Talking With Customers (or potential ones)

379 thoughts on Talking With Customers (or potential ones)

1. i did not buy Gratuitous Space Battles because i don’t like the gameplay idea. i want a game that is interactive ALL THE TIME. and not just before the game.

2. It didn’t have enough hot punk girls drawn by Jamie McKelvie.

   Ahem.

   I guess it got crowded out, I never even got around to trying the demo. Also, from my understanding of the concept it seemed a bit slight as a strategy game, and space battles aren’t unique enough to be a big hook by themselves for me. Compared to say, being a democratically elected leader of a country, or having hot McKelvie punk girls, to name two titles of yours that I’ve bought.

   I do love the name though.

3. No Mac version.

4. No multiplayer. Multiplayer is the key, for me.

5. I was interested in it (and I still am), I just haven’t gotten around to it. When it was released I was busy with other games, and then I guess I just kinda forgot about it. And now I’m still busy with other games (not the same “other games” as before, mind you), and… well, I’ll probably forget again.

   That said, I might buy it if there’s a big steam sale or something. It’s not that I’m not interested in paying the current asking price for it, it’s more that as long as I’m not certain I’ll actually get around to play it, it will take something special for me to actually buy it and place it in my already far too ginormous “bought but have yet to play”-pile.

6. The main reason that put me off (even though I enjoy sci-fi and strategy games) is the lack of a single player campaign, with story and all. It doesn’t have to be the best written story of all time, just something interesting enough to make me care about what’s happening. As it is, GSB seems more of an engine than a complete game.

   Also, it wouldn’t hurt if there was some way to interact with the game in the battle phase, maybe some sort of “reinforcements” phase?

7. I’m not really into strategy games, although when first announced I have to admit GSB did pique my interest, especially since it got mentioned on RPS. I had intended to give it a go when released, but to be quite honest I completely forgot about the game until the article about this survey / article came up on RPS again.

   So I guess the more pressing question is now that I remember it, why haven’t I bought it?

   1. It’s a wee bit expensive for what I’d consider a small indie title. Including VAT the price is €20.51 (Irish VAT). I know you have to cover your costs and all that, but I’m as broke as flash on the ipad at the moment. Of course I could temporarily move to the US for 30 seconds or so ;) and skip the VAT, but that would be a little dishonest. It also might not work.

   2. GSB is not on steam. I like buying all my games on steam. Seems stupid when I have to actually say it, but I like having them all in one place so I can quickly reinstall games without digging out the disc.

   3. There is no 3 really. I actually thought about just buying the game right now instead of giving the 2 reasons above, but it’s still too expensive. If it was say, €10 for the game / €12 including VAT, I would ignore the fact that its not on steam (2) and eagerly part with my money.

8. I loved the name, but didn’t buy GSB… Firstly because I have some kind of mental block when it comes to space combat, finding it basically impossible to enjoy on any level (this in contrast to both Kudos and Democracy, where the game concepts alone were enough to make me jump at them). Secondly, it did kinda sounds too sandboxy or openendedy for me, which I sometimes enjoy, but this didn’t combine well with: Thirdly, much as I enjoyed most stuff about Kudos and Democracy, I felt that they both somewhat petered out a bit too quickly, leaving me with not much to do, not much replay value, doing the same kinds of thing whenever I started a game, etc.

   All that said, I never played the demo of GSB, and probably should some day. Not sure I heard there was one.

9. I like your style, and would love to buy one of your products, but the reason I had no interest in GSB is the reason I have no interest in any of your products: There’s no narrative. I read through some of the comments, and saw my opinion better expressed than I could, by others, but basically, with no campaign, much less any kind of story-line, there’s no way to ever progress. Playing it seems pointless, because there’s nothing to beat, and nothing to discover.

   I know that’s not technically true – there’s beating other people’s scores, I suppose, and there’s discovering new ship designs – but they don’t ring valid with me, for whatever reason. It’s more likely that I’m a failure as a human being than that you are a failure as a developer. But I just don’t have any interest in a game that seems to have no plot. I’ve already got solitaire, if I just want to play with myself.

