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Avadon on Steam


Madd The Sane

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He doesn't say that it is intel only. He just says it will run natively on Intel Macs. It would be strange to say it will run natively on Intel Macs, but fail to mention that it only runs on Intel Macs. I don't know what percentage of his customers use PowerPC Macs, and he probably doesn't either. He probably would not take the chance of potentially cutting out a large part of his market.

 

>System Requirements:

>

>PC Running Windows XP or later or Macintosh running System 10.4 or later

>800 MhZ processor. Minimum 1.6 GhZ processor recommended.

>Video card or processor with OpenGL support and 32 MB video RAM (64 >MB recommended).

>512 MB RAM, and 200 MB hard disk space.

>1024x600 screen resolution with 32 bit color.

>Avadon will run natively on Intel Macintoshes.

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This is from Deathspank's trailer,

 

Old man: "I once slayed a dragon"

Deathspank: "Really, that's amazing"

Click to reveal..

Old man:

"Well, I didn't really slay it

and it wasn't technically a dragon.

What I meant to say is :

I once kicked a cat"

 

disclaimer:

I am not recommending you buy it, I myself do not plan to buy it. I just really liked the joke.

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If a character's Kick The Dog moment is excessively horrible, cruel, or otherwise despicable enough to make an audience lose all sympathy for him, then he's crossed the Moral Event Horizon, if he's not on the other side of it already. If the Dog in question is someone the character cares about and discovers Being Evil Sucks, then they've Kicked The Wrong Dog and might be in time to avoid a Face Heel Turn. If the dog belonged to a minion, expect it to help cause a Mook Face Turn because Even Mooks Have Loved Ones. On occasions, if karma works in the dog's favor, he'll manage to get a last laugh. On even rarer occasions, after being pushed around too many times, the dog may decide to plan against the Big Bad for his own ambitions, because Being Tortured Makes You Evil.

 

ROFL

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Eschalon Book I sells for $20 and Eschalon Book II for $25. I think Jeff's games are better than that.

 

—Alorael, who thinks Jeff's manifesto covers that. Why play Spiderweb games instead of KotOR? There's really no reason when KotOR is in the bargain bin. But once KotOR has been played? Jeff's still making games. They'll be there for you.

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Originally Posted By: Enraged Slith
I don't think Avadon would sell on Steam. None of Jeff's games would. It's not that the games aren't any good, it's that no one would give a second look to a very outdated looking game that costs more than twice as much as beloved classics like KotOR.


Jeff's games generally sell in the mid-four figures. When being on Steam means literally millions of eyes on your product, only a tiny fraction of those potential customers have to buy the game to make a big difference.
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Originally Posted By: Celtic Minstrel
...why would you just copy-paste a paragraph from a linked page?

Because he thought it was funny and wanted to highlight it.

Originally Posted By: How to die in 12 easy steps
Eschalon Book I sells for $20 and Eschalon Book II for $25. I think Jeff's games are better than that.

They are better, but they are less attractive. We've had this conversation before. Eschalon has the same quality that made Realmz and Exile III so successful: an engaging, colorful interface and atmosphere. It feels lively to play those games in a way that doesn't apply to, say, Geneforge 1 -- even though I greatly prefer the story and mechanics of Geneforge 1 to all three of the other games.

Eschalon 2 fixed some speed and play control issues; its biggest problem is its lack of balance. However, this problem is not apparent until you've been playing for a few hours (and even then, it only seems to be apparent to Red Mage types like myself). In other words, Eschalon's strengths (color, liveliness, engagingness, simplicity) directly lead to sales, whereas Spiderweb's strengths (game balance, story, length and depth) are much less apparent at first.
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I think all Avernums are better than both Eschalons (haven't played Esc 2) due single char doesn't need to do everything.

 

Avernum has better skills than Eschalons which makes Avernums char-creation more creative than Eschalons (2 types of armor-skill and 2 types of swords-skill is bit too much based on given points at start and of course cartography is nice skill but not that usefull until at high levels and there are better and more usefull skills to spend given skill points).

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Knights of the Dinner Table. issue 168, page 65 had a great review of Geneforge 5 as a neglected game. The reviewer picked up a cheap copy at Gamesgate and really loved all the things you could do and the replayability. Then he went into what most people hate, the graphics that were old 10 years ago and an anceint game engine compared to other games in this genre.

 

This is the problem with Jeff's games. You have got to be willing to play it in order to enjoy it.

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The graphics would be outdated on a DS.

