Game News Avadon 3: The Warborn Released

[Heretic]

Looks like people are growing tired of the stale Spiderweb formula. I know I am.

According to Steamspy, each new game in the Avadon series has sold an order of magnitude fewer copies.

Avadon 1: 220,000
Avadon 2: 60,000
Avadon 3: 2,000

The nostalgia from 2011 has worn off.

 

[Trash]

I distinctly remember him going bonkers about a thread here concerning Avadon 1. Part of his rant was about me being disappointed with his world map. A world map is where you present the player with a gameworld. If it looks boring and artificial then I as a player know the maker of the game didn't really spend much thought and energy in bringing his gameworld alive. Avadon's worldmap was a perfect example of that. Just compare it to the Geneforge or Avernum ones.

 

[Fry]

Take a look at the Avernum remakes. Avadon 1 is a sales outlier.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Looks like people are growing tired of the stale Spiderweb formula. I know I am.

According to Steamspy, each new game in the Avadon series has sold an order of magnitude fewer copies.

Avadon 1: 220,000
Avadon 2: 60,000
Avadon 3: 2,000

The nostalgia from 2011 has worn off.

Avadon 1 also has had 5 years of sales and it has been bundled.

 

[Heretic]

Sure, but still, to sell two thousand copies on release is a bad result and shows a downward trend.

 

[Grape_You_In_the_Mouth]

Guy, that's just not necessarily true at all. We're talking about a weird niche here so gtfo with your absolute certainty.

 

[Metro]

Problem is he develops niche games marketed towards the very people who know his games aren't that good. You're not going to fool most hardcore crpg gamers. Especially now with stuff like Age of Decadence out. And it's not like this appeals to the Skyrim crowd.

 

[Grape_You_In_the_Mouth]

I dunno man he said a surprisingly large market of his is middle-aged housewives.

 

[MRY]

Sure, but still, to sell two thousand copies on release is a bad result and shows a downward trend.

Per Steamcharts, which, as I've written elsewhere, is much better than Steamspy for such comparisons:

- In its first month of release, Avadon 1's highest concurrent player count was 70.
- Avadon 2's was 142.
- Avadon 3 has already hit 130, and will probably wind up higher.

So I don't think you can really infer much. Time may vindicate your views, but first blush is that Avadon 3's launch is fine. It does look like Avadon has had a longer/thicker tail than Avadon 2, but it's hard to say -- Avadon 1 may have been more aggressively discounted/bundled, for example. Generally I would expect the first game in a series like that to be the highest performing, since some people will jump off if they don't like it. I didn't make it through any Spiderweb series, but I played some games in all of them up until the most recent iteration.

 

[Whisper]

Why noone mentions that with Vitality system reworked game became much more fun?

 

[Metro]

I dunno man he said a surprisingly large market of his is middle-aged housewives.

How would he even know that?

 

[Severian Silk]

He has his ways...

 

[Doktor Best]

I also dont understand it.

He makes game much better than Dragon Age and he talks about that game being his inspiration?

Whats wrong with him.

Its a PR stunt. Dragon Age = huge fanbase. He wants a piece of its cake.

 

[Roguey]

Looks like people are growing tired of the stale Spiderweb formula. I know I am.

According to Steamspy, each new game in the Avadon series has sold an order of magnitude fewer copies.

Avadon 1: 220,000
Avadon 2: 60,000
Avadon 3: 2,000

The nostalgia from 2011 has worn off.

A lot of this has to do with the fact that Avadon was released pre-Greenlight, and the others weren't. To mix metaphors, a few years ago, getting approved by Valve was like winning the lottery, but once they opened the floodgates, the free rides ended.

Those Avadon 3 sales are still comparable to what he was selling before Steam, so he's fine.

