Author Topic: Great work on Starward Rogue, team! Now you’re all laid off...?  (Read 31318 times)

Offline Strix

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Re: Great work on Starward Rogue, team! Now you’re all laid off...?
« Reply #15 on: January 28, 2016, 09:26:47 am »
Will there be the further promised content patches for this game?
On the content, it will somewhat depend on the contractor-volunteers and their own schedules. One of my wishlists would be to actually generate less branching and more web-like, tower-like, and ring-like RNG layouts for the rooms (all reduce backtracking of the current tendril layout) - this, however, will need engine work rather than XML work on the content-creator end.

 I'm guessing paid DLC won't be possible given the sales, but the bits and pieces will happen over the next weeks.

That would be a cool addition, and not something I'm used to seeing in games like this.

For paid DLC, maybe try releasing new mechs (I read somewhere on here that they were thinking of adding at least three more?) as relatively cheap DLC, similar to how Dungeon of the Endless did it. I mean, in a sense the mechs equate to Dungeon of the Endless' pods/playstyle restrictions, which were incredibly cool.

Offline Mánagarmr

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Re: Great work on Starward Rogue, team! Now you’re all laid off...?
« Reply #16 on: January 28, 2016, 10:02:59 am »
Why does this seem so familiar? I hate reality sometimes.
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Offline Misery

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Re: Great work on Starward Rogue, team! Now you’re all laid off...?
« Reply #17 on: January 28, 2016, 10:09:56 am »
Why does this seem so familiar? I hate reality sometimes.

Yeah, that's basically my thoughts too.

Some days, I just hate pretty much.... everything.  This is one of those days.

Offline Mánagarmr

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Re: Great work on Starward Rogue, team! Now you’re all laid off...?
« Reply #18 on: January 28, 2016, 10:11:26 am »
It kinda feels like unless TotalBiscuit covers an indie game, you're screwed. :/
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Offline Sabouts

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Re: Great work on Starward Rogue, team! Now you’re all laid off...?
« Reply #19 on: January 28, 2016, 10:25:32 am »
Really sorry to hear about the tough times. Being a big fan of A.I. War and The Last Federation I want nothing more then to see you guys succeed. Especially with Stars Beyond Reach, which I truly believed to be the next big thing for you. I know there's been a ton of press coverage and excitement for that game. I think the market for it was, and still is, very large. I've been looking forward to covering it on my YouTube channel for some time now (October last year). Either way Starward Rogue is a pretty awesome game. I plan on doing a series for it ASAP. I don't have a massive amount of followers, but I hope I can draw in some positivity for you all. You deserve it. Hang in there and keep pushing strong!
I play and commentate games with a heavy emphasis on 4x, Strategy, Tycoon, and Roguelikes.
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Offline cupogoodness

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Re: Great work on Starward Rogue, team! Now you’re all laid off...?
« Reply #20 on: January 28, 2016, 10:27:37 am »
I think the biggest issue is now that you have no marketing going on or any serious reviews of the game out there. On any of the game review sites. Looked at gamewatcher and the game is not to be found. Found a small news notice on Rock Paper Shotgun but no review. Same on other sites. You can't even find the game on http://www.gamingonlinux.com/index.php and they essentially list all the Linux games released. You need to work on marketing I'm sorry to say. You just can't sell games today without any adds or reviews, etc. On the other side you are known for strategy games and not for roguelikes/shmup which might be a part of why this isn't selling. Also looking at the Bionic Dues giveaway - people just don't look who the developer of a game in a giveaway is. They just snatch it up and forget about it. At the end it all now hangs on the fact if the bigger reviewers like TB or Quill will play through it and make their rating.

Also continue to improve the game and it will have a positive effect on the games sales in the end. If you drop all support for it besides the bug fixes it won't resonate well with the potential player base.

I know this sounded pretty preachy for which I'm sorry but the market is as it is today and demands a lot more involvement.

It's been tough, as time/financial constraints made it so we couldn't really reach out to anyone until the morning of launch. It just wasn't ready to be shared publicly until the eleventh hour. That said, we're not sulking about, ~1,000 emails to various youtubers, twitch streamers and press have gone out between last Friday and today. And I'm still working through / adding to our list -- contacting and providing copies of the game to big names of course, but also specifically trying to reach those that play games within the same genres or that we've been compared to. EDIT: We also got approval earlier today from Twitch for an official listing of Starward Rogue, though it doesn't seem to have gone up quite yet.

