Wondering if anyone caught the drama over at Matrix...

[larrybond]

Quite a bit of activity has gone on over at the Matrix Games forums and I'll go over it briefly for those who are out of the loop.

I'll try to recap:

Matrix and Slitherine swallowed-up AGEOD and now Matrix is selling Pride of Nations for a higher price than it was when it was first released!

This thread has all the specifics:

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3303077&mpage=2&key=

The rogo fellow has a few good points.

So my question is: Are the top-dogs over at Slitherine completely out of the loop? Have they lost touch with the industry? I'm assuming what rogo means by this is, that the elderly people running the show over there, and the yes-men under their wrath, have they lost touch with their customers? Too much gree?

I'm undecided on the subject and if I think their business model is based around greed or not. And don't get me wrong I've been a loooooong time Matrix fan, back when they started publishing the old SSI games.

My other question is for the headquarters here at Battlefront:

What are your opinions about the marketing decisions (or poor marketing decisions) Matrix and Slitherine are making over there? And what key aspects does Battlefront keep paramount? Do customers come first? How do you justify your prices? Is your business model focused around greed as (appears to be the case) over at Slitherine?

Thanks.

Larry

[JonS]

Unusual first post?

[Michael Emrys]

Ii thought the name Larry Bond vaguely rang a bell, so I looked him up in Wikipedia and this is what I discovered:

Larry Bond (born 1952) is an American author and video game designer. He is the designer of the Harpoon and Command at Sea gaming systems and several supplements for the games. His numerous novels include Dangerous Ground, Day of Wrath, The Enemy Within, Cauldron, Vortex and Red Phoenix. He also co-authored Red Storm Rising with Tom Clancy.

No wonder his name rang a bell!

To try to essay an answer to the original question, I have noted that BFC and its personnel usually make it a policy not to comment on other gaming companies. So I wouldn't hold my breath in anticipation of a reply on this one.

Michael

[dieseltaylor]

Seems an interesting discussion.

One of the oddities is that someone believes a thee year old game should be cheap because it is three years old. I wonder what his feelings are about the boardgames Monopoly and Acquire which are probably more expensive than when launched. Is it possible that a very good game is pretty much always going to be a good game?

CMAK will always be a very good game so provided it can run on a current operating system should always remain a seller at a reasonable price. If AGEOD has been mispriced by box-shifters down then whoever owns the rights is at perfect liberty to suggest a different selling strategy. Buying from a games house and keeping them going is something most of us can identify with.

[JonS]

I wonder what his feelings are about the boardgames Monopoly and Acquire which are probably more expensive than when launched.

Silly example is silly, for a bunch of reasons.

[dieseltaylor]

Ah you can always be relied upon to miss any subtlety in a post Jon. : )

[larrybond]

Seems an interesting discussion.

One of the oddities is that someone believes a thee year old game should be cheap because it is three years old. I wonder what his feelings are about the boardgames Monopoly and Acquire which are probably more expensive than when launched. Is it possible that a very good game is pretty much always going to be a good game?

CMAK will always be a very good game so provided it can run on a current operating system should always remain a seller at a reasonable price. If AGEOD has been mispriced by box-shifters down then whoever owns the rights is at perfect liberty to suggest a different selling strategy. Buying from a games house and keeping them going is something most of us can identify with.

although I agree with your logic, there seems to be alot more at play here. The price of the game has actually increased after 3 years, and its not really justified other than the fact that the game has a new owner. Also, it seems after Matrix bought the rights to the game, all other copies sold elsewhere will be illegal. And all prices at AGEOD will be increased to match the new Matrix price hike, for this game.

This, and a mixture of other things over the past couple years, makes me wonder who is making these decisions and if they're actually qualified to do so.

All the above may be legit, but it will upset customers like me. Doesn't it seem Slitherine is just bleeding out the Matrix Games loyal customer base to the very last drop?

[dieseltaylor]

larry - I don't particularly follow Matrix/Slitherine so I can only go by the one thread I read so perhaps I am too forgiving. I will do some research .........

Dec 2012

AGEOD, the indie developer once spun off as Paradox France, has announced that it is merging with Slitherine and Matrix Games. This represents three companies joined together that specialize in strategy and wargames. They will now all be under The Slitherine Group.

