Jeff Vogel Soapbox Thread

[Infinitron]

besides the fact he regularly releases games.

Has he ever told people to do that in one of his blog posts? To develop a solid framework and just pump out games? It really does seem to be his prime distinguishing factor in a sea of indies.

 

[Mustawd]

h, really? Remember Prelude to Darkness, Amulets & Armor, Nahlakh, Helherron, Dark Disciples, Din's Curse, Depths of Peril, Demise, Devil Whisky and the likes? Plus all the Russian shovelware? Vogel is the ONLY guy from the 90's & early 00's who survived the "easy" era. We have countless more success stories today

The era I'm talking about is right around the time of Minecraft, Braid, Super Meatboy, and consequently the movie "Indie". It's a short window that saw Steam open up its doors and dev studios like Vogel, who had ready to ship games, benefited.

We have countless more success stories today - and when they hit really big, they sell 500k in two weeks like Stardew Valley. Even as a big fish in a small pound, Vogel never got close to that.

Success stories are going to happen. It's a matter of numbers. His point is that it is much more difficult to do so. Not that it is impossible.

Similarly, how can he say competition lowered the prices when he fucking doubled Avernum 2's sales price and still made roughly the same money?

Yes, he doubled the price, and look at the volume. Didn't you even make the point a few posts ago that it narrowed his audience? Felipepe, I'm not sure what's triggering you so hard about what Vogel has said. But to me his words seem pretty point on. And a host of failed kickstarters, even from previously successful devs (consortium for example) is a great example of how crowded the market has become. There's only so much cash to go around. And the cream will normally float to the top. The easy days of releasing an Avernum on mobile and making some good money are gone.

 

[Mustawd]

I just don't think his antics do him any favours sale wise.

I guess I'm just the type of person who doesn't give two shits about his antics and buys games based on how much I enjoy them. Personally, I think he just gets a lot of shit here because he tends to wallow in self pity a lot.

Which incidentally, normally has zero impact on his games (except for avernum 2 ios port).

 

[Tacgnol]

besides the fact he regularly releases games.

Has he ever told people to do that in one of his blog posts? To develop a solid framework and just pump out games? It really does seem to be his prime distinguishing factor in a sea of indies.

He has written about why he likes to do remakes/remasters.

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/on-new-games-rewrites-and-pain-of.html

 

[Tacgnol]

I guess I'm just the type of person who doesn't give two shits about his antics and buys games based on how much I enjoy them. Personally, I think he just gets a lot of shit here because he tends to wallow in self pity a lot.

Which incidentally, normally has zero impact on his games (except for avernum 2 ios port).

Ultimately he can do whatever stupid shit he wants as long as he keeps producing games. I just wish he would try a new setting again (something different like Geneforge was).

 

[Mustawd]

Same. Doubtful it will ever happen again. The guy is like chronically depressed for some reason.

 

[Zeriel]

Same. Doubtful it will ever happen again. The guy is like chronically depressed for some reason.

I don't think it's mysterious. He has alluded to it many times. He is your typical 40-year-old male stuck in a marriage, so he has to earn X amount of money to support his wife and daughter. Doing something creative would jeopardize his income. Now personally I think he could swing it, but he believes that when he tried it in the past (i.e Nethergate, probably some other examples I've forgotten), it failed miserably. He's basically in a self-income version of the wageslave predicament. He thinks the only way he can survive is by churning out remakes of the same game he's been making for the last 20 years, and he hates it, hence all the Bioware worship. He just wants money, because money is freedom. Everything else he does is just his pathological coping with the life he hates.

Now of course that is probably a character flaw in of itself, most poor people are miserable sad sacks too and don't talk about it on their blog all day.

 

[Mustawd]

Now of course that is probably a character flaw in of itself, most poor people are miserable sad sacks too and don't talk about in on their blog all day.

No, true. They probably talk about it over a couple of tall cans of Steel Reserve or Four Locos.

