]

"Finally, the mainstream approval I've sought for so long..."

 

[PlanHex]

The colony ship will inevitably be more appealing to the mainstream even if it follows the exact same design philosophy just by the virtue of the graphics upgrade.
Like it says in that polish review thread, "pretty it ain't". Late 90s design is great, but late 90s 3D graphics still look like ass. More so with each passing year.

 

[Fenix]

If I was VD I'd be slowly shitting in my pants from all the praise he's been getting. How possibly can the generation ship game reach this level of critical acclaim? I bet he freaks out and makes the game totally casual, changes the engine to Gamebryo, introduces a new challenge system with no-fault choices without consequences and implements an awesome take-down button.

While your words look right in general, I think VD is a man who is not inclined to compromise, or he reached that point in his life (beause life is short, and it is said in Russian - if fuck - only a queen, if steal - only a million, life is too short to spend it on trinkets).

Late 90s design is great, but late 90s 3D graphics still look like ass.

I'm not going to contrive a discussion, but I can never agree with that.
Visuals in DR is great - useful, clean, informative, ergonomic.
What it is lack for you? I don't know, because it is better then in PoE fro example.

 

[tuluse]

Visuals in DR is great - useful, clean, informative, ergonomic.

Missing word "pretty".

Excel is also useful, clean, informative, and ergonomic.

 

[Kem0sabe]

I don't think the AoD engine was that ugly, I was very impressed by some of the maps, and it played really well.

I actually think the show regress graphically to a style and engine more similar to underrail, which is in its own way a very nice looking game, which would allow more focus on content as well.

 

[HoboForEternity]

I realize that AOD represents exactly the kind of economy that can't scale up, but every time I see that it's made well over a million bucks, I'm struck by the sense that it really isn't impossible for a developer to make money off non-cinematic RPGs.

It's more than possible. One correction though: AoD isn't just a non-cinematic game. It's a game with crappy graphics running on an old engine. With a good engine and good (but not great) visuals you should be able to sell 150-200,000 copies in the first year. Talking about a hardcore RPG, of course.

I'm not actually sure that I would consider AoD a hardcore RPG. There's so much loaded in even broaching the question that I don't want to create a brouhaha, but part of why I liked the game is that it actually lacks (or lets you bypass) a great deal of the cruft that some would consider a big part of hardcore RPGs. Maybe this is a debate over the meaning of "hardcore," though, which is silly to have. In my mind, the combat is very demanding and the game does have the possibility of dead-ending yourself with a terrible build or whatever, but there are other ways in which it felt considerably streamlined to me (in a good way).

Expecting to fail is a healthy and realistic attitude. Accepting success after expecting to fail is easy (a pleasant surprise, basically). Dealing with failure after expecting success because you're awesome can crush you like a bug. So expect to fail and we'll all hope and pray for you to succeed.

I mean, if Fallen Gods made AoD money and I kept it all, I guess that might have some material impact on me, but nowadays the money I made on Primordia (my most personally lucrative game project -- it's grossed around $500k and netted me about $80k) wouldn't make an appreciable difference, especially if spread across the years it takes to make a game. The money I made on Torment was completely indefensible as an economic proposition -- I was basically selling the most valuable hours of my time (the thin margins of freedom left by a day job and a family) for fewer dollars an hour than I made as a summer school teacher my first year of college. The only way these projects are justifiable are basically as some mix of escapism, vanity, passion, and marketing. The real risk with FG is not that it doesn't make money but that people are so offended by things like baby-eating witches and slave-taking raiders and giving a comely maiden to a wurm in exchange for lore and so forth that it brings me public grief. Or, more likely, that the project fizzles and I'm left with something I'm not proud of. But whether it sells or not really doesn't matter much. There's a decent chance I'll end up giving it away for free, or perhaps pricing at at $2 or something, or giving all the money it makes to the classics department of a local school or library.

when you have yatch be sure to invite us all :3

 

[PlanHex]

I don't think the AoD engine was that ugly, I was very impressed by some of the maps, and it played really well.

I actually think the show regress graphically to a style and engine more similar to underrail, which is in its own way a very nice looking game, which would allow more focus on content as well.

I think everything positive is due to art direction, which I liked a lot too of course. Doesn't change that geometry and character models look like it's PS1 era 3D, which was always badly suited for non-cartoony graphics. Engine change fixes that and leaves the great art direction.
Underrail is a different beast because it's 2D.

