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

[keith.lamothe]

I was thinking the feedback would be positive on the idea of another expansion, glad to hear that

More generally, we're really touched by the outpouring of support from folks (fans, journalists, distributors, etc; lots of people care ) and we're very grateful.  At Arcen we've always put more into the developer-customer relationship than is strictly required by the transaction, and we're very gratified to see so many people do the same in return (both now and in the past). 

But we certainly want the bulk of the solution to our financial difficulties to be making and selling really good games   And for a number of reasons another AI War expansion is probably the best way to do that in the near term, and could really help us get into a better position for other projects like Alden Ridge.

We'll see

[keith.lamothe]

http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,7048.0.html
This is my bug, the mercenary dock isn't working properly. Even starting a new game...that's why I was initially suggesting I reinstall unless it is due to the configuration of the game that I create.

Do you prefer private messages( do we even do that on this forum?)?

Oh, ok, I just hadn't thought of that one as a showstopper   Certainly will fix it once the Unity port is in beta, though. And forum posts are much preferable to PMs in general, unless it's something best handled privately (conflicts between users, etc).

[ShadowOTE]

Hey, haven't been on in awhile, but I did get around to picking up Tidalis yesterday, and CoN has been pretty neat so far. Good luck to you guys!

[keith.lamothe]

Thanks much for the support

[Fleet]

AI War expansions are automatic buys for me, and I would imagine for many of your customers that visit these forums. Keep the expansions coming regularly, early and often! A smaller expansion would get some money flowing sooner, which sounds like a good way to go.

[colonyan]

I bought AI wars just after it was released. Up until now, original alone amused me so much that
didn't thought of buying expansion. And here goes this new of tight sales.
I just bought Zenith Remnant and playing right now and .... Wow. Isn't just music too good?
Really adds sinister mood here. I'm also excited to find out new elements.
I want Arcen Games to keep making its games. Short of words but good luck. b

[keith.lamothe]

Thank you for the support

[mlaskus]

When you get a banner going, post it for everyone to spread the word.

Yeah, that was the general idea.

A little progress update, I recorded some videos in AI War, but GIF's 256 colour palette limit is making them look terrible.
I guess I could use PNGs instead, but some browsers(Chrome, Safari, IE) are still unable to display animations in this superior format.
I am going to experiment with the graphical settings in-game, maybe disable the backgrounds, they are lovely but I would rather lose them than the prettiness of that Riot Starship's force field.

EDIT:
I think I have a pretty good idea now how it should look.

1.AI WAR

2.I <3 AI WAR

3.I <3 dissapears, AI WAR moves to the edge
Animation starts fading in

Heavy beam + riot

4.Every choice has a consequence

Star map

5.Will you be victorious?

Forcfield defense

Zoomed out battle

6.Will you even survive?

Something big flies through the view... Avenger? / The view scrolls over a massive AI Fleet

A nuke comes into view and detonates / A home command station is overwhelmed and detonates

Fade to white
Fade to black
Loop

[snrub_guy]

Any expansions (hell, probably any games) from Arcen are insta-buys for me. Any time a new expansion comes out I get another load of hours out of the game. Sounds good to me. Hope everything works out, and I'll try to spread the word.

[jordot42]

     $6.99?!  What an exceptional deal!  I'd pay triple that easily.

[BlackCobra]

As far as a micro expansion, at that price point it would pretty much be an automatic buy for me.   For one thing, anything I can get several hours of entertainment from that costs less than movie tickets is an automatic win.  Secondly, you've already cemented your reputation as one of the better development teams out there for community interaction, which clinches it for me, really.

so true

i would buy an expansion immediately

[Ixolite]

Not sure if that was suggested or even considered before, but...

How about using those pesky torrent sites full of so called pirates to your advantage? Those are really good at spreading the word out, but it would require taking some risk. Don't know how difficult would it be to prepare a special edition of the game solely for that purpose but my ideas would be for example:

- Spreading out the demo to as many torrent sites as possible, but with longer time limit - say 10 hours. Why? 3 hours, as it is now, is rather short for AI War, you can barely scratch the surface, especially if you need to go through tutorial first. Actually, tutorial could be without a time limit itself. Anyway, if someone doesn't like the game in 10 hour mark, chances are he won't buy it or even tell anyone about it anyway. If one does however, it might be better encouragement to buy full version once he committed two or three evenings on it already. 10 hours is not really long enough to finish a single game for the first time, could be one more prod into getting the real deal.

- Creating a stripped down version with only basic options enabled but without a time limit at the same time. So only simple ships selection, two or three AI types per difficulty level, one maps layout, limited factions and modifiers, no achievements etc. All those options that are taken out should still be visible and described properly, so that you know what are you missing from the game. Having game in such state out on torrent sites could generate some attention.

In addition to releasing special demo/stripped version to torrent sites, you could try advertising your move via press releases (including TorrentFreak for example), stressing out that you're giving away large portion of the game for FREE (like: "get 10 hours of game time for FREE" or something like that) - don't call it a demo, make it feel special and out of the ordinary. You might also think about a discount code hidden (not too deep so people can find it) in the torrent release - word of mouth might spread thanks to it.

Added bonus of that approach is that if it catches on, the torrent will live for itself without much need to provide bandwidth for downloads and taking care of the attention around it.

There is of course a matter of the game getting cracked, but those not willing to buy it won't buy it anyway, while those who get the cracked game and like it enough might buy it eventually and spread the word some more in the mean time.

Just a quick ideas that I'm sure need refining and considering the potential risks, but I do think it is worth exploring in one way or another.

[mlaskus]

@Ixolite, sadly, the game has been all over torrent/warez sites since it got released. I doubt a stripped down version of the game, or a demo would get a lot of attention there.

[superking]

Any expansions (hell, probably any games) from Arcen are insta-buys for me.

[Rustayne]

Have to agree with Mlaskus on that one Ixolite.  I know I had no problem finding the game on a torrent as of 5 mins ago.  If there is already a cracked copy of the game out there, I sadly doubt a watered down version would do very well on torrent sites.   I could be wrong, but if they downloaded the demo/stripped down version, and liked it, but didn't want to pay the 20 bucks for the game, they would find the cracked copy and play that instead.  Your idea has some merit though I think.  If there was a way to show people who torrent things that AI War is a great game, there is a chance that they would buy it.  It really would depend on the community of the torrent site in question.