Sandbox Interactive joins Stillfront

    • mikeyyk wrote:

      spirit i play the entire game all areas. i spend a ton of silver to play the game at a high level. when sbi makes silver harder for me to get i dont have the time in the day to achieve my desired silver if they make it harder - therefore i must buy the silver with real money.

      now its fine to support developers but not when the game becomes burdensome to create silver.. i dont understand how you dont get it.

      i could burn through 10m silver with my satchel and respecs in a few hours

      p.s you realised all loot and chests will be nerfed by 15% too? thats how BM works

      10 hours you make 10m
      now in 10 hours you make 8.5m

      it literally feels like a pay reduction because everybody loves one of those right
      The chest thing is not... true. Not completely. Since the average price in chest is based of regular markets, in "theory" chest got buffed. Now, if you use chests to dump items back into BM, probably is a nerf, but less than 15% because runes/souls/tomes/silver bags

    • Korn wrote:

      Marketing has never been our strength (yet). We just recently hired our first in-house marketing manager (who is doing a great job so far, by the way!). We are starting to get better at this, and the limited amount of marketing that we do works really well.

      Now, here is the thing:
      Take Albion Online - a great game but (so far) extremely limited marketing - and combine that with a Stillfront, who are an absolutely marketing powerhouse the outcome is that you take the best of both worlds.
      Haven't seen any big marketing drive spearheaded by Stillfront yet ... is this in the pipeline? Or simply spin ...?
      Midgard
      T8 Fibre, Ore, Hide, Wood & Stone Gatherer
      T8 Gathering Gear Crafter
      T8 Bags & Capes Crafter

    • Midgard wrote:

      Korn wrote:

      Marketing has never been our strength (yet). We just recently hired our first in-house marketing manager (who is doing a great job so far, by the way!). We are starting to get better at this, and the limited amount of marketing that we do works really well.

      Now, here is the thing:
      Take Albion Online - a great game but (so far) extremely limited marketing - and combine that with a Stillfront, who are an absolutely marketing powerhouse the outcome is that you take the best of both worlds.
      Haven't seen any big marketing drive spearheaded by Stillfront yet ... is this in the pipeline? Or simply spin ...?
      @Kornhas the Stillfront "marketing Powerhouse" swung into action yet ..?

      Still waiting to see it ....
      Midgard
      T8 Fibre, Ore, Hide, Wood & Stone Gatherer
      T8 Gathering Gear Crafter
      T8 Bags & Capes Crafter

    • Congratulations for being a success story. 150m, even when split, isn't a laughing matter.
      A lot of people love to complain on here, including me sometimes, but the truth is there's nothing like Albion out-there, and certainly nothing this popular & growing.
      And most likely the people commenting here never ran a business remotely close to albion's scale.

      Looking forward to the mobile launch and the new wave of players it'll bring.

    • Rhodesia wrote:

      Congratulations for being a success story. 150m, even when split, isn't a laughing matter.
      A lot of people love to complain on here, including me sometimes, but the truth is there's nothing like Albion out-there, and certainly nothing this popular & growing.
      And most likely the people commenting here never ran a business remotely close to albion's scale.

      Looking forward to the mobile launch and the new wave of players it'll bring.
      Yes, enjoy those login queues and cluster queues.

    • Midgard wrote:

      Midgard wrote:

      Korn wrote:

      Marketing has never been our strength (yet). We just recently hired our first in-house marketing manager (who is doing a great job so far, by the way!). We are starting to get better at this, and the limited amount of marketing that we do works really well.

      Now, here is the thing:
      Take Albion Online - a great game but (so far) extremely limited marketing - and combine that with a Stillfront, who are an absolutely marketing powerhouse the outcome is that you take the best of both worlds.
      Haven't seen any big marketing drive spearheaded by Stillfront yet ... is this in the pipeline? Or simply spin ...?
      @Kornhas the Stillfront "marketing Powerhouse" swung into action yet ..?
      Still waiting to see it ....
      Well, no matter how mediocre the devs are, I have to admit there are more players than ever IMO. I'm seeing a short login queue on logins at random times at least a few times a week, last week I even bought premium to make it to something I said I'd be at, but was unable to because it ran out. Be it because of StillFront or not, they have gotten more players. StillFront is a dubious choice, but I hope for the best outcome and that it isn't all spin.

      I'd love to know what the strengths of the team are, server has always had troubles, UI isn't updated very often, skills share icons, and they thought it'd be funny to make a video about the 'use all' button. What's the next thing? A video about how you finally make unique icons for all skills (PLEASE DO IT I DON'T CARE, and it seems the team doesn't either)? Maybe some more maps instead of re-skinning the same 15-30 (I don't have exact numbers, I try to ignore it) maps all over the black zones and royal continent? Mediocre stuff at best, it's so frustrating to me the game has great concepts but executed so mediocrely. At the very least hire a designer for 20k and have them make unique icons in a few days, a contractor should have a super easy time doing that... Need I remind you of the minimap icons rework fiasco?

    • Korn wrote:

      Jikap wrote:

      -
      Take Albion Online - a great game but (so far) extremely limited marketing - and combine that with a Stillfront, who are an absolutely marketing powerhouse the outcome is that you take the best of both worlds.
      That would be a fair statement if you outsourced marketing to a marketing powerhouse instead of fully selling the company. I mean I want to stay optimistic regarding AO's future, but I have tons of examples of bad game dev company acquisition in the past and almost no examples of good ones - so the statistics is unfortunately strongly not in your favor.

