Why is PoE2 not successful ?

[Phenomenum]

Just my 5 cents: somehow i've started another (4rd or 5th, don't remember exactly) playtrough of PoE 1, instead Deadfire, which i've completed only 1 time and i don't want to return on these islands.

It's some kind of weird magic - technically, almost every thing and aspect in Deadfire is better or comparable to PoE 1, but  sadly, game couldn't touch my heart.

 

[ekt0]

20 hours ago, Wormerine said:

As if soundtrack? I doubt it had an effect on sales but I would agree. Considering the change of the setting, I expected the OST to change more. The world map and character creation music grates on my for some reason. Perhaps the melodic line sticks out too much? I find video game soundtrack to work best when they are vague mood pieces, without much direction. Give it a memorable melodic line on a loop and it can become irritating, even if the music is nice. I was hoping music will incorporate a bit more of the setting into it - there are traces of it, but very subtle. Then again, trying to write something in the vein of Polynesian folk music, without time for in-depth study might be a very poor idea. 
 

My favourite tracks are still from PoE1: main theme, sun in shadow, tavern song from White March. PoE2 has some nice stuff, too. District specific Neketaka stuff, In-Between music are all good. 

I am not quite sure whether the game soundtrack affects the sale number directly or not. However, as I mentioned in my previous posts, I strongly believe that if the game is good, people will buy it.

A very good example to my statement is the Witcher series. In the beginning, when they had wanted to make the Witcher 1, they were so poor that they had to use a free engine to develop the game. Later, they had improved the game quite a lot in the Witcher 2, and the market respected that. Lastly, they have had put so much effort on the Witcher 3, and that made the game sells so well until now.

I strongly believe that if the game was as polished as now when it was released. The sale number would be different. First impression always matters.

Edited December 4, 2019 by ekt0

[Gromnir]

set the wayback machine for 2003

https://www.nma-fallout.com/threads/briareus-speaks-out.152662/#post-3024645

fallout was not a good seller. ps:t, given the investment by interplay, were likely worse. were fallouts and ps:t bad games? if they were good games, they shoulda' sold, yes?

am not sure what is a good game. am knowing there is games we like. am knowing there is games we like less even though we believe such games were well-made. is games we marvel at their popularity given flaws we see in the title.  am not sure what is a good game, but am certain developers wanna be part o' creating such. the problem is game developers cannot make good games or bad games unless they also make games which is profitable enough given the needs o' the developer/publisher. 

we got no problem saying deadfire were a better title than poe1 in all but a few aspects. sadly, in spite of fact obsidian writers had more time and were better organized when creating the deadfire narrative than they did for poe, mistakes were made with deadfire storytelling which were inexplicably unseen until too late. even so, we do not believe our narrative concerns were what significant hurt deadfire sales. as such, is not difficult for us to say w/o equivocation that deadfire were a better game than poe, and we thought poe were a good game. apply transitive property.

the thing is, and we stated this earlier, being a better game is not what deadfire needed for increased sales. ironic and counter-intuitive as it may seem, designing deadfire to be better than poe were the fundamental design flaw which doomed deadfire sales. those folks who didn't like poe combat weren't gonna see refinement o' poe combat as an improvement. those folks who didn't like obsidian's take on a class-based system were not gonna see further distancing from 2e and 3e d&d as an improvement. obsidian made deadfire for those who liked poe. obsidian improved poe. a reasonable mistake, but in hindsight, a fatal mistake. tragedy is even now am not certain obsidian realizes what went wrong.

deadfire is a better game than poe. poe were a good game.  truth is better and good is not particular helpful labels save for those folks arguing on the arse-end o' developer message boards past point which any o' this matters.  rage at capitalism or greed or whatnot, but first goal has gotta be to generate 'nuff revenue to make the next game a reality, and the game after the next one. obsidian hubris were in thinking good and better were meaningful. 

aside: "exploration" is a trap. 

have been banging this drum since bg2 release and am certain we will continue playing to a deaf audience, but exploration is a complete unwinnable battle for developers.

single biggest complaint o' bg1 other than too easy/too hard were the lack o' depth o' encounters on all those wilderness maps. spent hours mowing fog o' war to reveal extreme brief encounters. suckage.  "do better bio!"

bioware listened to fan appeals and instead o' a whole bunch o' pointless hobgoblin, zombie and gnoll encounters on mostly empty wilderness maps, the developers focused instead on adding depth and density to map locations. planar sphere and umar hills and de'arnise keep became the norm. 'course after release o' bg2 the biggest complaint other than too easy/too hard were how folks missed bg1 style exploration.

