Good work.
Trend-wise, it would seem that there was a significant drop in the number of updates since late 2012. I suspect that it coincides with the rise of AL, the loss of many of the oldies, and the newer games being released.
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Good work.
Trend-wise, it would seem that there was a significant drop in the number of updates since late 2012. I suspect that it coincides with the rise of AL, the loss of many of the oldies, and the newer games being released.
Thank you,
indeed the release of AL and BD could be, or are the major reasons why PL, SL and DL are getting less updates.
Apollo and Fusionstrike threw up flawless theories, well 5 months ago (but i think they're still up to date) here:
http://www.spacetimestudios.com/show...ion-Caps/page2
Based on the download statistics, it would appear that AL is their primary income generator. On Android for example, PL got 1 million downloads, and it's been out for close to 3.5 years now. AL on the other hand has been out for much less and has gotten 5 million downloads. Assuming a similar monetization rate, you're looking at perhaps 7-8 times the amount of money from AL - more perhaps considering that AL is a newer game and therefore with more people willing to spent cash.
I suspect that DL was just a launch and test platform for the upgraded engine.
At this point, what I would like to see is either a groundup remake of PL or a major update to PL with the latest engine deployed.
Hmm with the latest engine I (personally) understand that Skills can be charged as example and such - I wouldn't like ''such'' a PL imo.
I agree with the downloads part, sadly that we can't check how many times it has been downloaded exactly - probably because of the same reason why Youtube never shows the latest correct views count of a video.
Well, looking at the stats:
AL
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=sts.al
PL
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=sts.pl
AL is in the 5-10 million category and PL is in the 1-5 million category. That said, they both have a comparable amount of reviews. Hmm ... well, we have to factor in the age of PL, so it will only generate a fraction of what AL generated. What we need is a downloads by date analysis and more accurate numbers than the broad ranges. Of course, none of this takes into account the iOS downloads, which is another limitation of my analysis, but I imagine the ratios would be comparable.
Is it possible to change an existing engine for a game, or do you simply have to re-create that game if you want to use a new engine? Because it many recent posts, STS/STG Devs have made the claim that PL can't make many of its requested suggestions and implementations due to not having the right engine. AL contains things that PL users want, but we can't get them because we don't have the right engine. Therefore, I assumed that PL can no longer be updated unless they were to literally make a new Pocket Legends, but just on a different engine.
Or perhaps I'm wrong, and implementing the engine they're using for AL simply costs too much time and money to invest in PL (STS could end up losing money by attempting to invest in a game with fewer players)?
I guess what I'm asking is:
What is stopping PL from having a new, and updated engine?
I feel as if STS/STG does not see the potential in Pocket Legends, which worries me. I think STS/STG is an unbelievably creative company; and if they can't take risks in one of their games, then perhaps they'll never be able to make on game where they can make profits off of - this will only lead to STS/STG creating more, and more games, thus, losing value in their customers and the loyalty/trust of their customers overtime. But have we seen that process begin yet, or is it happening now? I'm not too sure. Obviously, this is all my opinion.
Now
Ok a couple of things. First, before I answer the question, I do need to say this. I am not a programmer by trade (more of a hardware kind of guy). But let me put it this way, I do have a lot more knowledge about computer programming than most people so I do feel qualified to give an answer. I also know quite a few people in the software industry. Whenever you build a computer game, the gaming engine is the core of the game. It is responsible for things like rendering the physics, programming the sound (and things like collision detection), along with the under the hood stuff (like memory allocation, threading), and sometimes even the AI.
The answer, is that it really depends on how close the AL engine is to the PL engine. I suspect though that it would require a moderate overhaul. The same fundamental engine seems to be driving the game, at least looking at AL superficially (devs correct me on this one of I am wrong), but I suspect that there have been changes underneath. This is the publicly available info about the Spacetime Engine (http://www.spacetimestudios.com/content.php?5-Tech) and there have been later revisions (http://www.spacetimestudios.com/show...ith-Technology).
Well, I was originally planning on making a big post on this (delayed due to personal issues, especially my declining health in recent months).
As I said, it probably would not take a huge amount of effort (I mean just look at AL - the engine is fundamentally the same), but it would take some effort. If I were to hesitate a guess, they've done their cost-benefit analysis and they've decided it probably is not worth it. What do I think? That STS does not feel that their games can hold their players interest for long without releasing something new constantly (on average perhaps 1.5-2 games per year), hence the focus on releasing new games PL > SL > DL > AL, and now BD. The release of BD heralds the fate of AL - it will eventually become what PL and SL have become, a game with limited new content and a community that has largely moved on.
Personally, I disagree with that strategy. I mean consider the alternative. Imagine if all efforts had gone into PL (and maybe a bit into SL, seeing that Blackstar was made before PL originally for PC). Imagine what kind of game PL might have been with perhaps 4-5X as much content (perhaps as much as 10x, remember creating a new game from ground up takes much more effort than new content patches).
