Poll: Kickstarter for art revamp for AI War? (Tip: Vote no)

[Aklyon]

I would say the sound effects aren't bad (except in large confrontations, then the overlap is ow), but I usually have the computer volume as low as possible from having headphones. More variety certainly wouldn't hurt though.

[x4000]

You can say whatever you want about people who judge a game by its graphics, but that elitist attitude will not help bring in new people.

I don't know that it's an elitist attitude; it's more a matter of practicality.  All else being equal, of course better graphics are better.  It's a question of how to deal with things since all else is not equal.

The fact of the matter is that a game's graphics are a HUGE incentive for people to get interested in something and stick with it.

Certainly.  And that's a big part of why we are doing things differently on our newer titles.  But some gameplay designs just can't be done with hi-fi graphics without huge huge huge investments.  If you're going to have 800 entities, prepare for massive art expense.  So for instance with Bionic Dues, we're having many fewer units, but enormously modular ones.  It gets the same sort of variety, and even with visuals for all the modules, but at far less cost.

If you are going to update the graphics, I would also update some of the movement mechanics as well. The fact that ships can turn on a dime, and go from zero to full speed almost instantly detracts from the "space opera" feel of the game. Realistic turn animations, as well as acceleration speeds (especially for bigger ships) might help make the experience seem more genuine. You could also look at some of the missile and bullet firing and collision effects. As is, the missiles sometimes turn at 90 degree angles. The game's explosions could definitely be better as well.

All of those things require a ton of CPU computation, and thus during big battles that would slow down what already teeters on the edge of acceptable.  This again is a case of "the overall game design dictates certain details."  There are a lot of per-ship calculations that we simply can't do because it would be too expensive to do it for 6000 ships at once in a big firefight.  You'd get a slideshow even on higher-end machines.  A decade from now it won't be an issue, but right now it is.

Also, the same sound effects are recycled over and over again, and could use some variation/diversity to give them an extra appeal. As it is now, most of the firing effects are very painful to the ears, which is why I've left the sound off for probably the past 200 hours of playing.

The tricky thing with sound effects is that you either have to have someone really expert to roll their own -- which we don't have -- or you have to have someone who is great at recording actual things -- which don't exist -- or you have to purchase third party sound banks for things.  Which do exist, and we have a number of them, but there is a distinct limit to how many sorts of sounds there are.  If you think about even movies like Star Wars, they use the same SFX over and over and over and over.  The difference there is the movie is only 2 hours long, and the space battle scenes are only a tiny part of that.  And even during the space battle scenes, it alternates between stuff shooting and stuff just flying around, with the latter being the bulk of it.

I'm not saying the sound design couldn't be better -- obviously that isn't true.  But if you're expecting a AAA game sound design experience, you have to remember that most AAA games have multiple dedicated sound designers working for the entire life of the project (aka, years) to get you the sort of sound design you have in those games.  In other words, that's vastly out of reach for us.

So in other words, if mass appeal is what you're shooting for

Whoa, let's back that truck up!  This is a super niche game, and always will be, just by its very nature.  I mean, this game is hard, it's complex, and its learning curve is huge.  Even if we had the best AAA graphics in the world, sound design to beat everything on the market, and so forth, I think that this game would not sell more than two or three times more than it does now.  And that would be more than eaten up by the cost of making those sort of additions.  I mean, look at some of the niche AAA strategy games that bombed but had a cult following because they were awesome.  They almost all have a less steep learning curve than AI War.

Put another way, if Dwarf Fortress had AAA graphics I don't think that it would be wildly more popular, either.  To some extent, sure.  And if the interface was easier to use and things were explained a little better, then definitely there would be more people.  But right now it pretty well caters specifically to the audience that wants that sort of thing in the first place, and that's that.  Same sort of thing here.

The question is not so much a matter of expanding the audience (as I noted in my original post, I don't think that would happen much even with amazing graphics), but rather is a question of if it would be desirable for existing fans to the point that they'd want to fund it in order to get the benefits for themselves.  The answer so far seems to be a resounding no, mainly because of the incredibly vast cost of it.

I think if you were to do a major art/animation rework, you could sell the game as "AI War 2", as kind of a reboot to get everybody interested. Obviously, I have no idea how much something like this would cost, but in my personal opinion it would pay for itself in the end.

If we sold another million dollars of the game, as we did with the first game, then sure that would pay for itself.  But I find it fairly unlikely that we'd be able to dip into that well to that degree again.  We'd piss loads of our core fans off by abandoning AI War 1 and then charging them for a sequel without lots of content changes.  And with a sudden and dramatic slowdown in framerate thanks to the new CPU load.

