What is Atelier801's plan for the future? |
Geoffan « Citoyen » 1552940160000
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LONG POST WARNING I've noticed that Atelier isn't really finding much success with their games apart from Transformice, and that their other games apart from Dead Maze really get no updates and are generally dead. Nekodancer is the best example of this, but it's going to shut down when Flash support ends in 2020 anyway, Fortoresse doesn't seem to garner any interest from anyone and Bouboum is in a similar situation, Dead Maze was the game with the largest amount of money invested but it's small playerbase mainly consists of people who played TFM and found out about Dead Maze that way and it hasn't been updated for a while either. The latest update arrived in October, almost 5 months ago. Here is some data from Steam Charts, though this is not representative of TFM's playerbase and I have no idea how the Dead Maze community is spread out so take it with a bucket of salt. According to their data, Transformice has been garnering an average of around 526 players online during the last 30 days with 1143 during the peak during this time period. This is not a good metric of the overall playerbase as most people tend to play in their browsers, but that is still roughly almost 2 times less than for example March 2017, and over 4 times less than February 2015, when the game first launched on Steam. Dead Maze doesn't fare well either, with a rough average of 180 players on at all times in the last 30 days, with only 296 games during the peak. Compared to March of last year, that is over 6 times less players on average and over 7 times less players on during the peak. With this recent trend, one has to wonder, what is Atelier's plan for the future? These MMO-esque games have never really succeeded apart from Transformice which was released in a completely different era. It seems to me that A801 have been riding off the success of TFM and have been trying to replicate that success and falling short every time. The age of the browser game has passed years ago, yet A801 are still trying to push for these types of games. Let's look at the stats from some other sites from some other browser game sites, shall we? On Kongregate, the most played games that were *actually* released last year (Kongregate has a republish function which will change the release date but you can still see some reviews before that date), the most played game was Idle Skilling, with around 1 115 000 plays. The second was Re: Archer with around 850 000 plays, and the 3rd was Swarm Simulator: Evolution with around 720 000 plays. That is definitely not bad, and you have to consider that users of these sites mainly play older games. Newgrounds' most played game [size=1]that isnt fucking pornlin the past year was YOU LEFT ME. with around 145 000 plays, the second being Madness: Sierra Nevada with around 110 000 plays and the third was Rogue Fable III with around 84 000 plays. This does not count page views for games that have been released before March 13th, 2018, or any other content on Newgrounds such as art and video. This data shows that the most played games on these 2 sites from last year haven't reached the hights that games used to do, and it generally shows that sites for browser games are losing popularity, and games like Transformice are no exception. What can we do to solve this issue? Note: I could not find much data for other sites, and I cannot use other third party services like Alexa or SimilarWeb, as I need to put in some credit card info to use their free trial, which I can't do as I am a minor, and SimilarWeb only offers the a 3 month timeframe for their free trial, and pageview data is kind of useless without comparisons. |
Tunaxxl « Censeur » 1552940700000
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its transformice adventures |
Geoffan « Citoyen » 1552942380000
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Tunaxxl a dit : Aw yeah, I forgot about that game, which is coming in at least 2 or so years, is another MMO which are very expensive, and is set in the same universe as a Flash game which will be at least a decade old by that point. The amount of projects A801 have started and have never done anything with is mind-boggling. |
Tunaxxl « Censeur » 1552944240000
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Geoffan a dit : its a html5 game and will come out in april as a demo Dernière modification le 1552944300000 |
Namekuji « Censeur » 1552945080000
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Geoffan a dit : this is their current future plan, after that? probably die a slow death milking transformice with collector items while transformice adventure's player base tanks after a month. I REALLY didn't think they would make another game after the mistake that dead maze was but they are clearly careless with their time. I got no damn idea why they don't listen to their veteran player base who know better than they do. there are reasons many people have stuck around for years and new players put this game down after a few hours |
Geoffan « Citoyen » 1553027160000
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Wizzy a dit : I don't think that a new game was a mistake, but I think it was a mistake for it to be another MMO which is looking to try and be another browser game. The fact that they're trying to push for another one after Dead Maze completely tanked seems ridiculous. I have to wonder, what is their financial situation like? The fact that they're shelling out so many expensive games must mean that they have a good amount of money, but they're going to need to find another long term success, even if it's a smaller one. For TFM's playerbase, I believe that it's shrinking because there are other free games as alternatives, free to play games that are arguably better. Most of us started playing when we were kids, and back then actually good free to play games were a rarity. Your only real choices were kid friendly MMO's that you could play in your browser like Club Penguin and Animal Jam, other browser games that weren't very high quality for the most part and if your parents allowed you to download stuff, ROBLOX was an option. TFM was of a higher standard than most free to play games back then, so naturally a big playerbase spawned. These days, kids have Fortnite, Roblox is more popular than ever and mobile phones and mobile games are becoming even more popular even though they're a massive industry already, and TFM can't compete with games that might not be better, but draw in a bigger audience. A801 tried entering the mobile market themselves with Run For Cheese, but a generic endless runner that isn't based of a big franchise isn't going to bring much money in. |
Force_shaman « Censeur » 1553203320000
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It's infuriating how they just drop their old games when they start new projects. If you can't handle more games then you shouldn't be making them. The state tfm has been left in where it's basically perpetually supported by the players themselves is such a bad indicator for any game you choose to play by a801. I've played this game since 2010 and it literally kills me to see how many unanswered problems this game will have until it shuts down. |
