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You know what would be great?

A PROPER Majesty 2.

You know, a Majesty 2 that has randomly acting autonomous heroes, random maps, a variety of mobs that do things besides rush straight for the town center...

In short - I don't think it's possible to do in a profitable fashion. This is due to A: The cost of a proper M3 game would be high and B: I think that the audience for a PROPER majesty game is too small for A to be viable.

We'd love to - we love Majesty to death and we've looked at this in twenty different ways but can't make the math the work. Even if just was a break even affair we might consider it.

I hope someone comes to us and convinces us they can make a great Majesty game with a smart budget.

Regards,

Shams
 
Oh man, that's disappointing. But I appreciate the honesty so we know not to expect a Majesty 3 anytime soon.

Never say never :)
 
you can try this marketing thingy for a wider audience

That's the kind of reasoning the bigger publishers go by.

More marketing spend ≠ bigger audience. Besides that's not how we operate - we try to go for the smart opportunities.

/shams
 
Why Not try a Kickstarter Campaign and see if you can get the funds that way? I know that I for one would be happy to invest in M3

It's not about the funds - we have those. I'm sure a crowdfunding campaign would raise enough money and perhaps a little more from you, the dedicated crowd, but whenever we make a new game we want it to have the potential to reach a big audience. We just don't think it's there and considering everything else we're doing Majesty drops in priority.

Might change in the future. But for now we're really not pursuing a "proper sequel".

Regards,

Shams
 
First off - I am an ogre.

Secondly - it's not that a sequel "can't make money" - a goat simulator is a top seller on steam right now ffs. It all comes down to: A: do we have a good plan for a sequel? And B: is it more interesting to us than all the other cool stuff we're looking at right now.

As an aside - I'd love if PDS would find the time to do a sequel. I think they'd be great. To bad they're busy with Ro... I mean HOI4.

In the meanwhile - let's enjoy W2.

/s
 
Tarantian - I don't know what to tell you - you seem to either have made up your mind about how things work or are privy to other information than I am.

Additionally - Despite being an ogre I strongly disagree with being called a "corporate suits" - this is totally untrue - unless you call me than on a Friday - because on Friday's we have "Fancy Fridays" and we all dress up to spice up the monotony of wearing stupid Battlestar Galactica t-shirts the other days of the week.

Moreover - anyone who thinks we operate according to the same mindset as big publishers and don't take risks is plain wrong. Our entire business the past 5 years has been evidence of risk taking - Gettysburg anyone? We released an expansion about Indian lords set during the medieval ages that reached #1 spot on steam.

So when we say that pursuing a Majesty 3 right now isn't the smartest thing I think we've done enough to deserve your trust. Try to imagine that we ACTUALLY might be sitting on additional information that you are not privy to that help us reach that conclusion. We're not a bunch of monkeys in suits who fling feces at the wall to see which game poster it sticks to and make business decisions based off of that. Like i said - we wear t-shirts mostly.

We love majesty and would adore to make it - if we found a feasible way to go about it.

Finally - if there was one big universal truth I could broadcast for all gamers to hear is this - whoever thinks the only needed component in making a game is money, or even thinks it's even the most important component is dead wrong. Crowdfunding is a great thing - but this is truly the worst part of it. It's created this belief that if you just throw money at something your nostalgia will just magically appear.

The cost of developing a game is just a (often small) part of the costs involved with releasing a game.

In this case money isn't the problem - funding a Majesty 3 isn't a problem. We just happen to think there are better/more fun things for us to do than M3. We're not here to bring your specific dream game to life - we're building a business by making games WE want to make. You're welcome to hop on and ride with us as long as you want to - the more the merrier - just don't expect to be able to decide where we make stops.

/shams - Corporate Paladin
 
Dude my whole issue was with how you said this.



Based on what? If based on Majesty 2, it was like a tower defense game with no Fantasy Kingdom Sim elements at all, that had a 2000 page long thread about what was wrong with it and how it could have been better. It shouldn't even count as a sequel, it's more like a Spinoff, it is no closer to being a Majesty game than Warlock.

And Warlock mind you is a great game, but it's not anything like Majesty, which is the point of the comparison.

I just can't conceive of where you'd come up with the idea that there isn't a big enough audience for a game like Majesty.

I know you can't conceive where we'd come up with that idea - it's almost like you're not sitting in on all the Paradox meetings where we discuss this, look at data, analyze/track industry trends and constantly talk to colleagues and associates in the industry.

I'm sorry for the sarcasm but I find it arrogant that you somehow think your gut feeling is somehow more accurate than an entire publishing teams collective experience and knowhow about making & publishing niche games.

/shams
 
@Shams: Thanks for pointing out that data. It doesn't really surprise me as such, but again, I'd have to argue that the popularity of Maj2 isn't a good indicator of market potential for a "proper" sequel, precisely because Maj2 didn't live up to a lot of fans' expectations.

It's interesting to note, for example, that the Majesty HD figures seem to be holding relatively steady. Of course, if you go by absolute numbers, they're pitiful- but if you go by staying power, more than a decade after release, they're not too shabby.

