Glittering Gems of Hatred - part 2

[Jim Kata]

"Bethesda does not give the fans a chance for input in the game’s development, so the fans will not give Bethesda a chance to prove themselves."

This is illogical, especially if that input would come from those fucktards. Almost as illogical as making fallout 3 oblivion with guns.

 

[galsiah]

Any new games are influenced by the current market and what is perceived as successful right now... The "conventional wisdom", as I said before, would dictate that the market today simply isn't the same one that supported the original Fallout or the original X-Com....

I know this is neither your reasoning, nor universal in the industry, but it's based on frustratingly stupid logic.

If you walk into a market, and observe:
People buying oranges; no-one buying apples.
Many oranges, all looking really good; a few apples, all looking rotten.

Then you bloody well start selling apples that aren't rotten.


The idea that it's somehow safer to enter a saturated market of polished products, than a neglected market of sub-standard products, is ludicrous. To come to that conclusion, you need to be assuming that purchases of consumers are independent of the current range of games on sale (i.e. deducing the potential market directly from current sales).
This is beyond stupid.

[On the other hand, deducing the potential market from surveys is merely very stupid: that'll just tell you that people want the same games they're playing now, only with uninspired, incremental changes (which, of course, they do - that's just not all they'd want)]

Of course, but what I meant to say is that if you look "purely at history" getting the support from the Fallout fans has ensured success, failing to gain this support has meant a flop (we have few test cases for this, but bear with me).

No-one should "bear with you" on that - it's just nonsense.
I'd certainly expect there to be a correlation:
Producing a good game will often mean success.
Producing a good game will often please the fans.
Therefore, given that fans are pleased, the game is more likely to have been successful.

That's perfectly reasonable, but it in no way implies that pleasing the fans caused the success. (Similarly, it usually rains on days when I carry an open umbrella - that doesn't mean I can go out on a sunny day and make it rain by opening one.)

I'd agree that it's probably wise for a company to look at fan reaction as useful feedback. (if fans are reacting badly, that tells you you've got lower odds of success [based on Fallout franchise history]). However, while using fan feedback as a test is valid, using "pleasing the fans" as a design goal is absolutely not valid. As soon as that becomes a design goal, you've destroyed its validity as a test criteria, and any relation it might have had to your chance of success.

Fan opinion should be used for testing (both of ideas, and implementations), not to motivate design. [if the underlying reasoning is "Projects which please fans are successful more often than those which don't"]

 

[Dgaider]

The idea that it's somehow safer to enter a saturated market of polished products, than a neglected market of sub-standard products, is ludicrous. To come to that conclusion, you need to be assuming that purchases of consumers are independent of the current range of games on sale (i.e. deducing the potential market directly from current sales).
This is beyond stupid.

Maybe. I can sort of see where the thinking comes from, however, though it may be short-sighted. Take MMO's, for instance. Right now one could surmise that there is a huge market for MMO's similar to World of Warcraft (which would be all of them, practically). What MMO's there are which are different are very small and niche.

So do you enter an already-saturated market by making an MMO like World of Warcraft (assuming you would want to, of course)? Or do you make something different and hope there is an invisible market out there and current alternative MMO's are simply under-supported?

To the gambling man, the WoW-like MMO has numbers you can count on. There is a proven audience out there, one that is already buying and well-known. Trying to prove to such a man that if they invested in something different that the market would materialize is difficult to justify. It requires a leap of faith, and one that you tend to get only with small companies that have nothing to lose -- every now and again one of them comes along and proves everyone wrong, and suddenly everyone's scrambling to catch up.

To a degree, it's like that in many industries. Games more than most, perhaps, because it's not very established yet and especially now the volatility is really high -- the majority of games put out are simply not profitable. Is the answer to make higher quality games? That would be nice, but I'm not sure that's the entire answer... and if the current system isn't sustainable, I'm not certain that what it would evolve into afterwards if there was some kind of "crash" would be very much to your liking.

 

[Severian Silk]

I think NMA is doing itself a disservice by not establishing just who "the fans" are, how many of them are out there,

I think they've established this by creating the community.

what they have to potentially offer any developer of the IP

Not much.

