Alexis Kennedy
Posts: 1374
3/4/2015
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Hello all. Some of you will probably find this interesting:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/237657/Postmortem_Failbetter_Games_Sunless_Sea.php
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Alexis Kennedy
Posts: 1374
3/4/2015
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Thank you; and yes, it's definitely a success. We'll be blogging about sales numbers, as a pay-it-forward service to other indies, some time after we're back from GDC, but we're in a good place at the moment. Thanks to all of you who purchased a copy or told a friend - it means we can keep on doing more of this stuff, and everyone wins.
I'm also fine with the game not being for everyone, and I like games which are a little bit untidy. But the difficulty curve is more jagged than I'd like, and there are some needless annoyances sometimes, especially around the story CMS. With luck, we'll use the Zubmariner production process to push some changes back into the vanilla game, when we get that far - but that's for another day.
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Diptych
Administrator
Posts: 3493
3/4/2015
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SporksAreGoodForYou wrote:
Hah. I like this stat:
Budget: 250k GBP
Total words in game: 250,000
£1 / word. Seems like a fair deal. Every word is excellent.
They say a picture's worth a thousand words, but it turns out that a word is worth 1.53 US dollars, down from 1.67 this time last year.
--
Sir Frederick, the Libertarian Esotericist. Lord Hubris, the Bloody Baron.
Juniper Brown, the Ill-Fated Orphan. Esther Ellis-Hall, the Fashionable Fabian.
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SporksAreGoodForYou
Posts: 291
3/4/2015
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Hah. I like this stat:
Budget: 250k GBP
Total words in game: 250,000
£1 / word. Seems like a fair deal. Every word is excellent.
(edit: I know it's not that simple)
edited by SporksAreGoodForYou on 3/4/2015
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KhzDonut
Posts: 20
3/19/2015
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Finally got around to reading this, and I really enjoyed it.
I appreciate the frank and honest assessments of the game's strengths and weaknesses. I agree that the combat and difficulty arc being the primary weaknesses in the game (though still quite functional, and certainly not enough to dissuade me from dumping every bit of free-time I have into zailing the zeas) but I admire that the dev team can be that brutally honest about it. That makes me feel a lot more enthusiastic about the future expansions and games, because it indicates that the company will address those issues with more finesse the next time.
But really, in regards to finesse, I'm STUNNED at how well the combat system turned out. I was highly skeptical at first, and was not pleased at all with the initial release. As it stands now I hardly think twice about it. It feels natural enough that I rarely think about the fact that it was a major overhaul.
And the difficulty arc, while at times exceedingly aggravating, is also not enough to keep me from playing (though I may take a couple weeks off after a captain death... To grieve... Or something) But there are some benefits to it. A more casual experience would certainly reward those who are after stories rather than powergaming/grinding, but at the same time when I read through the forums as they are, the people who stay are usually the people MOST dedicated to the atmosphere of the game, rather than the powergaming/grinding. I think perhaps the difficulty curve in some sense has helped the community itself. It struck a good balance in that it very quickly discourages plowing through stories haphazardly, because you just won't get anywhere "faster" by doing that. Then once you've spent some time learning the tricks, namely by interacting with the community through forums or wiki's, and getting a few weapon/ship upgrades, you are rewarded by being able to journey through the stories at your (relative) leisure, *almost* in safety.
If there weren't that initial trial by fire I kind of think the community would see the same difference in dynamic between a game like the early days of EverQuest and later days of World of Warcraft (obviously in an MMO there's considerations that aren't in a single-player game, but still)
Early EQ was brutally hard and griefers got weeded out by the difficulty. WoW got so mainstream-accessible that by the time I quit (Cataclysm Expansion) it felt like the only thing that was left was griefers.
Obviously that's a bit of an exaggeration, and it's not like you have to deal with a griefer in Sunless Sea, but I think the overall lack of brutal forum conflict is partly a product of the difficulty of the early-game. I've seen a relatively small number of unpleasant interactions here, as well as the Steam forums, and that's pretty awesome. Only a small number of people who disapprove of the early-game difficulty make more than one or two posts about it.
Maybe it's a sort of jingoist mentality to say that it's an acceptable, or even preferable thing, to weed people out by making a game unnecessarily difficult or esoteric, but at the same time I think it's left the game only really accessible to people that really care about the atmosphere, and care about it enough to put some pretty significant effort into going through it all.
The flip side to that is of course the potential of turning the game into a haven for elitist jerks in ivory towers, but it doesn't really seem like the "untidy" game mechanics really appeal to elitism, because it's not like there's any real achievement you can get in this game to lord over anyone else, beyond "holy crap I actually survived for an extended period of time!"
My apologies for the long winded, and most likely controversial statements...
But to sum up, I like the game, and how it turned out, including combat, and I find the difficulty arc manageable.
I like the transparency and the analytical nature of the dev team.
