Slitherine/Matrix

[Martok]

This week's Tea Time vid primarily talks talks about Distant Worlds 2 and the Master of Magic remake: 

I know I've already said it, but I've been pleasantly surprised by the effort they've been putting forward in promoting DW2 lately.  I still wish they'd done more *sooner*, but better late that never.  Fingers crossed they do a decent job promoting the MoM remake as well. 

It'll be interesting to see if it's enough to make a difference this time around, as DW:U never got the attention it deserved. 




Speaking of Distant Worlds: Universe, I noticed something astonishing:  It appears that Slitherine has actually enacted a permanent price drop (to $29.99 USD) for DW:U across all platforms -- Steam, GOG, their own storefront, etc.  I immediately can't help but wonder if this indicates a possible major shift in their pricing policies, or if it's just a one-off (due to DW2 being released in a couple weeks).   

[Martok]

I probably should have posted the other editorial in this thread as well (instead of the DW2 thread), but Marco wrote another another piece in this week's newsletter.  Some interesting insights on Distant Worlds 2, and how it's informed their development of other games -- especially (and most immediately) Starship Troopers: Terran Command.  (I didn't realize the latter was on pace to become even bigger than DW2 -- far bigger. ) 


https://www.slitherine.com/news/fixing-and-fighting

Distant Worlds 2 Post-release

Post-release can be insane at times. When we launch a title like Distant Worlds 2 we have to take into account that the unforeseeable can happen. No matter how long the game has been in beta, when a game goes out to thousands of players the odds of something not working as planned are always there. CodeForce is working literally around the clock to fix some of the most annoying bugs that came up just after launch, but releasing patches and updates can also take more time than expected. All these fixes have to be tested on multiple machines as they’re likely to open more issues than they solve. It’s a constant race against time.

Starship Troopers: Terran Command

To partially avoid all that (you can never avoid it entirely), we have decided to postpone Starship Troopers: Terran Command. The game has well over a quarter-million wishlists on Steam. It’s by far the most anticipated game we’ve ever had, and while there’s a lot of excitement for what could be a breakthrough title for the Artistocrats and Slitherine, there is also the concern that everything has to be executed as best as we can. The June 16h release date is set in stone now, and we look forward to bringing Starship Troopers to market after all these years in development.

Hard decisions

Delaying a game is never great, we know. There are multiple reasons for that: players are disappointed, developers have to make hard budgetary decisions, expectations aren’t met, the list goes on. Nevertheless, the long-term effects of a bad release are far worst and we need to take that into account when making these hard decisions. It’s never a light-hearted, easy-going conversation.

Other cool releases before June 16th

We’re lucky enough that while waiting on June 16th, there are plenty of other cool releases to fill the hunger for strategy games. So, while Distant Worlds 2 goes on to become our best-selling game ever in its first month of release, we accept that some things went wrong and we’ll work hard to fix all the bugs.

And we also make sure that we learn the lessons for future releases.

[Undercovergeek]

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