-- and most importantly why the developers involved seem to think the Fallout hardcore are no longer part of their target audience.

The unpopularity of the game's featureset among community members would indicate this.

Is it really just that they find those particular fans annoying and have decided to dictate terms?

I don't have an answer for this.

Sometimes it feels a little like the blind leading the blind in terms of figuring out what will make a good and successful game (for those developers trying to do both)... but that logic is no better than the notion expressed that in order for an IP to be successful it must service the hardcore fans.

I don't think anyone in the Fallout community believes any longer (R.I.P. Troika) that a game would be successful if it catered to their tastes.

I also think that, sometimes, that feeling you had playing an original game the very first time just can't be recreated -- and while you can look back nostalgically and wonder "why don't they just make that again?" possibly it can never be like it was the first time and the problem may be you rather than them. But I think most of you live on the hope that this is not the case. Ignoring that there are reasons why things have changed, however, is going to be an exercise in extreme frustration (which, really, is as good a subtitle for places like the Codex as any. )

Good point.

I think the rabidity of the Fallout community is the result of the community being in its death throes. The community no longer has a reason to live. There are no large projects slated for the near future to sustain it (though there are a handful of smaller projects capable of sustaining a smaller community). If the stars "align" and a new, large project appears in the distant future, it may very well be a new and different community that will be there to receive it. [edit] Look at how small the X-COM community is, and it was a lot more successful for its time than Fallout was.

I think the lies and disinformation that have been recently appearing in news posts and editorials may actually be filling the void left by the absense of new entertainment. They are "role-playing" for a lack of a better medium.

I wonder which will break first: the community or the industry?

 

[The_Pope]

Maybe. I can sort of see where the thinking comes from, however, though it may be short-sighted. Take MMO's, for instance. Right now one could surmise that there is a huge market for MMO's similar to World of Warcraft (which would be all of them, practically). What MMO's there are which are different are very small and niche.

So do you enter an already-saturated market by making an MMO like World of Warcraft (assuming you would want to, of course)? Or do you make something different and hope there is an invisible market out there and current alternative MMO's are simply under-supported?

To the gambling man, the WoW-like MMO has numbers you can count on. There is a proven audience out there, one that is already buying and well-known. Trying to prove to such a man that if they invested in something different that the market would materialize is difficult to justify. It requires a leap of faith, and one that you tend to get only with small companies that have nothing to lose -- every now and again one of them comes along and proves everyone wrong, and suddenly everyone's scrambling to catch up.

To a degree, it's like that in many industries. Games more than most, perhaps, because it's not very established yet and especially now the volatility is really high -- the majority of games put out are simply not profitable. Is the answer to make higher quality games? That would be nice, but I'm not sure that's the entire answer... and if the current system isn't sustainable, I'm not certain that what it would evolve into afterwards if there was some kind of "crash" would be very much to your liking.

It's not so much a leap of faith into a nonexistant market, as the market did exist quite recently. To continue Galsiahs apples/oranges analogy, in the late 90s, oranges sold nicely. However, there were internal problems in a lot of orange companies and the market collapsed. A few managed to survive, but all they could afford to ship was rotten oranges. Now apples are the big market.

In any other industry, people would jump on the orange market. In the games industry, it's "Oranges are DEAD, r00fles Game over man DEAD".

 

[Section8]

[delurk]

So do you enter an already-saturated market by making an MMO like World of Warcraft (assuming you would want to, of course)?

To the gambling man, the WoW-like MMO has numbers you can count on. There is a proven audience out there, one that is already buying and well-known.

There is also a well known franchise, with a multi-million strong userbase to compete against in that corner of the market. Also, when you're talking MMOs, you're competing against a product that is devoting no small development budget toward continued custom and a game with no distinct end point.

In short, you have to give fans a compelling reason to make the change from something they play and enjoy, and will continue to do so for the forseeable future.

Or do you make something different and hope there is an invisible market out there and current alternative MMO's are simply under-supported?

Which is also a valid criticism. I think the moral to the story is that you'd be a fucking fool to go into MMOG development and/or publishing.