Mouldychesse « Citoyen » 1553430420000
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Has any of the Atelier members left? i only know sydoline lmfao |
Namekuji « Censeur » 1553432700000
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https://www.transformice.com/page/3/index.php a year back meli said they are not even sure about their own future, it really sounded like they were ready to go under. |
Shadowwinter « Citoyen » 1553512920000
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I'm always surprised when I swing back around to check in on things when I think about the game; And to see that it's still up and running is quite impressive to say the least. It's absolutely baffling that the game's managed to last thing long, especially when you can remember the times when everyone was a brown mouse, there were only 5 ground types and they all looked vastly different than they do now. It doesn't surprise me that they're choosing to make another game. In my personal opinion Transformice was and has been a "Finished Project" since the release of the two extra skill trees which was... All the way back in early 2015? There's not really much else innovative they can do with the game without changing the core game-play (more than they already have) and releasing/rehashing events. The game's always been more about the community with suggestions and forum driven discussions but the "Golden age" for all that died out years ago. I went and looked at the sneak peak for TFMA and if I'm honest? It doesn't look promising. It's cute and I'll probably try the demo/Full release if I remember too, but unless it's something more than a browser based game then it's just going to get blown out of the water by pretty much any other Indie title worth it's salt on Steam. As it's already been said; Times have changed, and thing's are far from what they used to be. I don't think the company will be going anywhere, but it'll be interesting to see how things turn up in 2020 -- Especially for Transformice. I just hope this new game gets better treatment than their previous one(s) did. I don't really know if I'd count Fortoresse, Bouboum, Or Nekodancer because as far as I could tell they were just side projects that were meant to be forgotten about after a month of "updates" were given to them. Understandably so because they all fell off pretty hard off the hype for them died down. I suppose the question that begs to be answered is: Is this game going to be something unique, or is it going to end up being another cliche attempt at following a dead trend? |
Cyanny « Citoyen » 1553547000000
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Geoffan! I'm your biggest fan! Anyway, I don't think Transformice was meant to be a serious game with competition, but rather a minigame where friends could have fun failing as shamans together and then move on, but since the developers found it successful, they decided to expand it beyond its small gameplay by adding shaman skills and what not. It did not actually change gameplay. It only just made it feel "bloated", in my humble opinion. I'd also say that today's kids are more focused at gaming on their phones and do not need to go on their computers anymore to find anything to play. I mean by this that Transformice has a concept that was overhyped in 2010, back when phones weren't dominant. Gaming on phone is way easier and much more convenient. Bored? Just swipe up the lock screen and download a game off the app store. There is no need to wait until you get home, then to boot the computer and to search for games online. The computer is only worth the patience it takes to turn on, when it's a competitive game that is hardly playable on phone. Think something like WoW or LoL. Besides, I don't think the problem lies only on Flash, but two-dimensional games overall. Maybe I could be wrong, but it's rare nowadays that you see a successful two-dimensional game. Kids nowadays are surrounded by three-dimensional hits like Fortnite. Maybe they seem to find two-dimensional games unusual, just like how I found retro games unusual back when I was still 10. It is no longer attractive. One last thing, which is a point I don't see brought up quite often: Transformice has unappealing colours to kids. The grayish purple background alone gives it a somewhat dull feeling, reminding me of desktop wallpapers in the mid 90s like that of NeXTSTEP. Saturated colours are far more attractive to the eyes. Plus, the animation of the mice is not fun to look at. How many frames are there exactly when the mouse jumps? Two. The only difference between them is that one is the horizontally flipped version of the other. If you looked at a game like Fancy Pants Adventure, which also happens to be a Flash series, the character gains momentum the longer it runs, flips while jumping, etc. which is much more fun to play with. tl;dr: game didn't age well Dernière modification le 1553547240000 |
Retrouvaille « Citoyen » 1553673240000
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Cyanny a dit : Undertale, Showel Knight, Isaac, Celeste, Super Meat Ball, Castle Crusher, Limbo, Terraria, and the list goes on and on |
Cyanny « Citoyen » 1553702940000
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Retrouvaille a dit : Yep, you're right. Sorry about that. Funnily enough, most of the names in your list got "retro" art in them, which also means that I was wrong about a different point in the previous post as well. |
Bhvana « Censeur » 1553743320000
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Geoffan's post Geoffan a dit : So you are making other people suggest A801 projects? Shadowwinter's post Shadowwinter a dit : Dernière modification le 1554588600000 |
Speartongod1 « Citoyen » 1554096180000
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I don't get it, wouldn't it make more sense to add a HUGE update in Transformice, not make an entire new game. This will be the end of Atelier801, since its most successful, popular game: Transformice, dies from no updates. Here's an example: You make a Game, it makes millions of dollars, however you ran out of ideas for the game, slowly over the years, so instead of making a big update, you make a ENTIRE different game which is based off the first game, not to mention it will cost money to create this game, and it will not make a lot of money compared to the first game at all.... Sounds pretty silly, doesn't it? Dernière modification le 1554096300000 |
Namekuji « Censeur » 1558575120000
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now we can watch transformice adventures go the direction of dead maze |
Likulau « Citoyen » 1558616700000
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What they should be doing is fixing and reviving their most successful game; TFM. They should have been doing that a long time ago, to be honest. This game once had a population in the millions; there is a reason for that and maybe they should think about why. Moving over to a new technology (HTML5 most likely, as it will offer the broadest support) would be a huge step in that direction. From reading the Kickstarter on TFMA it looks like they planned a full release (Windows/OSX/Linux and mobile) for the game; they should do the same for TFM. |