Game News Bad News: Chaos Chronicles development on hold due to legal trouble with bitComposer

[Metro]

Sadly Conquistadors will probably be in an Indie Gala before I get around to playing it.

 

[Grunker]

Expeditions: Conquistador's marketing failed on multiple levels, but I suspect the mere act of releasing as a Paradox-branded historical strategy game could have netted them many sales from CK2 fans.

I wonder if they ever had the option of going with Paradox.

Then you thirst for knowledge shall be sated once I visit them.

I agree though. Most of my non-Codexian friends who took my advice and got this were history-geeks.

 

[tuluse]

Amnesia got a fuckton of exposure tuluse. It's world famous, even among casual gamers.

When I was teaching at a folk high school (kind of a pre-high school boarding school that kids choose to go at themselves in the break between public school and high school) I saw this game being played in a room full of kids from all walks of life during a sleepover. We're talking 20 youngsters, none of whom would fit the profile for gamer even if they tried.

It's such a unique story of perfect timing, marketing and craft that I doubt you can compare it meaningfully to anything.

I know what you're trying to say though, and I agree, except for the overall example.

Defense Grid experienced the same long tail on Steam. Is that game world famous?

 

[Delterius]

Grunker or just about anyone else that might know this, did the bitcomposer deal involve extra funding for the E:C guys? If so, any idea how much?

 

[Excidium]

Amnesia got a fuckton of exposure tuluse. It's world famous, even among casual gamers.

When I was teaching at a folk high school (kind of a pre-high school boarding school that kids choose to go at themselves in the break between public school and high school) I saw this game being played in a room full of kids from all walks of life during a sleepover. We're talking 20 youngsters, none of whom would fit the profile for gamer even if they tried.

It's such a unique story of perfect timing, marketing and craft that I doubt you can compare it meaningfully to anything.

I know what you're trying to say though, and I agree, except for the overall example.

Amnesia's success is almost entirely because of retarded youtube celebrities, so yeah it can't really be compared to anything except maybe minecraft.

 

[Azrael the cat]

With a niche game like this, it's also likely to have a long tail. I think Amnesia was selling well a year after it had launched, which is unheard of in the console world.

Amnesia the horror game? Well, it's first-person survival horror. Turn-based, isometric, and text-heavy it's not.

This. Amnesia is a good example of some good things - for one, that a game that isn't an 'action adventure', FPS or cover-based shooter, and that targets one of the 'forgotten' genres (survival-horror - yes there's plenty of survival horror 'titles', but they have as much to do with the genre as Mass Effect does with crpgs), can succeed and even ride a hype train to mainstream success. It doesn't say anything about whether turn-based, isometric and text-heavy games can do the same (arguably survival horror is the genre where visual storytelling over text is at its strongest).

 

[skuphundaku]

The path of a codexer once again proves to be paved with misery. No wonder Torment is held in such high regard here.

That should be what the next Torment game (the one after TToN) is about: the masochism of always going against the current just because you know you right and everybody else is wrong.

 

[Metro]

Eh, Amnesia was basically a first person adventure game with fairly shallow puzzles. I guess there are some survival aspects to it but that just includes running away and hiding at certain semi-scripted intervals.

 

[VonVentrue]

Amnesia's success is almost entirely because of retarded youtube celebrities, so yeah it can't really be compared to anything except maybe minecraft.

That's a good point, Amnesia's sales only started gaining momentum the moment regular discounts slashing the price to a mere fraction of what it used to be kicked in, bolstered by a steady stream of YouTube clips with unberable, high pitched screams of their creators. The game's reputation sparked curiosity among the general public.

 

[Robert Jarzebina]

http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2012/09/amnesia-two-years-later.html

This success is due to many factors, some of which are the uniqueness of the game (horror games without combat do not really exist on PC), the large modding community (more on this later) and the steady flood of YouTube clips (which is in turn is fueled by the modding community output).

ITT RPG Codex discovers that turn based RPGs are selling like shit even in an incline time.

I told ya. Just wait till the industry will crash with new consoles and you will see gaming ITZ in full glory.

 

[Jarpie]

http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2012/09/amnesia-two-years-later.html

This success is due to many factors, some of which are the uniqueness of the game (horror games without combat do not really exist on PC), the large modding community (more on this later) and the steady flood of YouTube clips (which is in turn is fueled by the modding community output).

ITT RPG Codex discovers that turn based RPGs are selling like shit even in an incline time.

I told ya. Just wait till the industry will crash with new consoles and you will see gaming ITZ in full glory.

Never give up on hope, it's the only thing we have left.

 

[Jack Dandy]

I plan to stop by Logic Artists and interview them on the topic of Kickstarter Aftermath, and I look forward to bringing their response that almost all of their sales have been on Steam, and without it they would have made next to money, distribution deal or no

I'll be really looking forward to that, it can be a pretty interesting subject. Please bribe them with Dewritos to come back asap to this kind of game. I know they're working on something else atm (I'd bet on some shitty iPad game), but I simply really enjoyed the kind of gameplay EC offered, and would love to see it expanded.

Grunker or just about anyone else that might know this, did the bitcomposer deal involve extra funding for the E:C guys? If so, any idea how much?

From their last pre-launch update:

The full version of the game Expeditions: Conquistador, this very Kickstarter project is on the last leg of its amazing journey! But some of you may not know that we did a fair bit more than we promised for this game in our original goals here on KS, so you are in for an even grander gaming experience than you might be expecting!
For starters we achieved our first two stretch goals, even though we didn’t reach the stretch pledge numbers. So every time a player promotes one of their expedition members they can select from 30+ passive abilities to boost the unit in combat. Our second stretch goal also was reached, we created greater variations in character models, and further boosted the quality of the character animations as well.

