Quote:
From reading several recent threads and participating in a few others, I began to wonder what some thought a developer meeting might be like at CA/Sega. I thought it might be fun to write a quick synopsis of a fictitious CA/Sega meeting, in which every TW'rs worst nightmares were realized. I came up with this and I hope you enjoy:
MEETING NOTES:
"Gentlemen, BI didn't sell very well. Why do you think that is?"
"Because the game was buggy and moved further away from the core gameplay the previous purchasers of TW games expected?"
"No! That can't be it. Our Marketing Research Dept. tells us our target market doesn't care for the core gameplay of STW and MTW. They deemed the game way too hard for the fragile young minds of our target segment to grasp."
"Maybe sales were down because the game lobby was so buggy, laggy, and lacked most of the features our veteran MP community came to expect?"
"No, that isn't it. Our marketing research tells us MP is a small percentage of overall sales and the larger market is for the single player campaign."
"What about the Battle AI being worse than previous games?"
"No, that can't be it either. Marketing research tells us the battles in STW and MTW were too hard and sometimes it would even WIN against the player."
"Maybe it was the horrible lack of control over your units in battle, and the horrible camera angle?"
"Nope. Marketing research says the target RTS and Console market consists of people who are used to having no control at all over their units and they are young enough to have eyes sharp enough to be able to spot units from the lousy, err I mean new, default camera view."
"Maybe it is the fact that we didn't pay attention to the wants of our veteran community who left in droves when they saw RTW?"
"Nope, that isn't it. Marketing research tells us the loss of the veteran community would be offset by an influx of new younger RTS/Console players."
"Since you all are too simple to grasp the REAL reason for lack of expansion sales I will tell you: It was due to the fact we did not simplify the game enough and we did not put enough resources and time into graphics! Our marketing research tells us the RTS/Console crowd isn't interested in history, dates, micro-managment, nor anything which would distract them from the close-up, pretty graphics and batttle animations. If we make our game appear more AOE3-like we will rake in the sales. Nobody cares for things like dates, accurate history, or other boring historical things which cannot be graphically improved and exploited in our marketing of the game."
"But if we make our game more like other, more successful, RTS games won't we be losing our uniqueness and the "niche" we have worked hard to create for ourselves?"
"Marketing research tells us, that RTS games are the largest market next to FPS for PC games. Therefor, we must emulate the successful games and companies who make them. Why risk failure by trying something which may not go over well, when we can borrow from the proven success of others? I am not going to risk my job by sticking to a smaller niche market and not obtaining the mega-sales our parent company expects."
"But won't ignoring our core customer base create a lot of dissatisfied customers when they find out it is nothing like what they expected?"
"Yes, but we will ignore them as our usual standard operating procedure."
"If they find out about the changes we lan on making to the next game won't they decide not to buy our game?"
"They will, which is why we have written another standard operating procedure: No staff members may participate in the official forums except for those chosen for their ability to make it sound like they are giving information on the game, when they are really only making generalizations which do not give away any details whatsoever about the game itself."
"What about screenshots? How will we hide the changes there?"
"We learned this lesson in our last game: We will not provide any screenshots of in-game campaign menus, nor will we show anything about the game except up-close pics of the pretty units. Every now and then we will photoshop what seems to be a large screenshot of a big city/castle battle, but it will be done from such an angle and such a distance no real details will be given away."
"Won't the customers who bought this game decide not to buy from us in the future?"
"Yes, but that is unimportant since I will have been promoted to another position with another game and by then it will be too late to effect me."
"But what about us?"
BLANK STARE
"Sir? What will happen to us?"
"Err, well I gotta go. I have a very important meeting to attend."
RUNS OUT OF ROOM
