Friday Facts #293 - New remnants 2 & 1.0 Marketing plan

[Omarflyjoemacky]

From kovarex:

The famous quote of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" and also "No bullshit policy" is something we take very seriously all the time during the development since the early days. Things like pricing $30 instead of $29.99, no sales, no micro-transactions, game stability over features, no selling-out to big companies that would use the game as cash grab while destroying the brand (we actually declined to negotiate "investment opportunities" like this several times already, no matter what the price would be), the same would be when it would potentially come to any exclusivity deals, which is its own subject...

Kovarex, I love the work you guys do, but as a gamer, and a "big company" corporate overlord, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with your statement here. Specifically your denigration of adding new features...

First, let me say that I love Factorio, and have played countless hours (I was playing long before I had an account on this forum). But I believe major elements of your approach to 1.0 are seriously flawed. This isn't intended to be personal, rather, its about business. In terms of my background, I've run a $20M per year software engineering/development shop for a major US-based company (but never done games so take this with a grain of salt).

The problem I see for the Factorio team is that I believe Factorio has already largely reached a market saturation point - I've yet to be in a group of 5+ gamers where at least one of them hasn't heard of Factorio. While it seems that your strategy is to bring the game to more "mainstream" publications and sources, in an attempt to covert those likely non-simulator/strategy gamers to Factorio players, I think that's a risky approach. To me it seems that you've spent nearly a year putting all your eggs in to the big 1.0 "platinum plated" release basket. It's great that you're focusing on stability, and working things to assist new players in getting in to the game, but at the same time have you considered that you're largely neglecting your established fan base? The people whom have hundreds if not thousands of hours in the game? Whom have researched everything and played through multiple times? Please consider, will a new campaign or tutorial really be new content to those players? I'm sure they'd love to have new vehicles, new biter types (flying?), new buildings, new weapons, new biomes (space stations/platforms anyone?). I know I'd love to see some of that.

I think at some point very soon the Factorio team would be best served stepping back from the gold/platinum/diamond plating of the existing, already highly functional baseline and instead work on new features. Just think of how many current players would love to see that? Even if you don't care about the revenue you could rake in by selling some of that as DLCs, new content for long time/dedicated players would be a nice reward for the community that has stood beside you, told all their friends about the game, bought their friends copies, etc..

Bottom line, in my "big company" job I often see dedicated, talented software developers, when left unimpeded, getting too deep in to the process of polishing and perfecting, and thus missing out on the big picture.

I suspect they already have a few DLC ideas solidified. I can't see how every player wouldn't purchase a DLC for $10. Finished Loaders, flying biters, electric trains, different terrains, bridges, underground rail, faster belts, weather systems, etc. Sure many of this stuff is already in mods, but what if it was twisted up by WUBE? I'd buy their take on things. Many users, myself included, would also buy a physical copy of the game. Another easy way to collect $50-$100 per player.

This damn game... after more than 2200 hours, I'm playing for fractions of a penny per hour. I'm happy supporting WUBE through Factorio 2 any way I can...

This is exactly the reason why people hate big company, DLC policy and so on ... you are totally missing the philoshopy that was behind this game from the beginning. Kovarex explained it perfectly and the fact that he refused "big offers from big company" make all your post totally pointless. And i am sure ... considering factorio numbers in term of sales, can give you an idea of how BIG a BIG offers was about. But still ... There are people with different ethic principles, just bear with it. I personally think this is one of the reason behind factorio HUGE success. You consider polishing the product a non fundamental step ... i consider it a total form of respect toward customers. If you can have one if not the most mod friendly game ever made it's because of this (polishing). When kovarex will make its next big thing he will certainly meet success again because of the way he dealt with customers here.

On one point you were right though...my hours count on factorio made me play for fraction of penny per hour as well (and many are in this situation i think)...so definetly a price increase at launch will be more than fair because during these years there was a CLEAR improvement in the value of the product.

