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What exactly is GNI & AV doing?
Just a thought.
We heard so much about the deals Aventurine made with GNI AND Audio Visual. I remember dozens of posts by fans proclaiming tremendous victories back then.
Well... A great deal of time has passed since those announcements, and it's time to evaluate the actual "deals" we were informed about.
My question is simply this.
What exactly is GNI & AV doing?
If there is actually a deal with GNI, then why are there servers AND bandwidth issues causing them to postpone the launch? Seems to me that in reality there is NO deal with GNI to provide and maintain the server cluster. Aventurine is talking and acting like they have ONE server set up in their offices. I could be mistaken but curious what you guys think.
Audio Visual. Hmm... Remember them? We were told what a GREAT company they were and they will distribute Darkfall to the masses. Well... After all this time, tell me exactly what they have accomplished for this game? Anything at all?
I'll give you ONE thing AV should have AT THE VERY LEAST if this deal is legitimate. ONE THING.
BOX ART.
Yes, you heard me (or read me, lol).
BOX ART, for crying out loud! Very first thing you create with your artists is the front cover of the box. You need this for recognition and marketing. This is usually done YEARS in advance and doesn't have to wait for future events. So... Where is the box art? If they haven't even done this simple thing, they aren't actually doing anything, period.
Darkfall is like a mystery novel.
Comments
there was some rumours about GNI working 16 hours per day before Christmas time to get servers ready if that is true and the bandwidth problems also are true we get some fail host :S
BestSigEver :P
GNi is the server of choice, located in germany, NA, and a few other places.
AV will publish the game I believe, They still need Distributors in order to get the box to the retailers. (if they still plan on going with a box set).
You can find info via google on both AV and GNi.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
GNi is providing a server and other networking services, but its only for 1 game world used for the closed beta at the moment, and they are yet to get anywhere near 10,000 concurrent users hosted in game simultaneously on it, I personally have seen no evidence that they even have much more then 1000 in game so far, all indications reveal only a few hundred at a time to be more likely.
The idea or hopes of the supporters months ago that the announcement of this "deal" between Gni and Aventurine meant they had a finalized timetable for launch and had the resources available to launch Darkfall normally had proven to be wishful thinking.
Aventurine just simply don't have the financial resources necessary for the amount of bandwidth and servers needed for hundreds of thousands of customers to give Darkfall a normal industry launch despite their previous announcements to contrary.
I would think there will only be one or a few servers at launch, and money from preorders, box/client sales and subscriptions and demand will determine if they expand the number or not.
The deal with AVE was always strange but touted as conclusive evidence that Darkfall was legitimate by the supporters, because Aventurine were announced as the publisher for Darkfall in 2003, then they said they were looking for publishers for years but they could still self publish, then they said they had found a " partner" to help with "distribution" but they would still be involved with publishing.
AVE have done nothing so far expected from a publisher or distributor but neither have Aventurine so they both seem equally incompetent or AVE have simply not been asked to distribute / help publish yet.
Then Tasos makes all these claims about refusing offers from well know company's to publish his game and offers of lots of money if they make changes and if Aventurine agree to take less of a profit from sales and subscriptions, just seems like BS to me and contradictory.
The old joint announcements from GNi and AVI are suspect now because they were for the launch within 2008 timeline,and things have obviously changed over these last months, they may still remain or there may or been new negotiations.
I would personally say that GNI and AVI are both reasonably competent and professional in their own rights and any delays or problems are much more likely to be a product of Aventurines incompetence, lack of experience and unprofessionalism or simply their lack of money to pay for their services.
Does not surprise me that Tasos is constantly attempting to attribute blame on them for not being up to speed or causing delays, they are an easy target and will be compliant to an extent because Aventurine is or has plans on doing business with them.
Nobody outside of the companies involved knows what each is doing.
My guess would be AV is manufacturing the boxes and distributing them.
GNi is hosting the servers. My guess would be that the main cluster is not online yet and they are still using Aventurines own servers or a small GNi cluster, which would explain why they have been testing with features turned off. If is the case I would imagine they are doing this due to the cost.
Neither Aventurine, nor Darkfall Online are present on AVE's website. I would expect to see it in AVE's "Milestones in the life of Audio Visual Enterprises SA", but it's not there.
