Age of Decadence Goodness is Back

All you VD interviewers, how about asking him some questions not directly related to AoD?

For example, what are the chances of a hard SF cRPG if AoD is a success?

Or what about the chances of future releases (if any) being ad-funded? Considering the puny development costs and practically free bandwidth vs. physical publishing and copy protection, it - at least superficially - seems it ought to be possible to avoid the piracy issue & perhaps reach a wider audience by making the game gratis for the end user. I'd love to hear a professional advertising guy's thoughts on that.

EDIT: By the way, VD, lots of balls? I thought this was No Mutants Allowed :D
 
I think Vince has stated before any future projects are just speculation until AoD is out and succeeds. This isn't like "what's next" for a game company, and even AAA companies you usually don't ask what's next until the game's out.

That said, Vince has listed some game ideas for the next project for Iron Tower itself, namely:

a) AoD sequel, set either on a different continent and exploring the Qantari culture or in the "wasteland", exploring uncivilized societies - barbarians, nomads, scavengers, etc.

b) AoD party-based dungeon crawler - we have a decent combat engine, might as well put it to good use.

c) the colony ship game

d) a sci-fi prison game where the goal is to survive and escape.

He's also talked about projects Iron Tower will support if AoD succeeds, including "an interesting sci-fi game" and "Something evil this way comes..."

I guess we'll have to wait until AoD is out to find out what's up, really.
 
Thanks BN, that was pretty informative, all things considered.

I realise future releases from IT are purely speculative, but.. Damn it, VD keeps raving about all the shit I want & find strangely absent in all the games I buy. Can't blame me for wanting him to make a few dozen in the next month or two :D

It's also why I'd like to hear his thoughts on ad-based titles. I'm not altogether convinced piracy is a bad thing if it can force the games industry to adopt a functional & non-customer-abusive business model, but if ever there was a dev house I didn't want to see sacrificed on that particular alter, it's IT.

The SF ideas both sound appealing, but they'd be much more so with an emphasis on science. Mysteries with solutions a la Niven's Patchwork Girl, or a world where shit behaves as you'd expect, would be brilliant.
 
I remember him talking about the colony ship game, the concept sounded SO cool, way cooler than AoD. Which makes me think AoD will be even better than it looks...
 
You could do as I do and send a batch of questions first, and then another batch, and then maybe another one finish the thing.
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Yeah, it was considered, not sure why I didn't act on it.

As BN says, AoD appears to have several things lined up as candidates vying to be IT's next project, provided AoD actually sells. He seemed to even mention the possibility of a second team at one point, since you know, they wouldn't have to pay for an extra project. Woudl be nice to see.

The colony ship game would be cool indeed.
 
Tigranes said:
He seemed to even mention the possibility of a second team at one point, since you know, they wouldn't have to pay for an extra project. Woudl be nice to see.
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I think it's more of a time-schedule thing.

One of the few sensible things Molyneux has said these past few years was that gaming should start thinking about the film model of production. Instead of a 100-person crew working on it for years, you have a dozen-person crew working out all the details and vision for a couple of years and then they're joined by a genormous team of 100-200 people who finish the game in a few months.

ITS has the same thing basically. I mean, when Vince is working on the basic design of his second project, what're the artists and programmers supposed to do? I think the idea of the second team is that they work on the basic design now so if AoD is a hit (which is guaranteed since Morbus will personally buy 10,000 copies) the programmers and artists slide over to team 2 while Vince sits in a dark corner sulking...uh...writing the next game.

M said:
I remember him talking about the colony ship game, the concept sounded SO cool, way cooler than AoD. Which makes me think AoD will be even better than it looks...
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Stop slobbering all over mah forum, fanboy.
 
Brother None said:
One of the few sensible things Molyneux has said these past few years [...]
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That's rather startling. I've never heard of a projects based business that didn't operate like that. Perhaps there's a market for a dev house oriented management firm?
Brother None said:
Stop slobbering all over mah forum, fanboy.
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Stop posting interviews with interesting developers all over your forum, Bansheeboy :P
 
Disconnected said:
All you VD interviewers, how about asking him some questions not directly related to AoD?

For example, what are the chances of a hard SF cRPG if AoD is a success?
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How does 95% sound to you?

Or what about the chances of future releases (if any) being ad-funded?
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About zero.

I'd love to hear a professional advertising guy's thoughts on that.
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I don't like it.

Nothing good would come from shifting the focus from making the best possible games to get more sales to selling more ads to make more money. The next logical step would be targeting more people (i.e. making games more appealing to the casual market), so that we can sell more ads.

In the ad world what matters the most is how many people you reach. It doesn't really matter how good your "ad delivery vehicle" is, what's important is the magic number.

