PC Some Steam Charts

Are they not multi-millionaires? I thought multiple people had done the math on this already...
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire#Multimillionaire

Get wikipedia'ed nub!

And the math is not sales x price.

It's sales x price (including discounts) - the actual production expenses (like the mo'cap stuff) - marketing expenses - publisher earnings - taxes - pot smoked in kg during the process and psychological counseling for the hate posts - etc etc

 
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We have different definitions, I guess. If they have at least $2 million that would be "multi" millionaire in my book.

And I know the math requires subtraction of things. Technically, we don't have all the numbers (so we can't know for sure), but I figured that the rough estimates made were sufficient to assume that they have over $2 million, maybe even $10.

All of that was nit-picky, though. It's true that TFP could have made more money if they had done things differently. I won't refute that. I will say that I'm sure they know that and clearly are unconcerned. Some people aren't out to get all the money that they possibly can get. I know that some of you just can't fathom that.

 
Some people aren't out to get all the money that they possibly can get. I know that some of you just can't fathom that.
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Well, people who are, usually spend more money on marketing than on development nowadays so, not hard to fathom at all.

 
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You guys should add a Battle Royale mode where the radiation zone keeps shrinking. I'm halfway serious.
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You guys should add a Battle Royale mode where the radiation zone keeps shrinking. I'm halfway serious.
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I think they could definitely do this, but I don't think it would be anywhere near as successful. First, they are unconcerned with supporting more than 8 players. Their resource allocation and game design are not based to support sufficient numbers of concurrent players for a, say, 50 or 100 person server to work. 40-45 is about max at this time, and it's pretty sticky at that population. The servers that can handle it are pretty expensive too, as they are resource hogs.

If you have that many folks on a server, and you get two guys running around with AK's in a small room, the FPS is very poor. It's not an enjoyable altercation. Because of the resource limitation, the game is severely gimped for attracting and retaining a PVP Battle Royale crowd. Many people have elevated this concern of server population for various reasons (large PVP servers, large PVE servers, awesome performance on solo/small servers etc), but TFP have indicated it's out of scope/impossible. I don't know enough about Unity to know if they are knowledgeable and averse, or just justifying their design decision as it corresponds to less hard (probably very hard) work/or a complete redesign.

I would be overjoyed if they came out and said "sorry, A17 took so long because we did a redesign and shifted to cloud-based servers that enable us to support 100's of players/NPC's/zombies as well as severely hinder hackers since the assets are no longer stored locally. You also don't have to rent $100/month servers now. We have plenty of room to grow. We also built a robust server and mod manager so you can have all the server tools you need and tweak things to your hearts content, and players will just be confronted with a download when joining the server. Steam workshop will be coming in A18, where the community can share or even purchase in-game assets (prefabs and vehicles)." If executed well, that would be a game revamp that would sell another 10 million copies. These are the types of updates that should be done in an ALPHA. NOT reskinning the world for the fifteenth time.

 
Glad you mentioned The Forest.

Fantastic game!

Doesn't have replay-ability like 7DTD but soooo worth the money.

Have a lot of hours into that one.

 
I've played several of these games, my problem with Ark was the extreme survival curve at the start, and the slow grind of resources. I still play with friends but only on a private, modded server.

Rust would have been fun except for the people that found ways to screw with you even if you were on a PVE server.

The long dark was interesting but the sheer lack of resources, and my own difficulty navigating in the game hampered my enjoyment.

 
Glad you mentioned The Forest.
Fantastic game!

Doesn't have replay-ability like 7DTD but soooo worth the money.

Have a lot of hours into that one.
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We've got very different opinions of what makes a fantastic game. If it isn't replayable imo it's not only not fantastic but I won't buy it at all.

 
Silly TFP would be multi-millionairs by now if they read the pimp dreams section 5 years ago ¯\_(ツ)_/¯https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?82-A-collection-of-features-for-a-better-post-apocalyptic-zombie-survival-simulation (end of post, "game modes" section)
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It's tough to look at in retrospect, because the actual implementation matters. However, I think your theory is correct. They would have sold a lot more copies if they built a game that was centered around the more popular player interactions fostering a competitive environment.

