The failure of DW

Originally Posted by goldorak

Well RA is not released yet and if it comes out in 2009 that will be 4 years after the intial release of DW on battlefront.
Its a little to late to capture the casual market right now.
Don't you think so ?

I see DW heading the same way as Falcon 4, a game that will survive only due to long time players. The inability to caputure any kind of mass market appeal will mean that in the long run this game will die (I assume its a natural thing).
The only thing that could revive it and bring new players to the table, would be for an independent software house to "lease" the source code to DW for x years, and start doing a heavy graphics update. And I mean heavy.
Then fix whats still broken in the navalsimegine, and finally don't try to sue the modders that extend the game.
Who knows, by that time maybe cina will be in open naval confrontation with taiwan and the us, so you can even use real events to market the new "cold war" sim.

The problem was that SCS did not want to use new technologies - for the licenses it was necessary to pay bucks.

Even on an exhibition of electronic games SCS they have not gone - have said - " for it must to pay money ".


Any format in game - FREE-OF-CHARGE. Bmp, J3D, Wav, etc, etc...

Really - very few money is enclosed in this game.

The engine of game - 12 years old.
For DW - used all old from the engine.
Really - on it have spent about 3 months. (To add a new code).
All other time - was drawn by graph 4 interfaces for: - FFG, Kilo, P-3, MH-60. LOL...
I think 2-3 men only made this game.

SCS - is has departed from Sonalysts.
Sonalysts - now does not want to relate to any games.

SCS simply unscrupulously have taken away money.

I agree with that that DW was a mistake and financial failure.


However - in this game not many money have enclosed (Not buy any licenses – modern technology)- so SCS all the same not strongly of steel poor.

[Pillar]

Originally Posted by goldorak

Well RA is not released yet and if it comes out in 2009 that will be 4 years after the intial release of DW on battlefront.
Its a little to late to capture the casual market right now.
Don't you think so ?

No idea to be honest. I think some kind of article at a mainstream gaming site would help with that, but the kind of thing RA brings to the simulator appeals more to the hardcore sim market anyhow.

What I don't do is measure the success of DW by anything the casual market thinks of it. The causal market isn't qualified to evaluate DW.

Popularity is a poor measure of worth.

[goldorak]

Originally Posted by Pillar

No idea to be honest. I think some kind of article at a mainstream gaming site would help with that, but the kind of thing RA brings to the simulator appeals more to the hardcore sim market anyhow.

What I don't do is measure the success of DW by anything the casual market thinks of it. The causal market isn't qualified to evaluate DW.

Popularity is a poor measure of worth.

You got me wrong. The casual market of course is not in a position judge DW.
But and this is a big but, without casual players, DW is a commercial failure. Case in point, SCS has abbandoned DW, and there will be no more games from them. So yes in this respect it is a gigantic failure.

Do not underestimate what RA can do for generic players. People that don't live and die by manual TMA, naval strategies etc... are drawn to a modern sub sim because they want to relieve certain types of "romantic" experiences. For instance the ability to drive the Red October. Even if you're not a naval enthusiast, casuals still enjoy that film. And having a HFRO campaign in DW with a playable RO well its just
Being able to command such a ship is a reason to play DW. And from there who knows ?

[Nexus7]

Originally Posted by goldorak

Do not underestimate what RA can do for generic players. People that don't live and die by manual TMA, naval strategies etc... are drawn to a modern sub sim because they want to relieve certain types of "romantic" experiences. For instance the ability to drive the Red October. Even if you're not a naval enthusiast, casuals still enjoy that film. And having a HFRO campaign in DW with a playable RO well its just
Being able to command such a ship is a reason to play DW. And from there who knows ?

But that's exactly the wrong direction to go for DW, as it's strength is exactly the detail and the quality of that detail.
I fear it will be a poor experience to look vor visual pleasure in a simulator that was born not to care a darn about graphics but to spend all resources in direction realism... It's like if you born a child, it was a boy, but you want to turn it into a girl lol. (I think it gives the idea)

Btw, HFRO is one of the sub movies with the most factual errors

Originally Posted by goldorak

You got me wrong. The casual market of course is not in a position judge DW.
But and this is a big but, without casual players, DW is a commercial failure. Case in point, SCS has abbandoned DW, and there will be no more games from them. So yes in this respect it is a gigantic failure.

Do not underestimate what RA can do for generic players. People that don't live and die by manual TMA, naval strategies etc... are drawn to a modern sub sim because they want to relieve certain types of "romantic" experiences. For instance the ability to drive the Red October. Even if you're not a naval enthusiast, casuals still enjoy that film. And having a HFRO campaign in DW with a playable RO well its just
Being able to command such a ship is a reason to play DW. And from there who knows ?

I Agreed :
- You are right - any more there will be no games from SCS is simply not competition is capable.