   If I bought anything of yours, it would be one of the Kudos games, I think, but I don’t really think I’d enjoy them as much as I think they’re closer than anything else to being something I might enjoy. But if you want to guarantee a sale, where I’m actually excited about purchasing it and looking forward to it, make something with a narrative.

   One last note: I totally understand why you don’t – it’s time consuming making the kind of content that is traditionally the way narrative is done in video games, and for the kind of gamer that doesn’t demand narrative, it would just detract from the replay value. You’re just one dude; it’s okay that you don’t make games that everyone likes. It would be a little weird if you were CAPABLE of pleasing everyone in the world.

10. Now I look really stupid. It actually IS on steam! Still too expensive for me though =(

11. I liked the idea, demo was enjoyable enough, but “I wanted a campaign wrapped around the battles. It was too sandboxy”. If it had a narrative context tacked on I’d have bought it.

12. Unfortunately, I’ve never heard of your game and didn’t even realize it was on Steam until I looked it up. I just got linked to this article from Rock Paper Shotgun and I think its valuable to at least provide some kind of input to bold articles such as this one.

    Now that I have seen your game on Steam it is more on my radar and I might be more tempted to buy it if it were to go on Steam sale or such (I simply don’t have the the money/time to play it right now though).

    So I think a Steam sale (particularly a weekend sale) might boost sales tremendously if it were accompanied by new media or such to better understand the game.

13. Also, I agree with the DLC comments that’s common in this thread. I’ve only bought one piece of DLC ever, and I regretted that. When there’s tons of DLC available for a game, it makes the regular edition look incomplete. And I’m not buying incomplete games.

14. When PC gamer reviewed it they gave it a fairly average score, said it was unbalanced and that it got a bit repetitive. After this I still wanted the game, but whenever I’ve looked at it I’ve had other stuff to play (a constant state for the last year) and I’ve never seen it much below £20. For an imperfect game that’s just not a feasible price at the moment. Last week I picked up Sins of a Solar Empire for ~£3. It’s impossible to compete with that on value unless your game is free.

    Also, a weird thing that speaks of my memory more than anything else, but when it came out I’d forgotten the exact name of the game (I know it’s distinctive) and I’m sure there was another space stratigising game either released near that time, or on sale at that time, or had dlc released at that time and I got them muddled and never bought either.

15. I played through the entire demo by just randomly dragging the tutorial ships on the map. At first I tried to play properly. My decision was to just use the tutorial ships until I lost a battle. I would then figure out what went wrong and would build my own ship. (The ship editor seemed complex, so I wanted to start using it with a clear goal in mind)
    That I won the first battle with just the tutorial ships seemed OK to me. When I won the second I was surprised. When I won the one that explicitly warned me to not use these ships, because they were ill-equipped, I was disappointed. I then decided to see how far I could go, and it turns out I could win all maps on all difficulties just by randomly using the tutorial ships. The only thing I did was to make sure that I used all my resources. I never built my own ships and I never changed any settings about the ships’ behaviour.

    The problem wasn’t that the demo was too easy, the problem was that I didn’t get to do anything. I had at first intended to play for real, but the demo didn’t give me a chance to play real. I did also try the ship builder, but since I went in there without any motivation (and without cool pieces available that would have given me ideas for new kinds of ships to build) I ended up not building a ship.

    The demo for me was the equivalent of a shooter in which you just have to run down a corridor and can ignore all enemies. Sure you could stop and shoot the enemies, but what’s the point?

    The game had always been a “wait and try the demo” kind of game for me. Since I didn’t have a feeling for how the game would be like after trying the demo I didn’t buy it.

16. It interested me enough to download the demo, which crashed when I tried to run it.

17. Honestly, truly honestly speaking your game looks awesome. I just don’t have the patience for it.

18. It seems like the game doesn’t have much structure or overarching goals. Aside from perfecting your setup before the battle starts there’s not much else to do. You don’t get to issue orders and be active in the carnage, and it seems to be very much trial and error to get things right.

