Epic Strikes Again - with a twist

[SckizoBoy]

This time it's with a much more niche title.

Now, I'm aware the active and long-time Total War series playing part of the Escapist is a lot smaller than for most other gaming franchises. Grand strategy games are already a niche genre, however broad, within the hobby, and there are the numerous subdivisions of 4X, RTS vs TBS, RTS vs RTT vs TBT within the umbrella of 'strategy games', one or more of which most players will gravitate towards. However, Creative Assembly seems to have cornered the market for the TBS/RTT hybrid gameplay that almost no-one else, realistically, has even contemplated emulating or competing against (which is a pity, but that's a discussion for a separate thread), and I really don't know how to feel about the decision to make A Total War Saga: Troy Epic Game Store exclusive for a year.

My take: given most marketing (however little of it there was) had release earmarked for Steam, publisher meddling (because of Saga's bad rep) is the most likely cause for it. But why would SEGA (or CA themselves, can't discount the possibility) accept the exclusivity deal, with day one 100% discount sale? Given the usual offerings of EGS, the only consumer related reasoning is that they want TWS:T to appeal to a larger market within the gaming community, but it seems that SEGA/CA haven't really learned their lesson from TWS:Thrones of Britannia here, insomuch that they wanted a watered down TW game (the whole point of the Saga series, they're supposed to be Total War-lite, with Shogun II: Total War - Fall of the Samurai shoehorned in for some respectability) for mass appeal. ToB failed because non-strategy gamers were turned off thanks to knowledge of CA's usual line of TW games (and either being overwhelmed by the prospect, or just not enticed by it), and strategy gamers were turned off because of how shallow the game was. And both were turned off (with some exceptions) by the setting. Pandemic notwithstanding (though this could have been a kicker), CA is not struggling. Despite its bad press in the lead up, Three Kingdoms released and reviewed well and its DLC haven't done badly either, but Warhammer II has been doing consistently well for them since the first race pack dropped and despite the complete lack of news or announcements, the player-base could not be more behind them for the impending release of Warhammer III. This deal with Epic, though, has set things back a bit though, because now everyone and their dog is nitpicking at literally everything they're saying and not being charitable about it. That said, the aforementioned pandemic and failure of ToB likely turned Troy into a high risk low reward title, so CA's acceptance of the deal can be seen as understandable (distinct from excusable/to be condoned) (more reasons here, some general, some CA/TW specific: ).

For the first time, this may turn out to be a genuine lose-lose for literally everyone. For Epic, this won't be the start of a committed foray into the strategy/related genres of games with respect to winning market share off of Steam since public response to Troy was tepid at best for the most part before this, so regular customers of Epic won't be interested to begin with given how little exposure they've had to it. For Steam, this means the obvious (though knowing Steam, they'll shrug and move on). For players it means no mod support until it releases on Steam, and what will likely be dubious multiplayer support at best. For CA, it means another nail in the coffin of the Saga series, and the quest for a mass appeal TW-like continues for them (even if I feel such a concept is a waste of time and effort), as well as genuine hopes from a sizeable chunk of the players that they won't be dumb enough to pull another such move when WHIII is released (I have no concern here because Epic would need to offer a great deal more than whatever they paid for Troy, and damn near the entire WHII community would gladly pay full price for WHIII if content creators give even the slightest whiff of a thumbs up). And for SEGA, it means... well, nothing, I guess, they got their paycheque.

Banal question of the thread: do you care? Whether it's Epic doing Epic things, TWS:Troy not being a blip on your radar etc.? Or should we talk about why no-one but CA does TBS/RTT?

 

[sXeth]

I'm amused by the supposition that Epic's cash is primarily Fortnite, and not that Unreal Engine (and I believe they own some of the otheer engine things) thing thats licensed for half or at least a third of all major games it seems like. (Hell, thats how Epic was able to spend 8 years making game, mostly flopping it out the door, then building a second game to repurpose the assests and catch a trend wave with). Or the fact that Tencent owns 49% of them and could probably bankroll their epic store giveaways for a decade or more as a loss lead.



Anyhow, I don't honestly remember which one Total War is. I know most of the grand strategy type games have become awful DLC pits, so its a genre that I haven't wandered into in a whiles now.

 

[Chupathingy]

I don't really care much about Troy TW in the first place, and even if i did I never buy TW games at launch anyway because they're always broken and there will undoubtedly be heaps of DLC to follow, which will inevitably go on sale.

