Did piracy kill the commercial viability of CMx1?

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Darren J Pierson:

I have no doubt that the best thing for BFC is CM:SF and whatever they decide to do with the new engine. That is just my opinion, but the BFC folks seem to be passionate about what they do and they are still in business. Just because SOME of the older customers disagree doesn't make those opinions correct. If hardcore wargamers were really a truly profitiable demographic, we wouldn't face a monopolistic market situation. BFC provides us with all that we are going to get in 3d tactical gaming.

Customers can either buy the product, which signals that we are happy with the direction of the market or not buy it which signal displeasure. If we buy the games simply because they are all that are out there then we reward folks for not giving us what we want. If we don't buy then the market is considered too much of a niche and no more games will be made and we are out of luck. (Note, I am not saying CM:SF fits into any of these categories myself - it is clear that there are lots of opinions on the game including it is fantastic and on target - all puns intended).

As a long time adventure gamer I have seen the near demise of that part of the hobby. When main stream publishers make an action-adventure hybrid and it fails, they complain about the non-existant adventure customers. They fail to realize that they didn't really make an action game nor an adventure game and lost both groups. Many adventure gamers are told to suck it up and buy them anyway or we won't get anything. We have to decide, is half-baked crap better than nothing?

The only real hope for customers is to actually have a comptetive marketplace where we can vote with our dollars, pounds, yen, etc. And the products have to be different enough to clearly show what we are actually voting for with our money.

We can talk about what would have been better with CMx1 forever but I don't think it will help anyone very much. As an academic exercise there is nothing wrong with it but I hope people don't think that they are going to resurrect the old beast. I don't think BFC will ever produce a product that they feel is in any way shape or form inferior or a rip off. Whether folks will like it or not is different, but we shouldn't take it personally if a game isn't our cup of tea.

It isn't a this or that proposition for everyone. I like CMX2 and can understand its appeal to a different/wider market. It doesn't mean I'm ready to say that CMX1 was a dead end conceptually, that's my only point. I'd buy either.

Even better, I'd buy one of each.

[Darren J Pierson]

Fair enough - I should have made clear that "or somewhere in between" was certainly possible.

[thewood]

Originally posted by Darren J Pierson:

Fair enough - I should have made clear that "or somewhere in between" was certainly possible.

Actually, the somewhere in between comment seems to be the fairest comment for where I hoped CM2 was going. I kind of have the feeling its a baby/bath water thing.

I feel guilty for still loving CM1. I may need to double up on therapy. 1/2 mother issues, 1/2 CM.

[Guest BigAlMoho]

Originally posted by Lt Bull:

2) BTS/BFC strayed from a winning formula. With each successive CMx1 release, BTS/BFC made changes to the game which made the product of less value and worth to their existing customers/prospective customers. They in effect killed their market by reducing the quality of the game with each succesive release of CMx1 making it less attractive for customers to buy than each preceeding release.

As it became clear that some of the most desireable requests were not going to happen EVER it became an increasingly hopeless love affair...

[Battlefront.com]

Darren,

Saying that those of us who bought and loved CMAK are those whose marketing opinions don't matter to you does seem like a bit of a cold comment. I'm assuming you mean that those who loved CMAK are not the targets of marketing because we will buy your product anyway and the marketing needs to target the undecided? Or are you just channeling Derek Smart here? Are you trying to piss off the old guard? You are doing well.

Sorry you misunderstood my point, so I'll clarify. You bought CMAK because you really loved it. The game was designed for you and it is why we bothered to make it at all. We knew it wouldn't sell as well as the others, yet we decided there were enough of you who wouldn't care that the graphics were "dated", wouldn't care that it was the third showing of the engine, wouldn't care that it had a lot of what the first game had, etc. If we thought there weren't enough we would have skipped it because we're a business and can't afford to make games that cost more than they earn.

What we knew, going into CMAK, was that we the larger audience for the game wasn't there. Therefore there was no point trying to go after them. One of the quickest ways to lose money in this business is to spend a lot of time, energy, and money chasing people that really don't want to buy the game in the first place. Therefore, we made CMAK for people like you and were very happy to do it. My comments now are response to people that have it in their heads that the lower sales were the result of a bad demo or somefink. The lower sales were just part of the lifecycle of the game engine, therefore there was no marketing gimmick we could have done to make the sales higher and somehow saved the CMx1 system for another 5 years.

