So now that Wargroove is out...

[Astasia]

...and failed miserably (you know it's bad when they release a press release about breaking even), what do people think the odds are that the devs come crawling back to Starbound to try and get some actual income? And how successful do people think that will be after a year of baiting and lies? Will anyone care about the xbox release of a dead game? Or will they surprise us with new content before then?

The snuffing out of one candle brings hope to the embers of another?

[KalterEvil]

Wait, Wargroove failed? When I played it, it was fun and all (for me as a TBS fan) and I'm still playing it. And I dont think that devs forgot about starbound so why do they crawl back?

[kei]

Originally posted by KalterEvil:

Wait, Wargroove failed? When I played it, it was fun and all (for me as a TBS fan) and I'm still playing it. And I dont think that devs forgot about starbound so why do they crawl back?

it didn't, it's literally the #1 game on switch rn.

op is just mad bc the retarded sb devs left the game unfinished.

[Astasia]

I'm sure it's great at what it was meant to be, but it's pretty niche. There are less people playing Wargroove on Steam right now than people playing Starbound, Wargroove came out days ago, Starbound has been dead for 16 months. The difference in interest between the two games is astronomical. Granted Wargroove also released on consoles and is probably doing a bit better there, but the devs a few days after release said the game broke even, meaning they made little to no profit from it, which is not the goal of business.

[Aapef]

I don't think Wargroove failed at all. The only "problem" with the game, and why it is less played than Starbound, is that it's a turn-based strategy game (not really "niche" though) while the chucklefish community is based on things like Starbound or SV that are really far from strategy.
But I think that when they will release the DLCs and console versions of Wargroove, it will be more renowned for the game itself. I really hope so since Wargroove is a great game (lackingsome unique units and race perks though).
Also, Starbound has a lot more to offer than Wargroove, since it's a "endless lifetime" type of game with a plethora of huge momds (Elithian Races, FU, etc...) adding new things even now. Wargroove on the other hand is more the PVP typ The solo campaign has little to no replayability, and the community is too small to have a serious multiplayer matchmaking. As I said before it also lacks some "uniqueness" between factions. There are the scenario and map creators yeah but those are some niche features. So it does not have this "endless creativity" thing that Starbound has.

Edit : Also, I think I read somewhere that the devs plan to prepare new updates for Starbound but you might want to check that.

[Legion]

Lmfao. Wargroove failed? Considering the multiple platforms it's on (compared to SB ONLY being on Steam) and that's it's only been 2 days, it's hardly able to be considered "failed". Starbound was released as an EA game and people bought into it, played over time, got invested in it, and may as well continue playing it since money was spent on it and time was heavily invested. Wargroove didn't have that EA period like SB did. It needs more time for people to find their way with it like with SB.

So yeah, no, calling this failed is a pretty lousy attempt at trying to garner attention back to SB. No candle's been snuffed, and if any game is close to being snuffed, it's SB.

[kbrayaquar7]

Originally posted by Nomadic:

Lmfao. Wargroove failed? Considering the multiple platforms it's on (compared to SB ONLY being on Steam) and that's it's only been 2 days, it's hardly able to be considered "failed". Starbound was released as an EA game and people bought into it, played over time, got invested in it, and may as well continue playing it since money was spent on it and time was heavily invested. Wargroove didn't have that EA period like SB did. It needs more time for people to find their way with it like with SB.

So yeah, no, calling this failed is a pretty lousy attempt at trying to garner attention back to SB. No candle's been snuffed, and if any game is close to being snuffed, it's SB.

It's not only on steam. It's also on GOG.

[ConductorSavy TTV]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Granted Wargroove also released on consoles and is probably doing a bit better there, but the devs a few days after release said the game broke even, meaning they made little to no profit from it, which is not the goal of business.

So wait, the game is out for less than a week, and the sales already matched the budget? That's pretty good in my opinion, means future sales are all profit for employee pay and future games and updates. How is that a fail?

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Vaulteron:

So wait, the game is out for less than a week, and the sales already matched the budget? That's pretty good in my opinion, means future sales are all profit for employee pay and future games and updates. How is that a fail?

The vast majority of sales happen during launch week. After that it's a trickle, with a few spurts during sales. As we speak the company continues to spend money, if the launch week sales barely covered development costs then that trickle of future sales isn't going to cover extended support costs, and DLCs likely wont be profitable since generally only a small fraction of owners buy them. They are already working on a DLC for the game, likely started months ago with the design stages, but it's probably going to be heavily budgeted at this point.

A game like Wargroove probably had a budget of about 1.5-3mil USD, their big launch week news was that they recovered that. By comparison Starbound's EA launch they announced selling a million copies, and that was with a lower development budget (fewer employees and no offices at the time).

To be clear for a new startup indie dev team recovering a game's budget is a great step and often the best they can hope for. Chucklefish has been riding the wave generated by Starbound for a few years now, they used the money to expand dramatically and branch out as a publisher. Following the success of Starbound with something like Wargroove where the best thing they have to say about release is they didn't lose money, yet, that's a massive step backward for them and I'm fairly certain they are feeling a bit of a sting right now.

