Hi, I’m new to this whole forum thing (this is my first posting ever) and I just wanted to offer my 2 cents about Bloodlines.
Many people have blamed Bloodlines commercial failure on a combination of poor marketing, poor timing, the M rating, and of coarse the bugs. However, according to my sources, the table top game has sold more than 1 million copies since 1991. Baring in mind that many people who play the game don’t own a copy, after all only one person in a group needs to have the rule book, it isn’t unreasonable to assume that there are at least 2 million fans out there. This basically means that if everyone who purchased Bloodlines thus far has been a VTM fan that only about 3.5% of the fan base was tapped, an absurdly low number.
I first found out about Bloodlines while watching x-play (could have been extended play, wow that was a long time ago) and I nearly jumped out of my seat. I was in the midst of discovering Arcanum for the first time and was storytelling a VTM conical with some of my friends, so Troika working on a Vampire RPG (with the HL2 engine no less) really got me exited about Bloodlines.
So for the next couple of years I waited, eagerly studying any information I could about the upcoming game. When it finally came out I broke the sound barrier rushing home to install it. Two days, two hours of sleep, and about a 1000 crashes later I sat back starting my long wait for the upcoming sequel I though would be released about a year later. However I had been disappointed by certain aspects of the game.
The first oversight on Troikas part was the lack of customization in character creation. In Bloodlines, players were offered 7 clans and one choice, weather to be male or female. I though maybe a mistake had been made because I had seen on a preview clip another menu, in which you could give your little undead alter ego a past which would help shape your characters development, basically the same thing you found in Arcanum. To this day I do not understand why that feature was cut from the final product. It might be superficial but the lack of customization was enough to convince one of my friends not to by it.
One aspect of the tabletop game is the amount clan loyalty you find among players. Unfortunately for Bloodlines, a poll conducted by white wolf found that three of the five most popular clans were unavailable for play namely, the Tzimisce, Lasombra, and Assamites. For those of you not familiar with the table top game, imagine an AD&D RPG in which you couldn’t be an Elf, Dwarf, or Orc.
One other major reason for the low sales in my option was the lack of any kind of multiplayer option. Vampire was a traditionally a social game, meant to be played with a small group of friends. I understand Troika’s reluctance to open up that preverbal can of worms, but even the rudimentary combat oriented Vampire vs. Hunter combat they had talked about early on would have boosted sales substantially. Even more incredible was the fact that Troika didn’t release a mod kit with the game as Valve had done with the original half-life. Had hardcore VTM players had the ability to set up there own chronicles using a mod engine, creative storytellers would have bought the game just for that function. Even the abysmal Redemption had this feature and there were a few dedicated modders that continued to produce content years after the game was first released.
These relatively minor details (or lack thereof) alienated Bloodlines from a substantial number of White Wolf fans; fans that should have been a strong commercial base for what was otherwise an excellent RPG. Sorry about both the size of this post and horrible spelling and grammer, english never was my strong suit.
Bloodlines and RPGs
RPGs are primarily meant to be single player affairs. I don't feel that the single player gaming population has grown smaller or less financially capable, or outgrown itself (age-wise). However, compared to the supposed potential gaming market, which is very much fixated on multiplayer gaming, the single player portion has been gradually and irrepressibly growing smaller. The unfortunate fact about games is that the most popular games offer multiplayer aspects. My housemate plays World of Warcraft every day, even though he's already reached the maximum level. Many other friends of mine purchased HL2 not for the single-player aspect, but for Counterstrike. Prior to these games, the most popular games were those on Battle.net, i.e. WC3, D2, etc, and the LAN games like UT and Quake.
Furthermore, with the proliferation of bittorrent and in previous years, CD piracy, RPGs (and also other genres like adventure) suffer more than multiplayer games, due to the fact that multiplayer games require keys to play online. Hence a large proportion of legally purchased games are only purchased so because of multiplayer. For single player games like RPGs, the ease of bittorrent or the neighbourhood pirated game store is far more attractive. I don't deny that I use bittorrent now and then. Invariably, however, I delete the game after playing a few hours, because I don't find it all that fun. Fortunately my spending power is much greater than before, and I can afford to buy (off the shelf) highly rated games like Chronicles of Rid**** or games from a trusted developer (Bioware/Obsidian and Sports Interactive).
I feel that companies like Obsidian can survive by producing high-quality RPGs for the single-player fan base, but even so, only marginally. Unfortunately the publishers most likely will want to target the multiplaying or console demographic, and more likely than not superficial or rushed products will appear on the market, like the KOTOR series.
