This is not a dinosaur game!

[crazyroosterman]

Steam tags can be kinda ridiculous in general.

I dont even look at them much.

I find them generally  okay so long as your going with something very vague and not super persifick I suspect the ridiculsness of this tag though is because a lot of people don't really seem to under what an actual survival game is for instance they see tomb raider and are ,hey shes got a bow and I shooting animals that means this is a survival game!, which is obviously utter nonsense but what can you do.

[x4000]

Ditto on the tags.  I wish that devs could control those, or... something.  I don't know, that probably would hardly be better.

[Draco18s]

...Steam's tags mean something?

[Cinth]

...Steam's tags mean something?

Only if you put value to them.

[Hearteater]

Ditto on the tags.  I wish that devs could control those, or... something.  I don't know, that probably would hardly be better.

That would be nice, but we'd end up with the 90's webpage meta tag fiasco: Put on ALL THE TAGS! The only way dev control would work would be if a dev could permanently remove tags they felt did not apply to their game. I could also see allowing a dev to add 3 initial tags or something limited when the game first got added.

[x4000]

You actually can tag your game like anyone else, yeah.  So I always throw in my two cents when it comes to picking my three tags for my own games.  Never seems to matter, though.

You're absolutely right on the "throw in ALL the tags" bit.  It's like that with youtube tags still, and I hate having to do that.

I really love the idea of being able to just remove tags that feel irrelevant to the game.  All of the tags are positive things, so it's not a way of dodging  something negative that is said about your game.  It's a way of clarifying things, instead.

[Draco18s]

I use an art posting site that has two sets of tags:

• Artist official tags
• Suggested tags

The second set is just the list of tags that are suggested by regular users.  I think there's some kind of popularity filter (e.g. five or more people suggest the tag).  I am not sure off hand if I can suggest the removal of a tag on a piece that is not mine or outright remove a suggested tag on one of my own submissions (90% of everything is well tagged by the artist and I have no submissions).

[crazyroosterman]

I use an art posting site that has two sets of tags:

• Artist official tags
• Suggested tags

The second set is just the list of tags that are suggested by regular users.  I think there's some kind of popularity filter (e.g. five or more people suggest the tag).  I am not sure off hand if I can suggest the removal of a tag on a piece that is not mine or outright remove a suggested tag on one of my own submissions (90% of everything is well tagged by the artist and I have no submissions).

is that deviant art by any chance? also to Chris shall this game be continuing your current trend of having zero humans in it? also I'm very much looking forward to seeing if stars confirms my theory.

[x4000]

Stars Beyond Reach has zero people in it; it takes place in a different time and place.  This game has people, though -- you play as a person.  Mostly the enemies are not humans, although there are some.

[Cyborg]

I like dinosaurs but, I have a concern:

After what happened this winter, don't you think AI War 2 is the safe project? It has a playerbase already. Not that I don't like dinosaurs, because I do. I got a new video card just to play ark.

You have challenges marketing and bringing in new players. I just think that another wild idea might not get the attention that the studio needs. And I think, if this is a survival game, there are an awful lot of those.

[Pumpkin]

I like dinosaurs but, I have a concern:

After what happened this winter, don't you think AI War 2 is the safe project? It has a playerbase already. Not that I don't like dinosaurs, because I do. I got a new video card just to play ark.

You have challenges marketing and bringing in new players. I just think that another wild idea might not get the attention that the studio needs. And I think, if this is a survival game, there are an awful lot of those.

I can't read that without (emotionally) respond. I'm worry about Arcen because I love it. I love what you've done so far and I hope you'll be fine. I don't know anything about running a company ; I can only trust you on this choice (of doing a brand new game). I fear it would be a bad gamble (heck, your first 3D game?!) in face of some other choices (totally random example: AIW2) that, for me who knows nothing about running a company would have been better.

TL;DR: I am (we are?) worried yet I don't know what's best. Please reassure me (us?).

[Cyborg]

I like dinosaurs but, I have a concern:

After what happened this winter, don't you think AI War 2 is the safe project? It has a playerbase already. Not that I don't like dinosaurs, because I do. I got a new video card just to play ark.

You have challenges marketing and bringing in new players. I just think that another wild idea might not get the attention that the studio needs. And I think, if this is a survival game, there are an awful lot of those.

I can't read that without (emotionally) respond. I'm worry about Arcen because I love it. I love what you've done so far and I hope you'll be fine. I don't know anything about running a company ; I can only trust you on this choice (of doing a brand new game). I fear it would be a bad gamble (heck, your first 3D game?!) in face of some other choices (totally random example: AIW2) that, for me who knows nothing about running a company would have been better.

TL;DR: I am (we are?) worried yet I don't know what's best. Please reassure me (us?).

It could be his final ace in the hole (English expression), and he's not ready to play it yet. But without looking at numbers, you have to ask the question if that ace loses value the farther away you get from AI war 1 (Like Duke Nuke'em, whose launch was an anachronism).

[Misery]

I like dinosaurs but, I have a concern:

After what happened this winter, don't you think AI War 2 is the safe project? It has a playerbase already. Not that I don't like dinosaurs, because I do. I got a new video card just to play ark.

You have challenges marketing and bringing in new players. I just think that another wild idea might not get the attention that the studio needs. And I think, if this is a survival game, there are an awful lot of those.

I'll be honest, I've had this same concern.

I mean, Starward turned out fantastic, yet even so the launch was terrible and never picked up afterwards really... it did enough damage that many people were let go.  What would happen if that sort of launch were to occur again?

Even with better advertising and such before launch, that sort of result is still possible.  Particularly from those players that followed you guys due mostly to your strategy games, which I think is the main thing you're known for.

I mean yeah, SBR is there, but even with that, when I think about it, this does seem a bit risky.

Wheras something like AI War 2 would probably be an instant buy for many.

[ptarth]

AI Wars 2 would require a lot of programming resources.

[x4000]

The main response I have to the above is: why can't we do both?

We're in a stable enough position at the moment that we can afford to plod along with both things.  I'm also not in a very good state of mind for making a strategy game right now, and so the likely result of that would be pretty poor.  Keith is working on that, however; first with SBR, then AI War.  AI War 2 is still a long ways off programming-wise.

Meanwhile I'm able to focus on something else that I'm passionate about, and on a timetable that I have more control over.  I was passionate about Starward Rogue, but had no control over its timeframe thanks to being staff-heavy and past mistakes with the amount of time spent on SBR and so on.  We're now running a lot closer in terms of our expenses to our income, so the risks of doing anything are lower.

And in my case, I see a hole in the market here, and feel a burning desire for this kind of game, and so am thinking... why not?  The last time I had this feeling and noticed that kind of hole, AI War happened.  There literally hasn't been any other case where that's happened for me.  I'm brimming over with game ideas all the time, but that sort of situation is pretty darn rare.  For me it made sense to take a couple of weeks and see if it made sense and was something I could actually pull off.  The discovery was: heck yes, absolutely I can do this.

I totally get the concerns you guys have, don't get me wrong.  And you could wind up saying "I told you so" some months down the line.  That said, at the moment we're pursuing something safe (the Keith side of things, which he is more than capable of handling himself), and something that is more of a departure, but in a good way I think (the me side of things -- and I'm not pulling in Keith one iota for my bits).

I'm not sure how many of you read about the whole Trine 3 debacle, but that's not this.  Those guys really tried to go nuts with the graphical fidelity in 3D in a just absolutely insane way, and they were trying to live up to the standards of a prior game while also translating it into three dimensions, etc, etc.  That led to just so very many problems for them that they discussed.