...

poe and deadfire developers faced same exploration conundrum, but reversed. given finite resources available, poe developers focused on adding depth to a limited number o' maps, which meant reduced 'exploration." complaints result. deadfire solution obsidian came up with were to add many island encounters and to provide ship combat to be making the inevitable world map exploration less tedious. unfortunate, the ship combat were unfulfilling, but even if the resource sink o' ship combat had been avoided altogether, such would not have changed the complaints 'bout all the rando mini encounters scattered 'cross the world map. "do better obsidian!"

exploration is a trap feature. developers will never satisfy fans 'cause no matter what they do, some significant % o' fans will always complain 'bout the developers efforts. personal, we prefer depth and density over the breadth o' exploration, but for every Gromnir there is at least one person who wants exact opposite. doomed. 

advice: pick whichever approach seems most appropriate to game and setting and do best possible but ignore inevitable exploration complaints from fans. exploration balancing is a fundamental unwinnable battle for a developer to fight. 

HA! Good Fun!

ps in times gone bye, briareus were a black isle developer, which is why the nma crowd didn't dismiss his observations out of hand as sacrilege and/or heretical. 

Edited December 4, 2019 by Gromnir
clarification

[xzar_monty]

2 hours ago, ekt0 said:

I strongly believe that if the game was as polished as now when it was released. The sale number would be different. First impression always matters.

The fault in your logic is that in order to get a proper first impression, a game must be bought.

 

As for your claim that "if the game is good, people will buy it", this is simply not true. It is also not false, as such. This is how it goes in all commercial ventures:

1) There are rubbish products that turn out to be immense successes.

2) There are rubbish products that don't sell and are forgotten.

3) There are superb products that turn out to be immense successes.

4) There are superb products that don't sell and are forgotten.

5) All possible levels of success are also possible for all products that fall between rubbish and superb.

Before and upon release, it is impossible to know what becomes of any particular product.

[wih]

47 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

The fault in your logic is that in order to get a proper first impression, a game must be bought.

 

As for your claim that "if the game is good, people will buy it", this is simply not true. It is also not false, as such. This is how it goes in all commercial ventures:

1) There are rubbish products that turn out to be immense successes.

2) There are rubbish products that don't sell and are forgotten.

3) There are superb products that turn out to be immense successes.

4) There are superb products that don't sell and are forgotten.

5) All possible levels of success are also possible for all products that fall between rubbish and superb.

Before and upon release, it is impossible to know what becomes of any particular product.

We can say "If PoE was good, then people would buy Deadfire", which is closer to the truth, but still false, since PoE was good but Deadfire sales still disappointed. Most correct, I believe, would be to say: "If PoE lived up to the expectations of the wider public, then the wider public would buy Deadfire".

[xzar_monty]

Yes. But we don't know if there even exists a wider public (anymore) for the kind of game PoE and Deadfire are. It's possible that the niche has simply become too small.

[Boeroer]

3 hours ago, Gromnir said:

"exploration" is a trap. 

I agree 100% to this statement.

I'd also add "open world", "your choices have an impact" and "companion relationships" and "crafting" to that list. More or less. Not that they are bad - but it often seems devs are trying too hard with those. In the hopes that such tags on the game make it sell more I guess.

[Gfted1]

Also, "spiritual successor".

[wih]

1 hour ago, xzar_monty said:

Yes. But we don't know if there even exists a wider public (anymore) for the kind of game PoE and Deadfire are. It's possible that the niche has simply become too small.

Oleg Shpilchevsky, who is the studio head at Owlcat Games thinks there are three million people who like classical RPGs.

https://app2top.ru/industry/kak-v-rossii-sozdavalas-izometricheskaya-rpg-istoriya-razrabotki-pathfinder-kingmaker-131491.html

The interview is in Russian.

[Boeroer]

@Gfted1: That as well. On the other hand: without that tag we maybe would have lost Obsidian some years ago.

Edited December 4, 2019 by Boeroer

[daven]

3 million eh. 

I get the impression some of you think that people would only buy Deadfire OR DOS2 and not both. I bought both, also Pathfinder, the Shadowrun games, Serpent in the Staglands... I didn't bother with TTON because all reviews and comments said it isn't even an RPG apparently. So I didn't bother. 

 

Edited December 4, 2019 by daven

[wih]

12 minutes ago, daven said:

3 million eh. 

