Adventure Gamers - Forums

Firefly’s poor performance has absolutely nothing to do with people purposely not watching due to fear of the story not being finished, that’s absurd. It’s an unappealing premise to most people and was marketed poorly (and is not that great a show).

The only reason I wait, like why I haven’t purchased TWW or TWD S2, is because I know there will be sales once it’s all completed. It’s not due to any fear of non-completion.

Edit: The people who actually think or care about this non-completion risk are probably a pretty small group. The 10 people on this forum who are deathly afraid of that are in no way representative of the millions of gamers/television viewers out there.

Venkman - 26 January 2014 01:55 PM

RockNFknRoll - 25 January 2014 04:10 AM

MoP - 25 January 2014 02:34 AM

(07:07:05) flesk: How are things looking for a second episode?
(07:09:50) Paavo_Harkonen: flesk: Unfortunately, the sales of the first episode were not as good as we hoped, so things are looking… somewhat uncertain at the moment. It’s a matter of funding. But I certainly haven’t given up hope yet.

This is such BS. It’s super shady to do business in this way and leave people hanging so hard. Don’t release a “chapter 1” without a plan for a guaranteed chapter 2 and 3.

I disagree (to an extent). It’s not always practical to have the money and time to be able to “guarantee” future chapters even if sales on the first chapter are poor. That’s the way it goes. Many TV shows get canceled long before they complete their stories due to poor ratings. Do you say it’s “BS” for a network to not keep hemorrhaging money just so that you can see the story to the end?

It’s more akin to film. Like if Kill Bill Pt. 1 came out in the theaters and then we never got a Pt. 2 as planned. Or if Star Wars Episode IV and V came out, and Return Of The Jedi never happened. It’s less like a TV show, because that is a different model. TV shows have pilots, and then if they get picked up they get a certain number of episodes batch-ordered. There is never a promise for a season 2. It’s not usually the case that each episode’s existence depends on how much money the last episode took in, unless it’s a disaster. And TV shows are often self-contained modular stories. If an adventure game maker assumed it would work like TV, he’d be a highly stupid businessman.

Plus, our culture is changing even in TV. More and more people wait for Netflix to have the entire season or series before they dive into a show they’re looking forward to. Especially deep engaging shows, they don’t want to commit to a series if they’re not sure if it’s complete. People want on-demand services, they don’t like to wait. It’s a total misreading of the market to assume that just putting out a Chapter One, with the promise of more chapters to come, will give you honest data (or revenue) of how many people are interested. You will have some significant portion of people who will hold off. So you’re left with less sales, less buzz, no chapter two, disappointed fans and a bad reputation. At least if you make and release a full game, you know exactly what your audience is.

When you think of it, the idea of one release getting the necessary cash for the second release has always been the model. But that should apply to wholly separate games. The success of one Sherlock Holmes game gives the company what they need to make a sequel. That’s fine. Separating one story that way doesn’t make any sense. If you don’t have the resources to make a full game, then either make a shorter game that stands on its own and hope for more funding next time, or figure something else out.

Another option is to release smaller or more casual games to get some revenue to fund a bigger full game. Or just wait and slowly accumulate the money you need. Be as patient as you want your audience to be. Way better to lay low and one day over-deliver, then to over-promise and under-deliver.

Yeah, I have to say - success usually meant a Sequel, not a “second part” of the first movie! Heh.  If Star Wars ended at Luke, Han, Chewie and Obi-Wan blasting out of Tatooine and reaching a destroyed Alderaan and we never got a sequel…. hahah.  Interesting discussion.  I don’t care for episodic gaming myself - at all - I think Fester Mudd got stuck in an unfortunate situation, however.  I hope it works out for them.  Something tells me they’ll make their part 2 come hell or high water.

Bt

Frogacuda - 26 January 2014 07:56 AM

Staying with N-Fusion is interesting, though. I know he was the one who suggested them in the the first place. I wonder what they’re up to.

Just for completeness, I asked Josh during the second session, without any specifics, if any of the projects they’re working on would be covered here:

One of them would certainly be covered by AdventureGamers, the other… I’m not sure.

So it’s good to know he’s working on something adventure related. I’d venture a guess the second one is some RPG-lite for mobiles or such. Should’ve asked in which areas exactly is he working in.