However, the big difference between a MMOG and a conventional computer game, is that a regular game is essentially a consumable product, rather than a sustained consumer service.

It's like the difference between choosing a bank or a phone provider when compared to choosing a movie to watch or a book to read. If you're selling a service, then you're either relying on customer dissatisfaction with their existing provider, or selling your similar service where the incentives to make the change outweigh the perceived inconvenience of doing so.

With MMOGs, you also have to consider that you're essentially dealing with a service that also provides incentives and rewards to loyal customers, ie the virtual gains the player makes through their characters. You're also dealing with a service that the typical user doesn't need multiple instances of. Who has the time or the inclination to play more than one MMOG?

But, let's forget MMOGs, since they're really a market unto themselves. Lets consider the majority of single player games, which are limited in content, and have a distinct ending - therefore a limited lifetime as a viable means of entertainment.

The idea that it's somehow safer to enter a saturated market of polished products, than a neglected market of sub-standard products, is ludicrous. To come to that conclusion, you need to be assuming that purchases of consumers are independent of the current range of games on sale (i.e. deducing the potential market directly from current sales).
This is beyond stupid.

I think that's pretty close to the mark, as always from Galsiah. I'd like to take that wisdom on my usual tangent of production values and the perception of "gaming generations," which seems to me to be utterly ludicrous. Sure, technology is progressing at a ridiculous rate, but it seems a bit fishy to me to consider audiences ten years past as dead and gone, given the average life span of a human being.

Sure, you could argue that the burgeoning production costs of game development require unit sales in the millions, as opposed to the much smaller audiences of ten years ago, but why not turn that on its ear and think about how you can cut production costs? To me that seems like a more reasonable approach than trying to outdo existing blockbusters and established franchises.

I think there is room to keep production values low, and yet still acceptable to many consumers. Is a comparison to movies unreasonable? There is certainly a market for blockbusters (and no shortage of failed big budget releases) and there is also a market for low budget releases. Neither market is exclusive of the other.

In games the markets do become a little more exclusive, since a low budget movie scrimps on special effects and marketing, but can still present the same visual quality, whereas the budget of a game is mostly consistent of cost intensive audio/visual assets, and development and/or licensing of current technology. Therefore, making budgetary cuts would detract from a major selling point, but then again, you've spent a lot less money in the first place, so you don't necessarily need to shift as many units.

The question becomes simply - How many gamers value substance over style?

Personally, I think there is a neglected market out there, after all there is a whole generation (literally) of gamers who experienced lo-fi gaming 20 years ago, who are still alive today. They have seen gaming when it had no style crutch to prop itself up on, and the reliance was on substance. There's no shortage of (unpaying) custom for emulators such as DosBox, and more gaming ROMs (also unpaid for) than you can poke a stick at. There are plenty of fan projects attempting to bridge the technical divide between yesterday's games and today's tech.

The biggest problem is not that there is no feasible audience for lo-fi games, it's more the difficulty in getting the message to them. It's hard to sell substance with a few lines on the back of a box, and it's just as hard to drum up a decent buzz from the gaming media, who seem interested in anything but substance.

[/delurk]

 

[Jasede]

It lives!!!

 

[Hazelnut]

Section8... welcome back man, you were missed! First Fez, now you... not a bad start to 2007 for the Codex. :D

Where the hell have you been any way...?

(yes, we're still all waiting for roundtable #2)

 

[Astromarine]

Holy SHIT S8 is back. Together with Fez and the temporary banning on Volly is was a pretty good week or so.

 

[MountainWest]

Is a comparison to movies unreasonable? There is certainly a market for blockbusters (and no shortage of failed big budget releases) and there is also a market for low budget releases. Neither market is exclusive of the other.

In games the markets do become a little more exclusive, since a low budget movie scrimps on special effects and marketing, but can still present the same visual quality, whereas the budget of a game is mostly consistent of cost intensive audio/visual assets, and development and/or licensing of current technology. Therefore, making budgetary cuts would detract from a major selling point, but then again, you've spent a lot less money in the first place, so you don't necessarily need to shift as many units.

