How many copies have been sold??

[diesel7013]

Not to be too judgemental with my whole idea ( I like the idea of a computer wargame magazine - Remember we used to have a mag called Computer Strategy Magazine - I think that's what it was called )

John Tillers engine would be a great engine to use for a quarterly computer wargaming magazine w/ different games in it - hell, he comes out with a new game every couple of weeks with that same engine anyway - ( my cynical side says its the same ol crappy game that you get to keep paying 49.95 for - just w/ different maps to play on! )

So - to seriously address the idea - which seems like a good one - How much would you pay every 3 months to get a good magazine that coveres all the good computer wargames out there, that has strategies and how too's, and has scenarios for different games already out there - but also had a 'light' game included?

Also - Armchair General is new to the scene and so far I've liked all three issues - maybe a good idea is for all of us out there who like wargames to become subscribers and then use them as a conduit for our ideas - cover more computer / board wargames as well as the history topics that they cover. Then it's just a matter of getting them to team with one of the wargaming companies out there to put out a game every other issue ( they print every 2 months - we could then get 3 games a year maybe?? )

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker
You and Mike Scholl (sorry Mike, but hey, you do post some really negative shiite, Moriarty."seem way too wound up over nothing.
Just a thought...[X(]

What? Pointing out that "having two left" doesn't really say anything encouraging or
discouraging about WITP's sales is "negative"? I'd call it a realistic appraisal of a "no
comment" answer. I hope the game sells well for 2by3, so they will have a stake in
supporting it for a long while. Am I frustraited that the map has some highly skewed
distances on it.., or that the Pennsacola Convoy is sailing around empty..., or that any
of several other annoiances that have come up in the AAR's still remain? Yes. This is
the only detailed game on a subject I'm interested in likely to come out in the next 10
years, so I'll be living with it's ommissions and errors for a long time. Am I going to
buy it anyway? You bet.., two copies at least.

[Raverdave]

Why does this question always come up? Why is there a need to know how many have been sold? IIRC the same question was asked about UV and I have no doubt that it has also been asked in the other gaming threads on this forum as well.

WHO CARES !

[jnier]

ORIGINAL: Raverdave

Why does this question always come up? Why is there a need to know how many have been sold? IIRC the same question was asked about UV and I have no doubt that it has also been asked in the other gaming threads on this forum as well.

WHO CARES !

I think people care because they hope this game will turn a profit and they want see Matrix stay in business.

[Erik Rutins]

Hey, sorry guys, we really can't discuss actual sales numbers. However, I will say that the convention was a great success, with sales higher than expected and WitP selling very well. Thanks for all your interest and support, we'll get it in the online store as soon as possible.

Regards,

- Erik

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: Raverdave

Why does this question always come up? Why is there a need to know how many have been sold? IIRC the same question was asked about UV and I have no doubt that it has also been asked in the other gaming threads on this forum as well.

WHO CARES !

Probably a lot of people on this forum. For two reasons. One, they want 2by3 to do well
so that they will continue producing a type of game we like. And two, because they'd
like the game to have the broadest possible base so there are more people to play it
with. If 2by3 has chosen to be "non-commital" about sales they probably have good
reasons which most players will respect. But unless we have an IRS auditor among our
ranks, the desire to know is basically a positive indication of fan support.

[ZOOMIE1980]

ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980

ORIGINAL: Marc Schwanebeck

We have only 2 copies left.

Out of???

This entire industry segment is a mystery to me, from and economic perspective. How much is a "lot"? Does 2X3 actually make any money to make investment in such venture worthwhile? I mean 2X3, from what I understand has only one programmer that makes ????/yr and one on loan from Matrix, itself? It has one game out there, UV, and this one. Who are the other principals that are getting compensated from these games?

I ask because I'd kind of like to know if this is a worthwhile financial venture for me to ever get in to? Do you people make any REAL money at all??

How much does your significant other make and are you any good with children? You sound stressed, so you better keep a REAL job.

Hey, ZOOMIE! If 2by3 and Matrix want to do this, why burden them with your take on reality? Obviously they make enough to be happy and continue to pursue this venture. They might actually "enjoy" what they do and garner pleasure form it. More than most can claim... Lighten up! Quality of life is (at least to me) more important than money which can't be spent when either A) too busy and freaked to enjoy it, or B) dead.

Chill out and "enjoy" a beer, don't just look at the bill and think "if I was less a tippler, this could go to my retirement." You and Mike Scholl (sorry Mike, but hey, you do post some really negative shiite, Moriarty."seem way too wound up over nothing.