I get the impression some of you think that people would only buy Deadfire OR DOS2 and not both. I bought both, also Pathfinder, the Shadowrun games, Serpent in the Staglands... I didn't bother with TTON because all reviews and comments said it isn't even an RPG apparently. So I didn't bother. 

 

In fact, he says that not too much classical RPGs are released each year,  so fans have enough time to try them all. He says they didn't have concerns if there would be enough buyers, only whether their game would be good enough.

I too think that if you are RPG fan, you will buy the games you think you'll like, which, of course, doesn't mean you will actually finish them.

Edited December 4, 2019 by wih

[Wormerine]

2 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

Yes. But we don't know if there even exists a wider public (anymore) for the kind of game PoE and Deadfire are. It's possible that the niche has simply become too small.

Or Deadfire was too big of a production, due to unexpected success of PoE1. 

Blade Runner 2049 was really excellent. But it is not a kind of movie, nor IP, which would make a return on $150-185m budget. 

A lot of cash was invested into Deadfire - a full year of a full team development, then crowdfunding campaign, which gather more money then PoE1, and whatever money on top was thrown to finish it, uncluding full VO and such. All in hope to expand on what was expected to be returning players. Not all of the "improvements" made for a better game, but crucially audience didn't return - maybe they didn't like PoE1, maybe they didn't like changes to PoE2, maybe they just moved on. 

A question which might be interesting to ponder: should PoE3 be small budget project and cater to the few who staying with PoE3. or should PoE3 aim to change, and attract wider audience?

[xzar_monty]

26 minutes ago, Wormerine said:

A question which might be interesting to ponder: should PoE3 be small budget project and cater to the few who staying with PoE3. or should PoE3 aim to change, and attract wider audience?

My sense is that the question is a waste of time, because there ain't never gonna be no PoE3. I will be happy to be proven wrong, should that happen.

[xzar_monty]

1 hour ago, daven said:

I get the impression some of you think that people would only buy Deadfire OR DOS2 and not both. I bought both, also Pathfinder, the Shadowrun games, Serpent in the Staglands... I didn't bother with TTON because all reviews and comments said it isn't even an RPG apparently. So I didn't bother.

What's TTON? Sorry, I'm ignorant.

I will buy all the "classical" RPGs that look promising. I hadn't heard of Serpent in the Staglands, so I went to check it out just on Youtube, and it looks rudimentary indeed. Not for me, but thanks for the tip. As for the entire list of "classical" RPGs that I have truly enjoyed, that's BG2, PoE, Deadfire and P:K. I have also played BG, IWD, IWD2, Temple of Elemental Evil, NWN and NWN2, but they are all somewhere between somewhat unsatisfying (IWD) and poor (BG, NWN2). Let's forget the Ultimas and the Phantasies of yesteryear, shall we.

[Boeroer]

No Dragon Age: Origins?

TTON Is Torment: Tides of Numenunuonumuonera

[thelee]

The thing about comparing games in the past to games now in terms of sales trajectory is that the past is an extremely different market. You don't actually have to go further than Hollywood to see how the entertainment landscape has changed. Some of the major movies of the 90s made their money over huge timelines, and doing such a slow burn was not that bad of an idea. (Titanic notably didn't sell out at first release, and only after the initial weekend did theaters start selling out, and it actually became more popular over time; its highest grossing week was two months after release. By contrast, the similarly big-revenue movie Avengers: Endgame made 1.2 billion in its opening weekend alone and then trickled in additional sales to slowly hit its record; they even did a marketing blitz just to shove a few more butts into seats near the end of its theatrical run so that it could legitimately claim to break sales records.)

I don't doubt that smaller indie productions might have to rely more on the long-tail of sales, especially because they don't have the ability to make as big of a splash as AAA studios. But that doesn't change the basic economics that are at play in the 21st century with multiple million dollar budgets that need to be recouped pretty quickly before moving onto the next big project.

 

1 hour ago, Wormerine said:

A question which might be interesting to ponder: should PoE3 be small budget project and cater to the few who staying with PoE3. or should PoE3 aim to change, and attract wider audience?

I would say small budget PoE3 is the least-risky way to test the waters - try a new setting, keep in TB mode from the start, etc. If that also stays small, then the writing is on the wall for this kind of a niche game and we'll see the IP explore different genres. I like Boroerer's idea of basically a small-scale hackathon using the Deadfire engine, or JE Sawyer's own idea of a Pillars Tactics game.

Edited December 4, 2019 by thelee

[xzar_monty]

6 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

No Dragon Age: Origins?

