How do you guys deal with those self declared experts?

So, once in a while when we post a progress update we get posts like these,

https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comme...ghter_progress_report_bots_tutorials/dvost5h/

From self declared experts on IP life cycles I never respond to these, just ignore them. Do you try to get them straight on how things work or just ignore them like I do?

 

Ignore their tone and take what they say on its merits.

With no context, its not a totally unreasonable point, albeit poorly delivered. But you have more information than them, and you can consider their point without agreeing.

Definitely agree with no reply

 

Hmm ... I wouldn't even take offence on that suggestion, it's merely someone's judgement, you take it or leave it. Poorly delivered, maybe, but bluntness can be a virtue sometimes.

In fact, cutting loses is occasionally a sound advice, not always of course. It's mainly up to you, if you have your own motives to do something, then simply disregard what he said, confident you're doing it because of X reasons.

Reply, or don't reply, his words shouldn't affect your emotions, only your rational thinking. There could be an angry mob with pitchforks and torches outside your door screaming at you to cut it out with that game production, screeching that it's a time waster, shrieking that you risk misusing your time, throwing rocks through your glass windows with horrible messages tied up:

You should temporarily consider focusing on a smaller project for a while
​

Is any of that going to throw you off and define your path like a paper boat at the mercy of some a road gutter's current? You're the captain of your own boat.
You can't control the wind ... but you can control the directions of your sails!

 

I don't really agree with "cutting your losses" being the best way to proceed*), but the rest of his reasoning in that first post sounds pretty much spot on for me. If I had VR hardware I'd likely buy the game because I want to see all the stuff we've talked about here in the past first hand. But if I didn't know you? No chance I'd jump on this as a regular consumer. And aside from the fact that I don't have VR hardware, I don't think I could be much deeper at the core of your target audience.

*) I'd consider how the experience can be turned into being a viable singleplayer game. That might in turn create a community for multiplayer again.

 

Cutting your losses is a horrible "tip" I hope devs dont even consider this when they get that from the community. Just F***ing get one with it and finish the game!

edit: We are doing just that btw, fixing the best single player experience possible, but its a bit beside the pint I guess

 

I disagree on it always being bad advice, for all my gamedev attempts so far (none of which ever made it to a release) it always would have been a great choice to cut my losses sooner and move on.

Awesome! And I think it's right on point. By focussing on SP you're in a sense temporarily "cutting losses" on pouring more focussed work into something that has no sufficient demand. E.g. making a battle royale mode for a game with a tiny active playerbase would be a very bad time investment imho. Sounds to me like you're doing everything right!

And (thinking out loud here, like one of those self-proclaimed experts you don't seem to like very much, in spite of this forum having a pretty high density of them imho ^_^ ) once you've got good SP content you can think about a way to "rebrand" to get those reviews back up on a fresh start. Like e.g. split SP and MP into 2 separate entities at half the price of your current game each, giving both to all players who currently own the game, and make the SP part the "new" game, so that it will hopefully get good reviews, and then you can use ingame targeted marketing to try and convert players over to buying the MP part of the game too.

 

Offcourse its a bit depending on the dev team and their experience level and whatknot. But for us it would be idiotic. Doesn't matter how the game sells now, its in EA, we are not working on a game, we are working on a framework. If we quit now we dont quit making a game we quit making a framework for shooter games in VR, that would be stupid.

Haha, yeah, I forgot that most Unity devs here are not professionals So you are right, I'm probably targeting those self proclaimed experts as we speak Anyway, I think many devs quit too early. I guess many none pro programmers just run into a wall were the code base isnt maintaintable etc. A game is never better than the foundation its built upon, as long as you have a great foundation and effortlessly and continually improve it, the "game" is not dead. My two cents

 

I completely agree!

 

No it's not. It's sometimes a horrible tip, sometimes it's a great tip. I think you're generalizing based on what works for you right now.

