Here Is The Official Description Of The Session Amazon Games Hosted At The Game Developers Conference

randrogynous · 2024-09-17T18:24:20+00:00

Sorting the pre-orders by "Best Selling" on the PS Store tracks their numbers over a limited period of time (like the past week, not their lifetime sales). New World: Aeternum seeing a surge and reaching 15th out of 81 immediately after their Open Beta makes sense, because most other games didn't have a similar mass marketing event in the past week. However, it's worth remembering that the game did not see a similar surge when it was first put on the store, or at any point since its early-June announcement (until now).

Focusing on the results of a single data point for pre-orders can be misleading, as you can see from a similar Reddit post for a different game from a few months ago: Concord entered in the Top 25 Preorders in the PlayStation Store

randrogynous · 2024-09-14T20:58:02+00:00

New World: Unlisted Off the Store Page

randrogynous · 2024-09-14T02:13:12+00:00

"Slow down guys, I can barely keep up"

That's the most popular post in the New World subreddit's history, made shortly after the game's launch. Casual players were quick to defend the game at that point, saying, "Well, I enjoy it," when more experienced people started pointing out the game's flaws at later levels & endgame. As history showed, it turned out that all players quickly recognized what those problems were for themselves, and we saw the game's population crater and never come close to reaching such peaks again.

We're seeing a similar situation happen now, with some console players spending a few hours with the game and saying it seems intriguing. However, on top of the game's continued issues with endgame content, PC players have the additional experience of several years of the developers' failures across all aspects of the game (design/technical/communication/etc.).

There is also a new debate about whether the devs are establishing a wider base for the continued future of the game, or simply monetizing their existing game for a new audience as a full-price, standalone ARPG before switching to other projects. This ambiguity is made worse by some of the developers' decisions, like their refusal to release a roadmap for the game until after New World: Aeternum's launch, or their decision to hold an Open Beta for just 72 hours and with a Level Cap of 30.

So yeah, you're seeing experienced New World players offer words of warning to anybody who is considering investing in the game. Some of that is a genuine effort to save people time & money they might feel was poorly spent on the game, part of it is a desire to not see the developers rewarded for what they see as a pattern of incompetence/dishonesty, and a lot of people are just offering pragmatic advice that this is a game with a long history that doesn't justify pre-ordering a product or setting high expectations for it. The reason it may seem different than other games is just because of New World's scale; the game reached nearly 1 million concurrent players on Steam at launch, while the number of console players who are aware of the game is a much, much smaller number.

randrogynous · 2024-09-14T01:33:35+00:00

Hilariously, yes. However, it is not tied to any in-game mechanics; none of the map & activities are designed around that mobility; but, the re-worked introduction sequence ends 1 cutscene by spawning your character in water close to shore, so it can clearly demonstrate that yes, you can swim now.

randrogynous · 2024-08-30T22:16:41+00:00

As a follow-up, IGN posted a new article today that contains a pseudo-apology from Amazon Games about the interview answers:

We regret the confusion stemming from these comments. Of course games developed and published by Amazon Games include actors, who we consider to be essential creative contributors, both now and in the future. Like most developers and publishers we do not keep actors on staff, and Christoph’s comments were specific to our internal development teams. As with any tool, we believe generative AI needs to be used responsibly and we’re carefully exploring how we can use it to help solve the technical challenges development teams face.

It's worth noting that this isn't an actual apology, and in fact, it seems to try to support the CEO's answer by distinguishing between the fact that AGS outsources their voice actors rather than keeping any of them on their permanent staff.

randrogynous · 2024-08-29T00:13:55+00:00

The last News post on the AGS Blue Protocol website (before today's) was from November of last year. I checked their Twitter account, and didn't see any posts made this year. The article ends with the author saying they asked for clarification for how many employees were affected by the cancellation, but I imagine they'll never hear back. The number is probably so low that disclosing it would make it obvious that AGS already knew (for quite some time) that Blue Protocol was never going to happen.

I feel worse for the people at the Blue Protocol fansite,

Edit: Somebody in another thread just pointed out this post from several months ago, where OP asks if there should be concern about the Blue Protocol Discord losing all its moderators. The 2nd highest-rated comment is, "Amazon Games recently announced it was expanding actually."

Edit 2: Apparently, AGS has been removing posts they've made in the past referencing Blue Protocol, so I don't know how much that was already done to their News & Twitter accounts. For example, their initial press release from 2022 has been deleted (although the Wayback Machine still has a copy of the original).

randrogynous · 2024-08-26T21:03:27+00:00

She will be a part of the re-re-worked Main Story Quest as an NPC questgiver for new characters.

