DecoyJoin Date: 2012-09-11Member: 159037Members, Super Administrators, Playtest Lead, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Silver, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts, Retired Community Developer
edited May 2014
I find it interesting that Hugh really considers it a failure largely in part because it didn't make enough money. However, there weren't many news sites posting about Kodiak. A quick google search of "Natural Selection 2 Kodiak" brought up very few results that aren't from UWE. If you search "Natural Selection 2 Community Development", there's way more results. It's interesting, since the only "PR" we did for the CDT was a single Reddit post on /r/games that Asraniel made as an experiment. From there it got picked up by multiple news sites and spread.
It could definitely be partially because the CDT is more unique and exciting. I just felt like the PR for Kodiak was kind of contained within the bubble of people who already bought NS2. Did you guys know that this website existed purely for Kodiak? Neither did anyone else.
As far as I'm concerned, the Kodiak update was a success. New, official map. New DLC. Couple of bug fixes. Loki is still working on balance for Kodiak, I think some changes will be going in for 267.
The best part about the Kodiak update "failing"? The Community Development Team spawned.
I never liked that map even before it was released as official map. Nice to walk around it and observe the water and vegetation, but as a gameplay map, nah.
That's pretty interesting stuff. First, I think it's good to hear that UWE seems to have made a lot of money out of NS2 in general (correct if I'm wrong, but 10 mio sounds like a lot to me). That means we'll keep getting games from them.
Now, I see why they view Kodiak as a failure. If I were them, I probably would, too. However, I think it's an overall enrichment for the community and the game. (We got a whole new map, we got more custom content integrated into the main game, etc.)
I think the main reason the update was a failure is the small size of the active NS2 community. If you only have about 1000 daily players, only a fraction of them are going to buy the DLC and it is obviously hard to reach 50,000. You might want to say that the Kodiak update came too late to be able to succeed.
I wonder if those 12,000 revenue are with or without Loki's share, though
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
Being objective, and after watching it whole, I need to agree.
Yes the community liked the pack.
Yes we like that more and more community folk are involved.
But it cost more to make then it received in sales. That basicly means you bleed money.
Sales, players etc (from what I got on the vid) did not go up in any meaningful numbers.
I find it interesting that Hugh really considers it a failure largely in part because it didn't make enough money. However, there weren't many news sites posting about Kodiak. A quick google search of "Natural Selection 2 Kodiak" brought up very few results that aren't from UWE. If you search "Natural Selection 2 Community Development", there's way more results. It's interesting, since the only "PR" we did for the CDT was a single Reddit post on /r/games that Asraniel made as an experiment. From there it got picked up by multiple news sites and spread.
It could definitely be partially because the CDT is more unique and exciting. I just felt like the PR for Kodiak was kind of contained within the bubble of people who already bought NS2. Did you guys know that this website existed purely for Kodiak? Neither did anyone else.
As far as I'm concerned, the Kodiak update was a success. New, official map. New DLC. Couple of bug fixes. Loki is still working on balance for Kodiak, I think some changes will be going in for 267.
The best part about the Kodiak update "failing"? The Community Development Team spawned.
These are some of the points I was going to make.
If I'm reading Hugh's presentation right, he's counting $12,566 in gross revenue (before applying any costs), nearly 2100 units of DLC.
The costs are listed on the following slide, which look to be (if someone can read the slide better, please post):
- $1000 'something' spending
- $1000 marketing expenses
- 50% of revenue to Loki
- Varying time input from 5 full-time UWE employees
- Very high time input from Hugh (>LS weeks total)
Meaning UWE netted $4.2k from the DLC release.
So UWE wanted to make $50,000 from this $6 DLC, of which half was going to Loki.
This would require selling 16,000 units of the DLC, disregarding whatever cut Steam takes. And there was ZERO PR behind this DLC launch. No game news sites picked it up, was it even advertised on the main menu in-game? I don't remember seeing it. So the only people that bought it are the ones checking the UWE site for news updates, forum goers, and folks who randomly come across it in the Steam store.
They made 11% of their goal, from these sources alone. Imagine if there was actually some PR behind it?
Granted, after factoring in some of the 'time costs' from the UWE employees, the net revenue is basically nil. I still don't think this is a fair way to review the 'experiment'. Especially when you're comparing it to Gorgeous and Reinforced releases, both of which got huge amounts of marketing.
