The Manor Lords Developer Is Rightly Worried...

being a solo Dev of a much hyped game must be a very stressful experience what's happening now is that steam's number one wishlisted game is coming out next week the game we're talking about here is Manor Lords and yeah it's the most wishlisted game on Steam right now and because of that the solo developer behind it kind of needs players to take a little bit of a listen essentially he's posted saying that manl Lords may not be what everybody is hoping for of course what is that about is that about the expectation that he has set or is it about how Manor Lords has just been an absolute organic marketing hit to the point where everybody in their Mind's Eye can see a massive wealth of possibilities in the game and it's been an amazing time the developer of Slavic magic I mean number one maybe must have had some access to Slavic magic given how impressive an effort Manor Lords is for a team of that size but what's happened is it's soared up to the top of steam's wish lists it's actually been AO roed by Microsoft for a Game Pass deal which by the way is a very rare thing they have dried up that money pot so much so yeah getting a Game Pass deal in the modern environment is actually quite the achievement but of course all of this is because of its humongous popularity and then you've got to think about why and you've got to think about what's uh sort of what's broadly going on number one this is coming out into Early Access number two is a part of all of the sort of pre-launch marketing beats a lot of creators who have got pretty strong audiences are looking into this game you know like say your residence your Legend of Total Wars many others and a lot of this does speak to the interesting ven diagrams that this game finds itself in because yes there is exactly what it is right but also if you're a total war fan oh you're looking at the combat in this game and thinking my God I have had so many combat criticisms of Total War in the last while I am interested maybe you like city builders I mean they've had it Ono Renaissance but maybe your time isn't being eaten up by City skylines 2o and maybe now you're just thinking okay well this game looks pretty interesting and it's in my uh my van diagram and that means we've got a situation where a game with realistically a tiny budget as compared to Total War or city skylines 2 or really a lot of its contemporaries it is competing with them and that's one of the interesting things about small Indie disruptors the entire point of a small Indie disruptor is that it is competing while it almost definitionally cannot be comparable because of a complete asymmetry in resources so to try to cut through all of this and make sure that we do not have a no man Sky shaped launch the developer has made a big old post on Steam and to be honest I'm just interested in this situation but also I do think it's worth getting the word out here here's what he said and I'm just going to quote here what this game is not man ofl Lords is not a total war competitor it is a city Builder with battles yes battles are there but not as huge or frequent as some of you might expect the majority of gameplay is focused on city building and management it is not an Empire management style Grand strategy game the map has regions but you won't be able to conquer the whole of Europe nor have marriages or anything like that the game is designed to play at a much smaller scale it's not a role playing game either if you've played Kingdom Come Deliverance or Mountain blade matter Lords is it different type of game there is a visit mode in Man of Lords that allows you to walk around your town but it's an experimental cosmetic bonus feature the game is meant to be played from a bird's eyee perspective like a strategy game almost always should there won't be any firstperson gameplay it's not a competitive fast-paced RTS like Age of Empires or Starcraft so maybe I mean if you're someone like me and you just wanted to uh hold out you know to hold fast against a massive wave of britling can't do it I mean a bunch of dudes but I don't know I don't think anybody really expected this to be like Age of Empires or Starcraft but do you know what's really spooky to me somebody probably was comparing this to Age of Empires and that's probably why the dev has felt they've had to write this paragraph but anyway he goes on to say a lot of the game mechanics focus on Aesthetics of your town and resources take some time to be transported around the map this results mostly in more of a relaxed experience with high-intensity moment spicing up atmospheric city building rather than the game being high intensity all of the time that to me sounds completely reasonable as a disclaimer and frankly after him saying all of those things I am more excited about the game because in a way if you define something by what it isn't that can tell you a lot about what it is and what his disclaimer tells me the game is through the lens of what it is not is exactly what I want from a game like manner Lords and that is why I'm excited no I do not want to play manl Lords because I want to conquer Europe but maybe you want to be very powerful Within your region and one thing I think as uh as I don't know just as the industry develops we're really beginning to appreciate a little bit of less is more sometimes you don't need as much Pace you don't need as much scale what you do need is meaning and sometimes when things are a bit more stripped back and slow you actually get more meaning and that means that a game experience can in fact stay with people more uh I mean also the obvious one Dev can't make total war Mountain blade and a paradox Grand strategy game Allin one that certainly would be an impressive feat though for a lot of people though the potential of an indie beating all of those games is a very appealing thing right the idea of an indie beating a big AAA effort making a better game that is a truly amazing story and Via asymmetric competition I think that this game can actually do that no I do not think that it can beat Warhammer 3 or the next like I don't know medieval 3 if that comes out in a decade I don't think that it can beat those games on their own terms but it doesn't have to all it needs to do is make make sure that I click manner Lords instead of Total War whenever I hit a button in Steam and whenever I'm doing that I'm based on my own emotions and what each game is offering me so it doesn't have to be a like for- like comparison but clearly though what Slavic magri a bit worried about here is that well word of a game spreads and it can spread so much that it's no longer