Just a thought...[X(]

Well, there's a balance between the two. Investing in something like a software entertainment business would, for me, be most likely a supplementary sort of thing, at least at first. It would be a of "labor of love" to a point, not something to get rich on by any means. But I'm not into charity nor into throwing money down a black hole either. I would have to have an expectation of a reasonable return, something at least as good as investing the same amount in a diversified stock portfolio, real estate, etc. And, unfortunately, my last delve into this business was not a particularly good experience, mostly because the organization I was thinking about becoming a part of was GROSSLY under capitalized, which, unfortunately, seems to be the norm for this industry....

[2Stepper]

Thats probably at least partly true. I'm of the same mindset... LONG LIVE MATRIX...

Yet I see no need to dog out companies for making a concerted effort on their own behalf. I mean it was a convention for petes sake! If they DID take only 50 copies and sold all but 2, so what? I mean it's a start... The game will get advertised and it'll have it's competitions among other companies... Far as I'm concerned, the detail I've seen in this theater game raises the bar a TON! Matrix is by many and should ALWAYS be commended for their efforts with it. Granted, like Mike Scholl points out there's always going to be those that aren't happy with one detail or another. The "detail" hounds are always yipping at a companies heels over games like this... But you know what? If we all stay constructive and offer up our suggestions and help? This game can and will be supported by Matrix for a LONG time! Not to mention it'll only get better!

I for one am thankful to have a company like Matrix around doing work like this... They didn't rush to release and from what I can see have a real gem on their hands... Well done lads! [8D]

[ZOOMIE1980]

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980

I ask because I'd kind of like to know if this is a worthwhile financial venture for me to ever get in to? Do you people make any REAL money at all??

ZOOMIE,

If money was the driving force behind wargame design, there wouldn't be any wargames. [X(] I think the most popular PC title sold in the last 10 years was Century of Warfare (I was a scenario designer on a few of the titles), it outsold any previous wargame by several times what is normally expected. It was available in stores and in most countries around the globe and it sold about 100,000 copies at best when all was said and done.

WitP is only available online and there wont be the thousands of impulse buys generated at the tens of thousands of game stores around the world simply because someone sees it and says "hey this looks cool", there won't be dozens of feature articles in any gaming mags either that would steer readers to this site, so at best they'll probably sell 5,000 - 10,000 copies if word of mouth generates a decent interest in the title.

Given the number of people involved in the development and the number of years of work put into the title, I think we all owe Matrix and 2X3 a debt of gratitude [&o] for bringing this game to our PC's. Personally I intend to buy two copies and I've been working on my brother to try and get him interested. Unfortunately he doesn't like games that make him think so much, he'd rather get lost in mindless fun when he games. I'm not giving up on him yet however. [;)]

So in answer to your question, you'll not make much money if you start designing wargames. In fact you'll be lucky to break even. How many wargame companies last more than 5 or 10 years in business? None that I can think of, hopefully Matrix can break that trend.

Jim

Well, there you go! A REAL answer. Thanks. 10,000 at $70 a copy makes for $700,000 to go around for three years for the number of folks involved. Not bad for two or three guys, kind of sucks if it is more like ten or more.....

I never did feel one could make serious money doing this stuff, but I did think one could at least make something. I'm not looking to get rich off of doing something like this, just an idea that I could do something very personally fulfilling without ending up in the poor house after throwing money down a black hole. Sounds more and more like this idea is for a "post-retirement" sort of thing. Kind of an income supplement. Still could be a worthwhile, fufilling venture, though.

[ZOOMIE1980]

ORIGINAL: PlacidDragon

I think you are wrong with the bombastic "they are *clearly* in it for the money" comment. Naturally they are in it for the money in the sense that they have to eat, pay their bills, etc. However, if they were *really* in it for the money, i dont think we would have seen them making these types of games, with such a limited customer base. The worst Diablo 2 clone ever will probably sell more copies than WiTP will, and require a fraction of the work. One thing that should be glaringly obvious is that this genre of games is hardly a "big seller" in the crowds.

No, i'd say that they are into it because they like making these kinds of games, and (hopefully) it can also sustain them financially..

Thats my take on it anyway [:)]

Well there's the key. How to put out quality turn based wargames without so much labor intensity. If you are going to write softwar that is only going to sell 5000 copies at $50-70 a pop, you can't really afford to take three years and use a dozen people! But without knowing much detail about how things are done in this part of the business it is hard to understand what, if anything, someone could do to make the work more efficient. Most of what I think I "know" is really only what I suspect or have an educated guess on. Kinda seems to me the whole genre is kind of stuck in a developmental rut. Probably a good reason for that, but until I learn more, I would have no idea how a new infusion of capital and ideas would best move it forward....

