Joel Billings
Posts: 32265
Joined: 9/20/2000 From: Santa Rosa, CA Status: offline
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Here's the situation Red is trying to outline. Matrix Games is the publisher of the game. 2by3 Games is the developer. There are 3 programmer/designers in 2by3 Games, Gary/Pavel/Keith and I act as the project manager on our games. Although Keith developed the original engine used in our games, he's made only a few contributions to 2by3 in a number of years, so really it's Gary and Pavel. Red Lancer (John) is one of a virtual army of "volunteers" that helps 2by3 Games create and test the games. Without these volunteers, the big, data intensive projects like War in the East would be virtually impossible to create. They help us because they have a passion for these kinds of games and get as much (or more) enjoyment out of working on these games as they do playing them. John started out working on custom scenarios for WitE, and then started helping us with other parts of the game with WitW. Gary and I are the only people working on these games full time, as everyone else either has a full time job, is a student, or is retired. To me, Matrix is really the spiritual successor to SSI. In the 80s and 90s, my very biased opinion is that SSI was the dominant computer wargame publisher (if only by the number of titles published). With the sale and disappearance of SSI as a force in wargaming, Matrix took up the mantle around 2000. Like SSI (again, a thoroughly biased view), they do a great job supporting outside developers. Decisions re pricing and delivery dates are worked out cooperatively between Matrix and 2by3. It took us 4 years after the release of War in the East to complete War in the West. None of us thought it would take that long, but it did. Matrix didn't pressure us to release WitW before we felt it was ready to go. At a point we got the game into beta testing (not alpha testing), we started to think about a possible release date. However, we never felt like we were rushed to release the product, other than our own desire to get the game in front of customers so we could start seeing some revenue and we could start seeing feedback to the game from more than the limited number of beta testers. These big projects require a lot of users before we can truly refine the game. Again, that doesn't mean the game isn't fun to play at release, it's just the reality that it will likely improve after release as the additional users will find bugs and push the game systems in ways that a limited number of testers never can. We appreciate that some people believe we are forcing customers to pay for the right to test an "unfinished game". Guilty as charged, and probably the only way these games get done these days (although we feel our "unfinished games" match up pretty well with "finished" games that are released with much larger development budgets). We do allocate a lot of time after release to improve and support these products. Even there, if we are lucky, volunteers come into play with additional support long after the time we can devote time and attention to the games. Matrix does not discuss release dates and pricing in advance. Why should they? With online publishing there's no need to set a retail release date months ahead of time. It was retail that forced many games to come out before their time, lest a major pre-paid advertising campaign was wasted. As with any software publisher, Matrix has been burned before by products that were announced and then took years longer than expected to be completed. Better to wait and watch and see a game in beta testing. I wish I could tell you when WitE2 will be released, but I can't. I could give you a time frame, but it would be a pretty large one. With projects like WitE2 it's not unusual for the game to be in beta testing for a year (or more). We're not yet in beta testing (we are in alpha testing). That should give you a strong clue as to the likelihood of WitE2 coming out in 2016. 2by3 has a contract with Matrix for us to publish WitE2 with them, but the game will be published when both Matrix and 2by3 feel it's ready. Based on our past experience we will have no trouble agreeing to when that time is. And you can be assured that the release of WitE2 will be due in no small measure to the dedication of the volunteers that worked on the project, to whom we are indebted.
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All understanding comes after the fact. -- Soren Kierkegaard
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