In other words, while the idea is certainly appealing in an "I'd like to play that" sort of way, the feasibility analysis is poor and the ROI looks shaky at best, and the risk is pretty high.  And given other things we are working on, I think the opportunity cost is also very high (We can make more money, faster, by doing other things).  And given how we've been struggling financially to not shed staff, hitting financial goals are important.  Going through a period of incredibly high investment (with money we don't have) for a very uncertain return is the very definition of high risk for us at the moment; the sort of decision that could wind up losing most or all of the staff if the dice didn't come up just right.

[Kahuna]

First of all: I really like the art style of AI War.

this would draw in some more customers for Arcen, who otherwise were put off by the graphics perhaps.

Add gameplay video(s) (none of the trailers actually show gameplay or the UI) get better screenshots. The trailers don't show what the game is like and the screenshots really don't do justice to AI War. The screenshots are (almost) always zoomed in which is not how the game is played most of the time. They should also show the UI and they should be realistic. By realistic I mean "no 194 home planets with max caps". Show real situations from real games. Also some of the screenshots are really confusing and kind of messy AND most screenshots have too bright backgrounds (nebulas or whatever).. sometimes the backgrounds are brighter than the PLANET. There are some good screenshots too but most of the screenshots don't do justice to AI War.
http://cdn.steampowered.com/v/gfx/apps/40408/ss_4255a8115732a9d64e7b2712f9b71a8c06196497.1920x1080.jpg?t=1350961682
Yes it's a new map type that comes with the DLC but it doesn't look very appealing on the Steam store page.

Oh and now that those ugly planets have been removed from the game they should be removed from the screenshots too.. I'm looking at you rotting cow and LowResolutionWrinklyPaperEarth.

At least one gameplay video showing the base game. The gameplay video should show someone actually playing the game (with UI enabled..) instead of someone "making a trailer/video"

Yes I know AI War has a demo too but people are not going to try the demo is the screenshots look bad. I got lucky when I got into AI War. When I first saw the trailer and screenshots I had no idea what the game is like. They didn't really tell me anything about game. I just though they looked kind of confusing. After a couple of weeks I saw AI War on Steam again.. I tried the demo only because I was bored to death and because I like the idea of "humans vs machines". One of the first things I noticed was that the game looked better in-game than on the store page. The gameplay was awesome of course.. that's why I'm here. According to Steam I've played 1681 hours. Lot of that is afking though but still.

I don't know if anything made any sense^^ I'm tired and I wrote this post twice because a Java update crashed Chrome. Whatever.

EDIT: Again.. there are some good screenshots too..
..I suggest making a new thread where players could post their screenshots. Then you could choose the ones you like and maybe some of the old ones. etc

[zoutzakje]

I'd say no, don't waste so much money on this. Honestly, AI war looks great the way it is. I'd rather see 3 more expansions than new art and 1 expensive expansion. Just doesn't seem worth it to me. Gameplay and complexity are the reasons I became such a big fan, I couldn't care less about the art. Heck, I'd play the game even if it were ASCII style graphics.
People who get turned off by the graphics are the people who usually wouldn't be interested in the kind of game that AI war is anyways.
Spend the money on adding content, gameplay, bugfixes, balancing, sound effects and music. That's the way to get more fans.
And besides, 858 new icons to learn? Please don't do that to us lol.

Now if you were to run a kickstarter for a new humongous expansion, then I'd give as much moneys as I could spare without doubt.

[orzelek]

My 2 cents:

1. HUD update could be useful. It's one thing you look at all the time. Not sure if it could be done while keeping it's simplicity.

2. From all other proposals - I would say largest benefit would be from ship icons and potentially planets/backgrounds. I wouldn't say it's really needed. At least not for me

[x4000]

@Kahuna:

It's really hard to show hours of gameplay condensed into 3 minutes in any way that makes sense, unfortunately.  And in terms of the screenshots, if we just showed a lot of the far zoom icons I think that would be impenetrable to most people.  We try to show a mix of both.  As far as the older planets that look bad, it's kind of bothersome to steam for us to ask for screenshot updates, so we try to do it infrequently.

AI War still does solidly, anyhow.  Selling about $5k to $7k gross a day right now thanks to the new expansion, so I mean it's not like we're hurting for money or something for it.  AI War has always been our best earner, by far.  Could it earn better?  Maybe.  But honestly I think that people who are buying it are doing it off the game's reputation more than anything else, since the graphics really are not going to sell it to most people, and yet it sells really well.