Good point. I did have that, but I didn't get much past character creation. Anything in 3D is pretty much a no-no for me, it seems: I just can't get around the way the graphics get so repetitive so quickly, no matter how nice the various templates (if that's the word, probably isn't) look at first sight.

[xzar_monty]

8 minutes ago, thelee said:

The thing about comparing games in the past to games now in terms of sales trajectory is that the past is an extremely different market. You don't actually have to go further than Hollywood to see how the entertainment landscape has changed. Some of the major movies of the 90s made their money over huge timelines, and doing such a slow burn was not that bad of an idea.

Yep. Speaking of Hollywood, I can't resist putting in this extremely interesting piece of information: Hollywood films are no longer made for American audiences. They're made for Chinese audiences, which are much, much bigger. There have been some rather interesting cultural additions/omissions in Hollywood (re)releases because of this. The first one that comes to mind might be this: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/22/media/top-gun-flags-intl-hnk/index.html

Edited December 4, 2019 by xzar_monty

[Wormerine]

1 hour ago, xzar_monty said:

Yep. Speaking of Hollywood, I can't resist putting in this extremely interesting piece of information: Hollywood films are no longer made for American audiences. They're made for Chinese audiences, which are much, much bigger.

Only true about some selected titles. China can be a profitable market but it's an odd one. Many movies won't be released there, and those that do, they don't get a lengthy run time. They can make an impressive profit though. 

 

[daven]

2 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

What's TTON? Sorry, I'm ignorant.

I will buy all the "classical" RPGs that look promising. I hadn't heard of Serpent in the Staglands, so I went to check it out just on Youtube, and it looks rudimentary indeed. Not for me, but thanks for the tip. As for the entire list of "classical" RPGs that I have truly enjoyed, that's BG2, PoE, Deadfire and P:K. I have also played BG, IWD, IWD2, Temple of Elemental Evil, NWN and NWN2, but they are all somewhere between somewhat unsatisfying (IWD) and poor (BG, NWN2). Let's forget the Ultimas and the Phantasies of yesteryear, shall we.

I haven't played more than 1 hour of Serpent, I merely bought it on the look of the game. That's what I mean, I will buy most CRPG's as i 'plan' to at least play them one day. So I don't think of them as rivals, i'd have thought most CRPG fans buy a lot of them.

Don't have much comments on the hollywood situation. I'm not really into going to the cinema, in fact the last film I did see at the cinema was a rerelease of 2001 A Space Oddyssey a year or 2 back.I'm not sure if it's the same situation... with DLCs and all that lark associated with 'em.

Anyways, with all this said. I don't think any of the modern releases are on the level of BG2 still! BG2 has a massive barrier to entry though with AD&D and being a direct sequel. The last 90's and early 2000's was a great time for RPG's in general. The best Final Fantasy games came out around then, the classic IE games, KOTOR, Deus Ex, Breath of Fire 3/4... man the PS1 had some good JRPG's. Suikoden 1 and 2.

No idea where I am going with this. Okay POE is a good game, my problem with it is it feels like a ripoff of the classic games too much. It's almost unfair that the IE games had so much material to go on with all the forgotten realms stuff. It made the worlds feel so much bigger.

 

Edit: After seeing the new Pathfinder game announced i had an obvious realisation, Pathfinder was a success partially(or primarily) due to being from a well established franchise and brand name! As was Divinity, they have both been around for years.

Edited December 4, 2019 by daven
MORE

[IndiraLightfoot]

23 hours ago, Gromnir said:

set the wayback machine for 2003

https://www.nma-fallout.com/threads/briareus-speaks-out.152662/#post-3024645

fallout was not a good seller. ps:t, given the investment by interplay, were likely worse. were fallouts and ps:t bad games? if they were good games, they shoulda' sold, yes?

am not sure what is a good game. am knowing there is games we like. am knowing there is games we like less even though we believe such games were well-made. is games we marvel at their popularity given flaws we see in the title.  am not sure what is a good game, but am certain developers wanna be part o' creating such. the problem is game developers cannot make good games or bad games unless they also make games which is profitable enough given the needs o' the developer/publisher. 

we got no problem saying deadfire were a better title than poe1 in all but a few aspects. sadly, in spite of fact obsidian writers had more time and were better organized when creating the deadfire narrative than they did for poe, mistakes were made with deadfire storytelling which were inexplicably unseen until too late. even so, we do not believe our narrative concerns were what significant hurt deadfire sales. as such, is not difficult for us to say w/o equivocation that deadfire were a better game than poe, and we thought poe were a good game. apply transitive property.

