So no Dominions 4?

[Kraftwerk]

Then we get to the Starbucks fallacy. You're actually eroding your own argument here, and you don't even realize it. You see, Starbucks is Bioshock, and Oblivion. Dominions, is the little coffee shop up the block from your house, with the amazing pastries. You see, in the world of coffee, people are starting to turn away from the mass produced "lowest common denominator" garbage. Coffee (read: espresso) drinkers (I am one of them) are snobs, and Starbucks isn't cool enough anymore. Dominions players tend to be a bit snobby as well (though we hide it here, since we're all the cream at the top ), and it's only a matter of time before you grow up and you realize that all the mass marketed media that you're gorging on, really isn't very substantial. Somewhere around the time you realize you should come back here and apologize for stinking up the boards, your buddies will just buy the damned game for $60.

That is, if you're not working overtime every week as a dishwasher to support your 19 year old wife and three kids.

Now see, I promised myself I wouldn't get nasty, and look what you made come out of my fingers..... < sigh >

But at the local coffee shop, coffee is 15 cents a cup. At starbucks its 6 friggin dollars. So I dont get that. And shove the high and mighty mass media this and that, ma and pop mumbo jumbo, everything is mass media, this forum, the shirts you wear, the car you drive, the billboards you pass by, youre just as bombarded by it, and involved in its proliferation as anyone you want to point fingers at.

Fact is, the coffee in the cup is the same coffee. The bits and bytes are the same in every piece of software. You dont want to be subjected to scrutiny against mass produced products? Dont compete in a free market. Lifes tough, the markets are harsh, and the lowest common denominator at the end of the day, is where the bargain is, and in a world increasingly wary of spending its dollar, the lower common denominator is whats going to sell.

You dont pay out the wazoo for a print of a painting, theyre all about the same regardless of the artistic content.

For someone who apparently likes Kraftwerk, youd think youd know abit more about (or like) Andy Warhols POP! movement that kraftwerk was a result of. You can mass produce art and sell it for a reasonable price.

You dont have to be snobby smug intellectual to appreaciate it either. You can be a plain plum dumb consumer, and have just as much right to purchase a product at a reasonable price as anyone else, regardless of your level of appreciation.

Art is a product.

[Leif_-]

Kraftwerk said:
The MoM community is alive and kicking,

Would Sir please make up Sir's mind? First the MoM community dried up because people weren't buying the game any more, and now it's alive and kicking because people aren't buying the game any more. You simply can't have it both ways. Real life isn't like Dominions: there's actually a limit to the good stuff.

Concern with art and customer satisfaction as a first and formost helps those products sell.

Dominions 3 is selling and selling well. The Dominions 3 community is alive and thriving. Those are the fact of the matter; they won't go away just because they're inconvenient to your argument.

The difference is availability, this isnt in stores, visibility, its an old game, it isnt being reviewed anymore,

E pur si muove. And yet it sells. Funny, that.

The price, the marketing, the availability, its all the stone age with you guys.

And yet it sells.

[Leif_-]

Kraftwerk said:
Fact is, the coffee in the cup is the same coffee.

That's like saying that the games produces by EA Games and Sid Meier are the same games. It's quite simply not the case.

For someone who apparently likes Kraftwerk, youd think youd know abit more about (or like) Andy Warhols POP! movement that kraftwerk was a result of. You can mass produce art and sell it for a reasonable price.

An Andy Warhol print is going to cost you a lot more than a copy of Dominions 3, even though there's gone more time and work into making Dominions 3. So what was your point again?

Art is a product.

But it's a product where there's no obvious relationship between the cost of manufacture and the value of the finished product.

[Leif_-]

Kraftwerk said:
Why are people paying an extra 15-25 dollars more for your game, than any other game in the same category, independant 4x games.

Why indeed. Careful, Kraftwerk. You're precariously close to starting down on the road to wisdom.

