Monte Cristo-prejudiced?

C

crpgnut

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Hey guys, I've looked on several forums dedicated to Silverfall and the developers ONLY post on the french forums. Do you think they're prejudiced against English speakers or are they so stupid as to not have a support department for the non-French. European developers wonder why their games don't sell well in the US. This is reason #1. We EXPECT to have the developers ear! We're spoiled little whiny butts if we don't get our way :D
 
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i'm guessing because they don't speak english very well. monte cristo also made the game 7sins and even the english version has french voices. that game was hilarious by the way and worth it alone for the insane minigames.
and i don't think western-european games have too much trouble selling in the us. eidos(uk) and ubisoft (french) alone have produced more decent and well selling games than nearly any american developer i can think of. but yes customer support is nice but lots of times on english boards of foreign games their is no one who even posts so its not too suprising that a developer should waste thier time browsing a handfull of peoples posts.
 
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OP: Are you nuts? Thousands, no wait, millions of American developers never reply on non-English speaking forums either, so this is but poetic justice!

:p
 
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Actually, Atari (publishers in the US) have forums for Silverfall. Check them out here!
 
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I have a simple solution; let's get all these developers to post on this board!! :)
 
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Heck, we'd give them a forum in exchange for all the new people, right?
 
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Arhu said:
OP: Are you nuts? Thousands, no wait, millions of American developers never reply on non-English speaking forums either, so this is but poetic justice!

:p
Click to expand...

@Arhu I'm thinking from looking at my nick/avatar that I'm at least partially a nut.
As far as justice, from a making money standpoint Developers that don't talk to their English speaking buyers, go out of business. It's the simple cliche of don't bite the hand that feeds you.
 
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I guess some companys can live from german money alone, at least when I think of Games like The Patrician, anno 1603, the Guild, the Settlers or of ISS's Avatar :)

Not that I like any of it :)
 
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crpgnut: Yes, I know you're right, partial nut. ^^ 'twas a wee bit of irony on my part. Cos you look so funny. And nutty.

While you mentioned money making, I realized that I'm an anti-money-maker. Not because I don't like people who make money - I'm envious of them in that regard - but because I'm so bad at it. I'd rather give away something for free than charge for it. Can't live in this world without money though... :-/ so.. meh.
 
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crpgnut said:
As far as justice, from a making money standpoint Developers that don't talk to their English speaking buyers, go out of business. It's the simple cliche of don't bite the hand that feeds you.
Click to expand...

That depends on the country you produce for.

Among Star Wars collectors, it is a very, very long held grudge that Hasbro doesn't speak to the foreign collectors.
My point is, that because Star Wars is a world-wide phenomenon, SW collectibles shouldn't be basically limited to only one country, no matter how big it is.

I could call this prejudice, too.

Non-US-Collectors are simply neglected. It's as simple as that. Hasbro concentrates on the US-market, and I purposefilly don't say "the american market", because they even neglect Canada.

If you listen to non-US Star Wars collectors, you'll find that they are all frustrated and angry because of that.

It has always two sides.

And of course, some say that other collectibles aren't available in the US, like Playmobil, for example. (Actually Adam Pawlus, the main person behind www.galactichunter.com says that.)
 
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Alrik Fassbauer said:
I purposefilly don't say "the american market", because they even neglect Canada.
Click to expand...

Canada is a country? I thought it was just the place that kept my freezer stocked with ice cubes :D
 
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lol, yes. :D

I personally know a few people from Canada, and I have a high respect for them. :)
They're not SW collector's though. ;)
 
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I do agree though, that if you sell internationally you should support internationally.
English is the language of trade, but it doesn't mean all your buyers speak it :)
 
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I think it's called being a BUSINESS!! They don't care about collectors, they care about moving product and making money. Cost effectiveness would therefore mandate the US focus. Return for investment, whether in time or money is much more profitable if concentrated in what is argueably the largest consumer market in the world. ( I'm referring to a market with money to spend on such things, not simply size of population )
 
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Well, if we're going to tar Monte Cristo for this, best chuck in Piranha Bytes. When was the last time they spoke directly to the English market instead of through World of Gothic in German?
 
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Didn't Kairo occasionally post at the Dot? Still, I agree that all small developers (at least) should speak as best they can to all sections of their marketplace. After all, it's in their own best interests!!
 
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Well, Piranha Bytes is weird anyway :) . It's also not exactly "politically correct" of them to speak almost exclusively via WoG instead of the truly official JoWood forums.

They (well, for the most part just two of them, i.e. KaiRo and Ralf who is the art director) are currently very active at WoG in a thread about the artbook. The discussion has long drifted away from the actual artbook and it's about a large variety of topics concerning Gothic and PB as a company now. It's mostly about the past because KaiRo and Ralf keep emphasizing that they are under NDA regarding any questions concerning the "future project" (which is a G3 add-on with a probability of 99.99999%, of course ;) ).
The most "exciting" thing that KaiRo has said in that thread recently was in response to a question whether the add-on (if there was indeed an add-on in development) would be more grim or gloomy than Gothic III. KaiRo's response consisted of just two lines... "Add-on!" and "Gloomy!".
Otherwise, most answers just deal with the past of the franchise and the company and some small-talk stuff.
 
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You should not take two things as given:
1. Developers are allowed to talk to people outside the studio about the game.
2. Developers want to have contact with gamers.
 
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I can understand the first, but not the second. Why wouldn't they want to talk with the people they hope will buy their game? Angering them can't be a good thing for sales!!
 
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