Too old contents.


=======================
TRIBUTE:
-- Arturo Gatti - Is Dead. --
Great Boxer!
Sadly...
==============

SCS - this is dead...he players have remained without support, it is very a pity...

[Shearwater]

Originally Posted by Nexus7

But that's exactly the wrong direction to go for DW, as it's strength is exactly the detail and the quality of that detail.
I fear it will be a poor experience to look vor visual pleasure in a simulator that was born not to care a darn about graphics but to spend all resources in direction realism... It's like if you born a child, it was a boy, but you want to turn it into a girl lol. (I think it gives the idea)

Btw, HFRO is one of the sub movies with the most factual errors

I think you're right. For me, there are two types of games: The ones that give me pleasure / are fun, and the ones that give me the satisfaction.

The first type of games are i.e. FPS or RTS games. There's times when I like to mindlessly blow everything up end empty my head. A really good way of distracting myself.
The other type of games, those that give me satisfaction, are TBS games, and most of all, sims. I think especially in sims, the immersive factor can be enormous.
You have to put a lot of effort into mastering those games, but you get much more back in return from those games than from shallow action-oriented games. As I said, I don't dislike either one of them - but they serve a different purpose.
A lot of people critisise fans of hard-core sims for slavishly adhering to realism and forgetting about the real "game". To me, this is nonsense. As Nexus7 has put it: Detail, and quality of detail. I think immersion is lost to a great deal when I find out that something is not just simplified (which is okay, to some extent), but plain wrong. This is most annoying when a game pretends to be serious.

[Dr.Sid]

Don't want to hijack the thread .. but let me see some page with those errors in HFRO. Actually I think the score would be pretty low. I saw some such page, with like 50 errors .. but all was just overlooked details on viewers side. I can't recall any critical problem in the movie, not counting the caterpillar drive.

[Bubblehead Nuke]

Originally Posted by Dr.Sid

Don't want to hijack the thread .. but let me see some page with those errors in HFRO. Actually I think the score would be pretty low. I saw some such page, with like 50 errors .. but all was just overlooked details on viewers side. I can't recall any critical problem in the movie, not counting the caterpillar drive.

They were there.. trust me. I had a good laugh in the theatre. I was almost tossed out with a few shipmates but the people in front and behind us asked that we be allowed to stay. They said we made the movie watchable.

Errors.. Bear with me as it has been a LONG time since I have seen it. These are off the top of my achohol addled mind.

1) Light in the periscope...(I liked the blinking morse code myself).

2) Attack depth (damn they are going to use a lot of air! to mpulse that torp). Make your depth 1200 feet and swoosh, down they go and NAIL the depth as they get there. I loved the creaking noises. Never heard them myself.

3) Torpedo evasion (Fly Big D.. Fly!). If it is range gating on you, going to the roof ain't going to help. You are gonna die on the surface.

4) Weapon active out of the tube. You know, it it is active, the magnetic exploder would have been active. It would not have gone far you know.

5) The CRAZY manevering in close quarters. Wow.. you would have thought they were fighters and could actually see each other. Not too mention that the Typhoon handled like a pregnant cow.

6) OMG the sonar, they could hear a whale fart and tell the what they had for dinner. Actually, they filmed it when I was in and I had heard that had done an actual sonar contact callout. Did you know that a LOT of the control room folks were actual bubbleheads who vollenteered to make it right? They could not stand the thought of a script butchering it.

When the Navy reviewed everything they about had a cow. They had to go back and reshoot a LOT of the control room scenes. The last thing they wanted was authenticity. I am suprised that the had the manual time bearing in the control room. That was the guy who called out 'Possible turn based on aspect change" or something to that effect. I am really supprised they allowed that.

The layout of the sub in general. Were are those spaces?? On that note: If you have seen Stargate Continuim, the interior of the sub is DEAD ON. That is what control and the upper level passageway look like. That is what the wardroom (minus the flat panel garbage) looks like.

Let me get back to you on the rest. I have to get my laserdisc out (yes, I have a WORKING one and I hate to buy duplicates).

I will correct spelling later..Thank you and have a good night

[goldorak]

Originally Posted by Nexus7

But that's exactly the wrong direction to go for DW, as it's strength is exactly the detail and the quality of that detail.
I fear it will be a poor experience to look vor visual pleasure in a simulator that was born not to care a darn about graphics but to spend all resources in direction realism... It's like if you born a child, it was a boy, but you want to turn it into a girl lol. (I think it gives the idea)

No you still don't get it.
Its not a mutually exclusive proposition. Having a detailed simulation in no way means you have to have crap graphics. On the ther hand having nice graphics does not mean the simulation is geared towards casual gamers.
You can have a detailed simulation with nice graphics. I hate to bring the eternally dead horse of Falcon 4, but that game had for its time really nice graphics (not an 1988 graphics engine just to keep the parallel between that and DW), and it had 3 difficulty levels, from arcade like experience were the radar basically was a top down 360 degree god view of the battlefield, to the all manual approach were you had to manually start up even the jet plane in the hangar !!!
And nobody in their right mind would classify Falcon 4 as an arcade geared towards casual gamers even though it was newbie friendly.