 

[Tacgnol]

Same. Doubtful it will ever happen again. The guy is like chronically depressed for some reason.

I don't think it's mysterious. He has alluded to it many times. He is your typical 40-year-old male stuck in a marriage, so he has to earn X amount of money to support his wife and daughter. Doing something creative would jeopardize his income. Now personally I think he could swing it, but he believes that when he tried it in the past (i.e Nethergate, probably some other examples I've forgotten), it failed miserably. He's basically in a self-income version of the wageslave predicament. He thinks the only way he can survive is by churning out remakes of the same game he's been making for the last 20 years, and he hates it, hence all the Bioware worship. He just wants money, because money is freedom. Everything else he does is just his pathological coping with the life he hates.

Now of course that is probably a character flaw in of itself, most poor people are miserable sad sacks too and don't talk about it on their blog all day.

His situation is understandable, but his (contested?) sale figures seem to suggest that a remake doesn't guarantee him sales.

Maybe he is looking at this wrong?

 

[felipepepe]

The era I'm talking about is right around the time of Minecraft, Braid, Super Meatboy, and consequently the movie "Indie". It's a short window that saw Steam open up its doors and dev studios like Vogel, who had ready to ship games, benefited.

Ok, so Jeff has been making games since 1994, but you are framing this discussion only from 2008 & onward? WHY?

I think there's no debate that being indie today is better than being indie in the late 90's, early 00' - a.k.a. most of Vogel's carrer. That's my point.

And I'll even contest that retarded 2008 hype. The media made a huge fuss about everything, making the guys super-stars... but apart from Minecraft (an insane outlier), I'd say we are about equal today, if not better. It took 4 YEARS for Braid to sell 450k copies. Stardew Valley sold more in two weeks. Undertale has 1.3M sales. Prison Architect has 1.5M. ARK: Survival Evolved and Rocket League both have 2.8M, outselling FEZ, SuperMeatBoy and Limbo. Fame =/= sales.

And all those are games from the past year or so. Doesn't seem to me that huge success stories are "much more difficult to do so", and we now have a healthy amount of indie games with moderate success, selling 100k or more, where in 2008 it was "big or nothing".

 

[Tacgnol]

I'd be really curious to see what Jeff's sale figures were like in the 90s.

It was obviously profitable/viable enough for him to make a full time career out of game development.

 

[vonAchdorf]

I'd be really curious to see what Jeff's sale figures were like in the 90s.

It was obviously profitable/viable enough for him to make a full time career out of game development.

Didn't he mention 3-6000 copies in one of his blog posts?

 

[Tacgnol]

I'd be really curious to see what Jeff's sale figures were like in the 90s.

It was obviously profitable/viable enough for him to make a full time career out of game development.

Didn't he mention 3-6000 copies in one of his blog posts?

Interesting. He used to sell his games for full price back in those days.

For the time I guess those would be pretty good sale figures for an indie dev.

 

[Dayyālu]

Vogel is a survivor, I give him that. But I think he has no idea of why that happens, besides the fact he regularly releases games.

Simple, yet correct.

It has been proved countless times from Avadon and from his blog posts, that Vogel has little idea of what made his games borderline good (setting and reactivity, mostly thanks to the shitty production values). Not many "easy era" RPGs gave the players the amount of factional choices (and a rather unique setting) like Vogel did with Nethergate and Geneforge.

Then, as the other said, he went for his little Bioware phase (I do remember his blog posts about the Codex, amusing as they were).

It's good to remember that Vogel has mostly no idea of what he is talking about: his financial and game design blog posts are wildly incoherent and change drastically as the years go by and he's proven wrong time and time again (Steam, Indies, Production values, Fan feedback, discounts, prices, Bundles). There is literally not a single subject in his blog posts where his predictions have proven true.

Vogel has no idea of what he's doing, or why he's succesful. From the "design" standpoint to the "financial" standpoint - he truly thought that Avadon was a remarkable game and not derivative drivel -. Maybe he's simply lucky.