[Dragar]

Kraftwerk,

Agreed that Dom 3 will never be a mass market game without lower pricing, advertising, publicity, better production values etc. The thing is, with a game like this, it would unlikely be a big hit anyway, the learning curve is too great, it's too slow and not visual enough for a typical consumer.

Illwinter and shrapnel could put in a lot of time and money and get a cheaper, better produced game out to a lot of people, but would the increase in revenue cover the costs and the extra time? Remember that the Illwinter guys develop in their spare time. To hit the mainstream Dom 3 would need a major rework in terms of production, graphics and SP playability, and then a heap of promotional activity.

From their (and shrapnel's) point of view, a cheap to produce game is still pulling in decent revenues at moderate sales with high mark-up two years after release... what's not to like? It’s a nice cash cow building a loyal base while they develop their next product. If in the future they want to take it more seriously they can build Dom 4 and launch it, with a ready made community to test, troubleshoot, create map/scenario content and help drive it.

I'm also guessing that Illwinter get a larger piece of the pie than if they went through a major developer.

From Shrapnel's point of view its even sweeter - as their biggest selling product it must be giving them a lot of their new customers and developers, with follow through to other game sales.

Bigger isn't always more profitable, high margins on moderate sales with low cost is a perfectly acceptable business model.

[JimMorrison]

No, it's not 15 cents a cup. It's espresso, people don't go to those shops to save money, they go there because it's NOT the same coffee, and it's NOT the same assembly line atmosphere.

Am I bombarded by the same mass media that you are? I doubt it. I'll make one simple point - you have a TV. This is just a guess, but if it's true, it means you watch it, and while that doesn't make you some sort of mind-slave, it makes you much more immersed in the mass media than I am.

And what has this to do with pop culture? I love pop culture. I love shouting out things like "But what about the RUM?", and "Down the garbage chute flyboy!" at appropriate times. Do I like watercolor paintings of Campbell's soup cans? Not so much, but I do like wacky experimental electronica.

You DO pay out the wazoo for the "print" of a painting. Those things you get dirt cheap are called "posters", and they are certainly not "print" quality. The "poster" version of Dominions might be called a "demo", you should give it to your friends.

Pop culture is the fruit, mass media is the farmer. I'll let you figure that one out yourself, since you take offense to me belittling your intelligence.


In case you hadn't noticed, the prevailing, substantiated, and overwhelming opinion around here is that the current price for Dominions 3 IS in fact a reasonable price. This is not some sort of logical debate, where if you just pull another rabbit out of your arse, you will bend the laws of physics. This is reality, it's not going to change for you that easily.

[Amhazair]

JimMorrison said:

You should get the Morimoto Soba if you can, it is -amazing-. Also a big fan of the Brutal Bitter, and their Rogue-N-Berry used to be hands down the best berry beer you could get in America, til they cut it because it wasn't as good as Belgian berry beers. o.O


I like this discussion much more than the other.

You gotta love Belgian beers - berry or otherwise. I'm not exactly unhappy about the location my parents decided to move to shortly after I was born.

I wouldn't mind having a taste of your supposedly awesome Oregon produce either, mind you.

[Twan]

Considering the time spent on it without feeling "I have nothing left to do in this game", and the interest endlessly renewed by frequent expansion patches and new players to play with, I can only compare Dominions to a MMO, and fact is 55$ for first copy + nothing each month is an extremely small price, when I payed 10 times more for three years on some games.

[Sombre]

That's a very good point Twan. If I was into a MMO game as much as I am into dominions I'd have paid quite a bit in monthly or yearly subscriptions and received pobably about the same level of support from the devs (in the form of fixes and content adds and whatnot).

[theenemy]

Yes, Dom3 is an expensive indie game. A very expensive indie game(don't let us fool ourselves here). But with all the patches(of which many have been the size of an entire expansion) that the developers so kindly have given to us, it's kinda like getting your money back. I just can't believe that I'm living in the same country(I think ) as the developers of this game. Astrid Lindgren? Yeah, right! Alfred Nobel? I don't think so. Illwinter Games are my new heroes!