- oscar66
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Re: Finish your games challenge
I finished Legacy Tales Mercy of the Gallows SE . I didn't even realize there was a CE. It was a really nice game. It did have voice work with a narrator who was terrific. He really added to the feel of the story. The artwork was pretty grim and again was perfect for the story of pirates and that era. I loved collecting the coins to open boxes to get items you needed. There were a lot of HO scenes which was fine they were interesting to look at. The diary was pretty fantastic in its layout as well, it made you want to read it. Some of them are meh. Great jump map as well. I'm not sure what I missed from the CE, but I don't feel like I missed anything. A very satisfying gme.
"There is no more perfect stillness than the solitude in the heart of a snowstorm." Diana Gabaldon
- stusue
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Re: Finish your games challenge
TiramaSue wrote:
Meanwhile, over on the CCC replacement forums, people are telling the developers to sell their games directly, don't bother with BF. Are these people will to pay more for the game so that the devs can hire a larger CS staff, and more people to work in bookkeeping, and accountants capable of dealing with the tax laws of different nations, etc? Not to mention the loss of any seed money a portal is throwing their way. And do they really think BF will give away the rights to make teh next Azada, MCF, HE, etc to companies who don't have exclusives with BF?
A question from someone to Boomzap on another ex-CCC forum, back in August ...
Question: now that Big Fish has apparently turned against a portion of its customers (us) will there be another way to purchase your games? I'm sure you can understand why many of us would prefer to directly support the developers of these games rather than a game portal that no longer appreciates its customers.
Boomzap's response ...
Unfortunately, all our HOPAs are exclusive distributed via Bigfish. They basically ARE the portal for that kind of games. Some of our earlier games (like Passport to Paradise, Orchard and Zen Fashion) were self-distributed, and many of our older HOPAs get re-distributed by other portals.
Having said that, I don't think they've turned against their customers. I honestly suspect you guys were collateral damage in the shutdown of Cork; they're reducing the number of moderators, and some bright spark in accounting must have thought that CCC took a lot of effort to manage, and didn't directly contribute to the bottom line. If the moderators seem a bit testy right now, it's probably because many of them are either waiting out their 30 days notice period before being let go, or have seen good friends and colleagues fired. We'll miss the guys we've worked with in Customer Service group, on the Cloud Team, and in the Localization team over in Ireland.
Allan
And, in response to someone's query about how it works when you order a game from Boomzap when you're directed to BFG to pay ...
Bigfish gets a final build (called a Gold Master, from the days when the final game was printed to a Golden CD-R disc for mass production), which they run through Quality Assurance to make sure it works properly, and upload to the site. We'll update our website at the same time, and put up the link. Should be more or less the same time on both sites.
The actual mechanics of how this is done is different from website to website; usually you'll use another host for the build. We've used Digital River before, but changed to Bigfish because they had a better service for the user. Others use other portals like Steam, WildTangent or Oberon. It really depends on who the audience is; for 'hardcore games' (shooting or strategy games, for example), it tends to be Steam, for HOPAs Bigfish.
Hope that helps,
Allan
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What you're doing today is important
because you're exchanging a day of your life for it.
- stusue
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Re: Finish your games challenge
I downloaded and tried today's gamegiveaway game, Lost Head, and it seems fun. Physics based puzzle, and not hard to start though I'm sure it gets much more complicated in later levels. Just played through the first several levels but it definitely seemed worth getting for free to me.
I was also very happy to get Around the World in 80 Days yesterday. I played through it way back and I think it's a great M3. I got it originally from GGotD, but only have it on my other computer. Really glad to have snagged it for my current laptop.
Damn, I totally forgot to download 80 Days onto my laptop last night. 
I'll have to remember to download Lost Head onto it tonight. 
Thanks for reminding me! 
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What you're doing today is important
because you're exchanging a day of your life for it.
- stusue
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Re: Finish your games challenge
Here's a figure that I personally find mind-boggling. In response to someone's query about advertising ... or, rather, the lack of it ... here was Allan from Boomzap's response ...
