Inferior to CMBB

[76mm]

Not to be pedantic (OK, I'm being a little pedantic!), but before you put it in your sig, I'd correct artesian (involving, relating to, or supplied by the upward movement of water under hydrostatic pressure in rocks or unconsolidated material beneath the earth's surface) to artisanal (pertaining to or noting a high-quality or distinctive product made in small quantities, usually by hand or using traditional methods).

[AttorneyAtWar]

People don't seem to realize that if BFC really followed everybody's sage business advice that logic would dictate that they abandon CM altogether and turn their attention to making Manga comic book inspired video games for the Japanese iphone market. I'd say let sleeping dogs lie and be happy you're getting what they're giving you. Because you probably wouldn't much like the alternative (though million of Japanese twelve year olds would be pleased)  .

 

BRILLIANT MIKEYD!

 

 

Oh man were going to make a fortune!

 

Just wait until we have fully modeled crews...and cutscenes, Combat Mission will never be the same! We'll take the Japanese mobile market by storm, we'll start on OS and branch out to PC.

 

*Ill split the money we make off of this with MikeyD 50/50, he did inspire it after all.

Edited June 1, 2015 by Raptorx7

[womble]

Not to be pedantic (OK, I'm being a little pedantic!), but before you put it in your sig, I'd correct artesian (involving, relating to, or supplied by the upward movement of water under hydrostatic pressure in rocks or unconsolidated material beneath the earth's surface) to artisanal (pertaining to or noting a high-quality or distinctive product made in small quantities, usually by hand or using traditional methods).

Though there's something appealing about the idea of a flooding well of pizza....

 

Pedantic is good. The whole game is based on pedantry.

[76mm]

Also, honestly I'm not sure if I would buy into the conclusion that Dominos pizza  (CMBB) = bad and artisanal pizza (CMRT) = good.  

• Dominos pizza--cheap, quick, and good enough for most circumstances;
• Artisanal pizza--expensive, slow, and with added features (smoked sea salt, wild game sausage) which sound enticing but that are of little real advantage to most people most of the time.

I guess the obvious conclusion is that there are Dominos pizza (CMBB) people and artisanal pizza (CMRT) people and that neither is right/wrong, they are just looking for different things.

[sburke]

That's what I get for replying from my iPhone.  Can barely see to type and correcting is a royal pain.  Oh wait yeah a flood of pizza, that's what I meant! 

[sburke]

Also, honestly I'm not sure if I would buy into the conclusion that Dominos pizza  (CMBB) = bad and artisanal pizza (CMRT) = good.  

• Dominos pizza--cheap, quick, and good enough for most circumstances;
• Artisanal pizza--expensive, slow, and with added features (smoked sea salt, wild game sausage) which sound enticing but that are of little real advantage to most people most of the time.

I guess the obvious conclusion is that there are Dominos pizza (CMBB) people and artisanal pizza (CMRT) people and that neither is right/wrong, they are just looking for different things.

Wait that sounds familiar... where did I hear something like that before- oh yeah on post 8 of this thread.  Great minds think alike, what that has to do with us I have no idea.

[slysniper]

Well, I will just point out again. That CMx2 really came out of the CMx1 fan base request. Years and years and years of it.

Every time BFC did a new game, we had these threads that popped up with the wish list of what the players wanted CM games to be.

So low and behold BF went about making a new system with many of them request addressed into the design.

We get CMx2 and as we all know what then happened. The starting of the wailing and gnashing of teeth begins - the sad thing is, much of it from the same players who had made the request for just that type of game to begin with.

Thank goodness for us that BF ignored the whines and pushed on with the design until we have found ourselves where we are today.

Its a great game.

But again if they do ever go onto a CMx3 type system, I still think it needs to be a drastic design concept change instead of a similar product all designed again in a new engine and different graphics.

I think of the old Panzer Leader and Panzer Blitz games and the scale of them battles and think placing them in a 3D game design would be a amazing trick and would be a successful new adventure. Plus maneuvering battles would become much more of a event within the gameplay because of the scale with which we would be dealing with.

[womble]

Also, honestly I'm not sure if I would buy into the conclusion that Dominos pizza  (CMBB) = bad and artisanal pizza (CMRT) = good.  

• Dominos pizza--cheap, quick, and good enough for most circumstances;
• Artisanal pizza--expensive, slow, and with added features (smoked sea salt, wild game sausage) which sound enticing but that are of little real advantage to most people most of the time.

I guess the obvious conclusion is that there are Dominos pizza (CMBB) people and artisanal pizza (CMRT) people and that neither is right/wrong, they are just looking for different things.

Dominos pizza, cheap? Where are you living?

[poesel]

BFC could let us make pre-orders for a non-existing product. Not much overhead and it would be perfectly clear how many people would really spent the money on the product.

Then decide to make it or not and draw from our accounts when its finished.

 

Same trust from the customer side necessary than with kickstarter only that here we have a company we know for quite some years.

[76mm]

Dominos pizza, cheap? Where are you living?

er, I live in Moscow now, I don't order Dominos here.  But it used to be cheap, back in the day, even if not the cheapest.  And certainly cheaper than artisanal, not to mention artesian, pizza...

[kevinkin]

I think of the old Panzer Leader and Panzer Blitz games and the scale of them battles and think placing them in a 3D game design would be a amazing trick and would be a successful new adventure. Plus maneuvering battles would become much more of a event within the gameplay because of the scale with which we would be dealing with.

I have thought that as well. But I wonder at what unit scale does 3D become unrealistic? Not at the platoon scale but higher I imagine. The post also brings up again the notion of a 2D "operational" layer with optional 3D combat resolution.

Kevin

[Battlefront.com]

Wait that sounds familiar... where did I hear something like that before- oh yeah on post 8 of this thread.

