[Ascovel]

Guys, guys, German adventure gaming sites have been shouting about the late October release and giving all sorts of new details about it the entire September! English voice-overs will be included for example.

If release dates in other parts of the world are a few months away, then that's connected to publishing problems and has nothing to do with the actual game not being ready.

[UPtimist]

Here we see the reason for proper marketing, PR(, whatever) again. Conflicted messages, all the shops (the international source) one-by-one, quietly, are chaning release dates, while for a certain group (Germans, it would seem), there seems to be very different information. All this, mainly all being speculation, leads to amongst other things angry customers.

All it would take them is a simple official statement (or even an unofficial if it's from the right source), even from a lower-level source if the people in charge don't give a damn, to give even some word on what is going on. A simple, short statement that would at least stop ease the anger from the constant lack of certain information. A little "we had to do a delay once again, we're terribly sorry" or "no, there's no delay" or "things are a bit uncertain right now, but we're working on it" or "we've done our part, it's up to the publisher now" or something... As long as they're doing something, I won't mind the delays. But when it's just half-arsing everything without really thinking about it, that doesn't lead to any good from anyone's behalf.

Originally Posted by Ascovel

Guys, guys, German adventure gaming sites have been shouting about the late October release and giving all sorts of new details about it the entire September!

Please, do indulge us What have we missed?

[giga]

Originally Posted by Ascovel

Guys, guys, German adventure gaming sites have been shouting about the late October release and giving all sorts of new details about it the entire September! English voice-overs will be included for example.

If release dates in other parts of the world are a few months away, then that's connected to publishing problems and has nothing to do with the actual game not being ready.

I totally agree with this. Same happended with "So blonde: return to the island", also by dtp and mamba. Although it got released in germany by dtp, the UK release by mamba suddenly, a few weeks before release, slipped half a year. In the meantime I played it, finished it and loved it in English. Still not released in the UK. I wonder what kind of strange agreements dtp and mamba make regarding their publishing deals. It really makes no sense.

[Ascovel]

Originally Posted by UPtimist

Please, do indulge us What have we missed?

The German voice cast list for example.

I'm sure that the posts on German gaming websites come from DTPs official statements and press releases and are not the invention of accidental website editors.

DTP is a German company and Germany is its primary market, so it's no wonder everything comes out first there.

[giga]

Germans do get a better treatment from adventure games publishers. Vampyre story and Gray Matter only get a collector's edition in Germany.

[Majsan]

Originally Posted by Ascovel

Guys, guys, German adventure gaming sites have been shouting about the late October release and giving all sorts of new details about it the entire September! English voice-overs will be included for example.

Does this mean english subtitles too?

[Majsan]

Hmm, why does my quote not end up in a nice little box like everybody elses? What am I doing wrong?

[tsa]

Originally Posted by dekaneas297

Every time I read this "you are overreacting" argument, I tend to conclude that adventure gamer's community gets what it deserves. Exploitation, mocking, bad attitude, amateurism.

Originally Posted by tsa

What do you mean by that?

Originally Posted by dekaneas297

That no matter how bad attitude a developer/publisher/pr department towards customers has, there is an amount of gamers that don't mind. They act as if companies do us a favor and we have to bear their incompetence.

Consumer activism at it's lowest degree.

That's fanboyism. Apple fanboys do it too. Try to say something bad but true about Apple on a nerd site like Slashdot, and you will be flamed. And BTW, fanboys gan be female too.

Originally Posted by UPtimist

Whether it is again delayed or not, I think the comparison to DNF is only not very accurate, it's also a bit dumb.

The DNF thing is entirely my fault. I more than once said somewhere here that GM looks a lot like DNF because it was delayed forever. I don't agree with your remark that because the circumstances for both games were different the DNF thing is a bit dumb. In the end both games still haven't been released. That doesn't make the DNF thing not a bit dumb (of course it is dumb, it's, like, 14-year-old talk) but it's a nice way to vent frustration.

Originally Posted by UPtimist

Say something constructive, seems like 1/3 of the posts is nothing but repeating that all over again, and then there's a delay and "Oh my god! I just thought of a super-cool comparison! This is SO DNF!".

