Fair enough, I’ll keep enjoying it and stay tuned for news of final release and a way to buy it!
A box would be so old school. I’ve got fond memories of going to the store and perusing what was available back in the days of 5 1/4 floppies.
Not going quite that old school! But a box with a manual, a tech wall poster and maybe another goodie or two, plus a USB with the game should be cool
Can I get this directly into my veins?
So Ray now has his box quote.
I’m not sure what this means :|
Just joking with CF since he appears to really want this box, and his description made me think of review quotes from movies only used on a game box instead.
ROTP: “so good you’ll want it delivered directly in your vein”
Btw, from a diplomacy stand point can you generally rely on a race to abide by their description? So if you share a border and they’re pacifists if you sign a non-aggression they won’t just use the peace to build an army and come at you any way, or will they? I’ve played more than a few 4x’s where the AI races are schizoid like that and you have to plan accordingly.
That is correct. The thing to watch out for are wars of opportunity, wherein an AI empire sees you as weak (maybe because you are not building ships) and may declare war on you.
Pacifist leaders are the only ones who will never do this. In ROTP, those words describing the leaders have meaning that you can rely on.
For example, Ruthless leaders don’t care if you break treaties or even drop bioweapons. Hey, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.
Honorables will never forget an oathbreak, and pacifists will never forget a genocide, whereas aggressives view genocide as just an inevitable consequence of being in their way. Coming in 2.15 this week, Xenophobes will become completely intolerant of spies, even if they are hiding.
For maximum exposure, you can put the game on Steam for free. You can then advertise the boxed set there.
Every day that passes without a Steam launch decreases the chance of it ever happening.
I honestly don’t believe that Steam will increase exposure in the long run since it will ultimately get lumped in as another indie space 4X game and lose any potential distinctiveness it might have otherwise had.
A game that you have to change your habit to acquire and play, however slight that change may be, is a game that you will give a better chance to win you over, if only because you had to do something different to get it.
And since MOO1 is an incredibly addictive game, I think most people who give it a chance will enjoy it and won’t care that it’s not in their Steam library.
Also, the boxed set is not going to be available forever. We’re going to take orders, make it, sell it and then move on with whatever else is next in my life. It will absolutely be a single print run so advertising on Steam would not be a thing.
If that were true, thousands of games that aren’t on Steam would be incredibly successful just from not being on Steam. This sounds just like the open source purists who didn’t want to be on github because “what’s wrong with sourceforge?”. You go to where the people are. The reality is that with Steam you have a much better chance of finding an audience, growing a large following, and funding whatever future ventures you want to pursue. A good example is OpenTTD now moving to Steam, not to mention Dwarf Fortress, which will now find an audience orders of magnitude larger than what it ever had.
Does Steam guarantee success? Of course not. It’s true that there’s a lot of competition. But just the ease of use; the ability of thousands of users to come across a recommendation, go to your page, read a review, and then click a button and play your game, makes it much more likely that your game (and potential game-making career) will endure.
Intererestingly, the digital distribution service that seems to have done the most to ensure games will endure is GoG, not Steam.
Honestly, I do appreciate your advice and opinion but Steam doesn’t really provide any value to me. I’m not concerned about future income (I’m retired) and the game is already a free and easy download for anyone who wants to play it. And it’s being received very well by those who play it, which in the end is all I really care about.
I totally get that there are gamers who would not consider playing a game if it’s not on Steam, but they’re not the target audience for ROTP.
Look at it this way. If ROTP is a highly rated game (a big if!), is free, is in the local language of the gamer and they STILL insist that it be on Steam before they play it, then remind me again who is being the purist?
I think the main thing is that since you’re retired, you’re not thinking of the financial incentives. Nevertheless, you should want the game to receive maximal exposure just because it’s good (and I think it’s great). Personally, I try to buy my games on GOG as well. However, if I were to publish a game, would I emphasize GOG? Absolutely not. Their market-share is unfortunately tiny.
It’s not about that – it’s about exposure and minimizing friction. This is how things work when scaling up. This is how you build a huge audience. Again, I get that you don’t want that for financial reasons, but your game deserves it.
Additionally, there are many open source projects that would love to be on Steam to increase their exposure. OpenXCOM, OpenApoc, and Jagged Alliance 2: Stracciatella among them. But it’s difficult/impossible for them, because they rely on copyrighted data files. You have the advantage of owning all your data, which means you have the ability to be on Steam and therefore benefit from maximum exposure.
According to Steamspy, there were over 10,000 games released on Steam in 2020. Steam does not provide exposure. Marketing budgets are what provide exposure.
Look, I know how Steam works. You need to market your game OUTSIDE of Steam, and then players go find your game on Steam and play it. Simply releasing your game on Steam without spending real money to advertise it basically turns your chances into a lottery ticket.
The only way I would consider using Steam is maybe some shared arrangement with Wargaming.net since they are the MOO IP holder and would bring 100x more eyes to the game than anything I could ever do. At that point, it would be worth it.
I would only suggest avoiding Shrapnel. There is a good reason why Illwinter left them as soon as possible.
What’s the story with Shrapnel?
The story I heard is that they didn’t provide a lot of support to Illwinter, took a big cut, and required that the game charge a huge premium. (For a huge manual and DVD, the game was 60.00. Very Much worth it, but these days Illwinter sells digitally for 39.99, which fits my budget better, especially as the game manual usually is out of date fairly quickly).
That could have changed though.
Illwinter eventual landed at Steam for Dominions 4 and 5, but they had their game at another store, that I believe is now defunct.
But Shrapnel story was from a decade ago, and I probably got details wrong. I just know they were quick to leave and not return.
And that sort of story isn’t isolated to Illwinter. Approaching Infinity has a very similar history, as do one or two other Shrapnel escapees I remember reading about over the years.
I’d just like to say how happy I was to run across a place to put a few notes in-game.
Little things like this warm the cockles of my heart.
There was also forum drama! The Shrapnel forums were a big deal for Dominions, since it was a hub for game advice, mods, the mod community, and MP game communications. One day one of the biggest modders got in a small argument with one of the Shrapnel employees, and the modder was banned. Then everyone who spoke out against the ban was banned. And so on. In the course of a few weeks the Shrapnel moderators drove away a large chunk of the player base and mod community. It was impressive work! I can only hope to so dramatically and publicly flame out one day.
Drama is always the best until it involves you.