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[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: RisingSun
Take it easy ol' timers, we dont want another tread hi-jacked again.

Popcorn?

[Rising-Sun]

ORIGINAL: Icemania

ORIGINAL: RisingSun
Take it easy ol' timers, we dont want another tread hi-jacked again.

Popcorn?

Sure as long you add some butter

[Spidey]

I'm off for a few days and this happens when I get back? [:(]

Well, after having read the development in this topic, there are a few points I feel like making.

1. On the extension of contracts
It's quite normal that once a business contract expires, you consider your options. It's what Elliot should (and almost certainly will) do and it's what Matrix is no doubt going to do. The entire talk has been on whether Elliot should stick with Matrix, but do we know that Matrix even wants to stick with him? Of course they should spend a little while considering what to do next and how they wish to arrange it.

If they feel like continuing for a second spell then that's what they should do. If one of them don't then that's probably fine too. They'll shake hands, appreciate the good times they've had and the money they've made, and then they'll move on, with almost no hurt feelings between them, because both parties know that it's nothing personal, just business. Or at least that's the theory. In practice, most business managers are a bit less Vulcan than that, but since I don't know any specifics, I really don't care to speculate on the exact details of the relationship between Elliot and Erik.

That being said, it really wouldn't surprise me if Elliot would have a hard time getting better deals anywhere since he's a micro-developer. I don't think Valve is likely to throw in much support and I don't see how Matrix can justify support if he's going to undermine them by putting his game on Steam.

2. On emotion in business decisions
Business managers definitively do not qualify as sociopaths just because they make their business decisions based on logic. Similarly, it has nothing whatsoever to do with sociopathy, and in fact isn't even the tiniest little indication of the condition, if one suggests that business managers should in fact base their decisions on logic. Finally, it is very much not an indication of sociopathy that one doesn't see the sense in comments about loyalty, trust, and various friendship fluff-terms in a discussion about a business contract.

Just thought I'd make that clear. By the way, accusing people of having empathy-issues or otherwise insulting them for no reason is in fact a slight indication of sociopathy.

3. On the evaluation of marketing
There are in fact more ways to evaluate an effort than through sheer numbers. The qualitative approach would be to simply do key segment or focus group studies or, if we're doing it entirely bare-bones, do a one-person effect analysis. Show the created material to one person and ask said person how he interprets it and whether it makes him want to spend potentially a hundred bucks on the game? Elliot can do this on his own, using himself as a test subject, and then he'll have the first vague answer as to whether he is satisfied with the marketing efforts, won't he? Similarly, we can do this same thing, with the caveat that we only have access to bits and parts of the total effort. Still, this can in fact give us a decent enough first idea of whether we think the marketing was good or not.

4. On the importance of minding one's own business
It really doesn't matter if something is our business or not. This is a forum. we discuss things on a forum. Even things that aren't actually our business. For instance, it really wasn't my business that Clinton got a blowjob from Lewinsky or that he then lied about it under oath. It was totally his choice to unzip and her choice to smoke the cigar, and I do believe they were both adult at the time. Does that mean I shouldn't have an opinion on whether it was a good or a bad choice that a president decides to get a blowjob from an intern? Of course not.

5. On lies and mistakes
A lie is an intentional untruthfulness. A mistake is a claim that turns out to be wrong. When you call something a lie, you're also implying intent. Not just that something in fact is wrong but that the one who said it knew it to be wrong and said it anyway. That's rude and not called for in most civilized conversations. As a rule of thumb, if your mother said it, would you call her a liar or would you simply correct her? That's how you should behave in a civilized conversation.

6. On wild speculation based on Elliot's inactivity in a marketing capacity
I can't speak for others, but personally I find it to be a real drag to occupy myself with all kinds of social media crap. And I'm not even the lone guy who dedicates my life to writing my very own super-complex 4x game. It would not surprise me in the slightest if Elliot isn't energized or motivated by speculating about promotion and marketing. He's busy doing his game and I doubt he has much energy left for media bullshit when he's not working on the game.

Taking time off from working on the game, by the way, would also result in him not getting the things done that he'd like to get done. He's one guy, isn't he? He can spend an afternoon working on his website or he can try to make the AI that little bit better. He can spend hours doing a developer blog, writing about what he is doing and what he'd like to get done, or he can spend those hours actually getting it done.

My speculation is that he's likely spending his time as a developer, thinking like a developer, avoiding unnecessary distractions, and consequently leaving all the marketing crap to his publisher, much like a writer would spend his time writing books and leave all the publicity work to his publisher. And that's totally like it should be. I'd be very surprised if the contract doesn't make Matrix responsible for the marketing, so why should he allow himself to get distracted by it?

