Will there ever be a sequel to WITP?

[rroberson]

So here's a random question. Any chance Matrix and the gang will ever commission a sequel? As great as this game is (and I played it from day one until about 5 months ago when my personal life became too hectic to carry on) it screams for a major overhaul given the millions of mouse clicks that it takes to run a turn. Don't get me wrong...I love the game...but she is a monster and could use some serious streamlining.

Think it has a shot?...given that it remains one of the most popular forum stops if not games Matrix ever put out.

[jamesjohns]

Great question (and great game!)

Can Matrix put it on kickstarter?

[dr.hal]

I would sincerely doubt the ROI would be there for such a move, despite the games obvious appeal to all of us on this forum. Hal

[wdolson]

There was a thread recently on this topic. Someone was offering to put forward some funds to create a version of the game focusing on Europe. I pointed out that the biggest stumbling block to doing a new version, whether a rework of the Pacific game or a European game is personnel, not so much money. Many of the team from the original development effort of AE have moved on to other things or our time is more limited than it was back then.

Bill

[wdolson]

ORIGINAL: dr.hal

I would sincerely doubt the ROI would be there for such a move, despite the games obvious appeal to all of us on this forum. Hal

ROI? republic of Ireland?

[Numdydar]

Return on Investment [:)]

[rroberson]

ORIGINAL: wdolson

ORIGINAL: dr.hal

I would sincerely doubt the ROI would be there for such a move, despite the games obvious appeal to all of us on this forum. Hal

ROI? republic of Ireland?

Ah, that is too bad, I know I would kick in funds for it...hell...i drop cash into various kickstarters all the time.

That being said I appreciate the efforts of the AE guys a great deal, made the game a million times better.

Here shortly I will have to scare up another game with someone. Now that my personal life has settled down I'm feeling the ten-year itch again .

[LeeChard]

I would gladly kick in.
I bought World in Flames knowing it had no AI and probably for won't years.

[CV Zuikaku]

Just kickstart the damn thing already!!! [8D]

[m10bob]

ORIGINAL: rroberson

So here's a random question. Any chance Matrix and the gang will ever commission a sequel? As great as this game is (and I played it from day one until about 5 months ago when my personal life became too hectic to carry on) it screams for a major overhaul given the millions of mouse clicks that it takes to run a turn. Don't get me wrong...I love the game...but she is a monster and could use some serious streamlining.

Think it has a shot?...given that it remains one of the most popular forum stops if not games Matrix ever put out.

For the sake of unity, I agree.
For selfishness, replace all mention of "WITP" with "Steel Panthers", as well........................[;)]

[dr.hal]

....the biggest stumbling block to doing a new version, whether a rework of the Pacific game or a European game is personnel, not so much money.

Bill,

While I applaud your desire to be diplomatic and circumspect, I would argue it is about the money. Matrix Games is a company (I've met some of the top executives and they are business people). It needs to make money and pay the bills. If there was money to be made with the creation of a new and better WITP AE2, then Matrix would find the talent to make it happen. Yes the original team has moved on, which is both good and bad (new ideas and a new view has advantages), however no one is irreplaceable. I'm certain the folks in Victory Games way back when, had no clue that this game would expand to the extent that WITP AE has taken it. Clearly it could go much further with an upgrade or redesign. But as the game gets more complicated and detailed, it might appeal to a narrowing population, which would increase unit costs and decrease unit sales. As is evident in this thread, this forum contains those that see the beauty of the game and need no convincing, but they are not the ones that would need to be attracted to the new game and the NEW PRICE. I've read many postings by new comers to AE who want to know about the value for money given the price as it currently stands (and the age of the game no doubt). I can only imagine folks looking at a cost per unit that is doubled or tripled what it is now. Pulling together and paying a talented team to rework WITP AE would be expensive (as you say, the original group has moved on), but it could be done. However, the ROI (non-Irish) would have to be clearly evident. Equally clearly, it is not. Hal

[rustysi]

OK, I gotta say it, "Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it". This topic comes up time and time again with varying people saying I want this or I want that. No matter what its a game and certain things are and will always be abstracted. Its the nature of the beast. There always needs to be a balance between reality and playability. I for one don't really think the game needs to be any more complex. For instance I don't wish to move beans and bullets, I have enough to do just getting the right amounts of supply to the right point (as Japan).

Could the interface be more user friendly (translated to less mouse clicks), maybe, but I doubt that would be under the same game engine. I wouldn't suppose they'll do a complete re-write just for that. Could this or that be done, probably with a re-write, but I doubt that's going to happen. Furthermore I'm not sure I'd want it to, as I've invested a large amount of time trying to get up to speed with this monster.