The merged company, according to a statement, should have each company pool its resources while still remaining separate entities: "Yes, you heard it, we have managed to form this triangle of wargaming expertise. Each entity will maintain its own identity, with the specific touch of each studio staying as the directing line for their new games. Basically it means that the AGEOD team will work on the AGE Engine, as before (one more turn syndrome? yes please!)".

Slitherine and Matrix Games themslves merged back in 2010, with each handling releases regionally. AGEOD's most recent release was Alea Jacta Est, taking place during the Roman Civil Wars. The game is currently a candidate for Steam Greenlight.

I have looked at the three companies websites and see a commonish pricing policy and of course the ability, unlike for BF, of selling into your local market boxed games. I am sure that the pricing policy does make sense for the companies. To a degree earlier games may cannibalise your sales of new products particularly if they are already highly-rated and cheaper than your new games which may have only PR puff.

I can know of at least two commercial companies who virtually died by pricing what they did too cheaply. One unbelievably was doing developmental work for GM but was not charging the correct on-cost of the engineers involved. Having happy clients but going tits-up in business happens much more than people think.

Depending on the various licenses then Matrix etc can possibly remove the rights of previous retail sellers. Pre-owned disks I am sure will circulate and the price rise : )

PS. I do think you actually still have three managements/developers but they sensibly IMV are trying to minimise costs by better distribution AND not price-cutting to get more sales potentially at similar companies expense.

[JonS]

Ah you can always be relied upon to miss any subtlety in a post Jon. : )

No, I got it. It's still silly. Primarily because you're equating a physical product with a digital one, presumably because they're both "games". There are other reasons - like blithely ignoring inflation - too. But digital vs physical the main one.

[Redwolf]

I have a long-standing opinion that wargames need to be more expensive, and that patches that add functionality (as opposed to hacking up platform problems or fixing bugs) should cost money.

Otherwise our wargaming hobby will never get the feet back on the ground.

Now, Matrix/Slitherine behave odd, that's for sure. I would expect they invest the money but their forum software (both on matrix and on wargamer.com) is garbage and the patch servers are down. I also voiced more specific concerns about some of their pricing in a recent thread over there.

[Vanir Ausf B]

The market will decide if Matrix's pricing is correct or not. They say PoN lost money. That and the acquisition by Matrix suggests AGEOD's previous pricing strategy was not working. Customers who had grown accustomed to waiting for a couple of years after a game was released to buy it for $2 via 3rd party retail are obviously disappointed they won't be able do that in the future. But they would likely have also been disappointed when AGEOD went out of business.

[Doug Williams]

I can't say that I pay much attention to Matrix/Slitherine, although I did enjoy playing their Panzer Corps grand campaign, until it became so ridiculously difficult that I had to start using cheat codes to "win".

As for the price of wargames, I agree with Redwolf. As far as Battlefront, I want them to charge whatever they need to in order to keep putting out great games like CMBN and CMFI. Obviously, their is a price point that they cannot go beyond before they start losing customers, and it is up to them to figure that one out. They are nowhere near it right now, as far as I am concerned.

[Ranger33]

It's just a difficult thing to get your brain to accept full price for something that you saw go for almost nothing on Steam multiple times. I actually just got into the AGEOD series recently and one of the nice things about it is the pricing, $20-$30 per game is pretty cheap in the land of wargames. I don't mind leaving a game a full price for years when the starting price is reasonable to begin with. I'm curious whether the next expected game in the series, American Civil War 2, will be priced similarly or hiked up following this merger.

Tangent: I highly recommend Alea Jacta Est (or Birth of Rome) to anyone interesting in Roman history. Really fun game that's quite deep while avoiding excess micromanagement.

[Vanir Ausf B]

From the sounds of it, selling their games for cheap wasn't generating the volume of sales needed to remain profitable. That means they will have to either increase prices or cut costs.

[Sgt Joch]

AGEOD actually makes very interesting, complex and realistic strategy/operational games and they cover eras which other wargames don't, like the 18th century or ancient Rome. I own both "Rise of Prussia" and "Alea Jacta Est". "Rise of Prussia" is IMHO, the best strategy/operational simulation of 18th century warfare currently on the market.