So, irrespective of Taso's press release on December 5, 2008, I'd hazard a guess that AVE isn't doing jack for either Aventurine or Darkfall, at least not yet. We certainly haven't seen any of the "normal" activities one would expect of a publisher, such as marketing, advertising, manufacturing (there's been no word that the game will be sold via normal retail channels in a box and there certainly hasn't been any mention of it going gold - the closest indication of it going gold is Tasos referring to the "release candidate client").
I'd love to see information as to what AVE is doing for Darkfall.
~Ripper
Why would you expect them to make a big hoo har about it? If they already are distibuting movies and have facilities in place to do this it's probably not a big deal, they are just tipping their toe into the waters of doing exactly the same thing but for games. It looks like they are doing only the core activies of manufacturing and distribution to third party games / movie distributors warehouses. I wouldn't expect to see them create EA style circus around this game as I doubt they are willing to spend millions on marketing.
Why would you expect them to make a big hoo har about it? If they already are distibuting movies and have facilities in place to do this it's probably not a big deal, they are just tipping their toe into the waters of doing exactly the same thing but for games. It looks like they are doing only the core activies of manufacturing and distribution. I wouldn't expect to see them create EA style circus around this game as I doubt they are willing to spend millions on marketing.
Creating a new games division and signing an agreement to publish a MMO is pretty big news. As such, I'd expect to see at least a mention of it on their website. Regardless, the article I linked lists traditional game publisher activiies, none of which we've seen from AVE, including "core activies of manufacturing and distribution". There's no indication that anything is being manufactured or distributed, much less marketed. As such, it's not unreasonable to question what AVE is actually doing for Aventurine and Darkfall.
Generally speaking, as mentioned in the link, publishers usually finance game development. So, at miminum, is AVE funding Aventurine to develop Darkfall? We've seen what happends with other indie developers when they can't get or lose a publisher. Spacetime Studios is a perfect example. They're an indie studio in Austin that was forced to layoff all but core staff when NCSoft pulled out of their publishing deal:
"A New Beginning" (January 8, 2008)
...
Our project has been cancelled by the current publisher. Regardless of how you look at it, we won’t be entering production in the immediate future, so we are retrenching and unfortunately had to let 12 folks go. There are always wild rumors at a time like this so we wanted to be as specific as possible to the number and circumstance. All 12 employees released were given extended benefits, severance and will be supplied letters of recommendation. These were good folks and we are not happy about it. We’ll do anything we can to help them land somewhere else. If you are a developer and are looking for good folks, drop us a line at jobs@spacetimestudios.com.
...
"Spacetime Studios Acquires Blackstar IP from NCsoft®"
"Another Chaper" (July 31, 2008) (emphasis mine)
News travels fast so let’s get right to it.
Our company has been entirely self-funded the for the last six months while we tried to find a publishing deal for ‘Blackstar.’ Throughout this period we have held onto our pre-production development team because, honestly, we think they are the best of the best. We have been shopping Blackstar around but - right now, at least – the concept of a SciFi space/ground IP has proven to be a challenge. Our studio cannot survive at its current burn rate without a publishing deal, so we face a necessary (though very difficult and painful) decision. We are scaling down from thirty-two down to sixteen folks in the hopes of developing a pitch, a prototype and another publishing deal.
We will be letting some very good folks go. They will receive extended benefits and we will be doing everything we can to help them land on their feet again. We consider these people to be the cream of the crop, so if you are looking to staff up your team please drop us a line at jobs@spacetimestudios.com.
"Studio Update"
Head’s up… we’re back! We have found an amazing publishing partner and are working on a truly EVOLUTIONARY project. We are scaling back up so if you are looking for employment over the next 6 months please keep watching our job listings. There is not a lot more we can talk about right now, but we would like to take a moment to say THANKS to all the folks who have stuck with us and offered their support during this time of transition.
"We got Space...you got Time?"
A friend of mine has an interview with them, as a result of this job fair. Good luck to him!