    So I guess I don’t like the basic concept. Pity, because it looks cool!

19. I read an article about this at Rock Paper Shotgun so I decided to drop a comment that why I didn’t buy your game.
    It quite simply does not appeal to me. The whole space theme is not really my cup of tea.
    Before you start wondering… no, I haven’t illegally downloaded it either as I’m against piracy overall.

    But good luck on your future endeavors.

20. The ship art doesn’t appeal to me. What I’ve seen looks too much like cheap plastic toys. This is probably a result of having spent 6 years playing Eve Online where the ship designs are very solid and grounded.

    Other than that (Which is the big one really): I haven’t had an itch to play the game yet. It’s a great idea but I’ve had a few space game itches and none of them can be satisfied by GSB. I recently went on a 4X space kick and found the options lacking (Would like a hex based 4X game a bit like Civ). I also periodically get a Nexus: The Jupiter Incident itch and would love to get a game where I am in command of a capital ship to a similar degree as Nexus (In the earth bits before you had the funky ship).

    Had the game had a sale where I can get it for south of $20 then I would probably buy it just to support you but I can’t spare more than that for a game I’m likely not going to play more than once.

21. I’ve got plenty of games to play, and money is a bit tight at the moment, so I’ll wait to buy it when I’ve spare cash, and am bored.

22. I tried the demo, and enjoyed it. However, I’ve got some stupid number of games I keep meaning to get around to playing, and earlier this year, decided to stop buying until said pile is reduced. reduced a lot.

    Blame it on many sites having heavily discounted sales that include many games in a package. But even these, I’ve stopped buying now otherwise I’d just have more than I have time to play. I’d probably grab it and the DLC if there was only 0-2 games vying for my time.

23. I didn’t buy it because I tried the demo and I didn’t enjoy it. I slapped a few ships together and played a few matches but I never understood what choices were good or bad and I wasn’t interested in working it all out.

    I had similar experiences with Democracy, Kudos, Democracy 2, and even one of your older space games. I’m pretty sure I’m not your target audience.

24. Even though the name is very appealing, at first I assumed it was a schmup which I wasn’t interested in and I’m not that bothered about strategy games either.

    If I was still a student I’d have had the free time to download and try out the demo and would have probably done so, which may have led to a purchase. But in these days of actual having a job there’s only a couple of hours a week I can actually dedicate to playing and have a big stack of games waiting to be played already.

25. When I first heard about the game I did read something about ship customization, I thought you could buy the ships completely, like in some games. But you just put items in slots… I think i would have bought it if it were how I thought.

26. I bought the game when in beta and played it till release, but then stopped. I haven’t bought any DLC yet. Reason for that is that I feel that I have too little influence in the battles, besides setting them up in a more basic fashion. I’d like to have
    1. DLC bundles/flatrates, where I buy one thing and get all DLCs (doesn’t even matter if I get a reduction in price, I just don’t like the “micropayment” all these different DLCs result in. Set up a “supporter” bundle next time, where you increase the price for the normal game, but every person that buys said bundle before release gets every DLC that comes out for free.
    2. A DLC that adds to the controlability. I want to set more commands to fleets, give more logical connections between them, set up more teamwork. Right now it feels like a graphics game and gameplay is a bit shallow. As far as I have seen from ad-mails with offers and quick glances over websites, the DLC you produced only offered new graphic packs and some additional weapon functionalitiy. I might be wrong, but I didn’t feel like looking more deeper into it.

27. 3. After action reports with replays for the whole battle would be nice to give players feedback on what went wrong in a battle and where. Maybe even things like visual indicators where your ships were hit, when and from what weapon, like a true simulator ;D

28. Two reasons
    1) so many games so little time
    2) I am waiting for a steam special sale

29. Gratuitous Battles in Space seems to have everything I could want but for it being essentially a tower-defence game. I have occasionally played these as flash games but only while waiting for something else to compile at work.
    This put me off even trying the demo as, at the time, I was already fully engaged in Sins of a Solar Empire which was both gratuitous, battle filled and in space. My cup runneth over.