I think their problem is that they are very much in a niche market, even more than CM and they do not have the flashy 3d graphics that games like Total War et al. have which limits the market even more towards "Grogs".

If it helps AGEOD stay alive and producing quality games (they have a new U.S. civil war game in development), then I have no problem with the arrangement.

On a related note, this post by TK at "Third Wire" shows many of the problems game developpers are currently facing:

Guys, we appreciate all your input, but please stop making it so personal. Its not about what I want, its about what we can afford. If we don't finish EXP3, its not because I don't want to, or I somehow hate you, or I'm hurt, or anything else personal like that, its simply because we don't have the money do so.

Threads like this remind us why we don't post here anymore. I know you guys have short selective memory, but there was a time not too long ago when we used to post here often and even in other forums, but every time we do, threads like this come up and remind us how terrible idea that is.

When we talk about future plans, its about what we would like to do if we have the money. Its never a promise of anything. We never promised EXP3, only that we'd love to do EXP3, if EXP2 and SF2NA did well.

Even though SF2NA is our best seller so far, and EXP2 is selling better than EXP1, SF2NA and EXP2 haven't recovered their investment yet - they sold about 25% more than their predecessors, but they also cost about 200% more. All those features everyone was requesting here added significantly to the cost but didn't result in matching increase in sales. So the money from PC sales are still going toward paying back all the debts we've incurred during their development. We had to take out loans, max out credit cards, sell our cars, empty our retirement accounts, and we are still falling behind in rents and payments. If it wasn't for the mobile games, we would've been out of business last year and be homeless by now.

Cost of developing games are constantly going up. SF2 aircraft, for example, cost more than 4x the SF1 aircraft. And our market size is not expanding at a similar rate. It's not rocket science to figure out that at some point, the cost to develop gets higher than they sell. Looking back, EXP1 was about where it crossed that line for us. So not only we don't have the money to finish EXP3, but we already know for sure that EXP3 will lose money. It has to be paid for by something else.

Luckily, mobile games are doing very well so far - we are just getting started there and we already have over 1.2 million downloads combined. A single one day download of one mobile game often exceed the total, life-long downloads of all our PC games combined. And the cost to develop there still very low. So we are still planning to finish EXP3, but it'll be done if and when our mobile games make enough money to pay for it (well, after paying back all our debts first).

To answer to the original topic, of course we're still working on PC development, especially with Windows 8. But keep in mind that the direction we're going may not be what many of you want. We're working to make our game more accessible and easier to play to appeal to a bigger market, and rely more on in-app purchases for monetizing, which means less realistic features and less support for mods in the future. Again, it's nothing personal, its just what we can afford. And like you said, 13 years is a long time to be working on one thing, and it may be time we do something else, there are plenty of other genres of games that we'd love to work on (ones that doesn't cost so much to develop).

http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB3w/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9420&p=59528#p59528

[Redwolf]

Can somebody summarize who is who?

What is that thirdwire site and who's hanging out there?

[Sgt Joch]

sorry,

"Third Wire" makes flight sims, 50-60s jets, for the past 10-12 years. I own a few, they are not hard core, but not arcade either.

http://www.thirdwire.com/

TK is Tsuyoshi Kawahito, owner and lead developper who was also one of the lead developpers behind "European Air War", so he is basically another Steve.

[Wodin]

Rock Paper Shotgun have also doen an article and I agree with Tim's stance.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/04/19/the-flare-path-indecent-proposal/

[Ranger33]

Matrix will now have weekly sales! Very cool. Can't link to it because rules, yadda, yadda but it's 60% off two older ACW titles. Hope it works out for them. I'm personally looking for Conquest of the Aegean or some of the Close Combat titles go on sale, I would be all over those.

[agusto]

I have a long-standing opinion that wargames need to be more expensive, and that patches that add functionality (as opposed to hacking up platform problems or fixing bugs) should cost money.

