Opinion on crowdfunded games

[algroth]

I was a bit unclear there, so your umbrage is understandable. Apologies. When talking about nostalgia, I only meant the specific example of printed music journalism, i.e. it's the "old guys" who buy these magazines devoted to Genesis et al., the new generation doesn't really consume the music press in printed form. It used to, but it no longer does.

 

I wholly agree that the music of these artists does indeed capture both young and old alike, and I see that as a very good thing.

 

Clearer now? Again, apologies, I was too ambiguous.

 

Ha. Maybe umbrage is too harsh a term? It's more a slight annoyance that I have, that nostalgia is often used too loosely. However, nostalgia for the printed music press is a curious thought and something I wasn't thinking of. I can see that, yeah. No need to apologize anyhow.

[bringingyouthefuture]

To give a concrete example: what is the newest band that can go on a worldwide stadium tour and expect it to work? That would be Metallica, founded in 1981 (nothing against Metallica, their second and third albums were seminal works in the genre).

 

 

 

If I was not mistaken it is sounding like you like Heavy Metal!? (insert headbanging emoji hear  )  But honest would rather listen to my favorite bands at a small club than a huge stadium, plus no more studio bands who sound horrible live!  I am sure music industry people and musicians feel the pain, but as a consumer have been pretty happy ... not sure it is an equivalent exchange but I didn't make the rules.

Edited April 1, 2019 by bringingyouthefuture

[Xenavire]

To put it bluntly, buggy games are a fact of life. Even Nintendo, one of the most thorough companies I have ever seen with their QA, has bugs riddling their games - take a look at something like Super Mario 64. Other than a few fairly minor bugs people stumbled upon, it seemed on the surface to be an excellent example of good QA at the time it released. Fast forward to now, and the number of bugs and issues that have been found and are actively being used to speed-run through the game is fairly staggering.

 

I've worked in QA. I found some crazy **** both during development, and after launch, and I imagine anyone that has worked in QA could say the same. The smallest kinds of fringe cases get overlooked, even with dozens or hundreds of people QA testing, and the reasons for that are numerous. And the older a game gets, the more likely that overlooked section of game or edge case is going to rear it's ugly head and either be infuriating, hilarious, or exploitable.

 

You are unlikely to ever see a perfect game. All the greatest games had issues, lurking somewhere beneath the surface. But Deadfire, for all of it's complexity, is in a relatively good place (granted, its taken a while to get some of the more egregious bugs sorted, but I have encountered very few in recent memory, turn based beta aside, and I haven't encountered anything that broke the game in RTwP, which is a victory in and of itself.) As long as Deadfire continues to see support and they continue to squash bugs, I think that they are doing an excellent job. Crowdfunding doesn't really factor into the decision to support a game long beyond the backer fulfilments,so here's to hoping they continue to support it well into the development cycle of Pillars 3.

[Verde]

I don't think anyone is expecting a perfect game, but for a game to have severe mechanical bugs a year out is unacceptable. I wonder what type or pressure Obs had to release a turn based mode?

Edited April 1, 2019 by Verde

[Boeroer]

I guess lowish sales numbers motivated them to think about a way to rekindle sales. That - and the fact that there always was a Turn Based mode in the making since PoE - but never was released. So they didn't have to start from scratch. 

Edited April 1, 2019 by Boeroer

[daven]

Are the sales for deadfire that poor??? Or is it because the first game was a bit of a surprise hit.

[xzar_monty]

I believe it has been fairly well established that Deadfire absolutely and truly bombed. I don't know if the sales have picked up since this was thoroughly discussed, but I wouldn't bet that they have.

 

Here's something you may want to check (noting the date): https://www.onlysp.com/pillars-of-eternity-ii-sales-below-expectations/

[M4xw0lf]

Bit of on topic :

I played lots of Obsidian games, many from day one (KotOR II, NWN 2, Fallout New Vegas) and neither Pillars of Eternity or Deadfire were as buggy as the three I named.

