Talking With Customers (or potential ones)

379 thoughts on Talking With Customers (or potential ones)

1. @Drew

   Oh look! It is on steam!

   Seriously … Try to give the guy some serious feedback at least …

2. I didn’t buy GSB primarily because it’s simply not my type of game. Although, I’ve been known to buy games that weren’t like what I usually play, but didn’t since I have a large backlog and because I spend most of my time on a Mac these days…

3. I didnt buy this game for the same reason everyone else did not buy this game. Single player games are dieing. Everything is going either multiplayer or social network. People have moved beyond this type of game.

   The only exceptions are multi-million dollar games like half life that can not be recreated by people like you.

4. Demo crashed a few times… game wasn’t all that fun, it wasn’t strategy, it was more “throw these random weapons on the biggest ship possible, then spam the screen with the same huge ships”

   I always played at the maximum speed, and in a window so I could surf the web while the battle finished.

   Plus I hate DLC, just wait 6 months, gather up everything you have, and release an expansion pack. I hate feeling like I’m being nickel and dimed for each little addition to the game.

   And I need a multiplayer mode, so I can build a fleet and fight my friend’s fleet.

   There are sooo many different choices when you first start the game, its a little overwhelming. Until you figure out which weapons and ships are the best, and then there are really no choices.

5. Wow, if I wanted to buy the game and the DLC it would be $40.92
   .
   .
   .
   .
   are you crazy? $9.99 would be reasonable.

6. i didn’t buy gsb and neither did i pirate it.

   i was interested in the name and the first few screenies… but it quickly became evident that it’s pretty much the space battles from “strange adventures in infinite space”… not a lot of depth to game.

   no strategy. not much tactics.

   now i haven’t actually played the game so i could be totally wrong. but that’s what i took away from the descriptions.

   also, campaign and story and maybe some kind of progress system… some depth in other words… would be what i consider necessary.

   also, as someone else has said, paid DLC is something i will never accept. i’ve gamed for years with community made mods that more than held my interest and gaming companies getting rid of such open architecture in favor of all this paid DLC violates the essential tenet of salesmanship – WIFM:

   What’s In It For Me.

   as a consumer, i DON’T CARE what’s in it for you. i get DLC is preferred by companies and developers. it’s not what i prefer. end of discussion.

   but that’s just me. i’m sure you have many devoted fans and kudos to you for your gumption and initiative.

   rock on and hopefully, you’ll have games that i’ll want to buy.

   jin

   p.s. piracy IS inevitable. but one of the BEST ways to reduce it is to appeal to PRIDE OF OWNERSHIP and MEMBER BENEFITS. if you can somehow build a community that requires a legal license to participate in, if the community is valuable, i’ll bet many people will want to have that sense of belonging. those are the ones that most appeal to me. draconian DRM makes me root for the pirates.

7. don’t take this the wrong way but I think it would benefit you to not have a picture of yourself here. It’d be more to your benefit actually if you were a faceless entity out there, but you established better rapport. People don’t need to know what you look like.

   But I agree with most of what everyone else is saying here:

   – Your price point places it squarely versus the big boys.
   – your little comment above which compliments your buyers and trashes “most people” isn’t professional in the slightest. Ask yourself if that type of remark is conductive towards generating more sales.
   – face it, you wouldn’t have this blog entry up if you were happy with sales. you obviously aren’t, so what’s with the contradiction actions versus statements?
   – no multiplayer modes? esp at that price point? That’s almost mandatory in this day and age(unless you’re doing a game like HL2 or Dragon’s Age). now if this was a $9.99 game or under, the expectations are lower.

8. Totally agree with Anonymous Owlman

   Don’t like DLC unless it’s free. Prefer if the game is complete and if any DLC comes, it’s free.

   If you want to release a part 2 of the game with new races, then so be it. But none of this 1 new race every other month for $5.

   Strategic depth… a bit more control would be good. I understand what you’re trying to do by offering a computer controlled space battle but how about some depth elsewhere. The weapon configurations get a bit samey-samey after a while. For me the skirmishes are the candy of the game, not the online matches. Online gaming always ends up in someone abusing some facet of the game mechanics. I trust the computer less to do so.

