Dominions 3: popularity rising?

[Twan]

Attiring MMORPG/CCCG fans would have heavy consequences for the poor illwinter team.

It means there would be constant debates about how "perma death" in dominions is bad, why no expansion is planned (free content doesn't count for guys ready to invest money each month to continue to play a game or be competitive in it), why graphics are the same with their top notch one month old computer and ten years old ones, frequent flame wars will oppose the partisans of different evolutions of the game, etc... Nothing is worse than the MMORPG public for game developpers tranquility.

(ps : it's a caricature, but...)

[Kristoffer O]

The ethnicity was fun
As was zoidberg

Regarding the MMORPG public behaviour I'm not too concerned. We've got 10 years of experience of not listening to stuff that feels irrelevant

It would likely be more of the kind, since the public here is both thoughtful, openminded and friendly (but there have been times that I have wondered a bit ).

I'm also quite used to irrational behaviour since I work as a teacher I like to educate (or make people better than they are), so if they come her and rants, we might turn them into civilized members of a community.

To sum up: I think I would suffer less then you as a community would

[Kristoffer O]

Hmm, I must bee in a good mood. Lots of smilies there

[PashaDawg]

Spring cometh.

[Tenebrion]

Intelligent games attract intelligent gamers. The kind of people that most gamers worry about, from the MMORPG community, are the people that likely wouldn't be interested in Dominions, much less discussing the finer points of the game. Among the 600,000 or so monthly uniques that visit mmorpg.com, even if you assume that half of those visitors are immature, that'd mean there's a potential of 300,000 gamers that could be interested in Dominions.

People that are concerned about 'perma death', graphics, expansions instead of patches, etc wouldn't likely give Dominions a second glance. It's the mature gamers that want a different and deep experience, and would find an interest in Dominions, so the community on the Shrapnel forums would remain much the same. Just look at the communities from games like EVE and Poxnora ; the games are complex, and as a result, the communities are top notch, despite the player base being made up of MMORPG gamers.

[DonCorazon]

What surprises me is, given the apparent size of the fan base here, how few reviews there are on popular sites like Metacritic and Amazon. Maybe its just me but I use those sites all the time. I posted reviews for Dom 3 on both places, even though I purchased Dom 3 through Shrapnel. I suppose putting it on some Amazon lists that come up when more widely known games are searched would help increase exposure even more.

I guess it is a mixed blessing as I appreciate the smaller community size and interaction with developers here, but on the other hand, my hope is strong commercial success motivates continual development of the franchise. As they say, content is king and I think Dom 3 is a hidden gem.

Also, I have yet to do this but I think there is strong crossover between those who love fantasy boardgames and Dom 3 and consequently posting on Boardgamegeek would also bring in many more fans.

[Kristoffer O]

Boardgamegeek?

Sounds interesting. Unfortunately I rarely take time for boardgames nowdays.

[Tenebrion]

DonCorazon said:
As they say, content is king and I think Dom 3 is a hidden gem.

I absolutely agree. As a lifelong fan of strategy and fantasy games of all flavors, it still amazes me that I didn't find out about Dominions until a few months ago. I can't help but wonder just how many hundreds of thousands of gamers there are out there who are just like I was - completely unaware of this highly addictive, deep strategy game, just waiting for someone to tell them about it.

[S.R. Krol]

DonCorazon said:
What surprises me is, given the apparent size of the fan base here, how few reviews there are on popular sites like Metacritic and Amazon.

Metacritic is unfortunately rather useless to the indie world. The fact that there are eight reviews from official sites/publications is actually pretty good compared to most non-mainstream reviews, but still sorely lacking. They also drop titles from their list pretty quickly. I recall the frustration I had when Weird Worlds came out, and though it was getting great reviews left and right Metacritic refused to put them up even after I pointed every single one out to them. That's when I learned they only use "approved" review sites. Or so they say. You'll notice that for a really popular, big budget title like Halo 38 they'll have reviews from everyone on the planet.

As far as Amazon goes I think that's simply a matter of most folks not realizing that you can find it on Amazon.

The 'Geek is a good avenue. Jason Lutes, who has been active in the map making community before, is on their fairly regular so there are some Dom players already there. I know we've looked into advertising with them, not sure what type of decisions have been made with that.