NWN 2 was the worst offender of the lot; it had a plotstopper early on which took around a week to patch, and then some of the patchfiles themselves were corrupted and I had to wait for the fixed files and download them again over 56k... those were the (f*cking awful) days!

So no, from my personal experience I can't confirm that the quality of programming has suffered from crowdfunding, in Obsidian's case I'd even say it has improved (at launch at least; the games still tend to have some quite persistent long-term bugs).

[thelee]

I guess lowish sales numbers motivated them to think about a way to rekindle sales. That - and the fact that there always was a Turn Based mode in the making since PoE - but never was released. So they didn't have to start from scratch.

 

there was? any link to anything discussing this? i'd be curious to read more about any earlier attempts at a TB mode.

 

 

I believe it has been fairly well established that Deadfire absolutely and truly bombed. I don't know if the sales have picked up since this was thoroughly discussed, but I wouldn't bet that they have.

 

Here's something you may want to check (noting the date): https://www.onlysp.com/pillars-of-eternity-ii-sales-below-expectations/

that article is basically social media regurgitation, there's a thread on the forums that discusses the numbers and they are definitely much better than what is speculated there (it was based on a flawed understanding of how dividends are paid out). still not great (i think ballpark of 200k at that time), and definitely way below what I think Obsidian was expecting based on (non-official) commentary from people like je sawyer and co.

 

for those just joining in: the dividend is paid out by a specific formula that is legally specified, so we have a rather accurate picture of revenues and can divine from that a fairly accurate range of sales (based on assumptions of average unit price) and it definitely doesn't look good. there's another dividend payout coming in a couple months that will give us a picture of how sales have performed since then, but even if TB mode beta kicked sales up a notch, I personally don't expect that much more in sales from the next dividend evidence. (if the dividend is another 192 then they doubled their revenue since then, but personally i wouldn't expect that - even if they doubled their unit sales via holidays and such, with discounting they probably murdered their average sales price)

[Boeroer]

 

I guess lowish sales numbers motivated them to think about a way to rekindle sales. That - and the fact that there always was a Turn Based mode in the making since PoE - but never was released. So they didn't have to start from scratch.

 

there was? any link to anything discussing this? i'd be curious to read more about any earlier attempts at a TB mode.

Phew... can't exactly remember but I think it was some interview or stream. It was said that there was always the plan to bring a turn based mode - even to PoE - but limited time and resources wouldn't let that happen and so it was only some basic stuff. Something like that. I tried to find that piece but didn't succeed yet. There are so many articels that cover "Tuen based mode" and "Pillars of Eternity".

Edited April 2, 2019 by Boeroer

[evilcat]

I suppose that small or medium studio may be interesting in promoting own brand and IP, using KS money not as scam or fast and last cash grab, just starting capital for future expansion.

Also KS backers may be not the last customers, and if game gets high notes or is just good in the niche there may be your regular buyiers.

 

There is interesting example of No Man's Sky, which might ended as cash grab, but devs decided it is serious, and worked on game post release ending with something (not my genre, but is said to be worthy).

In similar way Patchfinder The Bugmaker probably sold more copies outside KS.

 

The general idea of KS is good. There may be some weird factors like if normal publishers do too good games there will be no niche for KS. Or a couple scams can lower enthusiasm. Or collapse of western civilization may shrink pool of backers... and so on.

[Xenavire]

I think if there are "low sales" (and I admit, I don't keep tabs on sales, I just buy the game and play), part of the reason could be people waiting for console versions. I'm sure more than a handful of players ended up buying it twice, or buying in once the console version of part one was released  so naturally some would wait and get a complete console version (especially if anyone else is as excited for a switch version as I am. Pillars on the go!)

 

So all the delays for console versions may be causing a deficit in sales - which is being exacerbated by the turn based mode, as that seems to have pushed back the release dates indefinitely.