To be honest, I also can’t fathom it being such a massive flop. On Steam it peaked at 700 players. Shadows of doubt release peaked at 2200. Something had to go seriously wrong when a niche indie title with no mainstream appeal has a better launch than a AAA game. I don’t think it should’ve been a success, but it definitely should’ve done better than that.
I didn’t hear a single thing about the game until after it was already dead, and that’s why I’m not surprised it flopped.
If they’d done better(read: any) marketing or public testing, then it might have been at least salvageable, but from what I’ve read it seems like people weren’t fans of the character designs and gameplay either.
My hope is that consumers have lost confidence in games that they know have no value if they don’t attract a massive audience. We used to get games like StarCraft and Halo that had single player, cooperative, and competitive modes. We used to be able to host our own servers. Without those things, the value proposition drops precipitously if it isn’t a massive hit. I hope that’s the reason it flopped.
To be honest, I also can’t fathom it being such a massive flop. On Steam it peaked at 700 players. Shadows of doubt release peaked at 2200. Something had to go seriously wrong when a niche indie title with no mainstream appeal has a better launch than a AAA game. I don’t think it should’ve been a success, but it definitely should’ve done better than that.
I didn’t hear a single thing about the game until after it was already dead, and that’s why I’m not surprised it flopped.
If they’d done better(read: any) marketing or public testing, then it might have been at least salvageable, but from what I’ve read it seems like people weren’t fans of the character designs and gameplay either.
My hope is that consumers have lost confidence in games that they know have no value if they don’t attract a massive audience. We used to get games like StarCraft and Halo that had single player, cooperative, and competitive modes. We used to be able to host our own servers. Without those things, the value proposition drops precipitously if it isn’t a massive hit. I hope that’s the reason it flopped.