For awhile the company where I work was able to offer only 3.2 mil people. It's not a lot, not if you want to be in a serious ad business. We couldn't get a lot of grade A clients. That drove us to expand aggressively, just so we can get our hands on that top advertising buck. Now we do 12 mil. The quality suffers, but we are swimming in ad money.

The moral of this story is clear, I hope.

I'm not altogether convinced piracy is a bad thing if it can force the games industry to adopt a functional & non-customer-abusive business model...
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There is no such thing, unfortunately.

People pirate games because they can do it easily and because not paying for something is always better than paying for something. It's not a statement or protest against DRMs, high prices, or dumbed down games. The prices aren't high, btw. Games cost as much as they did 15 years ago, while gas, food, rent, even books have gone way up.

Piracy is a bad thing simply because it makes life harder for honest, paying customers. They have to deal with limited installs, online activations, validations, and other crap. Ad-funded games won't fix this problem; they will create a different, probably much worse problem instead.
 
VDweller said:
I'm not altogether convinced piracy is a bad thing if it can force the games industry to adopt a functional & non-customer-abusive business model...
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There is no such thing, unfortunately.
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For anyone who, erm, "trusts" the good judgement of the gaming industry, here:
EA: Second-hand sales are a "critical situation"
"I'd actually make the point that for us second-hand sales is a very critical situation, because people are selling multiple times intellectual property," said Jens Uwe Intat, senior VP and general manager for European publishing at EA, speaking exclusively to GamesIndustry.biz.

"What we're trying to do is build business models that are more and more online-supported with additional services and additional content that you get online. So people will see the value in not just getting that physical disc to play at home alone, but actually playing those games online and paying for them."

That's right. No more offline gaming because EA hates it when they don't make money off of second-hand sales.

I sympathise from a basic business standpoint, but honestly guys man the fuck up, if the industry is so shitty that it has to take an aggressive stance against second-hand sales, then I think it's fairly safe to say the industry is the problem, not the second-hand sales.
 
Out of curiosity since VDweller is answering question, will there be a demo? I ask this since I refuse to buy games now a days without a demo since I have no clue if the game will run decently (or at all) on my PC.

On a side note, will the game be available in stores, by download only or some other distribution method? I ask because unless there is some method to play/install the game without the need for internet I'm not going to buy it. I have no problem with digital distribution if I can burn the installation files to a disk but making the game need to contact the internet is a no go.

I know I'm picky, but as of now most of my gaming involves decade old games where most of the companies are long out of business. So even if the quality is there I will not pay top dollar for a game that I cannot play years from now. Sorry to go off on a tangent, but the game looks good and I'd like to be able to make the purchase if or when the game runs on my PC (also, I understand if it's too early int he game for these types of decisions to have been made or even thought about).
 
Matt K said:
Out of curiosity since VDweller is answering question, will there be a demo? I ask this since I refuse to buy games now a days without a demo since I have no clue if the game will run decently (or at all) on my PC.
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It's a shareware game, Matt. You download it, play it for a bit, then decide if it's worthy of your money. The best way to treat customers, imo.

On a side note, will the game be available in stores, by download only or some other distribution method? I ask because unless there is some method to play/install the game without the need for internet I'm not going to buy it. I have no problem with digital distribution if I can burn the installation files to a disk but making the game need to contact the internet is a no go.
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If you get the game online, you'll need the internet twice: to download the game and to pay for it. Then it's all yours, forever and ever.

Alternatively, you can also mail us a payment and we'll mail you a boxed edition, bypassing the internet completely. Some publishers have shown an interest to AoD, but I'm not overly crazy about that, so it's too early to say if the game would be available in stores.

Sorry to go off on a tangent, but the game looks good and I'd like to be able to make the purchase if or when the game runs on my PC (also, I understand if it's too early int he game for these types of decisions to have been made or even thought about).
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Understandable. As for the specs, Pentium III 1000 and 512 MB RAM will do the job.
 
VDweller said:
Understandable. As for the specs, Pentium III 1000 and 512 MB RAM will do the job.
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wtf is up with those high-end specs?!

Trying to please the graphic kiddies, eh, Vince D. Weller OR SHOULD I SAY PETE HINES.
 
Brother None said:
VDweller said:
Understandable. As for the specs, Pentium III 1000 and 512 MB RAM will do the job.
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wtf is up with those high-end specs?!

Trying to please the graphic kiddies, eh, Vince D. Weller OR SHOULD I SAY PETE HINES.
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If I remember correctly, the relatively high amount of required RAM (many people will complain) is due to lots of scripts and gameplay and RPG goodness. So it's not for graphics. At least not for the most part of it.

Am I right?
 
Thanks for the reply VDweller and the link Brother None. I'll definitely be giving this game a shot and hopefully others will as well.
 
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