Hi everyone,
We got a number of questions directed to Alexander the Developer on our Steam forum, so we decided to follow them up with some answers. Since Alexander himself will delve into philosophy, postmodernism and Keynesian economics in his response, we'd better start off with news about the upcoming update.
At the moment we're working on the hiring UI, and in case with this engine it means changing some part of the groundwork without dismantling the house. Why we decided to change the UI is another story — we'll try to get to it in a separate post. The basic idea is to move a part of the hiring from sites into the garrison, plus add unique garrison fortresses for provinces, which will enable hiring of special units. By the way, we already have two new units of the highest rank — right now we're balancing them out.
Now to your questions, asked in this thread.
It should be noted that Alexander is extremely happy with the warmest community's response to his in-game message. Over the summer the game's rating went up from 56% to 83%! Such rating growth and very kind words do wonders to our morale. For this we thank you very much! On the other hand, a higher rating didn't really help with the game's sales...
Seven dollars. This is how much the project Eador. Imperium managed to earn on Steam on the 18th of September. And after Valve's share and taxes, it's even less than that.
This level of sales would means that either a person with a salary of 200 dollars a month will work on the game from this point (a person nearly impossible to find), or the project's support is slowly put on hold.
So these are the options for now. How did we end up here? Let's reflect on this a little bit.
Our tournament's winner speedyappraisals: «I am confounded as to why this game has not sold more. Perhaps marketing, I don't know because for game play and strategy I have yet to see a game that comes close.»
So there are different kind of marketing. For example, product marketing. We develop a game for some specific audience, and the game basically sells itself. Our sales tell us that either our audience didn't really like our game (not reflected by the current Steam rating), or this audience is just too small. Or something went wrong with another type of marketing — promotion.
This is mostly about showing the complete product to the largest possible number of people. Luck and money are key factors here. You need a good budget to work with YouTube "influencers" — this implies a variety of possible cooperation. Or maybe you created a meme game, and the Internet will do the rest for you.
As a game, Eador is not really funny and can't produce much hype. It's quite slow, looks like Heroes of Might & Magic on screenshots, but is very different gameplay-wise. Of course, the project also had stability problems — this is the part where we complain about the game's ancient engine we inherited and the old team's management blunder.
Returning to our two options. To be honest, we don't have a definite answer at this moment. Not sure what the best way to go about this is. So for the nearest future, we don't plan any immediate changes in the support plan for the game — while we still can pay the bills. However, the decision will have to be made at some point.
If we are to stick with Eador in the future, maybe in the form of a new a completely reworked game — how do you imagine it to be? More of HoMM, more of Civilization or Crusader Kings, perhaps? Let us know.