Vault Dweller: Age of Decadence needs to sell 45,000 copies to be successful

[felipepepe]

Claymation is best medium for AoD trailer.

A LARP trailer, complete with a turn-based combat scene and a really bad actor reading long persuasion dialogs.

You know you want it.

 

[MRY]

Just take footage from the Rome TV and dub it with AOD dialogue. Stick a "fair use" disclaimer, and I'm sure it'll be legal.

 

[SausageInYourFace]

Scientific research

Citiation needed? Not saying you are wrong, just curious what your source is.

btw, Swen Vincke said that AngryJoe had a significant effect on the sales of Dragon Commander, which is probably why he even went to his house to present Div:OS 2 to him.

(Not that I think AngryJoe should or could review AoD, I just doubt that youtube personalities should have no effect on sales, there is a reason developers go after them)

 

[laclongquan]

He's actually talking about The Watch, the traitor. Don't ask me how I know.

Being in a refugee camp is a shame Codexer must endure when server is down~ Although, it's not that heavy.

 

[AbounI]

yesterday, i was thinking about something special about AoD.We all know the game is a heavy text based, even more than what some books can totalize.
So hey, why not publish a kind of collector book with some artwork content (locations, items).Why not then a chapter where all the main NPCs would be presented in a few lines.Another chapter for the long tale of indie development.It could also feature some of the nicest interviews.
And if it's not doable in a hardcover format, there's always a pdf format.

Ask yourself and see: if such a thing would be published, would you buy it to support ITS?

 

[Lacrymas]

yesterday, i was thinking about something special about AoD.We all know the game is a heavy text based, even more than what some books can totalize.
So hey, why not publish a kind of collector book with some artwork content (locations, items).Why not then a chapter where all the main NPCs would be presented in a few lines.Another chapter for the long tale of indie development.It could also feature some of the nicest interviews.
And if it's not doable in a hardcover format, there's always a pdf format.

Ask yourself and see: if such a thing would be published, would you buy it to support ITS?

If they think they've reached some new levels of reactivity and causality, then why not make it dissertation-like to outline and explore in-depth their philosophy and method? That would influence game development for the future as well.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Personally I've had a hard time championing AoD to my gaming circle, due to rather unfortunate launch timing along with WL2 DC and D:OS EE.

We all know these games are time consuming as fuck, so most people really aren't interested in buying more than one in short amount of time.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Ask yourself and see: if such a thing would be published, would you buy it to support ITS?

In general, our strategy (for the lack of a better word) is aimed at selling the game to new 'customers' rather than squeezing more money from the existing customers.

If they think they've reached some new levels of reactivity and causality, then why not make it dissertation-like to outline and explore in-depth their philosophy and method? That would influence game development for the future as well.

I don't think that we reached new levels (it's not for me to tell), but I do like writing articles and I wanted to write articles on TB combat and on how to design/write/script C&C for a long time (which doesn't mean that I'll actually do it). I had a half-written TB draft for over a year now.

Anyway, the main issue with promoting a game this way or that way is that we (indie developers) don't really get much coverage, so all we can do is write things on our sites, which isn't very effective (which is why I write my design articles for my own amusement, not to reach some audience). Not that I'm complaining. It is what it is and I don't expect the gaming media to change and start paying attention to what indie developers are mumbling about.

Personally I've had a hard time championing AoD to my gaming circle, due to rather unfortunate launch timing along with WL2 DC and D:OS EE.

We all know these games are time consuming as fuck, so most people really aren't interested in buying more than one in short amount of time.

Naturally. If someone didn't play these games I wouldn't expect them to pick AoD.

 

[Lacrymas]

I don't think that we reached new levels (it's not for me to tell),

It actually is (for you to tell), any artist knows when he's creating something new and influential. Beethoven has said of his 9th symphony, quote: "With this symphony I've secured my place in the history of the world"

 

[Vault Dweller]

That's some ego, eh? Speaking of history of the world:

 

[Lurker King]

Personally I've had a hard time championing AoD to my gaming circle, due to rather unfortunate launch timing along with WL2 DC and D:OS EE. .

Since the vast majority of the potentially buyers of W2 and D:OS already bought or backed these games, and played and talked about them to death, and both games are very big and tiresome, I believe this is not the case at all. People who say they are waiting for them are either a small minority or part of the majority who are just paying lip service. In any case, since they will not play these games forever, this is not an good excuse to avoid AoD at all.

 

[Lacrymas]

That's some ego, eh? Speaking of history of the world:

While he was quite temperamental, that wasn't his ego speaking. He just knew the history, philosophy and development of music before him and he knew that what he was doing was new and influential, just like all other great artists, and not only in music.

