Grimoire

Here's the articles I found on Jeff Vogel and pricing

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Jeff...w_Youre_Going_To_Price_Your_Computer_Game.php

http://www.fullindie.com/portfolio-...-sustainable-business-jeff-vogel-summit-2015/



As you can see, he's talking about marketing and perception and here's a good line

Jeff Vogel said:

Putting your special little game on sale can be an emotionally wrenching experience. Everyone wants to protect their baby.

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Dart, see if you can wrap your brain on the fact that the seller's interest is different from the buyer's interest. You seem to be an expert on the subject.

Lucky Day said:

Here's the articles I found on Jeff Vogel and pricing

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Jeff...w_Youre_Going_To_Price_Your_Computer_Game.php

http://www.fullindie.com/portfolio-...-sustainable-business-jeff-vogel-summit-2015/

As you can see, he's talking about marketing and perception and here's a good line



Dart, see if you can wrap your brain on the fact that the seller's interest is different from the buyer's interest. You seem to be an expert on the subject.

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I don't know, it sounds like he's finally agreeing with me

Not that it says much. I don't think much of that guy in terms of being a developer or a business man. He strikes me as mediocre at best in both ways.

Mediocre businessman? His budget is basically nil, i.e. no overhead or costs going out, he reuses assets a lot, remakes his old games and makes a solid profit on every game he releases. I'd say that's pretty clever at the very least. And to a good chunk of RPG fans, he makes quality games and has established a solid fanbase.

He's living a great life off his art and passion. A 20+ year run as an indie/niche RPG developer is impressive to me. He created his own lane.

Fluent said:

Mediocre businessman? His budget is basically nil, i.e. no overhead or costs going out, he reuses assets a lot, remakes his old games and makes a solid profit on every game he releases. I'd say that's pretty clever at the very least. And to a good chunk of RPG fans, he makes quality games and has established a solid fanbase.

He's living a great life off his art and passion. A 20+ year run as an indie/niche RPG developer is impressive to me. He created his own lane.

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We all know how hard you are to impress

As for making a profit, then Spiderweb was often struggling in the past according to Vogel. Maybe that has changed after he finally saw the light, but I doubt he's doing all that well. I hope for his sake he's struggling less, though.

His games smack of half-assed work all the way, so I guess it's only fair.

Struggling at times or not, he's survived 20 years in this industry, from before the indie boom to after. He's still making games for a fanbase that loves them and lives off his passion for gaming. To say that's not impressive is goofy.

He even has a Kickstarter coming up for a new engine project. I expect him to do even bigger and better things in the future.

Fluent said:

Struggling at times or not, he's survived 20 years in this industry, from before the indie boom to after. He's still making games for a fanbase that loves them and lives off his passion for gaming. To say that's not impressive is goofy.

He even has a Kickstarter coming up for a new engine project. I expect him to do even bigger and better things in the future.

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Yeah, he's doing the EA sports dance of constantly making the same thing with minimal evolution only on a tiny scale. Very impressive!

I can probably live with being goofy in your highly educated eyes

NewDArt said:

His games smack of half-assed work all the way, so I guess it's only fair.

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Got to disagree with you there! The two Avernum remakes were great, and the third one is definitely one of my most cheerfully anticipated projects for 2018. A huge amount of care and attention went into that game world.

Anyone who can live off what they love doing is a success. Jeff is living the dream. 20 years makes him a real OG. That deserves respect from any fan of RPGs and RPG developers.

I'm sure he's fine being mediocre in your highly educated eyes though.

Pongo said:

Got to disagree with you there! The two Avernum remakes were great, and the third one is definitely one of my most cheerfully anticipated projects for 2018. A huge amount of care and attention went into that game world.

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I'm glad someone can see it, because I sure can't

Fluent said:

Anyone who can live off what they love doing is a success. Jeff is living the dream. 20 years makes him a real OG. That deserves respect from any fan of RPGs and RPG developers.

I'm sure he's fine being mediocre in your highly educated eyes though.

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I think you're confusing your own fairy tale perception of what it means to be a small developer with the reality of the extreme pressure of running your own independent business.

Not that you being in never-never land is a big surprise

It's great that you find his work so impressive.

It's also ok with me that you can't quite handle a differing opinion, yet again. It's sort of become your trademark.

Fluent said:

He even has a Kickstarter coming up for a new engine project. I expect him to do even bigger and better things in the future.

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So you're saying his next game might actually look like it was developed within the last decade?

JDR13 said:

So you're saying his next game might actually look like it was developed within the last decade?

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Yep. Will have a brand new engine, new art and the like. Not sure when he plans on doing it but that's his next big project last time I heard.

I have extremely mixed feelings about Vogel, but I still give him credit for being able to be successful at what he does. And it's worth noting that if Avadon sold 200,000 on Steam then that's about 2 million right there. Plus I believe it was also quite successful on IoS. Maybe it's no Starmoon Valley, but that's still really good for an Indie developer selling old school niche RPGs.

But it's also worth noting that Avadon 3 looks like it only sold about 5,000 copies. Which gets into my main complaint about Jeff, he doesn't show enough creativity or take enough chances. He should see how much more successful he was with a brand new engine and IP then he was when he recycled it for the 3rd time.

