Matrix Games Forums

AFAIK Victoria isn't out in the UK anyway. The last I knew it was scheduled for the end of this month.[:)]

I think Ravinhood as missed the point completely. The reason why all wargame companies are finding it hard to shift lots of units is that they don't get shelf space. Even duff RTS games will gat shelf space and hence sales.

Its no co-incidence that both Paradox and Matrix are following GalCiv's publishers and the other mail order companies into a primarily direct sales route.

Johan from Paradox's comment was made in the context of poor sales - the response has been to sidestep the distribution problems that dogged the NA release, just the same as Matrix have just announced. The comments about making the game simpler is just a reflection that grognards alone don't support games companies - either board games or computer games. Just look at the casualty list.

Even the sainted Gary Grigsby appears to have clocked that one [;)] with his new WW2 game

ORIGINAL: DerekP

I think Ravinhood as missed the point completely. The reason why all wargame companies are finding it hard to shift lots of units is that they don't get shelf space. Even duff RTS games will gat shelf space and hence sales.

There's plenty of shelf space still for MOO3 which I saw yesterday in Best Buy (large chain electronics, music etc store if you're not from the US) next to it's useless Strategy guide. I see more copies of Pax Romana than Victoria and my local Software ETC still has Combat Mission 1 on the shelf. In fact, I've seen more copies of Two Thrones than Victoria.

Johan from Paradox's comment was made in the context of poor sales - the response has been to sidestep the distribution problems that dogged the NA release, just the same as Matrix have just announced. The comments about making the game simpler is just a reflection that grognards alone don't support games companies - either board games or computer games. Just look at the casualty list.

Even the sainted Gary Grigsby appears to have clocked that one [;)] with his new WW2 game

Grigsby is also making a grongard's wet dream which he is releasing first, so I really doubt that hardcore strategy is going to disappear. Matrix alone has EIA and two Frank Hunter games in the near future as well as more HTTR and Korsun Pocket type games. Point of Attack from HPS has just been released, and there are probably many more we are not aware of in the pipeline.

Unfortunately Derek, Paradox has a mixed reputation on boards like this and that appears to have unfairly tarnished Victoria as a buggy game.

It wasn't just these forums Dinsdale and you know that as well as I do, the Paradox Victoria forum as well was fuming over the 1.02 patch for Victoria. So let's not make it appear that it was "unfair" broadcasting of the truth. It was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Well with a few exagerations maybe.

Myself, I have to believe when you have a bunch of pots calling the kettle black, it is usually black, one bad review does not a bad game make, but, when you have an average professional review score of 6.3 or less, it's pretty obvious the game has some issues.

I know all games aren't going to get 90% ratings that are pretty good games, after using Gamerankings for quite some time now I've learned that the player ratings of around 79% average usually mean a pretty fair game. Vicky got a 73% by the players average and a 63% by the professional reviewers average. I take those two add them together and get a final average, which puts Vicky below the 70% mark. Usually a game has to come within a 75% average of the two before I will even consider it. Using this method I no longer get burnt by crappy games. I do pay close and careful attention to PCgamer and Computer Gaming World and Gamespots reviews also, even after the averages, their reviews are the most important to me. PCgamer gave Vicky a 62%, CGW gave Vicky 3 stars a 60% and Gamespot a 6.3 out of 10 equates to 63%, so these professional reviewers that I trust are right on with the averages for the game. Have to believe and trust somebody in this industry.

You seem to like it and that's good, I'm glad, but, can you support Paradox all by yourself?

Oh and as far as shelf space and games being on the rack. I live in a small town of 75,000, well it's small to me anyways. I see Vicky, Korsun Pocket, HTTR, Pax Romana, Combat Mission Overlord/BB bundle and most all the new games, that aren't direct sales; in all 3 stores that I shop. Software Etc., EB and Best Buy. They are getting shelf space alright. People aren't buying them because I believe more and more people are starting to realize they are getting ripped off, especially with a no refund policy. I know that's what got me to checking reviews a lot more. I got tired of getting ripped and no refund or exchange for something else. Word of mouth is the best advertising or the worst advertising for a game or company. You can bet word of mouth about Vicky and Pax Romana got around pretty quickly around here.