 

[Lurker King]

Beethoven wasn’t working on a second rate medium filled with controversy about the very nature of his work and by the time he said this he wasn’t the equivalent of an indie musician making his first composition. Besides, given the existence of internet, the trolls, the irrational backlashes, eternal resentments, any grandiose comment would not be wise, to say the least.

 

[Lacrymas]

Beethoven wasn’t working on a second rate medium filled with controversy about the very nature of his work and by the time he said this he wasn’t the equivalent of an indie musician making his first composition. Besides, given the existence of internet, the trolls, the irrational backlashes, eternal resentments, any grandiose comment would not be wise, to say the least.

True :p

 

[Ismaul]

any grandiose comment would not be wise, to say the least.

Lurker King said

 

[Lurker King]

?

 

[Lurker King]

Oh, you are talking about the nick! I would chose "Lurker", but this nick was already taken. Thus, I chose "Lurker King" wich is a comic allusion to "Lurther King".

 

[Copper]

Well, as far as Steam goes - you've set a high price, which means you can drop it quite a bit - 75% off even - while still taking in something. There's not that much else you can do there, so you have to find other ways to build your brand. Let's be blunt - you're not going to sell a game that looks like this full price to a lot of people. There's a reason visuals and stuff like fancy lighting and spell effects were such a big priority for Obsidian. I'm sure this isn't a surprise, since it was obvious from the first time RPS were sniggering at the attack animations.

It's a shame you can't simply rip-off Obsidian for the dialogue/interaction scenes - a nice little piece of art for the scenes would look a lot better than the top-down view, and could catch the eye - 'you know those things Obsidian did? We did them better!' You could get a bunch of freelancers from Third World countries to pull it off pretty quickly and cheaply, but it's probably not realistic at launch. Consider a Gold upgrade (you'd need to hit some minimum sales target though) for a polished UI and scripted sequence scenes. Check out the Cryptic comet games, esp Armagaedon Empires, for a great example of this. I remember a blog post where he gave some numbers, and the art was not expensive.

The three big things you've got going are complex characters, complex combat, and complex interactions between choices. You need to get that shit out of the forum and onto the front page.

Your site needs a bit of a shake-up - a footer for all pages with a Buy Now! section, for one. News posts that aren't just patch notes - great for existing customers, not so interesting to anyone else. Even just trawling the forums for interesting posts and putting them up on the front page would do something - it won't set the world on fire, but writing super-specific articles could help you get people who really want to play an archeologist solving riddles, for instance, while having posts - even guest posts by forum regulars - on combat builds & tactics will do a lot to showcase the depth of the system. Resurface those interviews from the forum and put them in some SEO, share-friendly format would be good. Write for other people, too, act like you're the guy with the answers, to get some of their juice.

 

[Kem0sabe]

I don't know what their site metrics are, but I very much doubt their front page gets a lot of views or time spent reading.

People these days have a very short attention span online, if it's not in their face and ready for immediate consumption, they won't waste their precious 9gag time on it.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Pretty much. Our steam page's metrics dwarf those of our site, which really means that your success largely depends on your Steam exposure, not your own site or PC Gamer and such.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Since the vast majority of the potentially buyers of W2 and D:OS already bought or backed these games, and played and talked about them to death, and both games are very big and tiresome, I believe this is not the case at all.

I expect a lot of people intend to do 2nd playthrough. Especially since, you know, its fucking free.

 

[SniperHF]

Anyway, the main issue with promoting a game this way or that way is that we (indie developers) don't really get much coverage, so all we can do is write things on our sites, which isn't very effective (which is why I write my design articles for my own amusement, not to reach some audience).

You could always pull a sea/felipepepepepepepe and spam up Gamasutra.

 

[laclongquan]

Ehm Vault Dweller . For your next game, you probabbly should think about outsourcing to sweatshops in Vietnam? The low low annual payment for a normal programmer or artist in Canada or US is pretty good money here.

ANd it's not like we are stranger to art outsourcing. Japanese game companies put a lot of branch offices in Vietnam. Dena, Squeenix, etc all have.

Self advertisement: my sister-in-law is doing that, art, graphic, and animation, for a DeNA branch in Hanoi. 4 years already. So we can hook you up, if not her, then some other locals.

 

[Elhoim]

Ehm Vault Dweller . For your next game, you probabbly should think about outsourcing to sweatshops in Vietnam? The low low annual payment for a normal programmer or artist in Canada or US is pretty good money here.

Vince is the only one in Canada, programming and animation are in Ukraine and I'm in Argentina.

 

[Forest Dweller]

Vince is the only one in Canada, programming and animation are in Ukraine and I'm in Argentina.

In other words, he's already outsourcing to sweatshops.