 

I think it's always a horrible tip, because you as a outsider that is giving the tip has no clue whatsoever what is happening behind the closed doors of the Studio in question

 

sometimes people on the outside can see clearly, while you yourself are biased towards the game because you like the idea, or have already invested so much into it.
if your game already launched and has pretty bad reviews ond no more players left, its really difficult to bring it back.
most people wont even click it when they see the review score.
even if you are making a framework, you could take the framework and refine it while working on a different game.

 

This is not if the game is good or not, this guy hasn't even tried it. its his tip about cutting loses I talk about. He has no clue.

edit: We always listen to constructive feedback from actual players, but this is something else

 

Do not concern yourself so much about public opinion. The reason this thread exist is pretty clear, you want confirmation bias regarding the other guy being wrong and unimportant.

Alas, if outsiders have no idea about what's best for you, then why make this thread? This thread shouldn't even exist by that logic.

See, a tip is a take it or leave it thing. It's not a mandate written in stone. Tips are simple suggestions based on their personal experience, and then you and no one else evaluates if it applies to your particular case. People don't have to live in your game studio to be able to give you a tip.

This should be a no brainer, if his advice doesn't apply to you, you can say "Thank you but we're good" ... if his advice maybe seems like he's trolling, trying to make you go for a bad decision on purpose, then ignore him altogether, pity him, and don't spend another second of your life thinking about it, you have more important things to do.

 

Basically he's saying the game is poorly received and has been out for a reasonably long period of time so dropping it should be an option that you look at seriously.

Objectively, this is a valid point.

Practically, you shouldn't be taking business advice from your playerbase.

 

oh, I dont care one bit, but I think its a pretty fascinating behaviour worth discussing. I dont need confirmation from you guys that I shouldn't listen

 

He is not even our playerbase since he does not own the game

 

Doesn't really change anything, does it?

 

No the part about taking business advice from consumers doesn't change. But there is absolutely nothing such a person can bring to the table that helps your studio.I don't even consider the negative reviews on Steam with 0.1 hours played as anything that can give anything of value. I only read the positive ones since there the real constructive feedback is.

 

lol

 

If we're just discussing things in general, then my takeaway is always consider what someone says no matter how painful. They may be right.

And in this specific case, I want to point something out: you seem to think that he's wrong. But it's absolutely impossible for you to know that. His statements hold objective value, and there's no guaranteed magic key that's going to bring you a rush of players. At this juncture, the idea that "you don't have many players" (fact) so you won't ever get them (conjecture) is more likely than the idea that you will get them (also conjecture).

I suggest you take a look at LawBreakers if you want an example of what he's talking about. He's not really wrong (as far as the likelihood of gaining players is concerned). Now abandoning the game is another thing entirely, but you should be able to face the realities of the situation.

From the way you describe it you see it as building a framework. So it sounds like you don't actually think he's wrong, but that what he's talking about doesn't matter. Someone else suggested using that framework for a different game, which seems to "solve" both problems in a sense.

Do you read the negative ones with more that 0.1 hours?​

 

I'm not saying he is not right about the player stats and those facts, those are facts. But those facts means nothing if you should cut your losses or not. He just dont know enough about the game not even the game as it is in its current state if you own the game on Steam (since he have never owned it or played it), moreso since he does not know about all the cool S*** we are working on. etc,etc. Not even our dedicated players on Discord knows all the stuff we are working on

Well, offcourse we want this game to succeed, it would be so much easier than launching a kickstarter for the next one. But yeah, I put more value in the core domain that we have built than in the IP. We are a game focused on awsome mechanics not story or IP

​

I read all reviews But there are not many negative reviews that are constructive, so I dont put much effort in those. We are also a special case, we and another game released at about the same time. We were the first two shooters in VR. They released abotu 3 weeks earlier if I recall correctly, in that time they built a pretty big player base and we were hit hard with fanboy reviews when we went live. Reviews we still need to live with, though, we only have 60 reviews so that can easy be fixed with a few more positive ones. All new reviews are positive so that's nice.

The new steam review system is crap too at least for us that are hit hard with fanboys from a competitor. The new system filters on review likes, a positive review get a few likes a negative one get about 30 likes for our game. So the first page of reviews are only negative ones from 2016.

