Love AI War and/or Tidalis? We could really use your help...

[Mánagarmr]

As I mentioned before, I'll try to make a hybrid Let's Play/Review of both AI:War and Tidalis on my YouTube page. I've had some success with LPs before, but doing a _real_ review that really presents a game is something I've never done before. Will try to have something posted by this weekend.

[TheMachineIsSentient]

Yeah, I was thinking of pre-orders for Alden Ridge as well, but then i was reminded of Duke Nukem and wondered if we would be paying for something that we might never see. I see the charity thing as being a misstep. We all want a better world and healthier kids, but, I think it gave away income from your most stable, well-liked product which you depend on for survival. Chris, you are a victim of your own benevolent personality. I know it is referred to as a micro-expansion, and it is I guess, but the content is worth purchasing. And the entire team deserves money for that effort. Maybe you could end the charity promotion? Maybe, since it isn't released yet, put a date on it where future earnings go towards development.

Just giving ideas, maybe that wouldn't pass the smell test for you, but I think that as long as everything is clearly stated prior to purchase, you are not violating any business contract with the user. Even better, maybe just give 10% to charity after a certain date.

The last thing I can think of this morning is advertisements on the forums. Don't everyone shoot me at once; desperate times call for desperate measures.

[keith.lamothe]

I see the charity thing as being a misstep.

Please do remember that the decision to make CoN for-charity was made well before we saw signs of financial distress, and that kind of promise can't be gone back on.  We have to operate on reasonable assumptions when doing business, and we simply did not expect that our overall income would be lower after the release of Tidalis than before it.  If income drops like that, it can make any plan look like a misstep from the outside

Maybe you could end the charity promotion? Maybe, since it isn't released yet, put a date on it where future earnings go towards development.

No, we can't do that, we've already publicly promised that all CoN revenue (after distributor cuts and taxes) will go to charity, and that's that.

The last thing I can think of this morning is advertisements on the forums. Don't everyone shoot me at once

Ok, we'll take turns

Thank you for the suggestions, though, there's certainly warrant for thinking out of the box, even if some possibilities aren't actually possible.

[Trurl]

So, here's one thing that may be limiting Tidalis's sales: the demo is too large of a download. Casual gamers have a short attention span... they have a lot going on and can't be bothered to wait for a long download to try a game out. Also, casual gamers are more likely to have slow internet connections which makes downloads take even longer. Casual gamers are used to web games that they can try out almost instantly. They see a game they want to try and want to be able to play it within a minute. You can't expect them to wait an hour to download a 400MB demo. Heck, they might not even have 400MB of free hard drive space, and they certainly aren't going go delete their pirated copy of Twilight to make room for a game demo.

So, I think you need to come up with a new demo for Tidalis that is small... something that could be downloaded in less than a minute on a slow DSL connection. 10MB or so. Even better would be a Flash version of the demo (or maybe a Unity web player version?) that people could try out quickly in their web browser, but I imagine that would be a lot of work.

Just to give a little perspective... Peggle (the full game) is a 15MB download, so Tidalis is 27 Peggles. That's a lot of Peggles.

[Lancefighter]

400 mb is a large download? since when..
Maybe casual gamers have a short attention span, but i can certainly find something else to do while 400mbs download 

also, eve forum rules require:
#  Maximum height: 120 pixels
# Maximum width: 400 pixels
# Maximum file size: 24,000 bytes (not Kbytes)
# signature graphics that may only contain your character name, corporation logo, corporation or personal slogan or other text that is directly related to your in-game persona, or content directly related to Eve Online.

the last one is the real problem :\ I could probably try an AI war banner of some sort, with my avatars face on it, that says something along the lines of 'what Lance does instead of stationspinning', but even then its probably a stretch 

[keith.lamothe]

400 mb is a large download? since when..
Maybe casual gamers have a short attention span, but i can certainly find something else to do while 400mbs download 

Yea, for someone who games a lot it's not that big a download, but for folks used to 15MB downloads...  Part of our difficulty with Tidalis is that it really is a hardcore game with casual appeal; meaning that casual gamers should be able to really enjoy it, but it doesn't fully fit into the "casual" category all around.  The download size is one example of that.

Making a "demo version" would be tricky since basically it means no music (or only one track, and that majorly compressed below its current quality) and no animation, really limited all around, etc.

Personally I think a super-slimmed-down web-based demo would be great, but as Chris said that involves a fair bit of time (new platform, etc), and we don't have a ton of that.  If our current efforts turn things around a bit, I think that would be one thing to explore.

# signature graphics that may only contain your character name, corporation logo, corporation or personal slogan or other text that is directly related to your in-game persona, or content directly related to Eve Online.

the last one is the real problem :\ I could probably try an AI war banner of some sort, with my avatars face on it, that says something along the lines of 'what Lance does instead of stationspinning', but even then its probably a stretch 

Yea, honestly I think CCP is intentionally trying to prevent that kind of visual advertisement of other games.  That is their right, and I think we should respect their wishes in that.  I don't know about their policy on talking about or verbally advertising other games is, though.

[mlaskus]

It's a shame about EVE forums then. I guess people there could be interested in AI War. Anyway, I will make a forum banner, maybe you can use it somewhere else.

[cpunch]

Coming from someone familiar with EVE - I don't know that AIW and EVE share all that much in common besides being very large and about spaceships.  Just looking at that community and going "Look that's a lot of people who like spaceships" isn't necessarily meaning those same people want a deep strategy game.  For one, EVE is a game thoroughly aimed at two hardcore players: the PvP crowd and the Industrialist crowd, who would more likely want to spend money on Recettear so they can run yet another imaginary business.  A game that lacks competitive multiplayer and a deep economy is going to have a hard time finding traction in that community.  Certainly there are lots of people who would be interested, but they've got hundreds of thousands of subscribers and that certainty is simply statistics at work.

