Well I have to say that while I agree that it's good thing that PotBS survived, and that smaller dev houses can make a go of it, it shouldn't be forgotten that it being released with many concepts not very well thought through, and much content not in place, did some severe damage to the game. In fact I think it's validly questionable whether they'd still be around if not for their deal with Sony.
There was a mass exodus from the game not long after release, and that needn't have happened. In my opinion a lot of the reason it happened ties into what happened with AoC as well, and to a lesser degree WAR. That being they listened too closely to the wrong people.
These games all do the same thing, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it can be if the devs, or more correcly the production heads, aren't on the ball.
What they all do is rush to get a community formed around the game long long before release, which again isn't a bad thing. The problem comes when they believe that those pre-release community members reflect the overall customer base that may come to want to try their game out. They make decisions based on feedback (which tends to be a lot of sycophantic fanboi "feedback", or a case of one particular play style preference drowning out most everyone else) and trends from them, instead of looking at more widespread trends and such in the genre's fanbase. Then the game gets released and surprise surprise surprise, they get hit with their mistake square on the chin.
Last edited by Vaebn; 01-23-2009 at 03:15 PM.
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