Age of Decadence - Possible Retail Release

On the indie front, Gamebanshee points out a forum post at the AOD forums stating developer Vince Weller has been contacted about a possible retail release for his Iron Tower Studio title, Age of Decadence:

We were contacted by a well known publisher today. The publisher thinks that AoD is a "top-tier" product that simply must be on Gamestop and EB Games shelves across North America.

Further on in the thread:

We are considering it.

And

Anyway, so far it looks promising. The publisher has accepted our "not negotiable" points (we retain all rights to the setting and future titles based on the AoD world, any DRM decisions should be approved by us, etc). We'll see.

More information.

Sounds good, I just hope they have more success at brick and mortor stores than Devil Whiskey had. Admittindly AoD is a far supeior product than Devil Whiskey *if it is released bug free. Devil Whiskey was riddled with bugs when it was released, they still haven't fixed it completely yet.

Personally I hope it's more of a distribution thing in the end than publishing. Publishing usually means the publisher getting involved in the product. AoD doesn't need that, it only "needs" (and doesn't really need it) someone to distribute the game and put it on the shelves.

This game is slowwwly gathering speed, like a snowball rolling down a 1% grade, getting interest from both genre fans and publishers worldwide. I think it will be big, at least on an indy scale.

Interesting development for Iron Tower Studio, how is the Cyclopean project?

Still in pre-production, which in my case means lots of writing, where it will stay until after AoD is released.

I suppose my only fear is that publishers always manage to screw things up - sneaky DRM issues, licensing/IP issues etc. And they inflate the cost of the game - money that I would much rather give directly to the developers. Of course, being signed means that "you've arrived" (I guess). Either way, both AoD and Cyclopean will remain on my shopping list.

I think I will wait and hear how they do.

Ah! Good to hear of this news, Vince! It's a tough minefield to navigate. We've been approached as well by two different publishers but in both cases were unable to come to any agreement that seemed fair to us. It's a very frustrating process.

Best of luck to you, and I look forward to seeing AoD sitting on the shelf at Best Buy!