Originally posted by Aapef:

Also, I think I read somewhere that the devs plan to prepare new updates for Starbound but you might want to check that.

They have been saying that for 16 months.

[Aapef]

Since Wargroove was not announced (I did not heard about it before Feb the 2nd) one might expect that the game will get known overtime for what it is and that more people will buy it. The game has been out for a bit more than a week now, I don't think we can just say it has failed or not. Just wait a couple of months before judging.

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by Aapef:

Also, I think I read somewhere that the devs plan to prepare new updates for Starbound but you might want to check that.

They have been saying that for 16 months.

Yeah they have been saying for 16 months that they would take a year off with Starbound, so let's hope for the best and stop complain about the game being dead or idk. It's not a big team, they cannot work on 3 games at the same time, and cannot just support an old game like that for years without doing anything else, since this would not create any income for the devs. Now they entered post-prod with Wargroove, so if it works well they will be able to send some people on Starbound again. There is also Spellbound being produced.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Aapef:

Since Wargroove was not announced (I did not heard about it before Feb the 2nd)

They did announce it. They've been doing blogs on the website, sharing info with gaming sites, sending out keys to streamers and youtubers, doing pretty much everything they can to get attention for the game. There just hasn't been much interest in it from the start. Making a clone of an old game that ran it's course just doesn't appeal to a huge audience.

Originally posted by Aapef:

Yeah they have been saying for 16 months that they would take a year off with Starbound

They never said anything of the sort. The first 6 of those months they were teasing 1.4, then they scrapped it with a promise they would release some smaller updates instead and maybe add some of the 1.4 mechanics into the game where they made sense. Then 6 months later they said their attention had been on the xbox release* and they were switching back to PC and would have a new update ready "very soon." That was 4 months ago, without another word from them.

*We of course all know that Chucklefish hired a different studio to handle the xbox port so their involvement in that has in truth been minimal.

[Aapef]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by Aapef:

Since Wargroove was not announced (I did not heard about it before Feb the 2nd)

They did announce it. They've been doing blogs on the website, sharing info with gaming sites, sending out keys to streamers and youtubers, doing pretty much everything they can to get attention for the game. There just hasn't been much interest in it from the start. Making a clone of an old game that ran it's course just doesn't appeal to a huge audience.

Originally posted by Aapef:

Yeah they have been saying for 16 months that they would take a year off with Starbound

They never said anything of the sort. The first 6 of those months they were teasing 1.4, then they scrapped it with a promise they would release some smaller updates instead and maybe add some of the 1.4 mechanics into the game where they made sense. Then 6 months later they said their attention had been on the xbox release* and they were switching back to PC and would have a new update ready "very soon." That was 4 months ago, without another word from them.

*We of course all know that Chucklefish hired a different studio to handle the xbox port so their involvement in that has in truth been minimal.

Well since I did not hear thing about the game I guess the com campaign was kinda lacky.

While you are at it, one thing that is bad for the game imo is the constant comparision with Advanced Warfare. I don't know if they did tease the game as the successor of the later but even if µI did not play it, I guess it's only the genre that is similar, tell me if i'm wrong though.
Anyway in every review I read, people compare it to AW, which is not a good ad for the game, since people are comparing a new game with new content coming up with an old, fully set up staple of the genre. I might be wrong though.

About Starbound, I don't remember where I read what I told you but if I see it again I'll llink that in a post.

[Astasia]

That comparison started with the devs who from the beginning said they were making a game like Advance Wars. That was their objective from the start, to make something just like AW. It's even on the game's webpage, the second question in their FAQ is "So the game is basically Advance Wars?" their answer "Kinda." and they go on to give some minor differences in mechanics. You are right, that's not a great way to promote (or design) a game.

[Aapef]

Originally posted by Astasia:

That comparison started with the devs who from the beginning said they were making a game like Advance Wars. That was their objective from the start, to make something just like AW. It's even on the game's webpage, the second question in their FAQ is "So the game is basically Advance Wars?" their answer "Kinda." and they go on to give some minor differences in mechanics. You are right, that's not a great way to promote (or design) a game.

Indeed that's not a really good idea, bad point if they started that by themselves.
I'm kinda glad that the universe is not the same though. I like the fact that they put it in the same world as Starbound.

[D a R i U z Z]

I saw its on sale and thought of getting it, But reading some threads i've seen people talking about the game being unfinished, Can someone explain to me the whole picture?

[Aapef]

Originally posted by iD a IR i U z Z:

I saw its on sale and thought of getting it, But reading some threads i've seen people talking about the game being unfinished, Can someone explain to me the whole picture?

Well, I don't think the game is unfihished. People consider it as unfinished because it's not well polished, some features are not that well introduced to the player (like arcad games vs IA).
Also imo factions feel like all the same. If you don't take the commander perks into account, there are no differences between factions, no special abilities, nand units are just reskins. I just hope this will be fixed at some point.
Anyway, I really like the solo campaign, the atmosphere is nice and the references to Starbound are nice (#Nuru).
But I think you should ask about things worrying you.