Here's what happened to The Banner Saga 2

Here’s what happened to The Banner Saga 2 The Banner Saga, Stoic’s Kickstarter success story, made a big splash when it launched in 2014. The stylish Viking journey game combined roleplaying with turn-based combat. As part of a planned trilogy, the tale of Rook’s caravan proved emotionally compelling and gamers eagerly awaited the continuation. But did you know there’s already a sequel? The Banner Saga 2 launched in April of 2016, but sales have been notoriously low compared to the first game. John Watson, co-founder of Stoic, [partially blames](http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-01-09-we-set-out-to-make-this-trilogy-we-cant-leave-the-story-unfinished) their decision to not run a Kickstarter or engage the community for the sequel. Because sales from the first game were good enough to fill the coffers at the studio, Stoic decided to forego the crowd-funding and finance development themselves. Unfortunately, this disconnected them from the core fan supporters. “I think we dropped the ball there,” Watson admits. “We thought that audience would still just be there. We really neglected our community during the development of Banner Saga 2, because we were focusing on our work. I think that was a mistake. We all agree that was a mistake.” Stoic insists the tale will continue in The Banner Saga 3, and Watson says the lessons learned from the first two games will benefit its development. Whether or not the third game will be crowd-funded is something the studio is still considering.

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2017/01/10/heres-happened-banner-saga-2/

They provided copies of the whole proposed trilogy to anyone that backed the first project for at least 50, so I bet that made some impact.

Not really sure I “buy” this. People seriously didn’t buy the game because it wasn’t on kickstarter? People who are savvy enough to be aware of a game turning up on KS surely keep up with the latest releases and would have been aware it was on Steam. So maybe people who backed it in the first place just didn’t like the original and couldn’t be bothered to buy the sequel.

It’s a shame anyway, as it’s brilliant. I hope they have enough cash left over to give the series the finale it deserves.

So… nothing happened to Banner Saga 2? The third game is still in the works? I will admit I didn’t know the sales were considered poor. That’s a bummer, BS2 was more of the excellent BS1 with some new mechanics for mid-game play (and I assume the third game will be level 11-15 gameplay with some new toys and powerful skills and enemies). I’m quite looking forward to it!

John Watson has said a few times that sales for BS2 haven’t stacked up to the first game. We don’t have solid figures for it, but SteamSpy does show about 750k for the first game and 110k for the sequel. Obviously that doesn’t take into account bundle/extreme sales or Kickstarter owners.

Is this QT3’s first curiosity-gap headline?

I’d like to see Sorcery 4’s drop in comparison. I feel like these games are victims of overall market circumstances.

When I finally got around to playing Banner Saga 1 , it was engrossing enough and good fun, however game mechanics were a bit off, and I felt like I just used renown to buy food to avoid deaths, when they didn’t seem to matter much in the end.

I did, but only because it was a GwG on Xbox a little while back. Still haven’t tried it out yet.

I liked Banner Saga enough, but I didn’t really need more Banner Saga, so count me in as someone who bought the first but wasn’t really interested in the 2nd.

KS can be a powerful marketing tool. 30 days of exposure you otherwise would not get. Potential to have articles written about you where otherwise nothing would take place. People reviewing your pitch. Etc. It can be more than just raising cash.

I feel like this game had no marketing at all, I’m always on the lookout for new rpgs and this one flew completely under my radar. Saw that it was released by chance a few weeks after the fact.

I hadn’t considered that Mok, fair point.

Just in the last few weeks there’s also been “As if you didn’t have enough reason to stay away from Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius” and “Overwatch relationship fans are going to love the latest bit of character lore”.

I’m trying to figure out how to work in “Activision hates it when gamers do this!” or “What happened next will shock you!” into a headline.

The top games of 2016, #8 will leave you speechless!

Skyrim looked great when it came out, but how it looks now will make your jaw drop.

And on topic, wasn’t this game free to everyone that backed the Kickstarter? So wouldn’t it be expected that there would be far fewer sales? Or is this only non-SK sales we are talking?

The best way to communicate a click bait headline is to do so in a way that uses more words less efficiently.

You won’t believe what happens when you install this driver into your computer!

When you earn this achievement on the Xbox you won’t believe the reward you will receive.

What Sister Miriam is doing today will shock you!

15 surprising reasons that Duke Nukem cannot work in the games business any more.

Everyone that backed over $50. Which I assume was a substantial minority, but still a minority of backers.

Yeah, I just looked and roughly 6k of the 20k backers had a pledge at 50+. Even the total number of backers is small compared to overall sales numbers posted above. Many of those probably came from stuff like humble bundle or steam sales.