The reason for the rack size shrinkings isn't just console games, it's the LACK of NEW QUALITY PC GAMES in a quick time period. This taking YEARS to create a game isn't going to keep pc games on the rack. If I was a software outlet I'd have to look for other means to make an income as well. PC games in QUALITY have shrunk in the last five years. Back in the 80's you had hordes of PC games coming out monthly, every month and QUALITY games too, up until about the early 90's. Then I started to see a decrease in quantity and quality. So let's stop putting the blame on "something" else or us gamers. It's the developers who are causing the decrease, not the consumers. We want QUALITY for our $$, not pieces of crap.

ORIGINAL: ravinhood

It wasn't just these forums Dinsdale and you know that as well as I do, the Paradox Victoria forum as well was fuming over the 1.02 patch for Victoria. So let's not make it appear that it was "unfair" broadcasting of the truth. It was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Well with a few exagerations maybe.

1) I said mixed reputation on boards like this that would mean multiple places wouldn't it?
2) The Paradox fora were mixed on 1.02, as many people raved about it as complained about it
3) It isn't "the truth" just because an opinion may coincide with yours, or mine, it's just an opinion.

You seem to like it and that's good, I'm glad, but, can you support Paradox all by yourself?

Absolutely not, but what I find disturbing is the suggestion that complexity=bad. IMHO that's rubbish, complexity can be great when it's done correctly. I don't think Victoria's complexity is the same. It's really a very simple game which looks complicated and has a convoluted interface. That's certainly a recipe for poor reviews and a game which isn't going to have mass appeal.

Absolutely not, but what I find disturbing is the suggestion that complexity=bad. IMHO that's rubbish, complexity can be great when it's done correctly. I don't think Victoria's complexity is the same. It's really a very simple game which looks complicated and has a convoluted interface. That's certainly a recipe for poor reviews and a game which isn't going to have mass appeal. - Dinsdale

It wasn't complexity = bad in Johan's statement. It was PATCH = Broken and I really tend to agree with that statement. When games like Paradox releases need patch after patch after patch...to continue to 1.08 patches with complex games like they make....yes, it's broken.

But, it's not what you or I think or have opinions about, it's what the MASSES have the opinion about. It's not complex to you, but, obviously it is to the buying MASSES cause it didn't sell. It was a flop, it failed miserably, just admit that. It failed miserably. You won't ever see another game like it out of Paradox, Johan said so. Now the games will be simple and easy like HOI and EU II heh. If you want to call those simple. I still think they got a long road to hoe. I think they've got a large head about themselves and their games and once they get a couple of more flops that don't sell, they might finally realize it, but, by then it will be too late. It will of course be too bad for the complex fans of Paradox products, but, we live in a world of survival, and one has to do what one has to do to survive. I just read recently today that Patrik is no longer with the company either. That was a surprise.

The problem with most forums and you know this as well as I, they are biased company loving, game loving fanatics for the most part. To goto a forum for information about the game is about the worst thing anyone can do for an "accurate" quality review about the game. I've been on enough of them to see this, time and time again. And you better not be against the game or the company, or you will be flamed and or banished from the forum.

I'm a wargamer from way back, but, I have never enjoyed the more "complex" wargames such as ASL or Terrible Swift Sword just to name a couple, just as in computer games, when a game starts taking HOURS to complete or even days and weekends and weekends of playtime just to finish one game, I lose interest, my friends lose interest. We're in a society of "fast service", "fast food", "fast entertainment". Let's face it, it's here, it's not going to go anywhere real soon either. When you have an RTS and FPS market that is cleaning up in business, you have to become a realist and see which direction to take or faction to join. The others are going to be left in the dust.