The question becomes simply - How many gamers value substance over style?

A problem, as I see it, is that a "great" independant film can be produced by an unknown talanted director/writer that gets his/hers inexpensive actors to perform at their best - and there's no shortage of persons who try to be that director/writer - where as a truly good RPG requires talanted programmers with years of education, great writers, great designers - all who must be paid - that, just as well, could have been used to create the next "block buster"-game.

Of course, David Gaider (for example) could design a low-budget game, perhaps a great one given the right persons to work with him. But that would mean that he didn't work on the next block buster. And I can't see Bioware allowing that.

Movies are expensive to produce because of Hollywood-stars and special effects, games are expensive to produce because of man-hours. And Patrick Stewart. Less shiny graphics means less hours for the graphics programmers, but not for the persons that really matters, i.e. the writers and designers.

 

[Briosafreak]

I'll try to reply more in depth to a few ideas that were talked about here, but I don't have the time right now. So I'll just leave three quick thoughts:


- The fact that Section 8 delurked just made my day;

-

I think the rabidity of the Fallout community is the result of the community being in its death throes.

No Mutants Allowed had his best month in term of unique hits ever in January. Better than the week Tactics was released, better when Van Buren was announced, better when Van Buren was cancelled, better when we broke the news of Troika ending their activity.

Stop speculating and conform to the thought you are clueless.

I may be simply flamed for being part of evil Bioware

There's an ironic twist to those words, the fact that NMA has one admin that hates all of your games and design choices, three that are neutral regarding your work, playing some games you made and ignoring others, and another that prefers the BG series to Fallout1. Ironic isn't it?

 

[GhanBuriGhan]

No Mutants Allowed had his best month in term of unique hits ever in January. Better than the week Tactics was released, better when Van Buren was announced, better when Van Buren was cancelled, better when we broke the news of Troika ending their activity.

But how many of these are Bethesda fans and others, drawn to NMA due to its notoriety in the FO3 controversy?

 

[Sander]

There's an ironic twist to those words, the fact that NMA has one admin that hates all of your games and design choices, three that are neutral regarding your work, playing some games you made and ignoring others, and another that prefers the BG series to Fallout1. Ironic isn't it?

Ehe, I don't hate Bioware's games. I enjoyed KoTOR and Baldur's Gate 2 (including the expansion). BG 1 to a lesser extent.
I just think the Bioware games are poor RPGs, and I hate the real-time with pause deal, but that isn't a deal-breaker for me. Oh, and I think NWN was the buggiest game I ever played (I don't care for the official campaign, 'cause that wasn't what it was created for), with a way too limited (and buggy) editor.

Anyway, David:

To the gambling man, the WoW-like MMO has numbers you can count on. There is a proven audience out there, one that is already buying and well-known. Trying to prove to such a man that if they invested in something different that the market would materialize is difficult to justify. It requires a leap of faith, and one that you tend to get only with small companies that have nothing to lose -- every now and again one of them comes along and proves everyone wrong, and suddenly everyone's scrambling to catch up.

I don't get this, especially when compared to the 'niche' of the Fallout-like RPG (while Fallout sold quite well when it came out, and has continued to sell consistently throughout the years. Even now).
The WoW-like market would probably be the riskiest market to get into, mainly because WoW is the biggest game..well, ever. It's got a lot of very loyal customers, and luring those customers away would be incredibly hard. In other words: the market for WoW-like games is saturated.
The market for niche-MMOs, however, certainly isn't. City of Heroes appealed to a different market, and was quite a success. As did the Star Wars MMO.

Anyway, finding such a niche is difficult, of course, and a gamble. However, compare this to the traditional RPG and you have a guaranteed market: most of the people who played Fallout and Planescape: Torment when those games came out are still around. As evidenced by the attention Fallout 3 is getting, the continued sales of Fallout 1 and 2 and the fact that it'd be nigh impossible for them all to be dead.
There are also a lot of people who played Wasteland and the like way back when, and would like to see a return to that. You can't tell me that all those people have suddenly dropped those tastes in favour of the next shiny console game.

