Exodus Of The Machine Teaser 1

[keith.lamothe]

Good. If it were similar, I would almost certainly just play AIWar instead.

Yea.  The gameplay itself is fairly similar to oregon trail, though it has diverged in several respects.  Needless to say, the experience of playing it is radically different than playing AIW.  The main commonalities between Exodus and AIW are the universe setting and the fact that I mean for you to lose a lot.

Well, there's also the single-use explosive devices, which I suppose is all that matters.

[chemical_art]

I'm sure you are already aware of this, but despite love of previous games, I hope you continue of making this game following the arcen trend of being its own thing.

To say another way, the games I play are not considered to be "like" another game, but the game itself is used to compared by other things.

To make it oversimplified...

I haven't tried Tidalius [sic] because it seems Bejeweled like. I do play AI War, which I have heard others call "X" AI War ish.

Make sure this game is the latter, and not the former, and you'll be good. I like Oregan trail, but I just passed up a game that, while unique, felt too much like Oregan trail which I've tired of. I want new games, not rehashes.

[keith.lamothe]

I want new games, not rehashes.

Sure, that's fine.  This is pretty different from OT, that's just the first game that came to mind as I finished reading the March Upcountry series and thought of pursuing some kind of similar story/gameplay.  The game design and story design have moved on a lot since then.

Did you actually try Tidalis?  I've played Bejeweled.  Tidalis is very different than that.  Tidalis is far more cerebral and has far more profound variety, though perhaps I didn't play bejeweled long enough to see it shine (no pun intended).

In other words: if you're going to not try a game because it appears from the store page or wahtever to be a rehash rather than a "new game", then we may not be able to get past that.  Coming up with a screenshot and/or trailer which tells such a fine-grained message (like, but not too like, or whatever) past all the usual miscommunication-inducing filters between us and the consumer is actually far more difficult than making a good game in the first place.

[x4000]

If you're going to pick a game to compare Tidalis to, I really would not pick Bejeweled at all as near the top, to be honest.  It's a lot more like Panel de Pon than anything else, but even that's a pretty poor substitute.  It's about as similar to that as AI War is to Sins of a Solar Empire.  From screenshots it's hard to tell the difference, but the meat is incredibly different.  Really the same is true of all our games, and that's not something we intend to change anytime soon!  I would utterly be depressed if I was just cloning someone else's game outright with a few tweaks.  Ethics aside, it would be incredibly dull.

[chemical_art]

In other words: if you're going to not try a game because it appears from the store page or wahtever to be a rehash rather than a "new game", then we may not be able to get past that.  Coming up with a screenshot and/or trailer which tells such a fine-grained message (like, but not too like, or whatever) past all the usual miscommunication-inducing filters between us and the consumer is actually far more difficult than making a good game in the first place.

Fair enough, but it is a point I've brought up for months now:

In a world where many people have maybe an hour a day to play games, let alone buy them, trailers and first impressions are everything.

I mean, I'm among the absolute top fans of you, in that I've posted here so much for so long, but I simply don't have the time to try demos unless from a 30 second glance the game interests me.

I'm not trying to sound rude, but this is a hard reality. From a 30 second glance, Shattered Heaven didn't interest me, so I've never tried it, so it is has fallen among the literally thousands of other games out there that I don't have time to try.

I'm sure I'm coming across mean, but I'm just to provide a more accurate picture. For someone who has never bought an arcen game before, your text introduction, and maybe your trailer video, makes your game. Period. And from your intro that you've given here, I get the vibe "Oregan trail. Bored of the game type, Pass." Full stop.

I'm trying to help you all figure out how to market this best. You can ignore it if you want. But you should make sure as you frame this game outside your forum you make it unique, and not following another game.

[chemical_art]

If you're going to pick a game to compare Tidalis to, I really would not pick Bejeweled at all as near the top, to be honest.  It's a lot more like Panel de Pon than anything else, but even that's a pretty poor substitute.  It's about as similar to that as AI War is to Sins of a Solar Empire.  From screenshots it's hard to tell the difference, but the meat is incredibly different.  Really the same is true of all our games, and that's not something we intend to change anytime soon!  I would utterly be depressed if I was just cloning someone else's game outright with a few tweaks.  Ethics aside, it would be incredibly dull.

As I said, see above.
I spend maybe 20 minutes per month looking for games. Meaning I spend on average 2 minutes looking at games to examine them.

I'm not saying your games are bad, I'm saying market HARD your DIFFERENCES to entice your people. I love you guys, but your intros make me yawn.

[x4000]

Typically we do try very hard to market the differences, but I suppose you're right that it's not always at the forefront of what we're thinking about.  Often we're just trying to get across the "what the heck is this!?" message any way we can.  But yeah, as Keith said the marketing stuff is easily just as hard as making the games in the first place, we've found.

[chemical_art]

The main reason why I'm almost begging you to try to keep marketing in mind is that you do it well. The fact I'm doing it so early is so I hope on some level you think "we need something that will really, really stand out in our trailers to make 90% of the viewers not think of Oregan trail"

The fact you tell me Tidalis is different from Bejeweled just reinforces this. It is not enough to just BE different, you have to explain HOW it is different CONCISELY.

Appearance IS reality on so many levels. Time is precious, and in the digital sales age, you have just one marketing glance often to sell your pitch. Which is why, in part, you have to beg for spreading the word for SH so much. It just lacks that "hook" to get people to try it for the first time.

[keith.lamothe]

In a world where many people have maybe an hour a day to play games, let alone buy them, trailers and first impressions are everything.

(...)

I'm sure I'm coming across mean, but I'm just to provide a more accurate picture.

I know you well enough to know you're not being mean, and the feedback is appreciated.