      Also I believe it's not entirely correct from your perspective to promise that everything will stay the same and nothing will change, because you no longer have the decision making power and SBI will have to do whatever Stillfront tells you to. Maintaining full independence while selling a company - is something juridically impossible, so for people that have any experience in this matter this all looks like conventional PR move and player base bullshitting.

      And to be completely honest with you, that's the bane of modern game dev. Companies that start as small ideological and committed studios, with big dreams of making great games, sooner or later prefer a cash grab over ideas and dreams. You are not the first company to go through it and surely not the last.

      Too bad that's not something your community hoped for :(

    • Zumzat wrote:

      Korn wrote:

      Jikap wrote:

      -
      Take Albion Online - a great game but (so far) extremely limited marketing - and combine that with a Stillfront, who are an absolutely marketing powerhouse the outcome is that you take the best of both worlds.
      is something juridically impossible, so for people that have any experience in this matter this all looks like conventional PR move and player base bullshitting.

      And to be completely honest with you, that's the bane of modern game dev. Companies that start as small ideological and committed studios, with big dreams of making great games, sooner or later prefer a cash grab over ideas and dreams. You are not the first company to go through it and surely not the last.

      Too bad that's not something your community hoped for :
      That's not true. It's not impossible just largely not what has happened, and looking at StillFront's game portfolio makes you wonder why AO is a part of that list.

      I sincerely hope that StillFront does good with marketing, but the way they operate allows for the studios to handle things as they've done before, that's their whole model. It's not an American company, it's based within the EU, even Sweden, and there are some 'simple' responsibilities they need to adhere to.

    • Zumzat wrote:

      That would be a fair statement if you outsourced marketing to a marketing powerhouse instead of fully selling the company
      Exactly. Zero need to sell out for better marketing. They could have easily outsourced. The 'marketing' excuse is incredibly disingenuous. Truth is they sold out for the cash, which is fair enough (I would have done the same) .. just be honest enough to admit it instead of trying to spin it to be something it isnt.
      Midgard
      T8 Fibre, Ore, Hide, Wood & Stone Gatherer
      T8 Gathering Gear Crafter
      T8 Bags & Capes Crafter

    • gideonflynn wrote:

      Zumzat wrote:

      That's not true. It's not impossible just largely not what has happened, and looking at StillFront's game portfolio makes you wonder why AO is a part of that list.
      Uhm, no. Acquiring something means gaining ownership over it, gaining ownership means gaining the upper decision power. No one is going to buy anything without gaining ownership over it, unless it's a scam.

      - wrote:

      why AO is a part of that list
      This has been already explained above: obviously Stillfront wants to expand their portfolio into different areas and sub-genres.

      - wrote:

      I sincerely hope that StillFront does good with marketing, but the way they operate allows for the studios to handle things as they've done before, that's their whole model. It's not an American company, it's based within the EU, even Sweden, and there are some 'simple' responsibilities they need to adhere to.
      The way it is usually done is the following: certain ever-growing financial goals are set and no direct interference is made while they are continuously met. But we all know that all MMOs have their increase and decrease cycles, they all go through good times and bad times. Thus, most likely sooner or later that interference will happen.

      Besides, I can give you about 10 examples of major gamedev companies going down the tubes after acquisition (not at once of course, but eventually). How many examples of positive cases can you give me back?

      The post was edited 2 times, last by Zumzat ().

    • Zumzat wrote:

      gideonflynn wrote:

      Zumzat wrote:

      That's not true. It's not impossible just largely not what has happened, and looking at StillFront's game portfolio makes you wonder why AO is a part of that list.
      Uhm, no. Acquiring something means gaining ownership over it, gaining ownership means gaining the upper decision power. No one is going to buy anything without gaining ownership over it, unless it's a scam.

      - wrote:

      why AO is a part of that list
      This has been already explained above: obviously Stillfront wants to expand their portfolio into different areas and sub-genres.

      - wrote:

      I sincerely hope that StillFront does good with marketing, but the way they operate allows for the studios to handle things as they've done before, that's their whole model. It's not an American company, it's based within the EU, even Sweden, and there are some 'simple' responsibilities they need to adhere to.
      The way it is usually done is the following: certain ever-growing financial goals are set and no direct interference is made while they are continuously met. But we all know that all MMOs have their increase and decrease cycles, they all go through good times and bad times. Thus, most likely sooner or later that interference will happen.
      Besides, I can give you about 10 examples of major gamedev companies going down the tubes after acquisition (not at once of course, but eventually). How many examples of positive cases can you give me back?
      Idk what your meaning of impossibility is. Nor do I know what your understanding of business practices, T&C... and how buying something has nothing to do with T&C, deals, and actual effects in the real world isn't really connected to those. Anyhow, unless we get the actual documents, those are assumptions and nothing but that. I understand the negativity, but I actually like StillFront's wording on a good amount of things, after having read on what their mission is, and how they've carried themselves. Now, that's subjective and words, but that's where I'm referring to being in the EU, where anyone is heavily fined and kept from scamming once it's found out. There's lots of regulation on this area, and it's not even getting close to something like Gamigo, yet, and given the historic value of StillFront, I really don't think this is the point. We have yet to see, though, and I'm also very skeptical.


      "Besides, I can give you about 10 examples of major game dev companies going down the tubes after acquisition (not at once of course, but eventually). How many examples of positive cases can you give me back?" I'm not able to, because I've never had that much experience with acquisitions of game companies, but I can tell you neither of us probably heard about them because they went well. You never hear about good things in the sensational ways you hear about bad things, and I once more direct you to Gamigo, which is sensational for doing exactly what you're talking about. Never heard this about StillFront. You make statements based on assumptions, and present them as pure truth. There's lot's of room for this to go other ways than you say, it's just not usual (afaik), but not impossible ~~