Defense Grid 2

[Wanderer]

Another tidbit about game design: it's a speculative business.  Aka, you pay first in order to make whatever game you're making, then you make some income.

Yeah, I knew that, but I just did a bit more research (and it's hard to find) on the sales figures, and Defense Grid didn't do the sales volume I'd understood it to have done.

How much did they then spent on free content patches and support in order to keep sales going for a longer period than their original flurry on initial release?

That I can answer... All the extra map packs and what not are purchased, not free to download.  At least not on XBox live.

Arcen has always had the good fortune that AI War cost me almost nothing but a massive amount of my own time in order to initially create, and so the profits from that have enabled further projects like Tidalis and AVWW.  However, a lot got reinvested back into AI War as well, post-release, but the expansions and so forth balanced that out and made it so that it was still very much a net gain for us the whole way through with AI War.

But you can't just look at the surface finances of a game company and know these things.

True, I personally usually prefer to pour through a prospectus for things like that, but it would appear Hidden Path is privately held and thus not required to publically release them.  Defense Grid, however, is their only primary game (well, that they themselves are advertising), otherwise they appear to be doing sub-contracting to Valve for some of their work for things like CounterStrike.  There's hints that they've done other sub-contract work in other components of Valve games but it's hard to nail down.

The only guess I have is the "You Monster" add on (which I need to go buy, download, and play, I had no idea they'd even MADE the thing) didn't sell as well as expected (and it's a biggie) because, well... by the time they released that one we'd all moved on and stopped watching the news.  They've still got a hardened core of players, but the majority of us (most likely) didn't even see it.

So, yeah, you're right Chris, I probably jumped the gun a bit on that one.  I'd heard reports that DG was 'selling amazingly well' and apparently that marketing machine didn't match up to actual numbers.

[Wanderer]

They also are using a new engine for the sequel by the sounds of it and last I checked, those aren't cheap.

That depends on wether they are licensing an engine or developing one in house. The latter is usually very painful and expensive unless you're pro to begin with.

Their engine is a ground up engine, custom.  It'd need to be, they were the only 3D tower D game in development when they started.

Sol Survivor came out afterwards, completely different engine, and is 'prettier'.  It doesn't have the same depth of play though.  Well, it might, but one of the survival levels is literally impossible to hit 20 minutes on unless the RNG likes you, so it pissed me off.

[x4000]

True, I personally usually prefer to pour through a prospectus for things like that, but it would appear Hidden Path is privately held and thus not required to publically release them.

That made me laugh out loud -- point taken. 

My only point is just that people tend to leap to all sorts of conclusions about game companies that are rarely true.  For instance, people see the metacritic score for AVWW and think it must be doing terribly, and/or that we're going out of business.  Not that, um, it's selling 3x faster than our prior bestseller.  People's perceptions of the innards of privately-held companies are rarely right; but for someone running a kickstarter, I suppose you could always ask them where the money went.

[Wanderer]

True, I personally usually prefer to pour through a prospectus for things like that, but it would appear Hidden Path is privately held and thus not required to publically release them.

That made me laugh out loud -- point taken. 

Heh, yeah, having a financial background from my work as a DBA and once being a stock broker (don't ask, long story) I've gotten a bit familiar with things like that.  I've also crashed 3 of my own companies so I know what it looks like when things go south fast.  Economic Spiral indeed.

People's perceptions of the innards of privately-held companies are rarely right; but for someone running a kickstarter, I suppose you could always ask them where the money went.

Agreed, and you were right, I was mistaken.  I was working off bad information and didn't re-do the homework... however, yeah, if you're askin' for money I get to ask where the old stuff went! 

If it was on booze, DJs, and dancers for the celebration party, I'm good with that...

[KingIsaacLinksr]

King

*RABBLE*

Yes, we can see you made the post.

Yeah, sorry about that but I started that signing bit on a previous forum and have been doing it so long it's muscle memory, idk if I can program my hands to stop doing it.

@Wanderer Xbox forbids developers from releasing free DLC to their games for some Microsoft reason, thus every piece of DLC has to be paid. That said, one set of DLC was free for Steam owners, their first set. The rest since have been paid for, but well worth the price. Considering how cheap they were.