   Lastly, the fighter configurations were so limited that I can’t help but feel that the mechanics are flawed for some level of ‘realism’. Fighters play a huge role in battles. what about offering fighters a bit more maneuverability to outmove missles etc.

9. No Mac version, so I havent actually played the demo. I do have a small windows netbook, but I read its not supported (I suspect intel gma card too crap anyway).
   Btw, most of my gaming is on xbox and iphone, + a bit on Mac.

   I am not usually into strategy games, esp if they have complex UI stuff. But, graphically it looks very good, I’d certainly try it. I suspect I’d find it odd not to control ships arcade style, but I dont know yet.

   I buy very few games generally. A game has to really hook me. Often games just pass me by if I feel I dont have time to play a new one.

10. Reasons I did not buy GSB (yet).

    Price

    Lack of control

    Turned off by lack of 3D

11. A more constructive way to get the feedback you’re looking for would be to post online surveys. One for people who played the demo and didn’t buy it (to check gameplay), and one for people who saw the ads/stories and didn’t buy it (to check marketing).

12. One for people who saw the ads/stories and didnt play the demo that is.

13. Rilian hit a lot of the trouble for me — in the demo, the feedback on what happened wasn’t up to the task of driving my analysis of the battle so that I could usefully tweak the ships for the next round.

    Also, the interface had a couple annoying rough spots. IIRC, I’d name ships with capital letters and spaces and such, then have those removed; lists of ships proved difficult to manage; and I think items in lists were often rather cryptically named.

14. I won’t buy any game that nickel and dimes you with DLC. Charge a fair price when you release the game and release whatever else for free. The logical conclusion for this model of game design is that we’ll end up paying for even the patches that only fix game bugs and that’s bullshit. I don’t pirate any games.

15. I feel I must at least post this:
    http://store.steampowered.com/app/41800/
    For people who aren’t aware that GSB is on steam. It’s been on there for 8 months :D
    Thanks for everyones feedback.

16. I no this is not a popular view but 76% on metacritic. If it not over 85 i don’t even bother with the demo. There are far to many great games around on different systems to waste time on game that don’t come up to standard.

17. if it was on a really good sale on steam with all expansions at some crazy low price its insta buy until then i wont buy,

    typically i never buy a game at full price unless its by valve :P

18. 1 – The name (and the game) is too campy. It implies a level and type of “humor” in a game that I’m not into. I find that what game developers think is funny tends to not make me laugh, but makes me roll my eyes and groan instead, and possibly turn off the game (maybe for good). I guess that’s why they’re game developers and not comedians. If this element is present, it better have some killer game play and serious polish to make up for it (like Fat Princess). This game unfortunately does not have either.

    2 – Not enough interaction during game play. Hell, even the slow-as-hell Civ games have you pretty much constantly doing something if you want. And who ever heard of a skirmish where the you can’t give orders mid-battle? Even in the Total War games, you can scream new orders to your troops in the field. All this fancy space travel and weaponry technology, and the General can’t radio the fleet and tell them to do something else? Fail.

    3 – For the most part, the ‘trial and error’ mechanic is a deal breaker. The game should give you a reason to want to try again through advancement, or tighter integration between losing a battle and having to do it right the next time (ala Demon’s Souls), or simply not letting you go back and try again and just changing the story based on the outcome and moving on (forcing you to either reload or play it through again after you’ve beat it). Unless any of these aspects are present, trial and error isn’t fun, it’s a chore…

    4 – …especially when there’s absolutely no guidance on how to do better the next time.

    5 – I rarely pay that much for a blockbuster title with all the polish and depth of Grand Theft Auto 4, let alone for an unpolished and relatively shallow strategy game. I paid $20 each for Total War and Civilization 4. Neither of which try to ding me for anything via DLC. There are expansions, but they’re significant content-wise and few in numbers. I also haven’t bought any of them (except for Civ 4 where they were bundled with it).

