Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log

[JonBrave]

Originally Posted by elmokki

Dominions 3 scene is small and slowly dying. If the game was a 5 euro/dollar sale game in Steam for the holiday seasons, you can bet there would be many new people trying it out. Right now the price is so ludicrously high and there's absolutely no visibility for the game that influx of new players is far lower than what it could be.

Even if it were $5 instead of $50 (and we pretended that was profit), do you think there would actually be 10x sales? And, would there be ten times as many content Dom players? I doubt it.

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by JonBrave

Even if it were $5 instead of $50 (and we pretended that was profit), do you think there would actually be 10x sales? And, would there be ten times as many content Dom players? I doubt it.

On steam, yes. Steam is odd, it is the amazon of selling games. (What works, only works for them, and it works great. But copying their business model will fail, and if you compete with them you will always have to deal with them).

So if dom3 was on sale on steam it would sell like a ... thing that sells. Because steam has a huge impulse buying community. Sadly shrapnel doesn't have this.

[elmokki]

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

On steam, yes. Steam is odd, it is the amazon of selling games. (What works, only works for them, and it works great. But copying their business model will fail, and if you compete with them you will always have to deal with them).

So if dom3 was on sale on steam it would sell like a ... thing that sells. Because steam has a huge impulse buying community. Sadly shrapnel doesn't have this.

Yes. Tenfold sales aren't impossible in any way. $5 is a price where people pick it up at the price just to try it and with Steam it's like three clicks for any Steam user to do that. $50 is a price where very few people buy it before trying it and even then it probably takes some consideration to pay the price of a full AAA game for it (yes, dom3 is better game than many of those, but those games did still cost a lot more to make so they do feel more entitled to get $50 if I happen to buy them in the first place). As a bonus buying from a random site usually requires you to do more than just click three or so times.

As for tenfold content, obviously not. Probably still more content than with $50 price though.

Minecraft is a good example of a game that got huge exposure with just spreading the game on their own site. It's not really something you can compare CoE3 with at all though. Minecraft was revolutionary in terms of gameplay. It's also very easy to access even if you aren't really a gamer. It also cost just 10 euros at start which is why I bothered to buy it in the first place back when I did. CoE3 doesn't have those selling points and is bound to be more of a niche game. The game mechanics aren't probably going to be revolutionary for more than small parts really, and more than that, it's going to be a turnbased strategy game. A genre that you need to streamline really well to appeal to casual gamers.

[JonBrave]

Originally Posted by JonBrave

Even if it were $5 instead of $50 (and we pretended that was profit), do you think there would actually be 10x sales? And, would there be ten times as many content Dom players? I doubt it.

Fair enough, from replies it seems concensus [Edit: apparently "consensus", sigh] is that it would increase sales tenfold.

But the other bit of my post was that IMHO you would not get ten times as many happy Dom3 players. I just don't believe there are ten times as many people out there who would think Dom3 was great, or even playable. It's such niche audience.

[nordlys]

Originally Posted by JonBrave

But the other bit of my post was that IMHO you would not get ten times as many happy Dom3 players. I just don't believe there are ten times as many people out there who would think Dom3 was great, or even playable. It's such niche audience.

Keep in mind COE (judging by COE2) is much easier-to-get-into and more "casual" than Dominions. In fact, I have no problems imagining COE2 as a flash or a mobile game (actually, I think Illwinter could benefit a lot by considering the ios/android ports for some additional untapped market for COE3 - and no, before you ask, I don't have either platform and don't plan to get one ). So it does have a much wider potential market in my opinion than the ultra-hardcore and, dare I say, elitist Dominions.