Thoughts On Post-1.0 AVWW In The Wake Of Terraria's Development Halt

[KingIsaacLinksr]

@zebramatt - yea, I tend not to wander the wilds of the internet, the heat's exhausting   Kind of like one alternative I've heard suggested for the ESRB's "Online Interactions Not Rated by the ESRB" : "Online Interactions Indicative Of The Hearts Of Man".

There are different sections to the internet.  One part is  the self-entitled people, another part is the really weird did-I-trip-on-acid? part and then there are other parts of the internet.  (Too many to count)  YouTube probably has the best representation if you really dig into the videos.  I have.  I lost my sanity along the way...

King

[x4000]

Wandering into certain parts of the internet fairly conclusively answers the question of why no sentient alien races have ever tried to contact us.

But there's a lot of amazing parts of the internet, to be sure, too.

[zebramatt]

I like to imagine real world equivalents of youtube video pages for the surrealist mirth.

Like walking into a pet shop and admiring the cute fluffy bunny whilst the other patrons verbally abuse one another in heated arguments about race and religion. Perhaps because the rabbit looks a little like Hitler, I'm not sure.

[keith.lamothe]

Wandering into certain parts of the internet fairly conclusively answers the question of why no sentient alien races have ever tried to contact us.

Yea, every time one of them proposes it, a bunch of the others call him a n00b

[zoutzakje]

wow Chris, you always surprise me with the long essays you often write. Where do you even find the time for that?
I just wanted to say that I'll keep my fingers and toes crossed for AVWW not getting financialy bombed as well. I haven't played much of it yet (about 15 hours or so), but so far it seems to be a great game with a lot of expansion potential. I am very much looking forward to expansions for both AI war and AVWW. But yeah, I think a lot of us are eagerly awaiting a new development period for AI war now ^^
What if the worst possible scenario happens and AVWW turns out to sell bad? Will you guys try to develop a new game? continue with AI war only? Or (and I seriously hope not) quit developing games for good?
Well, no matter what the future might bring, I will continue to support you guys.

[x4000]

wow Chris, you always surprise me with the long essays you often write. Where do you even find the time for that?

I am a very, very fast typist.  And I don't proofread anything I write, even remotely, for things of this nature.

I just wanted to say that I'll keep my fingers and toes crossed for AVWW not getting financialy bombed as well. I haven't played much of it yet (about 15 hours or so), but so far it seems to be a great game with a lot of expansion potential. I am very much looking forward to expansions for both AI war and AVWW. But yeah, I think a lot of us are eagerly awaiting a new development period for AI war now ^^
What if the worst possible scenario happens and AVWW turns out to sell bad? Will you guys try to develop a new game? continue with AI war only? Or (and I seriously hope not) quit developing games for good?
Well, no matter what the future might bring, I will continue to support you guys.

Cheers, thanks for your support as always!  If AVWW were to bomb completely, embarking on a new game immediately would be suicide.  We'd return to the bosom of AI War and try to rally behind that, then do... something else.  I'm personally in a position where I don't have much of a risk of getting out of making games, but Arcen as we know it would not survive AVWW bombing (aka, staff shrinkage, development getting slower, etc -- which is what happened to us after Tidalis bombed, actually).  Fingers crossed, though, signs as promising at least.

[KDR_11k]

I just played Terraria for the first time tonight. Pretty crazy game, that. Not really sure what I was doing but I enjoyed myself nonetheless. I'll almost certainly play more of it!

I think Terraria was the most fun back when I didn't know anything about the world and was slowly exploring it and finding out the rules (along with funny stuff like telling a guy to "go ahead and scout the dungeon" while we were waiting for nightfall to fight Skeletron).

[Nodor]

Terraria has a ton of content and is a great game.   It's not really repeatable.    Building a massive tunnel/fortress system takes a LONG TIME - and the second time..  is painful. 

AI War's little boxes that give me things to click every time I start a new game.. and the problem of never being able to handle them all at once (at a decent difficulty level) + different AI types.. make it difficult to "finish" AI War.  Add in the "play it with friends, talk about strategies, implement them together" and you have an fantastic, repeatable experience.  (I'm in danger of exceeding the amount of time I logged on Total War games (Shogun through Shogun 2) with AI War -and that's not a small number). 

Tidalis was a lot of fun up until I was unable to defeat a puzzle.  .. But starting over with different options or choices, or going elsewhere.. wasn't an option. 

I am awaiting the steam release of AVWW.   I am concerned about the world development/replayability issue (Building towns may or may not be lots of work) - on the other hand, AI War's strategic choices make it easy for me to believe that when you state alternate strategies to victory, you have expertise in the field.   Ergo, I expect to be able to "defeat" the overlord, but I have not been able to determine if it will be a 100 hour game (Elder Scrolls style where you level/defeat a game with a number of archtypes) or a 500+ hour game where you never run out of things to try/do with friends - and it doesn't feel "grindy".   Either way, I'm looking forward to the release.

[tigersfan]

Well, ideally, you will get 100s of hours of playtime, that's our eventual goal (not sure if we're there yet, but there's still a TON of content). But, with the way the game is designed, you should never have to "restart". Sure, you can if you want, but every time we add something, we do it in a way that you can find/use it in your current world. So, replayability in the traditional sense isn't necessarily the goal, but as long as the game is selling and there is community support/demand for it, we plan to keep adding content/things to do.