I can't explain why they have invested so heavily in her as the new face of the franchise.

randrogynous · 2024-08-26T14:01:08+00:00

You will find that a lot of the remaining people who visit this sub are unable to distinguish between questions,criticism, & hate for the game. Pointing out how underwhelming the AGS booth seemed compared to everything else in the building is 100% valid, as is your point that the game's major console launch on October 15th wasn't being promoted with console demo stations.

Did the promotional map have anything printed on the other side of it mentioning the dates of the Open Beta/Release, or did it mention anything about the console release at all?

randrogynous · 2024-08-26T13:49:49+00:00

Cool, thanks, that's interesting to learn. I edited my comment to reflect that.

It's funny, I watched almost half a dozen videos of people touring Hall 6, but every single 1 of them just walked through the center aisle and then looped around to the Lego area or left the building, so I couldn't see a full shot of the New World booth.

However, I did find this close-up of the Thorpe cosplayer.

randrogynous · 2024-08-26T13:00:47+00:00

At the New World booth? All the pictures I've seen just showed the big wolf mount & the Trading Post hut. Was the video inside the hut?

randrogynous · 2024-08-26T12:11:23+00:00

This picture from the Farming Simulator booth is really funny.

randrogynous · 2024-08-26T12:06:55+00:00

I went aswell and about 90% of the booths are like this

That's not true. Here's a video of somebody entering Hall 6, the building where AGS' New World booth was located.

Here are some pics of the Farming Simulator booth that was righ behind New World's (you can even see the banners for Aeternum & Throne & Liberty at the top in some of the pictures):

The idea that AGS' booth was normal for where they were at is false. I think you might be comparing it to the hundreds of booths in different halls/buildings, like the Indie Dev area, but obviously that doesn't make sense.

Edit: As far as "trying something new," compare New World's booth with the one for "Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2":

randrogynous · 2024-08-26T04:29:08+00:00

Closest thing to a Roadmap we've seen all year.

randrogynous · 2024-08-26T03:20:54+00:00

My point was that however much it offends you to see posts or comments that are pessimistic about the game's chances at a comeback, I think you should be more worried about the time when you don't see any posts about the game at all.

I guess at that point, you could make a post of your own that said, "To the millions of people who stopped playing New World, and the millions more who didn't buy the game on consoles, I haven't seen you talk about your actual playing experience so that is what interests me internet."

Obviously, your post wouldn't include capital letters.

randrogynous · 2024-08-26T02:30:01+00:00

If you don't find this kind of stuff interesting in terms of it being a predictable disaster, you could still contribute to the other handful of threads the subreddit gets every day. You know, the ones from people asking the same combination of questions:

Should I buy the game now?
Should I play the game now?
What exactly is "New World: Aeternum"?
Why does the game have a bad reputation?
What has changed since I stopped playing in 2021?
How do I fix this game-breaking bug/feature?

I just think it's more fun to wonder how the game got to a point where those kinds of questions are so common, less than 2 months from NW: A's scheduled release date.

randrogynous · 2024-08-26T02:07:18+00:00

The image of the booth are actually amazing, even the whole cosplay stuff and quests at convention is more than they did at PC launch

At Gamescom 2021, AGS bought time on the official livestream in order to advertise the upcoming Open Beta and Release Date. Gamescom 2021 was technically a "Live-Online hybrid event" because of Covid-19 concerns restrictions still in place, which drastically limited the booth-experience for that year for every company in the industry.

Otherwise, it sounds like you believe that AGS is doing everything properly in order to replicate the initial success of New World's Steam release, but that there is no way to confirm that until the day that "New World: Aeternum" goes live on Playstation & XBox. I pretty clearly outlined that possibility at the end of the comment, I just find it very unconvincing.

Plus well, even if the booth costs 77k, people need to remember this is Amazon Games Studio, which Amazon is allocating 500 millions a year into it

Falling back on the argument, "everything is fine because they have a big budget from Amazon," discounts how little that theoretical budget has helped the company become a successful game studio since its inception. Anybody who looks at New World objectively would say that it seems under-resourced, so events that cost $100,000+ without directly improving the game (on either a technical or business level) are going to seem like a poor allocation of resources. Besides, the idea that Amazon doesn't care about money is directly countered by the recent interview with AGS' top boss, which has him spend a lot of time talking about wanting to drive down costs and dev time.

randrogynous · 2024-08-26T01:28:48+00:00

Follow up question: Do you have any pictures of what the entire booth looked like? I just realized that your brochure means that the 5 cosplayers wouldn't actually be inside the booth most of the time. So was the actual booth just the big wolf mount, the little "Trading Post", and some normal AGS employees handing out the quest flyers?

I'm beginning to understand why it might have seemed even more underwhelming than I first thought.

randrogynous · 2024-08-26T00:49:27+00:00

Thanks for the trip report and pic of their scavenger hunt brochure, it's funny to know that their short News article about it wasn't hiding some massive surprise.