Electric train DLC? Serioulsy??! C'mon man ... that would bring hate toward the game and made its 98% positive review drop down badly. Is this what you want for Factorio? Do you think factorio customer are same as brainless Battle royale players? Reputation is important. They can go up in price and none would disagree with it ... instead ... make customers feel like milking cow and you are done, and this is exactly what you are suggesting here.

More on reputation ...
See previous post of bw_mutley and you know what i am talking about.

So, how do you suggest I give these guys more money? I want to! I've already purchased multiple copies for friends. Don't get me wrong. As long as they have control of their IP, I'll keep handing them money. It was simply some ideas. Like I said - I have played for little to nothing (I actually purchased from WUBE off their site, before they were even on Steam - I think it was $17 after currency conversion). I have triple AAA games that don't even come close to the enjoyment I've gotten from this game.

[Xakep_SDK]

Thank you that you did not removed factorio from steam because of those "investment opportunities".
Before steam release i played cracked version, but right after i saw it in steam with regional price, i purchased factorio.
Thank you for making factorio better with every release, not only feature and stability wise, but also user comfort, like regional price.
Also thanks for linux version, as i am linux player.

[ownlyme]

...

[Dry Hairy Tree]

Wrote a lot of advertorials back in the day when I edited a paper. I managed to halve the ad space doing this (and bringing in sponsors who aligned with the values of the publication). The public were appreciative. Anytime you can stop bludgeoning folk with blunt advertising tactics you will receive loyal and grateful converts to a better way of doing things.

Corporates are Desperados for dollars, pathetic and predictable.

Providing a service rather than extracting a profit. Thank you. You are part of a brave new world.

Where are the angles of interest to generate stories?

Down the rabbit hole: how I wasted all my time and got 1st division honors in my Masters anyway.

I would be ruminating synonymous vs non-synonymous DNA substitution rates while calculating smelting ratios. I examined population dynamics while commenting here on the patterns of distribution of widgets. I studied biogeography while assessing the games biomes in relation to flora and fauna.

From chaos to regimented order: how would you play Factorio?

From spaghetti to high class perfection and all stages inbetween. The open sandbox nature of Factorio has seen a diverse collection of creative players, modders and developers push the envelope in several directions. Chaos vs order, build vs battle - what manner of game caters to such a disparate crowd. Three examples that would be good. The devs classic spaghetti base, Poobers base (pure art), and something by Colonel Will or his mates. Zisteau is always worth a look he's a complete madman in gaming.

Bots vs belts: How hard is it for game developers to listen to their public when that public is passionately divided?

Friday Facts: Why do some developers stand out over others? (hint, that word inclusion again).

Remember, journalism is about answering the W's.

Who, What, When, Why, Where and hoW.

I hope other users who've played through challenging aspects/times of life might have some input on similar themes. If I feel inspired to write any actual articles I'll be sure to pass them on to the dev team. Tired right now...

[AndrewIRL]

games as simple things on their phone (still waiting for Factorio on Android btw!)

That was an April Fool's joke. But they could build a small free puzzle game based on Factorio mechanics. Implement just:

• Inserters
• Assemblers
• Belts

feed in some resources on one side and accept finished materials on the other. Create 50 puzzle levels with space constraints, water in the way, limited numbers of machines, etc. The game would introduce players to the basic mechanics of Factorio without a ton of dev effort while serving as an advertisement for the full game.

The variables are:

• Projected cost of building the mobile game
• Projected users gained

yielding a Customer Acquisition Cost. Obviously difficult to predict and a relatively expensive advertising mechanism which can't be tested with a smaller investment.

[masoudd]

I heard of Factorio from GCP Grey on youtube. Someone had asked him how to stop playing factorio and he said I don't know man, please send help.
I had to see what it was. I bought the game a few days after.

My suggestion about marketing, I listen to some programming related podcasts, I know the number of listeners aren't the same as "mainstream" but I would love to listen to an hour of factorio developers talk about problems and challenges they faced. I'm sure a lot of podcast hosts would love to have you guys as their guests.