the thing is, and we stated this earlier, being a better game is not what deadfire needed for increased sales. ironic and counter-intuitive as it may seem, designing deadfire to be better than poe were the fundamental design flaw which doomed deadfire sales. those folks who didn't like poe combat weren't gonna see refinement o' poe combat as an improvement. those folks who didn't like obsidian's take on a class-based system were not gonna see further distancing from 2e and 3e d&d as an improvement. obsidian made deadfire for those who liked poe. obsidian improved poe. a reasonable mistake, but in hindsight, a fatal mistake. tragedy is even now am not certain obsidian realizes what went wrong.

deadfire is a better game than poe. poe were a good game.  truth is better and good is not particular helpful labels save for those folks arguing on the arse-end o' developer message boards past point which any o' this matters.  rage at capitalism or greed or whatnot, but first goal has gotta be to generate 'nuff revenue to make the next game a reality, and the game after the next one. obsidian hubris were in thinking good and better were meaningful. 

aside: "exploration" is a trap. 

have been banging this drum since bg2 release and am certain we will continue playing to a deaf audience, but exploration is a complete unwinnable battle for developers.

single biggest complaint o' bg1 other than too easy/too hard were the lack o' depth o' encounters on all those wilderness maps. spent hours mowing fog o' war to reveal extreme brief encounters. suckage.  "do better bio!"

bioware listened to fan appeals and instead o' a whole bunch o' pointless hobgoblin, zombie and gnoll encounters on mostly empty wilderness maps, the developers focused instead on adding depth and density to map locations. planar sphere and umar hills and de'arnise keep became the norm. 'course after release o' bg2 the biggest complaint other than too easy/too hard were how folks missed bg1 style exploration.

...

poe and deadfire developers faced same exploration conundrum, but reversed. given finite resources available, poe developers focused on adding depth to a limited number o' maps, which meant reduced 'exploration." complaints result. deadfire solution obsidian came up with were to add many island encounters and to provide ship combat to be making the inevitable world map exploration less tedious. unfortunate, the ship combat were unfulfilling, but even if the resource sink o' ship combat had been avoided altogether, such would not have changed the complaints 'bout all the rando mini encounters scattered 'cross the world map. "do better obsidian!"

exploration is a trap feature. developers will never satisfy fans 'cause no matter what they do, some significant % o' fans will always complain 'bout the developers efforts. personal, we prefer depth and density over the breadth o' exploration, but for every Gromnir there is at least one person who wants exact opposite. doomed. 

advice: pick whichever approach seems most appropriate to game and setting and do best possible but ignore inevitable exploration complaints from fans. exploration balancing is a fundamental unwinnable battle for a developer to fight. 

HA! Good Fun!

ps in times gone bye, briareus were a black isle developer, which is why the nma crowd didn't dismiss his observations out of hand as sacrilege and/or heretical. 

This is a post full of useful insights. Kudos to Gromnir for writing this up, and the expression "wayback machine" gave me a good chuckle as well.

I agree with these points in general, and then I am still one of those weirdos that did like the exploration in BG1 (and I still do when I've replayed BG EE), despite them big and rather empty maps with quite a few repetitive and bland encounters sprinkled with a few brief ones and then various dungeons and castles and manors and farms and fields and towers...

NWN2 Storm of Zehir and Deadfire pushed these game too far into Skyrim territory, and I've been replaying Skyrim again now (Special Edition), and I still like the game for what it is - a huge map where I get to run around and explore and do repetitive stuff my way and I couldn't care less about the quests. A game like Deadfire, however, shouldn't copy that recipe. If BG1 was anything like that I wouldn't find it very appealing at all. So, one way to describe Deadfire would be to say that it has Neketaka as a content-rich hub, which is surrounded by the sea (most of the gaming map is these waters, actually) - people easily forget this in these discussions - where you can find some floating debris, or a plague ship, but for the most part you get bugged by other vessels (encounters which you can deny be veering away or fast-click through battle and then board them, or do the little mini game over and over again). And you have to deal a lot with ship maintenance and enhancing it as well (not very fun stuff). Also at sea, you get this intermittent pantheon on a stick interludes when you decided to take a nap in your bunk. But your character isn't developed along this story, and the game progression doesn't work in tandem with these deity discussions. The only obvious thing is your party following the tracks of Eothas and obviously literally Eothas. And from the get-go, we are told that we don't really matter. Eothas will do his thing regardless of what we do, and quite logically, we only get to agree with his cause or not at the end - we can't even take him on. Eothas is like a player that is playing the game before us and who is in-game, and we are in the wake of his wreckless tunnel-vision playthrough.