Furthermore, with the proliferation of bittorrent and in previous years, CD piracy, RPGs (and also other genres like adventure) suffer more than multiplayer games, due to the fact that multiplayer games require keys to play online. Hence a large proportion of legally purchased games are only purchased so because of multiplayer. For single player games like RPGs, the ease of bittorrent or the neighbourhood pirated game store is far more attractive. I don't deny that I use bittorrent now and then. Invariably, however, I delete the game after playing a few hours, because I don't find it all that fun. Fortunately my spending power is much greater than before, and I can afford to buy (off the shelf) highly rated games like Chronicles of Rid**** or games from a trusted developer (Bioware/Obsidian and Sports Interactive).
I feel that companies like Obsidian can survive by producing high-quality RPGs for the single-player fan base, but even so, only marginally. Unfortunately the publishers most likely will want to target the multiplaying or console demographic, and more likely than not superficial or rushed products will appear on the market, like the KOTOR series.
Could people have been scared off by the source engine?
Most people I know who enjoy adult/challenging games or whatever you'd like to call them are running fairly old machines and are quite happy to re-play old copies of Albion or System Shock rather than investing in the money to upgrade their computer enough to run this game. I am also a fan of whitewolf PnP games and found this game very true to the source material, but found that even most whitewolf fans that I knew had no knowledge of this game, I only knew of it because I am a fan of previous Troika games, also a lot of whitewolf fans were dissapointed by the lack of multiplayer that was available in the original, I think the biggest failing in marketing was not getting the word out/or appealing to what should of been their core audience.
Most people I know who enjoy adult/challenging games or whatever you'd like to call them are running fairly old machines and are quite happy to re-play old copies of Albion or System Shock rather than investing in the money to upgrade their computer enough to run this game. I am also a fan of whitewolf PnP games and found this game very true to the source material, but found that even most whitewolf fans that I knew had no knowledge of this game, I only knew of it because I am a fan of previous Troika games, also a lot of whitewolf fans were dissapointed by the lack of multiplayer that was available in the original, I think the biggest failing in marketing was not getting the word out/or appealing to what should of been their core audience.
Not all matyrs acheive divinity;
But at least you tried.
But at least you tried.
hi folks!
It's funny to find this topic on an other forum since I started exactly the same on one of the french forums where I started saying that recent RPG just suck...
I've been reading other topics and feel already a bit disapointed that Bard's Tale seems a bit short but i'll try it anyway.
Why did bloodlines fail?
A good question and as far as i'm concerned i was very dispointed with this game. I'm an old RPG gamer (IRL and computer) (for information I played wastelan when it got out in 1985... ) and since then i tried nearly every single RPG games which got out.
When i first heard of VTMB i was very excited to try it, but like all games, i download the demo version of it first and discovered that no demo were available... very bad news... (all the ones i tried which didn't have one sucked).
So as a normal broke gamer i downloaded it (i know it's very bad, but it's 49$ i can't afford on every game and i am very unpleased when i buy a ****ty game) installation went fine, i launch the game and... my GForce 2 Pro DDR was considered to limited to play the game... yikes! well i launch it anyway (usually it is considered to limited but it works fine anyway), create my caracter (with the very limited caracter creation sheet (bad point on my opinion)), and start the game, the story looks fine, graphics are really nice, and start moving (in the first room things are okay) i leave the room and god damn it!! the game lags!!! impossible to play... and as i said i'm broke changed my pc a year before so i can't afford buying a new graphic card and anyway there's no point buying a new one considering the games i like.
So that's why I didn't buy the game. I never went futher with this game only banned it and HL2 with it since it uses the same graphic and game engine.
Anyway, all the FPS style RPG games I tried weren't so good so it didn't really mater.
Are games going to continue to be as poor as the ones nowadays?
Well the general feeling is YES... slob ... i had a quick look on what RPG's are going to be edited in the future, 80% are onlin games... and we can't say more about the ones having a single player option... I am against those MMORPG i think it's crap... You have to play like 500 hours to have a decent caracter and pay every month 15$... that's not for me, since i only play like 1-2 hours a day...
What could be done to increase sales?
It's hard to say what could be done to increase RPGs sales since, as other said, companies are here to make money, not to satisfy a small community of intellectual players. And creating complicated games, with a complicated plot and dificult puzzles/riddles is not creating a game to be sold to a lot of people!!