Anyways, seems that something's been screwed up again. Still, it's Schrödinger's cat here: since we can't know if the delay is for a good reason or not and whether it's ever going to be released or not, we can't make any conclusions and can only say that it's either neither or both.

This game has been delayed so long, there isn't anything constructive to say anymore. No wonder this thread has turned into a moaning place.

[tsa]

Originally Posted by Majsan

Hmm, why does my quote not end up in a nice little box like everybody elses? What am I doing wrong?

You forgot to put [/quote] at the end of the quote, I guess.

[UPtimist]

Originally Posted by tsa

The I don't agree with your remark that because the circumstances for both games were different the DNF thing is a bit dumb. In the end both games still haven't been released. That doesn't make the DNF thing not a bit dumb (of course it is dumb, it's, like, 14-year-old talk) but it's a nice way to vent frustration.

Well, I'm ot entirely familiar with all the things that happened with DNF. However, as far as I know, I think that there was a point, in the beginning (of GM), when they were rather similar in that they were changing developers, redoing everything and so on. But as far as I understand, the thing with DNF is that it's (or was) always way off-budget, has illusions(and hype) of grandeur, constantly goes trough engine changes because they want to have the latest and so on, whereas GM went through that huge change when they switched to the current developers (and so on) butright now is pretty much finished and is being delayed (or just announced too early) by an inadequate PR department and actually finishing the product. I understand where you're coming from, but I just kinda snapped yesterday I feel it's an adequate comparison at best, and one tat shouldn't be viewed as a corresponding situation but rather as an optimistic comparison, like "Well, it's bad but it's not yet quite DNF bad"

So yes, there are similarities, but I guess that the differences are also there and I just got tired of it for a while And I do understand the venting I guess I did a little bit of my own there...

This game has been delayed so long, there isn't anything constructive to say anymore. No wonder this thread has turned into a moaning place.

That's very true.

[Monolith]

Originally Posted by dekaneas297

That no matter how bad attitude a developer/publisher/pr department towards customers has, there is an amount of gamers that don't mind. They act as if companies do us a favor and we have to bear their incompetence.

Consumer activism at it's lowest degree.

I couldn't give a crap about GM. I'm just pointing out that the justification to compare this game to DNF which has been in dev hell forever, is just pathetic and sad.

Companies aren't doing us a favor, they are only doing what they should be doing and that is RUNNING A FRIGGIN BUSINESS. All we have to do is wait, instead of wasting thousands if not millions of dollars managing a company.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Originally Posted by Monolith

Companies aren't doing us a favor, they are only doing what they should be doing and that is RUNNING A FRIGGIN BUSINESS. All we have to do is wait, instead of wasting thousands if not millions of dollars managing a company.

That's not all we could do. We, or rather some of us, could also write the companies and tell them what a lousy job they've been doing in terms of public relations and marketing, never keeping us regularly informed on the game's progress. We could also let them know we're not wasting money on their products if they continue to keep us in the dark about it.

Companies run their "friggin" business? Fine. Customers spend their money elsewhere - it's their choice.

[tsa]

I've had enough of GM and this thread now. I'm leaving. I will wait for a review of GM before buying it .

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Originally Posted by tsa

I've had enough of GM and this thread now. I'm leaving. I will wait for a review of GM before buying it .

I'm going one step beyond that and will wait for the game to be marked down really cheap (under $20 USD). On the X360 that shouldn't take long at all as it's not a Halo or a Mass Effect so very few people will want it and it'll have to get marked down quickly.

[Monolith]

Originally Posted by Intrepid Homoludens

Companies run their "friggin" business? Fine. Customers spend their money elsewhere - it's their choice.

Of course. But isn't it in their (the company) best interest to also release their game without being overshadowed by other games? Despite their shitty marketing, it will be our fault to just right it off right now as crap.

It says a lot about a person who doesn't have patience, full aware of said crappy marketing department.

In the end. Call me an Optimist, and not a fan boy. I'm a working citizen, and I still have tons of games to play. I don't have time to worry about one game.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Originally Posted by Monolith

Of course. But isn't it in their (the company) best interest to also release their game without being overshadowed by other games? Despite their shitty marketing, it will be our fault to just right it off right now as crap.

