POLL: Did you buy Jim's card game?

[DeToxRox]

Simple really.

I totally forgot about the card game until looking at his site, and I was curious how many FOFC'ers ended up buying it after the uproar over the games announcement.

[samifan24]

I voted no. I'm sure it was as well done as Jim's games but I just don't have interest in any type of card game.

[DeToxRox]

I voted no. I'm sure it was as well done as Jim's games but I just don't have interest in any type of card game.

Agreed.

This poll is nothing against Jim, I was just curious because I remembered the game was not well recieved by the FOFC community upon announcement.

[Icy]

No, i have zero interest on cards games, i play mainly sports or strategic games (business, management, wargames).

[Abe Sargent]

Not even a little bit. I have never purchased an electronic card game in my life, its just not my genre.

[CU Tiger]

Is this the first unanimous poll in FOFC history?

[VPI97]

Is this the first unanimous poll in FOFC history?
Shurg...I bought it.

[flounder]

I bought it too. I got my $9.99 worth.

[FBPro]

First of his games I have not purchased, I have zero interest in cards and/or poker.

[RedKingGold]

Voted no. I'm waiting for future patches to come out before purchasing the game.

[Dutch]

I bought it, played it about 2 or 3 times. It seemed to be implemented properly, but it's not my kind of (card or computer) game.

[stevew]

I think an Affliction based card game would go over well with the people here.

[Anthony]

i think the blunder Jim made is he really believed the people who often posted "i would buy anything from Solecismic". he probably thought with it being priced cheaply compared to his other games it'd sell more. i think a game like that shouldn't be priced any higher than $4.99. at $10 you only need to throw in a couple more dollars and you can buy a DVD. maybe even a cheap used video game. $4.99 is a better pricepoint cuz then you would draw in more of the "i don't care if i don't ever play the game, i just want to support Solecismic" crowd. at which point its a donation, essentially. i'm sure he put a lot of work into it so i'm not knocking the effort. you'd think he'd have polled people around here and gauged the interest in such a product. since he doesn't market his game and is hype-adverse, we're the only people who know about the card game so you'd think he'd cater to this crowd's interests a little more.

if it was a RPG card game i'd have considered buying it. i haven't ever owned such a card set before so i'd have spent $10 on something like that.

[DeToxRox]

I think an Affliction based card game would go over well with the people here.

I'll kill you.

[Anthony]

this woulda been a great easter-egg hidden game in FOF. unlock the Up and Down The River card game and you get to play it with the players with the highest intelligence ratings in your universe. almost like a celebrity card game. now that's a treat.

[Mustang]

If it was a card based game like Armageddon Empires, I would have purchased, but regular card games aren't my thing.

[DanGarion]

Only card games I own are Fluxx and Chrononauts.

[lordscarlet]

The reality, however, is that the success of the game is not measured by how many members of FOFC bought it.

[stevew]

I'd definitely buy a tabletop strategy card game if he made one. We've bought quite a few niche type ones from target over the past couple years.

[Anthony]

The reality, however, is that the success of the game is not measured by how many members of FOFC bought it.

actually it is. since Solecismic don't market their games the only way for the company to get the word out on new games is by their outdated website and here. its not like Solecismic is going on cardplaying forums promoting the game, like how developers for other games promote their products here. since the Solecismic website isn't updated frequently enough nor do they have their own forum it's not likely they have a large group of people who constantly stop by that 1995 looking site looking for new content. quite frankly this is the only place Jim's got.

i can't imagine there's a huge market of people out there googling "up and down the river" and magically stumbling upon the solecismic website. and if this poll can be considered representative of the internet as a whole for every 100 people who've heard of the game, there's about 2 people buying it. it is so very unlikely that there's a huge group of people who not only don't come to FOFC, but they are magically the ones not part of this community that are buying the game. i think you'd have to take the poll numbers here and apply it to the non-FOFCers as well.

[Ben E Lou]

actually it is. since Solecismic don't market their games the only way for the company to get the word out on new games is by their outdated website and here. its not like Solecismic is going on cardplaying forums promoting the game, like how developers for other games promote their products here. since the Solecismic website isn't updated frequently enough nor do they have their own forum it's not likely they have a large group of people who constantly stop by that 1995 looking site looking for new content. quite frankly this is the only place Jim's got.

i can't imagine there's a huge market of people out there googling "up and down the river" and magically stumbling upon the solecismic website. and if this poll can be considered representative of the internet as a whole for every 100 people who've heard of the game, there's about 2 people buying it. it is so very unlikely that there's a huge group of people who not only don't come to FOFC, but they are magically the ones not part of this community that are buying the game. i think you'd have to take the poll numbers here and apply it to the non-FOFCers as well.

Anthony is so cute when he's dead wrong.

http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Games/Card_Games/Up_and_Down_the_River.html

[Ben E Lou]

(Now I'm quite certain that ain't 401 human downloads this week, but the idea that FOFC or Solecismic.com are the only places you can go to hear about this product is just completely and totally incorrect.)