You see adverts for big AAA games because a game like Grand Theft Auto 5 had a development + marketing budget of ~265 million USD, which is comparable to movies like Avatar or Titanic. About half of that was development costs, the rest was a pretty amazing marketing blitz that hit channels everywhere. As you saw from the discussion earlier, our budgets are... a little smaller
If we spent a couple of million dollars on mainstream media advertising, it's also pretty unlikely that we'd ever recover it... even the largest hits in the HOPA space don't make that kind of money.
~265 million USD ???? 
** thud **
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What you're doing today is important
because you're exchanging a day of your life for it.
- stusue
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Re: Finish your games challenge
I found this post really interesting, Boomzap responding to people asking why F2P and what would happen to Awakening and other PC casual games, etc.
The best person to explain this is Chris Natsuume, our Creative Director. So I shared your questions with him and here is his answer:
The real answer is that it's driven by consumers. In general, the developers and the publishers are having a hard time making ends meet these days - largely because so few people pay for games. We have piracy rates for games that are well in excess of 75% - that's right, over 75% of the people playing our games are not paying for them. This destroys our ability to make the money we use to pay the staff that make the games. It's hard, but it's also true. If you wonder why you see so many developers leave the HOPA industry altogether, this is the key reason. This, and at the same time the costs to make the games are skyrocketing because of increased expectations for the games - more animations, longer gameplay, more CE content, etc. The truth is - it's barely financially viable to make these games anymore, and all of the developers are really struggling to make ends meet. Free to Play forces the players to connect to a server to play, and this prevents the piracy, which is one of the major reasons it is becoming popular.
Additionally - the content for traditional HOPAs is largely disposable. You play the game, finish the story, and move on. When the games were cheaper to make, this was a viable model, but now that the costs for making them has gone up so far... we're all looking for a way to make a game that has a longer lifespan. Something that we can support, build on, and keep alive longer than the 2-3 month lifespan of a normal HOPA. Free to Play allows us to do that as well, allowing us to keep improving on a game, adding to it, building it better and better. It's our hope that we can use that to provide the users with a better experience in the long run - and one that we can actually remain profitable with.
That being said - Boomzap hasn't given up on traditional HOPAs. We're just releasing Awakening Kingdoms now - a F2P based on the Awakening universe. But we knew that many people love the HOPA trial-download games, and would still want to see those, so we made a conscious decision to make Kingdoms a separate story and a separate game, so we could continue making HOPAs in the traditional model to continue Sophia's story with a continuing series of Awakening try-buy games while allowing people to play a F2P game as well.
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What you're doing today is important
because you're exchanging a day of your life for it.
- TiramaSue
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Re: Finish your games challenge
A question from someone to Boomzap on another ex-CCC forum, back in August ...
Question: now that Big Fish has apparently turned against a portion of its customers (us) will there be another way to purchase your games? I'm sure you can understand why many of us would prefer to directly support the developers of these games rather than a game portal that no longer appreciates its customers.
Boomzap's response ...
Unfortunately, all our HOPAs are exclusive distributed via Bigfish. They basically ARE the portal for that kind of games. Some of our earlier games (like Passport to Paradise, Orchard and Zen Fashion) were self-distributed, and many of our older HOPAs get re-distributed by other portals.
Having said that, I don't think they've turned against their customers. I honestly suspect you guys were collateral damage in the shutdown of Cork; they're reducing the number of moderators, and some bright spark in accounting must have thought that CCC took a lot of effort to manage, and didn't directly contribute to the bottom line. If the moderators seem a bit testy right now, it's probably because many of them are either waiting out their 30 days notice period before being let go, or have seen good friends and colleagues fired. We'll miss the guys we've worked with in Customer Service group, on the Cloud Team, and in the Localization team over in Ireland.
Allan
I have to disagree with Allen. CCC didn't close down because of the shutdown in Cork. The problem was not being able to transition the data from the old forums to the new forums they had hoped to have in place back in July (I think that was the target). That left BFG between a rock and a hard place: open new, COMPLETELY EMPTY forums, or dump a part of the existing forums in order to extend the lifetime of the forums that would remain.
