Whats going on in the Sim Market?

[jbergey22]

Wolverine apprears to be slow so Gary had to get another job. Greydog hasnt had a new release from anyone other than Adam in 2 years. OOTP has its core game but has added nothing new. Havent heard anything from Jim about a new product. Anyone know of any new games coming out or any other companies? Been awhile since it has been this slow IMO.

[DanGarion]

Originally Posted by jbergey22

Wolverine apprears to be slow so Gary had to get another job. Greydog hasnt had a new release from anyone other than Adam in 2 years. OOTP has its core game but has added nothing new. Havent heard anything from Jim about a new product. Anyone know of any new games coming out or any other companies? Been awhile since it has been this slow IMO.

I think I heard that there is going to be a FOFC Forum Simulator coming out in the next couple weeks. That way you can pretend to talk to your FOFC friends even while not online.

[muns]

Originally Posted by jbergey22

Wolverine apprears to be slow so Gary had to get another job. Greydog hasnt had a new release from anyone other than Adam in 2 years. OOTP has its core game but has added nothing new. Havent heard anything from Jim about a new product. Anyone know of any new games coming out or any other companies? Been awhile since it has been this slow IMO.

I agree its slow but I dont think anything is coming anytime soon. I havent bought a new game in some time now, and am really itching for someone to come out with something.

[Galaril]

Not much simply and that was even before the recession.

[MCK]

FROM GREYDOG WEBSITE


Arlie Rahn
GDS Developer Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Phoenix, AZ
Posts: 1,584

GDS removing Fast Break from our upcoming release list

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

With everyone else going on and Brian having other issues to deal with, we've decided to remove FBB from our site/forums. We wish Brian the best and wouldn't count out working with him again down the road if things change.

[Cringer]

Text simming is deader then punk rock my friend.


(not 'more dead' but deader, it may even be the deadest thing ever)

[KWhit]

True dat.

[DaddyTorgo]

Gary had to get another job?

[DaddyTorgo]

I think it's just tough in a recession - this is really "disposible income" in every sense of the word. And nobody's got much of it left.

[jbergey22]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

Gary had to get another job?

Yup on his forum he said he had to get back in the real world for the time being as the recession has affected his sales. He still plans on releasing his scheduled games and eventually making sims his one and only but for the time being is doing other things as well.

[Ryan S]

It is not all bad news for text sims. Football Manager 09 has been top of the UK PC sales charts for the last 13 weeks and the boxed copy of FM Live has made the top 10.

Gaming - News - 'Football Manager' holds on to PC top spot - Digital Spy

[DaddyTorgo]

well FM is to text sims like....darn...idk what the comparison is. lol

[cartman]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

well FM is to text sims like....darn...idk what the comparison is. lol

How about:

Jessica Alba/Megan Fox/Eva Mendes/Scarlett Johannson/Kate Beckinsale (take your pick) is to your high school's homecoming queen.

[DaddyTorgo]

that works cartman

[jbergey22]

Originally Posted by cartman

How about:

Jessica Alba/Megan Fox/Eva Mendes/Scarlett Johannson/Kate Beckinsale (take your pick) is to your high school's homecoming queen.

Can I add Elisha Cuthbert and Kate Bosworth to the beginning of your comparion? I would have never thought Bosworth belonged in that group until I watched 21 in which she was flat out hot.

[Anthony]

not a good time at all for text sim games. they really should've all pooled their resources and just banded together to form a semblence of one mega company, each releasing a game under their speciality and using company resources to help out on each other's games. kinda like what GDS had in mind initially, but more of a supergroup of developers.

text simming is like satellite radio - before you offered customers 2 different companies to choose from, each with their own pros and cons - they really needed to have built the satellite brand up and established it as a viable medium for entertainment, and then when it established itself as such then broke off into smaller companies. there was a time when text sims were gaining momemtum in the States but that was back earlier this decade, 7-9 years ago, if not more. a shame really. and the recession looks like its gonna make a lot of companies put things on hold so they can put food on the table so it's gonna be hard to imagine something coming out within the next 6 months.

