Late to give an opinion but...
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Originally Posted by Mahatatain
I think that it is sad that T2013 has ceased but I think that some decisions were made by 93 Games Studio that made the success of the game unlikely.
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They certainly made some bad choices but we all do. They might have underestimated the task. However, I would advocate that most gamers current attitude made the success unlikely not their initial choices. Too often, we simply want too much people.
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Originally Posted by Mahatatain
1. The game background is weak in places and is quite US centric. The details of the UK made me cringe and I read one comment (from an Australian) when the game was realeased that he suspected that the writers hadn't even looked at Australia on a map! It seemed to me that the game background was written for a US market without any thought to an international market as it plays heavily to US stereotype views of the rest of the world. My instant reaction as a GM therefore was that I would have to rewrite the game background or simply use the system in a different setting.
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As it was the case with the initial game. However, I would agree with the idea on the map. However, for my parts, I'm not even sure that most americans even know what a map is (and this is spreading fast to Europeans). After all, while I was studying in US, a US student (senior in international political studies) told me that he whished to drive down to Germany (we were in Vermont!!). Of course, you still can drive through Canada, the Behring strait (provided you are in full winter with enough ice), all of Russia and Poland but that might be tricky... If we didn't have to rewrite T2... backgrounds we wouldn't be here in the first place.
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Originally Posted by Mahatatain
2. There are some flaws in the combat rules (in my opinion) and that put several players I know off the game after an initial session.
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Didn't go that far, with two little girls and too little available time, I always found the rules too heavy. I made the same mistake on my own game design and I'm know correcting it. I'll be reducing the character design phase from 50 to 10 pages and the rules from 20 to 4-5. Meanwhile, I'll expend the background section and edit books focused solely on background. The best in this is that it takes a couple of days to write a background while it takes a bunch of months to design the rules.
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Originally Posted by Mahatatain
3. Their business model seems to focus around people purchasing pdf versions rather than actual books in most countries and that seems wrong to me. Most gamers (and the majority of T2k fans) are "older" gamers and are more likely to spend the money for a good quality hardback book (which is what they produced in some markets) rather than a pdf. None of the supplements were ever more than pdfs though (I believe).
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When I was saying that we want too much. Without PDF, no RPG design is possible today. I won't do anything else, hard copy is nice but out of reach. Too expensive to make, Too expensive to send, takes too much place in your already full storage room, sending it to stores is also hell. I don't know elsewhere but, currently, in France, you only have two surviving so called rpg editors and these guys are only a bunch of incompetent lying a..h...s
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Originally Posted by Mahatatain
4. They initially focussed on firearms supplements rather than sourcebooks or adventures and when they did release a sourcebook it was for their "Everytown" generic setting rather than the Czech sourcebook Tegyrius developed - http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=2355 |
Here is a huge mistake, I agree. In the initial exchange I had with smokewolf, he told me that they were going to develop sourcebooks on countries (I'm still waiting for it). When, I saw the sourcebook on firearms I ceased to visit 93gamestudios. I tend not to care about big guns and big guys (but that just me). Not enough on vehicles, planes, ships..., also
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Originally Posted by Mahatatain
It's sad when any game fails but I think that their approach was flawed in the first place.
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You too hard on this, I think. You forget one thing, when you put yourself to such a huge task, you have to make choices and assume them. Just too bad that they couldn't change path. Terminating the project is their only bad choice IMO. Put it on hold, make your money and start it all over again.
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Originally Posted by Mahatatain
They seem to be nice guys however so I hope that they do well in the future. They've done more to contribute to the gaming hobby as a whole than I've ever done!
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I have suspended my own game for five years (I understand personnal reasons). I restarted the distribution over last summer. The funny part is that I sold more copies in three months that any shop in 7 years. I had the same problem that they had but I'm now working at correcting them and I hope to release a new version in 2011 along with an english version (at last). The point was simple: i needed to make a living first and to organize my life (didn't I said that twice already?
). I hope that 93gamestudio will be capable of doing something similar. About hard copy, if anyone wants one, no problem, just get your cash ready. It could be sold at 100$ for only 10$ in PDF.