As I said over at NMA: going for the hardcore RPG market at this stage basically means guaranteed sales and fewer development costs (you can essentially ignore the consoles, really), while going for the mainstream games means extremely heavy competition.

I don't think anyone in the Fallout community believes any longer (R.I.P. Troika) that a game would be successful if it catered to their tastes.

Troika was succesful and made a profit with their games, for as far as I know. They stopped because they couldn't get a publisher for their next game, and had had a pretty poor relation with their previous publisher.Vampire: Bloodlines sold relatively well, even though it was very buggy and was competing with the all-mighty Half-Life 2.

I'm pretty sure this was explained by one of the Troika guys a while back. So, in fact, Troika is merely evidence that the games can be succesful, but that publisher are too set in their role of catering to a mainstream, console-oriented market.

 

[Atrokkus]

The ONLY reason why someone would play these games is the license: the familiar world, characters, etc.

No, not the only reason. Another reason is the game itself. Many people who loved Dark Messiah HAD NO CLUE about other M&M games. Same goes with other "deviant" franchise-milking titles.
So Fallout fandom means very little to Bethesda. And if it does, still they would try to balance out the "pro-fan decisions" and "pro-market decision" so that the former don't hinder Fallout3's success on the mass market.

 

[Briosafreak]

Ehe, I don't hate Bioware's games. I enjoyed KoTOR and Baldur's Gate 2 (including the expansion). BG 1 to a lesser extent.

Even more ironic then :wink:

 

[Elhoim]

Ignoring that there are reasons why things have changed, however, is going to be an exercise in extreme frustration (which, really, is as good a subtitle for places like the Codex as any. )

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

First Fez returns, now Section8....OH GOD ITS HAEVAN!!!!

 

[Atrokkus]

Therefore, making budgetary cuts would detract from a major selling point, but then again, you've spent a lot less money in the first place, so you don't necessarily need to shift as many units.

Exactly the logic of indie-developers. However, you can't apply the same logic to big companies like Bethesda which has a single production unit that is managed by one conventional producer who can't even fathom a possiblity of making two very different games at once: one being the potential best-seller with state-of-the-art technologies "for the EXTREME" gamers (mass market) with a huge team of talented very well paid employees, and anothe being a much uglier and cheaper project "for the hardcore" that has shabby $100 engine, ultima-era graphics and workers who get paid MUCH less than their colleagues next room. It would seem too radical for our big-time companies.

Even if Bethesda is willing and able (which is pretty unrealistic) of recreating the perfect turn-based combat system, correctly implementing SPECIAL, and providing choice & consequence similar to what was seen in FO1, THEY WOULD STILL MAKE IT STATE OF THE ART 3D WITH LATEST SHADER SUPPORT AND SAND EROSION. Then, during the production cycle, when they see how much they spend on graphics, they will suddenly shift from full TB combat to realtime with pause because their marketing prognosis is not so good.

 

[galsiah]

To the gambling man, the WoW-like MMO has numbers you can count on. There is a proven audience out there, one that is already buying and well-known.

To the gambling man who is shortly to be wondering how he lost his shirt - yes.
The numbers are numbers that could be counted on for the previous games. That tells you nothing about what support exists for an extra game. Betting on such a market supporting your game, simply because it supported others, is as reasonable as assuming your horse is going to win because it won the previous race.

Trying to prove to such a man that if they invested in something different that the market would materialize is difficult to justify.

It's hard to justify anything to such a man: he is stupid. If he were a gambler, he'd quickly lose all his money with his kind of reasoning.

Perhaps a developer pitch needs to start with a presentation of "Basic Economics, Statistics and Game Theory for the Cretinous".

It requires a leap of faith

No - it requires an acknowledgement that there are no easy anwsers. Then it requires careful research, prototyping etc.

and one that you tend to get only with small companies that have nothing to lose -- every now and again one of them comes along and proves everyone wrong, and suddenly everyone's scrambling to catch up.

Good lord - to "catch up" with what!!??
That small company's success is based on the fact that they did something different. It takes a special kind of idiocy to think that to "catch up" with them is to copy the game they just made. To truly catch up, you'd need to follow their style of thinking, not copy their game.