[Philliesfan980]

I think part of it is console games are starting to close the gap a little. Sure, there are crap products out there like Madden and Front Office Baseball, but there are also some real quality products like MLB The Show, NBA2k, etc.

There's only so many hours in a day, and more of us are devoting our time to these games.

That's my take on it anyway.

[Swaggs]

Did anyone ever check out the music company sim that Wolverine released?

It looked promising during development, but I must have been preoccupied during its release and didn't see too much about it.

[Arles]

For me it's just real life. Being a dad, having a "real" 50-60 hour a week job and trying to have a small life as well.

I enjoy making the game a lot more when I don't need the cash to survive and can take my time on it. But, that also means the game takes longer and there's some "fatigue" from the gamers. That's why I don't like to say a lot (promise a lot) until I get close because real life may throw a curve.

[rjolley]

Hey Arles, have you heard anything about Brian lately?

[Buccaneer]

Brian has always been my very favorite and this latest turn of events saddens me. We'll always have the brilliant and still very relevant FBCB, which my son and I will start playing again next week.

Nothing from VPI97 either on his football sim, which held a lot of promise.

[Mota]

Yeah it's pretty sad these days, there's such a lack of new releases. Just a few years ago things were so crazy, you had multiple sims of the same sports. Now you can't even get a Football game every 2 years or so.

I still enjoy my OOTP though, but I'm jonesing for some new football and basketball action, especially on the college side because we haven't seen one of those since 2005.

[DanGarion]

Originally Posted by cartman

How about:

Jessica Alba/Megan Fox/Eva Mendes/Scarlett Johannson/Kate Beckinsale (take your pick) is to your high school's homecoming queen.

You mean to Lily Allen...

[AgustusM]

Interesting that the theories seem centered around the idea that the recession is driving down demand, but I don't believe that to be the reason.

for one it seems to take 18 months or more of development time for these games and 18 months ago people were still spending money and few saw this financial doom. With that in mind it is totally reasonable that 18 months ago developers would still see a viable market.

two, I believe the market is still viable. As previously mentioned FM is thriving and other video game sales seem to be very high. Historically affordable diversion does well in down economic time and few things give as much bang for the buck as a good video game.

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by AgustusM

Interesting that the theories seem centered around the idea that the recession is driving down demand, but I don't believe that to be the reason.

for one it seems to take 18 months or more of development time for these games and 18 months ago people were still spending money and few saw this financial doom. With that in mind it is totally reasonable that 18 months ago developers would still see a viable market.

two, I believe the market is still viable. As previously mentioned FM is thriving and other video game sales seem to be very high. Historically affordable diversion does well in down economic time and few things give as much bang for the buck as a good video game.

but developers need to provide for their families NOW

[AgustusM]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

but developers need to provide for their families NOW

of course they do, we all do.

I assume you argument is that developers who would normally be trying to make it work on their own have been forced by the economy to go back and work for the man and we know that at least in Wolverine's case that is true.

But is is also true, especially in tech, that down economic times drive innovation. Perhaps that isn't as true in such a small niche as the text sim market.

I wish I had chosen the developers career path 25 years ago, but I am afraid my programming education never got past 1982 level basic.

[Arles]

The economy hasn't really impacted my lack of a release. I happened to get a very good job opportunity outside of gaming (that I really enjoy) and have been juggling both ever sense

To those of you asking about Brian. I talk with him from time to time and he seems to be getting things going again in his life. I think you will hear from him again down the road.

[Icy]

You can't compare SI to any other text sim developer, SI is a huge company while the other are independent programmers who happen to have another job to feed their families and develop games as fun and hobby and for some extra cash, but not as way of living.