Anyway, we do the best we can with the marketing materials, and feedback is always welcome.  But the whole art revamp post was not a "how can we make more money on AI War" sort of post.  As I noted in the OP, I felt like it would be a negligible gain, and possibly even a net loss in some respects, to do it even if it was fully funded by players.

A lot of the things that people are mentioning in here are absolutely things we are trying to do in our post-AI-War games, but they are also meant to be more accessible while AI War's fundamental thing is that it's not accessible at all to most people.

[Wingflier]

Good points Chris, and I don't necessarily disagree with any of them. Game marketing is obviously not my expertise, I'm just giving you my opinion as a long-time player and a person who has attempted to introduce countless people into the fold.

AI War is complex, yes, but I don't think it's prohibitively complex to most RTS players. If I had to guess, it's the graphics which prevent people from ever trying it in the first place more than the complexity of the game itself which pushes people away.

One of the main criticisms of DotA that we heard again and again is how complex it was, and how it would never succeed as a major title when there were similar games out there, which were much simpler and more streamlined. Everybody had become so used to a gaming world where instant gratification and simplicity was the selling point, and nobody would have guessed just how successful complexity for complexity's sake could really be once the graphics and interface of the original game were improved.

Once again, this is just my theory based on personal experience and observing this kind of phenomenon in other cases.

[x4000]

@Wingflier:  All good, and I do appreciate the perspectives, always.  It's always a good idea to consider things from a lot of angles or we wind up missing something.  And you might be entirely right in all that you say.  But I think there is a lot of luck in which games make it big and which do not.  Yes the games that are good are the ones that will make it big... but not all good games do.  For every DotA, there are a number of "sure fire" things that miss that people are just absolutely consternated about.  I mean, looking outside of games, just think about Firefly (the TV show).  The failure of that is largely inexplicable.

So while I think there is a good chance you are right about the graphics vs complexity thing, there's also a good chance that the dice would not be in our favor even despite the fact that you were right.  Or at best that the level of risk is kind of un-knowable, and thus given that the investment is high it's implicitly high risk.  If you don't know the odds but the investment is small, then we can afford to play around and test things a bit.  Unless we get some major windfalls in the future, I think the days of Arcen doing massive investment into a huge and really complex-to-learn game are pretty well behind us.  Instead we'll do moderate investment into things that are deep, as pretty as we can make them, that play to our strengths, and which are as easy to learn as we can make them.  And then with those that are popular enough, we'll continuously ratchet up the complexity via expansions.

Pretty much all the other things that we have tried have either been lucky (AI War was the right game at the right time, aside from being good), or have been some flavor of financial failure (all our other games up to Skyward Collapse lost money).  The new approach is new as of Skyward Collapse, and is the first time we're seeing actual fiscal success since AI War.

[Tridus]

@Wingflier:  All good, and I do appreciate the perspectives, always.  It's always a good idea to consider things from a lot of angles or we wind up missing something.  And you might be entirely right in all that you say.  But I think there is a lot of luck in which games make it big and which do not.  Yes the games that are good are the ones that will make it big... but not all good games do.  For every DotA, there are a number of "sure fire" things that miss that people are just absolutely consternated about.  I mean, looking outside of games, just think about Firefly (the TV show).  The failure of that is largely inexplicable.

Firefly was difficult to fit into a single category because it was a kind of weird space western thing. Fox put it into a bad timeslot. Didn't market it well. Aired the episodes out of order, and in particular didn't air the first episode first.

It's failure is pretty easily explained: management stupidity.

[Wingflier]

I mean, looking outside of games, just think about Firefly (the TV show).  The failure of that is largely inexplicable.

I thought that myself as well. I also thought the same thing about Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles too. When I first watched these shows as a kid (in my teens at least), I absolutely loved them, and HATED the television stations for cancelling them!

But when I went back and watched them again as an adult, I tried to take my bias out of the equation. I love Sci-Fi shows, so obviously I have a much higher tolerance for bad programming in that area. So when I tried to take my Sci-Fi bias out of the judgment, I realized that the shows had parts where they seriously dragged on at points. I just watched Firefly again recently, and there were many episodes that were rather silly at best, obvious filler at worst. Even the last episode, where the mercenary invades Serenity, threatens to cuddly hug  Kaylee, then River infiltrates his ship and pretends to be Serenity talking to him (and he actually believes it)...I mean come on, that was a little silly don't you think? I can imagine your typical television audience just frowning and changing the channel. Also the era in TSCC where Sarah starts losing her mind, and the obsession with the 3 dots...I mean it was just a bad decision by the directors.