And the reception of the patch is being judged by reading forum responses? The players that come and post on these forums are the most passionate, most vocal of any that play the game. They're the ones that are going to say "Yes! Great job!" or "WTF, this sucks." The vast majority of players that purchase the DLC will say "This is kinda cool, but I'm not going to make an account on their forums to say so." If you actually wanted some feedback, then you should have included a short 2-3 question survey on the DLC purchase.
I'm not sold that Kodiak was a failure. If UWE had treated it as a 'proof of concept' rather than a major sales attempt, using what they learned to streamline the process for committing community-generated materials into a salable product (ala Dota 2 and CS:GO), I'm pretty sure they would be looking at it in a different light.
Cannon_FodderAUSBrisbane, AUJoin Date: 2013-06-23Member: 185664Members, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
I don't think it was a fail. I guess it depends on your expectations. I brought 2 Kodiak DLC, 1 for me and one for gift. I felt it was a good strategy for UWE to:
1. properly attribute credit to the community's effort for getting fixes and content
2. Try out CDT as an idea, but sanctioned by UWE (I think this is a great move by an Indie that don't have the resources to sustain content and patch)
3. 2. is possible because NS2 has always been a Community input game since its inception.
I think UWE took a chance with the CDT, and also Combat standalone (I hope both will be a great success). I am really looking forward to combat for a quick blast, but have NS2 to fall back on for a more intelligent fps.
Took a chance? They moved on from the game and just allowed ppl to mod on their own. I hope to god we stop hearing of this 'small indie' team, and treat uwe more like a company, not 4 faces.
BeigeAlertTexasJoin Date: 2013-08-08Member: 186657Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester, Pistachionauts
I think you guys are reading too much into the language here. "Failure" doesn't necessarily mean the update was "bad", more like "learning experience".
Soul_RiderMod BeanJoin Date: 2004-06-19Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
One day Hugh will realise he is being too quick at writing off these things as 'failures'. He's still thinking like an accountant, bottom dollar is the be all. This was successful in so many ways that financial doesn't measure.
My only issue is the lack of coverage this received in the gaming press. Only a couple of days before, GorgeCraft had been News'd on RPS, and that was without a press release or anything done. You can guarantee if an email had been sent to the gaming press, they would have been over the kodiak update like a rash.
The journalists on these sites are desperate for news, so much so that they will post about a mod that updates it's news story on ModDB, think how mad they would have gone over this, if only they had been contacted.
They might be looking at it the wrong way, if they sold it at $6 a pop to a tune of $12,000 then it was sold to 2000 players, which is about twice the concurrent users. I'd like to know the stats on the "active" playerbase, IE how many people have played the game in the last month. If they planned to make $50k they were expecting to sell over 8000 DLCs. It was cool DLC but we cannot see skins ourselves this is a 1st person game, only other people can which makes it not as cool as other games skins can be. Even TF2 you get different weapons with different effects. This game is pretty fast paced and there isn't much time to sit and admire skins, and its pretty graphically intense and dark, where in a game like TF2, skins show up much better due to the color/contrast and art style they went with.
I don't think it was a fail. I guess it depends on your expectations. I brought 2 Kodiak DLC, 1 for me and one for gift. I felt it was a good strategy for UWE to:
1. properly attribute credit to the community's effort for getting fixes and content
2. Try out CDT as an idea, but sanctioned by UWE (I think this is a great move by an Indie that don't have the resources to sustain content and patch)
3. 2. is possible because NS2 has always been a Community input game since its inception.
I think UWE took a chance with the CDT, and also Combat standalone (I hope both will be a great success). I am really looking forward to combat for a quick blast, but have NS2 to fall back on for a more intelligent fps.
Just to be clear, KODIAK was community built and supported, but it was not the COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT TEAM as you suggest. While some members of the team were involved with Kodiak, this is an entirely different venture forward.
The key points for me in that video were the profitability (almost zero for UWE) and concurrent steam numbers. 33% drop in concurrent players since kodiak development started, and 7% drop since kodiak was released. I would call that a failure based on those facts alone. Professional development (community team) and adding new content for existing players is cool, but lets not forget about the lifeblood of a game that is concurrent players and business 101.