And also 8 years ago when we introduced CMx2

Thanks for the correction on Artisanal. I tend to eat the stuff, not spell it

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Well, I will just point out again. That CMx2 really came out of the CMx1 fan base request. Years and years and years of it.

Every time BFC did a new game, we had these threads that popped up with the wish list of what the players wanted CM games to be.

So low and behold BF went about making a new system with many of them request addressed into the design.

We get CMx2 and as we all know what then happened. The starting of the wailing and gnashing of teeth begins - the sad thing is, much of it from the same players who had made the request for just that type of game to begin with.

Thank goodness for us that BF ignored the whines and pushed on with the design until we have found ourselves where we are today.

Its a great game.

 

Well said.

But again if they do ever go onto a CMx3 type system, I still think it needs to be a drastic design concept change instead of a similar product all designed again in a new engine and different graphics.

I think of the old Panzer Leader and Panzer Blitz games and the scale of them battles and think placing them in a 3D game design would be a amazing trick and would be a successful new adventure. Plus maneuvering battles would become much more of a event within the gameplay because of the scale with which we would be dealing with.

 

Wargamers certainly are more diverse than they would otherwise appear to be. Which makes developing wargames a bit of a challenge because there are niches within the niche. For example, Eastern Front stuff sells less well than Western Front because it doesn't appeal to as many wargamers. Same for something like North Africa or Pacific, for that matter. So it's not like we have an audience of x number customers and we get x sales for each game we make. Instead, we have x number of customers and we get some portion of that depending on the appeal of the title being released.

Scale comes into the equation as well. There are distinctly different sub groups of wargamers based on tactical, operational, and strategic levels of warfare. Typically wargamers tend to be most comfortable 1 level up or down from their preferred type. Meaning, tactical types are more OK with operational than they are strategic. Strategic types are more comfortable with operational than tactical. The operational types tend to prefer tactical or strategic depending on what most excites them about operational. Larger picture thinking pushes them towards strategic, more interest in details down to tactical.

Battlefront, so far, has two types of products... strategic and tactical, with Strategic Command being one and Combat Mission the other. There's some, but not a lot, of overlap between the two portions of Battlefront's customer base. Which means, in effect, that Battlefront's total customer base is quite a bit larger than sales of any one specific game. A smart game developer would think of how to appeal to a broader spectrum of its existing customers before moving out into the wilderness to attempt to attract non-wargamers.

BFC could let us make pre-orders for a non-existing product. Not much overhead and it would be perfectly clear how many people would really spent the money on the product.

Then decide to make it or not and draw from our accounts when its finished.

 

Same trust from the customer side necessary than with kickstarter only that here we have a company we know for quite some years.

 

This is definitely something we've considered doing. And it makes sense because the majority of people buying our games are already our customers, therefore if they are interested in it they'll likely buy it anyway. It's simply a matter of kicking in the money earlier.

One downside of this is that if the money is spent and the project doesn't get developed, for whatever reason, trust with the customer is harmed. Another downside is that if people pre-pay they can sometimes feel more entitled to be upset if the end product isn't exactly what they had imagined. But the biggest one is how to deal with "pre development orders" for a product that doesn't manage to raise enough money to justify development. Then what? Offering refunds to people is a major technical problem and it only works if we haven't spent the money when we make the call to cancel it.

Lastly, it is dangerous for a developer to work off of "advances" (which is basically what this amounts to). It's a little difficult to explain why to someone who isn't familiar with these issues, so I'll just say it is significant enough that many good developers go under because of it.

So it has a lot of upsides, especially since 20-30% doesn't go to another party, but there are downsides.

 

I have thought that as well. But I wonder at what unit scale does 3D become unrealistic? Not at the platoon scale but higher I imagine. The post also brings up again the notion of a 2D "operational" layer with optional 3D combat resolution.

It's all a matter of levels of detail hitting the computing resources. There's plenty of operational level 3D RTS games out there already. And to some extent CMx2 can be played like one as well. The difference is that with CMx2 there is a lot of low level 3D details because that's the focus of the game. In an operational level game those details would not be as important and should be abstracted a bit so as to free up computing resources to handle the larger scale. Strategic requires even more abstraction for it to work.

Steve

[Vergeltungswaffe]

CMx1 was the greatest wargame series ever. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Until CMx2. 

[Los]

Girls Und Panzer. I'd download that mod!

[poesel]

One downside of this is that if the money is spent and the project doesn't get developed, for whatever reason, trust with the customer is harmed. Another downside is that if people pre-pay they can sometimes feel more entitled to be upset if the end product isn't exactly what they had imagined. But the biggest one is how to deal with "pre development orders" for a product that doesn't manage to raise enough money to justify development. Then what? Offering refunds to people is a major technical problem and it only works if we haven't spent the money when we make the call to cancel it.

 

I meant pre-order not pre-pay. Pay would be on delivery with the option not to deliver at all. That way you get a better estimation if a product is marketable. If there is enough interest you make it, if not then not. No need for refunds.

 

Downsides are disappointment from customers if it doesn't get made and, you mentioned it, entitlement to being upset if it does (but you get that anyway). Also games may fall through which would have been a surprise success (like FI).

OTOH you may surprise yourself if you set up a game you don't expect to fly and then get thousands of pre-orders (like 'Fulda Gap' hint, hint).

[Battlefront.com]

It's risky to ask people if they want something without requiring them to "put their money where there mouth is". With our customer base it is less risky, though, so I wouldn't rule it out.

Steve

[AttorneyAtWar]

Girls Und Panzer. I'd download that mod!

 

Finally, someone with taste!

 

PANZER VOR LOS!

 

 

Hey look, I think I see our next Red Thunder module!