While that may be true, I lose interest rather quickly. If I can destroy the AI in a campagin, it feels as if I won the game, even though technically I haven't even scratched the surface and fully explore what the game can offer.
The bad news however is that by offering something like this, you create a disincentive to actually buy the game. If you play the tutorial, and you win the tutorial, you feel happy and glad and have lots of fun. Why pay for the full game, when it feels as if you have already won?
This is an article about a indie game known as Oasis, which offered a tutorial campagin too, which does allow the player to experience the game. The thing you offer seems to be the same as Oasis, and this leads to the problem of people not paying for the full game since they are sastified with the demo.
If you feel like you've completed a game just after completing a
simulated campaign in the tutorial (where the AI is not even able to act fully, and you are guided through all the strategy), I don't really know how to respond to that. Our demo so far seems to have an above-average conversion rate to paying customers, so I think we're doing
something right.
Even if it was a full campaign (which it is not), that would be like winning one skirmish in, say Supreme Commander, and then feeling like that was it for you with that game. If that's the way you feel, then that's the way you feel, but I think there's a disconnect here. When I say "campaign," it's like the longest skirmish you've ever played, it's not like something with story or whatever. You are set up with a full galaxy and lots of sub-objectives to optionally pursue while you are going after your main objective. Games like this are meant to be played more than once by nature, that's just how (non-scripted-campaigns) of RTS games are. If you're thinking of this as being in any way analogous to a scripted-campaign from Warcraft, or SupCom, or Rise of Nations or so, I think that may be the disconnect. Apples and oranges.
I'm surprised that you'd give advice on why the demo is ineffective without even looking at it, but thanks for taking a look at the game. The comparison to Oasis is interesting, and I like Daniel Cook's blog, too, but a tutorial is not the same thing as a real game in my opinion. By the end of the tutorial you are finally, mostly, ready to try the real game. And, like any good demo, we limit that severely -- in this case, around 1/10 of a real single campaign, similar to having just the first level of an FPS game or something.
Without the tutorial as we have it, there's no way for people to see all the interesting strategic opportunities and differences that are in this game as compared to other games. Most people who have bought it and who have then talked to me have in fact mentioned the intermediate tutorial as being one of the big deciding factors ("I was halfway through it and knew I had to get it," or "I finished that tutorial and then played a little of a real campaign and then knew I wanted to get it," etc). Anyway, thanks for the advice, and for taking a look at the game.
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Topic: AI War (Read 6178 times)