A simple thank you

[Truper]

Tim: If you're going to be putting up the infrastructure for a MMP, I wonder if it would be too much to ask that Shrapnel run a dedicated Dom2 server. The community currently has access to the server run by St. Esben, but the demand for server time is greater than the supply. I've no clue whether you could justify the expense, but I thought I'd ask anyway

[Gandalf Parker]

Truper said:
Tim: If you're going to be putting up the infrastructure for a MMP, I wonder if it would be too much to ask that Shrapnel run a dedicated Dom2 server. The community currently has access to the server run by St. Esben, but the demand for server time is greater than the supply. I've no clue whether you could justify the expense, but I thought I'd ask anyway

Shrapnel has a number of games which could use a good PbEM game site. Dominions 2 and Space Empires IV are probably the 2 biggest crowds (both excellent games and for many of the same reasons if you want to check them out).

Thats why Ive been pushing for some of us to come together and create a generic web structure that can easily support adding different games.
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...5&o=93&fpart=1
Ive searched and searched, and Im very surprised that there doesnt seem to be one. The closest I could come up with as a ready-made package was one of the BBS packages which would amount to basically being a web-forum allowing uploads.

I would like to see one written as SysAdmin-upward (making best use of having the whole machine to itself), rather than WebMaster-downward (which is best for a package you might add to a machine as a user). I have a dedicated server I can use for it.

[Murph]

This has been an interesting thread for me (other than the flame war, which is actually the first really serious-seeming one that I've seen on a Shrapnel forum - usually people here are remarkably polite and reasonable - probably why I keep coming back).

I'm particularly interested because I've experienced all three of the distribution methods being discussed here, and I'm curious as to why some some methods seem to be prefered by people.

I've bought most games in retail stores, in fact, I bought GalCiv that way - which I did not like a fraction as much as I liked SE IV, truth be known. And I didn't see much different about GalCiv than your general retail game. Needed to be patched, and generally paid a lot of money for something i ended up not being crazy about - par for the course.

I bought Dom2 through Shrapnel's website, after I got the demo in PC Gamer. Played the demo until I loved it so much I had to buy the game, then bought the game Online - my first Online purchase - and now comes the kicker - waited 2 weeks to get the game, because I live in a small town in Canada and they apparently carried my copy to me ON FOOT!

But that wait did give me a chance to play the demo through, oh, 40 times or so. So basically I experienced all the drawbacks of the on-line system; I was reluctant to order something on-line, had to wait a long time for my product and even had to use customer service for my out-of-US credit card.

And guess what, they were great! Shrapnel was very responsive and helped me out - which is big for me, as I'm a customer service manager - and I was fully happy when I finally got my order.

And I ordered SE IV not too long after- no fear or worries this time, and it only took a week. No problem after the Last time. All the problems i had didn't turn me off one bit from ordering Online - why? Because the product was great - the service was great and the support was great.

Now, I've also gotten software Online via DD, and haven't been much impressed - albeit that it was mostly apps. Long download times (even now that i'm on ADSL) for the complex stuff, and exactly the same reluctance to provide credit card info Online. So how is direct download better? If you want this game - or any other Shrapnel Game - you'll buy it, hells with how you have to do it.

I thought the real problem with Shrapnel was not their distribution - which keeps their costs down and lets them pay devs more, but their marketing. Lets face it, for a lot of people, they go and browse the game store and see if anything looks cool, and that's how they find out about stuff, or they hear about it on game review sites or in magazines. I'm a serious strategy game player and I'd never heard of Shrapnel until I saw the demo in PCG (I think it was PCG anyways, quite a while ago).

I don't think Shrapnel needs to put games on shelves in stores, or allow you to download their games directly, although both I'm sure open up their own portion of market share - they need to make more great games and get the word out there through marketing that they exist - Field of Dreams was wrong - you have to build it AND tell them about it, before they come... How you get them to it will work itself out, because people will come to quality.

We all did.

Well, that's my rant. And let me do what this thread was intended to do in the first place - say "Thanks Illwinter, thanks Shrapnel - thanks to all the forum junkies. I spend more time than is healthy here, and I don't feel bad about it at all."

[quantum_mechani]

Murph said:
"Thanks Illwinter, thanks Shrapnel - thanks to all the forum junkies.

Wow, back on topic after 6 pages- I can't belive it!

[Cainehill]

It's almost all on topic. Some of it is merely ... palatable.

And say,QM! When is the next Twilight due, since you say your email of working?

[Tim Brooks]

Tim: If you're going to be putting up the infrastructure for a MMP, I wonder if it would be too much to ask that Shrapnel run a dedicated Dom2 server.

We are looking at this. It is something we have wanted to do for a while now and have it on our list. But doing it right takes time.

[Tim Brooks]

Murph:

I thought the real problem with Shrapnel was not their distribution - which keeps their costs down and lets them pay devs more, but their marketing.

We actually do alot of marketing - the PC Gamer Demo was how you heard about us right? The problem is we are dealing in niche markets, and there is no good way to reach the niches. You either have to pay alot of money through magazine ads to reach a small percentage of potential customers, or rely on reviews to do this for you. PCG or CGW wants close to $20,000 for a full page ad, and we reach mainly people that aren't even interested in our type of products. It just doesn't make sense to do this.