Steve

[Darren J Pierson]

Hmm. My first attempt seems to have disappeard.

Steve,

Yup, you are right, I misunderstood and my apologies for being a jerk about it. It has just been a pretty crappy day and I let it get out. Thanks for clearing that up.

Darren

[jomni]

I never bothered to buy CMAK because I thought CMBO is already enough and loads of fun.

I think Steve is thinking about people like me who needs something fresh.

[Darren J Pierson]

Originally posted by jomni:

I never bothered to buy CMAK because I thought CMBO is already enough and loads of fun. I believer there are a lot of people like me.

That's quite probably true. I for one always loved Grant/Lees and Matildas so CMAK was a natural for me. I've even bought multiple copies of it for my desktop and laptop. But I imagine I am rare in that regard.

[Battlefront.com]

Sirocco,

Well, we're kind of short on facts, given the very fact that we don't have access to sales data, or what might have been if things had been done differently. Ergo it's all opinion and speculation, and some of that speculation is your own, I might add, informed speculation; but then some of us are also informed, too.

Sure, I can not prove a negative any more than you can. The difference is some of you guys don't seem to understand that concept. So if neither of us can prove a particular point, but I have data that tends to support my opinion... well, a rational person would concede the debate in the face of a stronger argument. They wouldn't be bringing up a dead horse 5 years after the fact

Neepster,

BFC would have been far better off making CMAK backward compatible with CMBO as well as having the N. Africa/Italy stuff.. Redo the original scenarios with new features and pawn it off as an upgrade plus new content. Heck, the forum members and beta testers would have done the scenario work...

Absent major improvements to the engine it wouldn't have worked out well for us. Probably would have sold even less than CMAK because CMAK basically did offer everything that CMBO had and offered more stuff. So I disagree... redoing CMBO would have not have been worth the effort.

dalem,

Actually the latter versions were less interesting, different without being better, and in the case of the 3D one, WAY different to no purpose.

That's because the 2nd one sold so much worse than the first that they figured they needed to change things around more dramatically. They tried changing the subject matter, that failed, so they tried going quasi 3D. I think that sold better than other options but it wasn't very good from what I remember.

[qote]Different is not always better.

Very true, but it of course is in the eye of the beholder. I am sure you can find someone that thinks Panzer General 3D was the best of the whole series. This is actually the biggest beef I have with opinions such as I am seeing here... you guys are so sure that you speak for everybody and we are so very sure you speak for a minority. An important minority, but one that if allowed to call the shots would have us out of business fairly soon. I've made that point all the way through CMx1's development cycles so I am not saying anything I haven't said before. The difference between us and pretty much every other game company on the planet is that we at least listen and do quite a bit of what you ask us to do. We simply skip over the things that are suicidal

Darren,

Customers can either buy the product, which signals that we are happy with the direction of the market or not buy it which signal displeasure. If we buy the games simply because they are all that are out there then we reward folks for not giving us what we want. If we don't buy then the market is considered too much of a niche and no more games will be made and we are out of luck. (Note, I am not saying CM:SF fits into any of these categories myself - it is clear that there are lots of opinions on the game including it is fantastic and on target - all puns intended).

True. The worst thing a grog likes to hear is that a game they detest is selling better than a game they love. It invalidates many of their arguments for what makes "a better game" because the market tends to punish publishers that make such games. Had CMBO been 2D we would probable be out of business even if the game played out exactly the same as CMBO did. Therefore, grogs have a total under-appreciation for the wider pool of gamers out there. You guys got your CMx1 because we made sure you weren't the only ones interested in it.

As a long time adventure gamer I have seen the near demise of that part of the hobby.

Flight sims, tank sims, and naval sims have gone from one of the premier segments of the industry to a backwaters niche market. The few products that remain are quite good, but the days of 3 or 4 major releases in the vehicle sim genre each year are long over and done with.

dalem,

If I sell 10,000 units of "Farm Boy" and you think you can still sell more, don't you then make "Farm Boy: Corn", and "Farm Boy: Soy Beans", etc.? If that's true, you're automatically "excluding" buyers from your initial base each time because people interested in farming might not necessarily be interested in farming soy beans, right?