I think the more apt comparison might be with a somewhat younger game that you recently released an acclaimed successor to. I honest-to-Krolm believe that a properly-executed Majesty sequel could have a similar reception. Maj2 just wasn't up to it.


@Colombo: IIIRC, exact sales totals are only available for consoles, and I can't seem to google those anymore. Probably around some place, though.

Another factor to consider: what is good enough of a performance for a majesty sequel? I think we could do a majesty game that sells +25% better than M2, which sold ok. But the stakes are a bit higher today than they were in 2008.

Next week I'm going to bring this up with the person in charge of the majesty franchise and have an honest to god talk about M3 and see if anything's changed.

Regarding the earlier question. A game that has about 30 active players daily is really not good, then again it was released 6-7 years ago. If any of the majesty games would have had about 100 players it would be a strong indicator.

Both Fred and I would love to do M3. It's a question of figuring out how to do it in a way that works in today's market/our business.

Now back to W2!

/s
 
Even so - if we purely look at Majesty 1 - or heck put all the numbers together - concurrent users, forum activity (posts like yours) - it all tells us there's smarter things we could be doing with our time/developers. We've got limited bandwidth as a company and we have to chose what we do. A vocal minority isn't enough to warrant a course direction. Sorry.


Why not just make CoD and Gears of War clone games like the Triple A devs if you're going to think like that? What Paradox Game should exist if you were going by that?

Really? Thinking like that has given us games like Crusader Kings, Warlock, Victoria, Teleglitch, Cities in Motion - that's a far cry from turning into a CoD or GoW machine. That's actually another problem with Majesty - a "proper" majesty sequel is, for me not niche enough, nor is it mainstream enough - it's just too little for us to consider a full sequel. There's a big difference between doing niche and niche.

But Tarantian - you don't seem to believe a word I say - so how about you start your own game company and make us an offer we can't resist. Until then I'm done with your tone and this discussion - I don't have anything to add.

/shams
 
Shams, with due respect, your company kind of poisoned the well, and now you're complaining that nobody's coming to drink. (Going by forum activity is particularly strange, given that the Cyberlore boards went down years before the IP acquisition, and only a few of us ever migrated.)

As I gather, your argument has been based on Maj2's numbers, and your estimate that you might be able to do, say, 25% better this time around. I would invite you to imagine how much better Maj2 could have sold if it had (A) functional (and co-op) multiplayer, (B) at least the full range of the original's content, (C) AI that was at least as performant/colourful as the original, and (D) random map generation and freestyle play (heck, if we're dreaming big, maybe even a sandbox campaign.) Now, I don't know what kind of numbers that translates to, but I bet it's a shade better than 25% over.

There's no mystery surrounding why folks don't still play Maj2: because it has no replay value.

This is not a subjective matter of taste- these are all things which were objectively missing from Maj2, and present (or at least markedly less problematic) in the original. You say you are a company that prides itself on seeing the smart opportunities. Well, please, use your intelligence, and extrapolate a wee bit- it's absurd to suggest the presence or absence of these features wouldn't have a marked effect on sales and longevity. Lord knows what would happen if you actually improved on Maj1.


EDIT: Anyway, like I said- if you have more pressing things on your plate at the moment, or the right dev team isn't available right now, that's understandable. But that's a matter of circumstances, and different from saying Maj3 is intrinsically not worth your time.

I wouldn't go so far to say we poisoned the well... :) but you definitely have a point - look we understand majesty 2 wasn't the majesty game a lot of majesty fans were hoping for. We're not sitting around going - "damn those grumpy M1 players - why didn't they buy enough of M2!?" We know full well what the implications were of taking the game in another direction.

I wasn't around at the time when they designed it so I can't really say. But Paradox motto has always been - "we make games we like to play ourselves" and Majesty 2 is a game a lot of people internally at Paradox enjoy more than M1. Most prominently - our CEO Fred.

So don't make the mistake of assuming that an M3 would automatically mean us moving closer to M1 - it might even be a step further away.

That said - there are a lot of M1 fans as well - and when/if we seriously revisit the idea of doing another Majesty we'll make sure to gauge what the community feels. That's what makes us different from the Activisions/EA's - you can have this conversation with the person in charge of deciding what games is made next.

/shams
 
This does remind be a lot of the discontinuity debate regarding Heroes III/IV vs HoMM V and VI. :D

I really enjoyed M2 and its DLC, so if you guys do move to a M3, you would have my support.


I think that's a great comparison.

Heroes of Might and Magic III was the pinnacle in the series and few fantasy/strategy games have ever come close. I still play it regularly.

Clearly M2 wasn't our Homm3 - but neither was Majesty 1 to be hones.

I really don't want Paradox to take the Majesty series and do what Ubi did with Homm. Sure they're making much more money now with the style of game that Homm6 is - but it's not catering to all the old fans clamoring for more Homm3. Problem is that they can't do a Homm3 because that would a be a super niche product today and they can't turn niche into something super profitable (a requirement for them)

We however do know how to do niche and turn it into something that's financially successful - but I'm not sure simply take M1 - updating the graphics and doing minor improvements is the right way. And until we find the right way we're not going to walk down this path.