only really being received by the most engaged audience and that means that this is a game I mean given that it's number one in Steam right number one most wishlisted game there are a lot of people who are probably turning up to this game with not particularly well calibrated expectations because most of the time whenever a game goes that high in Steam it is because of pretty crazy resources marketing and that sort of thing what might happen is they'll learn about this game from a clip of Legend of Total War and uh they may then think oh wow look at that Legend's playing it instead of Total War it's better than Total War this might be my dream game and of course that's not what mandl Lords is trying to do it's not what Legend is trying to make happen but I can certainly say from my personal experience as not only doing news punditry here as I suppose you could say Enthusiast press for a game like say World of Warcraft that you can say things and people can get an idea and an expectation that seems completely uncalibrated from what you have said that happens so so so much so obviously here the dev doesn't want people to think Total War killer and then get upset hence this and to illustrate a lot of this I'm going to talk about a game with a far higher budget Starfield yes I don't know how lead researcher of organization Connor has chosen a very smart thing Starfield yes we are tying Starfield to manner Lords that might seem completely unhinged but trust me it is pretty hinged a lot of people played Starfield and a lot of them played it for a lot of time sometimes even more than balers Gate 3 at one point but you then take a look at the steam user reviews and you can see that a lot of people who played Starfield really should not have played Starfield and it's not about liking specific aspects of the game or whether Starfield was disappointing for those who just got frustrated at say like loading screens one of the most frequent refrains from people when you actually go through those reviews is other games achieving the fantasy of the genre better than Starfield can so it's actually not even about a lot of the minutia of Starfield or or whatever no it is about that big fantasy to many no man's Sky a Elite dangerous and Star Citizen they're all ostensibly Space games in a similar genre to Starfield right you can do many of the same mechanical actions but just because you are sharing a genre with a game or sharing a mechanic with a game that does not always translate to it being a similar experience so Starfield was Todd Howard's dream of having low sci-fi 2000s hour nasch and as an aesthetic and then doing I suppose the story of a bit of a western frontier in space and that is not what what many of the other games that I mentioned uh are and for some people who played Starfield because they wanted games more like the promise of Star Citizen I mean they were going to be kind of disappointed regardless because this was not the game that they wanted they didn't want a Bethesda game in space and you're completely justified by not wanting that of course but then the question here is why did you buy Starfield when Bethesda title in space is basically what Starfield was always going to be and I think the answer at the core there is that the potential for Starfield goes a lot higher than generic Bethesda you could think oh wow this could be my dream game you hear Phil Spencer talk about how he loved being a space pirate in Starfield and think oh boy here we go this will be really exciting maybe you're interested in Star Citizen but well you actually look at Starfield and think all right first person walk about the place fly a ship customize a ship and there's planets one of these is out there other one isn't out okay I will play Starfield because I'm interested in Star Citizen and it's not fully out yet and you're obviously then in a situation where Starfield has just competed with Star Citizen even though it is a completely different game trying to do completely different things of course I'll also add that I don't think that Starfield is successful at what it tries to do unfortunately but basically Slavic magic is trying to avoid that problem here they're basically trying to set expectations early that manl Lords isn't here to kill total Ward that it's not here to compete with Crusader Kings 3 or anything like that on a onetoone fashion it's just its own thing and where it is in the v diagram and your own interests that is what it is but don't expect it to directly compete with the games that you want to play it instead of expect it to indirectly compete do that and I think with manner Lords a lot of us will be having a really really good time I mean I love the total war games well it's complicated relationship Mountain blade I can't go near Mountain blade as a rule it just can't and put too many hours into all of the mountain blades it is too destructive to my life so I mean in Pharaoh big childhood game like manner Lords is exactly what I think I want from it and that's very much as a genre Enthusiast but it is interesting to see here an example of a developer maybe looking at Shawn Murray maybe looking at Starfield and thinking okay I actually see a problem on the horizon because ultimately I don't think the dev would have done this if they weren't a little bit spooked at some of the chatter they're seeing about their own game I just think it's an interesting situation and look if you were interested in manords but aren't checking out in the steam Forum I at least hope that this video provided you with some utility I suppose in single boosting the developers message just so you actually understand what's uh what's going on because Real Talk the world's complex our lives are complex and to be absolutely up to date with everything that you could potentially be excited about is a completely absurd Prospect cuz there's just so much going on but okay that's that as I record this video it's no rest for the wicked time and it's almost manl Lord's time even though this industry does give us many things to laugh at and much stupidity I still need to hammer home the point that video games are really godamn good okay that's it have a good day I'll see you again tomorrow

Channel: Bellular News

Views: 506,897

Keywords: manor lords, manor lords dev, manor lords statement, manor lords gameplay, manor lords launch, paradox, gaming news, pc gaming, steam, manor lords steam, manor lords review, manor lords guide, bellular, bellulargaming, bellular news, game industry, industry news, videogames, game news

Id: zWHm_InzMjc

Length: 12min 33sec (753 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 21 2024