If everything stays basically the same, except the crops, then you are correct. This is why we built CMx2 to handle (theoretically) any time period, not just WWII ETO. CMx1 was, unfortunately, not so flexible. So after CMBB was out and we realized that the changes we made to the engine and graphics, plus the massive amount of content, wasn't enough to recapture CMBO sales, we seriously considered not making any other games based on the CMx1 engine. Early war would certainly not have sold well, Pacific War was too far out of the engine's grasp, and redoing NW Europe would have been a dead end. So we were left with basically one theater... the Mediterranean. We decided it would do well enough to make it worth the effort and it was. But after that, there was nowhere else to go with it. CMx2 has no such inherent limitation.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

thewood,

I feel guilty for still loving CM1. I may need to double up on therapy. 1/2 mother issues, 1/2 CM.

No need to feel guilty about loving it any more than we feel guilty about making it. Since we are proud of what we have done we are proud that you guys are so passionate about it. If there were 10x more of you than there are we probably would do things differently too since grog concepts of game improvements are usually far cheaper to do than the ones the rest of the gamers have in mind

Darren,

Yup, you are right, I misunderstood and my apologies for being a jerk about it. It has just been a pretty crappy day and I let it get out. Thanks for clearing that up.

No problem. One of the difficult things about this discussion is, as thewood pointed out, the possibility of someone thinking I'm peeing on good stuff to justify CMx2's direction. That is not the case at all. I'm only saying this stuff because some (a few) think that we had no reason to change anything in CMx1 because it was perfect, our customer base was solidly behind it, and that our future was assured yet we tossed it aside. Not at all correct. The opposite is true, in fact.

We still think CMx1 was the best thing to ever hit wargaming at the time and compared to before. However, I still think that Grigsby's East Front was one of the best games of all time, as was his Eastern Front (both were at different scales than CM anyway). Close Combat 2, which is something we competed against in a way, is one of my favorite games of all time. But do I think these are the games I should still be playing now? No. I played them to death and don't want to go back to those games except as a nostalgia trip. I don't live in the past, but I remember it very fondly.

Or as a movie I saw tonight put it, "memories are meant to fade. There is a reason for that" (or something like that). We expect that CMx1 will eventually be as played as the original Space Invaiders, but remembered as fondly by those who played it. It's just part of the life cycle and we aren't arrogant enough that we can change reality.

Steve

[dalem]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Very true, but it of course is in the eye of the beholder. I am sure you can find someone that thinks Panzer General 3D was the best of the whole series. This is actually the biggest beef I have with opinions such as I am seeing here... you guys are so sure that you speak for everybody and we are so very sure you speak for a minority. An important minority, but one that if allowed to call the shots would have us out of business fairly soon. I've made that point all the way through CMx1's development cycles so I am not saying anything I haven't said before. The difference between us and pretty much every other game company on the planet is that we at least listen and do quite a bit of what you ask us to do. We simply skip over the things that are suicidal

Actually I've never claimed my opinion is relevant to anyone but me and people who play games like me.

And yes, we're the minority, but we're so darned cute.

-dale

[Battlefront.com]

dalem,

Actually I've never claimed my opinion is relevant to anyone but me and people who play games like me.

Though when you advocate for a position that is in opposition to someone of a different opinion, you are effectively saying that the other person's opinion is of lesser worth. That's the crux of the debate about 1:1, for example. "I think the way it was before was perfect, now you screwed it up" is completely incompatiable with "1:1 is great and never want to go back to the way it was". A more compatiable first opinion would be "I think the way it was before was perfect, but I can see others like the 1:1 change so I guess this isnt' for me". Or put another way, SOME people wanting a return to CMx1 are completely ignoring, trashing, or otherwise degrading the opinion of those who like the changes. There is a difference in attitude for sure.

And yes, we're the minority, but we're so darned cute.