[idgod]

How about some marketing over Games Done Quick? (AGDQ and SGDQ)

I saw some speedruns in 0.15 and 0.16, this would be nice to see in v1.0, I'm sure. On Games Done Quick Events masters of their game compete in speedrunning a game.

https://gamesdonequick.com/
GO FACTORIO v1.0 at AGDQ 2020!

Swedish player "Nefrums" bet Factorio v0.17 in 2:19h.
Maybe get in touch with him?
Or German player "AntiElitz", who bet the game in under 2:00h in 0.14 already. Maybe he'll give it a shot again

Would be good promotion, since this event is for charity.

[Bilka]

I can assure you that we are in contact with speedrunners: https://www.speedrun.com/Factorio#Defau ... ultiplayer ;)

Anti does not want to go to GDQ before 1.0, but I am sure that something will be considered with the full release.

[Dry Hairy Tree]

Another thing to consider with marketing is the widely disparate age groups you cater for. From kids to old(er) types like myself. I noted Nephrums is sporting some grey himself - even our experts 'have experience'...

How about a free prostrate check with every game sold...

Actually, I'm just thinking about the community aspect, and how broad a community it is. I know there are a few female players, but also wonder, is your userbase skewed heavily toward male users due to the engineering aspect - OR! Have you smashed sexist stereotypes about engineering? (At my university the stereotype is well and truly alive).

What is the gender make up of typical gamers in comparison to Factorio? Any facts like this have points of interest that might be molded into stories or not. The thing is that typical angles might not go viral - interesting factoids, however, we're addicted to them.

And here's a heading that will hook many gamers easily:

"The Cure For Minecraft"

[Katharsas]

About making money:
Maybe the devs could sell managed factorio mp servers? That way people have a way to give them money while they actually provide a useful service that can make the factorio mp ecosystem easier to use, while being helpful for normal factorio sales at the same time.

[Unknow0059]

Things like pricing $30 instead of $29.99, no sales, no micro-transactions, game stability over features, no selling-out to big companies that would use the game as cash grab while destroying the brand (we actually declined to negotiate "investment opportunities" like this several times already, no matter what the price would be), the same would be when it would potentially come to any exclusivity deals, which is its own subject...

What I truly hate is banners and forced ad-videos, or radio spots that are just screaming at me and trying to get into my head without my consent. The idea, that I would basically pay for the ad that annoys me by buying the product feels deeply humiliating. So you can understand, that I don't want to pay marketing companies to do this to others.

This, and why you guys technicalists trying to squeeze every bit of performance out of your game, and trying to make it the best it can be, is why i love you guys.

[kovarex]

From kovarex:

The famous quote of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" and also "No bullshit policy" is something we take very seriously all the time during the development since the early days. Things like pricing $30 instead of $29.99, no sales, no micro-transactions, game stability over features, no selling-out to big companies that would use the game as cash grab while destroying the brand (we actually declined to negotiate "investment opportunities" like this several times already, no matter what the price would be), the same would be when it would potentially come to any exclusivity deals, which is its own subject...

Kovarex, I love the work you guys do, but as a gamer, and a "big company" corporate overlord, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with your statement here. Specifically your denigration of adding new features...

First, let me say that I love Factorio, and have played countless hours (I was playing long before I had an account on this forum). But I believe major elements of your approach to 1.0 are seriously flawed. This isn't intended to be personal, rather, its about business. In terms of my background, I've run a $20M per year software engineering/development shop for a major US-based company (but never done games so take this with a grain of salt).