Explain why Civilization is so popular? My explanation is, it's simple, it's relatively fast and it doesn't have complex popup window after window after window to setup an economy.

The Total War engine is popular all of a sudden. Won Two Strategy Game of the Year awards, how many games of Paradox's have won Strategy Game of the Year awards? Goto Gamerankings.com and use the detailed game rankings calculator and look where Paradox games are.....HOI came in 196th out of 200. Vicky of course didn't even make the charts. People use these boards, I know I do. EUII and EU was up there in the rankings though, around 40th+

I also look at the reviews of games on Amazon.com, poor pitiful Vicky got a spanking on Amazon.com. Those people that are buying direct and of course using Amazon.com are seeing these reviews before they make a purchase. Some developers might think one dissatified customer won't make any difference. It's possible this is untrue when you have the likes of Gamerankings.com and Amazon.com slighting your product.

Watching Ebay tells me a lot about newly released games as well. Within a month Vicky was selling for $15 on ebay, got 6 bids total. While EYSA was selling for $26 still and people bidding out the ying yang on it. Dang it and I was trying to get it for $20 hehe

I don't recall if it was you or someone else that didn't care for EYSA. But, you see, the MASSES seem to like it. So once again you are outnumbered on both sides of your fence. You're more of a niche market gamer. Your market is small and not much out there for you. LES the Sarge is the same way, his market of computer gaming is even smaller (heh no offense Les) but, that's his choice and your choice. Same with me, I have choices as well, and it doesn't include Paradox games atm.

I'm confused by your responses Ravinhood? What point are you trying to make?

The point I was trying to make is that the whole computer wargame business is finding it hard. No one can make enough money through a traditional direct sales route. Particularly when many people only wait for bargain bin / second hand games (sorry ravinhood but thats the truth).

By not buying games which try to develop the genre we collectively condemn the genre to obscurity. Lots of people on these boards are moaning about the length of time it tales to develop this game or that game (see EiA, WiP, WiF forums). The reason for this is that there is no cash behind these games to accelerate the process. When these games come out I bet there will be a phalancx of "grognards" which point out that the game "is completely unplayable" because there is some minor change to the picking of chits for battle or in the game turn sequence. People read these comments and think the game is busted.

We are our own worst enemy sometimes when we collectively try to show how damned clever we are.

My atttitude to strategy games is that I'll buy most of them as most of them will give me pleasure. The only two examples that I can think of that I didn't enjoy were "The Civil War" published by Empire and "Wargamer 1813" - I think they were both developed by the same guy but they were unplayable without a lot of work. At least Paradox (and other companies) have shown that can support the games after release (SPWaW comes to mind too).

But reminiscing of the good old days and relying on The Underdogs and E-bay for your gaming pleasure is a sure way to guarantee that you will not get any new commercial wargames in 5 years time.

I thought my point was simple. 20+ years ago they could churn out good quality wargames within a few months if not less. With good quality AI's. Today, they take years to churn out a pile of crap. I think that's pretty simple to see.

If they fail and fall, so beit, if the genre dies, too bad, it's not the consumers fault it died, it's the developers/publishers fault.

Personally I don't see the genre dying, I just see a few less wannabe's or trytobe's end up in the garbage can where they belong.

Matrix appears to be above the watermark, one of their games did get Wargame of the Year (Korsun Pocket). If all that remains is ONE GOOD company, One Good Developer that delievers, that will certainly be fine with me, at least I know when they do finally release a product it will be worth buying.

Battlefront is surely not hurting at all with gaming sales. Even without my $$, because I will not buy direct from a gaming company or download direct source. Although I was able to get the Battlefront Bundle from a Retail outlet. I deal with retail or ebay mainly because I get some input and satisfaction if I'm not satasifed when I use retail and ebay. I can direct a retail outlet of what games I am interested in, even pre-order them, be one of the first to receive the game. Online sales is so robotic and customer non-friendly if you should run into transaction problems or a return issue.