And cuddly. Kinda like a cross between a skunk and a porcupine And before anybody starts getting on my case about that, I let a skunk live in my basement for a whole winter (named him "Steenkie") and have yet to do the traditional Maine thing and shoot our porcupine (named "Paco") even though he has killed all my hemlocks and eaten half of my porch. So there

Steve

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

dalem,

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Actually I've never claimed my opinion is relevant to anyone but me and people who play games like me.

Though when you advocate for a position that is in opposition to someone of a different opinion, you are effectively saying that the other person's opinion is of lesser worth. That's the crux of the debate about 1:1, for example. "I think the way it was before was perfect, now you screwed it up" is completely incompatiable with "1:1 is great and never want to go back to the way it was". A more compatiable first opinion would be "I think the way it was before was perfect, but I can see others like the 1:1 change so I guess this isnt' for me". Or put another way, SOME people wanting a return to CMx1 are completely ignoring, trashing, or otherwise degrading the opinion of those who like the changes. There is a difference in attitude for sure.

Steve </font>

[Pinetree]

I'm another of those in the minority, I bought CMAK first, then CMBB. I've never played CMBO.

The reason I bought CMAK was that my main interest in WW2 is the campaigns of the NZ Div. and CMAK allowed me to play out nearly all their battles.

I know BFC is hesitant to release the CMx1 source code, is this mainly to do with lack of documentation? There is another game out there that had the same problem, Rowan's Battle of Britain.The source code was released to a bunch of enthusiasts (called the BDG) after Rowan went bust and they continued to develop it with no documentation for 500,000 lines of code.Now the game is thriving as Battle of Britain 2.

I help out with the BDG and they've managed to work out what most of the code does. Now they are starting to add more features and use the engine for more games. If you did release the CMx1 code, there will always be a few dedicated people to see what they can make of it.

[Battlefront.com]

Dorosh,

As I've stated several posts ago, it is possible to enjoy aspects of both games. You're the one who is pitting CMX1 fans vs CMX2 fans. Contrary to what you say, Steve, it is very possible to argue one position without running down the worth of the other person's opinion. Now, if someone is sensitive enough to feel their "worth" has been run down simply because they've been disagreed with, their position probably wasn't a strong one to begin with.

You missed my point, obviously. It is possible to like both, but so far the people that have said that have often found themselves on the receiving end of those that ONLY want it to be one way or the other. The loudest bunch being the "bring back abstraction" crowd. So yes, while it is possible to argue in favor of one vs. the other, in practice that doesn't seem to happen much here. It's very "I like it this way and therefore that's the only way it can be enjoyed".

Pinetree,

I'm another of those in the minority, I bought CMAK first, then CMBB. I've never played CMBO.

Definite minority, but we like you all the same

I know BFC is hesitant to release the CMx1 source code, is this mainly to do with lack of documentation?

No, that's the primary reason we think nobody would be interested in paying us for the source code. Or at least as much as we would feel the code is worth. And the latter is why we'll never release it as Open Source. We're in too much of a niche market and the thought of someone competing against us with our own product and us not getting a cut of it... well, let's just say that isn't something we really want to think about

Steve

[Lord_Simmox]

i bought all three as ww2 is my preffered genre,i woulda bought 4,5,and 6 if it was there too,i bought CMSF to support BFC,no other reason,i want ww2 stuff,i bought down in flames,i bought TOW.personally i couldnt wait for CMAK,because of the australian troops finally,we were in ww2 aswell you know:)and the middle east then and now.

if im not mistaken,CMBO was BTS not BFC,although i appreciate their the same people.i kinda like the name,bigtime software:)

interesting ?

[Battlefront.com]

BTS was Chrales before we formed Battlefront. We retired the BTS name about... I dunno, 3 or 4 years ago. It's hard to get rid of though

Steve

[Micheal Wittman]

I seem to do more reading than posting, but I remember playing the demo for CMBO. I do not remember the names of the battles, but I remember

playing the "ME" and pbeming with a friend as axis

and allies. The carnage that went on in the woods

on the axis side was crazy. Also the battle where

there was a town in the valley and the allies had

a good load of arty, axis had a bunker on the hill

with a Tiger that came as reinforcement at some point. Those were some gaming history moments as

were many more over the years with all the CMx1 titles with my friend and I. We only recently stopped playing CMBB because we were craving some campaign action. For that "SC2" by Hubert is doing

a "great" job! But when WW2 comes out in the new CM engine it'll be time to step back in. So at the moment with the CMx1 and the SC2,heh, life is

good! Thanks to the guys at Battlefront and to the

crazed people on the forms that contribute any ideas that make it to the betterment of our gaming

time!