Kodiak was a great project, developing it was a good decision, it produced a multitude of wonderful outcomes, I am honoured to have been a part of it, and I am proud of those on the team that put it together.
Many posts in this thread appear very upset with me for suggesting otherwise. I did not intend to suggest otherwise. Consider the Microtalks context, and their objectives:
1. Discuss an interesting game development point 2. Practice short form public speaking
Given I am not very good at public speaking, and consequently am keen to practice it, it is understandable that my intended point would be misunderstood in the context of an audience of passionate NS2 players. At the core, the definition of 'failure' many of the posts in this thread adopt is very different to the definition of failure I am using in the talk.
Don't worry @Hugh, I don't think anyone hates you for it we all make mistakes.
Some valid points in here though. Like how it received zero PR. Even the main screen in game is still on Eclipse. I play almost every night and I'm still coming across people who don't even know there's a new map.
Also your financial goal was set way too high for a player base that is so small. Not that you guys shouldn't try and make all this affordable but 50k just isn't realistic from 2000 people who don't even know about it.
I think financially you should view it as a success even if it's not sustainable. If you were to do the same thing with subnautica earlier in the games life I expect a goal like 50k would be a breeze. With that in mind I think I know what you mean be failure not being the right word.
Given I am not very good at public speaking, and consequently am keen to practice it, it is understandable that my intended point would be misunderstood in the context of an audience of passionate NS2 players. At the core, the definition of 'failure' many of the posts in this thread adopt is very different to the definition of failure I am using in the talk.
Tip: dont stand in front of anything which is loved and call it a failure, 'while speaking in general' when u love it yourself. nuances get lost.
this video should probably just be ignored. mostly because it's nonsensical. and a lot of the ideas expressed in this thread are as well.
first of all, what is the actual profit engine we're talking about here? it's a couple of skins. people are saying "of course they didn't sell more units, there wasn't any PR!" but what's the objective? if you're making a new map and an update to the game with features and fixes and releasing it for free, then the objective of that is to increase player base. that's the only thing it can do. if you wanted to leverage that into cold hard cash you should have charged for it. should you charge for a map in ns2? not really, no. but releasing it for free isn't gonna make you more money unless you somehow leverage it into sales of the game itself. if the plan was to use this update with the map and everything as sort of a cross-promotion for the dumb skins dlc then that was just nonsensical.
the costs associated with creating this update / dlc being offset by the dlc sales doesn't make sense. conflating the cost and benefit of the update and the dlc as if they were a single profit-making unit doesn't make sense. first of all, i know for a fact that more effort went into the update than the DLC. they implemented a whole new system (the development for which they basically got for free, of course, but they still had to manage, qa, playtest, integrate, deploy, etc. internally) for skins and shit, added fixes / features (again, no dev cost, but prev. still applies), and coordinated a ton of playtesting on a whole new map (which again they didn't build, but had to coordinate, playtest, integrate, deploy, etc.). now for the actual dlc, all they did was take rant's art and put it on steam. all this involved was like figuring out how steam dlc works i guess. which is probably pretty complicated. but by far the most important thing to note here is that probably 90% of these are one-time costs.
the whole point of the kodiak update was to establish a content pipeline. that's where all of the cost went, and you recoup that cost by utilizing the content pipeline. churn out more dumb skins and try to get people to buy them. was this a good idea? how many skins could one possibly want for models that are always the same? all valid questions, but the whole point of a system like this is that creating skins is cheap. it's probably about $500 of man hours to create and test a skin internally once you've created the whole pipeline for it. this is why skins in cs:go are like a couple of cents a piece at cheapest. obviously they have a larger market, but it also costs them almost nothing to add more skins.
the systems included in kodiak are an investment in the future of NS2. in theory it should introduce a system of microtransactions to help fund future development. trying to recoup the cost of building that whole system with a single skin pack doesn't make sense, and doing PR for some dumb skins doesn't make sense either. do PR for the map and try to get people to play the game.
was it a good investment? not really. honestly i don't expect to see a lot more skin packs, because they aren't a very good fit for NS2. imagine having 50 or even 20 marine or rifle skins to choose from. why would you even want that? anyway, you know what else was an investment in the future of ns2? organized play. if you're gonna give a talk on failure, start there. oh man. it's so obvious that the discussion they had was "how can we give these guys what they want while investing as few resources as possible?" i don't blame them. i've been there, and i've done that. and it almost always turns out how organized play did. useless.
tl;dr: just read the underlined bits. i can't not ramble.
