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

[Vinraith]

It's funny, a story-based campaign is one of the few add-ons for AI War I probably wouldn't buy. Strategy games make for terrible story telling devices, the best part about a good strategy game like AI War is that it allows you to create your own story as you play. Invariably, that's far more interesting than any pre-scripted narrative to me.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, to be clear, we're definitely not talking about anything storytelling-wise for this next expansion, that's just too much of a jump to make at once.  And if we ever did anything like that it wouldn't be the only feature of the expansion.

[TheMachineIsSentient]

Okay, so we agree that steam doesn't do the game justice...

But then there's: http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-TID/tidalis-bundle

and also: http://www.direct2drive.com/9653/product/Buy-Tidalis-Download

All of these sites have the exact same verbiage, although they serve different crowds.


You could provide a link to the full description on your webpage, but those are three sites where it looks like match three madness. I wholeheartedly agree that your features page is better than the one that I purchased from-steam- which I imagine a great many of your customers are buying products from. Are the majority of your sales coming from your feature page or other sites? You don't have to answer that...just saying, maybe it needs a little extra help in advertising.

If the steam page stinks... Change it up. There is match three fatigue in the gaming world, and people are going to overlook it if they sense that's what it is.

I think you should mention the plushy pile and hidden levels to Intrepid adventurers...



Regarding AI War, what do you mean by concrete steps? I was thinking something like...

"I finished a campaign of AI War last night… I found a spawn that gives me a new beam modifier for my z beam frigates. I had to fight against a Mark three planet to get to it! It was a little out-of-the-way, and it raised my progress meter, but the Schwartz is now orange!"

"I was liberating the rebels on Saturday with some friends, and now we are able to make ships that are automatically allied and controllable by all of us at the same time."

"I took down the avenger, and it dropped a new powergenerating unit that is also a ship at the same time"

I don't mean that you level up and gain experience points... Just little rewards for actually finishing the game( this might do wonders for the multiplayer problem of finishing games). Maybe certain rewards only show up in multiplayer ( and appropriate to multiplayer). And the rewards themselves aren't game breaking… Purple beams? Nothing but coolness factor for adventurous players willing to look. We were discussing the endgame in another thread a while ago; this would be a great part of that and a risk to take.

I don't know if you're getting irritated in your post... But I'm just throwing this stuff out there for ideas for you guys, things that could alter your audiences perceptions. You already won your core crowd over, people like me are already going to purchase what you guys create. It's everybody else you need to sell.

[Vinraith]

Yea, to be clear, we're definitely not talking about anything storytelling-wise for this next expansion, that's just too much of a jump to make at once.  And if we ever did anything like that it wouldn't be the only feature of the expansion.

Yeah, I know that's not on the plate for the November micro-expansion, just figured I'd provide a counterpoint to the (inevitable) campaign requests.

[keith.lamothe]

I don't know if you're getting irritated in your post...

No, definitely not.  On the occasions that I get irritated I usually don't mind making it clear  Though more cautious with customers of course, haha.

I do appreciate the feedback, particularly about Tidalis (because, as I said, AI War has sold as well as could reasonably be expected of that kind of niche game from a previously-unknown indie; indeed better than could have reasonably been expected given all the installing rigmarole, etc).  And I hope I'm not coming across like we didn't make any mistakes.  Obviously, clearly, at some point we made mistakes.  And as Chris has already stated there were some big honking ones in the PR on Tidalis.

I think the biggest problems are that we made something that both hardcore and casual gamers would like (a lot, pretty often), if they got sold on it, but it's got several barriers preventing it from really reaching the casual gamer market pretty much at all, and while the hardcore market probably saw a good bit of it (it was on the front-page steam rotating ads for a while, after all, and got 100% reviews from people like Tom Chick and James Allen) there were other barriers preventing them from getting sold on it.

We are currently taking steps that will hopefully rectify both problems; we'll see how those go.

But I'm just throwing this stuff out there for ideas for you guys, things that could alter your audiences perceptions. You already won your core crowd over, people like me are already going to purchase what you guys create.

Yea, and we really appreciate you guys

It's everybody else you need to sell.