There are those here that put a lot into improving things as much as possible of their own accord, and I'm sure we all appreicate that tremendously. So I say let's all take a step back and just enjoy the ride on what has to be one of the best games I've ever played. IOW let's not fix it 'til it breaks. Of course just MHO.[:)]

[wdolson]

....the biggest stumbling block to doing a new version, whether a rework of the Pacific game or a European game is personnel, not so much money.

ORIGINAL: dr.hal
Bill,

While I applaud your desire to be diplomatic and circumspect, I would argue it is about the money. Matrix Games is a company (I've met some of the top executives and they are business people). It needs to make money and pay the bills. If there was money to be made with the creation of a new and better WITP AE2, then Matrix would find the talent to make it happen. Yes the original team has moved on, which is both good and bad (new ideas and a new view has advantages), however no one is irreplaceable. I'm certain the folks in Victory Games way back when, had no clue that this game would expand to the extent that WITP AE has taken it. Clearly it could go much further with an upgrade or redesign. But as the game gets more complicated and detailed, it might appeal to a narrowing population, which would increase unit costs and decrease unit sales. As is evident in this thread, this forum contains those that see the beauty of the game and need no convincing, but they are not the ones that would need to be attracted to the new game and the NEW PRICE. I've read many postings by new comers to AE who want to know about the value for money given the price as it currently stands (and the age of the game no doubt). I can only imagine folks looking at a cost per unit that is doubled or tripled what it is now. Pulling together and paying a talented team to rework WITP AE would be expensive (as you say, the original group has moved on), but it could be done. However, the ROI (non-Irish) would have to be clearly evident. Equally clearly, it is not. Hal

Too many new people might kill the game too. Did you read the recent thread on WitE/WitW here on this forum? There were some people playing WitE, but WitW's interest seems to be waning and it's only six months old.

Games are like movies or books. For every Star Wars franchises there are a lot of unremarkable movies that have little or no following. Additionally as you have pointed out, there is also the price issues. Investing a lot of money into a project for a new game engine most people are going to want to see a return. If the product is high price, low volume you need to convince a small number of people to fork over a lot of money for what is essentially the same game with some UI improvements or something that could possibly be broken beyond recognition and unplayable. If it's priced for higher volume (serious war games are never truly high volume), you need to convince a lot of new players to come on board. That might be tough with a monster game with a steep learning curve. Even if the interface was improved (I agree there are many things that could be done to improve it), this would still be a huge thing to learn. If a new interface simplified things too much, it would probably break the features that keep drawing people back in. For example WitW has a much slicker air system than AE, but it's more like watching a dull TV program than playing a game.

When a popular game engine is developed, game makers tend to extend that same engine until the market runs out in part because it's expensive to develop a new engine and in part because it's even tougher to find a hit with consumers. Whenever you make a new engine, you run the risk of developing a dud that consumers won't want. Once you have spent the time and effort to make the engine enough to play test it, it's too late to go back and start over.

One mistake management can make with any project is thinking that technical talent is fungible. There were jokes at Boeing when I was there that upper management thinks there is a warehouse somewhere with a bunch of generic engineers and they just program them with the skills they need and throw them as a project. In reality, you need the right talent to make it work. I think any new WitP effort is going to need at least some of the people from the original AE project to keep the project from getting hijacked into something few people will want. This is actually one of those things I've thought about a fair bit. I find it difficult to turn off my combination Engineer/Psychologist mind. (Degree in engineering, Psychology is a life long hobby reinforced by an SO with an MA in Psych.)

Just figured out what you meant by ROI: Return on Investment. It wasn't obvious to me from earlier context, but then I may have been slow kid in the class that day...

Bill

[dr.hal]

Fair enough Rusty, I get what you are saying. I certainly am not advocating reworking this monster of a game just to rework it. I think there are a number of improvements both in play and in terms of "things to do" that would make it more "enjoyable", things outside the concept of "bells and whistles" but that to do so would cost a lot for Matrix and I doubt they could get enough return on that cost to make it worth the effort (the juice is not worth the squeeze so to speak). Many aspects of the game are "dated" in terms of graphics, etc. However updating these without looking into some serious systemic updates would be just "window dressing" which if I have your point right, is not worth it.... IMHO. Hal

[dr.hal]

I agree with you Bill, there would have to be continuity with the previous gaming system in order to retain the old player and still attract the new. A difficult balance. I think that the Silent Hunter series lost sight of that and that's why it is no longer competitive (at least for me!). Not being an engineer I'm far from being knowledgeable about how much time and effort it would take to do a major upgrade, the core of my statement is that Matrix must have look at this concept (a number of times), as they are good business people that they have successfully found a "niche" market, and have come to the conclusion that this system will not be going much further. Hal