Too many cooks in the kitchen, too many opinions about it. I doubt any one person feels exactly the same about it. Personally, I couldn't say yes or no that it's a failure. I don't reap the benefits of the success of it, nor do I need to take blame for the "failures." I love the map, I think the optional DLC is sweet (bought mine that day), and I get tired of people shrugging it off because they dont want to take the time to learn the damn map. It plays FINE in my experience so far; I have smashed aliens, I have smashed marines.
Given I am not very good at public speaking, and consequently am keen to practice it, it is understandable that my intended point would be misunderstood in the context of an audience of passionate NS2 players. At the core, the definition of 'failure' many of the posts in this thread adopt is very different to the definition of failure I am using in the talk.
Tip: dont stand in front of anything which is loved and call it a failure, 'while speaking in general' when u love it yourself. nuances get lost.
Get over it, dude. The patch was a failure. Anyone with half a brain can see that by watching the video and the data Hugh presented. They invested X amount of time, made $0 profit, and the playerbase continued to drop. That is a failed business investment.
Given I am not very good at public speaking, and consequently am keen to practice it, it is understandable that my intended point would be misunderstood in the context of an audience of passionate NS2 players. At the core, the definition of 'failure' many of the posts in this thread adopt is very different to the definition of failure I am using in the talk.
Tip: dont stand in front of anything which is loved and call it a failure, 'while speaking in general' when u love it yourself. nuances get lost.
Get over it, dude. The patch was a failure. Anyone with half a brain can see that by watching the video and the data Hugh presented. They invested X amount of time, made $0 profit, and the playerbase continued to drop. That is a failed business investment.
Get over it, dude. The patch was a failure. Anyone with half a brain can see that by watching the video and the data Hugh presented. They invested X amount of time, made $0 profit, and the playerbase continued to drop. That is a failed business investment.
Sometimes you have to make a loss or break even in order to set up a profitable platform.
Game updates cost money, and need to make a certain amount back to be worth the time investment, especially for a small team. "Failure" is a tough word that elicits a strong emotional response for people who feel personally invested in the project, some of which we've already seen in this thread. Any other game developer would simply have had this meeting internally and never breathe a word of it to the public.
Kodiak - While I personally have spent about 10 minutes playing it. It's a completely bad map. But hey it looks good. My mate who has 250 hours of ns2 and doesn't play competitively hates this map so much.
Why the patch was a failure;
- Kodiak offered nothing to the competitive community
- The map is bad, the FPS on the map is bad.
- Skins were bad, Hardly noticable while playing.
- Bugs were left unattended yet again (and new ones introduced?? forgotten now)
UWE need someone who has real experience in advertising, PR & Problem solving. They had Jambi a solid map, a well played & fair map. A map that should be a official map. But because it's not pretty enough gets screwed.
UWE need someone with the ability to make the harsh decisions & not afraid of being the bad guy.
The skins failed because there was no advertising. I only play this game for Matches & Scrims so I literally had no clue about them & I was unwilling to give any donations to UWE due to there recent poor form of updates.
Maybe UWE should look at how CSGO run there skins/content pipeline and actually brainstorm ways to improve there profits. Once again 50% of the community was left with a half assed foul taste in there mouth.
Why would I buy armor skins when I can't see them on myself? Gun skins only.
One day Hugh will realise he is being too quick at writing off these things as 'failures'. He's still thinking like an accountant, bottom dollar is the be all. This was successful in so many ways that financial doesn't measure.
Oh, financial matters a great deal when running a company and needing to keep everyone employed. Unfortunately, when undertaking a large task that involves company time and money, such as the Kodiak update, it really has to be with the intention to make it profitable. A nice side effect is to generate good will among the community, etc., but at the end of the day we can't run a company on good will. An increase in sales and an increase in playerbase are the measures for success of any product we put out.
My only issue is the lack of coverage this received in the gaming press. Only a couple of days before, GorgeCraft had been News'd on RPS, and that was without a press release or anything done. You can guarantee if an email had been sent to the gaming press, they would have been over the kodiak update like a rash. The journalists on these sites are desperate for news, so much so that they will post about a mod that updates it's news story on ModDB, think how mad they would have gone over this, if only they had been contacted.