Not everyone else.  We just need enough diehard fans like y'all  Partly kidding there, that doesn't work so well as a business model.  But on the other hand I think we need to learn some lessons about the chances of actually getting much more than say 30,000 or 40,000 copies of any one thing sold in a year, etc.

Yeah, I know that's not on the plate for the November micro-expansion, just figured I'd provide a counterpoint to the (inevitable) campaign requests.

Yes, and we do appreciate that people chime in on both sides, particularly when it comes to stuff that's taking the game in a new direction.

[x4000]

The latest update: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2010/09/point-of-clarification-were-debt-free.html

Copied:

The fact that Arcen is debt-free is an important point, and I wanted to make sure that didn't get lost in the larger posts from the other days.  Why is that so relevant?  It means that, in the grand scheme, the company as an entity is in no danger of disappearing whatsoever.

Even in this super slow period, even after the royalties it owes staff, Arcen makes about five times what it needs to in order to continue operating the website, pay our LLC fees, and that sort of thing.  That means that AI War and Tidalis and so forth would still be on the market a year from now, two years from now, and so forth.  Rumors of our impending bankruptcy are greatly exaggerated, in a manner of speaking -- one only has to declare insolvency if one can't pay one's debtors and has no assets.

What Stands To Be Lost, And What Doesn't
So what's the big deal been?  Well, the problem was never about Arcen-the-entity.  The problem is about Arcen-the-team-of-people.  Myself, Pablo, Keith, and Phil, primarily (Lars is happily employed elsewhere fulltime, anyway, and has only ever worked part-time with us).  The financial challenge that we've been facing was that we wouldn't be able to keep paying the actual staff, providing benefits for those who have them, and that sort of thing.  In other words: laying everybody off, including myself.

That would be the end of us doing much work for you, but the prior work that we've already done would live on.  That said, many of us have decided that we'd still try to do some stuff part-time in the off hours even if we had to look for other work (we all love what we do), but it won't be the same at all, especially for me -- as a new dad, I can't put in nearly the hours I did back in 2008 or 2009 when I was working two jobs.  I have no idea what we'd be able to accomplish and in what timeframe, but it would be just a tiny fraction of what we do now, I'm certain.  And if one or more of us found other employment with other game developers (a few have offered, over the last year or so as well as recently), then odds are we wouldn't be able to do much with Arcen aside from selling what we'd already made.

So when I was saying that would be the end of Arcen Games as people know it, that's what I meant: that we'd go into sort of a shadow half-life, like Voldemort did after his curse rebounded upon himself.  Like the dark lord, we might then be able to claw our way back into full life, but it wouldn't be the same and it would take a long time at best.  Okay, perhaps I shouldn't be comparing us with an arch-villain of a fantasy work, but it was the only analogy that came to mind -- I've been re-reading the Harry Potter series lately, so I'm sure that's why.

Things Have Improved, A Bit, The Last Couple of Days
None of this makes the situation any less serious, of course, but at least it does mean that the products themselves won't completely disappear, and that we'd have some hope of making a comeback even if we did completely go under.  The outpouring of support and help over the last few days has been absolutely amazing, though, and has helped at least push our dead-end date out by a good half month so far already.  That's pretty stunning for a couple of days without anything even being on discount -- we're extremely grateful.

We've also had a number of businesses offering us support in various manners, and for that, too, we are extremely grateful.  "No man is a failure who has friends," to be sure.  I've felt alternately a bit like George Bailey and Kathleen Kelly lately, which is not something I'd ever expected.  Of course, the main thing on my mind with Kathleen Kelly was how it turned out for her despite the outpouring of support, but that's just cynicism.

I think that, if it's possible for things to work out, we'll find a way with the help of those who have rallied to support us.  We've got a few things brewing in the works for after AI War 4.0 at this stage and even before, though we can't talk about most of them yet.  There hasn't been a magic bullet to solve all our problems yet, but every bit helps and things are moving in the right direction for the first time in months -- that's all we can ask for.  I'm certainly filled with a sense of hope, and it's all thanks to you.

We can still use all the help people care to throw our way, though, to be sure.

