Anyone else sick of the vague viral marketing?
 

Just show us a fucking screenshot of the game already. Not these daft pictures with hidden messages in them that only neckbeards can figure out. The average gamer doesn't give a shit about viral marketing campaigns. They don't bring in new consumers. You know what does? Screenshots or trailers. That's what every game company does when they want to get people excited for a new game. Maybe, just maybe they know what they're doing.

OWI/whoever, get your heads out of your arses. Thus far you've made a right mess of generating hype/public awareness.

Maybe they're not ready yet, and they want to show us their best efforts. And they don't want to keep us in complete silence, so they interact with us.

I think if I had time, I would probably enjoy trying to decode stuff, but with other commitments, I actually only have time to dip in and out to see how things are coming on, which isn't always entirely clear. Letting the community here collate the info seems to be the best way to guage progress.


It's a good idea for the initiated, as a sort of pre-game... game, and I suppose in the run-up to announcements at least gives the current fans something to do as well as the chance to figure out the developments. Maybe in terms of the campaign's efficacy on the whole it's worrisome that I'm not certain about what stage of develpoment it's at (last thing I saw was the Lorne talk where during the Q&A nobody seemed to want to ask about the brand new game), but that's more likely because I'm just out of the loop nowadays.


Who cares anyway, my laptop won't even run New and Tasty, so I'm fucked

Don't like the 'daft pictures'? Go on with your day, the screenshots will still come in time.

Why can't OddJobAbe just buy a new laptop with his retirement money?

I still open the forum sometimes and scroll through the ARG threads. It's a bit of a chore to follow, so really I'm just waiting in the wings for someone to give me everything I need to know about the game on a nice silver platter.

It's like we've said (a few times) before - the ARG's just some fun for those that want to play along. Don't like it, that's cool, nobody's forcing you. :)

There's a great bit from Ricky Gervais' most recent standup about people on Twitter that chose to follow him, then get annoyed at his content. I feel it relates fairly well to this scenario -

It's like walking past a billboard with an advert for guitar lessons, ripping the ad off, and shouting "BUT I DON'T WANT ANY GUITAR LESSONS". No one is forcing you to have guitar lessons, but they're there for those that do.

My impression was that the Spirit of 1029 ARG or whatever is only really followed by a small community of dedicated fans, so by no means is the whole thing "viral".
Either way, if OWI did what many other developers often do and not release any info or communications related to the game at all, I'm sure you wouldn't be whining.

I don't really take part in the ARG, but I think it sets a nice pace and atmosphere to the slow drip of information. I'd prefer the ARG to no information at all, which is what I assume we'd have if it didn't exist. I mean, screenshots happen when screenshots are ready. It's not like OWI_Alex is belly-flopping into a swimming pool full with screenshots like Scrooge McDuck.

But I do hope that someone photoshops that now.

i'll admit i can't do ARG'S but looking at other people figure it out is fun to watch

Exactly this.

Soulstorm was announced over 2 years ago, and the fact that there's STILL jack shit in terms of information or screenshots/trailers about the game is ludicrous. In one thread, people had to press you for a straight answer on whether Soulstorm is a 2.5D remake or a different game entirely. Is your marketing department staffed by a chimp with a typewriter?

Are you sure it's gonna be called Oddworld: Soulstorm and not Oddworld: Forever?

You got me. Excuse me while I eat this banana.

You called it Soulstorm above, just let me know if you fancy changing it.

Imagine being so entitled that you actually make an account on a fan-site to demand screenshots for the game. Have you ever considered, meech121, that there are valid reasons for OWI playing their cards close to their chests?

lol yeah i think i saw that too. glad i'm not the only one that wondered why the fuck they weren't talking about the actual game.

oh man, i can tell you're new to OWI or just want to make a big noise. there have been much longer episodes of 'nothing going on' than a couple of years, believe me, and you can't really say that anyway because the ARG counts as something. i'm talking proper 'nothing going on'. like, desert wasteland style 'nothing going on'. the ARG is a god-send in regards to 'something going on' lol.