I WILL agree with you that Sci-Fi shows much reach a must higher standard than say...Reality T.V. or Soap Opera, because the audience for them is much smaller. However, to call Firefly or TSCC flawless is a real stretch.

Also, I'm not disagreeing with the way that you're marketing your games now (I think Skyward Collapse was a massive success); if that works for you, then clearly I support you 100%. However, I would like to know these great games you keep referring to you in your post which, just out of sheer bad luck, ended up in the bargain bin. In my experience, most PC games that fail, fail from some massive design flaw or marketing failure, not based on some intangible factor that nobody can predict. Take Achron for example. The concept of that game was fantastic: An RTS where you can literally use time travel as a weapon. Unfortunately, even though it had that unique feature, it sucked...as an RTS. Its fundamentals were so flawed that all the neat features in the world couldn't save it. I don't think this was the gaming world being unfair, I think it just failed as an RTS, and excelled as a virtual time-traveling machine.

[Mick]

Sci-fi costs more to produce and advertisers are willing to pay less (the demographic is not as interesting to them for various reasons). That's really all it comes down to.

It sucks because I like sci-fi, but that's how it is.

[x4000]

Firefly was difficult to fit into a single category because it was a kind of weird space western thing. Fox put it into a bad timeslot. Didn't market it well. Aired the episodes out of order, and in particular didn't air the first episode first.

It's failure is pretty easily explained: management stupidity.

I knew someone was going to say this.   But actually, for the purposes of my point, it was still not obvious at all.  Wind the clocks back to when Firefly was in preproduction.  They didn't know they'd be in a bad timeslot, or that it would be marketed poorly, or shown out of order.  Yes it was risky with a mix of space and western, but the writing was really good and so were the actors.  No reason to think that the bump of the genre mix could not be overcome -- heck, look at examples prior to that of unusual genres doing well.  Who would have thought something like Buffy would do well?  It's not a mix of genres, but it certainly wasn't usual for TV before it came out.

So what I mean is, given the information when they were deciding to embark on Firefly, it actually probably looked like a really surefire thing that would do at least moderately well.  There were plenty of prior examples to point to, enough to expect a moderate success at worst.

But the point is, the dice did not come up in their favor at all; external factors on something that was moderately risky turned it into something that really failed hard.  The external factors in this case was management-caused, but that was still outside the studio making it.  And in our case could easily be market-related.

So my point being, with something that is possibly risky (space cowboys or high complexity), doing a massive investment into something that is not necessarily going to pay back off is... well, it's risky.  Only gamble with money you don't mind losing, and all that.

[Tridus]

Yeah, it's true that they couldn't have known those things would happen at the time they were making it. But it's not a mystery what went wrong,  we just didn't know it until after it went wrong.

[x4000]

I mean, looking outside of games, just think about Firefly (the TV show).  The failure of that is largely inexplicable.

I thought that myself as well. I also thought the same thing about Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles too. When I first watched these shows as a kid (in my teens at least), I absolutely loved them, and HATED the television stations for cancelling them!

My wife and I were super surprised about the Terminator cancellation, too. Kind of just a "sigh, this always happens" moment, so not too surprised I guess.  But Terminator has such mass market appeal that we really thought that would get past the normal sci-fi baggage.

But when I went back and watched them again as an adult, I tried to take my bias out of the equation. I love Sci-Fi shows, so obviously I have a much higher tolerance for bad programming in that area. So when I tried to take my Sci-Fi bias out of the judgment, I realized that the shows had parts where they seriously dragged on at points. I just watched Firefly again recently, and there were many episodes that were rather silly at best, obvious filler at worst. Even the last episode, where the mercenary invades Serenity, threatens to cuddly hug  Kaylee, then River infiltrates his ship and pretends to be Serenity talking to him (and he actually believes it)...I mean come on, that was a little silly don't you think? I can imagine your typical television audience just frowning and changing the channel.

I didn't notice that at the time, but I've only watched it once, and a long time ago.  My wife and I are normally hyper-sensitive to that sort of thing, but perhaps we overlooked it because there's usually some camp in sci-fi and this was way less than usual.  I honestly don't remember.

Also the era in TSCC where Sarah starts losing her mind, and the obsession with the 3 dots...I mean it was just a bad decision by the directors.

Yeah, that was annoying, and we noticed the dragging as well.  But they had pulled out of that just before the show died.  In retrospect this is probably part of why we weren't surprised when it stopped going.