Creative Assembly is high above the watermark as well. Albeit they are becoming slow with releases. Rome:TW has been in the works for five years+ now. That's an awful long time to me, but, as the consumer I have no choice here but to wait on what appears to be a ground breaking production, that very well may change the way we see many games in the future.

Shrapnel games appear to be some quality games, but, because they resort to direct sales, they aren't getting any of my $$. Those that sell Shrapnel games on ebay are though. So I'm not missing out on anything, if anything Shrapnel is missing out on my $$ for not making their products available to retail.

HPS another gaming company that appears to make some outstanding wargames. Once again though another company that gets none of my $$ because of direct sales. Am I missing out? No because they are appearing on ebay.

It's not that there aren't good wargaming creations out there, it's the way they are presented to the consumer. Relying heavily on the internet traffic for your main and only source of sales, I do not feel is the best way to success. It's like putting all your eggs in one basket, if that basket drops, all your eggs are going to break.

I'm merely one consumer within thousands/millions even, but, ask yourself this question, am I the only one that thinks this way? I highly doubt it, since I'm pretty certain that not everyone uses the internet for buying of goods. If it were so Walmart's would be empty, Targets would be empty, EBgames would be empty, Best Buy would be empty. The internet is growing no doubt and business on the internet will continue to grow no doubt with the new age of consumers knocking on the doors. But, you still have millions of the baby boomers era still out here in the consumer masses and our $$ are just as good as those new age consumers.

The main thing I want you to look at here is this. If I didn't have an internet connection I wouldn't know about any of these companies that resort to direct sales. I never knew about them until I had an internet connection. The only games I was ever aware of before the internet, were the games sitting there in the retail outlet on their little racks, screaming for me to buy them and play them...and I did. And they were good, up until five years ago. Then they started getting bad, they became a box of "buy me now, we'll patch it laters". And you will NEVER convice me that that is the way it should be. That all games should be buggy and flawed upon release. I will never buy that in a 100 years.

You use E-bay but you won't buy direct on-line??????? Where's the sense in that?

When you buy on E-bay you add nothing to the industry - you act as a parasite (sorry for the terminology buts its acccurate). You get your fix cheap and add nothing to the development cycle. So you shouldn't really complain when the new releases dry up

Maybe you should read all of the post and learn to comprehend DerekP. When you do that you will understand why I use ebay. If you cannot comprehend why, then that is your problem not mine.

ORIGINAL: ravinhood

Maybe you should read all of the post and learn to comprehend DerekP. When you do that you will understand why I use ebay. If you cannot comprehend why, then that is your problem not mine.

I know that every time you as a "wargamer of way back" buys a wargame off e-bay its less money in the pot to develop the next one.

If you're happy with "fast food" then fine - I like a more balanced diet [;)]

BTW it's Johan - not IAN!

That wasn't my reason for buying games off of ebay DerekP, if you had read my post thouroughly you would have seen it was because if I got a faulty piece of software or a game, I get a full REFUND, shipping included.

That's my point about direct sales more than anything. When you have a problem with the game you purchase, you are going to spend more time trying to get one that works and shipping the faulty product back to them and it costs YOU more money. It also costs them more money when there is a faulty program because they have to reship a new one, so then we have a nice circle of extra dollars going to the shipping companies because of direct sales and faulty programs/cd's.

As I said, if they want to setup a program where they pay all the expenses, sure, I have no problem with that, other than having to WAIT that much longer for a product that works.

When you have a retail outlet you have immediate return and new goods, there's no waiting or extra cost to me. Ebay provides for FULL REFUND when you search for those quality ebayers that provide it, and many also will pay the full shipping charges back to them...Mainly because of that ebay report card.

Now do you understand?

It's not that there aren't good wargaming creations out there, it's the way they are presented to the consumer. Relying heavily on the internet traffic for your main and only source of sales, I do not feel is the best way to success. It's like putting all your eggs in one basket, if that basket drops, all your eggs are going to break.