As for competition, strategy games, and grand strategy especially, are very niche as you said. So it would require someone with enough money to come along and make something of equal presentation and quantity as a typical TW game to make a dent in CA's 'monopoly'. I can't think of anyone who could or even would try that.

 

[happyninja42]

Banal question of the thread: do you care? Whether it's Epic doing Epic things, TWS:Troy not being a blip on your radar etc.? Or should we talk about why no-one but CA does TBS/RTT?

Nope, don't care. I've bought a few TW titles over the years, but I rarely stick with them. The combat is fun at first, but after your 30th battle it all just starts to blur together into a samey mess. I got WH 2: TW: The Warrenning Wars of Hammering: 2 but I didn't even really get out of the tutorial first introduction to the overmap. I just sat and looked at all that stuff and just felt....deflated. I didn't have any drive to actually try and engage in the game. Because I knew it was going to be a massive grind of emo, spikey roid dudes and monsters, all just being so extra it's not even funny. And, while I get that's what WH fans like, the insane stupidity of the factions and how soap opera-y they are in their behaviors. I just don't care for it, and don't find it fun. So yeah, the game just...sits collecting digital dust.

 

[Worgen]

Meh, fuck em, they are actually lying there to. Games that sell I think over 2 mil go from 30% to like 20% and the TW series is pretty big. I think I'll avoid their games now, I mean I'm not that big into the TW series anyway.

 

[Samtemdo8]

Meh, fuck em, they are actually lying there to. Games that sell I think over 2 mil go from 30% to like 20% and the TA series is pretty big. I think I'll avoid their games now, I mean I'm not that big into the TA series anyway.

...TA?

 

[Samtemdo8]

I don't really care much about Troy TW in the first place, and even if i did I never buy TW games at launch anyway because they're always broken and there will undoubtedly be heaps of DLC to follow, which will inevitably go on sale.

As for competition, strategy games, and grand strategy especially, are very niche as you said. So it would require someone with enough money to come along and make something of equal presentation and quantity as a typical TW game to make a dent in CA's 'monopoly'. I can't think of anyone who could or even would try that.

Well as far as I heard Total War game launches hasn't been as bad since Rome 2.

Warhammer 1, 2, Thrones of Britannia, and Three Kingdoms had smooth enough launches. Nothing on the almost meme level of Rome 2's launch.

 

[Worgen]

...TA?

Editing.

 

[Gyrobot]

Well this is what happens when Steam fucks up. another AAA running for the hills of EGS

 

[meiam]

I don't think the point of the saga was to water down the release, they use it more to test stuff out, a lot of feature that were tried in Throne of Britania went on to be included in 3K. Hopefully they'll also be included in warhammer 3 cause they're quite good. This wouldn't have been possible if they didn't have a smaller title they can afford to try new stuff in.

As far as the epic deal, the best things to do as a consumer for the developer is to not buy the game on epic. The deal almost certainly involved some amount of money that they'll get no matter what, ie they're guarantee to get at least 5 mil for this exclusivity no matter how many sales they get. If you just buy/get it from epic they don't really get any additional money because they were guarantee a certain amount of sales whether or not people bought it, all it does is mean that epic won't pony up the cash to make up the difference for not having sold it to you. By waiting for the steam release they'll get both epic money and your money. On top of that the steam release will be far more stable having gone trough a lot of debugging/update and such.

The fact that its free on day one is interesting, I'm not quite sure what the deal is, but they must be getting a big pile of money for that too since that will significantly eat up their projected revenue, since the most hardcore TW fan (people who would otherwise have bought it day one) will just be getting it for free instead. The hope is probably that enough people buy it and this create enough buzz to obtain better sale in the future (for this and older title) but I doubt they expect the increases in sales to actually be larger than the loss from all the most ardent player getting it for free. And since it's only for one day I doubt a lot of non total war player would really pick it up, since they'll likely won't hear about it until after the game comes out and buzz kick in. Shogun 2 was free for awhile on steam and plenty of TW game go on really heavy discount, so I don't think there's a lot of people who are kinda interest in TW but not willing to put money down.

Anyway epic store is still crap even beyond the exclusivity, still don't have shoping basket and plenty of basic features. Maybe build your storefront into a respectable place before burning vast amount of cash?