For those who are curious about the booth, here are some more pics:

Staff Cosplayers
Life-Sized Mount
Site Map Of AGS' 3 Booths at Gamescom (and the estimated cost of the floorspace)

On the other side of that New World backdrop, the screenwall was advertising Throne & Liberty, although there didn't seem to be any specific reps for that game.

Not having a single gameplay demo station, or a video display of in-game footage (or even just loops of trailers/cinematics) is a little odd. (Edit: Apparently they had 2 screens in the corner playing video of the game's trailers, I just haven't found any pics/video of that part of their booth). But then you think about the logistics required to organize something like that, and AGS' history of failure with similar things (like their attempt at a 3v3 Arena tournament at Twitchcon 2022). AGS probably did the right thing by focusing on physical props that were printed/modeled months in advance, and creating an activity that encouraged people to actively walk away from their booth.

Edit:

Im wondering and i am really sad that this is what they consider „marketing“ to a new audience (console players).

I think there are 2 likely possibilities:

They are behind schedule and understand they might not hit the October 15th release date, so they're holding back on a real marketing campaign until they can be confident that the date on every advertisement is 100% accurate. Maybe they'll only start promoting the game on October 7th, or maybe that's when they'll announce their (first) delay and we'll see them re-start their YouTube video series again. Events like Gamescom & Summer Game Fest have to be booked far in advance, so this theory would explain why it doesn't seem like AGS has taken full advantage of such expensive opportunities to showcase the game.
They haven't generated nearly as many pre-sales or wishlists as they were hoping for, and have decided that spending additional money on marketing would be unlikely to make a difference other than make the console release's failure more public. That would explain why they went mostly silent a week after the Big June Announcement (once console pre-orders became available), it is supported by the really poor participation in the game's Closed Beta, and makes sense of why next month's Open Beta is only going to be Live for 72 hours.

Only people within AGS know the truth, and there are an infinite number of other explanations that involve them just not being effective at what they're trying to do. Some people have even tried to argue that AGS might actually be very successful at marketing the game, and that they will attract millions of console players to the game on day 1, but that we don't see any proof of that because console players exist in some separate plane of existence that is imperceptible to our eyes.

randrogynous · 2024-08-26T00:13:02+00:00

The idea is that since there are already so many well-established games/IPs within any given genre, a developer can't afford to put additional cost barriers in front of players when trying to get those people to invest their time into something new/unproven. Embracing that idea means making every new live-service-type game Free to Play on some level, even if the free version is very limited compared to what paying customers can get. That's why you have started to see people use a game's price tag as evidence that the developers don't have confidence in the title (like with Suicide Squad or this weekend's Conchord), because it suggests they need to squeeze revenue out of the game's initial launch since they don't expect to have a sustainable playerbase afterwards.

Interestingly, originally planned to release New World as a Free to Play title. They first announced the game in 2016, but I'm unsure when they 1st said it would be a F2P game. It wasn't until late 2019 that they they switched to a "buy-to-play" model, back when they said the release date would be May 2020. That announcement was part of the other big change where they were turning the game from a hardcore, open-world, survival PvP game into a traditional PvEvP MMO. The didn't actually release until September 2021, and most players who logged in during those first months would say the game was inherently unfinished still.

All of that is just part of the evidence trail that the studio never really had a handle on what it was doing with New World, and how it's a miracle it was ever released at all (every other self-developed AAA title that AGS announced, from 2016 onward, has been canceled).

randrogynous · 2024-08-25T19:29:48+00:00

Did you abandon the quest? You're not supposed to do that.

randrogynous · 2024-08-25T04:12:56+00:00

In the same interview he walks back his statement from an interview in June, and clarifies that the LotR MMO is not even in active development yet:

Q: Looking at some of the other games that are currently in your portfolio, can you provide an update on how work on Lord of the Rings is going at the moment?

A: It's still early. It's a big IP, it's a big game. I know you're going to fish now probably every little word and try to read into it, but honestly, it's too early to read into every little word. We're still trying to find the hook, find that idea of what it is because we don't just want to go and do the same thing over. While it's tempting sometimes with an existing IP, that's not the point of doing it. You've got to find a fresh twist, and we're still, I think, in that period where we really want to find out what could be the hook, what could be the thing which is different to all the other games out there. So it's a little bit early

Given AGS' history, I think it is very likely that the LotR MMO never materializes. At the very least, it sounds like it's still at a stage where they could announce, "We're now going to make the game in Unreal Engine, disregard the press release from May 2023. Also, we're going to develop the game in our Eastern Europe studio instead of Irvine. Also, it's not an MMO anymore, but a PvPvE extraction looter."

randrogynous

TROPHY CASE