Tend to disagree. That retail basket of yours kind of already dropped (for niche genres that is). If you are realistic you wil lsee that they don't have another choice. Why do you think Battlefront, Shrapnelgames, HPS, Matrix Games etc all did go to the Internet away from retail. The current publisher retail system is flawed, they would not survive.
Some figures I stumbled upon the last couple of days:

Stardock's Galactic civilazitions sold 100k copies:
10k direct: 40x10k= 400.000 dollar = 40 dollar for each copy going to stardock
90k retail good for: 300.000 dollar = 3.3 dollar for each sold copy going to stardock

I believe it changes from 5 dollar for each copy plummeting to 1-2 dollars if they sold Gal civ through retail overseas

Same sounds comming from Paradox (you can order CK directly from the mnow). It's cheaper, faster then retail and Paradox get more Euri's.
Believe 5 to 15 times as much as through retails ( and after bassicaly two months it's pennywork for each copy sold through retail)

So if you want to support the niche genres buy online, and as direct as possible.

Are you serious? The distributers get that much from the game???? I find that a little hard to believe. Considering the profit markup on the games I stocked was a mere $3 to $5 itself when I was in the software business. So you tell me who's getting the biggest bite out of that $40???

That's almost like saying the distributers are paying $3 to $4 to the developers for each game. And charging us retail vendors $35 for the game, for a game that sells for $40??? No way.

Something is very wrong with those statistics, or someone is playing with the books somewhere down the line.

400,000 for 10k games is a lot better figure than 30k or 40k if the distributers are ripping them off like that, providing those figures are true. They ripped us off as well then.

Let's see if I can get dig up one of those threads...be back later

Ok, the threads:

Brad Wardell (Stardock) Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2004 5:46 am

Yea, it's definitely broken even. But I can say that it only broke even because of direct sales. The publishing model is kind of broken.

When someone buys GalCiv at a store in the United States, we see about $6. The Distributor gets more money than we do. And the publisher sees more than we do too.

Overseas, it's much worse, we see only like $1 to $2 depending on the deal.

But on direct sales, we see all of it.

So you figure 10,000 direct sales = $400,000. 50,000 or so US retail ~ $300,000. + another $50k to $100k in foreign sales. Add a few thousand Drengin.net sales at $70 apiece and things come out well.

But yea, the problem is the retail model. The game cost about $600k to make which is nothing compared to most AAA games. If we hadn't done the direct sales, we'd be looking at only around $400k in total revenue -- a loss of $200k on a game that got really good reviews and sold 100k copies. That seems insane to me. Not our publisher's fault, they were, generally, fairly up front with things (though all the amounts ended up being the worst case scenario, I guess we should have expected that).

Needless to say, our future titles will be done differently.

And more at:
http://www.quartertothree.com/phpBB2/vi ... php?t=8966


Johan at the Paradox forums:

Fredrik will answer more technical questions.. but yes, we get a significant greater profit from each game sold through the shop. I don't have the exact numbers and comparisons but its somewhere between 5 times and 15 times as much money for each sold game.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/sho ... ge=2&pp=25

Can't find the posts about Paradox getting $0.01 for games that are going into the bargain mode and what they get for each game.
But if you look at the current CK price: 32 Euro, divide that by 5 = 6.4 Euro for each sold copy through retail and 32:15= 2.1 dollar for if you sell oversee. More or less the same numbers Brad from Stardock mentions.

ORIGINAL: ravinhood

That wasn't my reason for buying games off of ebay DerekP, if you had read my post thouroughly you would have seen it was because if I got a faulty piece of software or a game, I get a full REFUND, shipping included.

That's my point about direct sales more than anything. When you have a problem with the game you purchase, you are going to spend more time trying to get one that works and shipping the faulty product back to them and it costs YOU more money. It also costs them more money when there is a faulty program because they have to reship a new one, so then we have a nice circle of extra dollars going to the shipping companies because of direct sales and faulty programs/cd's.