7. Conclusion (no, it isn't really)
I freaking hate Steam, it sucks, it blows, it's stinking crapware that makes me feel as if someone's spying on me, and I WILL NOT USE IT!! Also, I fail to see any why Matrix couldn't offer an internship to a marketing grad student and have that free labour slave his ass off to produce marketing material and spam the living hell out of various strat game fora around the web with stories about how great this game is. And the crazy thing is that the grad student would probably love the job, since it's a real world non-theoretical application of his £€€7 marketing skillz.

[solops]

Keep Matrix. I like Matrix's sales model. I will always buy from them preferentially, given a choice. I have a Steam account and many Steam games. I detest Steam. I detest its intrusive and controlling nature. Hooray for Matrix! Long live their marketing model and I WILL pay extra for it if I need to. Many great things in our niche would never see the light of day without Matrix.

[jesuswhywhy]

+1 lock this thread its just too nuts to go on

[Icemania]

There is only one person here who has repeatedly claimed others are lying, amoral, immoral sociopaths.

In contrast, I've managed to respond without using such language despite extreme provocation. I have a right to defend myself from such accusations.

And let's not forget welcoming a new forum member with an accusation of schizophrenia.

The rest of this thread is quite within normal parameters.

The appropriate action speaks for itself and it does not involve locking this thread.

[Icemania]

Nice post Spidey

[Tcby]

ORIGINAL: Icemania

Nice post Spidey

+1 to this [:)]

[Icemania]

As many of you might be aware Horizon has recently been launched, and as always, Space Sector has a quality review.

What I find interesting is that IGN and GameSpot have reviews while Polygon has news and PC Gamer has a preview.

In contrast, I cannot find anything material regarding Distant Worlds (beyond basic information and user reviews), particularly for Shadows or Universe on gaming sites such as these, that provide exposure to the 4X gaming audience.

For those that consider Distant Worlds marketing to be reasonable or good ... on what basis do you make this assertion?

Note: I am not making any comments about the quality of these sites, this is not my point.

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: Spidey
6. On wild speculation based on Elliot's inactivity in a marketing capacity
I can't speak for others, but personally I find it to be a real drag to occupy myself with all kinds of social media crap. And I'm not even the lone guy who dedicates my life to writing my very own super-complex 4x game. It would not surprise me in the slightest if Elliot isn't energized or motivated by speculating about promotion and marketing. He's busy doing his game and I doubt he has much energy left for media bullshit when he's not working on the game.

Taking time off from working on the game, by the way, would also result in him not getting the things done that he'd like to get done. He's one guy, isn't he? He can spend an afternoon working on his website or he can try to make the AI that little bit better. He can spend hours doing a developer blog, writing about what he is doing and what he'd like to get done, or he can spend those hours actually getting it done.

My speculation is that he's likely spending his time as a developer, thinking like a developer, avoiding unnecessary distractions, and consequently leaving all the marketing crap to his publisher, much like a writer would spend his time writing books and leave all the publicity work to his publisher. And that's totally like it should be. I'd be very surprised if the contract doesn't make Matrix responsible for the marketing, so why should he allow himself to get distracted by it?

You may well be right Spidey. But even if this is right the developer needs to be be mindful of the importance of Marketing e.g. to help provide future capacity for Distant Worlds 2 and so on. We all have activities in the workplace we don't particularly enjoy, but they need to be done. And indeed this can be done with a fraction of the developers time e.g. occasional checks and discussions on Matrix performance.

[ASHBERY76]

The player base does 99% of the marketing.The expansion is supposedly close and all we know is a small article on spacesector.That just about says it all.

[Osito]

ORIGINAL: Icemania

As many of you might be aware Horizon has recently been launched, and as always, Space Sector has a quality review.

What I find interesting is that IGN and GameSpot have reviews while Polygon has news and PC Gamer has a preview.

In contrast, I cannot find anything material regarding Distant Worlds (beyond basic information and user reviews), particularly for Shadows or Universe on gaming sites such as these, that provide exposure to the 4X gaming audience.

For those that consider Distant Worlds marketing to be reasonable or good ... on what basis do you make this assertion?

Note: I am not making any comments about the quality of these sites, this is not my point.

I know very little about marketing, so I'm fairly neutral about whether or not DW marketing has been reasonable or good. I didn't find out about the game until mid 2012, but I have to say that I wasn't really looking until mid 2012. So I think someone who is interested in this sort of game will most likely find it, because they'll be looking at the kind of sites (in particular Space Sector) which would cover it.