I might be wrong, but i think besides SI (FM), Markus (OOTP) is the only developer living exlcusively from his game sales. Arlie, Gary, Shaun, etc all them have a full time job and text sims programming is just their hobby. I don't know about Jim, but i doubt he lives only from FOF/TCY as he has not released a game in over two years, so i guess he has another job that keeps him bussy, of course it's a just a guess and not my business what others do for a living.

I think we gammers are forgetting a bit about what indie developers mean or used to mean, and we keep demanding more and more from them like if there had a huge group of developers, when most of them are just one man shows, with that man having just a few hours free per week to program our loved games, sometimes at the cost of their free time or even family time. It could explains why some of them have slowed down, we fans are demanding them more and more complex adn bug free games, while their income from those games have not raised at same speed as our demands.

I might also wrong on this, but i think that we text sim gammers are geting extinted, we average 30 years old or so, and the new generations are into consoles more than anything, so the text sims fan base is probably not growing, might even being decreasing.

About the current financial situatioin affecting those indy developers, i don't think it is affecting them directly right now with decreased sales, but probably it's more planning for the future and having an steady income source just in case things gets worse.

I think we had a golden era 2 or 3 years ago, but by now it's over. I hope 2009/2010 will be good years again with all the games that are currently being developed by all the different text sim companies/developers.

[Capital]

Icy,

I think a lot of what you said is on the money. The demands for text based games and exploded recently, which adds time, which also means money, to the development cycle.

Also, IMO, some of the text based games have gone the way of bloatware. They are trying to fit everything into the game that maybe a very small segment will actually use. Instead of concentrating on simply being mainstream. There may be some backlash from some on the message board, but the result will be much more streamlined.

I'm now 36 years old and I don't want to take the time to learn every possible option in the game, such as starting a baseball league on Mars in the background of my main league in the US. Although, I did buy the 7th and 9th version of that game - just didn't play it much - didn't want to take the time to learn everything.

A clean interface means a lot to me.

[rjolley]

Originally Posted by Arles

To those of you asking about Brian. I talk with him from time to time and he seems to be getting things going again in his life. I think you will hear from him again down the road.

Thanks for the update, Arles.

[cody8200]

It definitely seems like the need for more and more features even in the first release of a game could keep some developers away. There is already such a high standard with FOF, the 2 college football games, soccer, baseball, etc. that it doesn't leave a lot of room for new developers. For an indie developer, they really have to go after another niche other than the hardcore text gamer in order to have a hit on the first try. One that comes to mind is New Star Soccer. Fun as hell and sells quite a bit. Almost all of the people who own it also own FM. But it doesn't try to do everything that FM does or it would fail.

[Mac Howard]

Because Sick as a Parrot is developed continuously and upgrades released as often as every couple of months I don't often mention them here. But, as you asked and as I've just introduced into SaaP 2009 v 2 a new feature - which I believe is unique and will become an essential part of any "management" sim in the future if it has any ambition to be taken seriously. I'm not absolutely certain that it hasn't been done - I haven't for example seen the latest FM (I can't get it to run on my machines) - so I may be wrong in claiming it unique and a first.

There are three aspects of management that should be included in these sims - squad building, match tactics and player motivation/management. The last of these however has never been done well. SaaP has had pre-match, half time and full time squad and player motivational talks for some time but using the multiple choice comments system that can be repetitive, not germane to circumstances and not what the "manager" would like to say or the language he would like to use.

Late last year I expanded such a system, replacing 20 or so option combinations (ie 20 x 5 choices) to over 300 such combinations. But quickly became convinced this wasn't the solution particularly when in testing I found the options still sometimes seemed artificial and missing the mark despite all efforts to avoid that.

In discussing the future of soccer management game I've suggested on several occasions in the past that the only real solution is a LISA-style Artificial Intelligence system for player interaction. Well, I've bit the bullet and for release 2.0 of SaaP 2009 I've introduced an experimental setup such as this for the individual player pep-talks from the match dressing room.