The pity is, that no one built games quite like he did in the mid 2000: I still wait for some fake-historical game (not AoD tryharding) or good reactivity. Would be better if the combat engine wasn't shit, though...

 

[Doktor Best]

I dont think Vogel believes that Avadon is a masterpiece. I think he went for the bioware formula because he saw it sells well, and he was right with that. Just look at Avadons sale numbers, they are far better than his Avernum games...

Bioware has a huge fanbase and therefor biowareesque games generate a huge potencial customerbase if media throws in the bioware comparison in some of their reviews.

 

[Mustawd]

Ok, so Jeff has been making games since 1994, but you are framing this discussion only from 2008 & onward? WHY?

His presentation is specifically about that era. Indiepocalypse, etc. is specifically referring to this window of time where being an indie was relatively easy money if you had games to ship. He's merely saying that window has now closed and it's back to the grind of being an indie. Albeit in a different way. So no more easy money. I hardly understand how this stance is controversial.

I think there's no debate that being indie today is better than being indie in the late 90's, early 00' - a.k.a. most of Vogel's carrer. That's my point.

And I'll even contest that retarded 2008 hype. The media made a huge fuss about everything, making the guys super-stars... but apart from Minecraft (an insane outlier), I'd say we are about equal today, if not better. It took 4 YEARS for Braid to sell 450k copies. Stardew Valley sold more in two weeks. Undertale has 1.3M sales. Prison Architect has 1.5M. ARK: Survival Evolved and Rocket League both have 2.8M, outselling FEZ, SuperMeatBoy and Limbo. Fame =/= sales.

And all those are games from the past year or so. Doesn't seem to me that huge success stories are "much more difficult to do so", and we now have a healthy amount of indie games with moderate success, selling 100k or more, where in 2008 it was "big or nothing".

Well, on those points you might be right. I'd have to do some research, so I'll leave it open for now. I don't have a frame of reference for what indies sold before Steam. So some interviews might shed light on it.

 

[Nim]

I dont think Vogel believes that Avadon is a masterpiece. I think he went for the bioware formula because he saw it sells well, and he was right with that. Just look at Avadons sale numbers, they are far better than his Avernum games...

Avadon 1 came out 10 months earlier and is barely ahead of Avernum:EFTP, Avadon 2 had 15 months more and Crystal Souls has already surpassed it. Where are those far better sales numbers ?

 

[Mustawd]

I dont think Vogel believes that Avadon is a masterpiece. I think he went for the bioware formula because he saw it sells well, and he was right with that. Just look at Avadons sale numbers, they are far better than his Avernum games...

Avadon 1 came out 10 months earlier and is barely ahead of Avernum:EFTP, Avadon 2 had 15 months more and Crystal Souls has already surpassed it. Where are those far better sales numbers ?

Not enough romance.

 

[Zeriel]

I dont think Vogel believes that Avadon is a masterpiece. I think he went for the bioware formula because he saw it sells well, and he was right with that. Just look at Avadons sale numbers, they are far better than his Avernum games...

Bioware has a huge fanbase and therefor biowareesque games generate a huge potencial customerbase if media throws in the bioware comparison in some of their reviews.

I don't think it was that at all. Avadon was the first "new" game he had made in a while. More importantly, it had a lot of new art assets. Vogel usually skimps out on spending anything on his remakes and sequels to the games he's been making for years, I'd ascribe the sales numbers of Avadon to him actually making a game that looked like some effort had been put into it for a change.

Unfortunately his behavior makes it pretty hard to make a comparison. If he was putting out new Avernum games with lots of new art and ideas every year, we could make a judgment, but he doesn't.

Edit: And then there's what that other guy said, did it actually sell massively better? I have no skin in the game either way, the last Vogel game I genuinely thought was good was Exile 3.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Maybe he didn't count bundled copies.

