What the hell is up with Dominions 3???

[alexti]

Saber Cherry said:
But Stardock is an indy company, and their constant info trickle (aka "hype") netted a massive community and incredible launch...

Stardock is not really an indy company. Games are just not their main focus. So they have existing customer base from non-game products. This makes it hard to compare Stardock with purely game companies...

Saber Cherry said:But all together, they worked very well... since the world has been craving 4x-ish games recently. CivIV largely satisfied the Civ fans, GalCiv2 largely satisifed the Master of Orion fans, and now there are just the Master of Magic / Age of Wonders fans looking for a deep Fantasy TBS... especially when HOMMV has Starforce, and only a 50% chance of being good; and isn't quite in the same genre.

Maybe Dominions 3 can fill the void and become huge, with enough hype.

I don't think so. Dom2 is (and thus, I suppose Dom3 will be) hardcore strategy game while Civ4 or GalCiv2 are more like "strategy light" games. They have sandbox aspect (like building large cities, developing them and seeing the empire grow) which attract casual players. Dominions is much more strategy-centric which probably is interesting for much fewer people. So I would think Dominions is very much a niche game (and I like it to stay that way - as a strategic game it is much better than Civ4 or GalCiv2 :> )

[Nerfix]

Hmmm, nation and spell modding would be nice, but oh well.

Sounds good so far.

[Endoperez]

Nerfix said:
Hmmm, nation and spell modding would be nice, but oh well.

I think you meant ITEM and spell modding. Nation modding was said to be "more developed".

Thanks for that, PDF! I quess I should thank KO and Théophile Monnier as well. Theophile is an interesting name, BTW, if 'théo' is the same as 'theo' in 'theology'.

[Nerfix]

Ah, yes, indeed. Item modding.

[Kristoffer O]

> How come that Kris aint sure that what AI changes has been made?

I don't program the AI.

On the other hand JK is unaware of some of the new monsters and nations.

Our ignorances completes each other. We are certain that there are always thing we cannot answer. If we talk we might conjure a picture of a special feature or mechanic, but it will probaby be only partially right. Therefore we have betatesters. They might give us answers to some of our questions. They both play the nations and fight with the mechanics.

[DominionsFan]

Ah ok, I see Kris.

[PDF]

Endoperez said:

Thanks for that, PDF! I quess I should thank KO and Théophile Monnier as well. Theophile is an interesting name, BTW, if 'théo' is the same as 'theo' in 'theology'.

Yes, it's the same "Theo", and if you know your Greek somewhat note that the second term of "Théophile" is derived from "philos", meaning "loving".
In fact his name means "God loving"... But I can tell you he sucks at Dom2 !

[OG_Gleep]

Word of Mouth will only get you so far, and for the most part with new products your mining your current customer base. My company used word of mouth for the first 15 years, and it did well enough to support my Grandma and Grandpa. When my father took over, the growth of the first year and a half was more then all 15 years combined...and that was only a minimal marketing budget.

It takes me 2-3 previews before I remember a game. I got really hyped about spore when I saw the video demo of it, but it took someone mentioning the article for me to remember I had already seen it. The preview in CGW was one screenshot and a couple paragraphs. IMHO your going to need multiple magazines, with more screenshots (the masses love screenshots) to generate a buzz outside your current fanbase.

PS. It took the Vs article in CGW for me to buy Dominions II. And as much as I love it, I can't sell it to any of my friends.