It is an odd assumption to make that Hugh would not send out an email regarding the Kodiak update to the press. You really think he put all that effort into the trailer, into all the news writeups and overseeing the promotional assets, etc., and yet somehow neglected to send out emails to the press? Of course he blasted the Kodiak release out to whoever would listen. Unfortunately, we are no longer "sexy" news. NS2 has been out for over a year and a half, it doesn't have a huge gaming population, and there are a constant stream of new games coming out every day, so unfortunately the press are not going to be falling all over themselves to report on a DLC and map update.
Anyway, not singling you out Soul_Rider, just using your post as example of a lot of similar posts in this thread that seem to indicate that we didn't bother to do PR for the update or something.
JektJoin Date: 2012-02-05Member: 143714Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
edited May 2014
Regardless of what people think of the map, since in my experience everyone seems to write off new NS2 maps without reason anyway. I think the skins implementation was actually a successful trial. I see them all over the place. I bought them. I would buy more of them.
Can't make profit off of micro DLC sales when 500 people play the game though. With such a small pool of potential buyers and considering UWE was still paying so much for updates at that point a sustainable return was never going to happen.
More implemented cosmetics via the @NS2CDT might make some money here and there, but it almost seems like a waste of effort without making the game available to everyone. If all the funding of the Eclipse and Kodiak updates went into setting up a free to play model I wonder where we would be now?
I just don't think new official maps are even wanted anymore. Or were wanted at all past biodome. Or even bring in new players to begin with. Looking at the gorgeous changelog right now, and I can tell you it wasn't descent that spiked the playerbase graph.
Can't make profit off of micro DLC sales when 500 people play the game though. If all the funding of the Eclipse and Kodiak updates went into setting up a free to play model .. Well I'm just speculating I guess, and it would of been a huge task for UWE.
Pretty much this.
But it wouldn't help bringing people into the game from the F2P side of things until the game is playable on your typical F2P machine.
Comments
It could definitely be partially because the CDT is more unique and exciting. I just felt like the PR for Kodiak was kind of contained within the bubble of people who already bought NS2. Did you guys know that this website existed purely for Kodiak? Neither did anyone else.
As far as I'm concerned, the Kodiak update was a success. New, official map. New DLC. Couple of bug fixes. Loki is still working on balance for Kodiak, I think some changes will be going in for 267.
The best part about the Kodiak update "failing"? The Community Development Team spawned.
Now, I see why they view Kodiak as a failure. If I were them, I probably would, too. However, I think it's an overall enrichment for the community and the game. (We got a whole new map, we got more custom content integrated into the main game, etc.)
I think the main reason the update was a failure is the small size of the active NS2 community. If you only have about 1000 daily players, only a fraction of them are going to buy the DLC and it is obviously hard to reach 50,000. You might want to say that the Kodiak update came too late to be able to succeed.
I wonder if those 12,000 revenue are with or without Loki's share, though
Yes the community liked the pack.
Yes we like that more and more community folk are involved.
But it cost more to make then it received in sales. That basicly means you bleed money.
Sales, players etc (from what I got on the vid) did not go up in any meaningful numbers.
These are some of the points I was going to make.
If I'm reading Hugh's presentation right, he's counting $12,566 in gross revenue (before applying any costs), nearly 2100 units of DLC.
The costs are listed on the following slide, which look to be (if someone can read the slide better, please post):
- $1000 'something' spending
- $1000 marketing expenses
- 50% of revenue to Loki
- Varying time input from 5 full-time UWE employees
- Very high time input from Hugh (>LS weeks total)
Meaning UWE netted $4.2k from the DLC release.
So UWE wanted to make $50,000 from this $6 DLC, of which half was going to Loki.
This would require selling 16,000 units of the DLC, disregarding whatever cut Steam takes. And there was ZERO PR behind this DLC launch. No game news sites picked it up, was it even advertised on the main menu in-game? I don't remember seeing it. So the only people that bought it are the ones checking the UWE site for news updates, forum goers, and folks who randomly come across it in the Steam store.
They made 11% of their goal, from these sources alone. Imagine if there was actually some PR behind it?
Granted, after factoring in some of the 'time costs' from the UWE employees, the net revenue is basically nil. I still don't think this is a fair way to review the 'experiment'. Especially when you're comparing it to Gorgeous and Reinforced releases, both of which got huge amounts of marketing.