[ZOOMIE1980]

ORIGINAL: Raverdave

Why does this question always come up? Why is there a need to know how many have been sold? IIRC the same question was asked about UV and I have no doubt that it has also been asked in the other gaming threads on this forum as well.

WHO CARES !

Well, I do. I am evaluating whether or getting financially involved in this business in my empty-nester days, is going to be worthwhile. Is the work/self-actualization/money balance a good fit for me? Unless I have a better understanding of just how much the revenue stream is divided over how many people are, how do they go about developing these games, can I answer personal questions I have of whether or not there is enough money in it to keep from draining my retirement away and is there anything I can bring to table in terms of software engineering that could make developing these games more efficient?

Not only that, we all have an emotional stake in seeing Matrix and 2X3 make it so they are around for a while.....

And from this thread, there seem to a LOT of people with real interest in this topic....

[Mr.Frag]

Well there's the key. How to put out quality turn based wargames without so much labor intensity. If you are going to write softwar that is only going to sell 5000 copies at $50-70 a pop, you can't really afford to take three years and use a dozen people! But without knowing much detail about how things are done in this part of the business it is hard to understand what, if anything, someone could do to make the work more efficient. Most of what I think I "know" is really only what I suspect or have an educated guess on. Kinda seems to me the whole genre is kind of stuck in a developmental rut. Probably a good reason for that, but until I learn more, I would have no idea how a new infusion of capital and ideas would best move it forward....

That is exactly why simulators have vanished from all the larger production companies. They are simply too expensive to make and there is no potential to recover your investment. The only exception seems to be Microsoft Flight Simulator, but it covers such a special place that they do actually sell a million odd copies so it keeps itself going year after year.

Throwing money at it does not fix the problem, the problem is specifically related to the amount of research that needs to be invested to turn out a valid product. This is why the other market areas continue to do well. Fantasy stuff does not have to be technically accurate. No one throws a hissy fit because your pink kangaroo transport group is missing a group of photon archers in it's pouch[:D]

[Subchaser]

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

No one throws a hissy fit because your pink kangaroo transport group is missing a group of photon archers in it's pouch[:D]

Sounds like you really know the subject you’re talking about! [X(]

[:)]

[RevRick]

No one throws a hissy fit because your pink kangaroo transport group is missing a group of photon archers in it's pouch

Now I haven't heard anyone use the term "hissy fit" outside of my family - so howdy cousin. Now, where can I buy a photon bow and arrow, sounds like a good thing to use against dumb drivers on the interstate.

[ZOOMIE1980]

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

Well there's the key. How to put out quality turn based wargames without so much labor intensity. If you are going to write softwar that is only going to sell 5000 copies at $50-70 a pop, you can't really afford to take three years and use a dozen people! But without knowing much detail about how things are done in this part of the business it is hard to understand what, if anything, someone could do to make the work more efficient. Most of what I think I "know" is really only what I suspect or have an educated guess on. Kinda seems to me the whole genre is kind of stuck in a developmental rut. Probably a good reason for that, but until I learn more, I would have no idea how a new infusion of capital and ideas would best move it forward....

That is exactly why simulators have vanished from all the larger production companies. They are simply too expensive to make and there is no potential to recover your investment. The only exception seems to be Microsoft Flight Simulator, but it covers such a special place that they do actually sell a million odd copies so it keeps itself going year after year.

Throwing money at it does not fix the problem, the problem is specifically related to the amount of research that needs to be invested to turn out a valid product. This is why the other market areas continue to do well. Fantasy stuff does not have to be technically accurate. No one throws a hissy fit because your pink kangaroo transport group is missing a group of photon archers in it's pouch[:D]

Yea, good point. But how many people have done the research on OOB's from WWII? I mean, this is very well known stuff and there are compilations of OOB's all over the Internet these days. You are always going to get a nitpicker or two no matter how much attention to detail you get.

But it is not my impression that it is the OOB material that has taken this game so long to finally arrive. From the little detail the developers have leaked out, it appears they do an awful lot of "rolling their own".... There are no industry standards, not much reusablity, and a somewhat rigid design that seems to force the use of a lot of "hard coding" that makes mods and add-ons a very difficult venture. The idea that the trivial addition of an editable text field to the UI was "adding an unstable element" at such a late stage, was simply mind-boggling to me. When I found out, for instance, that they developed their own graphics primatives for standard, ordinary, vanilla GUI widgets like Dialog boxes, I was flaberghasted. Talk about reinventing the wheel! I mean, come on, there are literally DOZENS of GUI toolkits out there that could EASILY handle anything WitP could ever hope to need from a user interface perspective? I'm sure they have their reasons, or at least THINK they have their reasons, but you catch my drift.....?