As I said, if they want to setup a program where they pay all the expenses, sure, I have no problem with that, other than having to WAIT that much longer for a product that works.

When you have a retail outlet you have immediate return and new goods, there's no waiting or extra cost to me. Ebay provides for FULL REFUND when you search for those quality ebayers that provide it, and many also will pay the full shipping charges back to them...Mainly because of that ebay report card.

Now do you understand?

Absolutely not.

How many games do you return because they are faulty? I've returned one game in 20 years!

Besides you keep on missing my point. You can argue til the cows come home about how much profit a developer makes from direct or internet sales but they make absolutely nothing from people who buy on e-bay.

If you want more quality games - support the developers with your chequebook.

The comments about making the game simpler is just a reflection that grognards alone don't support games companies - either board games or computer games. Just look at the casualty list.

That's it exactly...

AI is no worse today than it was in the 80's or 90's. I've yet to play a game where I couldn't trounce the AI within a few games unless the AI engaged in massive cheating. A feature that was very common with games in the late 80's and early 90's.

After playing computer games up to now, a couple decades worth, I've noticed that it's me that's better. I've learned how game AI's work and I can usually beat most of them using similar tactics to other games of the same type of genre.

Graphics production really doesn't take anything away from AI development time. Graphics programmers are not AI programmers and they each work on their own section of the program simultaneously.

In the end though, it all comes down to what we purchase. The 80's and 90's were filled with terrible games, just like now. The difference was, it was still a new frontier and optimism (I bet this game will be great!) has been changed to cynacism (this looks just like that other crappy game I bought). So our purchases per year have gone down.

How many games do you return because they are faulty? I've returned one game in 20 years!

That's you, I have returned several in 20 years. So that is no excuse or even reasoning to support direct sales. You'll have to do better than that.

Ebay is like a garage sale. Are you now saying garage sales shouldn't be allowed? LOL People sell things they no longer want or feel is valuable to them. Other people buy them. There is a big business in garage sales, flea markets and now ebay. It has nothing to do with support or non-support of any business. The business has already made it's money from this product from the origional owner. Lol you sound like a business deserves a feedback of dollars everytime one of it's products are sold in a garage sale.

What I'm saying is, if I have to buy direct, I might as well buy it on ebay for that added security and satisfaction I get by using ebay over direct sales. I might as well shop garage sales for the item, because I am NOT going to support direct sales. First of all after seeing the profits they make off of direct sales, they are not passing that increase down to the customer. If they make a full $40-$60 for each sale of the game vs $3 to $4 like has been shown in another post, then they need to pass along the savings to the customer as well, not charge $59.95 plus shipping and handling. LOL That's as bad as it was, except this time they sink all the money into their pockets and the consumer still gets the ultimate shaft. Especially if the game suks. The consumer is out $59.95 plus shipping and handling and has a coaster to show for it. With ebay I have opportunities for refunds, with direct sales I do not. I'm going to go with what supports the consumer instead of what supports the pockets of others.

unless the AI engaged in massive cheating.

I never saw it as cheating, I saw it as an extended "handicap". It provided a higher challenge of play on a much broader scale. If anything it was a quality feature in that it made a experience player and even better player, once they learned how to overcome the extended handicap.

These games today, use extended handicaps as well much along the same lines, but, they aren't even as hard as they were in the 80's and early 90's. That's what makes AI's today seem weaker than they were then. They aren't as hard when they get extended handicaps or "cheating" as you might imply.

The handicap has always been with the numbers. oh a few games have a BIT and a very small bit of AI from easy to expert, to the point of not doing anything on easy and doing as much as is allowed by the programmer on expert. That's about it. The rest is overcoming the numbers, without any increase in the intelligence of the AI at all. I have read recently that some game is due to come out with an AI that LEARNS, I've got to find where I read that and what game it was again. I really want to see an AI that finally LEARNS from what the player does against it. If this works, it will hopefully change AI's for the better.