 

[Infinitron]

Jeff has said that he can live on 6000 full price copies sold per game: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...gel-soapbox-thread.91814/page-10#post-4118703

 

[commie]

In the time Jeff released 21 games, Cleve fixed 7 microissues.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Jeff has said that he can live on 6000 full price copies sold per game: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...gel-soapbox-thread.91814/page-10#post-4118703

avernum 2 crystal souls already sold like 75000 - 80000 copies. even at it's lowest recorded price (8 dollars) that's like 640k

 

[Infinitron]

Jeff has said that he can live on 6000 full price copies sold per game: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...gel-soapbox-thread.91814/page-10#post-4118703

avernum 2 crystal souls already sold like 75000 - 80000 copies. even at it's lowest recorded price (8 dollars) that's like 640k

http://steamspy.com/app/337850

Wow, that $10 Summer Sale was super effective.

 

[Grape_You_In_the_Mouth]

Yeah I honestly don't get how he doesn't have money for artists to make quality 2D graphics

 

[Roguey]

Yeah I honestly don't get how he doesn't have money for artists to make quality 2D graphics

The Vogel Kid College Fund.

 

[Urbanolo]

Jeff has said that he can live on 6000 full price copies sold per game: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...gel-soapbox-thread.91814/page-10#post-4118703

avernum 2 crystal souls already sold like 75000 - 80000 copies. even at it's lowest recorded price (8 dollars) that's like 640k

http://steamspy.com/app/337850

Wow, that $10 Summer Sale was super effective.

It wasn't the summer sale, the steam keys are sold for 3PLN (about 70 euro cents) at polish e-bay. I guess most people got the game from those sources.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Guy, that's just not necessarily true at all. We're talking about a weird niche here so gtfo with your absolute certainty.

2000 copies sold is pretty decent. Here' let's do some math: 2000 copies is 36000€ (18€ per copy due to the new release discount). Valve's cut is about 30% so we'll reduce that from the initial amount, which means that Vogel ends up with 25200€, give or take a few k. Since he tries to make games as cheap as possible you can deduce a few ks more for commissioned art and music, but most of that money that Vogel ended up with is going directly into his pocket. 252k€ is not bad. Plus he'll make more as time goes on and the game gets bundled and discounted.

 

[Trash]

That comes out as less than €2100 a month if we assume Avadon 3 is a year's work. Without taxes. With a house and family. Not much to live on.

Sure, the guy has a steady income through bundles, odd jobs, sales and so on. Still, I don't see these diminishing returns paint a good picture for his continued existence as a dev. Unless his next project is a hit again, that is. Somehow I doubt that, as the formula has grown more stale with each release and I don't really see the guy breaking into new territory.

All that said though, anyone actually played Avadon 3 enough for an informed opinion here? I wonder how it is as a typical Vogel game.

 

[Sizzle]

All that said though, anyone actually played Avadon 3 enough for an informed opinion here? I wonder how it is as a typical Vogel game.

It's much better than the second one (which, like I said earlier, is probably his weakest game). After two games of playing catch up to the enemy, you're finally taking a more pro-active stance in the war and bringing the fight to them. The politics are also a bit more interesting this time around (a conflict between the former Keeper, Redbeard, and the acting Keeper). A couple of NPCs from previous games return (Nathalie and Khalida), and there's no flimsy attempt at BioWareian romance like in A2.

Besides that, it's mostly the same - the quests are ok, the fights are unchanged. If you've liked the previous two at least a little, odds are you'll like this one as well.

 

[Johannes]

All that said though, anyone actually played Avadon 3 enough for an informed opinion here? I wonder how it is as a typical Vogel game.

It's much better than the second one (which, like I said earlier, is probably his weakest game). After two games of playing catch up to the enemy, you're finally taking a more pro-active stance in the war and bringing the fight to them. The politics are also a bit more interesting this time around (a conflict between the former Keeper, Redbeard, and the acting Keeper). A couple of NPCs from previous games return (Nathalie and Khalida), and there's no flimsy attempt at BioWareian romance like in A2.

Besides that, it's mostly the same - the quests are ok, the fights are unchanged. If you've liked the previous two at least a little, odds are you'll like this one as well.

I read that he wanted to lessen the amount of trash fights and/or make the fights more interesting, how much is that true? Or is the combat how comparable to his previous games? Is there HP bloat in the higher difficulties now?