I believe one of the major reasons why wargames dont drop in price as fast as FPSes do for example is because graphics dont matter that much in that genre. Take Call of Duty 1, for example: When it came out, its graphics were looking awesome and probably were one of te major reasons why people were expected to buy the game at a high price. Today, the CoD 1 graphics are almost a decade behind what is expected by the customers of such games, so it needs to be cheap to be attractive to potental buyers. On the other hand, in wargames like Harpoon 3 for example, the graphics simple dont matter and so does the age of the game.

Harpoon 1:

http://www.myabandonware.com/media/captures/H/harpoon/harpoon_4.png

Harpoon 3:

http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/6011/harpoon3screenshot1tf9.png

Cod1:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QLhNr3plChE/T8obKQc-UVI/AAAAAAAAAok/QecfD-HkRfM/s1600/call-of-duty-1_00321791.jpg

Cod6:

http://www.giga.de/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Call-of-Duty-Black-Ops-II_Standoff_Kill-Confirmed.jpg

[dieseltaylor]

Seems the cost model is wrong/out-of-control. However I have never actually played most of the games mentioned in the thread.

My gut reaction is that the sale price is too low. But as in all markets you have to work out your price point. So if that is lowish then the game ceases to be a labour of love and becomes a commodity. Designers I imagine start to begrudge the demands that they feel are placed on them. Disenchantment and the realisation they are trapped in a particular job market may follow.

Now its a moot point whether the designers/producers actually try to do too much - and then release prematurely because thats the slot. That may be a management thing.

However that is small beer to the funding problem. In olden times authors got patrons to subscribe for the book and I was wondering if that might still work. Obviously the US Army, and the Australian Army might be viewed as potential or actual patrons. However there desire may rate realism over enjoyment.

Crowd-funding or a subscription model? As you can tell I am musing on the fly. Personally I think some games are modern works of art - and I include the possibility that this applies to board and computer games. The trouble is there is a lot of dross before you find the good stuff. BF hit a major seam with the original CMs.

I have inherited CNA, Campaign for North Africa, all 9 foot of map and the individual pilot logs. Hugely realistic -probably - but a huge turkey and you have to wonder what SPI were thinking of when they decided to do it. Vanity? Deathwish?

However reverting to current times I wonder whether there is mileage in trying to dress potentially dour games with a little fun. Say for BF CMBN was introduced with a circuit ... and people honed their driving skills on it and reported the time. A nice little filler whilst awaiting a turn perhaps. Or realising that your 1.31 seconds was not that clever when others were cracking 1.15. : )

Throw in some hills for people to appreciate the effects of slope, and perhaps a cross country course ......

Any way you get the drift - trying to put fun into the game whilst learning the ropes.

If this seems to be drifting from the economics of game selling I rest my case on the basis that if people enjoy the game they play more and tell more of their mates.

I never play reaction games but the Borderland series is so seriously funny and sufficiently cartoonish that killing mammals is acceptable and I like to play. I am not suggesting that being funny is always the right approach just that in a world with lots of competing objects for time you need as many hooks out for punters as you can get.

Is being cheerful that keeps me going : )

[John Kettler]

larrybond,

Welcome aboard!

Judging from the way you express yourself, you're not The Larry Bond, whom I know personally. I don't know the games you cite, but I do know of Slitherine from the Spike TV program "Deadliest Warrior." Slitherine's got some killer (couldn't resist) combat model it uses to calculate the winner of a statistically significant number of clashes between unlikely combatants (ninja vs Spartan hoplite--not that "300" nonsense).

I agree with Michael Emrys on not hearing back from BFC. The people there are buried, and we're lucky they talk to us about game stuff.

Regards,

John Kettler

[John Kettler]

agusto,

Harpoon 1 reminds me of what Castle Wolfenstein used to look like. No person in frame for Harpoon 3, so hard to sense progress. My brother, Ed, was involved in the Harpoon computer and miniature games. His Harpoon Falklands/Malvinas War scenario book, South Atlantic War, was so good the Naval War College bought 100 for use as a textbook! He and Larry Bond have ongoing projects in the Command at Sea series. I helped write scenarios for the one covering the second half of the war in the Pacific, Steel Typhoon.

On a completely different note, our terrain is better than COD 1, but it's certainly not almost photorealistic, as in the second COD you listed.

Regards,

John Kettler