I did miss submitting to Gaming on Linux and I'll make sure we do that this week, and keeping up the Arcen subreddit (as someone mentioned in another thread) would be good too -- but I wouldn't go as far as to say they'd make a significant difference for the game's sales at this point. I've invested much more time into the subreddit in the past and it made little difference for us (other than to take me away from what I believe are more pressing tasks/concerns). Meanwhile, Linux users make up 3% of Steam sales for the game at current. That's not much however you slice it, but for comparison's sake, Arcen's lifetime revenue from Linux purchases on all titles makes up just 1.4% of all our Steam revenue (though it's worth noting Linux builds for some of our earlier titles arrived much later than their respective Windows counterpart, and also that the figures don't account for sales outside of Steam). Regardless, Mac and Linux users have never made the difference in the past, and likely won't here either.
« Last Edit: January 28, 2016, 10:44:44 am by cupogoodness »

Offline yllamana

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Re: Great work on Starward Rogue, team! Now you’re all laid off...?
« Reply #21 on: January 28, 2016, 10:50:23 am »
Sorry to hear about all your troubles. I hadn't actually heard the game had launched until a friend linked this thread to me. I picked it up and even though I'm not super into the bullet hell-roguelike genre in general, it seems really fun, well-polished and well-executed - in terms of smoothness of execution I think it is unarguably your best game. It's a shame it hasn't yet done well, and I hope that can turn around even though that's an uncommon thing.

Offline Matruchus

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Re: Great work on Starward Rogue, team! Now you’re all laid off...?
« Reply #22 on: January 28, 2016, 11:03:48 am »
It's been tough, as time/financial constraints made it so we couldn't really reach out to anyone until the morning of launch. It just wasn't ready to be shared publicly until the eleventh hour. That said, we're not sulking about, ~1,000 emails to various youtubers, twitch streamers and press have gone out between last Friday and today. And I'm still working through / adding to our list -- contacting and providing copies of the game to big names of course, but also specifically trying to reach those that play games within the same genres or that we've been compared to. EDIT: We also got approval earlier today from Twitch for an official listing of Starward Rogue, though it doesn't seem to have gone up quite yet.

I did miss submitting to Gaming on Linux and I'll make sure we do that this week, and keeping up the Arcen subreddit (as someone mentioned in another thread) would be good too -- but I wouldn't go as far as to say they'd make a significant difference for the game's sales at this point. I've invested much more time into the subreddit in the past and it made little difference for us (other than to take me away from what I believe are more pressing tasks/concerns). Meanwhile, Linux users make up 3% of Steam sales for the game at current. That's not much however you slice it, but for comparison's sake, Arcen's lifetime revenue from Linux purchases on all titles makes up just 1.4% of all our Steam revenue (though it's worth noting Linux builds for some of our earlier titles arrived much later than their respective Windows counterpart, and also that the figures don't account for sales outside of Steam). Regardless, Mac and Linux users have never made the difference in the past, and likely won't here either.
Oh, I know Linux or Mac won't make a dent in sales. Just meant it for more press exposure for the game. Anyway thanks for the answer. Very enlightening.

Offline Vacuity

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Re: Great work on Starward Rogue, team! Now you’re all laid off...?
« Reply #23 on: January 28, 2016, 11:28:34 am »
Oh, man. I'm a little heartbroken reading this.  You and Amplitude are the only developers I'll automatically buy titles on release day from, and you're the only developer where I've bought *extra* copies and given them away to random people on RPS's forums.  I make a point of commenting on RPS every time they run an article on any of your titles to try and raise your exposure there, and that's pretty much the only gaming media I interact with.
Curiously, it was actually the article on RPS on your 2010 woes that brought AI War to my attention, so I'd have to say, you're better off being open and honest about this stuff than hiding it away.
I don't know what else to say other than you all have my deepest sympathies.

Offline garion333

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Re: Great work on Starward Rogue, team! Now you’re all laid off...?
« Reply #24 on: January 28, 2016, 01:30:56 pm »
Bummer, Chris. Hopefully this post will get some word out, but things are rough around Steam anymore.

Offline steelwing

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Re: Great work on Starward Rogue, team! Now you’re all laid off...?
« Reply #25 on: January 28, 2016, 01:34:43 pm »
 :'( Best of luck recovering, Chris.  I'll spread the word where I can.  You guys make awesome games that are worth every penny I've ever spent on them.

