OT = How Does Shrapnel Stay In Business

[Atrocities]

Something similar happened to me too with StarCraft. I could not play SC for nearly 6 weeks until Blizzard sent me a new game. I had to send them my old copy though before they would send me a replacement. (The disk was chipped, and the store would not take it back.)

Yes, Shrapnel has done a great job keeping the customers happy, even the rude "one" a few months ago.

I must admit, SE IV has proven to be quite the addiction. I do sincerely hope that an expansion pack (free or not) comes out soon. Or for that matter, info on SEV.

Aaron has his foot in the gaming world’s door now, and getting support ($) to develop other games should not be a problem for him. (Should not be)

The only other site that I have ever stayed this long at, was a trek site devoted to BOTF, that kinda sorta got off topic and became a all in one trek site. It fell apart in June of Last year shortly after Armada was released. The guy that owned the forum could not keep up with the cost of running it, and had to shut it down. That is why I asked about Shrapnel. I would hate to see that happen here, and would hope that I am not alone in that feeling. (Good to know that I am not )

Again, thanks Richard for the feed back and Aaron for such an addictive game.



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"We've made too many compromises already, too many retreats! They invade our space and we fall back -- they assimilate entire worlds and we fall back! Not again! The line must be drawn here -- this far, no further! And I will make them pay for what they've done!" -- Captain Picard STNG
New Age Ship Yards

[Saxon]

A few months back there was a article in PC Gamer called “Where does your gaming buck go” or something like that. It broke down all the costs of a game and why we pay what we pay. One of Shrapnel’s secrets is that they don’t pay a lot of those costs. For example, I paid about the same for SE4 and Armies of Armageddon that I would pay for two games in a game shop. However, Shrapnel didn’t spend big bucks on advertisements or stands at that big gaming convention. 3D accelerated graphics are not something one associates with Shrapnel, which is another production cost cutting. Also, they don’t pay distribution costs, those get covered by the shipping fee we paid getting the games.

All this means that they can survive doing the good work they do on much lower volumes of sales than Blizzard does. Given that they share the same philosophy of games that I do and that they have playable games, I think it is a good model of business and one I am happy to support.

PS I get the British and American Versions of PC games and I don’t remember which one the article was in. Sorry.

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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Something similar happened to me too with StarCraft. I could not play SC for nearly 6 weeks until Blizzard sent me a new game...

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I couldn't play Starcraft when I opened the box, either.
My problem was that I didn't have the right OS on my PC, and the laptop didn't have a CD drive

quote:

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Originally posted by Saxon:
A few months back there was a article in PC Gamer called “Where does your gaming buck go” or something like that. It broke down all the costs of a game and why we pay what we pay. One of Shrapnel’s secrets is that they don’t pay a lot of those costs.

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They can not possibly be paying those costs and feed Aaron. Back in 92 the breakdown went like this :
1) Retailer marks up from distributer by 50-100%.
2) Distributer marks up from marketer by 50-100%.
3) Marketer pays developer a "very generous" 5-10% of what they get. The rest goes for manufacturing, advertising, and paying the staff overhead.

So a $40 game at the store gets the distributer maybe AT MOST $26.50, the marketer maybe AT MOST $17.50, and the developer AT MOST $1.75 BUT ONLY FOR THE UNITS ACTUALLY SOLD. A game was considered to do extremely well if half the units manufactured were sold, with the distributer and marketer eating the returns from retailers. How that split broke out varied, typically the retailer would get half what they paid back and the distributer would get half what they paid back. The developer got a "generous" say $2000 when the first manufacturing run occurred (5000 units). Then if the game sold well he would get a check for the latest run's sales just before the next run. But if a run was a bust the game would be closed out and all his effort would go down the drain. Back in 92 I was told that for my effort my game would be considered a HUGE success if it sold 20,000 units and the retail price would be up to me, but not to expect more than maybe $5000 in the first year. I said **** THAT, and quit working on it right then and there.

One thing to remember is that the number of computers has increased by a factor of 100 in the Last ten years alone. So instead of $5000 I bet Aaron is getting $50,000. But that still SUCKS because at a real job he could get $50-75 an hour if he is a decent programmer, which he probably is even though his engine seems to be optimized for memory rather than execution time.....

[Richard]

Well I can't get specific but needless to say we pay a LOT better than your 92 figures . Actually we pay our developers monthly based on previous months sales.

This really is the wave of the future and if we can get just a little more success this will start to wake other developers up to the fact that there is a LEGITIMATE alternative to retail. And if you have a decent game it is can be a lucrative alternative to retail.

Just depends on the game...

So if you know any developers .

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Sarge is coming...

Richard Arnesen
Director of Covert Ops
Shrapnel Games
http://www.shrapnelgames.com

quote:

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Originally posted by Richard:
So if you know any developers .

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I have not written any code since 93, but in a year or so I might develop a new 5th generation strategy game concept which takes advantage of the capabilities of 1Ghz 256 megabyte memory machines. By the time the engines are written that size machine should be in most households. It would use text files like SE IV for all the data so that players could mod it. Back in 92 there was just not the processor speed OR memory to support run time text parsing, but the better machines have changed the landscape as much as going from teletypes and punch cards in the 70s to video monitors changed things back then.

It will be 3d galactic and lower level maps with 32bit coordinates, zoom in to see particular stellar sectors, star systems, planets, and cities, which will have astronomically and geographically correct features. Research trees can be very deep and very broad, generated from seed categories and cost curves by a configuration engine. Abilities, Resources, Rates, Facilities and Components to match will be generated by the same engine using cost, size, and ability curves. So a player could modify the seeds to be shallow and narrow, or as wide and deep as he can stand on his particular machine. Instead of going to a particular level (galactic, sector, system, planet, city) and specifying what task he wants done, the player's job will be managing his AI managers to develop broad strategy rules of his own or to vary the defaults where they are tactically incorrect for the local situation. In other words, he gets to play general/emperor instead of footsoldier the way you must in SE IV and the other current generation games. Economics would be modeled as aggregates at each zoom level based on various factors, with the possibility of localized booms and crashes....

I estimate somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 lines of code, same as before but at a higher level of direction. IE what is written will be code to write code, not what actually executes. The generated code would be the engines to parse the text files produced by the configuration engine.......

Edit : I will not even START work on a project like that until I can be sure of 250,000 SALES by the time it is written. Once burned TWICE shy....

[This message has been edited by LCC (edited 01 August 2001).]

[geoschmo]

Uh, as long as it has a good beat and I can dance to it I'll be happy.

Geo