The problem I see for the Factorio team is that I believe Factorio has already largely reached a market saturation point - I've yet to be in a group of 5+ gamers where at least one of them hasn't heard of Factorio. While it seems that your strategy is to bring the game to more "mainstream" publications and sources, in an attempt to covert those likely non-simulator/strategy gamers to Factorio players, I think that's a risky approach. To me it seems that you've spent nearly a year putting all your eggs in to the big 1.0 "platinum plated" release basket. It's great that you're focusing on stability, and working things to assist new players in getting in to the game, but at the same time have you considered that you're largely neglecting your established fan base? The people whom have hundreds if not thousands of hours in the game? Whom have researched everything and played through multiple times? Please consider, will a new campaign or tutorial really be new content to those players? I'm sure they'd love to have new vehicles, new biter types (flying?), new buildings, new weapons, new biomes (space stations/platforms anyone?). I know I'd love to see some of that.

I think at some point very soon the Factorio team would be best served stepping back from the gold/platinum/diamond plating of the existing, already highly functional baseline and instead work on new features. Just think of how many current players would love to see that? Even if you don't care about the revenue you could rake in by selling some of that as DLCs, new content for long time/dedicated players would be a nice reward for the community that has stood beside you, told all their friends about the game, bought their friends copies, etc..

Bottom line, in my "big company" job I often see dedicated, talented software developers, when left unimpeded, getting too deep in to the process of polishing and perfecting, and thus missing out on the big picture.

Well I'm aware that there needs to be a balance. This is why after 1.0, we could easily add content in some form when all the "technology debt" is paid off.
You might be right about the saturation, but since Civilization 5 sold more than 8 million copies, and it certainly isn't a simple game, I believe, that there is still some operational space.
The approach really isn't that we are putting all the eggs into the platinum plated release basket, we just want to finish it, and since we are already doing that, we might want to push a little for the sales.

[J-H]

We all like the product we're seeing from Wube (+- a few details as there's always some disagreement), and I think everyone is extremely happy with the communication and regular updates your team is putting out.

The game software industry is brutal, with failed and failing companies all over the place, including companies that made my favorite games for a while, like Bioware(EA), Westwood Studios, Ensemble Studios, Volition, and others. Wube has an advantage, in that you have been able to monetize your game before issuing 1.0. Ballpark: 1,000,000 copies x $20 x 70% (lose 30% to Steam) = $14,000,000. I don't recall how big Wube is (10-20 people I think), but I hope you are all making good salaries that cover your time well and help you provide for your families, while also giving you the time to spend with them (vs. the evil "Crunch"). If my ballpark numbers are right, you've got operating capital for several years to come without stress.

Since you've already sold to your first-tier buyers, I would not expect a huge revenue spike at launch - if you double your base to 2M or 2.5M and end up with 25% of the sales of a tier-1 "Everyone's heard of it" AAA game like Civ6 - you are doing great!

80% of that revenue will come in the first year after launch. After that...what next? How do you keep making cool things and bringing in revenue? I think that's our concern. Is it your obligation to share your corporate growth strategy with us? No, but it's what I think some of us have in mind with a "1.0, then what?" approach. When lightning never strikes the same place twice, how do you follow up on a perfect game?

[Ericwu91]

On the subject of marketing, I personally met Factorio in a random Q&A video from one of my favorite youtubers. The question he was asked was "Which game have you been playing recently", and his answer, as well as the short clip that followed, got me hooked immediately.

https://youtu.be/K63ZKa_tt3s?t=290

Thing is, he was not (as far as I'm aware) sponsored by you guys, so it was a legitimate, ground-to-earth, two-second review that sold Factorio a 1000+ hour player. Something else to consider is that he speaks a lot of sense to people of a specific niche: Analytical, engineer-loving, problem-solving people.

He mentioned factorio in other videos as well.

https://youtu.be/jlLUuX2a0Cg?t=366

...Yeah.
My guess? He would love to sponsor you guys for a change.

[Omnifarious]

I like the remnants. They are very pretty and an excellent addition to the game.

I just wish I could take any joy in playing any versions after 0.17.28.