[Feltan]

ORIGINAL: dr.hal

I agree with you Bill, there would have to be continuity with the previous gaming system in order to retain the old player and still attract the new. A difficult balance. I think that the Silent Hunter series lost sight of that and that's why it is no longer competitive (at least for me!). Not being an engineer I'm far from being knowledgeable about how much time and effort it would take to do a major upgrade, the core of my statement is that Matrix must have look at this concept (a number of times), as they are good business people that they have successfully found a "niche" market, and have come to the conclusion that this system will not be going much further. Hal

Hal,

This is what I do for a living -- run large software efforts. The lingua franca of the trade when discussing the cost is "hours," as in labor hours. The more functionality, the more screens, the more the hours estimate goes up.

WITP-AE is both large and complex from a software development perspective. Really big. I have no inside knowledge, but I would venture to say the development to date could easily be measured in multiple person-years of labor hours.

A person-year is 2000 hours -- one schlep working on nothing else for an entire year.

The price of a labor hour is all over the board depending on the industry you are in. The cost includes salary, fringe (vacation, sick, etc.), general and administrative (G&A, to include covering the cost of covering HR, IT and the other support personnel in a company), 401K/retirement, health care, etc. It is packed, and depending on the industry you can see the value of an hour of labor skyrocket.

For instance, if you engage a company like Oracle for technical collaboration, your are well into the $250/hr.+ for labor. A small regional company might engage at $50-$75/hr.

I suspect, and this is a guess, you could assemble a team to do this kind of work for, say, in the range of $100 an hour -- less if you farm it out to independent contractors, but for the sake of discussion let's call it $100/hr.

That is $200K for a person year.

Going on total gut feeling, and given the complexity of WITP-AE, a significant upgrade could easily eat up 3-5 person-years of labor. Go in the middle at 4 person-years; 4 people for a year or 8 for six months.

Assuming they are not volunteers, that is $800K. Not to include marketing, distribution, etc. Figure a cool $1M for a sizeable upgrade.

At $150 per license, they need to sell approximately 6700 licenses to break even.

Costs can be trimmed, and trimmed a lot, especially if you shop for labor or ship the work via the internet off-shore. <-- that happens all the time

You could cut the estimate in half with some innovative thinking, but that still requires 3400 license sales to break even.

And, I have no idea what the install base is for this game, nor how many licenses have been sold. However, I am pretty sure it is a "success" for Matrix due to the love and volunteer labor of numerous individuals.

Regards,
Feltan

[rustysi]

which if I have your point right

You do.

[dr.hal]

Thanks Feltan for the explanation, that jives with what I know about labor and costs. At least, it is a good ball park figure. I think your numbers prove my point, that the unit cost would not, unto itself, be a money maker. But as you say, if you could trim and use some folks for the love of the game (much like colleges use athletes for the "love" of the game!) you might be able to bring the unit price down to manageable levels, but that's not something you should or could count upon. Thanks again and it is a clear as mud.... cheers, Hal

[KenchiSulla]

Not saying that the game cannot be improved but perhaps you should consider what type of customer you attract with this little gem... Isn't what we've got and some of us modded good enough? And what would the effect of a "sequel" be? I used to play and love Mediëval Total War: Viking Invasion. It was a great multiplayer experience, and then came along Rome... It destroyed it (for me at least)..

In short, isn't the amount of units, mouseclicks, labor and the long list of mechanics and rules what actually makes us love the game and makes us love the various units and results (up to the point were restless sleep is preceding carrier battles...)? Would you care as much about land gained and ships lost if it was so easy to learn and play..?

[HansBolter]

ORIGINAL: Cannonfodder

Not saying that the game cannot be improved but perhaps you should consider what type of customer you attract with this little gem... Isn't what we've got and some of us modded good enough? And what would the effect of a "sequel" be? I used to play and love Mediëval Total War: Viking Invasion. It was a great multiplayer experience, and then came along Rome... It destroyed it (for me at least)..

In short, isn't the amount of units, mouseclicks, labor and the long list of mechanics and rules what actually makes us love the game and makes us love the various units and results (up to the point were restless sleep is preceding carrier battles...)? Would you care as much about land gained and ships lost if it was so easy to learn and play..?

+1 on all sentiments.

I especially loved Viking Invasion, even solitaire.

As for this game:

If you deplore the mouse clicks you are probably better off playing a different game.

It's no different than sorting through hundreds of mile high stacks of cardboard on a Europa map.

Megagames are for grognards, all others need not apply.