JOURNEY’S END
…and so here we are.
Both All Aspect Warfare (PC) and Angle Of Attack (PC) are on track to go Gold sometime next week, thus bringing this near two year journey – which started out with one game – to a close. But life would be a whole lot simpler if it were that easy. Given the industry we’re in, it is not. Read on.
With digital distribution, you can pretty much go from development straight to sales without batting an eyelid. No need to worry about silly things like the [boxed] retail publisher song and dance, production, box art, sales & marketing to the retailers etc. You finish the game, sign a couple of contracts with the main digital distribution sites and boom, head shot – your game is online and selling.
However, even today, there is still something to be said about retail distribution. Sure, on the PC side it is dwindling as everyone moves to an online distribution model which will pretty much reducing the brick and mortar retailers to nothing more than ghost towns by 2013. Assuming they’re still in business.
After a major publishing (the publisher decided to cut back on SKUs as a cost cutting measure) deal went South a couple of months back leading to our just flat out terminating the XB360 version – thus immediately losing millions in revenue – we’ve been talking to a bunch of publishers about retail distribution into various territories of the PC version. Why not hold out? Well after spending the kind of money that we have on this game, holding out and spending the next six months pissing around with console publishers, is the kind of thing that kills companies and dev teams. So, I just decided to cut my losses and move on with the PC version. We may not turn a profit being only on the PC, but worst case scenario, we’ll make our money back and move on with our next project. I have a lot of friends who are currently out of work, have either lost their companies, teams etc or facing that sort of fate. Knowing what I know of the industry, I’m just not taking any chances. Especially when I have people to pay, a team to run and a company and IP to protect.
The deal with releasing even the PC version is that, once again, you can’t release the digital distribution version of a game ahead of the retail version. No publisher – let alone a retailer – will take it. And even so, most of the smaller outfits are either struggling, closing shop, aren’t paying their bills on time – if at all, or they’re cutting back on their SKU numbers. So even if you do get a [boxed] retail publishing deal, chances are you’ll never see a penny in royalties depending on who you give the product to.
Signing a game goes beyond contracts. There is quite a bit of up front expenses involved with that. It takes planning for production, sales, marketing, shipping etc. So even if you do a straight up “no advances” distribution deal, the distributor/publisher still has to fork out money to get the product onto the shelves in various territories.
So, once again, as with that whole PC vs XB360 game of chicken, we get to wait a bit and see if a retail deal is worth doing or not.
It doesn’t stop there. Retail distribution takes months of ahead planning. So even with a game going Gold today, by the time the dust settles, it won’t be in stores for at least two months. Assuming those months fall within a publisher’s best guess as to when the game would do well. In our case, we’ve been hearing that the game would do better at the end of Summer to early Autumn – the late August to September time frame.
Which means that if we run into a deal worth doing, we’re going to be sitting on a finished game until after the Summer – IF we wanted it at retail. If not, it is very likely that the game will start appearing on sites like Direct2Drive, Gamers Gate etc as early as the end of this month.
So, if you like the game, go to one of the sites and pre-order it. Those numbers make all the difference as to whether or not we forget about a retail release entirely and just go for broke. Our friends over at IGN already have a discount pre-orders page on Direct2Drive and we’re working on additional promotions which you will read about in the coming weeks if not days.
Oh, but it doesn’t even end there.
Now we’ve also got an offer (which I’ve declined twice already because the deal sucked) to consider putting Angle Of Attack on XBLA. So we’re looking at that. Since it is a much smaller game than All Aspect Warfare and fits within the XBLA price point, we’ll see how that goes. The trick in dealing with Microsoft these days is that you need a damn good Ouija board to figure out what they’re going to stipulate from one week to the next. And even so, you just need to make sure that the darn Ouija board isn’t running any version of Vista. Can we release the PC version first and still get it on XBLA? Do we need a publisher (then we end up with a percentage of a percentage in royalties), when we’re approved XB360 developers and seasoned developers? Oh, the royalty rates have changed again – so is it even worth spending upwards of additional $250K in dev costs to finish the XB360 port and put the darn thing on XBLA? Will they even concept (Yes, with all the crap thats on XBLA, you’d be surprised to know that they do in fact actually have a concept approval process. Go figure.) approve it?
Hence there is no demo of Angle Of Attack today. Why? Because releasing a PC demo of it will most likely affect the outcome of any such XBLA venture. Until we know for sure, we can’t do anything with the PC version of Angle Of Attack, least of all sell it for the PC.
*sigh*
THAR BE A DEMO!!
In the meantime, you can now play the demo of All Aspect Warfare which was just released and should start appearing on server mirrors throughout the day. Check back here throughout the day for the latest list of download mirrors. You can also check the demo discussions forum.
The demo – which includes the full docs, tutorials etc from the full game – contains the following features:
* Single Player
– No Story (a.k.a campaign) mode. No freeform sandbox mode.
– x03 (of six) playable careers (Mobile Infantry Marine, Elite Force Marine, Elite Force Pilot)
– x02 (of many) first person weapon profiles per career
– x02 aerial combat Instant Action scenario (Elite Force Pilot)
– x02 first person combat Instant Action scenario (Mobile Infantry Mairne, Elite Force Marine)
* Multiplayer
– Includes the stand-alone dedicated console server
– x06 playable careers (x3 Terran, x3 Gammulan)
– x02 (of many) first person weapon profiles per career
– x01 (of five) gameplay modes (Deathmatch)
– x02 Deathmatch scenarios (16 players)
The demo is based on the latest game build as of 06.09.09. If you were in the IGN sponsored closed public BETA focus test which ran between April 19th to May 18th, then the last version you had access to was Build 1.17.11 released on 05.07.09. Boy, have you missed quite a bit. Troll through the dev log and see for yourself.
So, check out the demo and let us know what you think. As with all our franchise properties, we will look to releasing future enhancements, features etc in the coming months and years. Who knows, we may even release modding tools and the scripting system for it, allowing you to create entirely new scenarios, maps, assets etc. So if you want to see future additions to the IP, go buy the game. Best of all, pre-order it. Now.
Oh, before I forget I must mention that the game demo is protected by Byteshield DRM, recently endorsed by the folks over at P.R.I.S.M Why did we do this? Because releasing un-protected demos just makes it easier for dastardly pirates to crack your final release. We have spent a fortune on this game and keeping Day One pirates at bay is very important to us. The good thing about this is that you get to see first hand the effects of this Gamer Friendly DRM from the game demo. It is the same DRM used in the final game, regardless of where you buy the game. Unlike the final game release which will require registration and a Digital Access Code (DAC), you don’t need to register and authenticate the demo. It has already been done for you. Just follow the instructions in the GUI and you’re good to go. You do, however, need an activate Internet connection for authentication the first time you run the game.
THE END GAME
For two years, a lot of us have worked very – very – long hard hours on this game. On our own. No outside funding sources. No publisher support. Nothing. Not to mention that we completely and totally bet the farm – the whole farm – on it. We hope that from the demo, you find the game appealing enough to buy the full version. This is why the demo is jam packed with features giving you enough to make an informed judgement. Most of all, spread the word.
Until next time!
ps: Like the final box art for the games? Well you can get them in large glorious wallpaper for your desktop.
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