I like that the community is almost entirely populated by helpful, compassionate, and dedicated individuals who seem to really click with the game and what seems like the point of the game: To be immersed in a world for the sake of being immersed in the world.
Honestly, this and Shadow Of The Colossus are the only games I ever really get the urge to play anymore. They're nothing alike, but they're both games that are of a very specific and atmospheric vision, and I think those are the games that get remembered.
I think Sunless Sea will end up being one of those games, and if not Sunless Sea, then surely its successor.
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Alexis Kennedy
Posts: 1374
3/19/2015
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That's a very encouraging comment - thank you! and your hypothesis about difficulty is very interesting. I've said before that making our first game a giant reading comprehension test has helped give us one of the most thoughtful and courteous user communities on the Internet (that's you, folks) - I can see that something analogous would happen here. But I am still unhappy with the unevenness of the difficulty level - and of course the repetitive nature of the earliest game. That's stuff we'll continue to look at when we come back to it.
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Alexis Kennedy
Posts: 1374
3/19/2015
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And: Sunless Sea is only ankle-height to Shadow of the Colossus, but a lot of Failbetters love that game too - as you might expect - and the aura of vastness, loneliness, sanctuary is, now I come to think of it, a pretty direct inspiration.
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Estelle Knoht
Posts: 1751
3/22/2015
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KhzDonut wrote:
GOOD GRIEF
Being competitive =/= griefing. You don't call a school bully "competitive", nor do you call a student who plagiarize for higher marks "a bully". Obviously that's a terrible analogy but I hope you get what I mean.
Also EVE is all about virtual corporate intrigue and griefing apparently or some such, and Dark Souls is designed with mechanics for players to invade other players' game and cause trouble. I think the designers of these game encourage griefing.
I think your phrasing is really unfortunate - you are basically saying that if players aren't dedicated, then they are morally lacking on the same level as those who actively ruins the enjoyment of others. It is also one thing to say "the game is not for everyone" and quite an another thing to "weed out people by making the game unnecessarily esoteric".
Going by your words Sunless Sea would be the most influential games ever if players have to pony up billions of dollars beforehand because it weeds out all the people not capable of extraordinary economic expertise. I am sure that's not what you mean, though. Also "unnecessarily difficult" sounds kind of terrible.
On an unrelated note English is such a difficult language and I feel so embarrassed about my vocabulary trying to post this thing *sobs*
--
Estelle Knoht, a juvenile, unreliable and respectable lady.
I currently do not accept any catbox, cider, suppers, calling cards or proteges.
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Estelle Knoht
Posts: 1751
3/23/2015
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KhzDonut wrote:
And again, I'm not a sociologist, so my analysis is probably overly simplistic, but I think there's grounds for thinking that increased difficulty, emphasis on reading/learning, and decreased competitive appeal, result in a less aggressive user base. Maybe that's incorrect, but ultimately it would probably require statistical studies to prove either way. Thought experiments will only get us so far in determining the truth in the matter.
....I think you need to stand back and look at this in a simpler light.
Here's your homework: analysis how aggressive the userbase will become upon the decrease of difficulty and discouragement of reading in
a) Cooking Mama
b) a sewing circle for elderly ladies
c) Fallen London-themed Constipation Salon Charade
(Don't actually do that)
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Estelle Knoht, a juvenile, unreliable and respectable lady.
I currently do not accept any catbox, cider, suppers, calling cards or proteges.
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KhzDonut
Posts: 20
3/23/2015
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The last thing I want to do is get knitting-needle-stabbed by some elderly-griefer-ladies, so I think I will have to pass on that particular study for now.
edited by KhzDonut on 3/23/2015
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Diptych
Administrator
Posts: 3493
3/25/2015
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Yep, Alexis is a cis chap - though you're not the first to make that mistake. In fact, he's mentioned in interviews that it happens often enough that it's part of the reason Fallen London has a "none of the above" gender option!
Completely off-topic edit: This is my 2000th post! Neat! Thank you all for putting up with 2000 posts' worth of my nonsense.
edited by Sir Frederick Tanah-Chook on 3/25/2015
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Sir Frederick, the Libertarian Esotericist. Lord Hubris, the Bloody Baron.
Juniper Brown, the Ill-Fated Orphan. Esther Ellis-Hall, the Fashionable Fabian.
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WormApotheote
Posts: 725
3/5/2015
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Sir Frederick Tanah-Chook wrote:
SporksAreGoodForYou wrote:
Hah. I like this stat:
Budget: 250k GBP
Total words in game: 250,000
£1 / word. Seems like a fair deal. Every word is excellent.
They say a picture's worth a thousand words, but it turns out that a word is worth 1.53 US dollars, down from 1.67 this time last year.
Actually if we assume a picture is worth a thousand words, then with 415 illustrations (equivalent to 415,000 words) we have £0.38 per word. :P
Relatedly, that means this post is worth £12.
edited by WormApotheote on 3/5/2015
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No, I don't pull the Eater of Names.
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