SotA secures Russian publisher

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by smack, May 10, 2017.

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  1. basalygin

    basalygin Avatar

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    I want to add that we play Sota because it's a great game, an amazing community and an excellent Portalarium.
    Spinok (Guild Master of the Russian guild), as we all worry that the localizer can destroy all this for us.
    We really want to continue playing with minimal changes for us.
     
  2. Calem

    Calem Avatar

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    Thank you for the clarification.

    The phrasing especially on the massivelyop article sounded suspiciously like partial sellout incoming, but I'm glad to hear they're effectively just a localization team.
     
  3. redfish

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    This was my point.

    My comment was not about the company.
     
  4. Berek

    Berek Portalarian Emeritus Dev Emeritus

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    As I've already said, the negative derailing debate and political arguments stop here. Any further commentary in this regard will result in your forum account being suspended.
     
  5. Time Lord

    Time Lord Avatar

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    Well Sirs, I'd like your feedback to consider the following in contrast;

    To both of you good players, I can say that Thailand is much different when it comes to spending cash. Most players here only make around $440.00 USD per month, which is around 15000 Thai Baht. Most live with their parents no matter what age or have a $70.00 a month apartment on their own. "They do spend their extra cash". The economy base here for eating and everything is adjusted to their economy, yet when it comes to large cities like Bangkok or Chiang Mai, the economy scales up the closer they live to those markets, as well as the size of their monthly paychecks. I believe there's something similar to this economic effect the further one lives away from larger Russian cities as Moscow. I could be wrong on that, but that's what I know about Russia.

    I think that all matters, yet when we see how our SOTA is made, any player who can afford the initial account can become a wealthy player if they play enough. So I do believe we need our SOTA's initial price for the game adjusted by area, but if there's only one server, then one Add-On store is all that's needed with current pricing. One note that I will say about this though, is that I would like to see an expanding availability of low priced merchandise made available in our Add-On store. I think this would go a long way to providing economic contrast with our customer base. Yet with that base possibly including more diverse real life economies, I believe an expansion of lower priced merchandise is warranted. I think we have a good amount now, but I'd like to see that expanded a bit, yet without many expiring items which would never come back. Possibly such items could come back at a later date, rather than being one time offers.

    I think there's many things to learn from here which may aide initial Episode pricing by location of the player.
    ~Time Lord~
     
  6. Browncoat Jayson

    Browncoat Jayson Legend of the Hearth

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    I think this is important regardless. The current items basically begin at $4, with most being $10-15. That's not astronomical, however it severely reduces impulse shopping. I'd consider a new pattern at $1 before I would a 6-pack of them for $5, especially since I only have one character right now. Look at some of the other MMOs pricing. I see a lot of 99¢ add-ons. There are a lot more low-end, single-purchase options than mid-range ones that we see in SotA. That doesn't even touch the Star Citizen priced houses and lots.
     
  7. LoneWerewolf

    LoneWerewolf Guest

    Hey @smack thanks for the info! I am surprised Port didn't inform us directly about it since we are the ones who funded this shindig. :)
     
  8. Lord_Darkmoon

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    It leaves a bit of a bad taste in the mouth if we have to get this information from other places when this project is so community centric. So it is a bit strange, being informed by people outside of Portalarium about such a huge news.
     
  9. Jens_T

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    I usually perceive Portalarium as very open and upfront about such information. Therefore I'd put this down to timing gone wrong. Ideally they would have posted the same announcement on the board & website when the news was released. But then they're a small team and it likely was an oversight. No harm done IMHO.
     
  10. Time Lord

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    The Art of War, in it's finest example.
    (Cut off from the advertising markets of what the larger gaming companies thought they had control over)

    I don't see this as earth shaking news, yet it is "great news". Portalarium hired promoters with incentives for them to better distribute, great news! I don't expect that to have a great influx right away, but who knows on that. I think the most important thing here, is that Portalarium has incentives worked out, which becomes the model for opening up "in carbon copy" for possibly other county's more local market savvy to their own location. This is "the art of war" at it's finest example.

    So what's the next target market by undercutting the big gaming distributor dogs?
    We're only talking advertising whenever we see something like Black Sun, yet they also have the capability to run a separate server if need be.
    I'd like to see alternative advertising through YouTuber Channels which are highly successful here in Thailand at pointing to great products.
    But I'm just a guy who knows nothing about such deals or what it may take or require, so my opinion is about worth about 1gp in game o_O...
    Though I do wonder who, or where next is ;)

    The Art of War... Kick those hidden Advertising A$$ets Portalarium!
    And Welcome to The Black Sun! :)
    ~Time Lord~:D
     
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  11. Lord_Darkmoon

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    I am curious to know how the ingame shop will be handled. Will Russian players buy through the Portalarium store and have the same prices as everyone else? Or do they have their own Black Sun store with different prices? This could disrupt the market and the community...
     
  12. Autumn Willow

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    This game would be a much better game if it weren't for the add on store. Hehe.

    But alas, port needs money. As the wise Aladdin once said, "Gotta eat to live, gotta steal to eat, Otherwise we'd get along."
     
  13. Wintermute of CoF

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    For a breakdown of regional pricing differences for SotA on Steam see here, currently the game is effectively 68% cheaper in Russia than it is in the UK for example.

    Add in some stolen credit cards and you have outlined the basic business model of G2A (here's some background reading, here's some more).
     
  14. Time Lord

    Time Lord Avatar

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    Very cool and Thanks! I favorite it for the future :) So what this means, is that I can start a SOTA club down at my local internet café for allot less than full USA pricing :D Excellent!
    [​IMG]
    I don't know why, but I'd never been as clear on that subject to have already done so...
    Thanks @Wintermute of CoF !
    ~Time Lord~:rolleyes:
     
  15. Berek

    Berek Portalarian Emeritus Dev Emeritus

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    What news are we talking about? We're not aware of having missed anything.
     
  16. Roycestein Kaelstrom

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    Could someone give me a summary what exactly does partnering with the Russian publisher do?

    In the other words, what are the responsibilities of this publisher beside distributing the game in Russia (ok maybe localization, too)?

    Will they have influence over timeline and design decision or even the actual day-to-day executions/operations that going on in Texas office?
     
  17. Jens_T

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    The "news" that you have a Russian Distributor / Partner. I believe if the news release on the gaming websites would also have been posted on the board & webpage the whole discussion here would have gone differently.
     
  18. Lained

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    Darkstarr stating in the last postmortem that they're only working on localization at the moment.

    https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?p=72007
     
  19. Roycestein Kaelstrom

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    Yeah well.. then we'd be missing out the hump night forum drama plus those gaming websites wouldn't generate much revenue through their ads, right?
     
  20. Berek

    Berek Portalarian Emeritus Dev Emeritus

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    Please see here: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?p=72007

    It was also responded to here, and we posted on social and sent out as an email in the weekly update.
     
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