I was intentionally brief in my last post. My time is too limited to get deeply involved at the moment. I'll add a couple of details though, and I don't claim that I am right. That's just how I see it until somebody comes up with good arguments.
Gorath,
I can't disagree with anything you said, but lets get some clarification on what you didn't say:
"The Witcher -> "
"Great name." Either you mean "The Witcher" itself is a great name, or the books behind the game is a great name/content/source for a game. In which case The Dark Eye isn't a great name/content/source for a game, or drakensang itself is not a good name itself.
"The Witcher" is a very good name because it's unique and it makes people think. A "witch" is female per definition. There is no such thing as a male witch. So why is this game called "The Witcher"? Bam ...
high involvement. The name even to some degree describes what the game is about.
Scott Miller on game names.
Just think about the brilliant coup at Penny Arcade (I think). Remember the comic strip (The Witcher .. The Witchest) ? When something like this happens you know you've made it.
"Drakensang" is okay. It's strange and unique, but is also needs explanation and it's not intuitively clear that it's actually pronounced "Draakhensung" (with a soft _s_ ). Example of a terrible name: SpellForce 2: Shadow Wars. It doesn't get more generic than this. A great game, but an uphill battle for marketing.
"great marketing from the very beginning." So, drakensang never had good marketing at all anywhere, or The Witcher just did it all right? And was the marketing easier because of all the interest, or was the it easier to garner the interest due to the fabulous marketing?
DraSa had good marketing in Germany. They sold more than 100k for full price. Which means the game was officially a major hit. (multiply by 3.5 to compare with North America).
Yes, The Witcher did at least the important things. I think we can round this up to "they did everything right". But it was also much easier for them because (a) they didn't need to find a publisher (b) they had marketing expertise in house (-> publishing) (c) they knew they had to get external help and hired an RPG specialist (and old friend of ours) and (d) they had the money behind them to fund it all.
Radon Labs does not have internal marketing. dtp is a good name in Germany, but still only a local publisher. They don't have many resources to spend on international marketing, simply because they don't sell their directly.
"interesting license." Unlike drakensang?
The Dark Eye: solid license in Germany. The biggest P&P RPG. P&P is a niche market. Worthless outside Germany.
The Witcher: Literature. Mainstream in Eastern Europe, easy to translate (the process of translating literature without loss is well understood!). Literature is easy to find access to. P&P has a high hurdle.
"controversial topics." Like boobies and banging hoes left and right? I think the biggest controversial topic in this century was the rapping of the license of the greatest crpg trilogy ever into a BG-clone. But I guess boobies always win in the end, so i have to give you this one, even if it kind of proves my point about the state of the community.
The mainstream doesn't care about cloning BG. Boobs, violence, a bad-ass hero and the strange literature license are topics.
"good product quality." I see no disparity in quality from the two. I only had it in me to play The Witcher up to chapter 2 when he gets arrested, so i did play it longer than the demo for drakensang, but all the aesthetic bullshit both games provide seems to be on par.
Agreed. Excellent job by radon Labs. Technically at least on par with a much more expensive game.
This doesn't mean that The Witcher is not a good game though. Good game + good distribution + a lot of very good marketing + good word of mouth = a huge hit.
Drakensang had all except the first only in Germany.
"the right guys to handle it. CDPR & The Witcher was the perfect fit." Is it not true for this game? I don't know, but it seems to me a dev and publisher fitting shouldn't impact fan interest in a game.
I meant developer and publisher, both CDP. Their whole uncompromising attitude. Everybody who dealt with them knew they're very passionate about this game. They wanted to make exactly this game
and they could afford to do it.
The difference to DraSa is the part in italics. One look into the RL CEO's eyes was enough to understand that this is the project they've suffered for through years of contract work. (Horse games for little girls. Really!) But Radon Labs had to negotiate to secure the money. They had to shop this project around for years, and it only got greenlit when they found external money. The compromises led to the almost complete absense of rough edges. Just about everything is good to very good. Drakensang is a deep RPG disguised as a KotOR clone. But what's unique about it? I've played it for 80 hours and I can't tell you. And yes, the 85% ratings on average are correct.
No rough edges means less grip on USPs. There's not much to identify with. I hope they can get more daring in DraSa 2.
What I've noticed is that the fan reaction is much more critical towards DraSa than to every other serious RPG. The fans criticise everything, even if it's better than in competing products or if it's accepted industry standard. I have no idea why. Maybe because they expected RoA 4 instead of a new game?
"And don't forget that CDP is also a big publisher in Eastern Europe. They know everyone, everyone knows them and have a lot of money behind them. The Witcher's budget was easily 3 times as big as Drakensang's, and that's aiming low." Casual fans would have no idea about budgets. They see a screenshot and say, "AWESOME!!!!" or "Icky-Puke!!!!" and move on. Both games have fancy-smancy graphics so, budget shouldn't factor in.
Would you deny that a bigger budget is an advantage? They can experiment more, they can afford better communication, they don't need to agree to the opinion behind the publisher side funding. This doen't even imply that the publisher was wrong. It's good practice to lower the risk by imitating a proven product line (Bioware ... ). Maybe I would have done the same.
I'm talking about why the lack of interest from the people supposedly in the know, the people from this site, who love NWN and BG, do not seem to be interested in this game. Why is that? I can't figure it out.
Me too. See above.
Would they be interested if the game was marketed better? Why? The would go from knowing about the game to knowing about the game, how does marketing create interest in a game from people who know about the game all ready?
Core gamer don't count for much. A few interviews here, a couple of previews there. That's it. More often than not limited resources are better spent on the mainstream.
That would be saying people are stupid enough to just pay attention to hype? No hype=no game worthy of interest? Regardless if its the same type of game, with the same level of fancy graphics, that they like?
I don't know how core gamers work. Mainstream gamers can be influenced and are influenced by hype all the time.
A couple more questions, if you would be kind enough to answer:
Let’s say, or assume, marketing is not a factor for the following
Should this game appeal to BG and NWN fans?
If yes, it should appeal to them, do you think it does or doesn't?
If no, it doesn't, why is that?
I haven't played BG and NWN long enough to decide whether or nor a fan of these games should like DraSa. BG happened when I played other stuff and NWN was a mediocre game, only number 4 in that cycle behind Arx, DivDiv and Gothic. But I think somebody who liked KotOR for the game mechanics, and not the Star Wars scenario, would have a high probability to enjoy DraSa. Let the experts for the other Bioware games decide how similar BG and NWN are to KotOR.