    I might have taken the bite if it were $5 or $10, but $40? I’m all for indie developers but they should know their place, and the outcome should at least keep me engaged. The big guys charge that much because there’s extra cost involved in producing the game (pressing hard copies, having box art done, paying the plethora of developers, advertising, etc) but they don’t really apply to you. But you’re charging like they do, and for a very unpolished game. It’s like a film school student showing his final school project and charging the same price you’d pay to see Avatar in 3D at the IMAX.

19. Here’s my check-list for buying a computer game (Applies to all products, not singling yours out):

    1). I don’t buy 1’s and 0’s – I buy a PRODUCT. If I can’t get a physical copy (not as an extra, but as part of the standard price), I don’t buy it.

    2). I don’t buy over the phone / Internet where you don’t have personal interaction with the place of commerce. If I can’t buy it from a store, it doesn’t get bought.

    3). I don’t buy products with suspect DRM (Digital Rights Management) or from companies who want to continually justify using increasingly invasive DRM for their phantom “War on Piracy” crusade.

    4). I never buy a game at full retail price… ever. A good store will always drop the price of their games within the first 6-10 months after release. I’m not 15 years old anymore, I have that thing called “Patience.”

    5). If a game looks like it’ll call itself “Game of the Year,” then simply wait for the “Game of the Year” edition to come out. It’ll have all of the patches available and all of the DLC / Expansions / Episodes / Whatever they want to call “Additional Content” nowadays. After the “GotY” edition, wait until the price is lowered (see Rule #4).

    5a). If a game looks like it’ll eventually be released in a compilation edition (ex. The game + all of it’s post-release added content), I’ll wait for that to come out. Most RPGs and RTSs have those nowadays at some point in their product lifecycle.

    6). If a game is converted from a console title, simply don’t buy it or buy it when it hits the “bargain bin” price for that store (anywhere from US$1 – US$9.99). These games, despite claims, aren’t optimized for the PC or the ports are simply lousy.

    7). Never buy an MMO. At all. Ever. Regardless of what it says on the box or what people are saying about it. Anything that relies upon the Internet for it’s main value is unreliable. Companies cease to exist, the Internet in your area is slow, inconsistent or otherwise unreliable… All of these factors make the product lose value.

    8). I never buy a “Collector’s Edition” of anything unless I really, really, really, REALLY have an emotional attachment to it or unless it is at a ridiculously discounted value.

    9). I always check the CDs / DVDs BEFORE purchase. If there are any marks or discoloration on the product, I don’t buy it. Many stores have draconian return policies and I will not waste my time with them. Also, many stores label used / returned games as “New” and any signs that the product has been opened prior to my inspection are not bought. The product keys to these items have been compromised, meaning less or even no value to myself.

    To be fair, though…

    A). I have bought many a game that people have absolutely hated that I have thoroughly enjoyed. Examples include “Total Annihilation: Kingdoms” and the final King’s Quest (I think it was #8) game. The only opinion I trust is my own; Not game review websites, not message boards forums, not even my friends. If there is a general consensus, I’ll take it under advisement when deciding to purchase or not.

    B). I will disobey any and all of the rules above if the purchase is a gift to someone else (who has requested it). Other people have different priorities in their life and I won’t interfere with that.

    C). I never buy “Used” unless it’s a library, tag or garage sale. If it’s from a store, it’s always new.

    I think that just about covers it.

20. I don’t really know anything about the game except for the name, which I find to be kind of a turn-off. I really like space combat games (MoO2, Homeworld, X3:TC), but something about the name turned off all my interest.

21. The name is great, the graphics are awesome, but no campaign like Total War means I just won’t play it enough to spend more than a couple bucks. If you say “this is the tactical component to a Master of Orion/ Dominions 3 type game I’m making and need the funds to continue, I will buy it TODAY.”

22. Every fiber of my body would love to love this kind of game, but somehow I can’t find the time or motivation to learn that module X beats module Y.

    I would probably have bought the game the instant it came out if it featured direct multiplayer and controllable ships. Same graphics, same physics, but action instead of challenge strategy.

    I know full well your reasons and the idea behind the concept, and I love it, but I just haven’t found the time for it yet.

