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Eternity PoE II: Deadfire Sales Analysis Thread

Mustawd

Guest
I don't know where you got your information, but way more than 30 people worked on Pillars 1 including contractors. Deadfire had a team of 35 employees if I recall.

Dunno where you’re getting your info, but it’s been confirmed only ~30 ppl worked on poe1.
 

Quillon

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I don't know where you got your information, but way more than 30 people worked on Pillars 1 including contractors. Deadfire had a team of 35 employees if I recall.

Its common knowledge for anyone who followed both games' development that PoE1 made with a skeleton crew, around 20 people most of the time, at its peak 30. I won't bother to dig up source on it.

For Deadfire: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/91197-so-who-is-working-on-the-game/

There are 54 people on that list but since people are moving between projects as noted, 40 to 50 should be a safe assumption.
 
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aweigh

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I don't even understand why one would assume Deadfire had a smaller team, I mean it goes against ALL logic. When you have a surprise hit (you know what I mean) you don't assign a smaller team to its sequel, why would anyone even assume that?
 

Zboj Lamignat

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Probably the same reason why anyone would assume that a game that no one buys will generate more sales for another game that no one buys.
 

J_C

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Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
Please stop being retarded. This point comes up every 10 pages or so, and then the cycle repeats. I'm like in groundhog day. The average price is around $20-23, not 45. Account for regional prices and sales.
While you are right that the average price is not 45, it is probably not as low as 20 dollars. cca 75% of sales are from the US and Western Europe, where they pay the full price, the rest is from Eastern Europe, Russia, China and other shitholes. And IIRC there were no huge discounts for PoE2 yet, I'd say the average price is probably around $30.
 
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aweigh

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PoE1 actually sold tho. It wasn't a "hit" but it sold more than enough for Obsidian to make a sequel as quickly as possible. Hell, it sold enough to fund TYRANNY, a throwaway pet project.
 

Sizzle

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PoE1 actually sold tho. It wasn't a "hit" but it sold more than enough for Obsidian to make a sequel as quickly as possible. Hell, it sold enough to fund TYRANNY, a throwaway pet project.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Tyranny funded by Paradox, the publisher?
 

fantadomat

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PoE1 actually sold tho. It wasn't a "hit" but it sold more than enough for Obsidian to make a sequel as quickly as possible. Hell, it sold enough to fund TYRANNY, a throwaway pet project.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Tyranny funded by Paradox, the publisher?
I believe that it was something like 60/40 or 70/30 funded by Paradox. I don't think that they funded the whole project.
 

The Great ThunThun*

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That is pretty much the same amount of developers that worked on Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2 - not to mention that Obsidian is using modern tech.

Golly gee willikers! I wonder what went wrong?

Feargus and the new writers. :M

Writers yes. Feargus no. Feargus is a constant of the process, his being there did not harm MoTB or even NWN2.

I keep repeating myself, but I think the point needs to be made:

PoE succeeded because of Nostalgia pandering; "Look we are the original devs (they weren't) and we are going to remake games you thought you enjoyed!!". This raised hopes in the backdrop of what Dragon age and Mass effect had become. But of course being incompetent, nuObdisdian people had terrible worldbuilding and writing ideas. This primed PoE2 for failure, especially because PoE did not receive appropriate feedback for being mediocre. PoE2 doubled down on the bad writing and world building and became less of a success than PoE.

PoE should never have focused on reinventing the wheel i.e. the mechanics. That was never the main issue with IE enthusiasts. The whole argument was in the first place a general misunderstanding brought about by Bioware mishandling the IE revival. The strength of IE games was always the generic fantasy coupled with nice music/pretty pictures/ spell effects. Instead, I suspect that Josh wasted precious resources on creating the mechanics from scratch and came up with D&D lite and that too badly implemented. Nothing surprising, because this is what he has always done anyway. Instead if Obsidian had spent more time coming up with an original setting and story, it would be successfully establishing itself in the long run. And now that the PoE as a brand is tarnished, I guess Obsidian can make the MMO it wanted to make in peace. Congratulations Obsidian, you are Bioware now.
 
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Theldaran

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It's obvious that, right down to the number of involved developers, Obsidian wanted to closely mimic the creation of BG1 and BG2 with the POEs.

Too bad that everything that made them shine in the past is long gone now.

The bottom line is that most of POE's enforcers don't like BG or haven't played, or finished it.
 

Theldaran

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Name a more overrated RPG than BG2.

Precisely, BG needs to be laid down to rest.

Even Black Isle themselves didn't want to milk it any longer (though they seemingly were going to keep the name for the 3rd part, the Black Hound, even if it had nothing to do with the previous games).
 

fantadomat

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I believe that it was something like 60/40 or 70/30 funded by Paradox.

Why do you believe that? There were never any such info aside from Pdx being the publisher and owning the IP.
I don't remember,could be mistaken. I have the vague memory of watching/reading something like this on their forum or retarded twitch channel. Also 70% makes sense to me when it comes to partnership and publishing.
 

imweasel

Guest
PoE should never have focused on reinventing the wheel i.e. the mechanics. That was never the main issue with IE enthusiasts.
The game should have been based on D20, but to paraphrase/quote Josh Sawyer: "D&D is SHIT! I'll do it better!" and "Maybe the grognards like [D&D], but for everyone else it’s kind of frustrating and so we try to get away from that as much as possible."

lulz
 
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aweigh

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This system that has stood the test of time is SHIT and I can do it MUCH better! Oh hoh hoh hoh *rides away in bicycle*
 

fantadomat

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This system that has stood the test of time is SHIT and I can do it MUCH better! Oh hoh hoh hoh *rides away in bicycle*
deadfire.png
 

Flou

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40 to 50 people worked on Deadfire, 20 to 30 on PoE1.

Actually around 100 people worked on Deadfire if you check mobygames.com that shows the games credits. Naturally not all 100 were working on the game full time or even all the time during the project. Some worked on it briefly before moving on to Tyranny, Outer Worlds or to the parking lot and into different ventures.

And around 85-90 worked on Pillars with some of the time shared with Tyranny and Armored Warfare.

I counted Obsidian's Q&A team to both numbers, but those guys (among some others) work on all of Obsidian's projects. I remember Josh or Chris saying that Pillars peaked with the team size of 40. They started smallish with about 20. So core team for Pillars was 25-40 once they hit full production mode and for Deadfire 50+

Deadfire's budget is obviously bigger, but by just looking at the credits it's quite hard to say how much bigger, since I doubt anyone here has a hidden webcam at Obsidian checking on who spends how much time on each project.
 

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