 

The games have great writing. Great setting. But too little direction is a bad thing when trying to appeal beyond his niche audience. Even the big open RPGs of today (Fallout: New Vegas, Elder Scrolls) have extensive quest journals and quest compasses to guide you in the right direction.

 

I love Avernum. But this style of gameplay would not appeal to a mass audience without a major graphics overhaul.

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Originally Posted By: Lilith
Originally Posted By: Enraged Slith
I don't think Avadon would sell on Steam. None of Jeff's games would. It's not that the games aren't any good, it's that no one would give a second look to a very outdated looking game that costs more than twice as much as beloved classics like KotOR.


Jeff's games generally sell in the mid-four figures. When being on Steam means literally millions of eyes on your product, only a tiny fraction of those potential customers have to buy the game to make a big difference.

I think Jeff would have to do some serious marketing to get even a tiny fraction to look at his games. But, I suppose he gets new customers with each release, so maybe there would be enough people looking at it to make it worthwhile.

Originally Posted By: Randomizer
Knights of the Dinner Table. issue 168, page 65 had a great review of Geneforge 5 as a neglected game. The reviewer picked up a cheap copy at Gamesgate and really loved all the things you could do and the replayability. Then he went into what most people hate, the graphics that were old 10 years ago and an anceint game engine compared to other games in this genre.

This is the problem with Jeff's games. You have got to be willing to play it in order to enjoy it.

Is there a link to that article somewhere?
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Originally Posted By: Enraged Slith

I think Jeff would have to do some serious marketing to get even a tiny fraction to look at his games.


Well, see, that's the good thing about being on Steam: Valve does the marketing for you.

I mean, let me put it this way: if VVVVVV can become a Steam bestseller, what game can't?
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Strong agree re the controls.

 

I never even used the word unmarketable, nor implied it. My point -- which I don't think you'll disagree with -- is that the lack of engaging graphics and atmosphere that draws people in, does NOT help to sell the games.

 

VVVVV does better on that count, frankly -- the graphics are simple, but very well done for what they are; smooth animation, deliberate colors, etc. The music helps too. 10 minutes of extremely fun gameplay is what makes a sale.

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I think there's a big difference. VVVVVV has deliberately minimalist and retro graphics. They're not just simple, they're Atari-like.

 

Spiderweb's games don't have the retro appeal in the same way. They're mostly just simple.

 

—Alorael, who on the other hand doesn't think they're an immediate deal-breaker for everyone. Every customer had to find a game, download it, and think it was worth registering. More eyes just means more people likely to do that.

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Originally Posted By: Urban Whinger
Spiderweb's games don't have the retro appeal in the same way. They're mostly just simple.
Strangely enough, this is what drew me to the Avernum series. I was getting tired of games that made my comp want to commit suicide, even on the lowest settings. Spiderweb's games are simple in terms of graphics, which is a nice change from games that seem to have been made for the purpose of showing off pretty graphics. Probably why im still playing games like Morrowind even today. Then again, Morrowind had some pretty good graphics when it first came out... Maybe ten years from now I'll consider Oblivion to be simplistic.
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From what I've seen of the Avadon screenshots, I think the graphics are just about as good as possible for a 2D computer game. Having the game be 3D would just raise the system requirements, making it harder to port to iPad and making it harder to run on netbook, and making it use more battery power for portable computers. After playing WoW for a few months on my laptop, my laptops graphics card wore out. My poor laptop always spun its little fan so hard playing WoW. I tried to keep it elevated to keep her cool. :'(

Anyway, 3D wouldn't add anything meaningful to the game anyway. It would be nice for desktop users, but laptops are way more popular, especially among younger people who are more likely to play in-depth games like this.

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If you want "eyes" here's what you should do:

(You guys will probably hate this and I think I even hate myself for suggesting it)

 

Make a short (about 4-20 hours game play) prequel to Avadon with the same engine but in flash or shockwave or trinity or some other web based platform. Add at the end "If you liked this game check out our other games on spiderweb.com". Let us guys beta test it. Upload it to kongregate or newgrounds or the likes, wait a month to see if it gets badges( if it doesn't pay kong a bit to make sure it does (you should probably check out how much they charge first through a dummy company, so they won't pull a fast one on you)). And vwalla instant hits and maybe even extra cash from the tip jar; kongers are real suckers for badges, no matter how lame the game is (present company excluded of course) once it has badges it will be played. Make sure to ignore all hate mail, kongers and newgrounders have very avid hate mailers.

 

As I've probably said before, Flash is an inferior prog. language, but its one hell of a marketing tool.

