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@Tarantian
And another one which has no respect for others on my ignore list!
Can't believe that he can write more and more disrespectful in this forum without consequences!
I've been following this conversation, and i can't believe Shams took time to answer his every point when he has such a disrepectful, almost hateful speech 
...Yeah.
@ Tarantian: As someone who's prone to the occasional hissy fit, I do sympathise, and I think there's a kernel of truth to your argument, but it's the same argument you've been trotting out over and over again. It is hasn't worked by now, it's not going to, and at this point your overall stance is probably counterproductive.
Deep skin and rubbish arguments. Anything about me personally is an irrelevant distraction as far as I'm concerned.
My argument is that there are no valid data points you can look at to determine how a game like Majesty would sell, and that Shams shouldn't be going around declaring genres dead with rubbish data and rubbish arguments.
And I've clearly explained why many of his arguments are rubbish.
If you're going to write off what I'm saying because I'm rude, nice ad hom dismissal but the argument should stand or fall on it's own and the person making it should be irrelevant as far as I'm concerned.
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I've been following this conversation, and i can't believe Shams took time to answer his every point when he has such a disrepectful, almost hateful speech
Shams arguments were rubbish and I've explained why whether I've been disrespectful or not.
If you want to discuss something with someone (exchange arguments, instead of declaring your own as truth), you need to be discuss politely, without hostility.
On good side, your other thread in this forum is like that, which is good.
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
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
If you want to discuss something with someone (exchange arguments, instead of declaring your own as truth), you need to be discuss politely, without hostility.
On good side, your other thread in this forum is like that, which is good.
Good manners don't make a good argument. Often rudeness sharpens the point. I don't believe in always doing criticism and arguments with kid gloves, especially not when giving feedback as a customer. I think the world would be a better place if more people spoke their minds instead of worrying so much about manners, and at the end, it makes no difference to the arguments whether or not the person making them is rude, arguments should stand or fall on their own and IMO the person making them should be irrelevant, with possible exceptions only for family and close personal friends.
And I've made my points fairly clearly, though perhaps with a bit of hyperbolic language and hostility. As I said before, this is the one thing, and one of the only things, that is almost guaranteed to get a nasty reaction out of me, and I consider it self evident that it's fundamentally irrational to declare a genre dead or unmarketable based on how many forum posts there are about a game released over a decade ago that no one has a reason to talk about, or any of the other data points he did provide and I don't believe for a second there are any better ones tucked up his sleeve.
This is an industry wide problem, the industry has been doing what Shams has done in this forum for years just usually not with an actual discussion with a fan. And I am a fan, a very dismayed and annoyed fan who really doesn't like what I'm seeing right now with this Triple A mentality infecting even Paradox, but a fan nontheless.
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
I would say the kernel of truth to Tarantian's argument is that direct comparisons with Maj2 are definitely flawed, and that while Paradox's overall track record is admirable, I would have to say your company's specific track record with the Majesty IP shows some questionable judgement. (Repeatedly. Again, I don't really know the internal reasons for that, I can only speculate and judge by external results.)
Where I would disagree with Tarantian is in saying that no other comparisons are possible. Now, I'm neither a market researcher nor an accountant, and my math here is probably going to be hopelessly naive, but maybe you could refine the formula a bit based on privy information or informed experience, and come to your own conclusions.
Let:
C = cost to develop and advertise
S = total sales
F = projected boost due to better features
M = projected weakness due to different brand or fan expectations
Majesty 3 patterned after Sims Medieval
C = 10 million (lots of extra, high-quality content needed)
S = 500K copies at 25 dollars average, including bargain bin = 12.5 million
F = 1.5 (real economy model, actual monster battles, delegation of responsibility, sandbox narrative)
M = 0.5 (Sims is a monster brand)
Total: Break-even or losses
Majesty 3 patterned after Majesty 2
C = 5 million (need engine to handle random terrain, better AI)
S = 300K copies at 20 dollars average, including bargain bin = 6.6 million
F = 2.0 (lots of room for improvement here)
M = 1.0 (same brand)
Total = 8 million profit
Majesty 3 patterned after Crusader Kings/II
C = 3 million (can adapt existing engine, need new art)
S = 500K copies at 20 dollars average, including bargain bin = 10 million (?)
F = 1.0 (presumably no worse)
M = 0.7 (same company, existing brand, but quite different gameplay or setting, depending on demographic.)
Total = 4 million profit
(Interestingly for me, this actually goes in reverse order of my personal preferences.) But again, I'm shooting from the hip here, so these estimates might be way, way off in either direction.
Personally, I reckon the riskiest factor is the suitability of the development team for the task, and the attendant odds of screwing up feature implementation, but PDS at least could probably pull it off. At any rate, I do think these are the kind of comparisons that you might productively consider.
Where I would disagree with Tarantian is in saying that no other comparisons are possible. Now, I'm neither a market researcher nor an accountant, and my math here is probably going to be hopelessly naive, but maybe you could refine the formula a bit based on privy information or informed experience, and come to your own conclusions.
