That's really unfortunate to hear, honestly Starward Rogue is probably my second favorite game from you guys behind AI War and the fact that it failed to sell as well as it had to feels kind of wrong.
I do have a "view from the outside" I really want to voice on this.
Granted, I only have the limited view of how Arcen works internally through the window you've offered and I hope I'm not spouting too much ignorance, but I'm going to really critical and I'm probably going to say some things you probably already know or discovered yourself, so I apologize if I'm being aggravating because of that.
I feel it has to be said that some aspects of Arcen Games have not made sense in the context of the the larger game dev scene for a while now:
- "Look and feel quality" has been low relative to team size. Yes you put out more games, but games are judged more individually than other software and are judged by their covers.
- Extremely (perhaps detrimentally) rapid release schedule driven by "burn rate". I can't think of any other dev that has to put out games as fast as Arcen to stay afloat and while I appreciate Arcen discipline and workflow, to some extent I suspect there are reasons for that.
- Lack of time to do "slow" and "soft" marketing. Like the above, this is also related to the fact you have to put out games so quickly that they never get a chance to build up much visibility via videos, screenshots, blog posts, and the like. Many games don't even build hype in the time an Arcen game is in dev!
Arcen's games are time and time again criticized for numerous "softer elements" which are the sorts of things that suffer under short dev cycles even if the quality of the code and assets being put out are sound. These are things tend to be vague topics like the "look and feel", aesthetic themes, how satisfying the sounds are, and various minor moment to moment elements that are difficult to evaluate and tweak on an accelerated schedule. Sure Arcen's assets have been getting better and are pretty good when evaluated individually, but how they're being applied has been lacking.
Many other game dev teams of similar size and budget seem to have these aspects come along more naturally and effortlessly, and I think that is because their games have more time to "sit and be evaluated" while they are being developed so they're not struggling with "why does this feel slightly wrong" as much. Ironically, I think that's because they're less efficient and slower than Arcen and thus don't have to address that problem as directly and intentionally.
While I do appreciate Arcen's discipline and aggressive workflow and believe that they're your biggest strengths and that if anything those qualities should be retained, at the same time I do feel that you need to somehow carve yourself room, both financially and planning wise, to adopt a more sensible pace of development.
The thing is you keep having to turn out games within a limited time frame due to financial pressure, which applies to most game devs sure but very few have had to put out games at the rate you do and that seems like the indirect source of a lot of issues.
While I do feel it's unfortunate that you're having to lay some people off, I would suspect a "slower burn rate" may be beneficial in the long run.
Perhaps you've come to the same conclusion already, but maybe Arcen Games
should be just Chris and Keith.
Again, you probably already thought about a lot this or maybe you disagree, and I apologize if I'm being aggravating, but that's my "view from the outside" as another software developer and I hope at the very least it helps lend perspective.
