DanSez wrote:Well guys, I hope not to bring ire down on my head but I'm concerned the avid historian love of the European Battlefield that exist here (and in parts of my heart too) will continue to make these games a niche appeal/small market game. - not too much excitement at Paradox over a Napolean Campaign, heck guys (and gals) 90% of the Paradox fan base couldn't tell you three battles that occured in that whole time span even if you spot them Trafalgar and Waterloo... seriously.
The call for a 30yrs War - again, same niche, same elements, same small market. For the good of the AGEOD and this community I would hope they would learn from the success and mistakes of the RUS experience and tackle another under represented market - the Chinese Warlords, or Latin American wars of liberation, which can be a whole series of games (time periods) and might tap into a new and growing market for customers.
Please don't hate on me - I have many of the AGEOD titles and love the games, but either tackle a new bigger campaign linked battle histor of the American Civil War, a South American Liberation War series, or do the Chinese Warlord history - staying in the Euro zone is comfortable and interesting - to those of us gathered here right now, but you need to grow to survive. Paradox is eating up your main title effort already. If your 2nd team game goes the way of Rise of Prussia (again same area/zone), there may not be a 2nd team AGEOD game developed next time.
I think you are at the same time right and wrong
Let's take a step back and analyze Ageod's track.
- They made a small niche game, BoA, that was well received and showed much promise.
- Then they made their blockbuster, AACW. Probably to this day the only real success in terms of sells. It is deserved. Almost everything is right, specially the map size, command and control, forces structure, leaders, etc. Almost for sure this game's success is partly due to the theme - the ACW has lots of fans, both in Europe and specially USA.
- Then what I think was the biggest mistake for Ageod: NCP. It was a flop. Not because the theme is not popular, far from it. But the lack of a grand campaign, coupled with design flaws - the map region's size was not well suited for the manouevering that the small campaigns pretended to depict (Waterloo campaign was almost a joke); unnecessary features like the military options and "new" replacement scheme; and the lack of the level of support that AACW had, contributed for a failure. It should have not been released.
- Then came WiA and RoP. Good games, but niche games. A fraction of potential customers, in comparison with AACW and NCP, that ensured that even if the games were great (and they are) they would never sell much.
- Then RuS. Again an "obscure" war, and made by volunteers that started a war among themselves shortly after the game was released, which did not help at all (the consequences of which are still being felt today)
- Then PoN. Again, probably a big mistake, and I am afraid, a design and technical one, IMHO: The game has no real "focus" and feel; economics do not make much sense, and diplomacy fails to deliver the promises of alliances and backstabbing of European policy of the time; colonization is not simple to compreehend, and the region size and lack of complex forces organization make the military aspect of the game lacking. And technically, it was a big mistake to release a game that forces the players, in 2012, to wait 5 minutes or more for turn resolution. The engine was simply not optimized. The reasons are compreensible, but in a way self-fulfilling: the team is small, the resources are few, it was not possible to make more, the game is delivered and is a partial flop, which compounds the team problems. And it was probably only released at all because Paradox bought Ageod in the meantime.
And now what ?
- NCP2, parting radically with the Age engine; enough has already been said, I keep my hopes (not very high), let's see
- And a new Age engine game. But which time period or conflict will be represented ? If they persist on obscure wars, like, yes, the 30 years war (I doubt that more than 10% of the players of Paradox games even know that this war existed), failure is certain. China, South America ? No, my friends, that's not where the market is. Chinese and south american players do not buy games, and the american and european markets do not care about those conflicts.
No, I am afraid that if Ageod (or Paradox France) is to succeed, the next Age engine game MUST depict one of the sure-fire, blockbuster conflicts: Yes, WW2, Ancient Rome, Alexander, Japan or maybe Medieval Europe. Anything else will be a (partial or full) flop and will only result in the fulfilling of the self-made promise of the failure of the Age-engine.
Probably such game should have been made earlier. Why, instead of NCP or after that, they did not make a North Africa campaign game, for instance ?: A well known and "romantic" conflict (if such thing exists); 2 main opponents for the majority of time. Planes and ships could be simplified as was made in RuS. Then they could have had a second blockbuster, and things could have been very different.
Still hoping for the best, though...
(To convince PX)