    If I find myself with some free time I may take a look at the demo but it still remains as something I like to see other people like enough for it to succeed. I can appreciate it might be fun but I’m perhaps not the target audience.

    Good luck with your next project.

30. Simple question, simple answer: While I was/am aware of GSB, the genre is not my cup of tea. It’s so not my cup of tea that I didn’t even download the demo.

31. 10€ is usually my limit for games I’m unsure about, slightly higher if it’s a very high production value game, but not much higher. I could see myself buying it eventually

32. 1) The price is a little high. I hate to be that jerk who says all indie games should cost $10, but that’s exactly my impulse purchase threshold.

    2) There’s no Linux version, and I run Ubuntu. We Linux users are fiercely loyal to devs who throw us any sort of a bone. I habitually buy games that support Linux (Penumbra, Osmos, Caster, etc.). I pay full price from the developer for these games. Hell, I bought the Humble Indie Bundle a few times, just to bump up Linux’s share on the pie chart.

    3) I heard bad things about it on the internet. Okay, I actually just read a couple of off-putting comments on Rock Paper Shotgun about how it’s ‘all about micromanagement’ and ‘kind of samey’ (not actual quotes, just how I remember them).

    I hope that helps.

33. I did buy the game and totally love it, but I would like the following:

    i) Ability to zoom out to see the whole battle area.
    ii) Screen save mode, just start a random fight and watch, setup is automated.
    iii) Make fighters relevent, or maybe I just haven’t figured out how to use them :).

    The game is very good & I do try and rag on to my friends to buy the game.

34. I love strategy games and had never, ever, ever heard of it till this RockPaperShotgun mentioned you wanting feedback. This is probably my fault since the only game review site I read is RPS and that only intermittently.

    May I suggest that in future game designers like yourself find a way to beam information about new strategy games directly into my mind to save us all the trauma involved in me not finding out about games, trying them out and possibly buying them.

    Go well,

    Jester

35. I heard about GSB on RPS, but I’m just not interested in that kind of game.

36. Several reasons:

    1) I have a massive backlog of games and less time to play them in. GSB would be another thing adding to that (and since I only just got around to playing the first Mass Effect, you can see this is a problem).

    2) I was never sure from the adverts etc precisely what kind of game GSB was.

    3) I hear that it is crashy under Wine. (That’s the reason I only just got around to Mass Effect, too.)

    4) From what I do understand about GSB, it is precisely the kind of game I would play for an hour or two then put down and forget about. It would have been an enjoyable hour, but…

37. I did NOT follow the development of this game. It wasn’t promoted on any of the few gaming sites I have in my RSS reader. As a working professional, the only way I hear about games (other than big names, obviously) is through Steam.

    If you were to offer a deal on Steam (one of the weekend deals) for the “Complete Pack”, I would probably get the game… that’s pretty much the only way I buy non Valve games.

38. I was interested in GSB since the first time I saw it on Rock, Paper, Shotgun; alas, I follow that site even though my PC is terrible.
    I couldn’t hope to run GSB on my system, sadly.

39. The game looks good, but my computer is a gnu/linux box… so I can’t try the demo.

40. Errmm, I guess I rejected the game out of hand because it looked like a typical 4X/RTS-type game and I’ve had enough of those for quite a while (so, ‘I have enough space-strategy games’)? So feedback could be that if you had marketed it as not being one of those games/significantly different, you may have drawn me in, but I’m not sure if that would do the game justice as it IS a strategy game set in space :-). Hope that helps.

    P.S. I bought democracy and democracy 2, if thats any help for you, I loved those games, but I’m more of a statto than most.

41. Tried the demo, didn’t want to learn what all those components do (way too much work for a game) – so, the demo was just no fun for me.

42. I didn’t buy it because it looks like a too deep game for my brain to digest in my current stage of life. I haven’t even tried the demo, actually. But it looks awesome, and have been following it with interest, thus it felt relevant for me to answer this as well.