[Sanok]

Personally, I think the reason BB sold less than BO and AK sold less than BB, was the drastic change in the infantry modeling. Yes, BB and AK is more realistic, but a lot of players don't know how to use realistic tactics. Even a lot of players that have done CMx1 for years, can have difficulty playing well. People liked the BO uber infantry. I have regular opponents that hate BB and AK, just because they can't enjoy the game with the more realistic infantry modeling. It appealed to the more hardcore wargamer, but not to the rest.

I believe it's really as simple as that.

Originally posted by Lt Bull:

I was reading the interesting "The Wrong Left Turn and the Uncanny Valley" thread by MD and was facinated when the discussion started to veer on pages 6-8 towards potentially "saving" the CMx1 concept by making it open source etc and the viability of it all and BFC views on it etc.

It got me thinking, "what went wrong" especially when I took a closer look and considered the implications of this statment made by BFC:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

...As I've said many times over, CMBO sold the most, CMBB sold significantly less, CMAK sold even less than CMBB. You guys can have rose colored glasses about how great our past games are, but we can not. ...

Steve

If you go by what BTS is trying to tell us, the CMx1 game concept HAD to be abandodned, reinvented and made RT if there was ever a successor to the CMx1 series. The evidence from "ecomonic realities" of the CMx1 series seems to support and vindicate their case for doing so.

This statement for me is both counterintuitive and extremely vulnerable to mis-interpretation and faulty analysis. I think there is perhaps a more sinister resaon why this may be the economic/market reality BFC state.

As a matter of fact if you look at these figures purely through "rose coloured glasses" and apply basic marketing/economic principles/reasoning, you could quite well conclude/reason the following:

1)The market obviously liked and bought CMBO the most thus it became the most commercially successful CMx1 game produced.

2) Sales dropped significantly with each successive CMx1 release indicating that at least owners of the original game had lost interest in the CMx1 series or were put off or not impressed enough by any of the attempts at introducing numerous new engine enhancments and feature additions made to the game each time and so consequently purchased the game in fewer numbers.

POSSIBLE EXPLANATIONS:

1) Market was saturated and satisfied with the intital CMx1 release of CMBO. Subsequent releases of CMBB and CMAK did not justify to either prospective new customers or owners of previous titles that they were worth buying or of any better value than CMBO.

2) BTS/BFC strayed from a winning formula. With each successive CMx1 release, BTS/BFC made changes to the game which made the product of less value and worth to their existing customers/prospective customers. They in effect killed their market by reducing the quality of the game with each succesive release of CMx1 making it less attractive for customers to buy than each preceeding release.

NOTE: Unlike the Total War Series or even the Madden football series, BTS/BFC do not know how to repackage the basic same game concept and make it more commerically succesful or at least commercially sustainable than previous releases. I guess they are not good at knowing what their market really want or knowing what a good thing is.

Can you see what I mean? Something isn't making sense here. This economic/market reasoning/rationale is totally justified if you look at it at face value. However, I do not for one minute believe that the gaming market is/was more interested in early CMx1 offerings (CMBO #1) than the later CMx1 offerings (CMBB, CMAK). There is something else going on here.

The thing I believe that might be the most important issue being overlooked here and resulting in a convincing case against CMx1 being "commercially viable" is ....software piracy! Being such a small independant game development company, I have always been concerend about their vulnerablility to the software piracy of their games. I believe with CMBO, they did the right thing. The game was exclusively available directly from BTS only. There was almost an unwritten undertanding between their loyal (niche!) customers and BTS that they would NEVER undermine the value of the game (and the economic rewards entitled to BTS) by either freely distributing the game to friends, let alone encouraging it's pirated distribution by whatever channels were available at the time. It certainly helped at the time that internet data transfer/volume costs and speeds were unlike how they are now, making downlaoding of even several hundred megabytes a chore, unlike how it is today in this broadband world when several gigabytes can be easily and effortlessly copied in a few minuutes.