Let:
C = cost to develop and advertise
S = total sales
F = projected boost due to better features
M = projected weakness due to different brand or fan expectations
Majesty 3 patterned after Sims Medieval
C = 10 million (lots of extra, high-quality content needed)
S = 500K copies at 25 dollars average, including bargain bin = 12.5 million
F = 1.5 (real economy model, actual monster battles, delegation of responsibility, sandbox narrative)
M = 0.5 (Sims is a monster brand)
Total: Break-even or losses
Majesty 3 patterned after Majesty 2
C = 5 million (need engine to handle random terrain, better AI)
S = 300K copies at 20 dollars average, including bargain bin = 6.6 million
F = 2.0 (lots of room for improvement here)
M = 1.0 (same brand)
Total = 8 million profit
Majesty 3 patterned after Crusader Kings/II
C = 3 million (can adapt existing engine, need new art)
S = 500K copies at 20 dollars average, including bargain bin = 10 million (?)
F = 1.0 (presumably no worse)
M = 0.7 (same company, existing brand, but quite different gameplay or setting, depending on demographic.)
Total = 4 million profit
(Interestingly for me, this actually goes in reverse order of my personal preferences.) But again, I'm shooting from the hip here, so these estimates might be way, way off in either direction.
Personally, I reckon the riskiest factor is the suitability of the development team for the task, and the attendant odds of screwing up feature implementation, but PDS at least could probably pull it off. At any rate, I do think these are the kind of comparisons that you might productively consider.
I would say you're shifting the goal post, and that there is no rational justification for concluding that a proper Majesty wouldn't be marketable, regardless and irrelevant to whatever basis would make a rational conclusion for whether it would.
Besides which your approach has been an abysmal failure for most companies, what makes you think it will be any better in the long run for Paradox? I remind you that every game Paradox has released has been a niche game, you could have dismissed any one of them using the same reasoning you gave for dismissing Majesty.
And while there's insufficient data to conclude that a Majesty reboot would be successful, there's no guarantee that any game will be, and Paradox used to be a company that was willing to take risks, it still seems to be despite your arguments, but your corporate robot attitude represents the death of innovation and risk taking if taken to it's logical conclusion. It would turn Paradox into just another generic company.
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Yeah... a little bit. At the start of the thread, Shams, you were basically saying y'all loved majesty so much that even a break-even proposition would let you consider a sequel, but there was no conceivable way it could work out. Now you're saying it has to be more than financially viable, it has to trump opportunity costs.
Of course, that was months ago. I dunno. Maybe things have changed. But Tarantian- Shams' point isn't any less valid than yours. Let's say that we call Maj2 a mulligan and don't count it either way. Where does that leave us? You can't point to an absence of evidence as somehow supporting your case.
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Alfryd: I don't think that InCo did overall bad job wiht Maj2. The execution of Maj2 was solid. However, it doesn't have post-production rebalance of rules like inhouse Paradox games have. If it could been slightly reformed in the way Maj1 was, just slight adjust of rules, it could be much closer to Maj1 in its sandbox feeling.
I think that trade posts were good in Maj2. The sacred places, given low variety of heroes without priest, was much bigger problem. So, to sum it up, one of major reasons why Paradox have such huge success, and quite a lot of indies as well, is not the ability to create perfect game from the day 1, but ability to transform the game based on feedback and working toward perfect game later. Blizzard with its Diablo 2 and Starcraft 1 and 2 did exactly the same. And I think that if InCo worked on Maj2 in the same way, it would be perfect.
And it isn't quality of Maj2 that made me not to want to play it. It is those little details that Maj got and are missing in Maj2.
And the thing with Tarantian. I unfortunately think, that he is right. I don't agree with his attitude because I don't think that it will bring us Maj3 in the way we like it. And because we want something from you, it isn't good to be impolite. But what I don't like that Shams is reacting to him. It seems to support that Tarantian way of acquiring attention seems more functional than the polite one.
I think that trade posts were good in Maj2. The sacred places, given low variety of heroes without priest, was much bigger problem. So, to sum it up, one of major reasons why Paradox have such huge success, and quite a lot of indies as well, is not the ability to create perfect game from the day 1, but ability to transform the game based on feedback and working toward perfect game later. Blizzard with its Diablo 2 and Starcraft 1 and 2 did exactly the same. And I think that if InCo worked on Maj2 in the same way, it would be perfect.
And it isn't quality of Maj2 that made me not to want to play it. It is those little details that Maj got and are missing in Maj2.
And the thing with Tarantian. I unfortunately think, that he is right. I don't agree with his attitude because I don't think that it will bring us Maj3 in the way we like it. And because we want something from you, it isn't good to be impolite. But what I don't like that Shams is reacting to him. It seems to support that Tarantian way of acquiring attention seems more functional than the polite one.
But my position, aside from my initial knee jerk reaction to it, was to argue that Shams can't legit call the concept unmarketable, he has nothing to base that on and his data points are rubbish because of reasons that I feel are mostly self evident.
Whether or not they SHOULD make a Majesty reboot is a different issue from whether or not there is any rational justification for just writing it off like it's some flawed concept that could never be profitable, like the Triple A industry has been doing with everything for years.
Yeah. I remember that few years ago, everyone was writing of turn-based strategy games as well
And look who all make them. We even have Alpha Centauri 2