Avernum 2: Crystal Souls - Rewrites & Price

Jeff Vogel has a new post on his blog that tackles the recent outrage of his raising the price of Avernum 2: Crystal Souls to $20 instead of the usual $10 price point.

He also talks about the new reality of game development.

We have finally announced our next new game. It's Avernum 2: Crystal Souls. It's a complete, ground-up rewrite of Avernum 2, which came out in 2000. It, in turn, was a rewrite of Exile 2: Crystal Souls, which came out in 1996. We at Spiderweb Software are about nothing if not integrity.

You can see a trailer and other info here. Avernum 2 is probably tied with Avernum 3 for our most beloved game, and I know a lot of fans are looking forward to a reboot. Now with better design (I hope), a better interface and graphics (in my opinion), and the ability to run on tablets (yay).

We don't half-ass our rewrites. This one is taking a full year. New material, new quests, a new dungeon, more dialogue, actual boss fights. You might not like our work, but you can't fairly say we're not trying.

But enough self-promotion. I've said a lot of overly self-assured stuff over the last few months about the state of the indie games biz. Now that I'm having to actually make hard choices and release games, I wanted to talk a little about how I'm adjusting to the New Game Reality.

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More information.

Good for him. I agree that $10 was too little for Avadon 2's initial price. Regardless of any bottom dollar pricing strategy, it's hard to bring new gamers into Spiderweb with the throwback sprite graphics. Stick with what works.

Maybe it made sense business wise to decrease the price down to 10$. But I always felt like this is extremely underpriced. Imho 20$ to 30$ is the correct price range for such a game. We are not talking about a game here which you play like 1-5 hours and then never thouch again like most indie titles.
I mentioned it a million times and I will mention it again: He should do a kickstarter. There are lots of people who would gladly spend more money than necessary. And with this approach of creating games he could just spend excess money on new art and sound which he could then even use for multiple follow up games.

Hmm, I think I understand Spiderweb's problem now.

First, a bit of reflection: I was a huge Spiderweb fan. I really loved Geneforge/Nethergate, liked Avernum, and admired Avadon.
Then I realized that Spiderweb makes the same games over and over, so I completely lost interest, and frankly I don't care about the Avernum remake, Avadon2, etc - because I have already played them in some form.

As a hardcore rpg'er I am looking for new stories, game mechanisms, and don't give a damn about production values. Unfortunately Spiderweb's new games won't fulfill my needs anymore.

Catch 22: Spiderweb does not have the resources to truly innovate, because it is risky, and expensive (and I think Mr Vogel himself became a bit too stubborn too)
Therefore they re-make their games over and over again, hoping to get in a new audience, but effectively alienating their established hardcore fanbase like me.

Interestingly, being a struggling indie developer myself, I am planning to make a blog concentrating on these very challenges while creating my own humble solution to this very problem. Talk the talk, walk the walk, we'll see...

Yeah, I left the Vogel camp long ago myself. I just can't tolerate the graphics anymore. If Vogel ever buys an engine and makes something new, I'll buy. Crystal Souls: The Regurgitation, isn't it.

I don't mind the graphics, though it is disappointing he doesn't want to put in the effort or bit more money to change more of the assets.

But this is what I've said ever since Steam sales became popular: Steam sales prices or such small Steam prices are not enough to fund a real business with real people having decent revenue and making a real living. This means these indie studios will always struggle, and "Steam is the way of the future" lies on much more shaky grounds than people want to acknowledge, and Kickstarter as well.

It is viable for Jeff because they have only three employees and a few contractors which they pay very little, and a dedicated fanbase who doesn't mind paying more.

If you look at for example the Amnesia team, they were at below poverty level through the development cycle, and they had subsidies from the Swedish government. It means that the unless you're an extremely big name or have a huge viral hit, Steam/Kickstarter can fund a team of college boys. But like I said to the Barkley 2 dev who is on the Codex, what happens when those people want to have their own family? They won't stand for this anymore. He acknowledged that this was what going on in their own studio.

As for Spiderweb games always being the same, I don't mind his games being similar one to another all that much, because they make up for it in other ways, such as exploration or writing. It is disappointing though that he makes now only the same hack and slash high fantasy game continuously, when he made the splendid Geneforge. If it means the difference between being able to pay his Seattle mortgage, having a good retirement for him and his wife, and sending his daughters to a good college, then I understand. But in my opinion Avadon is a lot inferior to Avernum, because it lacks the freedom of movement of the latter. It is clearly a Bioware lite game, and I find it kind of falls flat.

Humanity has risen! said:

As for Spiderweb games always being the same, I don't mind his games being similar one to another all that much, because they make up for it in other ways, such as exploration or writing.

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I don't think so. Since he is the sole writer of all his games, his style is obvious in ALL of his games. I like his mildly cynical writing style, but he uses the same style over and over again - and this gets boring eventually.
Same for the exploration: clearly, he uses certain world design patterns, which is superb at first - but again, you'll get used to it very fast.

Spiderweb games are a one-man-show, and unfortunately, it backfires on the long run. He is clearly not David Bowie, who constantly reinvents himself.

Humanity has risen! said:

It is disappointing though that he makes now only the same hack and slash high fantasy game continuously, when he made the splendid Geneforge.

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Exactly. See my rant above.

It could be 50 bucks, I'll buy it first day. Simply put, I can almost guarantee it won't need patches, and zero other games that I've bought recently at launch can claim that. Come at me.

I sometimes wish he would update his graphic engine, but to be serious for once he hasn't made a game yet I haven't enjoyed. So keep up the good work Jeff.

Also ask yourselves this how many indie developers have been in business as long as Spiderweb. Not many right? So he is obviously doing something right.

I love Spiderweb games and Jeff is an excellent writer and game designer (in addition to a programmer of course).

However as said, the fantasy theme is becoming stale and other themes like sci-fi, steam/cyber punk would be a good change. However, this would require a totally new story, setting, world design, graphics .. etc., which Jeff can't produce in one year!

So re-writing his old stuff is much easier as the foundations are already layed out, and he can produce games quicker (he still has to make a living).