As you can see, this is a perfect example of an indie game development studio who's fortunes pretty much rest solely on having a publisher to help finance the development of their game. When their previous publisher pulled out, they had to layoff staff, they had to acquire the IP for the game from the previous publisher, they had to be self funded for several months until they could find a new publisher/source of funding and now they're staffing back up! On a side note, it's refreshing to see their level of honesty and open communication.
~Ripper
I wouldn't expect them to announce that they have started production of the disks, maybe they will but maybe not. Also bear in mind that they have not paid for development of this game as is normally the case with with these traditional publishers EA games ect so have a far smaller piece of the pie than is usual, as far as I know they are only getting 35%. It doesn't look like they are going do a large amount of marketing or feel obliged to keep people updated of every step of the process. Look at some other titles instead of AAA mmo's from massive lables they don't do the kind of stuff you guys want when these games get released.
I wouldn't expect them to announce that they have started production of the disks, maybe they will but maybe not. Also bear in mind that they have not paid for development of this game as is normally the case with with these traditional publishers EA games ect so have a far smaller piece of the pie than is usual, as far as I know they are only getting 35%. It doesn't look like they are going do a large amount of marketing or feel obliged to keep people updated of every step of the process. Look at some other titles instead of AAA mmo's from massive lables they don't do the kind of stuff you guys want when these games get released.
On what do you base these statements? It's pure conjecture. What we do know is that they don't appear to have done anything generally expected of a game publisher. We don't know whether they've funded development or not, because nothing has been announced other than the following (ranslated by Google from Greek to English):
In a final agreement with the company went Aventurine the Audiovisual, on the exclusive cooperation between the two companies for the issuance, distribution and exploitation in any form in Greece and other 50 countries of the subscriber, interactive, web game multiple roles use the name DARKFALL, against payment rights (royalties) in Aventurine based on projected sales.
In a notice indicated that the Darkfall, pay a game last generation, and will be available to play via the Internet. In Darkfall, the most expected to issue on-line games, belongs to the so-called MMORPG (Massively Myltiplayer Online Role Playing Games), or games where the subscriber, using appropriate software and monthly subscription, can be connected at any time in the virtual environment of the game, which has created one or more virtual characters.Compared with the corresponding existing on-line games, the Darkfall offers better graphics, technology that allows simultaneous connection of more users, more interactivity and increased options from the user. Darkfall expect the pilot to go to the international market in October 2008. Also in this business plan agreed between the companies that a joint company with the development and dissemination of computer games on line in the global market.
The announcement stressed that the agreement is part of the strategy of the company Audiovisual for entering new, dynamic developing activities in the field of home entertainment. The company will initially set up for Gaming Board, through this cooperation, be placed on the market for dynamic on-line games, which present the greatest growth in the field of videogames. The market for videogames is also a dynamic market, sales of which in 2007 surpassed the sales of the music industry, while dynamically changing the number of users on-line games (expected to exceed 200 million users in 2008). ; Moreover, the technology of these games, where one part of the program is installed on the user and another part is installed on remote servers, does not allow illegal copies. In this way the Audiovisual believes it will avoid the loss of revenue from piracy in any form.
Granted, the translation isn't great, but there are definitely key points:
All of these, once again, lead to the question "What has AVE done for Aventurine and Darkfall?" Personally, I'd love to see AVE come out with a press release, at minimum, although a marketing/distribution campaign would be great.
~Ripper
Feb25 is just around the corner, I think its safe to say that you can pertty much rule out seeing the boxed retail version in game stores. So its looking like a direct D/L only. That will lock out a lot of potental players due to there D/L cap.
If they had a version of the box cover, DVD, or CD in there hands they would show that puppy to everyone.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
I wouldn't expect them to announce that they have started production of the disks, maybe they will but maybe not. Also bear in mind that they have not paid for development of this game as is normally the case with with these traditional publishers EA games ect so have a far smaller piece of the pie than is usual, as far as I know they are only getting 35%. It doesn't look like they are going do a large amount of marketing or feel obliged to keep people updated of every step of the process. Look at some other titles instead of AAA mmo's from massive lables they don't do the kind of stuff you guys want when these games get released.
