Thoughts on ways to improve GDS

[Spartacus]

A little back story then the main post. I've been playing GDS games since 2007/08 when I found them when I was in Iraq. Since then, the team split up and a new studio was formed. That studio consistently puts out 5 games a year. They are the same 5 games, just with various updates and upgrades, but they are consistent. Keeps the community engaged and excited. What's more, while each game is different, you can tell that each game is made by a group that shares ideas and information. The games feel like they are coming from a single studio.

 

My favorite two game series here are TEW and WMMA, both created by Adam. While I prefer WMMA, I think the vast majority of people here are here for those two games and specifically TEW. If you boot one up and then jump into the other, you can tell that they came from the same studio. Which they are even more so, coming from the same creator. He did experiment with Comic Book Hero, which had a great foundation and potential.

 

The only other creator that seems active is Derek. His games always sound great and I hope they have found an audience, but they don't feel like anything by Adam. In fact, if you told me that the two have never talked and shared ideas, I wouldn't be surprised. Instead of seeming like a game studio, it seems far more like two people making games sometimes and then a company putting them out.

 

Code of Superheroes should have been been Comic Book Hero 2, but instead it seemed like if CBH was Marvel then CoS was DC (or the other way around, whichever way you'd prefer the comparison). Mafia, Imperium and Arcadia all sounded awesome and I was picturing these games in an architecture similar to TEW or WMMA or even CBH for Mafia. But again, I wouldn't have even known that these games were from the same studio if I didn't get them from this website.

 

On top of that, the games that most of us play are so spread out. Which I get. You having one guy put out a game a year, especially when he spends so much time fixing the game he put out to make sure his customers are getting the best experience possible (I can't speak highly enough of the customer engagement). But that still leaves big gaps between games we look forward to. I believe WMMA 5 was put out in late 2017 or early 2018 with TEW 2020 coming out early to mid 2020. That's honestly not too bad, unless you aren't interested in WMMA at all. Then you are talking about a 4 year gap in between games that interest you.

 

I'm sure in that time, we've lost players that just haven't kept up as this is a place that you have to deliberately come to. And without new content, it's pretty easy to forget about this place.

 

In conclusion, if you have got through my ramblings, I think the biggest two things that could help GDS can be summed up in two points. #1 Put out at least a game a year. #2 Those games should feel like they came from the same studio. I know that #1 is easier said than done, but #2 is a must, I believe. I also hope this is taken the way I meant it. I'm not attempting to slight GDS, but instead hoping to point out things that I hope are clear but for one reason or another, isn't being hit.

[Dalton]

I think you might have a misunderstanding of what Grey Dog Software intends to be.

 

I don't think anyone involved with GDS, except maybe Adam, does this for a living. The games here are mostly labors of love. It's a small company that publishes a variety of text sims when the developers want to make them.

 

GDS isn't Paradox Interactive and that's okay.

[Derek DiBenedetto]

The only other creator that seems active is Derek. His games always sound great and I hope they have found an audience, but they don't feel like anything by Adam. In fact, if you told me that the two have never talked and shared ideas, I wouldn't be surprised. Instead of seeming like a game studio, it seems far more like two people making games sometimes and then a company putting them out....<snip> But again, I wouldn't have even known that these games were from the same studio if I didn't get them from this website.

 

My game design focuses and philosophies are quite different than Adam's (or Arlie's), and that's ok. He has his strengths and I have mine, and I think that makes for more interesting games than if everything looked and played the same (aka Sports Interactive, Paradox, etc). GD isn't intended to be that sort of company at all, IMO.

 

As someone stated above, I do not do this for a living, but to supplement my income. Adam (I think?) is going to school for something else, so perhaps not him either anymore. We cater to a very underserved niche/genre at varying intervals, and that's GD in a nutshell. Would more releases and such make the site more 'successful' overall? Maybe, maybe not, but the genre we serve wouldn't ever be 10 million copy sellers anyway.