Maybe the 300k+ number I gave was actually sold copies, not dollars. Whatever it was, the man is successful doing his thing, being his own boss and making RPGs. I think that's a great thing.

I also think his games are solid. I'm interested in the new engine and future projects.

Oh, and he shows a lot of creativity, IMO, in terms of the games themselves, their lore and so on. But yes, he does recycle/remake a lot.

To see his creativity just look up the lore of his big 4 - Avernum, Avadon, Geneforge and Nethergate. They are all unique from each other but also quite unique from most other RPGs made, especially Avernum/Geneforge and Nethergate.

The difference with Jeff Vogel's games though is that Vogel writes lots of them with limited content in each one. Cleve OTOH has spent 20 years making a single game that has ten times as much hand crafted content as any of Vogel's games. Add the cost of all Vogels games up and they will come to a lot more than $40. Furthermore, Cleve is still working on Grimoire and will probably be doing so for the forseeable future. So he wants to maintain the perception of value on it.

So far Grimoire has been compared to Tetris, Grimrock and Spiderweb games, but in reality it is nothing like those games, it's Cleve's one and only magnum opus and he would be crazy to just toss it out the door for next to nothing. Well maybe he is crazy in some respects, but not that crazy... Really you won't understand what Grimoire is about and how much effort it represents, unless you play it, when it will slowly dawn on you that the game is really something entirely unprecedented in terms of size and complexity. Whether you'll like it or not is a different matter, of course.

Personally, I find Vogel's work underwhelming in pretty much every aspect. His games are the kind I'd only play if I completely ran out of anything better.

Thankfully, I have a significant backlog of quality titles.

Roq said:

So far Grimoire has been compared to Tetris, Grimrock and Spiderweb games, but in reality it is nothing like those games, it's Cleve's one and only magnum opus and he would be crazy to just toss it out the door for next to nothing. Well maybe he is crazy in some respects, but not that crazy… Really you won't understand what Grimoire is about and how much effort it represents, unless you play it, when it will slowly dawn on you that the game is really something entirely unprecedented in terms of size and complexity. Whether you'll like it or not is a different matter, of course.

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I've heard people beat Grimoire in under 100 hours. Where's the promised 600 hours? If the game is really "unprecedented in size", then there should be more than 100 hours there. I can play D:OS and get 100+ hours out of it, 300+ hours out of an Elder Scrolls game and people play Elminage games for 500+ hours. There are plenty of RPGs that have 100+ hours.

I'm just saying that if the game really is unprecedented in size, beating the game in 100 hours does not correlate.

Fluent said:

Where's the promised 600 hours?

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I feel like I've been through this before, but…

There is no promised 600 hours. The problem is you either misread or misinterpreted what he said. He said it was possible to spend 600 hours on it not that it takes 600 hours to finish. Even though he's probably exaggerating a great deal, that's still not the same thing as claiming it takes 600 hours to finish.

And your comparisons are meaningless. Any game can be stretched out if that's what the player wants. The Elder Scrolls games can be finished in 30-40 hours, or much less, if the player chooses.

Fluent said:

I've heard people beat Grimoire in under 100 hours.

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I've heard a lot of things about Grimoire and most of them are nonsense. Go onto the community page on steam and take a look at the guides. In particular, the world maps that Felipepepe has published. Then tell us that there are only 100 hours of gameplay there!? And that (the world map not the act 1 map) represents only about 60% of the game, because that is about as far as anyone has managed to get since launch. Most of us have hardly scratched the surface.

fadedc said:

I have extremely mixed feelings about Vogel, but I still give him credit for being able to be successful at what he does. And it's worth noting that if Avadon sold 200,000 on Steam then that's about 2 million right there. Plus I believe it was also quite successful on IoS. Maybe it's no Starmoon Valley, but that's still really good for an Indie developer selling old school niche RPGs.

But it's also worth noting that Avadon 3 looks like it only sold about 5,000 copies. Which gets into my main complaint about Jeff, he doesn't show enough creativity or take enough chances. He should see how much more successful he was with a brand new engine and IP then he was when he recycled it for the 3rd time.

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Well, 200K copies would be pretty amazing if Jeff was working alone and they were all sold at full price - but he pays for assets and has at least one other team member to consider.

Also, the game has been heavily discounted multiple times throughout its history on Steam - so it doesn't translate to anything like 2 million at all - especially considering the cost of running a business with marketing and the cut Steam takes.

But, it's true, he seems to have become more successful after lowering the price to something most RPG fans would be willing to pay if they have even a small interest in his games.

My opinion about him as a business man is based on the fact that it took him ages to understand smart pricing for his niche mediocre products - and his utterly transparent practice of essentially redoing or outright remaking the same product over and over and over.

I fully understand he has a fan base going nuts for his games - and that's great. There are also millions of people playing Pokémon Go

But he could have been so much more if he'd taken some creative risks and made something genuinely new and exciting just once.

Not that I'm saying it's easy to do so - or that there's an incentive if you're not passionate about your work.

Seems to me it's a clear-cut business thing and that he doesn't have the ambition to take it to the next level.

Which is fine - but it is what it is.