The islands pale in comparison to the impact of the Deadfire game at sea I just described. Even worse, most of our exploring them was in the overland map mode (like in NWN2 Storm of Zehir), which isn't PoE1 gaming either - but rather some Civlization map-pushing mode with a few goodie huts (the places were we could scavenge resources or find a few items). This is sad, since a few of the dungeons out on the islands are very nicely designed and they have a great atmosphere. They are just too far and few between and they suffer from being spread out in this Deadfire at sea syrup. All in all, what I took away from the game is some weird sea-sick CRPG scurvy, and, mind you, I was one of those people that cheered when I learned about the sea map and the Pirates-like gaming being added to PoE2. O'hoy, was I wrong!

[ekt0]

On 12/4/2019 at 5:55 PM, xzar_monty said:

The fault in your logic is that in order to get a proper first impression, a game must be bought.

 

As for your claim that "if the game is good, people will buy it", this is simply not true. It is also not false, as such. This is how it goes in all commercial ventures:

1) There are rubbish products that turn out to be immense successes.

2) There are rubbish products that don't sell and are forgotten.

3) There are superb products that turn out to be immense successes.

4) There are superb products that don't sell and are forgotten.

5) All possible levels of success are also possible for all products that fall between rubbish and superb.

Before and upon release, it is impossible to know what becomes of any particular product.

I stand by my logic. When you are talking about sales number, it must be always referred with time.  A great game has tendency to be sold well as time passes by and the market learns about its presence. The example for this is the Witcher series, as I mentioned earlier.  Some good games, which have never been sold well no matter how long time goes by, are just not good enough for the market.

I do not expect everyone to love this kind of game CRPG, but even within its own domain of RPG players, POE 2 sales number is disappointing. So, when I mention the word "market", I mean the market of the specific game genre, not everyone.

Moreover, as I have said before, you do not need to buy the game first to evaluate the game quality. We have YouTube and Twitch nowadays. I personally had watched Cohh Carnage play POE 1 before I realized its quality and then later bought it myself. I do the same with POE 2. I have watched Cohh's playthrough before buying it, and this time I knew from his reaction during game play that he did not like this game as much as POE 1. Thus, I bought the game anyway, because I was impressed a lot with POE 1.

If you have doubt about how Cohh Carnage loves CRPG or not, I should tell you this first. He likes Obsidian so much that he had backed more than $10,000 on POE 2. He made a deal with Obsidian so that he is the first streamer to be able to stream the game on Twitch, and on the first day of his stream, some developers and even Josh Sawyer himself had dropped by his chat to see if he had any bug trouble or not. So, yes, I strongly believe that his opinion matters.

Last month, I publicly asked him on his stream whether he will give POE 2 another try or not. His answer is "No". He said that the game only barely met his expectation. On the contrary, he said he would play Arcanum, DOS:2, KOTOR 1 and 2 instead. This means that, to him, POE 2 is less interesting than these games.

In conclusion, these days, people will always know if the game quality is good or not before buying it. Everyone can watch a playthrough video series on YouTube or Twitch, read reviews from trustworthy source, listen to mouth to mouth reviews, or look at metacritic score, to see what the game is like. If that is not enough, you can always refund your game after trying it yourself on Steam.

So, please stop bringing this argument about no one will knows how good the game is if he/she does not buy it.

Edited December 9, 2019 by ekt0

[daven]

I've never heard of this guy.

[algroth]

On 12/4/2019 at 2:52 PM, Wormerine said:

Only true about some selected titles. China can be a profitable market but it's an odd one. Many movies won't be released there, and those that do, they don't get a lengthy run time. They can make an impressive profit though. 

 

It also used to be the case that American productions would only see about 25% of the earnings made in China, opposite to the 45% elsewhere abroad or the 55% in USA. Also at least in 2016 China had a maximum quota of foreign films that could be released theatrically. I'm not sure if these facts still hold true today, but even without these things in consideration, most films beyond some select cases still make higher gross numbers in USA alone than they do in China, let alone with the rest of the world combined. I think it's safe to say China is *a* market, and an important one (arguably second), but not *the* market aside from some very specific instances. For a random example, Avengers: Endgame, the highest-grossing foreign film in China by quite the margin (over $200 million above the next film in line, The Fate of the Furious) still made $614 million relative to the $858 million it made domestically.

Edited December 9, 2019 by algroth