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Obsidian’s 10th Extra Life Anniversary

What Pillars of Eternity needs for mass sales - tablet versions

Eurhetemec
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Eurhetemec

Eurhetemec

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Lots of my friends are huge Baldur's Gate/PS:T/IWD etc. fans from way back. It seems like half the people I know played them back in the day, even some you might not expect. Pretty much all of these people still play games, and indeed, many of them still play Baldur's Gate 1/2, but they don't do so on PC or Mac.

 

What they play on, is on tablet - most 10" iPads and Androids.

 

I've been letting them all know about Pillars, and how totally awesome it is, and the fairly universal response seems to be "I'll get it as soon as it hits tablet!". There's a lot of surprise that there isn't a tablet version already, in fact.

 

These are people with money (in many cases very large amounts of money), and they want to give it to Obsidian. But they won't do so for desktop versions, because that's just not how they game any more (for better or worse, but it's a reality). Given the fairly massive success of BG:EE etc., I think that there's a good case for getting Pillars on to these platforms.

 

Now, before we start hearing a lot of twaddle about how terribly difficult ports are, let's be clear, this is a game developed with Unity (if you don't know what that is, stop talking about how hard ports are and go look it up), already happily running on Windows, Linux and Mac, it will not be stunningly hard to port to tablets. If Obsidian want to concentrate on other things, like expansions and/or Pillars 2 or other projects, great, the port can probably be handed off to an out-of-house dev team. The only big concern I see is whether tablets could hack Pillars, technically (gameplay-wise, it would work great, no question), but I strongly suspect that, given that it can run on my literally 8-year-old (and not exactly top of the line then!) PC in 1920x1080 with no real framerate issues, that with a little downscaling, that wouldn't be a problem.

 

So anyway, big untapped market there, tap it! :)

 

TLDR: Big market for tablet versions. Unity makes it easy to port. Not suggesting main development team do this.

 

(EDIT - There's also probably a market for PS4/Xbone versions, BUT that, unlike these, would be actually a challenging port in some ways, because you'd have to come up with an entirely new control system)

Edited by Eurhetemec
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kalniel

kalniel

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Thank goodness the aim doesn't appear to be chasing mass sales :)

One of the very nice things about Kickstarter is that it allows fans who are in a minority to put their money where their mouth is and allow the devs to make a game that isn't necessarily appealing to the mass market.

 

But I agree that it should be a good match for tablets as well, just make sure to aim for PC first ;)

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wotdlois

wotdlois

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i dont know, maybe i am in the minority but playing a full blown rpg on a tablet doesnt sound like much fun.  Tablets to me are things we use when we cant get to the "real" computer, like sending emails or watching a movie on the train.  For me playing games like POE, require a familiar computer setup and environment, not a spontaneous, "oh i think i am going to load up an rpg while I wait for the bus to arrive, simply to burn time.   

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Eurhetemec

Eurhetemec

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But I agree that it should be a good match for tablets as well, just make sure to aim for PC first  ;)

 

Oh definitely, but as we have that, and Mac, and Linux, and it's Unity... then :)

 

i dont know, maybe i am in the minority but playing a full blown rpg on a tablet doesnt sound like much fun.  Tablets to me are things we use when we cant get to the "real" computer, like sending emails or watching a movie on the train.  For me playing games like POE, require a familiar computer setup and environment, not a spontaneous, "oh i think i am going to load up an rpg while I wait for the bus to arrive, simply to burn time.   

 

I feel the same way, but that's the thing - my friends don't, and indeed my best friend was going on about how great BG:EE was for long train journeys or the like!

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RadonGOG

RadonGOG

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I totally agree. Isometric RPGs are surprisingly fun on tablets, (try the Enhanced Edition games) and I think there is a large market waiting to be tapped.

surprisingly?! You are quite easy to surprise than! :D

I believe that there is nothing more obvious than the point that both Iso-RPGs and Turn-Based-Games are great on tablets! 