[lizthegrey]

https://youtu.be/L3CsxLU0jC0

I've talked about how Factorio and my job as a systems engineer intersect in a conference talk in case that's helpful

[Hamster]

https://youtu.be/L3CsxLU0jC0

I've talked about how Factorio and my job as a systems engineer intersect in a conference talk in case that's helpful

From Tranquility to Factorio. Just like me. Probably Eve players would be a good candidate for some targeted marketing.

[Omnifarious]

From Tranquility to Factorio. Just like me. Probably Eve players would be a good candidate for some targeted marketing.

I actually feel like Eve is a giant political science simulation. At least that's how it seems from the outside looking in.

[Drison]

From kovarex:

The famous quote of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" and also "No bullshit policy" is something we take very seriously all the time during the development since the early days. Things like pricing $30 instead of $29.99, no sales, no micro-transactions, game stability over features, no selling-out to big companies that would use the game as cash grab while destroying the brand (we actually declined to negotiate "investment opportunities" like this several times already, no matter what the price would be), the same would be when it would potentially come to any exclusivity deals, which is its own subject...

Kovarex, I love the work you guys do, but as a gamer, and a "big company" corporate overlord, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with your statement here. Specifically your denigration of adding new features...

First, let me say that I love Factorio, and have played countless hours (I was playing long before I had an account on this forum). But I believe major elements of your approach to 1.0 are seriously flawed. This isn't intended to be personal, rather, its about business. In terms of my background, I've run a $20M per year software engineering/development shop for a major US-based company (but never done games so take this with a grain of salt).

The problem I see for the Factorio team is that I believe Factorio has already largely reached a market saturation point - I've yet to be in a group of 5+ gamers where at least one of them hasn't heard of Factorio. While it seems that your strategy is to bring the game to more "mainstream" publications and sources, in an attempt to covert those likely non-simulator/strategy gamers to Factorio players, I think that's a risky approach. To me it seems that you've spent nearly a year putting all your eggs in to the big 1.0 "platinum plated" release basket. It's great that you're focusing on stability, and working things to assist new players in getting in to the game, but at the same time have you considered that you're largely neglecting your established fan base? The people whom have hundreds if not thousands of hours in the game? Whom have researched everything and played through multiple times? Please consider, will a new campaign or tutorial really be new content to those players? I'm sure they'd love to have new vehicles, new biter types (flying?), new buildings, new weapons, new biomes (space stations/platforms anyone?). I know I'd love to see some of that.

I think at some point very soon the Factorio team would be best served stepping back from the gold/platinum/diamond plating of the existing, already highly functional baseline and instead work on new features. Just think of how many current players would love to see that? Even if you don't care about the revenue you could rake in by selling some of that as DLCs, new content for long time/dedicated players would be a nice reward for the community that has stood beside you, told all their friends about the game, bought their friends copies, etc..

Bottom line, in my "big company" job I often see dedicated, talented software developers, when left unimpeded, getting too deep in to the process of polishing and perfecting, and thus missing out on the big picture.

Well I'm aware that there needs to be a balance. This is why after 1.0, we could easily add content in some form when all the "technology debt" is paid off.
You might be right about the saturation, but since Civilization 5 sold more than 8 million copies, and it certainly isn't a simple game, I believe, that there is still some operational space.
The approach really isn't that we are putting all the eggs into the platinum plated release basket, we just want to finish it, and since we are already doing that, we might want to push a little for the sales.

Thanks for responding, once again thank you and the team for all you do for the community. Factorio is truly an outstanding game - my hope and wish is that you and the team have the resources to continue supporting and adding to it going forward. I know that there are thousands if not tens of thousands of us (if not more!) that are willing to continue to contribute to those efforts financially (if that means DLC or otherwise) - we just need you guys to give us the opportunity!

[Bauer]

... there are thousands if not tens of thousands of us (if not more!) that are willing to continue to contribute to those efforts financially (if that means DLC or otherwise) - we just need you guys to give us the opportunity!

+1