Also, I'm not disagreeing with the way that you're marketing your games now (I think Skyward Collapse was a massive success); if that works for you, then clearly I support you 100%.

I appreciate it.

However, I would like to know these great games you keep referring to you in your post which, just out of sheer bad luck, ended up in the bargain bin. In my experience, most PC games that fail, fail from some massive design flaw or marketing failure, not based on some intangible factor that nobody can predict.

I am bad at this, because I tend to miss those games.  However, I imagine that those here can give you way more examples than I ever could.  I'm made aware of these frequently through the Off Topic threads, so that's mainly where I get the impression from.  But there are also certain ones that the gaming press talks about from time to time... I wish I remembered the one that was in the mid-2000s and some sort of adventure... shooter... something... Gah, that's really vague.   At any rate, you may be right here as well -- honestly I have no way to really know, as I don't pay too much attention to the specific cases.  But there keep being instances talked about by players and the press and so forth every so often, and so those kinds of stories keep me cautious to some extent.[/quote]

Oh!  And I do know some indies that had great success on one platform and then inexplicable failure on another.  I'm talking mid six figures on one platform, then suddenly low five figures for no apparent reason on another.  I can't give you any names, as they were said in confidence, but I know at least three indies that happened to.  That's not really the same thing as what I was saying above, but it's sort of related at least: you never know quite how a specific market will react to something.

Oh oh!  Actually, I have examples I can share: AI War.  It sells super well on Steam and our own site, and two other sites.  And then other really major sites that sell indie titles in quite good volume sell AI War horribly.  Why would a game that was such a hit with one audience fail to get any traction elsewhere?  As in, making seven figures on the other platforms, and low THREE figures on the ones in question.  Mid TWO figures in a couple of cases.  I mean, that's severe.  And it was not remotely in line with other indies on the distributors in question.

So I mean, there are examples out there.  I wish I could think of more, but hopefully some others will come and help me out.

Take Achron for example. The concept of that game was fantastic: An RTS where you can literally use time travel as a weapon. Unfortunately, even though it had that unique feature, it sucked...as an RTS. Its fundamentals were so flawed that all the neat features in the world couldn't save it. I don't think this was the gaming world being unfair, I think it just failed as an RTS, and excelled as a virtual time-traveling machine.

There are a lot of examples of games with a great concept that are flawed in other ways.  I'm not thinking of that sort of thing.  Maybe it was Too Human?  I can't remember.  There were some games that score very highly with the critics, that had a devoted (but small) following, and that failed to find a foothold in the marketplace.  I wish I remembered what they were off the top of my head so that it didn't sound like I was making this up.

Yeah, it's true that they couldn't have known those things would happen at the time they were making it. But it's not a mystery what went wrong,  we just didn't know it until after it went wrong.

Right, hindsight is 20/20.

But more than that, it's easy to find support for either view.  I was indirectly involved in a large lawsuit one time, via a company I worked for.  It dragged on for a year.  I remember remarking to my boss at one time "you know, when this is over, whatever the outcome is, we're going to think it was 'obvious' at that point."  Because there were enough things that could make it go either way.  We wound up winning -- we were in the right of it, but the other side had vastly larger resources and was doing a good job in throwing lots of mud, so that was the question really.  Since we were right, it seemed obvious that we won after the fact.  But it was in no way certain we would before we did, and if we had lost I feel quite certain we would have viewed that as obvious too: we were David vs Goliath, and the justice system is frequently not just.

Firefly could just as easily have succeeded despite management blunders if the show went viral and everyone just couldn't stop talking about it.  People would then cluck their tongues at the stupid managers, and talk about how it would have been better without them bungling things.  That wouldn't have been an obvious outcome before it happened, but after the fact we would have treated that as obvious: the show was clearly so good and so well loved that it would be almost impossible to kill etc.  That would be the opinion in that alternate universe, anyhow.

It's something I think a lot about.  Our views of what is obvious and what is not comes a lot from what has already happened, even when there was a lot of chance inherent in a chaotic system.  We make stories out of what happened, and have trouble believing it could have happened any other way.  I try to avoid that to some extent, because it leads to risk-taking in the present and I've been bitten by that style of thinking too many times before.  I'm still only so good at avoiding it, though.

[Tridus]

If you don't mind my asking, what's prompted the start of this thread? Have you been getting requests for a graphical overhaul, or wanted to do it after seeing Skyward Collapse do well with a different style, or something?

It seems like it's kind of out of the blue.