do you realize how many years there were of absolutely nothing new in terms of game development between Stranger's Wrath and New n Tasty? i've been hanging around here since 2007 and honestly during most of that time there was nothing new coming from OWI. it was just accepted as the norm so we kept ourselves entertained. some people got bored and wondered away from the forums, and some people just didn't like the way we acted here and left, leaving the few of us that bothered to stick around to poke and prod each other until they gave us another snippet of info.

there were little things that happened that people forget, like how at one point there was a brief stint where everyone thought they were going to make a movie based on AO called Citizen Siege and we got a bunch of concept art for it, but then that disappeared. then in much later years they teamed up with JAW, New n Tasty came out and Soulstorm began development, but all that happened right near the very end. i still consider NnT to be recent compared to how long things have been dormant previously.

NOT THAT I'M COMPLAINING, for the record. OWI will always be special to me and hold nostalgia, and i honestly wasn't bothered about the long periods of nothing new happening back then because at the time the Off Topic subforum was active daily so you could just drop in there and talk about any old shit, or Fan Corner if you wanted a dose of Oddworld. the reason i stuck around was because of the forum community, not actually the games. but these days life in general gets in the way, which i suppose is a good thing.

nowadays though because the forums are a lot less active than they used to be some of us tend to hibernate. for weeks, months, years we'll wait, saying nothing, just watching. waiting. masturbating quite a lot. then some randomer pops in and says "look at these pretty pictures" and the ones of us that haven't been eaten by the others come out of hibernation to make comments like "cool", "couldn't we have less pictures of Munch?" and "it's the wrong green". we're good at that.

tl;dr STOP WHINING YOU DON'T REALIZE HOW LUCKY YOU GOT IT

I'VE BEEN HERE OVER TEN YEARS

TEN FUCKING YEARS DUDE

AND NNT IS THE ONLY GAME TO COME OUT IN THAT TIME

you don't know you're born, man. you don't know you're fucking born.

I actually still think of NNT as having come out the year before last, not 4 years ago... I have to concur, this isn't a bad wait at all.


Hope I can borrow another friend's PS4/better computer to play Soulstorm, it sounds like this game should be coming more into its own with the new mechanics and whatnot.

4 years next Friday. Should we celebrate?

We should definitely celebrate. Friday is a prime day for celebrating. I'll stock up on the Special Brew.

Nothing will ever compare to the Dark Times

https://i.imgur.com/MZxoLck.png

also the fact that next Tuesday we are going to see something i'm hyped.

Also, tonnes of games take longer to develop than this. The only difference is that we knew about it when they started production.


EDIT: CravenKnight posrepped me with an unedited picture of Scrooge. Just not trying hard enough.

i got ptsd just from seeing that image

This is a stupid way of putting it, so let me put it in a more nuanced way.

Soulstorm was announced in March 2016. The original release date was Q4 2017, or to take it broadly, December 31st 2017. Then, in April 2017, the release date was pushed back to "early 2018" or roughly Q1/Q2.

Early 2018 came and went and now the release date is pushed back again to 2019, period.

So while I can understand the frustration of seeing barely anything of in-game content, the question I'm asking is this. What the hell happened during development that caused the release date to shift by 2 full years?

If you're confident enough 1,5 year ahead of time to pin down a release date in Q4 2017, then either a decision was made to make the game much much bigger than originally planned, or something went insanely wrong. The release date has now been moved by a period of time that is greater than what was originally deemed needed to finish the game.

So, without pointing fingers or making assumptions, I'm just curious to know... why?

I shudder at the mere sight of it.

Can anyone enlighten me as to what exactly happened? This was before my time.

In 2006 the oddworld wesbite went dark saying a new site was coming soon and nothing until 2011 when New "n" Tasty was started.

checking the site almost daily for years to see if anything was rolling. the dark times it was rough for oddworld fans

The former.

please tell me this means 3d gameplay in some shape or form
and a teaser for Munch

Sadly, I can't talk about Soulstorm other than what Lorne has talked about.

Rest assured nothing has gone "insanely" wrong.

Has Frima’s downsizing had any impact on the development? I also noticed that they were removed from the Soulstorm Press Release.

Oeh. Now I'm curious to hear all about that decision in the future.