23. I would have bought it if it had a proper campaign.

24. I’m amazed by how many people say it’s not on steam when it clearly is. I think the combat system is great however the game feels shallow without something else “Backstory? Resource-gathering? Diplomacy? Tech Tree?”. I need a reason to fight and care if I win. Without these I got bored and $20 is too much for me to take a chance on the full version. I’ll pick it up on a steam sale when it’s $10.

25. Thank you for asking this question. I buy a *lot* of PC games, but I did not buy GSB. I did try the demo on Steam.

    The demo looked like an okay representation of the game. Thanks also for that. Demos that artificially limit the game (No Multiplayer in a game that advertises co-op support, for example) always feel like the developer is admitting that their multiplayer code doesn’t work right. And historically, speaking as someone that buys games for co-op a lot, that assessment has been on-the-money.

    GSB is a relatively pretty game to watch, and it seems well put together within the levels, but here are the reasons I didn’t buy.

    ————–
    DLC
    ————–

    DLC comes across as an admission that the developer cares more for your money than for making a fun game.

    From a big game publisher, DLC is usually like the infamous Oblivion “$5 Horse Armor”: Important for the game, insulting to the player for not being included.

    DLC makes a slightly more sense coming from an independent developer, who is perhaps someone that doesn’t have a budget, let alone a team, for making these games, but it still feels like I’m paying an extra $5 (or $10 or $20 depending on how many of these DLC nuggets come down the chute) to get features that should have been in the game to start with. [Note: Your DLC seems to be $6 instead of $5. Did you accidentally make your DLC pricing based on XBOX360 pricing, where they upcharge at 6/5 the price for no discernible reason? :-) ]

    Thus, the very existence of DLC turns me off of a game from the outset. If I know a game uses DLC, then I know I will never feel like I own the whole thing and that the developer is looking primarily at ways to limit the game until he gets another nickel out of my pocket, so I will avoid it, looking instead to, well, any other game that makes no mention of DLC.

    Half the deals on Steam right now are for Model-Trains DLC. It feels like junk and line noise. It feels more like “look me in the pockets” scam-artistry than any product that has a right to be for sale. Are they really trying to charge $21 for 7 textures and three lines of INI file to control speeds or whatever?!

    I support indie developers, but I don’t support DLC if I can avoid it.

    I would like to see an indie developer charge an extra $10 for a “Supporter’s Edition” of a game, that included an in-perpetuity license to all DLC that might ever come out for it.

    For reference, I owned 4/6 of the Humble-Indie-Bundle games already, but I paid/donated $230 [$5 each * 6 for the developers and $100 each for the two charities] during the drive so that I could get Linux versions, and because I needed to re-up my support of the two charities. Since they reached their milestone, they open-sourced all but World-of-Goo, which is just beautiful icing-on-the-cake.

    ————–
    Casual Gaming
    ————–
    GSB feels like something that is stuck in the middle of the road.

    It’s not really a casual game.
    It has almost a “Paint-your-miniatures” level of complexity when designing the ships.

    It is a far-too-casual game
    You can get a drink or three while the battles play out. You can’t affect anything. You should add a screen-saver mode that just plays itself continuously.

    ————–
    – No Campaign / Storyline / Reason for Being there
    ————–

    Even if one spends all the time required to figure out how to build good ships, there’s not really anything to do with them. It’s not to say that your specific game isn’t 100% truth-in-naming, but if your battle graphics and setup were placed into something with a coherent reason-for-playing, you’d have a much more compelling package.

    ————–
    – Pricing
    ————–

    Assuming Steam is involved, the pricing is just way too high. Note: I am a sucker for the 75% off sales they run. In GSB’s case, I had considered buying GSB when it was on sale on Steam for $22 for the game plus both (at the time) expansions, but even $20 brings it out of the “impulse buy” arena.

    My friends and I have a term: “$5 Shareware”, used to describe games that are momentarily interesting if they’re $5, but are frankly embarrassing to purchase at any price north of $5. Your game is better than that, but it’s certainly not among the list of games for which I would be proud of paying $40. A $40 game requires something claiming to be a 20-hour campaign at the least. :-)

    —
    An Example for your Consideration
    —

    The gold-standard for games that are just addictive and playable in my book is “Plants vs Zombies”.

