Troika article

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GameDaily Biz have posted an article on the demise of Troika, here's a small snibblet:<blockquote>Boyarsky, Cain and Anderson formed Troika in 1998 after leaving Interplay where they created the classic RPG Fallout. Troika only created three games in the past six years: Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura (2001), The Temple of Elemental Evil (2003) and Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (2004). These games catered to the niche RPG market, and although most were well received critically, the titles simply failed to generate enough revenue for the studio to survive. Arcanum was the company's best selling game, and it only managed to sell 234K units and generate sales of $8.8 million, according to the NPD Group. It was downhill from there; The Temple of Elemental Evil sold 128K units ($5.2 million) and Bloodlines sold a paltry 72K units ($3.4 million). It didn't help either that Bloodlines, which was published by Activision and powered by the Source/Half-Life 2 engine, was released at the same time as Valve's blockbuster first-person shooter sequel.</blockquote>It's a good read, so get on over and read the rest.
Link: Troika - Game Over
Spotted at RPGCodex
 
Vampires only sold 72K thousand copies ?? That's very, very low for such a great title. I mean; they had good reviews, a good engine, great dialogs, .. to be honest, I think the software piracy killed this title.

What a fscking shame.
 
That one blew me away also. The fact that Arcanum sold 162,000 more copies than VTM:Bloodlines, is just amazing!
 
You know, I am personally sad to see Troika go. They definately had a lot of great ideas and a passion for the kind of games I wanted to play.

But, I'm not suprised that Vampire didn't sell well, comparatively. And really, I suppose I am not that suprised that they went under.

I bought Arcanum and managed to get through it. I thought it was fun, if buggy.

I bought Temple of Elemental Evil and played through it. Thought it was a fun adaptations of AD&D, if buggy and short.

Vampire simply didn't appeal to me for a couple reasons. First of all, I just don't have a big desire to play a Vampire game like I do with other RPGs, but probably the biggest factor is that my time is simply valuable to me and I didn't feel like I was playing completed games when I played through the other Troika games I played.

Reviews are nice, but personal experience always takes precedence. My personal experience was that trying to play the Troika games before it felt too much like work for me than play. The ideas were there, the execution just wasn't quite there.

As someone who has spent a few years working QA for game companies, I really feel as if I'm back at work if a game has that many issues and that's not how I'm about to spend my free time.
 
Lost Metal said:
That one blew me away also. The fact that Arcanum sold 162,000 more copies than VTM:Bloodlines, is just amazing!
Click to expand...

Aye I dont get it. I bloody loved Vampire, EVEN all the kids on the gamespy forum were raving about vampire... And yet it sold next to nothing? The bloody hell, what ARE gamers buying? E gads, I just don't understand it all. The game seemed to have the one two punch, what with being a great game AND offering great graphics through the steam engine. Sigh, don't understand it at all.
 
I think the whole "goth" thing must have scared people off, but it's still amazing how little it sold. What a shame. It'll will probably sell a lot more in the long run when people keep bringing it up in forums whenever rpg's are mentioned, which will sadly be too late for Troika to benefit from it.

And as a sidenote for anyone who bought ToEE and gave up on it: I'm playing through again with all three patches and I can safely say that it's entirely stable - I haven't encountered any bugs or glitches, so dust it off and give it another shot, it's a great game.
 
At the codex forum, somebody from RPGdot, Dhruin I think, stated the 6 month sales figures for Arcanum were around 69,000 units. He then hypothesizes Arcanum's sales were a lot of "bargain" sales. If so, Bloodlines has already outperformed Arcanum's 6 month total. I don't know how accurate his figure is though. Or the figures of Bloodlines. I wish there was a place where one could look all this stuff up. Who knows, that 74k figure might be based on sales as of December or something. I think Bloodlines is already a legend, and will continue to garner sales (though at reduced prices) as people finish up playing Half Life 2. The more times I played the game the more I found to discover in it. Heck, Frankenstien: Breadlust is already a cult vapor ware hit.
 
I came across the news of Troika's demise while searching for a designer's email address. I wanted to submit a bug report :)

However, it was a matter of finesse, a personal obsession, probably not a big public bug:

<attention, spoiler below (hollywood level)>

1.) Interesting character named VV asks you to assassinate a hunter. You can accept this, or you can avoid the topic, essentially declining. I did the latter, and it felt like the right thing to do, but what did NOT feel right was that the decision was final - not for ingame reasons but simply because the dialogue option would no longer be on the list. This is especially problematic if you consider it realistic that, being a vampire in this story, your morals may change; eventually, you may not see killing a hunter as murder anymore. Or while you may still see it as murder, you may accept murder to be an inevitable part of the existence. (We're talking about arranging-for-witnesses-to-be-away murder here, not running into a combat situation.)
Indeed, this change is what VV is all about!

...

The consequences were rather devastating on my gameplay. I reloaded 4 times, tried different scenarios, figured out I couldn't get past this little technical problem except in one way: Say yes (answer all questions as if you had already subscribed to aforementioned change). Then *don't do it*. Until I decide to. Probably never.

This would have worked fine, but now the bug comes in. The game treats you as if you had actually already executed the murder. Some stupid variables are set when you say yes, not when the victim is dead. For example, you get all the weird love letters. It's entirely inappropriate, and obviously a bug.

All easily fixable by changing a few lines of code.

I have to admit that that game has some damn brilliant moments, though. Potential ones, at least.
 
Yeah, I encountered a couple of bugs - some annoying, some resolved by reloading, some by getting back to an old savegame. Not fun.

But the atmosphere is simply amazing. I never was into vampires, but this game ?? The characters are so realistic I hardly think of them as brilliantly designed npc's, but more of real persons (yeah, call me weird). The only thing I should remember is replaying the game when I have a shiny new computer in 2 years that is capable of playing in full resolution with all the gfx.

It's gonna be classics, damn sure.
 
Arcanum was the company's best selling game, and it only managed to sell 234K units
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This is incorrect. By a signficant factor. I was there when the royalty checks came in, and Arcanum did much better than that. I do not think the publisher would have written checks for copies that they hadn't sold.

I never heard a final number on ToEE, as I wasn't directly involved in it, but the number I recall for its first-month sales was more than this article claims it did overall.

I do not know any numbers on Vampire, but I do know what I think of this source's accuracy.
 
Those numbers are from a small number of american retailers, that´s why they don´t add up. Those aren`t the real numbers.
 
That's a relief. I knew their games were underappreciated, was really surprised to see those numbers anyway though.
 
Whew... I hope they post a correction on that soon. Thanks for your input Mandrew, and helping to dispel the clouds of ignorance. Your posts are always welcomed.
 
Image fro the GameDaily's article

vampbloodlines.jpg


Where is that scene ? Never seen it in Vampire Bloodlines
 
That was a screenshot from a very early built. Amoung other things that Jeanette model was replaced with the one we all (or some of us anyways) know and love. Basically, the whole scene is contrived. Hot chick, hot location, hot dialogue... one way to sell the game I suppose.

EDIT:

Oh yeah, thats the Vesuvius upper room.
 
greatatlantic said:
That was a screenshot from a very early built. Amoung other things that Jeanette model was replaced with the one we all (or some of us anyways) know and love. Basically, the whole scene is contrived. Hot chick, hot location, hot dialogue... one way to sell the game I suppose.
Click to expand...

This is SO wrong.... :roll:
 
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