Then why are the bundled copies mentioned in the parenthesis? Here, let me remind you:

Actually, this fucking thing makes zero fucking sense. OK, so we have Avadon 1 with heavy bundle interest. I'm not sure what exactly he means. Percentage of bundle copies in the sales, I guess. So Avadon 1 costs 10 bucks, sells 60 thousands, nets 300k. That sounds about right.

But then we have Avadon 2. It sells 10k copies less which is a 20% loss, but suddenly the profits have sunken in thrice. 300%! And, with less bundle interest, that means that the bigger part of those sales should've had the fuller price. That number just doesn't make sense - even if steam & taxes take out the half away, 50k copies should net you 250k, not 100.

Another thing is that all these numbers are inconsistent with the steamspy. Which means that this entire chart is carefully doctored to depict whatever it needs to depict. Or, to put it simply, that it's bullshit.

The chart says 'Steam sales figure' which means Steam only revenues. Steamspy shows all owners, which include all bundle buyers (the developer provides Steam keys to the bundle sites). The numbers are consistent and the drop in sales within the same 'copies sold' ballpark can be easily explained by aggressive but ultimately futile discounts (he dropped the price to 1.99 a few times).

Edit: plus regional pricing which brings the avg price down. We sell AoD for $29.99 but the avg price per unit is 23-something.

 

[Grape_You_In_the_Mouth]

I don't think it's mysterious. He has alluded to it many times. He is your typical 40-year-old male stuck in a marriage, so he has to earn X amount of money to support his wife and daughter. Doing something creative would jeopardize his income....(continued)

Spoiler

Now personally I think he could swing it, but he believes that when he tried it in the past (i.e Nethergate, probably some other examples I've forgotten), it failed miserably. He's basically in a self-income version of the wageslave predicament. He thinks the only way he can survive is by churning out remakes of the same game he's been making for the last 20 years, and he hates it, hence all the Bioware worship. He just wants money, because money is freedom. Everything else he does is just his pathological coping with the life he hates.

Now of course that is probably a character flaw in of itself, most poor people are miserable sad sacks too and don't talk about it on their blog all day.

Simple, yet correct.

It has been proved countless times from Avadon and from his blog posts, that Vogel has little idea of what made his games borderline good (setting and reactivity, mostly thanks to the shitty production values). Not many "easy era" RPGs gave the players the amount of factional choices (and a rather unique setting) like Vogel did with Nethergate and Geneforge.

Then, as the other said, he went for his little Bioware phase (I do remember his blog posts about the Codex, amusing as they were)....(continued)

Spoiler

It's good to remember that Vogel has mostly no idea of what he is talking about: his financial and game design blog posts are wildly incoherent and change drastically as the years go by and he's proven wrong time and time again (Steam, Indies, Production values, Fan feedback, discounts, prices, Bundles). There is literally not a single subject in his blog posts where his predictions have proven true.

Vogel has no idea of what he's doing, or why he's succesful. From the "design" standpoint to the "financial" standpoint - he truly thought that Avadon was a remarkable game and not derivative drivel -. Maybe he's simply lucky.

The pity is, that no one built games quite like he did in the mid 2000: I still wait for some fake-historical game (not AoD tryharding) or good reactivity. Would be better if the combat engine wasn't shit, though...

I think these are great points that challenge my blinding homoerotic love for the man.

Also, the best part is that he's so honest and vocal about his sales numbers and design philosophies.

 

[Elwro]

And those who say 'he's doubled the price of his games' should know that back in the day each of his games cost $25. I felt very happy when I grabbed the whole Avernum trilogy in a Vogel's webstore bundle for something like $50 or whatever it was. Worth every cent.

 

[Kem0sabe]

I was really hoping he would go for a geneforge remaster instead of continuing with avadon. It's his best work to date.

 

[Nim]

It's pretty clear that the GF remakes are a few years off, Avadon 3 soon, Avernum 3 next year and then either something new or GF. So 2018 at the earliest.

 

[Grape_You_In_the_Mouth]

He's said in interviews that GF remake will be next in line after the ones you mentioned. He agrees with us that it's something special.