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PIP-Clownboy

PIP-Clownboy

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I'll throw this one out there too. Go the route of wasteland 2 and release on the nextgen consoles. I'd be able to play more and be able to try to get more of my friends to play it.

 

That's a slippery slope. 

 

Rather they focus their resources on new content and more niche style cRPGS. Hopefully something turnbased/sci-fi.

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Nukenin

Nukenin

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All BG:EE on my iPad did for me was make me fire it up on my laptop.

 

Just because it works doesn't mean it works well.

 

And let's face it, Pillars of Eternity is not for the faint of heart.  Playing it on a tablet is only going to compound its difficult aspects or at least amplify the unwieldy nature of the incessant pausing one must do to effectively micromanage ones party at higher difficulties.

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kylania

kylania

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I don't even like playing mobile games on a tablet, much less PC games. :)  They are great for reading an eBook on the toilet or looking up what other movies an actor from TV was in without having to get up off the couch or even rolling cool 3D dice for one session of DnD before switching back to real dice because the tablet ran out of power half way through the game even though it kept going to sleep every few seconds but that's about the extent of iPads or tablets for me.

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Brother Pain

Brother Pain

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I'm happy to play it on PC, but putting out a tablet version down the line wouldn't be a bad idea at all.

 

I wonder if the mature content in the game would be a problem for the official iTunes and Google Play stores, or if they're fine with it as long as no nipples are shown...

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Eurhetemec

Eurhetemec

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All BG:EE on my iPad did for me was make me fire it up on my laptop.

 

I don't even like playing mobile games on a tablet, much less PC games. :)  They are great for reading an eBook on the toilet or looking up what other movies an actor from TV was in without having to get up off the couch or even rolling cool 3D dice for one session of DnD before switching back to real dice because the tablet ran out of power half way through the game even though it kept going to sleep every few seconds but that's about the extent of iPads or tablets for me.

 

That's cool, but you're self-identifying as "not the target audience". You already play it on PC - I'm talking about people who do not, and suggesting BG doesn't work well enough for many on tablet is clearly wrong, given I know so many people who do it and are happy! :)

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cirdanx

cirdanx

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All BG:EE on my iPad did for me was make me fire it up on my laptop.

 

I don't even like playing mobile games on a tablet, much less PC games. :)  They are great for reading an eBook on the toilet or looking up what other movies an actor from TV was in without having to get up off the couch or even rolling cool 3D dice for one session of DnD before switching back to real dice because the tablet ran out of power half way through the game even though it kept going to sleep every few seconds but that's about the extent of iPads or tablets for me.

 

That's cool, but you're self-identifying as "not the target audience". You already play it on PC - I'm talking about people who do not, and suggesting BG doesn't work well enough for many on tablet is clearly wrong, given I know so many people who do it and are happy! :)

 

 

But BG on tablet was not very successfull, there is not such a big audience for a game like PoE to convert it. You also forget that BG was made in the IE engine, which was easier to port, that should be not doable or maybe even impossible with PoE without breaking the game.

 

Don´t get me wrong i understand your point, maybe better than you think :p I tried to get some friends into BG forever! Only when the tablet version of EE come out they tried it, the result was: yes they liked it and played it sometimes. Well that made a few sales for the EE, but brought not the BG experience to them that i had, there is a difference if you sit down infront of your pc and decide "i´m playing this now and let the immersion take me away" or "oh well i´m at the doctors and i play a bit".

 

i don´t think massive RPG´s like this are made for a tablet, gameplaywise maybe, but storywise and length? I don´t think it translates very well. Just my opinion though. If a rise in RPGS on tablets would make publishers rethink their attitude torwards them, then i´m all for it. On the other side, they would just "shop" them, want the mighty Carsomyr? Pay 5 bucks at our shop, your are welcome :x

 

RPG´s will always be a niche, but thats a good thing! Because of this we get pearls and not very often crap, look at the other side of the fence ;)

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, the man who never reads lives one."

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