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The thing is that Spiderweb already does roughly half of what you're suggesting, by making the demos for its games unusually large. This has basically the same effect as the short prequel idea you describe.

 

What's missing is a way to get very large numbers of people to try the demos. You're probably correct that putting them on game websites like the ones you mention would do this, but there are serious practicality issues. The most obvious is that Spiderweb's games are written in C family languages, so porting to Flash would be a gigantic amount of work. Another is that while small compared to most native PC games these days, the games to take substantial amounts of disk space and memory compared to what a browser based game can be reasonable expected to: Avernum 6 occupies over 110 MB after installation on my machine. You could cut this down somewhat in a shortened game, but it would probably be really tough to gain an order of magnitude improvement, which would probably still be pushing it.

 

EDIT: It seems to me that if Jeff can make things work with Steam (that is, if Valve will let him) so that there is a free demo and an easy mechanism to pay to upgrade it to the full game it would be roughly equivalent to your suggestion. Every single Steam user would be exposed to the demo, and I'm not sure how much free stuff there is on Steam, but free is a good way to get people to pay attention long enough to download and start playing.

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Originally Posted By: Niemand
EDIT: It seems to me that if Jeff can make things work with Steam (that is, if Valve will let him) so that there is a free demo and an easy mechanism to pay to upgrade it to the full game it would be roughly equivalent to your suggestion.


this is in fact a thing that steam allows people to do. recettear did it.
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AAAnd you've completely missed my idea.

The badges are the drivers here; put a game up for free and maybe people who have time will play it, put a game up for free with badges and every single grinder will play it due to the "ooh shiny" effect.

 

Point of curiosity(i.e. off subject):

How many hits did A6 have after its review in JIG?

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Originally Posted By: Erasmus
AAAnd you've completely missed my idea.
The badges are the drivers here; put a game up for free and maybe people who have time will play it, put a game up for free with badges and every single grinder will play it due to the "ooh shiny" effect.


Steam also supports achievements if that's really a thing you care about
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Originally Posted By: Lillith
this is in fact a thing that steam allows people to do. recettear did it.

Then it sounds like Steam could be quite a good fit for Spiderweb's purposes.

Originally Posted By: Erasmus
The badges are the drivers here; put a game up for free and maybe people who have time will play it, put a game up for free with badges and every single grinder will play it due to the "ooh shiny" effect.

The way I interpreted the idea is that you want to suck in large numbers of casual game players who otherwise wouldn't seek the game out. These are likely, in my estimation, to be people who don't care at all about badges or achievements or whatever. (I play flash games now and then on sites like kongregate, and I initially didn't even grasp what you meant by 'badges'. I don't have an account on any such site, I just go to them to play games.) And, as Lilith points out, if badges/achievements really are a big driver, Jeff can put them in.
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I think we're all missing the point here. If Jeff puts his games on Steam, then there's a chance that they'll be a dark horse smash hit that takes the video game world by storm. If that happens, then someone IRL might ask us if we knew about this cool new Avadon series, and we'd be forced to reply that we liked Jeff's games better when they were still underground, and that he's a sellout for making them so popular with Steam.

 

And then we'd all look like such hipsters. tongue

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Originally Posted By: Tirien
Then again, Morrowind had some pretty good graphics when it first came out... Maybe ten years from now I'll consider Oblivion to be simplistic.

Of course. This will continue until games are photorealistic, and even then we'll ooh and aah over improving special effects.

One day all games will look like Avatar, and they'll still keep getting more detailed, or at least more outlandish.

Originally Posted By: jecowa
From what I've seen of the Avadon screenshots, I think the graphics are just about as good as possible for a 2D computer game.

The Infinity Engine games spring to mind. The spell effects are better, the backgrounds are drawn, not tiled, and there are many more sprites for monsters, weapons, armor, and even just character facings.

—Alorael, who agrees that putting up some kind of teaser or demo on a flash game site would get lots of attention. That works the same way as Steam: the idea isn't that everyone will play but that some people will play, and that some of a huge number of people is better than some of not very many people. But Steam requires only a demo, which Jeff will make as part of his game as usual. Flash requires someone to program a flash game, which Jeff does not have time to do.
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Hey! Some great people down through the years had neckbeards. Like Emperor Nero. And we all know how fabulous he was from Nethergate, yes?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nero_1.JPG

 

How can you not love a face like that? It cries out for your love! IT WILL HAVE YOU EXECUTED IF YOU DO NOT LOVE IT.

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