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Amnesia Postmortem

[Sep 19, 2010, 12:51 pm ET] - Share - Viewing Comments

Amnesia postmortem on the Frictional Games Website reflecting on the first week of availability of the survival horror game from the creators of the Penumbra series (thanks joao). The post outlines a good news/bad news situation. The good news is that, as is reflected by comments in the forums here, the game has been very well received, both by critics, and by gamers, as reviews from both have even exceeded their optimistic expectations. The bad news is that sales of the game are trailing a little below the level they need to remain in business, expressing concern that a day 0 pirate version of the game was available 24 hours before its retail release, as apparently some unscrupulous website leaked their review copy. Here's part of their assessment of this situation: "This is of course not all the income we will make from the game, but is still a bit discouraging when comparing to recent XBLA releases and similar. So why is [sic] not sales [sic] higher? Piracy? People waiting for future massive discounted sales? Game too scary / niched? Right now we have not got a clue, but hopefully it will become clearer further on." Here's their conclusion:

On almost all fronts, we area extremely pleased with this release. It has in many ways exceeded our expectations and it makes all the hard work, pay cuts, etc worth it in the end.

The most distressing thing is the sales though. Even though we are far from complaining, it feels like we do not have the financial security we would like to have, to truly be able to focus on making the best game possible. So what should we do? The things we have discussed include: Increase the cost of the game, doing a console port instead of Linux/Mac, do a less niche title and more. Now is too soon to make a decision though and we have to see how the coming weeks and months go.

Finally, I know I say this a lot but we truly mean it: Thanks to all who have supported us by buying the game, spreading the word, and what not. We hope you all will continue supporting us in the future as well! All of Frictional Games sends their finest regards and thanks for this support!

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31.

Re: Amnesia Postmortem

Sep 19, 2010, 17:44

headkase

I'll let the cat out of the bag here - the Frictional employee asked me not to mention it and for 2 years now I haven't. I bought the retail version of Penumbra: Overture. It was published by a third-party for Frictional and one of the stipulations was that that third-party was wholly responsible for the patches. So, at the time my version would refuse to run correctly on my machine and there was a patch for the Frictional-store-bought version that would correct the issue. My third-party version did not have the patch available due to ahem crappy agreements. So, I posted on the Frictional forums that I didn't give a damn about supporting the developers, the reason I buy games is for support when needed. The Frictional person, outside of channels had me send a scan of my manual/cd so he was reasonably sure I actually did buy Penumbra: Overture. Once I emailed that scan the Frictional person emailed me back a cd-key to use with the Frictional-store patch (the third-party version did not use cd-keys). The lesson to learn from this is that small shops with few employees are much more concerned about each individual customer. Frictional cares about you. They will do everything reasonable to make you happy - including bending the rules in very rare situations that require it. So, what would you rather have, poor customer support from a "too big to fail" company or a company like Frictional who have proved to *me* that they actually give a damn about you as an individual? I'm poor at the moment so I haven't purchased Amnesia. When I have $20 however I'm going to pick it up from my local EB Games. You know why? Because when I bought Overture I was supported even though it bent the rules.

Subject

Comment [quote="headkase"Sep 19, 2010, 17:44]I'll let the cat out of the bag here - the Frictional employee asked me not to mention it and for 2 years now I haven't. I bought the retail version of Penumbra: Overture. It was published by a third-party for Frictional and one of the stipulations was that that third-party was wholly responsible for the patches. So, at the time my version would refuse to run correctly on my machine and there was a patch for the Frictional-store-bought version that would correct the issue. My third-party version did not have the patch available due to *ahem* crappy agreements. So, I posted on the Frictional forums that I didn't give a damn about supporting the developers, the reason I buy games is for support when needed. The Frictional person, outside of channels had me send a scan of my manual/cd so he was reasonably sure I actually did buy Penumbra: Overture. Once I emailed that scan the Frictional person emailed me back a cd-key to use with the Frictional-store patch (the third-party version did not use cd-keys). The lesson to learn from this is that small shops with few employees are much more concerned about each individual customer. i[Frictional cares about you.]i They will do everything reasonable to make you happy - including bending the rules in very rare situations that require it. So, what would you rather have, poor customer support from a "too big to fail" company or a company like Frictional who have proved to b[*me*]b that they actually give a damn about you as an individual? I'm poor at the moment so I haven't purchased Amnesia. When I have $20 however I'm going to pick it up from my local EB Games. You know why? Because when I bought Overture I was supported even though it bent the rules. [/quote]

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