On what do you base these statements? It's pure conjecture. What we do know is that they don't appear to have done anything generally expected of a game publisher. We don't know whether they've funded development or not, because nothing has been announced other than the following (ranslated by Google from Greek to English):
In a final agreement with the company went Aventurine the Audiovisual, on the exclusive cooperation between the two companies for the issuance, distribution and exploitation in any form in Greece and other 50 countries of the subscriber, interactive, web game multiple roles use the name DARKFALL, against payment rights (royalties) in Aventurine based on projected sales.
In a notice indicated that the Darkfall, pay a game last generation, and will be available to play via the Internet. In Darkfall, the most expected to issue on-line games, belongs to the so-called MMORPG (Massively Myltiplayer Online Role Playing Games), or games where the subscriber, using appropriate software and monthly subscription, can be connected at any time in the virtual environment of the game, which has created one or more virtual characters.Compared with the corresponding existing on-line games, the Darkfall offers better graphics, technology that allows simultaneous connection of more users, more interactivity and increased options from the user. Darkfall expect the pilot to go to the international market in October 2008. Also in this business plan agreed between the companies that a joint company with the development and dissemination of computer games on line in the global market.
The announcement stressed that the agreement is part of the strategy of the company Audiovisual for entering new, dynamic developing activities in the field of home entertainment. The company will initially set up for Gaming Board, through this cooperation, be placed on the market for dynamic on-line games, which present the greatest growth in the field of videogames. The market for videogames is also a dynamic market, sales of which in 2007 surpassed the sales of the music industry, while dynamically changing the number of users on-line games (expected to exceed 200 million users in 2008). ; Moreover, the technology of these games, where one part of the program is installed on the user and another part is installed on remote servers, does not allow illegal copies. In this way the Audiovisual believes it will avoid the loss of revenue from piracy in any form.
Granted, the translation isn't great, but there are definitely key points:
All of these, once again, lead to the question "What has AVE done for Aventurine and Darkfall?" Personally, I'd love to see AVE come out with a press release, at minimum, although a marketing/distribution campaign would be great.
~Ripper
You can add this to your list also. not sure if its tied in but its curious. www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/219832
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
double post
On what do you base these statements? It's pure conjecture. What we do know is that they don't appear to have done anything generally expected of a game publisher. We don't know whether they've funded development or not, because nothing has been announced other than the following (ranslated by Google from Greek to English):
It's not speculation, it's quite clear that they have only secured publishing rights for Europe and have not paid for the entire project. If they had paid development they would have the rights to publish game anywhere in the world and it would not necessary to specify that they only have European distribution rights, they would have worldwide rights until they licenced other regions to someone else. I shall give you an example of this occuring for a different game Warhammer Online. This game is owned by EA , they paid for it's development and own Mythic. Exclusive rights to publish Warhammer is however owned by France Telecom SA (aka GOA) in Europe and they pay royalties to EA. This is the same with Darkfall, Aventurine owns it and AVE pay them 35% royalties on sales in Europe. I would be interested to see who paid for Warhammers marketing, I would be willing to bet France Telecom paid for somewhere between nothing and very little.
www.capital.gr/news.asp
This does throw up an interesting problem, when they licence it to a US publisher will they insist on IP blocking access to EU servers as I'm sure they will want exclusive access to US customers?
Once again, these are all logical questions for which you (or any of us, I'm not trying to "call you out") do not have a a definitive answer.
~Ripper
I don't know why you think I can give you definative answers as I am just stating my opinion based on what I would view as the sensible thing to do in their situation. As I predicted months ago that the beta would be tiny and that the number of copies of the client would be restricted at launch so none of what they are doing comes as any surprise as I they are acting in accordance with my expectations. I can give you my reasoning for this but it just assumption.
I don't know why you think I can give you definative answers as I am just stating my opinion based on what I would view as the sensible thing to do in their situation. As I predicted months ago that the beta would be tiny and that the number of copies of the client would be restricted at launch none of what they are doing comes as any surprise as I they are acting in accordance with my assumptions.
Sorry, Blodpls, I edited my post while you were replying.
~Ripper
FREEDOM omg the Tears "SCREAMS" FREEDOM........ runs and hides in the bushes .. ... whips out a Dagger and stabs "FLOWER" or was it "Bambie" in the Tail...... Baaaawaaaaa....see I'm MEAN ta the Boner. La Peweeee.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiIY8tg2qBs