So some have the idea to make custumable games like NWN. You can create a whole new campain... I tried but failed, the campain generator was far to complicated for me, and i was horrified by the highly limited generator but that could be another topic .
And others don't bother about it... and continue to make there RPG based on a full combat game. (like dungeon lord...)
Maybe a good idea would be to ban action-RPGs from the RPG genre. Someone said it before me, DIABLO is NOT a RPG (even if it is a good game).
But i guess the best solution is to create your own RPG
It's funny to find this topic on an other forum since I started exactly the same on one of the french forums where I started saying that recent RPG just suck...
I've been reading other topics and feel already a bit disapointed that Bard's Tale seems a bit short but i'll try it anyway.
Why did bloodlines fail?
A good question and as far as i'm concerned i was very dispointed with this game. I'm an old RPG gamer (IRL and computer) (for information I played wastelan when it got out in 1985... ) and since then i tried nearly every single RPG games which got out.
When i first heard of VTMB i was very excited to try it, but like all games, i download the demo version of it first and discovered that no demo were available... very bad news... (all the ones i tried which didn't have one sucked).
So as a normal broke gamer i downloaded it (i know it's very bad, but it's 49$ i can't afford on every game and i am very unpleased when i buy a ****ty game) installation went fine, i launch the game and... my GForce 2 Pro DDR was considered to limited to play the game... yikes! well i launch it anyway (usually it is considered to limited but it works fine anyway), create my caracter (with the very limited caracter creation sheet (bad point on my opinion)), and start the game, the story looks fine, graphics are really nice, and start moving (in the first room things are okay) i leave the room and god damn it!! the game lags!!! impossible to play... and as i said i'm broke changed my pc a year before so i can't afford buying a new graphic card and anyway there's no point buying a new one considering the games i like.
So that's why I didn't buy the game. I never went futher with this game only banned it and HL2 with it since it uses the same graphic and game engine.
Anyway, all the FPS style RPG games I tried weren't so good so it didn't really mater.
Are games going to continue to be as poor as the ones nowadays?
Well the general feeling is YES... slob ... i had a quick look on what RPG's are going to be edited in the future, 80% are onlin games... and we can't say more about the ones having a single player option... I am against those MMORPG i think it's crap... You have to play like 500 hours to have a decent caracter and pay every month 15$... that's not for me, since i only play like 1-2 hours a day...
What could be done to increase sales?
It's hard to say what could be done to increase RPGs sales since, as other said, companies are here to make money, not to satisfy a small community of intellectual players. And creating complicated games, with a complicated plot and dificult puzzles/riddles is not creating a game to be sold to a lot of people!!
So some have the idea to make custumable games like NWN. You can create a whole new campain... I tried but failed, the campain generator was far to complicated for me, and i was horrified by the highly limited generator but that could be another topic .
And others don't bother about it... and continue to make there RPG based on a full combat game. (like dungeon lord...)
Maybe a good idea would be to ban action-RPGs from the RPG genre. Someone said it before me, DIABLO is NOT a RPG (even if it is a good game).
But i guess the best solution is to create your own RPG
if Bloodlines had good promotion then i think it would have gotten a better chance
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An optimist thought for the downcast
Remember, teenagers grow up and tastes mature. I noticed this in our PnP RPG player group. Story and interaction with NPCs became more and more important and while our tastes matured the source material became more and more oriented towards adults and touched on clearly adult themes.
Admittedly this is an evolution that took about 20 years but there is hope still. The adult segment of the game market will grow with every teenager that grows up into a twenty something, a thirty something... and will become more interesting to developers.
So there will be more mature RPG's, maybe not immediately, but just you wait,... because it will be in the interest of the greedy people.
Remember, teenagers grow up and tastes mature. I noticed this in our PnP RPG player group. Story and interaction with NPCs became more and more important and while our tastes matured the source material became more and more oriented towards adults and touched on clearly adult themes.
Admittedly this is an evolution that took about 20 years but there is hope still. The adult segment of the game market will grow with every teenager that grows up into a twenty something, a thirty something... and will become more interesting to developers.
So there will be more mature RPG's, maybe not immediately, but just you wait,... because it will be in the interest of the greedy people.
I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.
- Oscar Wilde
The church is near but the road is icy; the bar is far away but I'll walk carefully.
- Russian proverb
- Oscar Wilde
The church is near but the road is icy; the bar is far away but I'll walk carefully.
- Russian proverb