Concerns about lack of Tutorial and Price of Game - Page 4

Tim Brooks · #31 November 1st, 2003, 02:26 AM

Hi All:

Dryton raises some issues that I believe should be addressed by Shrapnel here. Hope you don't mind me barging in on your discussion.

As most of you know, we don't supply our games through the normal retailer network, as this is a sure way to make sure our developers make absolutely nothing on their games. Therefore, we don't sell tens of thousands of copies of our games. This alone, the economy of printing, makes our games a higher price point than most of what you find in the market place.

We have titles that have been in the market for 4 years that now, on reprints, cost as much as 25% more than they did when Shrapnel Games started. This due to the fact that printers and cd duplicators raise their pricing on an annual basis. We have never raised our pricing. In fact, we are considering moving our pricing higher in the coming month. Not because we want to, but because we need to.

The manual for Dominions II is our largest to date, weighing in at 146 pages. It is however, not in color as someone else posted. Wish we could have done it in color, but for a manual this size, the price of printing in color would have been over $30.00 per unit. Still, the manual is huge and includes a reference of all magic items and spells.

As the Shrapnel faithful also knows, we support our products relentlessly through patches, demo downloads, these forums and a customer service department second to none in this industry. All of these things cost alot of money. We run two dedicated servers - soon to be three - just to handle the traffic.

While I'm thinking of it, someone mentioned in another post that maybe we would sell more copies if we lowered the price. We have experimented with this through sales and special offers and have found this not to be the case for Shrapnel. Our special pricing events do nothing (less than 5%) to increase sales. People buy our games not on price, but because they like the type of game we are known for. Even long term price changes, we have had a few, do nothing to increase our sales.

Which brings me to Dryton's comment about this not being an "A-list" game. Dryton, this is an "A-list" GAME , as all of our titles are. What it is not, is an "A-list" piece of fluff. We don't publish fluff -- gameplay is what games should be about, and Dominions II has more game and replay value than any major publishers product that I know of.

Now alot of the Dominions crowd is new to Shrapnel Games and probably doesn't understand our philosophy as is stated in the above paragraph. We are all about making quality games, and very little about making the next generation graphics engine that has no gaming value. We couldn't sell these types of games the way we do. We would have to put them into retail just to get the "oh wow, look at the graphics" impulse buy. Does that mean we don't want our games to look nice? Not at all. And I thnk all of our games do look nice. They just aren't all state of the art. If that offends you, I'm sure you have an e-retailer just down the street that has shelves full of graphics marvels.

Okay, on to the tutorial. We are considering doing something with the demos. With each new developer, we get a new crowd. When I sat down with the game I spent about an hour playing it and realized the depth and the intangibles of this title. This game is something special and if presales are any indication, alot of others think so too. This game can be almost anything you want in a gaming experience and we thought limiting it with alot of pre-setup would not be a good thing. We may have been wrong. We know this partially because a group of people are unhappy with the AI. I say to them, you haven't set it up for a hard game, if you think the AI is that easy. So, we will keep you informed of what we decide to do with the demos.

I have gotten off on a rant, which was not my intention. Sorry. I hope this helped explain Shrapnel's position some.

Happy Gaming!

Mortifer · #32 November 1st, 2003, 02:45 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Tim Brooks:
gameplay is what games should be about, and Dominions II has more game and replay value than any major publishers product that I know of.

How true Tim. I agree with this totally.

Also 50 bucks is a very good price for the most complex strategy game ever.

Fyron · #33 November 1st, 2003, 03:19 AM

You could print a special edition of the manual in color and sell it separately, for the big fans. I'd suggest selling it with a copy of the game, but most of the biggest fans probably pre-ordered a long time ago, so they'd have to pay for the game again.

Could always do both though. I don't know what your minimum orders have to be for numbers of manuals, so it might not be worth it if only a few dozen (or less) people want to buy a color manual...

Tim Brooks · #34 November 2nd, 2003, 12:53 PM

Quote:

THIS is SO TRUE !! So many big companies have their developers wasting time on the most elite graphic designs... thus game content and additional features suffer.

There is a reason for this. All things being equal, the newest technology is going to sell over gameplay at retail. The major publishers can't afford not to go cutting edge, and they can't afford to do both- a game that costs several million dollars to produce won't make money. So graphics wins out over gameplay, because it sells better in traditional retail.

Just look at any development team from a major publisher, there are 4 to 6 times as many artists as there are programmers and designers.

The unfortunate consequence of this is that truly great games are overlooked, because they are not cutting edge in the graphics department - the money didin't go into a team of artists but into design and gameplay.

Now every once in a while you get both, but this is usually in a new title, where the developer already had the gameplay and design in place and the publisher didn't have to foot this bill - they concentrated their assets on the graphics. Rarley do you find sequels, that have both graphics and gameplay going for them, because the development effort was now funded with the emphasis on graphics.

Richard · #35 November 3rd, 2003, 02:13 AM

For the costs involved I doubt enough people would be interested for us to make any money on that. A full color manual is ridicously expensive.

Quote:

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
You could print a special edition of the manual in color and sell it separately, for the big fans. I'd suggest selling it with a copy of the game, but most of the biggest fans probably pre-ordered a long time ago, so they'd have to pay for the game again. Could always do both though. I don't know what your minimum orders have to be for numbers of manuals, so it might not be worth it if only a few dozen (or less) people want to buy a color manual...

Watchdog · #36 November 3rd, 2003, 07:27 AM

If the manual costs that much.......then scrap it. Seriously, Give me a nice PDF (I hate adobe but whatever) and save me some cash.

If company's stop paying for them, the price would go down considerably in a few months. But that's neither here nor there.

I always lose my manuals anyway.

[ November 03, 2003, 05:28: Message edited by: Watchdog ]

Richard · #37 November 3rd, 2003, 07:34 AM

No we have to have a printed manual, it is the number 1 way to stop pirates. Normal manuals are fine as far as costs go.

Quote:

Originally posted by Watchdog:
If the manual costs that much.......then scrap it. Seriously, Give me a nice PDF (I hate adobe but whatever) and save me some cash.

If company's stop paying for them, the price would go down considerably in a few months. But that's neither here nor there.

I always lose my manuals anyway.

Black Cat · #38 November 11th, 2003, 01:52 AM

I have bought most of Shrapnels Games but FWIW I really don`t understand the lack of at least a text tutorial for a mini game in the demo that would at least highlight the building-research-battles-magic aspect and how they relate.

It would take what, about an hour to write one up...??

Something like do A then B then C, so you get D.

In a Game that all the vets from D1 ( which I did buy but gave up on due to the poor quality of the interface descriptions ) say is rich & complex, the Demo, with no clues as to how to make things come together is either going to leave people with the idea this is simple & dumb or so confusing and a pain to learn, they won`t buy it.

Gandalf Parker · #39 November 11th, 2003, 02:09 AM

There is a doc file with the demo though its pretty bare bones. There is a thread pinned near the top of this forum, something about "lost people", which has much more

Shael · #40 November 11th, 2003, 11:55 AM

well that 50$ is a heavy price to pay but i pay it gladly

about lag of tutorial well does not bother me....
i learned dom1 via trial & error
it really is not that hard system just look at it for sec and you know the basics...

try and get your *** whoped couple times and you are fine...