In choosing to talk to a player the user-manager is faced with a blank text input screen in which he can type whatever he likes - "Great game, Joe, pity you didn't put that sitter away" or "You @#%$&% wanker" to a player who was red-carded and lost you the FA Cup Final. Whatever - not repetition (up to you), directly relevant (up to you again ) and exactly what you wanted to say and how you wanted to say it. Not only is it relevant it can also be cathartic

The program then analyses your input, much as Google will analyse you search requests against a library of key words and phrases, and then produces the appropriate reaction from the player(s), also taking into account his temperament, his current state of confidence and the conditions in the game.

As I said, it's experimental and currently limited to the dressing room pep talks to individuals but the reaction of users has been excellent and I'll be looking to expand it to training talks, general motivational talks and press conferences.

On the subject above: yes, I too don't rely totally on game sales for my living or I would pack it in and I would love to see things pick up considerably because the last three months have been dire. I've survived the recessions of 87, 91 and 2001 but this is something else. It may be that retail sales of games from the high street have done ok (I'm not convinced) but many of those are impulse buys when the little man in your head that says "no you can't afford it" is ignored but mail order and internet sales are usually considered buys and I suspect the little man is heeded. People take the demo instead of buying the game (I've noticed a significant increase in demo downloads).

[Anthony]

wow Mac that sounds fucking sick. why is it all these soccer games have the best toys and innovations?

[DaddyTorgo]

wow...fucking a mac!! woww

[Deattribution]

Music Wars - Rebirth was released over two months ago, and while I don't know anything about how well it's sold, I think it's been an under appreciated game and that is something that has put the text sim market in the situation it is in.

It's a solid game that is the best in it's genre, some interesting features, well supported and there isn't much of a buzz about it at all. That's not to say it's a perfect game, but without support from consumers it makes it a lot harder to advance the game, or for Antuan Johnson (the games dev) to even try a different genre of text sim.

Without supporting the developers who are creating games now, we can't really complain when nothing new comes out.

[cody8200]

Originally Posted by Anthony

wow Mac that sounds fucking sick. why is it all these soccer games have the best toys and innovations?

Mac,

My thoughts exactly. That feature sounds sweet. I'm d/l the demo right now. I'm not even a huge soccer fan but I find myself liking all of the soccer sims.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

wow...fucking a mac!! woww

Off topic but ... the first time I read this, I wondered why someone was having intercourse with a non-Windows computer. And how that related to text sims for anyone other than maybe HA.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Deattribution

It's a solid game that is the best in it's genre, some interesting features, well supported and there isn't much of a buzz about it at all.

Speaking for myself it's kind of hard to buzz about something I don't think I've ever heard of. Or if I ever did I have zero recall of it at the moment. The last thing music related I recall was (goes to look at program shortcuts in the Start menu) Rock Legend.

[Deattribution]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Speaking for myself it's kind of hard to buzz about something I don't think I've ever heard of. Or if I ever did I have zero recall of it at the moment. The last thing music related I recall was (goes to look at program shortcuts in the Start menu) Rock Legend.

There was a thread started here during the paid beta portion, and I believe during the release, Obviously neither caught on.

Most text games also seem to be still on the ancient advertising system of word of mouth, which doesn't do them any favors during times like these either.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Deattribution

Obviously neither caught on.

Hell, I'm not sure they lasted long enough to even be seen. But maybe I was mentally vacationing during them or something.

Most text games also seem to be still on the ancient advertising system of word of mouth, which doesn't do them any favors during times like these either.

On this point I'll have to defend the devs I think. Reality is that there's very few channels for advertising beyond word-of-mouth that would be cost efficient for them. The cost of advertising would very quickly exceed the reasonably expected sales it might generate. It's can get to be a nasty catch-22 for a micro business to do paid advertising online (which is about the only option that seems to even be worth considering for them). In order to move meaningful additional units through advertising you have to do a considerable volume of eyeballs. And once you find a resource that has a considerable number of eyeballs then the price takes you out of getting a good ROI.