    It’s a game that the developer charges $20 for, but for some reason is forever $10 on Steam.

    It’s level-based, and has both arcade and puzzle-y stages.

    In that game, you make some simple but synergistic/vital initial set-up load-out choices.
    It has a much-more-streamlined choice of elements than GSB at this phase. You don’t waste
    ten minutes fooling with shields.

    Once the load-out is chosen, you get to be actively engaged for 10 minutes.
    Your load-out choices matter, but your actions make all the difference between humiliation and glory.
    Unlike GSB, when you are in the level, there are lots of things to do. No sitting back for ten
    minutes waiting to find out whether your ships won or not.

    The PvZ levels are stand-alone, but there is a bit of story and cohesive theme running throughout, with good difficulty progression, so it felt good to come back later to play the next level.

    PvZ doesn’t have DLC, and I hope they just produce a sequel, but it’s an awesome ride, and at the end all I could think was I wish there were more of it to play.

    Hopefully GSB will get there, too.

    Thanks for taking the time to ask,
    J

26. Hey Cliffy! Been following your stuff for ages!

    Reason’s I didn’t buy the game:

    1) The game style was not really mu thing. I’m all for strategy but not the lace the watch the outcome format

    2) If the game was like Freespace 2 or the Wing Commander series of yesteryear that featured “Gratuitous Space Battles” I’d buy it in a second.

27. There are still a lot of gamers, who have money to spend, who love your game, but don’t have a credit card.

28. The screenshots turned me off instantly. Looks like a nightmare.

29. I was very excited about it, but after playing the demo and reading the reviews, it just turned out a bit different than I thought. I was hoping for a tactical kind of battleship game, but it’s more of a “build and release” situation. The lack of interactivity is what did it for me, really.

30. I bought the game, played it mostly through, didn’t buy any expansions. I wasn’t overwhelmed by the game, but that was purely due to ‘style’. I tend to like RTSes with an emphasis on base building which is the part of the RTS you chose to cut off to focus on the gratuitous battles.

    You couldn’t have been more clear about your gameplay and I played the demo, so I was by no means ‘hoodwinked’ or ‘disappointed’. I enjoyed the game for what it was and was happy to support an indie through Steam.

    Great job on setting a vision and delivering on it. GSB is an excellent example of what makes up a good indie hit — narrow focus, good execution, good distribution, and inexpensive price.

31. I would be interested to know if, following up on that post you made all those years go, if you’ve seen the kind of increase in sales you were expecting by trying to meet pirates in the middle.

    And to answer your question, I didn’t buy the game, but strategy games are simply not my cup of tea. I didn’t pirate it either, but for me watching someone else play the game on YouTube is usually enough to let me know if I’m going to enjoy the game or not. (And I don’t mean watching trailers, I mean watching uncut gameplay footage from someone who isn’t trying to sell me the game).

    I might give it another look sometime.

32. I did not feel this was my sort of game.
    but have heard alot of great things about it. I may pick up a copy if steam puts a sale on of it and im around to see it. Its funny how “SALE” on an already cheap price makes everybody go hard and pull out their very much over-used credit cards.

    In the short. I would buy this game if these sort of things interested me. As they do not, i didn’t buy it. But i would love to see another game from you as a developer.

33. I personally hate the fact that you have Expansion packs that you have to pay for. I don’t buy games because of that. I’ve been ripped off far too many times by spending on extra DLC that it’s made me sick. If I was an owner of the game I’d be pissed off that the extras weren’t part of the original payment because that alone could have been used to interest people and bring in customers. The game looks pretty good and I did try the demo but from comments and what I’ve seen the expansions should be given to people who pay for the game because it’s mostly like just adding skins to existing ships. In the demo there really wasn’t enough control over the ships. I understand why the control is limited, but I felt that there should have been something that allowed you to adjust the way your ships behave toward fighters, frigates and cruisers mid battle as well. The other problem is most of the ships behaved the same (ships from different races I mean). I really wanted to like the game and I did like the atmosphere but that bloody downloadable content crap is frustrating as hell… Someone already mentioned it, that you constantly want to be up-to-date with all of the latest goodies, but having to spend extra money on such limited extras isn’t at all appealing. That’s just my honest opinion, though I do wish you the best of success.