Offline Bluddy

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Re: Great work on Starward Rogue, team! Now you’re all laid off...?
« Reply #26 on: January 28, 2016, 04:22:13 pm »
Really sad to hear this. It's too bad that ultimately, the most important factors for success are unreliable and ever-changing, and not just putting out a great product.

In retrospect, given how fast the game was made, it probably needed a hard deadline a week before actual release, to allow for a week of marketing and synchronizing with the reviews.

Unfortunately, I can understand the mentality of people wishlisting the game because I have the same mentality. There's a whole lot of trash on Steam, bundles are constantly ongoing (making me question whether the next game I buy will soon be available for a few cents), and I already have a massive backlog. Time always works in my favor as a consumer. In order for me to actually pull the trigger, I have to really care about the developers, or be so excited about the game that I just can't imagine myself not playing it. That's probably not going to happen from Steam reviews alone.

My advice at this point is, don't let up. I don't think much needs to be done graphically anymore, so you can do most of the stuff yourself, but keep releasing updates and balance tweaks. The better the experience, the more youtubers will want to play this game over and over. You don't want a youtuber only playing this thing once -- that's not good enough IMO.

If you can work in a daily run, you can make a big deal about it (free huge update) and get some traction from that. Even if it's naive and doesn't eliminate cheaters, it gets a community going and that has massive impact. Unlike multiplayer games, daily runs don't need the players to be online at the same time, meaning that communities can live on for years with minimal support. Once you have the daily run in, you can come up with other synchronized runs that other games haven't gone with.

Unfortunately the goal these days is to go viral, which is an unfair expectation of any game. Fortunately, you have the right vehicle here with which to do it.

Offline mrhanman

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Re: Great work on Starward Rogue, team! Now you’re all laid off...?
« Reply #27 on: January 28, 2016, 04:35:10 pm »
I'm sorry to hear about this.  You've made a really awesome game that's I've thoroughly enjoy.  Hopefully, more people will realize that and sales will take off.  If not, keep making games anyway.  Faith and dedication will carry you wherever you need to go.

Offline tombik

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Re: Great work on Starward Rogue, team! Now you’re all laid off...?
« Reply #28 on: January 28, 2016, 04:42:43 pm »
I share the pain. I hope you will find a way out.

Although I was incapable of testing Starward Rogue properly because of bad performance on my PC, I still think it was a unique game from what I observed.

The thing with why there are so much wishlists but no sale is basically related with how frequent other Arcen games got bundled. If I knew that the title I spent 12 dollars will be bundled for 1 dollars with 2-3 other games in 1.5 year, this heavy depreciation stops me from buying games from that company. I know it is pretty convenient to sell in bulk "older" games, but most collectors like me have just enough games to play until something gets bundled.

So basically by bundling your games you are depreciating the average willingness to pay for your future games. That Bionic Dues move? That might had actually even hurt in that regard. "This company makes roguelikes to be given away for free."

I share the responsibility of the current state as being a cheapskate as I am. But that is the reality, and there are many who is worse than me. For many of your customers, your game is one of the 5000 thing to be purchased.

I was not trying to be harsh, just to give some intution about 9000 wishlist, no buy thing.
 

PS: I guess I have found out a missing word here: "I mean, obviously, I’m hoping that you’ll tell all your friends and family and shout to the high heavens how much the game if you do."

Offline Apathetic

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Re: Great work on Starward Rogue, team! Now you’re all laid off...?
« Reply #29 on: January 28, 2016, 04:47:52 pm »
I'm sorry to hear that.  I always have appreciated the unique ideas that your games have.

As a not, I'm personally guilty of having quite a few games on my steam wishlist that I don't intend to buy soon.  I put them there so I don't need to go digging through steam to find something new when I actually have time to start playing a new game or something different.  Currently I'm more limited by time than money for my gaming, so it doesn't make sense to buy games before I actually have time to play them...

On another tangent, going forward as possible it might be worth considering the Kickstarter model that I've seen become used recently.  I've seen a few studios (InXile in particular) use kickstarter to as a presale platform so that they can keep all of their staff onboard and don't need to risk losing talent inbetween projects.  For Arcen, this might be a good way to get the word out about future projects and potentially get some idea of what the total revenue will be for that game.

Best of luck to everyone going forward, Starward Rogue really is a fun game!