[MIJB#19]

Apples and oranges

[Anthony]

this shows nothing. show me the "number of purchases this week" stat and then we can have a conversation.


i'm sure we're getting new members in this forum all the time, but for stat tracking it'd be great to see how many new people we're getting that are coming here as a result of Solecismic products themselves and not to join a Hot Or Not poll. unfortunately our move to OS would skew those stats, since there's probably some new people who are OS regulars that are stopping by. i really would love to poll the people who've signed up in the last 6 months if they signed up for the General Discussion portion or if they've signed up to talk about Solecismic games.

Solecismic is like the guy at the party who keeps striking out with the ladies. his friends would say "you got no game", but he'll just say "this party is not representative of the amount of ass i get outside. just cuz it doesn't seem like much at this party doesn't mean i'm not getting all the poon i can handle".

[Ben E Lou]

actually it is. since Solecismic don't market their games the only way for the company to get the word out on new games is by their outdated website and here.

*shurg*

[Young Drachma]

this shows nothing. show me the "number of purchases this week" stat and then we can have a conversation.


i'm sure we're getting new members in this forum all the time, but for stat tracking it'd be great to see how many new people we're getting that are coming here as a result of Solecismic products themselves and not to join a Hot Or Not poll. unfortunately our move to OS would skew those stats, since there's probably some new people who are OS regulars that are stopping by. i really would love to poll the people who've signed up in the last 6 months if they signed up for the General Discussion portion or if they've signed up to talk about Solecismic games.

Solecismic is like the guy at the party who keeps striking out with the ladies. his friends would say "you got no game", but he'll just say "this party is not representative of the amount of ass i get outside. just cuz it doesn't seem like much at this party doesn't mean i'm not getting all the poon i can handle".

And yet, even with all of the horrible problems in his life based on your assessments which reflect the fact that he probably should curl up in a ball, take his monochrome 8-bit color web site and die, he's spent 10 years doing what the hell he wants to, based on a game that if it didn't exist we wouldn't be posting here.

Yeah, I'd say that he's an absolute failure.

Party on, man. Party on.

[Ben E Lou]

And yet, even with all of the horrible problems in his life based on your assessments which reflect the fact that he probably should curl up in a ball, take his monochrome 8-bit color web site and die, he's spent 10 years doing what the hell he wants to, based on a game that if it didn't exist we wouldn't be posting here.

Yeah, I'd say that he's an absolute failure.

Party on, man. Party on.

Dark Cloud wins the thread.

[Anthony]

10 years ago i had a full head of hair. what good does that do me now?

i'm not knocking the company or anything, we all would love to quit the real world and do what we liked. that has nothing to do with the topic.

[Ben E Lou]

not the original topic...but it does have to do with your posts...

[Raiders Army]

i think the blunder Jim made is he really believed the people who often posted "i would buy anything from Solecismic".
Where to begin here? I was one of those people that you're talking about. Without trying to sound like a hypocrite or a liar, I always did think I would buy anything from Solecismic. When the card game was announced and when it went on sale I thought about buying it to support Jim. That being said, I didn't.

Why not? Well, the big reason was that I was trying to make a statement by NOT buying it. I want Jim to make football games. Any "encouragement" in another direction means that he won't have time to devote to another football game. Being that the market for text-sim football games is quite small, I'd rather have one of the few developers out there devote his time to a game I enjoy rather than one I probably wouldn't.

I say probably wouldn't because I didn't even download the demo. I wonder out of all the people who answered "no" to the poll, how many of you downloaded the demo?

If Jim were to price his next football game at $60 I would buy it without hesitation. But if the next card game were $5, it still wouldn't get my money.

Flame away.

[Sun Tzu]

no

stfu

[JonInMiddleGA]

An interesting question (that we probably won't know the answer to, nor is it any of our business really) would be whether Jim expected more or less than roughly 5% of FOFC'ers to buy the card game.

If I were to guess, I'd figure the expectation was that amount or less so I imagine our relevance is about what it was anticipated to be.

[lordscarlet]

So, the funny thing is that I am on the record as not buying into Jim's outdated business model, lack of a modern website and lack of features to help the multiplayer community. Having said that, I am repeating the retorts given to my arguments back to Anthony. From everything I have ever been told, Jim's bread and butter is not this board or its users. It is not the multiplayer community. He gets far more sales from single player users that likely never visit this site. That has always been my understanding. Do I think this maximizes his potential customer base? No. However, if he truly does have sales well beyond the user base at FOFC, your (Anthony) arguments are completely meaningless. I don't know how many units of Down the River, FOF or TCY Jim has sold (and I don't think any of us will ever know), but if he is making enough money to support the lifestyle he desires, who cares if FOFC buys Down the River?

[Subby]

Well while we are rampantly speculating, maybe Solecismic isn't Jim's primary source of income anymore.

[Sun Tzu]

I've just kind of assumed that for years now.

[lordscarlet]

I am working with what we know. Jim, to my knowledge, has always said that it is his sole source of income. If that is not true, that could certainly change things a bit.

[lighthousekeeper]

I've just kind of assumed that for years now.

+1 (or his wife...sweet gig)

[Buccaneer]

I recall, maybe incorrectly, that while Jim was in NH, he was doing some database programming on the side for a Boston company.