[Trurl]

400 mb is a large download? since when..
Maybe casual gamers have a short attention span, but i can certainly find something else to do while 400mbs download 

Plants vs Zombies is 27MB, so Tidalis is over 10x as big as that. 400MB is HUGE for a casual game.

[Lancefighter]

Yeah, the forums are kinda supposed to be in character to a point, so it does make sense. And nah, I dont have any trouble posting in the offtopic area about aiwar..

and i guess I'm not up to date on my casual games then :x I've certainly downloaded larger demos than 400mb..

keep in mind that the fact that there are spaceships is a major motivator for me here :p spaceships imply created physics, which is generally more interesting than 'realistic' physics (take a look at Orbiter..) because, well, the developers can make the game as they wish instead of trying to fake realism.
But yeah, the internetspaceship circle and spaceshiprts circle dont overlap as much as i might expect they do :\

[Trurl]

Yea, for someone who games a lot it's not that big a download, but for folks used to 15MB downloads...  Part of our difficulty with Tidalis is that it really is a hardcore game with casual appeal; meaning that casual gamers should be able to really enjoy it, but it doesn't fully fit into the "casual" category all around.  The download size is one example of that.

I can't imagine the market for hardcore puzzle games is very big. What other games are in that genre? Puzzle Quest? The Puzzle Quest demo is 34MB, which is 10X smaller than Tidalis demo. I'd consider my wife a casual gamer, and she loved Puzzle Quest and played a ton of it. I'll have to try out Tidalis on her, and see if she can stand the download time.

Making a "demo version" would be tricky since basically it means no music (or only one track, and that majorly compressed below its current quality) and no animation, really limited all around, etc.

I think you really need to make a Tidalis demo that will appeal to the casual market, which means small, I'm pretty sure. You've got to remove as many barriers as you can to people trying the game.

[Trurl]

and i guess I'm not up to date on my casual games then :x I've certainly downloaded larger demos than 400mb..

IMHO, if you are posting on this forum, then you are probably not a casual gamer.

I agree that 400MB is not particularly large for a modern game demo in general, but it is very large for a casual game demo. If you don't want to target the casual puzzle game market, then fine, but I would argue that that is a mistake.

[x4000]

Regarding concerns about the download size of Tidalis: I just can't fathom that as the issue, in the main.  It's not like we advertise that it's a 400mb download.  What do folks imagine is happening -- that people start downloading it, go "oh noes, 400mb" and stop the download instantly?  I think that once someone starts downloading something, they're pretty much committed to it unless it's going to be some ridiculous amount of time to get (like days, on dialup).

Granted, it's not doing us favors in terms of capitalizing on their attention immediately, but the reason that the Tidalis game is so large is simple: the art is power of two larger than that in popcap games, and the music is very high quality oggs, rather than what I'm assuming are some sort of synth-based soundsystem (midi, tracker of some sorts, etc).

You do know that the popcap games only run at 640x480, right?  Or at least that's true for PvZ.  Maybe there isn't desire for a casual puzzle game with high-res graphics and music, but honestly I don't think that's the problem here.

[Trurl]

Regarding concerns about the download size of Tidalis: I just can't fathom that as the issue, in the main.  It's not like we advertise that it's a 400mb download.  What do folks imagine is happening -- that people start downloading it, go "oh noes, 400mb" and stop the download instantly?  I think that once someone starts downloading something, they're pretty much committed to it unless it's going to be some ridiculous amount of time to get (like days, on dialup).

No, I don't think they'd stop the download. Instead they'd get distracted by something else and never go back and install or play the game once it is downloaded. Imagine your typical casual gamer who has 20 minutes of free time before Dancing with the Stars comes on, and she decides to download and try out Tidalis. So she starts the download and sees that's its going really slow and so she starts playing Farmville and then maybe checks back in 15 minutes and it is only half way through downloading Tidalis. Then Dancing with the Stars comes on and she turns the computer off and forgets all about Tidalis and never even tries it. There's one lost sale.

Granted, it's not doing us favors in terms of capitalizing on their attention immediately, but the reason that the Tidalis game is so large is simple: the art is power of two larger than that in popcap games, and the music is very high quality oggs, rather than what I'm assuming are some sort of synth-based soundsystem (midi, tracker of some sorts, etc).

You do know that the popcap games only run at 640x480, right?  Or at least that's true for PvZ.  Maybe there isn't desire for a casual puzzle game with high-res graphics and music, but honestly I don't think that's the problem here.

I understand all that, but the fact is, if you want to sell Tidalis to casual gamers then you have to compete with Popcap games. I agree that the high fidelity of Tidalis makes the download size of the full game worth it, but not for a demo. What if you made a demo that had a single song and single background... so basically just one level. How big would that be? Or maybe you need to make a low-fidelity demo... I mean, your average casual gamer is probably playing the demo on a laptop with crappy speakers, so the audio quality doesn't even matter. Heck, maybe the demo doesn't even need music.

Anyway, I'm not trying to criticize you for making Tidalis too large. I really am just trying to point out something that I think might be preventing casual gamers from picking up Tidalis. I certainly could be wrong about all this. I'll see if I can get some of my casual gamer family members (Wife, mother, etc...) to try Tidalis and see if the download size matters to them.

[Otagan]

Just out of curiosity, have you guys explored the idea of an AI War 4 pack on Steam?  Not that I necessarily think it would result in a flurry of new sales, but it would give the opportunity for some people who are uncertain about the game to buy as part of a group and get a lower price point.