The hardest thing we do is try to find avenues to reach our niche customer base that is cost effective. The best ways we have found to do this is through paid search engine listings. Truth be told, the fans themselves (word of mouth) equates to more sales than anything we do marketing wise.

[PDF]

This thread became interesting again... Thanks Shrapnel !

I'm an advocate of downloadable products, but that may be because
1/ I'm not in the US so have difficulty finding some of *my niche* games
2/ I've a good DSL bw and I'm savvy enough with tech things to manage that without too much problems
3/ I don't fear buying Online (much less than carrying banknotes in my wallet in fact )
4/ I'm not convinced that piracy would make a sensible hit to games like Shrapnel's ones - the guys pirating that woul anyway never have bought the game whatsoever, at 99%...

But I agree that the tech infrastructure isn't quite ready, and requires too much investment for a company like Shrapnel when compared to possible profit.
Some people (Stardock-type) will have offer other companies secure and efficient d/l platforms to make this profitable to small publishers- and big ones will surely be scared to death by piracy issue for some years more !

BTW Tim if you want a full page in PC4War, the French mag which has proudly edited more than 20 pages on Dom2 in 3 issues , sure it's less than 20K $ !!

[Alneyan]

I must concur with PDF about the usefulness of downloadable products, though Shrapnel games can actually be bought outside the US without having to put a mortgage on your house (the format of the games do help to cut down on shipping rates, and some countries have their own stores to avoid annoying things such as duty taxes and the like).

On the other hand, I recall one independent adventure game sold for 30 euros (pretty cheap), and where the shipping cost was also of 30 euros, plus various banking fees and the usual duty taxes. Am I the only one who finds this to be a tad bit expensive? Oops, it looks like I am starting a rant about my main pet peevee.

[Chazar]

About the book as a copy protection and why I bought Dom2:

I am severely annoyed by the incompleteness of the Dom2-Manual and I am craving for a merge with Liga's excellent manual addenda (BTW: Thanks to Liga!)- but there wont be any, since on the one hand the manual is not available electronically and on the other hand selling a cheap revised manual would disable its copy-protecting function. This is very sad. Any solution here?

Maybe Shrapnel could sell cheap revised paper manuals to owners sending in their CD-Key as legitimisation, but the bureaucratic overhead would make that probably more expensive than the game itself. Printed manuals are also bad since they tend not to keep up with the patches as well.

Conclusion: I like printed manuals and I think I have bought games just because of printed manuals before, but this would have not been the case with Dom2 if I had learned about the game from a friend who would have had the manual: I hardly use the Dom2 manual, but I definitely rely on Zen's freely available MagicItem/SummonMonster documents above anything else, since they give an digestible overview over all the possibilites - especially to know these facts in advance before researching/empowering and exploring manually! Without those, I couldnt play! BTW: Thanks to Zen!!!


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So to give a complete feedback about a humble customers perception of why I bought Dom2, here is my view. I bought Dom2 because:

• Its a pretty good game. (BTW: Thanks to Illwinter!!!)
• I think it is a must to support smaller enterprises. My father once had a small scale craftsman's enterprise before retirement. Hence I still avoid big super-stores in favour of small shops on almost any kind of good. I also buy Audio CDs from non-mainstream bands much faster.
• Word of mouth. Someone recommended it in the Warlords4 forum. Aftewards I spread the game among all my friends vigorously. I also saw a good review in a major german IT-magazine, but that was already too late - I had already purchased the game.
• The demo. Paying for something I cannot test has given me bad surprises (eg. Warlords4 - as mentioned by someone else above I thought "4 is good (or at least as good as 3)". It wasnt, but that in turn made we aware of Dom2!). So either a demo or a 'friend's copy' are a must for me to buy a game now. However, I also gave away my CDKey to a few trusted friends in order to get them hooked on the game and/or to set up a server which I cannot. Some of them bought Dom2 now, some dont play at all. Somehow people always prefer the 'real thing', although I do not understand it myself since the liberal Dom2-Demo allows quite extensive testing (but does not solve the problem of letting a non-player setting up a server ).
• CD-Key-check introduced with the patch helped me to convince some friends to buy their own copy in the end. Sad but true. The downside here is that only few fellows thus delayed others buying it - either all buy it together or no one at all. Still the CD-Key-check is a perfectly acceptable thing for me, as it doesnt prohibit me to play at home on my desktop and while travelling on my latop. This is important! And I dont even need to remember to carry the CD with me. Well-done in my opinion!

The way of distribution is not a factor for me:
Either I want to buy it or I dont. Once I've made this decision, I take a look at that aspect of distribution. Usually I like to go to the game shop next door to order a specific game. I dont play that many games, so I do not browse for games in shops. For Dom2, I needed to order it from a german web-seller recommended here in this forum a while ago. This was unconvenient because of the german law which requires complex age-verification, but it wouldnt have changed my mind. A download is nice, but I dont like it for the fear of conncetion-breakdown. In the end, the german web-seller was even cheaper than buying directly from Shrapnel (taking post&packing, PayPal US/EUR conVersion and Shrapnels irregular appearing 10% discount offers into account).