But I should also be clear: we do try very hard to make a good first impression with the trailer and screenshots and game-description, etc.  One member of our team (Erik) is basically devoted to PR, including that.  He brings in Kevin, a specialist, to do the trailers.

We also try very hard to make original games.  I don't think it's unreasonable to say that we've succeeded in that.

And we try very hard to market the fact that they are original.  We are not blind to the need for that, rest assured.  Though we also cannot be blind to the need to give people some kind of context of "well, what kind of game is it?", and some kind of association with known quantity helps there.  AIW is an RTS, for example.  (Though in a lot of ways it's not, and in some ways it's more like something else)

If all that isn't enough to get through the message that "this is an original game" before our potential customer's time limit of answering that question is exhausted... well, frankly, we're done.  In that hypothetical scenario we've done the best we can at specifically addressing the issue, and it's not enough.

My guess as to why we're still in business despite that: most of the potential customer group is an easier sell than you

[x4000]

Yep, we'll mull on it for sure.  One big stumbling block for Tidalis, Valley 2, and Shattered Haven was that we did not start the marketing early enough.  AI War and Valley 1 did that really right, and the results were much better.  Reviewers had a chance to explain what it was in advance of the Steam release, and that gave customers confidence as well as more info.  We were able to read their explanations to inform our own marketing message, etc.  With Exodus and Skyward Collapse we are taking that approach again, so hopefully that will help in the same way.

[chemical_art]

My guess as to why we're still in business despite that: most of the potential customer group is an easier sell than you

I guess it would help to explain how I even came on these forums (via AI Wars).

I saw AI Wars on sale. I thought "What is this? I don't know [red flag right here]"

I then went to some indie review site via googling reviews. The gist was "A strategy game where you strategicly take worlds to defeat the AI. The hook is that you have to take some worlds to beat the AI, but not too many otherwise you will lose from overwhelming force." So I then bought the game.

Notice two keywords there: "Red flag" and "Hook".

It was a red flag in that I had to rely on someone else to get the gist and hook of the game. But the "hook" was that as a rts I could not just take all the territory, which is unique.

If it wasn't for that one random reviewer, I would not have bought AI War, nor AVWW 1.

I'm just trying to give some perceptive, since I know your latest games haven't quite met the sales expectations that you wanted. You need that HOOK, badly, to want further examination.

[chemical_art]

Yep, we'll mull on it for sure.  One big stumbling block for Tidalis, Valley 2, and Shattered Haven was that we did not start the marketing early enough.  AI War and Valley 1 did that really right, and the results were much better.  Reviewers had a chance to explain what it was in advance of the Steam release, and that gave customers confidence as well as more info.  We were able to read their explanations to inform our own marketing message, etc.  With Exodus and Skyward Collapse we are taking that approach again, so hopefully that will help in the same way.

[Gives the OK hand signal]

That sounds about right. For very many people, when you see a game you are interested in, the next step is [typing in favorite search engine] "X review". This review is meant to give both a different perspective of the game, and perhaps a bit more nuanced approach. If I look up a new game, and find no reviews or perspectives, I'm quite tempted to simply pass on the game since so many do give perspectives. The only exception,. to this general rule or free games  but that is a different pile of worms altogether and not really relevant to arcen.

[x4000]

That's actually an incredibly useful point: we do tend to bury the hook in the trailers.  Come to think of it, looking back at all my time working on perfecting queries for literary agents, that's one of the big sins of something like this.  And while the trailers and so forth are really good, we're bad at identifying and communicating the hook through the trailer and through the original marketing text.

I think that's definitely an area that we need to really focus on, yeah.  I can think of a couple of potential hooks to focus on for Exodus, and for Skyward Collapse I've had a really obvious hook in mind from the start with it.  SC should probably be our most obviously-unique game we've ever created, in a lot of senses.  Just from a surface glance I mean, not that it is actually more unique than our other titles under the hood (some of those are just as much out there).

[keith.lamothe]

I'm just trying to give some perceptive, since I know your latest games haven't quite met the sales expectations that you wanted. You need that HOOK, badly, to want further examination.

Sure, we understand that, and we're doing the best we can, and we try to learn from previous experience so we can do better (on that point among others).  If it's not enough, it's not enough.   

There's no magic wand we can wave to get through all the layers of miscommunication to someone who's only going to give us 30 seconds (if that).  We've learned that with both potential customers (who have no obligation to put a decent effort into understanding the game) and with reviewers (who do have such an obligation but often do not bother to honor it).

But I think we're doing alright overall.  And if Chris thinks we can do better on exposing the hooks, all the better

[chemical_art]

That's actually an incredibly useful point: we do tend to bury the hook in the trailers.  Come to think of it, looking back at all my time working on perfecting queries for literary agents, that's one of the big sins of something like this.  And while the trailers and so forth are really good, we're bad at identifying and communicating the hook through the trailer and through the original marketing text.

I think that's definitely an area that we need to really focus on, yeah.  I can think of a couple of potential hooks to focus on for Exodus, and for Skyward Collapse I've had a really obvious hook in mind from the start with it.  SC should probably be our most obviously-unique game we've ever created, in a lot of senses.  Just from a surface glance I mean, not that it is actually more unique than our other titles under the hood (some of those are just as much out there).

Just hearing that makes me happy


Your trailers are nice, but I desperately want a hook. Not even a strong enough  hook to buy it outright, but a hook to make me want to learn more.

Your games are good enough that once you get to the step of wanting to learn more you are set, but that first step of investigation, of why one should give this game some extra time to read reviews / try the demo, is somewhat lacking. That first step, that first hook, that first impression, that is what I'm asking you to examine.