All this might not be relative to the original topic, but it a interesting topic so I gladly discuss it

 

I'd definitely agree that those facts don't mean you should cut your losses. But again, realize that it's far, far more likely that regardless of what you do you're not going to gain players, as opposed to people coming in on the wake of your improvements. Number of games that grew after landing poorly <<< number of games that remained in obscurity. I'm defining "landing poorly" as not having many players. That's just reality, regardless of how awesome your improvements are. Just be aware of that.

Another thing to point out--the things he's saying are pretty generic. He's not making some big analysis. He's definitely not acting like a self-declared expert. "MP game does not have players, so it's dead and will remain dead" is an incredibly common viewpoint. Don't take it personally.

I took a look myself. You actually have twice as many positive reviews as you do negative ones. And there are only two (negative ones) from release that talk about the difference between you and Onward. And to me they don't read like fanboy reviews at all, but that hardly matters when there are only two of them and they're old.

At this point anything new positive or negative looks like "game is really good, but there are no players." Which is basically what the guy on Reddit said (though he didn't comment on the quality of the game).

 

Subnautica is a early access title that turned out to be a success in the end because they Devs just like us refused to quit and believed in their product.

Humans are quitters by nature, so it's only natural most initial failures do not turn around

 

Just keep in mind you might be too invested in your own product to be able to recognize when and if it's a good idea to cut your losses and move on to the next project. I don't know if I would take his advice if I were in your position but he makes valid points you should consider.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Loss_aversion_and_the_sunk_cost_fallacy

I'm not convinced that's what ultimately made them a success. Having a good game is definitely an important part of the picture but you need to attract attention to it. A quick glance at the Wikipedia entry shows that Subnautica received press attention during its early access phase.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subnautica#Reception

By comparison I wasn't able to turn up any articles covering your game. It's entirely possible the majority of your target audience simply isn't aware that the game exists. How much effort have you put towards marketing your game?

 

When you have worked for 20 years in the software industry like I have I think you gain eyes that somewhat can look at your own products a bit objective, but it's always good to listen to feedback, and we are humble for it,our game would have been a completely different game without our community and their feedback.

That said I don't think you should listen to all feedback and tips and especially not business related like this

 

I don't see anything wrong with his comment. It is his opinion about the future of this game, so is only necessarily wrong once you successfully prove him wrong.

You only get to release a game once, and when opinions are formed about a game they are difficult to change. No Man's Sky for example will always be a game sold on lies, and it doesn't matter that since release they have made good on many of their original false promises.

 

It wouldn't surprise me at all if this held the game back from becoming a success. After all it's bad enough that you have to find people who are interested in the concepts behind the game itself (realistic combat with physics-based weaponry). You have to hope your audience has the equipment required to play it too.

A search for the "most popular" of anything tends to produce a lot of noise so bear with me. Tech Radar has Farpoint in their top list of the most successful VR required games. Yet according to VGChartz they've only sold about 70,000 copies globally. If I'm not mistaken that's extremely low for an FPS. It received good reviews at launch too.

https://www.techradar.com/news/gami...rtual-reality-games-for-pc-and-mobile-1300576
http://www.vgchartz.com/game/161011/farpoint/

 

Never even heard of the game, but 70k is far from that great even in the VR world, our closest competitor have sold alot more. But sure VR is a small business, you can't even compare it with desktop games just yet. But it's the future, so anyone that has a great product ready when it does hit will have a great ROI

 

We keep being told that but I'll continue being skeptical until it we're near the cusp of it. Virtual reality is simply too risky to rely on it as the sole way to experience a game. If anything we're at a worse point now than when the current iteration of virtual reality launched thanks to the cryptocurrency miners driving the cost of graphics cards through the roof.

Just as an example the GeForce 1080 Ti has an MSRP of $699 but is currently priced at $1,000.

 

Price isn't the problem, the Rift is cheaper than a gaming monitor, ease of use and picture quality is.