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by Philliesfan980

I think part of it is console games are starting to close the gap a little. Sure, there are crap products out there like Madden and Front Office Baseball, but there are also some real quality products like MLB The Show, NBA2k, etc.

There's only so many hours in a day, and more of us are devoting our time to these games.

That's my take on it anyway.

Agreed.. I spend most of my time on my console vs playing text sims. Never used to be that way.

[Deattribution]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Hell, I'm not sure they lasted long enough to even be seen. But maybe I was mentally vacationing during them or something.



On this point I'll have to defend the devs I think. Reality is that there's very few channels for advertising beyond word-of-mouth that would be cost efficient for them. The cost of advertising would very quickly exceed the reasonably expected sales it might generate. It's can get to be a nasty catch-22 for a micro business to do paid advertising online (which is about the only option that seems to even be worth considering for them). In order to move meaningful additional units through advertising you have to do a considerable volume of eyeballs. And once you find a resource that has a considerable number of eyeballs then the price takes you out of getting a good ROI.

I don't disagree at all with there not being enough demand for there to be much if any advertising budget, however nobody really presents much of an incentive for current consumers to get the word out about a particular game. It basically breaks down to a product being released (Music Wars for example) and then hope people interested in the subject stumble onto it.

This is one of the few forums (outside of the devs official forums) where people look information on new text games and we are small group of people in the grand scheme of sales. Online there are tons of outlets for sports, and music where a street team of people could sensibly advertise (not spam) for a game. Of course nobody does that though.

[Mac Howard]

Originally Posted by Anthony

wow Mac that sounds fucking sick. why is it all these soccer games have the best toys and innovations?

I guess the answer is "competition", Hell. When you have the likes of FM, CM and FIFA to compete with and can't match the output of their multiple programmer teams as an individual then you turn to what you can do - innovation.

I'll be interested to hear your reactions if you take a look and, bearing in mind this is currently very experimental and currently limited, interested to hear how you feel it can be developed into the feature I believe if can become.

Has anyone heard of this in other games outside of the text sim arena?

[Tim Tellean]

We're trying real hard to get the word out about MWR it is a great game that no one knows about, we've tried all the usual avenues of reviewers (not interested), word of mouth, a few small ads and increasing the distribution channels but so far are stymied.
I think whats happening is the game is a niche of a niche product and people are stuck in the console games or off the shelf and our word and product is buried by the numbers, I do agree with Mac that innovation gets you noticed take World of Goo or Crayon Physics Deluxe both are insanely great games that take the Physics movement based game to a new level so awards and recognition follow and reviewers want to see it.
We did get some buzz when TPG 1 was 4th place by Game Tunnel for Sports Game of the Year in '07 but it didn't last.
It tough for the many, many websites out there too as the glut of game websites has really choked the market and made finding a voice and traction also difficult.

[Young Drachma]

What's killing the video game business.

[Mac Howard]

Originally Posted by Dark Cloud

What's killing the video game business.

O for the days when you only had 64 kbytes of memory to fill

[MizzouRah]

I know it's not Jim's way.. but I'd love to see a FOF released every year like Markus does with ootp.

[Groundhog]

Originally Posted by MizzouRah

Agreed.. I spend most of my time on my console vs playing text sims. Never used to be that way.

Yeah, ditto. I used to buy the latest console sports title, get hooked for a month or so, then find myself craving the more realistic text-sim version of the sports.

Now, things are getting much closer.

[Groundhog]

Originally Posted by Dark Cloud

What's killing the video game business.

Very interesting article. I had no idea video games cost so much to make. It's amazing when you consider the quality of some of the more indie titles I play on PC.

[Tasan]

Originally Posted by MizzouRah

I know it's not Jim's way.. but I'd love to see a FOF released every year like Markus does with ootp.

Or at least a TCY/FOF yearly rotation.


For the love of all that is holy Jim, give us TCY 2.

PLEASE.