To a degree, it's like that in many industries.

Quite right - stupidity is everywhere.

Games more than most, perhaps, because it's not very established yet and especially now the volatility is really high -- the majority of games put out are simply not profitable.

Could it be that this is because most companies invest too much money in a single project to compete in an already saturated market?
Playing safe with high budget games is losing us money: So let's play even safer with even higher budgets - that'll work.

Is the answer to make higher quality games?

Producers having a basic understanding of logic, economics, game theory and statistics would be a start - the kind of knowledge that allows conclusions to be based on reason and analysis, rather than gut feeling and a "me too" approach.

I don't see it happening of course. The type of person with these skills is usually not the type of person to go into management / production.

and if the current system isn't sustainable

It probably is sustainable. That doesn't mean it's either efficient (in any sense) or desirable.

I'm not certain that what it would evolve into...

Hopefully something with much more variety.

Perhaps this will happen. Internet distribution is certainly going to be a big help. However, it'd happen considerably faster if the average prduction company started thinking a little more, and relying on "conventional wisdom" a little less. (for instance, with the simple observation that many low-budget, high-risk projects can actually become low-risk when viewed collectively. Some will do well, others less well - the average performance is much more predictable than the performance of one big-budget all-or-nothing project)

There's nothing wrong with some companies concluding that they should make a big-budget, conventional game. There's only a problem if they come to that conclusion with such fallacious logic as "Many of these games are successful now - therefore one more will be too."

 

[Seboss]

Ignoring that there are reasons why things have changed, however, is going to be an exercise in extreme frustration (which, really, is as good a subtitle for places like the Codex as any. )

I was wondering how long 'til someone would take a note of that and post some wacky "I'm gonna give you a taste of EXTREME frustrashun" Sheridan screenshot.

 

[Section8]

Of course, David Gaider (for example) could design a low-budget game, perhaps a great one given the right persons to work with him. But that would mean that he didn't work on the next block buster. And I can't see Bioware allowing that.

Well yeah, I can't really see Bioware or Bethesda suddenly deciding to change their model from developing (potential) blockbusters, because both companies have the luxury of big budgets, and million strong hordes of babbling fools licking up their marketing ejaculations like kittens under a cow udder. Put mildly, they're successful at what they do.

It remains to be seen how long they remain successful. Bethesda's insistence on plastering their logo all over games they've merely published is risky if the game fails (see Star Trek: Legacy) since they gain the rep for it. Also, if you're dealing with multi-million dollar projects, a single "failure" could be all she wrote.

The sort of marketing clout these companies exercise can be pretty easily undone by anyone with enough readership. How many people base their opinions of Daikatana (not that it's really worthy of defending) on the internet memes of the time? How is it that Pools of Radiance 2 became known overnight as "that game that formats your hard drive" despite a mere couple of incidences of a very unfortunate bug? How many people have actually seen a Uwe Boll film?

It's all just ponderances though, we'll see in a few years if Bioware's move away from failsafe licenses or Bethesda's strange desire to make casual games from licenses that come equipped with aggressively overprotective fanbases brings about any drastic failures.

Movies are expensive to produce because of Hollywood-stars and special effects, games are expensive to produce because of man-hours. And Patrick Stewart. Less shiny graphics means less hours for the graphics programmers, but not for the persons that really matters, i.e. the writers and designers.

Artists tend to burn up a lot of those man hours, moreso with today's tech. Back in the day when a game character was under a thousand polygons, with a single 128x128 pixel texture and a few clunky frames of animation, things were relatively simple. It's still possible to preserve some of that simplicity while still maintaining a reasonable asset quality, and that's a dramatic cost cut. Or similarly, you could just outsource your artwork to India, am I right?

There's nothing wrong with some companies concluding that they should make a big-budget, conventional game. There's only a problem if they come to that conclusion with such fallacious logic as "Many of these games are successful now - therefore one more will be too."

Especially when your game is released 18-24 months down the track, competing with a glut of other developers following the same "conventional wisdom" as you.

Exactly the logic of indie-developers.[...]