 

Price is only not a problem for people who already have high-end gaming rigs. If the majority of the market had systems capable of running these games it wouldn't be a problem, but the majority don't have the hardware necessary.

According to Steam the number of people with GTX 1070, 1070 Ti, 1080, and 1080 Ti cards is only about 3.5% (previous generation hardware is even worse with 980 and 980 Ti being about 0.5%). I don't know the equivalents for AMD graphics cards but the percentages are likely very close to this as well.

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

 

Price is a problem. You need strong cards to power VR at the resolutions and frames required, and that requires strong money. And in addition to that you need the peripheral itself (which is definitely NOT cheaper than a gaming monitor--where are you spending $400+ on an average monitor?).

It isn't the only problem, but to say that price isn't a problem at all for VR is insane.

 

He's likely referring to 1440p @ 144Hz which is definitely outside the budget of the vast majority of gamers right now. It isn't like the cost of the monitor is the problem there either. You can't do high resolution with high refresh rate in current games without a high-end GPU and even then you rarely get the full 144Hz.

 

VR has been "the future" for well over 20 years. I remember how awesome it was in the mid 90's playing the original Dark Forces in VR with an iGlasses headset and air joystick. It was freaking amazing. Unfortunately in the mean time while things like resolution have improved, there has been exactly zero progress on the inherent limitations of how VR is implemented. Namely that the hardware is cumbersome and has no other purpose for the buyer, you need to clear a wide space to use it, and while you can't see anything else in the room you need to avoid getting tangled up in the cord tethering you to some other hardware.

Until these issues are overcome, VR will remain "the future" and I don't see that happening anytime soon. The hype around VR right now isn't that there has actually been any breakthrough, it is just that Facebook is pouring cash into trying to convince people a breakthrough has happened when it hasn't.

Contrast that with regular gaming on a monitor, the hardware is multipurpose, from web surfing to watching movies to getting work done to gaming, can be done laying down in bed, sitting at a desk, sitting on a toilet, or in the passenger seat of a car on a long trip. Look at the Switch compared to Oculus Rift, Nintendo threw a lot less money at the Switch than Facebook and is selling like mad, and the whole point of it is you aren't tethered to anywhere if you don't want to be.

 

Indeed. But taking a look at that same hardware survey from Steam you posted before, apparently 75% of people are still using 1080p. And even 120 or 144 Hz 1080p monitors cost less than $400.

 

With that logic everubody should make mobile games, for mid tier phones offcourse

 

Take a step back. No one has said you shouldn't make these games. We have said that there may be reasons why it isn't as successful as it could (and maybe should) be, and you should be aware of those things.

 

It's hard to take it seriously when you guys say VR haven't moved in 20 years. You can not have tried current gen VR.

We are going way off topic btw

 

Well I can't comment on that, I didn't say that personally. But glean the facts from the post.

Is any of that untrue? If not, then simply take it into account when approaching VR and the potential success of any games made using it.

 

We're not saying that VR won't have its own place on the market. We're just saying it won't be "the future". Generally when people use the term "the future" they're referring to it completely replacing existing methods and with how long you've been in the industry you should be aware of what happened when other products were labeled as "the future".

I remember when 3D became "the future" and companies were taking concepts that would have been more ideal as 2D and making them into 3D just because it was "the future". Yet today we have games that have become wildly successful that are not 3D at all. Because people finally realized that just choosing 3D wasn't always the best choice.

Likewise virtual reality won't always be the best choice. Having options and allowing the player to make the decision rather than locking them to one choice is the best approach. If you think about it it's no different than how we expect the ability to customize the game controls. Just because you think using one control is the best doesn't mean your players do.

 

I remembered when I started coding for Glide (API for 3dfx cards) people said the same, why don't you just go software instead, those cards are way to expensive, and they are single purpose only.

Funny how the past repeat itself

 

There will always be examples of technology that caught on just like there are examples of technology that didn't. What is important is to understand why each of them succeeded or failed. Often times you can determine if the technology will have a future by comparing past technology or even past attempts.