There was a time in about A9 or maybe A10 where Madmole played with some friends, who were noobs. He got really frustrated, because they couldn't figure out how to play very well/make ammunition etc. Ever since then he's focused on simplifying the game and making everything you acquire or do more of a linear progression, because he thinks people need that to avoid getting turned off on the game. I think his friends were particularly annoyed by the crafting grid, which is understandable. It had a wonky sort of charm that was reminiscent of minecraft, but I get how it could be infuriating to learn for some people. It was also very bad for use with a controller setup, which is what they were really after. The recipes were just another skill that took time to learn though. In actuality, many of the people that used to play the game loved the complexity and free roaming nature of it. It felt like a true sandbox where you spent your time figuring out how to build, fight zombies, scavenge, raid, and fight your neighbor. Now you can still do that, but you have to do 100 days worth of farming, leveling, scavenging in a certain order to be efficient. Fighting people on an established server is retarded because the people that were already on the server will have 2.5x as much health, 50% more damage, and approx 100% of additional resistance from armor/damage mitigation. It's just pretty dumb, and no amount of work would make it mainstream competitive in this incarnation.

I honestly can't fathom why they can't just utilize greater zombie diversity, zombie damage scaling, higher level weapony, or simply calculate zombie damage (and/or player resistance to zombie damage) differently than player inflicted damage so that the force multiplier isn't totally out of whack in PVP while also supporting their durability progression goal in PVE. It just HAS to be this certain way, because I'm pretty sure that's simply the way they wrote it, and PVP must suffer for it. Because, like, "PVP is not the focus", or in other words, we don't really care.

 
It's tough to look at in retrospect, because the actual implementation matters. However, I think your theory is correct. They would have sold a lot more copies if they built a game that was centered around the more popular player interactions fostering a competitive environment.
There was a time in about A9 or maybe A10 where Madmole played with some friends, who were noobs. He got really frustrated, because they couldn't figure out how to play very well/make ammunition etc. Ever since then he's focused on simplifying the game and making everything you acquire or do more of a linear progression, because he thinks people need that to avoid getting turned off on the game. I think his friends were particularly annoyed by the crafting grid, which is understandable. It had a wonky sort of charm that was reminiscent of minecraft, but I get how it could be infuriating to learn for some people. It was also very bad for use with a controller setup, which is what they were really after. The recipes were just another skill that took time to learn though. In actuality, many of the people that used to play the game loved the complexity and free roaming nature of it. It felt like a true sandbox where you spent your time figuring out how to build, fight zombies, scavenge, raid, and fight your neighbor. Now you can still do that, but you have to do 100 days worth of farming, leveling, scavenging in a certain order to be efficient. Fighting people on an established server is retarded because the people that were already on the server will have 2.5x as much health, 50% more damage, and approx 100% of additional resistance from armor/damage mitigation. It's just pretty dumb, and no amount of work would make it mainstream competitive in this incarnation.

I honestly can't fathom why they can't just utilize greater zombie diversity, zombie damage scaling, higher level weapony, or simply calculate zombie damage (and/or player resistance to zombie damage) differently than player inflicted damage so that the force multiplier isn't totally out of whack in PVP while also supporting their durability progression goal in PVE. It just HAS to be this certain way, because I'm pretty sure that's simply the way they wrote it, and PVP must suffer for it. Because, like, "PVP is not the focus", or in other words, we don't really care.
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I think these game modes described in that thread (or similar) could achieve some extra traction for the game because of the "short match philosophy" + the element of competitiveness, which people will often come back to.