King

[Mánagarmr]

They also are using a new engine for the sequel by the sounds of it and last I checked, those aren't cheap.

That depends on wether they are licensing an engine or developing one in house. The latter is usually very painful and expensive unless you're pro to begin with.

Their engine is a ground up engine, custom.  It'd need to be, they were the only 3D tower D game in development when they started.

I was referring to the sequel engine though. I was pretty aware that the first was a new one.

[Mánagarmr]

Yeah, sorry about that but I started that signing bit on a previous forum and have been doing it so long it's muscle memory, idk if I can program my hands to stop doing it.

Why does one do that anyway, I wonder? It says right there it's your post.

King

*RABBLE!*

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Yeah, sorry about that but I started that signing bit on a previous forum and have been doing it so long it's muscle memory, idk if I can program my hands to stop doing it.

Why does one do that anyway, I wonder? It says right there it's your post.

King

*RABBLE!*

I can't say why, I think it started as a joke and I've just been doing it ever since. Yeah, the posts say its me, but I just keep on doing it. Dunno why and idk if I want to stop it. On the one hand, it makes me look like an egotist, on the other hand, it makes my posts stand out

King

[Wanderer]

They also are using a new engine for the sequel by the sounds of it and last I checked, those aren't cheap.

That depends on wether they are licensing an engine or developing one in house. The latter is usually very painful and expensive unless you're pro to begin with.

Their engine is a ground up engine, custom.  It'd need to be, they were the only 3D tower D game in development when they started.

I was referring to the sequel engine though. I was pretty aware that the first was a new one.

They mention they're going to redesign their engine.  I don't know if they're just going to overhaul the current one or start from scratch since they learned enough in the first round to avoid any umpteen hundred coding mistakes that usually are just re-coded over the top of, though.

[Mánagarmr]

It would make sense to just refurbish the old engine, provided it was solid enough to begin with.

[Wanderer]

@Wanderer Xbox forbids developers from releasing free DLC to their games for some Microsoft reason, thus every piece of DLC has to be paid. That said, one set of DLC was free for Steam owners, their first set. The rest since have been paid for, but well worth the price. Considering how cheap they were.

Yep, true.  The reason XBox doesn't allow for free DLC is both greed and maintenance/testing costs.  Anything released on the XBLA gets a second round of testing done by Micro$oft to make sure it's not going to hose up anything.  They also maintain their own servers for all downloads and the like, including bandwidth, download, etc.  They won't eat those costs, so nothing free ever goes through XBL.  At least, that was the antique press release about it and they've never discussed it since that I'm aware of.

The new Elite process with Call of Duty is actually a break from that tradition, so I have to assume there's a contract model happening under the hood somewhere where they're getting a piece of the action from the Elite subscription fees.

[Mánagarmr]

The above is also the reason Dust 514 is Playstation exclusive. Microsoft simply wouldn't allow the tie-in with EVE Online.

[Wanderer]

It would make sense to just refurbish the old engine, provided it was solid enough to begin with.

Not sure if you've ever done some heavy rework of an existing application, but there are times where you take what you've learned and the technical specs of what that piece of software does and re-write it from scratch instead of inheriting a thousand artifacts from antique code that won't work with the "new vision".  It can actually save you a ton of time and cash to just start over... which is a sadness, but true.  Depends on how deep the problems go.

[Mánagarmr]

Hence my "solid enough". By that I meant code-wise, not how well it actually ran. (not that those are mutually exclusive)

[Wanderer]

The above is also the reason Dust 514 is Playstation exclusive. Microsoft simply wouldn't allow the tie-in with EVE Online.

I'll have to find it, but FFXI was basically the last game that MS will let off the reservation.  FFXIV tried to get on there, and MS basically told them either dedicated, XBox only servers or scrag off.  The customer service of Square (well, PlayOnline actually) was the primary culprit of that experiment failing and afaik will be the last time they do it.  Because they charge for the XBox Live Gold memberships, this makes a modicum of sense.  MANY players were raising havoc about double fees, problems with services that weren't under MS's control, and the like, and the powers that be over there just don't want the headaches again.

Mind you, that's not spelled out in any one place, it's a compiled understanding from a number of forum boards and smaller statements in press releases.