Things like these raise a big red-flag to folks like me and make me wonder, if I could do something to make the life-cycle of development a LOT shorter by infusing what I've learned from 25 years of business software development and project management....and whether I could make at a least a minimal amount of money at the same time....

[Sonny]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Hey, sorry guys, we really can't discuss actual sales numbers. However, I will say that the convention was a great success, with sales higher than expected and WitP selling very well. Thanks for all your interest and support, we'll get it in the online store as soon as possible.

Regards,

- Erik

If you want those "sales higher than expected" to continue then get it in gear and get EIA and WAW out there for us folks who really liked the demos at Origins.

(Looked around and didn't see any loose copies of any betas that i could steal.[:(]).

[:D][:D]

BTW - nice meeting you and Patty.

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980

Not bad for two or three guys, kind of sucks if it is more like ten or more.....

Well I believe the name "2x3" stands for ‘WWII games by three guys’ (I could be wrong on this), and as for Matrix, I direct you to this page: (link deleted due to failure to reopen page, go to the about us section and lookup "who is who") who knows how many ways the pie gets cut, but no one is getting rich by a long shot. [:(]

As I said you're lucky to break even in this industry. The problem is and always has been the niche marketplace for these kinds of games. No matter how much money you pour into advertising and marketing schemes, in the end there are only so many people who enjoy these types of historical games. Once you've reached them there isn't much potential for market growth. My brother is probably symbolic of the majority of the PC games marketplace; they view these games as work, not play.

Jim

[ZOOMIE1980]

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980

Not bad for two or three guys, kind of sucks if it is more like ten or more.....

Well I believe the name "2x3" stands for ‘WWII games by three guys’ (I could be wrong on this), and as for Matrix, I direct you to this page: (link deleted due to failure to reopen page, go to the about us section and lookup "who is who") who knows how many ways the pie gets cut, but no one is getting rich by a long shot. [:(]

As I said you're lucky to break even in this industry. The problem is and always has been the niche marketplace for these kinds of games. No matter how much money you pour into advertising and marketing schemes, in the end there are only so many people who enjoy these types of historical games. Once you've reached them there isn't much potential for market growth. My brother is probably symbolic of the majority of the PC games marketplace; they view these games as work, not play.

Jim

Valid point, Jim, concerning the market for these games. The only place one can then legitimately affect the bottom line is the labor issue. Only through the introduction and incorporation of new design, coding and management techniques can the amount of time and effort to produce a top quality title be reduced, thereby making it more attractive to more developers entering the industry. And that may be part of the problem.

The money is so tight in this genre, that it simply does not attract enough new talent with new ideas. Or, on the other side, it pays so poorly that only entry-level types tend to do it, and as family needs grow, they move on to higher paying business jobs. And then you are left with the only senior people in the business being the truely religious die-hards that do this out of nothing but love for the genre. And those folks tend to get stuck in a developmental rut quite often. Ala Gary Grigsby. Trying totally new developmental techniques is obviously too much of a risk in such a marginalized business, I suppose.

And my impression may be all wet, but I have this picture of this genre basically being run by the senior die-hards who came up in the early days of computer gaming who have stayed around out of love, not money, managing a small number of most young, entry-level programmers (kids with les than 5-7 years of experience, mostly in the 20's and early 30's) and designers who learn to do things a certain way. When I can finally extract an answer from a real developer concerning a "why do you do it that way", that answer tends to be along the lines of "we've always done it that way...". And that is always a sign of a stagnation of ideas from a development perspective.

[usecase]

I've been in the software industry for a while as well, most of it in mainstream application development, some in the High Performance Computing arena. I see more similarities between game development and the latter.

Code reuse, oo and agile development techniques often have to take second place to performance - which is why you see arrays and static data structures rather than dynamic containers and deep inheritance hierarchies.

Having said that, it is often possible to get decent performance and incorporate at least _some_ modern techniques for reducing development time.

Now, when can I order this game....

[bradfordkay]

Why does this question always come up? Why is there a need to know how many have been sold? IIRC the same question was asked about UV and I have no doubt that it has also been asked in the other gaming threads on this forum as well.

WHO CARES !

Raver, IIRC, the questions about UV were up because the development of WitP and UV Med were hinging on UV sales. If UV hadn't done well enough, we wouldn't be discussing WitP sales. Now, as far as WitP sales are concerned - as long as Matrix can pay the bills I let them keep mum...