And the reception of the patch is being judged by reading forum responses? The players that come and post on these forums are the most passionate, most vocal of any that play the game. They're the ones that are going to say "Yes! Great job!" or "WTF, this sucks." The vast majority of players that purchase the DLC will say "This is kinda cool, but I'm not going to make an account on their forums to say so." If you actually wanted some feedback, then you should have included a short 2-3 question survey on the DLC purchase.
I'm not sold that Kodiak was a failure. If UWE had treated it as a 'proof of concept' rather than a major sales attempt, using what they learned to streamline the process for committing community-generated materials into a salable product (ala Dota 2 and CS:GO), I'm pretty sure they would be looking at it in a different light.
1. properly attribute credit to the community's effort for getting fixes and content
2. Try out CDT as an idea, but sanctioned by UWE (I think this is a great move by an Indie that don't have the resources to sustain content and patch)
3. 2. is possible because NS2 has always been a Community input game since its inception.
I think UWE took a chance with the CDT, and also Combat standalone (I hope both will be a great success). I am really looking forward to combat for a quick blast, but have NS2 to fall back on for a more intelligent fps.
The only truth here:
And i would like to add:
$ for loki.
My only issue is the lack of coverage this received in the gaming press. Only a couple of days before, GorgeCraft had been News'd on RPS, and that was without a press release or anything done. You can guarantee if an email had been sent to the gaming press, they would have been over the kodiak update like a rash.
The journalists on these sites are desperate for news, so much so that they will post about a mod that updates it's news story on ModDB, think how mad they would have gone over this, if only they had been contacted.
Just to be clear, KODIAK was community built and supported, but it was not the COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT TEAM as you suggest. While some members of the team were involved with Kodiak, this is an entirely different venture forward.
Many posts in this thread appear very upset with me for suggesting otherwise. I did not intend to suggest otherwise. Consider the Microtalks context, and their objectives:
1. Discuss an interesting game development point
2. Practice short form public speaking
Given I am not very good at public speaking, and consequently am keen to practice it, it is understandable that my intended point would be misunderstood in the context of an audience of passionate NS2 players. At the core, the definition of 'failure' many of the posts in this thread adopt is very different to the definition of failure I am using in the talk.
Some valid points in here though. Like how it received zero PR. Even the main screen in game is still on Eclipse. I play almost every night and I'm still coming across people who don't even know there's a new map.
Also your financial goal was set way too high for a player base that is so small. Not that you guys shouldn't try and make all this affordable but 50k just isn't realistic from 2000 people who don't even know about it.
I think financially you should view it as a success even if it's not sustainable. If you were to do the same thing with subnautica earlier in the games life I expect a goal like 50k would be a breeze. With that in mind I think I know what you mean be failure not being the right word.
Tip: dont stand in front of anything which is loved and call it a failure, 'while speaking in general' when u love it yourself. nuances get lost.
first of all, what is the actual profit engine we're talking about here? it's a couple of skins. people are saying "of course they didn't sell more units, there wasn't any PR!" but what's the objective? if you're making a new map and an update to the game with features and fixes and releasing it for free, then the objective of that is to increase player base. that's the only thing it can do. if you wanted to leverage that into cold hard cash you should have charged for it. should you charge for a map in ns2? not really, no. but releasing it for free isn't gonna make you more money unless you somehow leverage it into sales of the game itself. if the plan was to use this update with the map and everything as sort of a cross-promotion for the dumb skins dlc then that was just nonsensical.
the costs associated with creating this update / dlc being offset by the dlc sales doesn't make sense. conflating the cost and benefit of the update and the dlc as if they were a single profit-making unit doesn't make sense. first of all, i know for a fact that more effort went into the update than the DLC. they implemented a whole new system (the development for which they basically got for free, of course, but they still had to manage, qa, playtest, integrate, deploy, etc. internally) for skins and shit, added fixes / features (again, no dev cost, but prev. still applies), and coordinated a ton of playtesting on a whole new map (which again they didn't build, but had to coordinate, playtest, integrate, deploy, etc.). now for the actual dlc, all they did was take rant's art and put it on steam. all this involved was like figuring out how steam dlc works i guess. which is probably pretty complicated. but by far the most important thing to note here is that probably 90% of these are one-time costs.