Back when we were discussing if PvP has a place in the sandbox mode of the game, Gazz said that progression had to be much faster in order for it to have meaning. Which is correct, but as you said it is not a big deal to differentiate zombies from players. Perhaps they could add players to a different collision layer and calculate damage with damage/maxhp divisions instead of flat numbers for pvp, with only small differentiations of weapon damage, so that it's fair but not completely equal (keeping damage reduction), but I really have no idea. As for other problems like new player griefing etc, I think that there are a lot of sollutions with imposed game mechanics - Fallout 76 will tackle that pve+pvp that way as well.

 
Just wanted to add that Subnautica had a remarkable 1.0 launch, as well. I couldn't flip through my YT feed without seeing Markiplier, IGP, Jacksepticeye, and tons more playing the hell out of it.

It seems to be rare that an EA game finally going 1.0 achieves a second injection of sales and concurrent players without the company funding a massive, massive marketing/online push. That has got to take some serious financial discipline/planning/investing if the devs are doing all that work without a publisher.

At least that's what I took from it.

 
All of that was nit-picky, though. It's true that TFP could have made more money if they had done things differently. I won't refute that. I will say that I'm sure they know that and clearly are unconcerned. Some people aren't out to get all the money that they possibly can get. I know that some of you just can't fathom that.
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I know it sounds crazy but the KS was literally to make the game that the bosses wanted to play but no one wanted to make. A game with actual gameplay - not just PVP - that could be played SP.

Also not just a theme park / sandbox where the winning condition (when you stop playing) is when you reach a critical level of boredom.

Should they have made yet another battle royale game (YABRG) instead?

I guess it would have been a lot simpler because then you don't need much more than moving and shooting.

 
have made yet another battle royale game (YABRG) instead?I guess it would have been a lot simpler because then you don't need much more than moving and shooting.
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To be fair 5 years ago it wouldn't be YABRG. Anyway a small scale game mode with a few players competing like the ones I describe in the thread I linked, shouldn't be too hard to make in a map 1/20 the size of navez. I am a fan of the sandbox/survival part of the game myself, but these things can bring a serious boost to the game's coverage.

 
To be fair 5 years ago it wouldn't be YABRG. Anyway a small scale game mode with a few players competing like the ones I describe in the thread I linked, shouldn't be too hard to make in a map 1/20 the size of navez. I am a fan of the sandbox/survival part of the game myself, but these things can bring a serious boost to the game's coverage.
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Why are some people so concerned to bring "a serious boost to the game's coverage" for TFP? Somebody who is concerned with this, please answer.

 
Why are some people so concerned to bring "a serious boost to the game's coverage" for TFP? Somebody who is concerned with this, please answer.
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I bought some TFP stocks some time ago...

Seriously though, it's just a hobby of mine, thinking of ways to do stuff like these ;p

 
Do you do the same for Bethesda, Rockstar, or EA? What about for Apple, Microsoft, or Google? Just trying to understand.

 
Do you do the same for Bethesda, Rockstar, or EA? What about for Apple, Microsoft, or Google? Just trying to understand.
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Yes, sometimes. Should have seen my windows 10 UX feedback, what a nightmare. For EA though? These guys have already sold their soul to the devil.

 
I know it sounds crazy but the KS was literally to make the game that the bosses wanted to play but no one wanted to make. A game with actual gameplay - not just PVP - that could be played SP.Also not just a theme park / sandbox where the winning condition (when you stop playing) is when you reach a critical level of boredom.

Should they have made yet another battle royale game (YABRG) instead?

I guess it would have been a lot simpler because then you don't need much more than moving and shooting.
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I was joking about the battle royal thing! Every game maker out there is just adding "hot feature X!" to their game, rinse and repeat.

You guys are the only ones making something worth playing on the long term in my opinion, where as everyone else is just interested in the latest gaming fad to maximize revenue. I honestly couldn't care less about "hot feature X" PvP, and anyway there's TONS of choices out there for those that are focused on it.

Singleplayer, PvE, and CO-OP is where it's at for me. This is the ONLY game that has gratifying building mechanics, interesting randomly generated maps with TONS of POIs, vehicles, gratifying looting mechanics, tower defense mechanics, as well as RPG and questing mechanics.

It's my perfect game! :)

 
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