34. I can answer the question – Why didn’t I buy the DLC?

    1. More than anything I wanted a proper campaign mode, but extra races make that even more enticing.
    2. I want to purchase this all together, and personally about $10 for 2 extra races and a campaign would be no questions asked purchase for me.

    I’d imagine in the future, that just like boxed games, combining everything into one sellable package is the way to go. For games I have missed the first time round, I quite like these collections.

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36. I bought the game and most DLC but not the most recent one. I nearly did and then there was a small problem and I never got back to it.

    The game is not compelling right now in its replay value. I am hoping that the strategic layer fixes that. If so, I will be back on board.

    Cheers and good wishes,

    GH

37. I do like strategy games, and i think Democracy was a great idea. I tried GSB a while ago (last year), and some of this may have improved, but these are my thoughts:

    GSB is a min/max game. I think there’s too much focus on the eye candy of the space battle, which is a result of assembling your fleet. Sort of a cool cutscreen. The game is actually in the fleet assembly, and if the those menus were more accessible and polished, it might work better for me. I started the game and saw how much work (and I do mean work, not fun) I had to do to figure out what all the equipment did and how to compare it, and moved on. I think that if you spent more time on the menus, I think it would be more appealing. Some suggestions:

    1) Give a smaller list of equipment choices to start. This will lower the learning curve, and let you create a sense of achievement as you add more stuff in. I saw the immense task of sorting every weapon (the interface I was using required lots of memorization), and thought that I finished school a long time ago. If I remember correctly, Democracy introduced concepts over time well.

    2) Focus more on the creating of the fleet and the reporting of the results. I would play the game without the battle visually playing out. Something is necessary, but the length of it gets repetitive after a couple of battles.

    3) Let me dramatically speed up the battle. Since I don’t have any impact on the outcome, I don’t want to spend most of my time in GSB watching a video. If I want to watch a space battle, I’ll cue up some Star Wars. I want to affect the outcome, so I want to be building and deploying fleets, not watching a video for 15 minutes. I know there is a speed up button, but my point is a design issue. It’s similar to playing Total War and not being able to give orders. That’s fine if I can auto play with fairly instant results. Not so fine when I have to watch the whole battle.

    I think you have a great niche, and I know (as a developer myself) that you want to push your limits, but you might want to focus on what you do well and have a reputation for and then add more. Or make a new game completely, but GSB seems like a min/max game in the vein of Democracy and Kudos, but with out the ease of manipulating the numbers.

38. I own Democracy 2 and Kudos 2 and like both of them very much. I didn’t even try the demo of GSB and never considered buying it. Positech games I’ve liked because they so well simulate something from the real world, but haven’t heard of a space battle happening so far. Additionally it didn’t appeal to me that I wouldn’t have direct control of the ships. As a casual game I could have bought a Space Control 2 battle clone, but for indirect strategy I use Football Manager.

39. Is difficult to say, but well… I like the game but I would want a little more control over the strategy… maybe something like a “advanced feature” who lets the user control a little bit the AI engine… I remember a java game made by IBM (It was like a demo of “how cool is java” -is not, java sucks), and in them you have a robot fighter and you can program the strategy of the fighter. That would be awesome… maybe

40. The demo was pretty neat, I may buy it eventually. However for now I’m not spending any money on things like tobacco, alcohol, theater, movies, soda and so on. I’m sifting hrough the discount bin as it is and if I’d buy the game, I’d have to give up on paying my full rent, a few meals or walking/taking a bike to work instead of public transport.

    So sorry, even if it would cost 3 dollars, I’d rather go and buy some premium meat instead, liver and onions are getting really boring. Sorry for being hard to please.