the whole point of the kodiak update was to establish a content pipeline. that's where all of the cost went, and you recoup that cost by utilizing the content pipeline. churn out more dumb skins and try to get people to buy them. was this a good idea? how many skins could one possibly want for models that are always the same? all valid questions, but the whole point of a system like this is that creating skins is cheap. it's probably about $500 of man hours to create and test a skin internally once you've created the whole pipeline for it. this is why skins in cs:go are like a couple of cents a piece at cheapest. obviously they have a larger market, but it also costs them almost nothing to add more skins.
the systems included in kodiak are an investment in the future of NS2. in theory it should introduce a system of microtransactions to help fund future development. trying to recoup the cost of building that whole system with a single skin pack doesn't make sense, and doing PR for some dumb skins doesn't make sense either. do PR for the map and try to get people to play the game.
was it a good investment? not really. honestly i don't expect to see a lot more skin packs, because they aren't a very good fit for NS2. imagine having 50 or even 20 marine or rifle skins to choose from. why would you even want that? anyway, you know what else was an investment in the future of ns2? organized play. if you're gonna give a talk on failure, start there. oh man. it's so obvious that the discussion they had was "how can we give these guys what they want while investing as few resources as possible?" i don't blame them. i've been there, and i've done that. and it almost always turns out how organized play did. useless.
tl;dr: just read the underlined bits. i can't not ramble.
That said, I want moar. MOAR.
Get over it, dude. The patch was a failure. Anyone with half a brain can see that by watching the video and the data Hugh presented. They invested X amount of time, made $0 profit, and the playerbase continued to drop. That is a failed business investment.
my point was that 'nuances get lost'.
Sometimes you have to make a loss or break even in order to set up a profitable platform.
Why the patch was a failure;
- Kodiak offered nothing to the competitive community
- The map is bad, the FPS on the map is bad.
- Skins were bad, Hardly noticable while playing.
- Bugs were left unattended yet again (and new ones introduced?? forgotten now)
UWE need someone who has real experience in advertising, PR & Problem solving. They had Jambi a solid map, a well played & fair map. A map that should be a official map. But because it's not pretty enough gets screwed.
UWE need someone with the ability to make the harsh decisions & not afraid of being the bad guy.
The skins failed because there was no advertising. I only play this game for Matches & Scrims so I literally had no clue about them & I was unwilling to give any donations to UWE due to there recent poor form of updates.
Maybe UWE should look at how CSGO run there skins/content pipeline and actually brainstorm ways to improve there profits. Once again 50% of the community was left with a half assed foul taste in there mouth.
Why would I buy armor skins when I can't see them on myself? Gun skins only.
Deadlines: None.
Cost: None.
Expectations: Clearly Set.
Goodies: All of them.
Profit: Technically 100%.
It is an odd assumption to make that Hugh would not send out an email regarding the Kodiak update to the press. You really think he put all that effort into the trailer, into all the news writeups and overseeing the promotional assets, etc., and yet somehow neglected to send out emails to the press? Of course he blasted the Kodiak release out to whoever would listen. Unfortunately, we are no longer "sexy" news. NS2 has been out for over a year and a half, it doesn't have a huge gaming population, and there are a constant stream of new games coming out every day, so unfortunately the press are not going to be falling all over themselves to report on a DLC and map update.
Anyway, not singling you out Soul_Rider, just using your post as example of a lot of similar posts in this thread that seem to indicate that we didn't bother to do PR for the update or something.
Can't make profit off of micro DLC sales when 500 people play the game though. With such a small pool of potential buyers and considering UWE was still paying so much for updates at that point a sustainable return was never going to happen.
More implemented cosmetics via the @NS2CDT might make some money here and there, but it almost seems like a waste of effort without making the game available to everyone. If all the funding of the Eclipse and Kodiak updates went into setting up a free to play model I wonder where we would be now?
I just don't think new official maps are even wanted anymore. Or were wanted at all past biodome. Or even bring in new players to begin with. Looking at the gorgeous changelog right now, and I can tell you it wasn't descent that spiked the playerbase graph.
Sorry lots of edits. Touchy subject.
Pretty much this.
But it wouldn't help bringing people into the game from the F2P side of things until the game is playable on your typical F2P machine.
But still, I would have thought it smart to invest in the system rather than in that one pack...