In regards to GFW staff mentioning on their podcast that their cover exclusive for Freedom Force vs The Third Reich was terrible (and did not sell well) because the cover editorial staff ruined it by underselling the game. This elicited a really funny response from Mr. Levine:
"I'm comfortable penning the financial failure of my game on those &%&*. I wont take any responsibility for me, for making that game and maybe not adding enough features or making it too much like an expansion pack and maybe not marketing it enough... f^#@ those guys, they ruined it for me. They took food out of my baby's mouth, Ziff Davis * ruined freedom force. If you want to see a Freedom Force 3 you know where to line up"
Seriously you guy's should download the GFW podcast, I'm amazed how funny Ken Levine is.
* Ziff Davis is the company that owns Games for Windows
:huh: So ... he's saying it's possible there could be a Freedom Force 3?
Yes, I'm in denial.
(And yeah that quote is far funnier in in the context of the rest of the podcast. "Look out, X-MEN! Here comes Freedom Force!")
It must be out of context because I just don't get it.
I was too lazy to transcribe the chunk before and after but the guy's at GFW are talking about Freedom Force since they LOVE that series (they used to drop the name every few issues) but when it came to doing an exclusive cover the marketing people were like "Freedom Force what?" and they did this cover that does the series a complete disservice. The cover basically said "watch out X-Men! Here comes freedom force!" but it felt more like "the X-men are cool! These are not the X-Men!"
So Kevin is injecting a little irony by saying "oh, so the bad sales was YOUR FAULT and not our own mistakes" which he lists off making it likely that he's spent some time looking at forums.
Freedom Force 3? Still no word of course...
If they only knew....This community has been the best forum that I've ever been a (inconsequential) part of. The user created content for Freedom Force (while not really abiding by the strict standards of Copyright laws) has been the greatest I have seen. I can't remember a single time I was excited about a release of a user-mod, skin, or mesh for any other game. Then again, I guess it's good we are operating under the radar, otherwise we wouldn't see as much progress as we have. Still I dream about the days where they come up with a similar game that has the controls and features of MUA but fully moddable (I really wish you didn't have to point and click to control your hero).
During the interview, there was so much irony and sarcasm flying around that a written version isn't necessarily clear about what they were really saying. What I liked most about that interview was that Ken Levine, while making those tongue-in-cheek remarks about GFW's responsibility in killing FFvT3R sales, was really acknowledging a litany of mistakes he made that were generally responsible. It was refreshing.
It was also interesting to be reminded of how ego issues in the production of a magazine (or anything, really) can lead to results that make no sense. E.g., that stupid cover caption that seemed to be about the X-Men with a passing reference to Freedom Force was a result of clueless New York magazine people who don't really understand the target gamer audience or the intent of the writers, so they change the cover to something they think will "sell magazines", even though it resulted in a cover that was probably just confusing to potential buyers. And, it apparently failed to help the magazine sales anyway.
I don't read GFW, but I have heard stories before (and actually worked somewhere where this happened to one of my projects) where something that was written to appeal to the intended audience/users/whoever was overruled by some drone who insisted he knew what people "really" wanted to see, even though he had no familiarity with those people or what they wanted.
Anyway, Ken Levine didn't actually say anything that we FF fans hadn't heard before, but many of us hadn't heard him say it before. And, to be honest, he didn't really throw anything out there to give hope (or trepidation) to those looking for a third FF game.
I'm not entirely sure that the actual game was responsible for low sales. The game itself was actually pretty good, even if it wasn't all that different from the original Freedom Force. There were a lot of people who never even played the original Freedom Force, so they wouldn't even know to make the comparison.
It definitely needed to be marketed differently, among other things.
Absolutely... my only complaint about :ffvstr: was their game tweaks directed at making it a multiplayer game. Nerfing max projectile distance and intertia on thrown objects messed a lot with my characters.
Quote from: lugaru on March 02, 2008, 08:29:17 PM
Absolutely... my only complaint about :ffvstr: was their game tweaks directed at making it a multiplayer game. Nerfing max projectile distance and intertia on thrown objects messed a lot with my characters.
And their "simpler" a.k.a. we must think the world is full of complete morons, energy system.
Quote from: BentonGrey on March 03, 2008, 07:12:48 AMAnd their "simpler" a.k.a. we must think the world is full of complete morons, energy system.
More likely, they received complaints from a bunch of complete morons about it (whether they be reviewers, or just a random fan at a convention somewhere), and heard nothing about it at all from people who never would have considered it difficult to begin with (how can you send praise about something that seems to simple & elemental as to not be a breakthrough?).
Ken Levine sounds like a pretty decent guy with a good sense of humor...
I almost feel bad about killing him off in that Metal Storm mission now........
Quote from: Panther_Gunn on March 03, 2008, 02:04:07 PMMore likely, they received complaints from a bunch of complete morons about it
I asked about this once on the official forums, and they claimed it was an issue that came up during their internal playtesting. But yeah, I'd sure like to meet these people who couldn't work out that an up-arrow means "more power" and a down-arrow means "less". Assuming they haven't all died in "Darwin Award" type accidents by now. :P
Not being able to crank down the power and put it on auto-repeat put a severe crimp in my playing style, that's for sure. :thumbdown:
The lack of an auto-repeat function makes the game nearly unplayable for me with a full team, in all honesty. I mean, I can't justify giving most characters a free ranged attack, so I'm stuck pausing every other second to issue a new order........ugh.....that's one problem I REALLY wish our community could solve.
Actually, repeating EP-using attacks are probably doable, at least by using the "dread hand" of custom actions...
Consider it a request Stumpy, and my second dearest wish!