But this relationship they had with their market was not one that they could count on indefinitely to keep them safe from the ecconimic pitfalls of software piracy on a small software company if they ever hoped of expanding their market and reaching out beyond the small niche one they had captured to a much bigger and diverese market.

I can't recall exactly when, but BFC eventually made the brave decision to also start distributing, marketing and selling CMx1 the way the "big boys" of the industry do: through third party retail outlets.

When they started doing this, they kind of lost control of their product and it's market value, though it certainly exposed CMx1 to a whole sector of the market that would probably have never heard of the game, let alone ever know or care about what BTS stood for (yes they did once have a mission statement) or how protective their traditional niche market was of the game. By this stage CMBO and the CMx1 concept had started to attract suprisingly fantastic accolades from both gamerd and the media. The latest CMx1 was certainly a game to check out!! But it was a double edged sword. The exposure had both the potential to make people take notice of the product and be interested in the game concept, while at the same time making the game appear to the general public as "just another PC game" that is probably worth a look but why spend the money they ask for it (after all, it looks kind of unproffessional and graphics are tacky looking, compared to other stuff on the shelf (from much BIGGER gaming companies)) when you can download it at home in 1/2 hr off Bittorent.

And I believe herein lies the demise of the CMx1 as seen by BFC as a commercially viable concept. CMBO/CMBB/CMAK almost became the IDEAL type of game to pirate. Relatively small file size for a game. Virtually no anti-piracy protection. Unlike many other games, a pirated version of the game was fully functional for multiplayer gameplay (unlike say most server based games that require registered unique "product keys" for online game play). Considering the game graphically looks tacky/unpolished/dated etc. unlike the "mass produced" junk on offer from the larger gaming developers, one might even feel justified not paying the unusually high $ for it and instead put it on the "find pirate version" list. But probably most importaat of all. IT WAS A FREAKN AWESOME GAME TO PLAY!!!!!!

So what I am suggesting is that perhaps BTS/BFC almost have themselves to blame for not "protecting their investment" and allowing CMx1 to become "just another game to pirate" whose market value subsequently saw it relegated to "baragain bin" status.

This is a crazy/extreme/melodramaitc analogy but I can't help but see it this way:

It is almost like they had this promising young little girl, who had so much potential, who was safe, loved and respected by everyone at home and the small local neighbourhood who knew her. They spent years instilling good wholesome values into her. Everyone believed she had something good to offer the world, they just had to see it. She was a little pimply and geeky in places but so are many awkward youngsters, especially those from a small town, and everyone was very protective of her. Still, everyone knew she would only become more beautiful with age, just give her the chance.

So the day came to let her go off to the "big bad world" of the big city to fend for herslef and find her fortune, competing with all the other pretty girls from all over the country, hoping she will find and earn the respect, trust and value she had back home.

But they did so without arming her with the knowledge or taking the proper precautions to protect her from and prevent her from being eaten up and taken advantage and used by the more unscruplulous elements that lurk in waiting in the hussle and bustle of the big smoke. There are lots of trips and traps in the cut throat world out there. People want to get something for nothing, and if you let them, they will. It was a mistake they would soon regret.

Several years later, and it's a sorry sight. That same fantastic, beautiful girl, that had (has) so much more to offer, now finds herself exploited on the street corner, selling herself for a few dollars, in the company of what you could only describe as human tragics and misfits. She looks uptown at where so many other girls, superficially beautiful, with little substance and without a fraction of what she could offer, go about their busy day dressed in the latest designer gear, gainfully employed by cut-throat organisations that really just want something good to look at and play with (after all, that is what they have all come to expect). Her hope of ever emulating and reganing the respect and value she once had back home in this new world has been forever lost. Everyone knows she sells herself cheap (you can even get her for free is you know who to ask). She is just another one of those stupid small town girls that niavely thoguht she was "special" and though she was "going to make it" in the big smoke, but she trusted the wrong people who told her how much she was worth, and now peddles the street for a few dollars. Now she is just another one of those tragic downtown whores trying to make a living. Such a waste.