[keith.lamothe]

Okay, perhaps I shouldn't be comparing us with an arch-villain of a fantasy work

I think you may have a permanent injury to the PR lobe of your brain (j/k)

[x4000]

Okay, perhaps I shouldn't be comparing us with an arch-villain of a fantasy work

I think you may have a permanent injury to the PR lobe of your brain (j/k)

I figure some levity is overdue -- if ever I were to have some terminal illness, I'd hope I wouldn't just mope around all the time, after all.

[keith.lamothe]

Indeed

[RCIX]

Something else i'd like to see is some method of upgrading your existing ships without actually having to buy more ships or new tech or something, kinda like SupCom2's ability to research damage, health, regen, etc. boosts. You'd obviously need to devise a system where you can actually see the updated stats of ships after you get the upgrades, but i think it could really work.

So like you could research a 10% damage boost to your bombers (or core triangle, or all fleetships, depends), which would cost 250 knowledge (since it's not all that much; it would be like having an extra 18 MkI bombers).

[Lancefighter]

it was going well until you mentioned how badly supcom 2 failed 

kidding really, i just dont agree with the way supcom 2 did it  (most notably, the ability to increase tech point gain by turtling)

Not saying, of course, i WOULDNT love a personal forcefield for my starships..........

[mlaskus]

Every description page of Tidalis should start with enormous bold letters saying, "This is not a match 3 game".
Also a trailer which actually explains how the game plays(but not in a tutorial kind of way), as I wrote in an earlier post, I was completely confused when I saw the trailer.
I just watched the extended trailer on Steam, and it is a lot better but still, I'm not sure if I would understand how it works just by watching it.

@Vinraith
RTS games can't tell a story? Have you played Red Alert 2? It is hilarious!
Also, Starcraft II, if you ignore its terrible writing, got the storytelling right.

Storytelling, if done properly, has it's place in every genre. Uplink had a great story hidden in it if you were able to figure everything out. It played out in emails you received, news reports and the content of some systems you could attack and ultimately lead to an apocalyptic conclusion.

[Tusoalsob]

I don't know if you guys know it, but here in Germany there was no test od Ai wars in anny Game magazine so the most people don't know about the game.

Perhaps you shoud give the magazins a test version so they can test it and repart about it in the magazins. There are mostly no Strategy titels in the making now and nothing that is realy comming out around the stategy sector, and SC2 is through he game magazins. SO Ai wars whout have a good chance for a nice Placment and some Fans can rite some "Leserbrife" to the magazine to keep it in talk some time.

You choud get good points in the lenth of the game because most other Strategy titels are very short and in the reply value of the campein. Perhpas you choud give the Magasins a demo version to put on there dvd's so no strem users can see it too and have a adress to order it.

The thing i can do is tell every friend about it and try to get some Links in some Forums to get more People to try it out and buy it.

[mlaskus]

@Tusoalsob
That's a pretty good idea. I completely forgot about magazines, I haven't read one in a few years.
I just checked, and the biggest PC gaming magazine in Poland(200 000-300 000 readership, I don't remember exactly) has never mentioned AI War nor Tidalis. I guess I could bug them to try it out.

Also, making a deal with a magazine to let them release full version of AI War on their DVD could be a good idea. I don't know how this kind of deal would work. Probably you would earn a lot less than selling those copies individually, but that would mean a large influx of people who would possibly buy the expansions.

[snrub_guy]

@Tusoalsob
That's a pretty good idea. I completely forgot about magazines, I haven't read one in a few years.
I just checked, and the biggest PC gaming magazine in Poland(200 000-300 000 readership, I don't remember exactly) has never mentioned AI War nor Tidalis. I guess I could bug them to try it out.

Also, making a deal with a magazine to let them release full version of AI War on their DVD could be a good idea. I don't know how this kind of deal would work. Probably you would earn a lot less than selling those copies individually, but that would mean a large influx of people who would possibly buy the expansions.

That or get some mags to stick the ol' three hour demo on the disc. That'd get some exposure. Same for Tiidalis. Not sure how easy it is to get on the discs though.