43. Several factors influenced my decision not to buy the game.

    Firstly, and most importantly, price. I’ve got a huge backlog of games to play, including a lot of A-list titles, many of which I bought in special offers / multi-game packs. For example, I recently bought Deus Ex and sequel for £3, and the Codemasters Racing pack (4 full games) for £12.50. In order for me to spend money on indie games, they need to either be competitive price-wise, or offer some other particular value for money. For example, I go out of my way to support, and often pay well over the odds for, games which ‘properly’ support Linux (i.e. natively, not via Wine).

    Secondly, it just doesn’t look like the kind of game that would interest me. I’m very much a gameplay fan — I often play relatively ancient games, or games with rudimentary graphics, simply because the gameplay is fantastic. From reviews of GSB and the gameplay videos I’ve seen, the “throw some ships together and then sit back and enjoy the fireworks” paradigm seems very shiny but not really very appealing to me.

    If GSB had been priced somewhere in the £3 to £5 range, I would have bought it without even thinking about it. At well over £10, it’s purchase that would have to be justified.

44. I’d also add that I recently bought both Galactic Civilisations II and Sins of a Solar Empire for a total price less than it would cost me to buy GSB.

45. I love the concept of designing you’re own ships and creating your own fleets. However, there’s no control over the battle. No tactical ad-hoc decisions to make. Eventually, this game is just basic trial-and-error.

46. I purchased GSB via Impulse because of a mild sale awhile back. All else being equal, I’ll choose Impulse over Steam just to support a smaller company with a more progressive attitude toward DRM (notwithstanding Wardell’s actual real-life politics). I haven’t purchased the expansions, tho, because I haven’t seen a similar decent sale on them, and I haven’t actually made time to play enough GSB to inspire me to buy the expansions at full price. It’s not that I don’t like the game – I just have a ton of games on my plate and not a whole lot of time to play them, and GSB was sort of a “rainy day” purchase for me, something I knew I wanted to play eventually but which I bought at the time only because of the sale price.

47. Hi

    I never heard about your game until I read an article about this very blog post on RockPaperShotgun. Which is already a not-very-well-known web site.
    Anyway… now that I know about it, well, I won’t buy it anyway.
    – Because I don’t like strategy games.
    – Because I don’t like games that take a million years to finish. There is a plethora of good games out there, and I want to play them all, but I don’t have the time to. Your game seems to be a long one.
    – Because I don’t play much on PC anymore. I prefer to play on console, from the confines of my couch.

    That being said, your game looks pretty cool and kind of awesome. But I already have tree hundred games to finish.

    Maybe if it were a flash game, so I can play it a few minutes here and there while I work…

48. Indie games need to be cheaper and more interesting than their big budget rivals. GSB felt more like a rereleased ’90s game. It failed to offer me anything I hadn’t already experienced.

    A strategy game needs to demonstrate in the the demo that it is possible, beneficial and easy to play the game strategically. By easy, I mean that strategic calculation should come from natural thought, not from spreadsheet calculations. This probably just comes down to a combination of learning curve and balance issues.

    Keep at it though. The mainstream space strategy market is performing no better. I’d love a good space strategy game.

    * “The demo was badly balanced”
    * “I wanted direct control of the ships, and that was frustrating”
    * “I wanted a campaign wrapped around the battles. It was too sandboxy”

    Price-wise, the problem with online distribution is the lack of a second-hand market. While other games’ prices will tend towards whatever value the market will bear, your prices remain set in stone, meaning that GSB is much more expensive than the likes of X3 and Civ4.

49. Also, further to other comments; yes, the pricing is definitely a problem. compared to the content on offer, and pricing of say, AI war GSB is simply over priced for what it is. Especially as the content is split across multiple expansion packs.

    AI war is a one man company too (at least it was – it still is very, very small; 2 devs now i think) and the post sales support and extra features that have been added is simply staggering. I realise the game is not directly comparable in terms of genre, but the indie business model is.

50. Simple enough reason

    -I do not enjoy strategy games

    Looks great and all, but just not really my thing.

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