The tragedy is this: How could they (BFC) have let this happen? </font>

[dalem]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

dalem,

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Actually I've never claimed my opinion is relevant to anyone but me and people who play games like me.

Though when you advocate for a position that is in opposition to someone of a different opinion, you are effectively saying that the other person's opinion is of lesser worth. </font>

[Lt Bull]

Nice discussions.

After reading through it I have been able to better refine my views on this.

- I am not suggesting that piracy was THE major reason why CMx1 "died". However I would not want to understate the influence it has on a small niche company like BFC and just how "plump and juicy a target" the CMx1 series was with regards to pirate exploitation. The fact that the game won the praise of so many but failed to register commercial success by way of actual sales just tells me that something somewhere is not what it seems. Piracy goes a long way to explaining that. I would bet that many of the poeple who DIDN'T buy CMx1 (graphics are crappy, I don't get this Wego so why isnt it real time, whats with showing just three guys when there are 12), but were otherwise interested in the concept of tactical/strategy wargames and waitied in the shadows for BFC to make a RTS/1:1 version of CM, represent a lot of the kind of player who I think would of robbed BFC of CMx1 sales (and subsequent knowledge of their market appeal) by pirating the game instead.

- It looks like many of us are trying to offer our own opinions on what was THE major reason why the CMx1 franchise died the way it die. We must be careful not to assume that any ONE reason is even clearly THE most influential. There is absolutely no evidence presented to suggest that. Maybe there were three equally influential major factors? Certainly numerous factors played a part but certainly trying to identify the top three or so is worthy exercise (albeit academic).

- I will offer you one of my top reasons for explaining the disappointing demise of the CMx1 concept as a commercially viable platform:

BFC failed to adequately market, package and sell the fundamental gaming concept/system that was unique to CMx1 (mainly the WegO system) to a market that extended beyond your hardcore grogs into your more general "I like strategy games" kind of crowd, despite having developed and introduced to the market a new, unique, ground breaking and powerful gameplay system for potentially representing a whole range of tactical level combat engagements that surpassed the scope, scale, realism and detail of what any contemporary RT(S) or turn based game could or could ever hope to achieve or emulate.

I believe they failed to positively introduce and showcase the benefits, possibilities and potential of the WeGO concept of gameplay to a market of gamers that had up till then only ever thought in terms of traditional turn based UGoIGo games (they generally suck) and RTS games (they are cool man). There is so much more you can do with a Wego system that is impossible to do with both IGoUGo and RT gameplay systems. I just don't think that BFC did enough to positively market the basic WeGo game concept enough in a way that would now see it as a genre and style of gameplay that is as enduring, well known and as a part of the gaming landscape market as what RTS and IGoUGo style of games are today. Had they succeeded in this respect, they would have NEVER have considered making CMx2 RT. If BTS were creativem innovative and admired for their game design, the same could not be said for their marketing skills.

I am sure BFC KNEW that enduring commercial success and growth/development of the CMx1 style of game could not be based on milking the same hard core grog market with each new release, yet there is nothing in their marketing of CMx1 that suggests to me that they were targetting anything but this market, rather than the section of the market they are NOW determined to impress with CMSF, the brader "general strategy gamer" market.

Rather than ensuring that any prospective new gamers firstly understood, were comfortable with and appreciated the whole inovative Wego gaming concept (the heart of the CMx1 system), they focussed on things like demonstrating just how more effective MGs were in CMBB as opposed to CMBO, or just how clever they now are at being able to represent barren, lifeless and bland desert landscapes and multi turreted tanks on a game engine already 6 years old. The CMBB and CMAK demos are evidence of that.

I believe the critiscism that BFC don't naturally excell in designing intuitive, efficient and appealing GUIs or in professionally presenting and introducing their games to new prospective gamers is valid and relevant to this discussion of how I think BFC failed to effectively and adequately market the game. Again we can look at the CMx1 demos (Ignore the CMBO demo for the moment as it was the first "prototype" offering and just kind of meant to be for core grog gamers). A game demo should aim to educate and familiarise the player with the most fundamantal and exciting/fun aspects of the game in the shortest amount of time possible. The CMBB and CMAK demos did not and could not do this. It was like a movie producer, when asked to provide a short movie trailer featuring highlights and maybe a bit of narration to fill in the gaps to whet the appetite of film goers, instead just basically submits the whole movie and says "Just read this short brief and start watching it and you will know what it is about". In this world where you have a limited time to try and attract someones attention, that strategy just simply doesn't work.