When I wrote my original post in 2011, calling for major reforms: http://www.spacetimestudios.com/show...-for-this-year, I was calling for an all-out focus on PL - to make it the WoW of mobile gaming. At the time, there were only 2 games, PL and SL. It made sense to me, to make that recommendation.
I'll elaborate later.
OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG HMMM ere we go
Totally agree with this, Spacetime was ahead of the game IMO when they made Pocket Legends, the upgrades they made in Star Legends looked amazing. Dark Legends really wasn't that astounding. Arcane Legends didn't even have a rotational view, so I'm not positive how it is an advancement, I mean obviously the graphics are better, but anyways, Battle Dragons was nothing new at all.
We know the Spacetime team is small, but it is just logic you can't take on all these games at once and do justice to more than one.
Arcane Legends gets the attention because it has more paying players, well of course it does when you don't care about a game that has needed a major revamp for years.
Compare how much PL changed the first year compared to the last 2 years.
What ever happened to the subscriptions that were being talked about a year and a half ago?
I remember this survey! I was stoked about some of the stuff. Then it never happened >_> I said yes to the sub too. And I hate subscriptions. Now, I probably wouldn't subscribe to this game, and won't buy play because sts is not putting the effort into the game anymore, so why should I?
I been sayin this a minute, ain nobudy goh tihm fo dat I guess
http://www.spacetimestudios.com/show...935-Not-cool-(
http://www.spacetimestudios.com/show...Problem-quot-)
Oh, now I start believing that PL runs one the newer, upgraded Engine as well. And I understand now everything - DL could not run on my Armv6 anyhow, now after the major Engine Upgrade of PL and SL in January, February (?) my Armv6 could not run them as well - of course AL did not as well.
I always was in the belief that they had to upgrade on Armv7 for more space for content updates or something like that.
Well, anyway, I haven't seen any outstanding update which could take benefit of the new engine in the past 8 months, be it on PL or SL which made me wonder - why in the world upgrading the engine if you don't work with it anyway?
My guess is they made the upgrade across games to lower the maintenance costs. If you have two substantially different codebases to maintain it ends up being more work. If they all have more commonality, even if you don't use all the new features in every game, it's easier to fix/change and migrate fixes across games. I suspect this was the major driver.
In hindsight they probably wouldn't have done so if they'd known then where things would end up. It looks to me like they haven't done enough development on PL or SL to justify the investment of updating the engine. But at the time they probably thought it would pay off nicely in easier updates and bug fixes.
Well, the ARMv7 certainly suggests that as well. If they are using the same engine across the board then that means that there are no real barriers to creating new content. It would be no more difficult to create new content than in would be for AL because under the hood, it's mostly the same. What would upgrading do? Well, Fusion has already answered that question below:
This is my guess as well. Even for a smaller studio, there are economies of scale here. It also helps that all games run on the same engine - it's not like other studios that release many titles in many different genres.
To be honest, I disagree with this statement. The reason why I do is because in the first statement, you noted that the codebase sharing would bring savings (it would, perhaps as much as 50%). But even without updates, it might justify it simply for the labor saved. It also gives them the option to have greater flexibility to upgrade, in the event that they choose to.
Ahh, I haven't thought of that benefit-point that it would be easier for them to switch between the games.
I rethink about the benefits of the new engine, well there was not that long ago an ''update'' without any Server Shutdown - personally this impressed me a little, maybe in a year they will be able to make updates without any shutdowns - beside new clients of course.
I don't know how much you know about game development, but you have to understand what an undertaking a new engine would be - well, it would take years of development. The original PL engine took about $10 million (2010 USD) and 5 years to build. There are reasons why engine licensing has been enormously helpful for Indie game development these days. Unigine is a well known example as is Unity 3D. The Crytek series of engines have also been licensed to give a few examples. I wonder if the STS engine has been licensed. I'll have to look it up when I have the time.
That being said, a new engine is possible. It would involve transferring the assets over (things like gold). Other games have done it before. The big issue isn't that though - the big issue is, is the ROI going to be worth it?
In general I would agree. My point is that in this case they haven't really made any substantial updates at all on PL (new content, bug fixes, etc.) since the switchover. Therefore they haven't reaped any real benefit from switching over because they haven't done anything that benefits from the economy yet. In general, this kind of thing is the right thing to do for a development house, but you wouldn't do it for a game that you never intend to update again. To me, this shows they had plans at one point to keep updating PL, which made the investment make sense, but then changed their minds.
As I said, it probably wasn't too expensive to update the engine - a "moderate overhaul" as a I indicated. Of course, that means little if the engine offered any new capabilities that are not being utilized, which at the moment, they're not.