To get to these stretch goals, they would need about an extra 12K, so I guess that's what Bitcomposer threw their way.

 

[Grunker]

Grunker or just about anyone else that might know this, did the bitcomposer deal involve extra funding for the E:C guys? If so, any idea how much?

No, not as far as we know. As has been stated several times, the deal with bitComposer primarily concerned access to Steam.

 

[Grunker]

Amnesia got a fuckton of exposure tuluse. It's world famous, even among casual gamers.

When I was teaching at a folk high school (kind of a pre-high school boarding school that kids choose to go at themselves in the break between public school and high school) I saw this game being played in a room full of kids from all walks of life during a sleepover. We're talking 20 youngsters, none of whom would fit the profile for gamer even if they tried.

It's such a unique story of perfect timing, marketing and craft that I doubt you can compare it meaningfully to anything.

I know what you're trying to say though, and I agree, except for the overall example.

Defense Grid experienced the same long tail on Steam. Is that game world famous?

I have no clue. I know a lot about Amnesia. I don't know a lot about Defense Grid.

 

[Rake]

The path of a codexer once again proves to be paved with misery. No wonder Torment is held in such high regard here.

That should be what the next Torment game (the one after TToN) is about: the masochism of always going against the current just because you know you right and everybody else is wrong.

I recognize your pain. Your kind must learn it comes from straining against the turning of the world. It spins thus. You cannot stop it. One day, you will wake up. You will stop pulling. The pain will be gone. Until then, all your waking hours are suffering.

 

[Monty]

I plan to stop by Logic Artists and interview them on the topic of Kickstarter Aftermath, and I look forward to bringing their response that almost all of their sales have been on Steam, and without it they would have made next to money, distribution deal or no

The restriction on online sales to Spain, Italy, Latin America (so BC could sell retail in those areas) is interesting, as I would have guessed those markets had decent potential for them. I wonder how much this hurt them, excluding areas from online sales seems like an encouragement for piracy.

 

[Infinitron]

Grunker or just about anyone else that might know this, did the bitcomposer deal involve extra funding for the E:C guys? If so, any idea how much?

No, not as far as we know. As has been stated several times, the deal with bitComposer primarily concerned access to Steam.

In this post it is implied they may have received money as well.

 

[Jarpie]

Expeditions: Conquistador marketing wasn't very effective to say the least and IMO much better partner for it would've been Paradox who probably are much better and nicer publisher than ShitComposter, although Paradox probably would've wanted to be actual publisher instead of distributor. Hopefully this and Chaos Chronicles teaches devs to avoid ShitComposter as the games they've published or distributed seem to have more troubles than worth a risk.

 

[Grunker]

Grunker or just about anyone else that might know this, did the bitcomposer deal involve extra funding for the E:C guys? If so, any idea how much?

No, not as far as we know. As has been stated several times, the deal with bitComposer primarily concerned access to Steam.

In this post it is implied they may have received money as well.

That's not from bC though. They mentioned additional funding from the beginning. They already had investors when I went to their offices to talk with them back when I did the report

I'll be sure to ask them next time I speak to them, however.

 

[mondblut]

The restriction on online sales to Spain, Italy, Latin America (so BC could sell retail in those areas) is interesting, as I would have guessed those markets had decent potential for them. I wonder how much this hurt them, excluding areas from online sales seems like an encouragement for piracy.

They were just afraid of the natives getting butthurt and sending them death threats. Imagine CoH2 response, except with machete-wielding crazies smoking from cocaine instead of the largely harmless ruskie dumbos.

 

[villain of the story]

Kickstarter? Alpha funding? Release mod tools so people can start creating content now? Unless the "new project" is CC under a different name, giving up on that much work like this sounds like bullshit considering they were sort of independent regarding creative control.

 

[felipepepe]

Amnesia got a fuckton of exposure tuluse. It's world famous, even among casual gamers.

When I was teaching at a folk high school (kind of a pre-high school boarding school that kids choose to go at themselves in the break between public school and high school) I saw this game being played in a room full of kids from all walks of life during a sleepover. We're talking 20 youngsters, none of whom would fit the profile for gamer even if they tried.

It's such a unique story of perfect timing, marketing and craft that I doubt you can compare it meaningfully to anything.

I know what you're trying to say though, and I agree, except for the overall example.

Amnesia's success is almost entirely because of retarded youtube celebrities, so yeah it can't really be compared to anything except maybe minecraft.

Exactly. People started to post videos of themselves playing and getting jump-scared, and it became a trend... just like that Slender game.

There were 3 Penumbra games from the same developer that play almost the same as Amnesia, but none of them have even 1/10 of Amnesia's fame....

 

[villain of the story]

how much of the existing work can be recycled by coreplay into something else for a kickstarter? call it Anarchy Annals or Discord Diaries or Entropy Essays...

Kodex Khronicles

 

[Burning Bridges]

Grunker or just about anyone else that might know this, did the bitcomposer deal involve extra funding for the E:C guys? If so, any idea how much?

No, not as far as we know. As has been stated several times, the deal with bitComposer primarily concerned access to Steam.

So this really only a distribution deal? At first I found it a bit insincere to make a deal with bc directly after kickstarting, but now I think I understand it better. Even bitcomposers site explicitly says that the game was funded on kickstarter.

 

[Grunker]

Grunker or just about anyone else that might know this, did the bitcomposer deal involve extra funding for the E:C guys? If so, any idea how much?

No, not as far as we know. As has been stated several times, the deal with bitComposer primarily concerned access to Steam.

So this really only a distribution deal? At first I found it a bit insincere to make a deal with bc directly after kickstarting, but now I think I understand it better. Even bitcomposers site explicitly says that the game was funded on kickstarter.

As far as we know, yes.