/shams
 
It's more that I just despise that sort of irrational and craven argument that could be summed up like this
"A game released over a decade ago with practically no advertising budget before half the world even had internet didn't sell amazingly, therefore the concept is fatally flawed and hardly anyone would want to play that sort of game."

Or

"Hardly anyone is talking about a game that came out over a decade ago that hardly anyone had access to, therefore a game like it couldn't sell well"

When it should be obvious that if people are even still talking about a game more than a decade later and have nothing but nice things to say about it, that indicates much more than how many people know to talk about it, besides which no one should assume that everyone interested in that sort of game would be talking about it when there's nothing relevant to discuss about it.

I just hate, utterly despise, that sort of industry attitude that goes around declaring genres dead based on such nonsense. It's what Shams arguments represent about the industry and the possible future corporate think of Paradox that will ruin them as a publisher of interesting niche titles one day, at that point it no longer has anything to do with whether or not a proper sequel to Majesty should be made, but how utterly contrived and logically fallacious the craven industry arguments are.

You make it sound so simple. We don't look at one single data point and make a decisions based on that. It's dozens of different factors that go into figuring out if a idea is worth exploring. Most of which you are not privy to. So it's very, very, easy to sit there and make bold statements about us being craven and conformist without having the entire picture. I think we've deserved the benefit of doubt thanks to our overall track record. I truly do. I'm sorry you don't see it that way.

Here's another aspect - supposedly we're making M3 for the old fans - right? But I sincerely believe that whatever we do - however good it may be - there's always going to be a crowd like yourself who won't be happy. Haters gonna hate. I've engaged in an open discourse with you and discussed the intricacies involved in deciding what game to do as a publisher. I discussion I'd dare you to be able to have with any other publisher. I've even said we'd specifically revisit the topic come business hours next week. Yet you decide to pounce on the things you don't happen to like in what I write. I don't think there's a single thing we could do to make you happy - so we're not going to try. I'd rather spend my time trying to please those that are civil, understanding and have positive and non-accusatory attitude.

Nothing good can come from having such a caustic attitude - especially in this community.

/shams
 
Tarantian, since you seem to totally disregard my arguments; Care to elaborate on what data points - or any indicators at all - you feel are valid for not pursuing sequels?

Say you were in my shoes - what are the things you look at that before deciding game X is a better business venture than say game Y? Or are you saying there's simply no hard facts that could be used as guidance if one wanted to make such a decision. It's all gut feeling? Please elaborate on how you're reaching the conclusion that Paradox should pursue a Majesty sequel.

Regards,

Shams
 
Any and all of the ones you have given are rubbish Shams and I've explained why, and I don't believe for a moment you have any secret data that is better than what you've given. The conclusions you draw from the data you're using are fundamentally irrational, you can't look at how well a PC exclusive game with no advertising budget sold in brick and mortar stores over a decade ago as any indication of how well a game like it might do on Steam. You can't use how many people are talking about a title released over a decade ago that no one has any reason to discuss as an indication of how well it would do.

And Shams what you're doing is a wide spread industry wide problem. You are declaring a genre to be dead based on faulty logic. And that's what's galling Shams, you shouldn't be declaring a genre dead, especially not on the rubbish data you're using.

I would look at the fact that some people even still are talking about a game released over a decade ago and that they have nothing but good things to say and that the only feedback I can find for it is that it's a lost gem, a cult classic, and so on, as a positive indicator.

But Shams the industry has been doing what you're doing for years and being utterly humiliated when games all the "hard facts" indicate should do well get torn apart in reviews and dumped on by fans, while indie projects show that what they've been declaring dead has a much larger audience than any of their "hard facts" could have possibly indicated.

The problem isn't that the facts aren't there, it's that the conclusions you and the rest of the industry draw from them are irrational and logically fallacious, and you seem to reinforce eachother's delusional non sequitur conclusions. Stop it. Stop going around declaring genres to be dead. It does you no favors at all, it just angers fans and makes you look disgustingly corporate and sets you up to be humiliated. It's irresponsible and irrational.

You're not answering my question - what would use as a basis to make a decision to tell you to do a sequel or not. So far you've mentioned

  • Community activity relative to original release date

Anything else?

/shams
 
There isn't sufficient data for a game like majesty, the only thing you could look at and draw any reasonable conclusion is what's been said about it and how much the people who've played it seem to like it.

What else could you look at for a game that came out over a decade ago with no advertising in brick and mortar stores as a PC exclusive that flew under most people's radar?

One thing you can't do with any valid reasoning is look at the data you've presented and write it off as unmarketable, that's rubbish it's non sequitur reasoning and it's an industry wide problem that you're a part of.

So in summary - you would base your decision on "community activity" and gut feeling?

Good luck with running your games business with that kind of decision process.

/shams