41. Personally I look for games that tell stories, I want to feel involved in an epic story. I don’t care about/for multiplayer skirmish. Homeworld appealed to me in that respect, the story of a lost people trying to reclaim their home, fighting through the evil empire.

42. I grabbed the demo off Steam a few weeks ago, gave it a quick look, liked what I saw, and never touched it again. It’s odd cuz I’ve been a PC (and Mac) gamer since the early ’90s (’80s if ya count my Atari 400, 800 and 1040ST as PCs) and I LOVE new, clever, and interesting games (I’m a BIG fan of little Devs) of all shapes and sizes.

    Simple answer: it’s my back. I have recently found that my 42 year old butt is happiest parked in front of my big-azz flat screen, planted on my comfy couch. Looking at my checkbook: all the games I buy these days are for the Xbox 360.

    I have lots of demos on my Macbook Pro and my DIMS (“did it myself”) desktop PC… but I seem to buy games for the ‘Box. My two cents.

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44. Dude, you rock! Being somewhat of an indie dev myself, I like your perspective on things, and it’s always interesting to read your stuff.

    But, simply put, you’re not making games that I want to play. I prefer first person games, stuff like L4D or Farcry or Fallout 3. GSB just doesn’t look like something I would enjoy. =\

45. I would have loved to play the game, and possibly buy it, but the demo wouldn’t run on my computer (Windows 7 64-bit). I wasn’t willing to drop some cash just to figure out if the full version was any different. I’d like to play it, since the concept seems awesome, but it wouldn’t work and then I forgot about it. :(

46. It wasn’t my cup of tea. I’m not entirely interested in strategy games, and being unable to control the ships didn’t help either.

    Instead of grand strategy games like most people make, I’d be more interested in a game where you micromanages a single battleship.

47. Hello,

    For me, the answer is simply “because I’ve never heard of this game before I read the Rock, Paper, Shotgun news about a developer asking people why didn’t they buy his game”.

    At a quick glance, I don’t think this is a game I’d enjoy, for various personal reasons that I think are irrelevant, because the most important thing here is I didn’t hear about this game before so couldn’t even form an opinion.

48. Short answer;
    It’s not the game it’s me (wow flashback of every breakup ever), it’s simply not my type of game.

    Overtly long answer;

    I won’t lie, I did play the demo with the thought that this was a RTS game, and yes I could never quite get over that initial feeling of being helpless watching the events unfold. But more than feeling without control I also felt confused.

    I just could never quite wrap my head around what tactics / equipment worked / failed, I just felt there wasn’t enough feedback. Watching my ships fire all type of weapons made it hard to determine what was doing more damage and what was doing no damage at all. I fully admit I could of overlooked something when I played the demo that would of given me more feedback.

    Which leads to the problem of too much choice, as the player I was completely baffled by the huge array of choice even in the demo. This range of choice combined with my lack of feedback just made me feel overwhelmed, how would I ever find what works. If I’d invested more time I would’ve really enjoyed this game I feel, but I didn’t feel like investing so much time into the game to get over that initial hump and get into the ‘rhythm’ of the game, that felt too much like work to me.

    Then again I play Dwarf Fortress which had that exact same problem of getting over the initial dificulty and confusion. But that’s the best I can express of why I didn’t buy your game, hoped that is somewhat helpful and not completely baffling / useless.

49. I bought and rather liked Democracy, as part of a 5 pack with other Indie games, but I didn’t by GSB because I haven’t seen an aspect of it that I felt particularly grabbed me. 2D was an issue, but from what I saw it looked similar to the space battles of Weird Worlds: Infinite Space and I always hated those bits so playing a strategy version of them didn’t seem like something I’d want to go for.

    It also – and this is an impression that is most likely not true but I haven’t seen anything to rebut it – looked like the overall game is very similar each time you play. It’s why I didn’t buy DEFCON from Infoversion, it looked like once you’d played it for an hour or so you’d seen the meat of the game, and given my shortness of funds I tend to prioritise.

    Also, I’d bought a lot of Indie games through the Humble Bundle etc and my backlog of games-to-play is huge already.

50. I played the demo and decided it wasn’t the game for me.

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