People who are not actively looking for this type of game will probably not find it. Is that a good or a bad thing? I think there's certainly a risk that the more casual kind of player would be put off by DW, and that would be quite damaging to the franchise, as they'd probably be quite vocal about their opinion (particularly on Steam forums, if the game had been released on Steam).

Although I wasn't around for the launch of DW in 2010, I'm pretty sure that if it had received wider exposure at the time it would have received very damaging publicity. Why do I say this? Largely on the basis that in February 2011 Space Sector gave DW a review score of 5.0. If Space Sector could only give 5.0, what would the likes of IGN and Gamespot have said? There would no doubt have been a lot of negative feedback on widely read forums. You might make a quick buck from increased sales at release, but that kind of publicity can kill a franchise, because it can discourage those who would like the game if they tried it.

Obviously, the game is much better now, and maybe it's now got to the point where it can withstand much better exposure. Perhaps, with the release of Universe, it will now get better exposure. We've yet to see how Matrix will handle this release. For all we know, it may even appear on Steam. Then we can have some really good forum arguments: the Steambois will have a field day

Osito

[Gregorovitch55]

7. Conclusion (no, it isn't really)
I freaking hate Steam, it sucks, it blows, it's stinking crapware that makes me feel as if someone's spying on me, and I WILL NOT USE IT!! Also, I fail to see any why Matrix couldn't offer an internship to a marketing grad student and have that free labour slave his ass off to produce marketing material and spam the living hell out of various strat game fora around the web with stories about how great this game is. And the crazy thing is that the grad student would probably love the job, since it's a real world non-theoretical application of his £€€7 marketing skillz.

I used to hold exactly the same opinion about Steam and refused point blank to buy a game that I couldn't fire up direct from it's .exe. I was eventually broken by Civ5 and Skyrim. Now I still have have two major reservations about Steam, namely always on DRM and Steam's drift towards a monopoly position in the PC gaming market (GoG notwithstanding) but I have changed my view somewhat having experienced it for 18 months or so. Main reasons are:

1. Steam has almost singlehandedly stopped and reversed the decline in importance of my beloved PC platform (with honourable mention to Skyrim/FONV modders, GoG and the Youtubers) making it much harder for publishers to justify dropping it. Matrix itself can only benefit from this.

2. Steam does an immense amount to promote new dev talent and bring games to market that otherwise never see the light of day. A classic example has just come out: Banished. The Steam sales and the player charts can and do enable successive waves of interest games that get more bucks were they need to be - in the devs bank accounts. It has demonstrably transformed the status of one of my favourite devs/publishers Paradox and the initial release quality of EU4 is a testament to the effect IMO.

3. It is in my view an excellent gaming service in every respect (except the DRM bit). I know a lot of people don't like their games automatically patched (although you can turn that off) but I do and most importantly it pretty much forces devs to make sure patches are compatible with players existing save files which was not always the case. I do not miss the hassle of installing my old games from DVD and going through the process of looking up endless details of which patches need installing in what order.

4. Although my view is that if I buy a game, book, film, whatever I have an absolute right to do what I want with it other than copy it or use the material for my own financial gain whatever the EULA says (becasue it can't override my consumer rights) I choose not to press this issue with Steam. The reason is that I can buy 2nd and 3rd choice titles at huge discounts in Steam sales rather than scratch around 2nd hand markets and this means a) a lot more money gets into the devs hands and b) the Steam sales themselves expose games to significantly larger audiences than they otherwise would get. See TB's vid for fuller explanation on 2nd hand games market.

You could say I'm simply justifying my own decision to finally crack and sign up for a Steam account - you could be right - but i think the balance of evidence is that Steam is good for the PC platform, good for indie dev talent and good for me as a player.

[Edit] One other thing: Steam also collects and collates a goldmine of data about what people are playing, when and on what kit. One might view this as something akin to the NSA and PRISM, but I believe it is of enormous help to devs in designing games people want to play and can play and focusing their resources more accurately.

[Gregorovitch55]

ORIGINAL: Icemania

ORIGINAL: Gregorovitch55
...

Welcome to the forum Gregorovitch55.

Not all of us are as friendly as Kayoz.

[;)]

Cheers mate. I confess I could not be bothered to engage with someone who either misreads or fails to read what you have actually said and then accuses you of schizophrenia for quoting their own paraphrase of what they thought you had said. Pointless.