I know BFC's time and resources were limited, but they certainly don't make it a priority to make it easy for general gamers to learn, understand and familiarize them selves with what their games are about or even how to play them (the failure to include things like an in-game tutroial or mouse over tooltips for buttons in CMsF continues this legacy). It is worth the exercise to think just how much effort other game companies put into to both their demos and to their games to help players understand and learn the game with interactive tutorials, videos, helpful tips and the like. NONE of this occurred with CMx1. It would be a tragedy, as I believe ocurred with CMx1, to see a great concept/idea fail simply becaue you could not effectively market/communicate it to a market that didn't know any better

If you now consider all the above and superimpose it on the fact that all this was all happeneing off the back of a game engine which basically remained unchanged for some 6 years, you can see just how tough BFC made it for themselves.

Finally, despite what BFC say, I certainly believe BFC threw the baby out with the bath water when they abandodned the WeGo game system as the primary platform for CMx2. It was the one thing that represented innovative genius and set them appart from every other game company. I do not believe for a moment that the CM game/name inevitavble HAD to go down the RT route to make it commerically viable any more than I believe that the WeGo style of football that is American football will eventually be abandonded in favour of the more popular real time style of continuous play you see in rugby.

[Sirocco]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

What we knew, going into CMAK, was that we the larger audience for the game wasn't there. Therefore there was no point trying to go after them. One of the quickest ways to lose money in this business is to spend a lot of time, energy, and money chasing people that really don't want to buy the game in the first place. Therefore, we made CMAK for people like you and were very happy to do it. My comments now are response to people that have it in their heads that the lower sales were the result of a bad demo or somefink. The lower sales were just part of the lifecycle of the game engine, therefore there was no marketing gimmick we could have done to make the sales higher and somehow saved the CMx1 system for another 5 years.

You accuse people of wrongheaded thinking, but honestly, Steve, if you think better presenting titles wouldn't help with sales, even after the botched release of CMSF, there's no hope. The five years is a bit of a strawman, too.

[Sirocco]

The "unique" selling point of CM isn't WEGO, or RT, for that matter; it's a higher fidelity representation of small unit combat combined with a simple interface and good, if not cutting edge, graphics.

[thewood]

I believe that WEGO was a factor, the right concept at the right time. It drew in wargamers who dismissed RT and also brought in some people from less grog-like areas who dismissed turn-based. I still have to explain WEGO to people who think CM is the same type type of turn-based game as Steel Panthers. That goes to the marketing of the concept.

I have been looking at some of the non-wargame forums and CMSF is getting beaten up for being too complicated and difficult to play. I think the setting and concepts are inherently difficult for non-wargamers, just like the nuances of Madden or other sport franchises. No matter what format BFC chose, very few RTS games ar going to come over and get hooked.

[OG_Gleep]

I would just like to point out(I know you guys are deep in a discussion), that hardly anyone pirates wargames. If you look at the torrent stats, mainstream games seem to generate as much legit buisness as non-legit. Everyone I know who are into the scene, would never buy a game they download. The data is skewed in my opininon because of this. If you have $100, you can only buy 2 games, which normally means you will pickup the 2 games you want the most. My friends pick up everything, but they still pickup the 2 games they can afford that they really wanted.

I've bought and paid for every one of my wargames (have over 1500 retail games), and believe its important to support companies like battlefront. I bought both AK and BB simply because I believed in the first title and wanted to support it. I don't actually think I've played AK more than once. Hopefully next payday I'll be able to pick up SF. Regardless of the state of the game, I'll buy it because I believe in this series.

The one thing that keeps most people away from this series (I've tried to get every online group I've belonged to to pick it up) is a) graphics, and the lack of an actual campaign. Unfortunatley the system is such that we are looking at a bunch of strung together single missions.

Maybe that has changed, I haven't played SF or much of AK. Thats pretty much why. I could get them to give it a go, but no one stuck around to play more.