When I was a kid I never needed to wear sunscreen. Now we've got all this SPF stuff and I definitely needed it.
The first evening I became intimately familiar with Aloe vera. I could be wrong but I think I'm now technically married to aloe vera. But now I'm back and I can mostly move my limbs again without being in too much pain.
This summer is going to be pretty busy. There's a lot of work going on in our non-games area in preparation for Windows Vista. On Tuesday I head out on behalf of WinCustomize.com to talk to Microsoft about the status on Vista. So I'm only going to be around one day this week and other posts will be from the road.
I was shocked and very pleased to see that Galactic Civilizations II made it into the top 10 best-selling PC games at retail in April. I don't think most people realize the significance of that. GalCiv II is in about a dozen different retail chains in North America. But a typical AAA game is in many thousands of stores.
To use a movie analogy, no matter how good or well received a movie is, it won't tend to make it into the top 10 unless it's in at least a couple thousand theatres nation wide. GalCiv II making it into the top 10 is like a movie that's only in select theaters in major cities making it into the top 10. It's happened before (Blair Witch Project for instance) but it's exceedingly rare.
So we thank you guys for all your support. The game's retail success is significant in a number of ways:
- The game has no copy protection. So if piracy is such a major killer of sales universally, then how did a turn based strategy game with no multiplayer from a small indie game developer crack the top 10 when it has no CD copy protection? I still contend that piracy does hurt sales of games but one can't count every pirated copy as a "lost sale" nor can one make blankest statements on piracy affecting all genres. If we were a first person shooter, then we probably would have had to be more stringent (though still no CD copy protection).
- It shows that digital distribution doesn't have a hugely negative impact on retail. How many people bought the game directly from us who just wouldn't have bought the game otherwise? It's hard to say but I suspect the number is significant.
- It provides more evidence that word of mouth is crucial. That means it's a very good idea to make sure people who buy your game aren't just happy for the first day or two but for the subsequent weeks, months. After all, the game came out in February but it wasn't until April that it showed up in the top 10 in overall PC game sales.
Tomorrow I'll be putting in some new AI stuff that should make v1.11 a bit smarter. The combat changes in 1.2 will probably have a pretty big effect at the top rung of the ladder and probably also help at the lower end as well.
While on the forums I did see some people complain about having to register the game on-line to get access to the free updates beyond 1.0X. You don't have to have a net connection on the machine you play the game on. We are working on automating the email response for those who don't have a net connection on the game machine. For most people, it's seamless.
The big advantage of the registration process is that it creates a full-blown customer account for them. As a result, players can then forever on download the ENTIRE game (not just patches). Another nice thing about it is that we can send an email to people who got 1.1 and tell them about 1.11 so that if they had that memory issue, they know that relief has arrived. Overall, I think the registration system is a win-win though obviously not all people like it. Suffice to say though, if we didn't have the registration system we wouldn't be putting in all the $$$ to keep putting in new features like we've been. Our system has always been about rewarding customers for buying the game and the registration system is a basic part of that (and has been on our software for 7 years now).
Next week when I get back we have to start nailing down what will be in 1.3 and then figure out what will be in the expansion pack for sure. The expansion would be out before Christmas. It won't have multiplayer in it however. A future expansion might. Only 33% of users said they'd purchase an expansion that was predominantly about multiplayer. Some of its advocates have said "You should do an expansion pack that does multiplayer and a bunch of other stuff." The budget is just not there for that. If 67% of players are likely to buy an expansion pack that builds on the current game in new and interesting ways and those features cost a lot less to do than multiplayer it makes it tough to do multiplayer. Still, I do want to add multiplayer at some point. It just won't be this year.
BTW, the Verizon Air Card is very nice. I was able to get pretty good Internet speeds with it at the airport. I'll be able to give it a good test run next week.