Quote:
Originally Posted by ReligFree
Most of us started playing Planetarion when it was borderline complete embarrassment to tell people you played a game on the internet. Now, you sit on the train to work in the morning and you see 50% of people playing games. Yet PA is decreasing in players. That's an ugly fact. Real ugly.
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I honestly never thought of it like that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ReligFree
So my question (and challenge) is, what's the worst that could happen by giving it a go?
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But I think I do have some insight into why PA isn't being radically changed: because it's hilariously risky, and will probably kill PA in 6 months.
Let's be honest here. PA Team is not exactly backed by millions of dollars in venture capital, and likely never will be. Even just
beginning to get PA improved would take tens of thousands of dollars, and that is such a low estimate it's not even funny. So what you're asking is for someone in PA Team to put themselves into debt to invest a sizeable amount of money into improving a dying game.
Look at AD2460. We know Spinner got about quarter of a million dollars in subsidies from the Norwegian government to develop it. It's absolutely safe to say the actual development cost a factor 2-10 more than that. That's just how the games industry works, even the niche browser based one both AD2460 and PA are in. And even if you believe that budget could be much smaller, AD2460 hasn't exactly turned out to be a revolutionary game, nor has it led rankings in app stores, a smashing success featured in articles the world over.
So PA Team has a choice. Take a very large risk, invest a large amount of money into the game, and maybe,
maybe if they're lucky, PA will become about as successful as AD2460. That is to say, not very. And in the overwhelmingly likely scenario that it flops, you can't just revert back to PA r63. You're also stuck with a second mortgage you took out in order to undertake this adventure.
And on top of that, PA Team doesn't even
own PA. Jagex does. PA Team merely has a license for its exploitation, under the guise of Ranul Tech.
"Oh," you say, "but what about crowd sourcing? That's really been taking off the last couple of years, hasn't it? Could that work?" Don't make me laugh. Hell will freeze over a dozen times before the PA community would raise even a thousand bucks, which wouldn't even pay a freelance developer fresh out of university for a week.
So what's the alternative?
Simple: muddle on. There are still 750 people playing, and that number is only decreasing by about 10-20 a round. At that rate, PA could go another 5-10 years before it dips below 500, which is still not
dead.The great advantage of this approach is that it risks
nothing. PA is marginally profitable, to my knowledge, and even though PA will never prosper again in this scenario, not investing in it also means that if the servers explode tomorrow, or the entire player base moves to Eve, PA Team can just move on with their lives. No stress, no debt, no hassle, just shrug and move on.
The second option is safe, boring, defeatist... and 100% the one I would pick, were I in PA Team's shoes.