[Flinkebeinchen]

I took a week long break from the forums after getting annoyed by Kayoz snipping quotes of my posts, good to see the discussion goes on. Icemania you are my hero

[Cauldyth]

Yeah, maybe the community here would be larger and more active if innocent attempts to participate weren't being met with unwarranted attacks.

[Kayoz]

ORIGINAL: Icemania
That's not a completely contradictory untagged speculation is it Kayoz?

I make no assumptions or speculations that are not part of any common law system. What does the court assume when you step before a judge/jury? That you're innocent. What does the law say about acts which it does not cover? Nulla poena sine lege. Nothing.

If my assumptions (that without a complaint from Elliot or Erik or evidence of wrongdoing/unreasonable conduct, there is no basis to question their arrangement) are incorrect, then so is the fundamental basis of civil society. Perhaps it's a fundamental difference in our outlooks of justice. From what I can gather from your statements, Icey, you come from North Korea or some such place. How's your beloved leader these days?

ORIGINAL: Icemania
By the way, how can you claim Marketing is "Reasonable" "without clear evidence"? By your own logic, shouldn't you be neutral Kayoz?

The burden of proof that it is not reasonable is on you. Not on me. Don't try to shirk your duties. This is a fundamental concept in western civil society. Perhaps you come from a country where one has to prove one's innocence - but that's not where Matrix is based, nor CodeForce.

ORIGINAL: Icemania
Many factors Kayoz. Loyalty and trust are just one of them. Your own failures to listen to what I am repeatedly saying defeats your entire argument.

Failure to listen? As opposed to your repeated ignoring of "none of your business"? Pot kettle black at the very best for you, Snowy.

As for the sociopathy issue you allude to - it's your words, not mine. You can't understand loyalty or trust outside of a contractual relationship. Your words. Not mine.

Really, it's getting rather tedious to go round and round with a crazy person who is (willfully or otherwise) ignorant of the basic concept of who has to provide the burden of proof.

Your burden, IM. Meet the burden and we can go forwards. Otherwise, conversation with you makes as much progress as a hamster in a wheel.

[Kayoz]

ORIGINAL: Gregorovitch55
1. Steam has almost singlehandedly stopped and reversed the decline in importance of my beloved PC platform

Completely baseless and absurd claim. Twaddle. Hogwash. Use whatever adjective you choose for "worthless".

ORIGINAL: Gregorovitch55
2. Steam does an immense amount to promote new dev talent and bring games to market that otherwise never see the light of day. A classic example has just come out: Banished.

As well as many which should never see the light of day. If you want to assign credit for the beneficial effects of Steam - then you must also accept the entries on the opposite side of the balance sheet.

ORIGINAL: Gregorovitch55
3. It is in my view an excellent gaming service in every respect (except the DRM bit).

Your personal opinion. Nothing more.

ORIGINAL: Gregorovitch55
4. Although my view is that if I buy a game, book, film...whatever the EULA says (becasue it can't override my consumer rights) I choose not to press this issue with Steam.

No, you've bent over and spread your cheeks for Steam. You agree to and condone their abuse of your consumer rights each and every time you give them money.

If you want to see the continued erosion of your consumer rights, then by all means continue giving your cash to Steam.

ORIGINAL: Gregorovitch55
... rather than scratch around 2nd hand markets and this means a) a lot more money gets into the devs hands and b) the Steam sales themselves expose games to significantly larger audiences

You miss the obvious:
c) More revenue for Steam.

That's all Steam cares about. It's a company. Making money is it's objective. It's whole reason for existence.

[Kayoz]

ORIGINAL: Spidey
4. On the importance of minding one's own business
It really doesn't matter if something is our business or not. This is a forum. we discuss things on a forum. Even things that aren't actually our business.

Some things are considered inappropriate or off-limits for discussion. Just as I don't think it's appropriate to engage in vitriolic political rants here, I also don't think it's appropriate to question Matrix's private business affairs without any documentation to support one's position. Got a complaint and some facts to back it up - then fine, bring it on. Thus far, nobody has presented anything worthwhile.

ORIGINAL: Spidey
5. On lies and mistakes
A lie is an intentional untruthfulness. A mistake is a claim that turns out to be wrong.

Perhaps I give Icemania too much credit here. I assumed he knew what he was writing, and on reflection this is probably not the case.

Looking at the depth of thought and attention to detail in his posts - you're probably right. I was unfair in calling his inaccuracies and fabrications "lies". I retract that statement. I erred in giving Icemania undue credit.

[Darkspire]

Lock in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... [8|]

Darkspire