And I really don't see why such logic can't be applied by "consumate professionals." I'd be willing to bet that most indie games that fail, do so long before any projected release due to the difficulty in getting an unfunded project (of any kind) off the ground.

If a developer with the luxury of self-funding or publisher faith took on a small scale project, how could they fail? That's essentially what Bioware and Bethesda are doing with their downloadable content sales. It's also not too far removed from what live teams do with MMOGs. It's just a slight expansion of the concept, from one where you have a known quantity of potential customers, and an absolute limit, to one where the projections are hazier, but have theoretically unlimited potential.

Plus, when you have a small team, it becomes so much easier to both effectively manage, and also preserve a consistent design vision. Two key areas that most developers fail miserably at.

Section8... welcome back man, you were missed! First Fez, now you... not a bad start to 2007 for the Codex.

Where the hell have you been any way...?

(yes, we're still all waiting for roundtable #2)

No spare time and dial-up internet makes 8 a dull boy. But, my job is consuming less of my spare time now, and I'll be getting some kind of fat data pipe into my new house, so all should be good. Roundtable #2 is on a back burner somewhere, half ready. Its incomplete state embarrasses my friends and family, so I'll see about finishing it off.

 

[Volourn]

"temporary banning on Volly is was a pretty good week or so."

Careful. I've been avoiding this thread for a reason - to be nice, and let others dicusss the silly article. But trolling like this can easily change that, and could cause an explosive reaction.

This is the only warning. A response will equal game over.

Back to the regulary scheduled program.

 

[Sir_Brennus]

Troika was succesful and made a profit with their games, for as far as I know. [..] I'm pretty sure this was explained by one of the Troika guys a while back. So, in fact, Troika is merely evidence that the games can be succesful, but that publisher are too set in their role of catering to a mainstream, console-oriented market.

BS

http://www.gamebanshee.com/interviews/troikagames.php

http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/static/EEpAZpklyFCxoEqUsh.php


and from your own NMA


http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34069&start=20&sid=f72ade590189165993c2e6b64d845842

 

[Briosafreak]

Sir_Brennus the statements from Leon actually concur with what Sander said, I'm not following you this time.

 

[Sander]

BS

http://www.gamebanshee.com/interviews/troikagames.php

From there:
"The reason we decided to shut down was because it was very apparent we wouldn’t be landing a deal within a reasonable time."

Also:

"
Leon: To date the most successful in terms of units sold has been ToEE, I believe – though I don’t have any exact numbers on Vampire yet. I think that when all is said and done Vampire will be comparable to ToEE numbers, if not surpassing them. One of the problems with our games is that they sell good numbers, but it takes a long time for them to do so. Arcanum is still selling a small but steady number of units each quarter, for instance. But longevity doesn’t matter in this business – it’s all about how much you sell in the first few months. "

So, as I said, it wasn't because they hadn't been profitable before, but because they couldn't find a new publisher deal. That concurs exactly with what I said.

http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/static/EEpAZpklyFCxoEqUsh.php

Yep, see below why these numbers aren't correct. Also, these numbers say *nothing* about profit, only about total sales. Without a picture of the costs, how much Troika had made from the publisher deal and how much of the revenue they'd get from the sales it's rather hard to say whether or not they made a profit. Except that Leon Boyarsky claerly states they did well.

and from your own NMA


http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34069&start=20&sid=f72ade590189165993c2e6b64d845842

Yes:
"I don't have any actual numbers at hand (nor do I know whether I can reveal numbers per our contract, since I don't have that with me at the moment either), but to the best of my knowledge, ToEE was our best seller - or at least our fastest. The reason it's difficult to say is because our numbers were often being adjusted after the fact for arcane business reasons (on the publisher's end). I believe Arcanum is close to ToEE in sales, but Arcanum has been out alot longer and is at a much lower price point. Vampire hasn't been out long enough to really judge how well it will eventually do, as our games tend to continue to sell (as do all RPGs) longer than most."

Again, nothing about poor sales there at all. The quote above that is clearly falsified by Leon's statement, and if you'd read the rest of the thread you'd also know why the exact numbers given there by Bradylama are actually incorrect.