 

[Fenix]

Excel is also useful, clean, informative, and ergonomic.

Exel is a table, while we discuss 3D graphics.

Doesn't change that geometry and character models look like it's PS1 era 3D, which was always badly suited for non-cartoony graphics.

They don't look like that.

 

[Mustawd]

I love excel.

 

[Goral]

Age of Decadence is -75% off on Steam. Vault Dweller Is it selling so badly that you give that much of a discount?

Edit:
Has the final patch been added? Steam has downloaded some update, is it the one with additional endings and Miltiades beating Agathoth?

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Going for a too big discount too early looks like a clear mistake to me. This behavior is associated with bad games and this is what many player will think.

 

[Goral]

I agree, and Dungeon Rats + AoD is for only 10.98 euro. That's less than Age of Decadence during it's last biggest discount and almost as much as Dungeon Rats at the premiere. Ridiculous if you ask me. I hope it will have the desired effect and thousands of people will buy it (I doubt it though, my guess is that we'll get many more negative reviews written by people who bought the game only because of a cheap price).

 

[a bear named spigot]

seems reasonable, it's been more than a year since release (aka it's old as fuck) and it's not like it's 75% down to $2. relatively high initial price point means you can do "ridiculous" discounts and still sell at a decent price.

 

[Vault Dweller]

It's complicated. One of the problems with being an indie developer is that you know nothing. What's the right price? The right discount? The right strategy? The right direction, update, expansion, etc. We learn everything by doing, but there are only so many opportunities to learn and observe the results, which is kinda like answering questions to generate a character in an old school RPG. You might be thinking that you're making a battle mage but might end up with a bard suffering from untreated syphilis.

Obviously, like every other industry we sell the most during sale events. For example, we sold 8,000 copies when we ran a 2-day 50% off promo. I think we were selling 15-20 copies a day at full price back then. It would have taken us 400-500 days to sell 8,000 copies and that's assuming that we'd keep selling 15-20 copies a day and it won't drop to 7-15. Basically, what your game sells depends on two things: its appeal (i.e. how badly players want it) and the discount; both go hand-in-hand. A game like the Witcher 3 or the new Civ game can sell a million copies on the appeal alone, a game like AoD can't so we have to discount, which is business as usual.

However, using the same discount in two big sale events is a mistake. The Christmas sale IS the biggest sale event of the year. While the difference between 60 and 75% seems huge, it's only $4.50. Anyway, back to appeal vs discout. AoD's been released 14 months ago and it was an old game even then as the demo's been released in 2012. It's losing its appeal fast as it has to compete with new games that have better visuals like Tyranny, for example. We can't keep the base price of $29.99 forever so sooner or later we'd have to lower it, which is a standard practice. So before we do it, might as well run a 75% off discount for extra visibility.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Obviously, like every other industry we sell the most during sale events. For example, we sold 8,000 copies when we ran a 2-day 50% off promo.

Have you thought about free weekend promo? It may be more effective in finding potential players who haven't thought about trying the game than doing a big sale like few hundreds bin games are doing everyday. Even if it fails , you will still have interesting data for future games.

 

[Vault Dweller]

It's not a long game like the Witcher 3, so you can beat it twice over the weekend. A sale event is much more effective. For example, we sold 39 copies a day before yesterday, 42 copies yesterday, and 1,200 copies in 2 hours since the sale started. As for bin games doing it every day, like I said it's appeal + discount. A game with low appeal won't sell much even at 90% off. AoD still has enough appeal to move 5,000-10,000 copies with a good discount.

 

[Heretic]

It worked on me, I'm buying extra copies of AoD and DR for friends.

One of them only ever played Skyrim, Tomb Raider and The Longest Journey, but liked the premise and role-playing possibilities of AoD when I explained it. We'll see. I'll tell her not to forget about Streetwise.

 

[Jazz_]

While your words look right in general, I think VD is a man who is not inclined to compromise, or he reached that point in his life (beause life is short, and it is said in Russian - if fuck - only a queen, if steal - only a million, life is too short to spend it on trinkets).


I'm not going to contrive a discussion, but I can never agree with that.
Visuals in DR is great - useful, clean, informative, ergonomic.
What it is lack for you? I don't know, because it is better then in PoE fro example.

wtf? DR graphics better than POE? I didn't like POE at all but c'mon now. Also, AOD is really shit graphically, mainly because the art style is really uninspired and lacks personality, take Underrail and SITS, they are even more retro than AOD but they have great art style.