Btw, HFRO is one of the sub movies with the most factual errors

I'm not a navy man, so even if there are some factual errors, it didn't take away my enjoyment of the film. Its still one of my guilty pleasures, together with the novel. By the way how I wish someone would bring RSR to the silver screen, that would definitely kick ass.

[OneShot]

The problem with appealing to the casual market is .. the casual market. I don't know the box arts/screenshots on display in the US but the one in germany looks ok enough and the screenshots are polished/nice enough to make it look good (not SH4 good, but better then DW truly looks). Now what happens when Mr./Mrs. Casual gamer looks at the box and goes ... ooh and then buys the game. The good part is that SCS just made a few bucks, the bad part is that after starting up the game (and possibly looking past the not-so-state-of-the-art graphics) Mr./Mrs. casual will learn that the game is quite mind boggling for them and will promptly deinstall the game and put the box somewhere hidden. Thats not the worst, as SCS has already sold another game, but Mr./Mrs. casual will tell their friends that DW while looking nice in the store is unplayable because its too difficult. That will prevent further sales ... very bad.

Now my point is, that the major problem for DW wasn't its graphics engine. Heck, most games nowadays put screenshots from the render movies on the box anyway, you could have done the same (or used the 2D Stations), add some nice box art and you are set. The problem was and is the fact that the game is not really accessible even with AC because of lack of tutorials, and a well thought out manual. On top of that comes the lackluster promotion of the game by SCS and its various publishers.

As for the usefullness of the mods/modding ... to lengthen the life of a game, mods are useful, but only for those who already bought the game. People seldom buy a game because they love the mods for it... Which takes us back to the initial point ... selling the game in the first place. Sure when mods are there and good, people who bought the game might tell their friends, hey game XY just got better because there is this kick-ass mod which in turn might compell them to buy the game, but usually they would have bought the game before that because the game itself was good.

[goldorak]

Originally Posted by OneShot

T
Now my point is, that the major problem for DW wasn't its graphics engine. Heck, most games nowadays put screenshots from the render movies on the box anyway, you could have done the same (or used the 2D Stations), add some nice box art and you are set. The problem was and is the fact that the game is not really accessible even with AC because of lack of tutorials, and a well thought out manual. On top of that comes the lackluster promotion of the game by SCS and its various publishers.

On these points I agree 100%.

[Nexus7]

The problem was and is the fact that the game is not really accessible even with AC because of lack of tutorials, and a well thought out manual. On top of that comes the lackluster promotion of the game by SCS and its various publishers.

On these points I agree 100%.

I agree 100% #2, and I feared this would be an significant hurde at the very start of the whole DW story.

I always felt like there should be a solid way to help new players understand the game mechanics (witch is the basis to enjoy it).

Personally I find the fat manual not so usefull. As a fact it failed to help me out in using the frigate, and a lot of other little things that I had to figure out by myself or asking here in the forum.

For such a sim, IMO, the support is critical. The manuals and the tutorials, as said, are (IMO) not detailed enought (not sufficent).

The solution (theorical) could be to make this forum an official reference for any understanding issue, but then it must be very clear to the guy that has the CD in his hand.

Another (theorical) solution would be to incite the buyers to join some virtual navy, as those orgs are great in introducing new players to the sim.

The problem of both solutions is that they are theorically valid, but troublesome to insert...

Basically the idea is that most players "wont' make it past the learning burden" if not DIRECTLY helped.

[LoBlo]

Originally Posted by Nexus7

I agree 100% #2, and I feared this would be an significant hurde at the very start of the whole DW story.

There are more complex war games out there than DW that are successful. Take the Harpoon Series for instance. Its got a learning curve that's even steeper than DW and its managed to make a very successful following including official navy buyers.

Seems like the same gamer demographic that goes for the Harpoon series would be the type that goes for DW... which begs the question... I wonder what percentage of Harpoon 3 gamers went for DW, why and why not. Maybe SCS should have found a registry of Harpoon players and sent them all advertisements.

[Pillar]

What if instead of appealing to the casual market, they just charged *us* more?

[Nexus7]

Going back to the very beginning, I remember the discussions around here were often not so "polite"...

- "Will you wait next year to release the game ?"
- "Does the new patch arrive already ?"

That sort of stuff was quite irritating but very constant.

It enoughs to browse the topics in late 2005 to see what the athmosphere was like... as an example: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=82081

Thinking back at the atmosphere around, I wonder a little less that Sonalyst got pis***-off