Many of the complainers don't seem to be as interested in actually playing the games as they were in just hanging out and chewing the fat. Some bragged about buying their games elsewhere and was indignant that BF would not allow them to mention competitors names and sale, all the while they contributed nothing to BF's bottom line but ate up bandwith with their myriad daily postings.
If the original game plan had been to close CCC at the same time as closing Cork, Hondo wouldn't have been told to hype the new forums.
For every minute you are angry, you lose sixity seconds of happiness. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Thread Starter- stusue
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Re: Finish your games challenge
Eipix's response to selling their games directly on their site and not going through BFG (as people on the other site still hate BFG (or Big Flush as they call it, with an emoticon of someone throwing up into a toilet) ...
Selling our own games - sorry to say that at the moment we do not have this option. Such is the nature of our contract.
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What you're doing today is important
because you're exchanging a day of your life for it.
- stusue
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- Posts: 2,335
Re: Finish your games challenge
I have to disagree with Allen. CCC didn't close down because of the shutdown in Cork. The problem was not being able to transition the data from the old forums to the new forums they had hoped to have in place back in July (I think that was the target). That left BFG between a rock and a hard place: open new, COMPLETELY EMPTY forums, or dump a part of the existing forums in order to extend the lifetime of the forums that would remain.
Many of the complainers don't seem to be as interested in actually playing the games as they were in just hanging out and chewing the fat. Some bragged about buying their games elsewhere and was indignant that BF would not allow them to mention competitors names and sale, all the while they contributed nothing to BF's bottom line but ate up bandwith with their myriad daily postings.
If the original game plan had been to close CCC at the same time as closing Cork, Hondo wouldn't have been told to hype the new forums.
I agree with you 100%, Tirama.
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What you're doing today is important
because you're exchanging a day of your life for it.
- lilyr
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- Registered: August 13, 2013
- Posts: 2,187
Re: Finish your games challenge
VOTE NOW !!
www.allaboutcasualgame.com has a survey now to vote for the Best of 2013 Awards. Several different categories -- HOPA, M3, Adventure and others. SPOOKY BONUS is nominated as is NEARWOOD and ROYAL ENVOY. I think the voting closes at the end of this year. I was able to vote yesterday. Sorry I couldn't maker this a clickable link.
It's sad to think of all the DEVs who want to make good games but find them unprofitable. I hope BOOMZAP has a winner with AWAKENING F2P and the AWAKENING series.
stusue -- I agree. I like your quote.
Wendy -- Although I am enjoying ART I may delete it. IF I can get AWAKENING fixed I think I'll just play that one. I'm spending much too much time playing 3 F2P games
- stusue
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Re: Finish your games challenge
VOTE NOW !!
www.allaboutcasualgame.com has a survey now to vote for the Best of 2013 Awards. Several different categories -- HOPA, M3, Adventure and others. SPOOKY BONUS is nominated as is NEARWOOD and ROYAL ENVOY. I think the voting closes at the end of this year. I was able to vote yesterday. Sorry I couldn't maker this a clickable link.
It's sad to think of all the DEVs who want to make good games but find them unprofitable. I hope BOOMZAP has a winner with AWAKENING F2P and the AWAKENING series.
stusue -- I agree. I like your quote.
Thanks lilyr and Jen, it's something I've always tried to remember. It's also why I often smile and say Hi to total strangers on the street, especially older people or people whom I think could use a friendly smile. It's rare that I don't first get a shocked look as they make eye contact, followed by a big grin and a hi back. That always makes me feel better, no matter how bad I feel myself, and I hope maybe the other person feels a tad happier as well. 
Thanks for the link. I've made it clickable for you ...
I've already voted in those categories where I've played at least some of the games and have an opinion. But it was hard when I had 2 of my fav 3 games in the same category. 
I'll be voting several times so that those games get lots of votes. But I voted this time for Nearwood in, I think, 3 categories, and Rite of Passage: Child of the Forest in, I think, 2 categories, as Nearwood wasn't one of the choices in those catgories. Next time I'll vote for Child of the Forest in all categories, because that was a brilliant game.
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What you're doing today is important
because you're exchanging a day of your life for it.