Who's writing it off? I certainly am not. But some of us still do have a right to complain about the awful [lack of] marketing for this title, fans and non-fans alike.

And what other games would Gray Matter be overshadowed by? It's not like it would be competing in the same arena as non-adventure triple AAA titles that can afford much more lavish marketing and advertising.

It says a lot about a person who doesn't have patience, full aware of said crappy marketing department.

True, but it also says a lot about a company with a lousy marketing team and neglect for its loyal followers - that is, Jane Jensen's loyal followers who themselves are potential free advertisers recommending the game to their friends online and offline.

In the end. Call me an Optimist, and not a fan boy. I'm a working citizen, and I still have tons of games to play. I don't have time to worry about one game.

No one is questioning whatever allegiance you have, or at least I'm not. The fact is that if the publisher wants to make money they must market this title accordingly, not jerk us around for the past 2 or more years about it and go through long periods giving sites like AG and Gamespy nothing to report on its progress.

The long editorial I had written 5 years ago about it still seems to ring true today for some adventure game companies...

The Cold Hotspot: A critique of the state of adventure games (part 3) | Adventure Developers

When I asked her about how adventure games are being marketed, Laura MacDonald, Developer Liaison for AdventureGamers.com, had this to say:

"Do you have a few weeks? [Adventure game developers and publishers not only do not] know who is buying their games[, but worse they] do not know why. Which leads to the constant 'fixing' of what may not be broken. Really to me there is little actual 'marketing' done with games....Moving into the niche market of adventure games – well there is no marketing and more importantly in a genre which is story driven – no effort to shape strategy to the game itself. What efforts in this direction have been used....have been successful in increasing sales.

And drawing on her own professional background in Marketing and Public Relations, she said:

"Learn what the market actually is. Is it really [that] 70% or even higher [are] women? Anecdotally it appears so – but [that doesn't constitute] research. Do book fans drive it? Maybe, but again who knows for sure. Why did they buy game X over game Z? Some overly vocal [adventure gamers] (generally the same ones over and over) tout puzzle...but they are just a speck. What if it turns out story is god and many gamers view complex puzzles as [an evil] they have come to expect to have to wade through to get to the story and character immersion they crave? Maybe it's the reverse. Who knows, but it would be nice to find out."

Marketing is the worst problem of the adventure genre, above outdated design and technology.

There are and have been many excellent adventure games worthy of mass attention, yet practically undetectable as microscopic blips on the commercial radar. Why does it have to be like this? You can design the best adventure game ever in the history of mankind, but it's absolutely worthless and a waste of time if nobody knows about it, and you're not gonna make any money off of it so forget about that sequel.

[stepurhan]

Originally Posted by Majsan

Hmm, why does my quote not end up in a nice little box like everybody elses? What am I doing wrong?

Like tsa said, you accidentally removed the end quote. These tags are automatically added when you quote but I'm guessing you deleted them by mistake when removing the bit you weren't responding to.

Now fixed in your original post. For future reference you should always have [/quote] at the end and [quote] at the start for the quote to work. The start will usually have more details if you're quoting directly from a post (e.g. the start of the quote above actually reads [quote=Majsan;560111]. Your name so it appears in the quote, the semicolon as a separator and the number to create a link back to a specific post.)

Emboldening just to highlight the important bits. You don't need emboldening in your posts.

[Majsan]

Originally Posted by stepurhan

Like tsa said, you accidentally removed the end quote. These tags are automatically added when you quote but I'm guessing you deleted them by mistake when removing the bit you weren't responding to.

Thank you for making it clear

[mgeorge]

Well guys, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, and not sure if this is accurate or not, but....

http://www.gameboomers.com/forum/ubb...be2#Post656454

[Ascovel]

Originally Posted by Intrepid Homoludens

True, but it also says a lot about a company with a lousy marketing team and neglect for its loyal followers - that is, Jane Jensen's loyal followers who themselves are potential free advertisers recommending the game to their friends online and offline.

You see how those people have been treating you, you armies of loyal followers and potential free advertisers!? Jump over to me and my excellent adventure games, keep spreading the word about their excellence among your friends - I'll NEVER betray your trust!

Seriosuly.

By the way, there are entire communities of devoted adventure game developers in need of your love, and perfectly ready to return it.