Graphical accelerators make sense in the same way that math co-processors made sense and the reason they caught on is largely the same reason that math co-processors were eventually integrated directly into the main processor.

Just because there are past examples of technology succeeding when it was least expected doesn't mean that virtual reality will succeed though for precisely the reason I mentioned in the first paragraph. There are examples of technology that didn't succeed despite all the people claiming they would.

Modern attempts at virtual reality have a much better chance at success than they had in the past and some of the problems @Joe-Censored mentioned are being eliminated thanks to technology that simply didn't exist in the past (eg wireless video streaming, high-density batteries, etc).

There is a big difference though between carving out a niche and becoming the mainstream technology that the masses rely on. What you need to remember is that the masses are often satisfied with "good enough". Just look at the different iterations of media distribution and resolution of said media.

Standard definition was rapidly phased out in favor of "high definition" resolutions yet for the most part people seem to be satisfied with 1080p (and even 720p) resolutions and have not been picking up 4K as rapidly as people were claiming they would.

Likewise rather than jump at the chance to have HD-DVD or Blu-ray the masses were far more enamoured with being able to access content anywhere even though they had to live with the same or worse resolutions and compression artifacts.

 

I'd say having a successful multiplayer FPS is a task of it's even on desktop. With VR you are struggling with the smaller user base and with several other titles that already have a steady amount of users even tho I know yours is a lot more polished than some of them. I have few friends with VR and from FPS they mostly play Onward, Pavlov, Payday 2 or recently Stand Out.

Personally I also think VR is the future but will be a gaming subclass of its own. However new big titles appear from time to time and new users move to them directly or from the old ones play the most popular ones. It will be hard for you to catch up or gain attention with a already released "old" title unless you get your game played by big streamers.

You might want to rethink are you doing the project as partly as a hobby and is there a realistic financial chance for it ever to recoup the time and resources it has already taken. Some other type project might be better or focusing on a nice single player campaign instead of the multiplayer experience.

 

Well you do not really measure good picture quality in pixel resulution, I always get annoyed when people start talking about megapixel on cameras or resulution on displays. Tell me the real quality attributes like image dynamic and contrast god damnit!

My projector can display 4k video,but it's black levels and contrast that's makes it a great display and why I can't watch streamed content on it because the artifacts will show because of the low bitrate.

Now I'm babbling

 

Thing is, nothing about this thread says you have an objective view. Your posts are rife with sunk cost fallacy and an arrogance that will ignore opinions that don't generally align with your existing position. Nothing so far suggests that you aren't heavily, if not blindly, invested in your current path, so you might need to take a step back to see if you are actually being objective.

Here's the thing about feedback, every problem is truth. It doesn't mean that they have gotten to the heart of the issue, but even an idiot can tell that something is wrong. Solutions are another story (usually infeasible for any number of reasons), but it's not as though there isn't a reason for their suggestion.

If you don't have a playerbase, are you doing anything to solve it? Do you intend to have a marketing push? Are you doing anything to foster community, like events? The "build it and they will come" mentality is cute and all, but this isn't a market where that's viable anymore (if it ever was). Also a thing that people don't seem to realize is that if the game is in early access, it's already shipped. If you expect things to get serious once you roll into 1.0, make a lot of noise otherwise it's dead.

 

It's much harder on desktop, you compete with games like Battlefield and other triple A IPs. I would never even try to make a FPS for desktop

What's unique with VR is that you can stand out with the mechanics much more. thats something really hard on deaktop,on desktop it's more about graphics etc. And there isn't much room to explore FPS shooter mechanics there, you have a bigger target audience yes

 

I'm definitely of the opinion that early access hurts more often than it helps.

 

That I agree on, we did it so we could cut down on dayjobs. Something that offcourse failed since we are two Devs on high dayjobs salary

Though like I said earlier the game would have been a completely different game if we didn't do it as a early access game. It's impossible to say if it was a good decision or not since we do not know how the game would have turned out.

 

Unless that's the business model AKA the fatter long tail.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/242760/The_Forest/ gets constant exposure and survival is one of those game types that works well with it.

 

Haters gonna hate