Aragos wrote:While I don't directly work for the game industry (though I have consulted on several A list games over the past few years), Balt is spot on here. This is one of the reasons that many development companies are going away from the traditional model (everybody works for a company and produces games) to a dispersed, independent contractor model (cheaper, less overhead, et al). And, like Balt says, developers and programmers have more than a little bit of "emotional buy-in"--more so than the players/customers in many ways. They take an idea, create something out of it, and hope people like it.Balthagor wrote:That's not what I said. I said I don't know. I have no idea how many more copies we will continue to sell.burock82 wrote:so it is not going to be fixed ?
Even setting up a kickstarter requires investment (more time than money, but still investment)nick-bang wrote: Do we need do a Kickstarter project to get the ball rolling ... ?
I Didnt know that Battlegoat were financially under that much pressure... ?
Most people can figure out what a studio needs to survive.
- Google up the annual salaries for a programmer + artist + lead designer + a junior designer. Add those up. Add ~ 10% for overhead.
- Look at the price the game is selling for
- Divide the costs of running the business by the price per copy of the game.
That's how many copies of the game, not on sale, a company needs to move just to break even. And consider that there is at least one year before release were there is nothing to sell, so no income. Salaries always represent the biggest cost to a studio.
It's not so much that we are under pressure, it is that we won't invest in lots of hours of work unless there is a reasonable belief we will get paid for the work. It is why many studios stop supporting games soon after release, they've used up their development budget based on what they know the game will make.
One of the choices BattleGoat made was to invest in the Hard Core Strategy segment of the market because we believe the game will continue to sell for many years because there is little else on the market like Supreme Ruler. That means we have "long tail" of revenue to keep going with support, but the tail still needs to be wide enough if we want fast paced development. The smaller the tail is, the longer it takes us to get updates.
And for me personally, I have to think about my future. I've been in the industry 14 years now with my name to multiple titles published worldwide. Maybe someday I'll want to run a studio? There are certainly some industry people I would love to collaborate with if the opportunity presented itself.
But we won't abandon the game, we are much to proud of the work we've put in to just drop it. Things like the localization open new markets for us and could lead to new investment making the tail both longer and wider. Revenues is one of the major reasons for so much content now being offered as Free2Play with in app purchases.
And that's video game industry 101
Is the game perfect? Of course not. Is it "broken"--no, but it does have some odd things to work around (MM issue--like I said a long time ago, I personally detest MM in general; ahistorical and leads to some seriously messed up pathing issues and slows the game engine, but I digress).
Balt hit the target spot on--it is all about $$, ultimately. You can only fix what you can afford.
Ok i understand that but please do not relate this BUG with money or budget! I am sure most of the players are not just players they have serious jobs or they are student in serious universities etc. I am working for one of the biggest wind turbine OEM in the world. What you say is like to say to our customer ; "we manufactured the blades faulty but in order to change them you need to buy more turbine" which will make customer angry and on next project they will not even call you to tender!
So in our case, we ,players, are the customers of game developers and there is a major issue , agreed and supported by community as well, and devs are just showing the money as excuse to not to fix it!
If i were a potential buyer, i would think twice after reading the forums about issues and bugs. Also personally , i hate to say that, it will make me to think twice to buy any game that any devs of this game involved. Becuase i will always remember as "They do good game but they do not fix the issues even the major ones"
This is my final post! I will not post anymore about it. But for one last time i bag you please fix this MM issue which is game breaker! It is affecting the quality of game!
Thanks and have a nice future jobs
Burak