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RWarehall: Furthermore, you seem to be neglecting the first Tweet implying GoG rejected it because someone there thought it looked like a mobile game. But I guess you know better than Zachtronics in that GoG really meant that their other games didn't sell well enough.
Personally, if that was the reason GOG gave and Zachtronics tweeted it, I would stop all business relations with Zachtronics, no matter their games. Why? Because I believe that business dealings between two partners should stay private. But that's just me, a horrible human person.

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RWarehall: I guess no amount of wishlist votes are good enough for you because the forum doesn't matter to GoG at all...
Quite the opposite, wishlist votes is what matters for me. And no, ~600 wishlist votes is a drop in the ocean. Ask all the people on reddit and the other places where they show support for this game to vote on GOG's wishlist, thus increase its votes to a few thousands, then GOG could (and probably would) revisit their decision. But saying that "the user base has spoken" is dismissive of the user base.
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JMich: snip
Seriously, you need to get over yourself. Every word out of your mouth these days seems to backup GoG 100% with no grays whatsoever.

400+ wishlist votes is significant enough. It's not like this game has been announced for years and not like everyone rightfully assumed it would be here anyway.
3 PC gaming magazines calling GoG's rejection completely baffling is also significant.

And here you go trying to call Zachtronics out for it because GoG are your best buddies now.
Bought and paid for...
high rated
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JMich: Personally, if that was the reason GOG gave and Zachtronics tweeted it, I would stop all business relations with Zachtronics, no matter their games. Why? Because I believe that business dealings between two partners should stay private. But that's just me, a horrible human person.
Actually, I salute the balls of every dev who would put the cards on the table like that. They're the ones who are trying to sell a product and making a specific reason for turning the game down public, they'd usually make themselves vulnerable, not gog. After all, they'd publically point out flaws in THEIR game. That is, unless of course gog would arbitrarily reject games for phoney baloney bullshit reasons that are so embarassing they wouldn't want these reasons to go public. You know, really dumb reasons like "too niche", "not a good fit", "looks like a mobile game", "we're having our winter sale now, let's see how well your game does on Steam first", or - allegedly - "it's turn based".

They could write "Sorry, but from the looks of it and judging by the sales of similar games in the past, we don't expect this to sell more than 10 copies.". Not very diplomatic, but infinitely preferable to the frankly insulting and just plain stupid shit they put in their rejection mails in the past. Their official statement re Opus Magnum is more self-aggrandizing, cryptic bullshit. "We rarely ever want to share any details on the actual system and how it looks like and what it means, because it’s just too individual."

It's about time their "curation" gets called out on that. The gog "curation" emperor has no clothes. I don't think they have a proper vetting process, I'd be hugely surprised if they even play the majority of games that are submitted.
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RWarehall: Seriously, you need to get over yourself. Every word out of your mouth these days seems to backup GoG 100% with no grays whatsoever.
I have said it in other threads, I do like taking contrarian views. In the current GOG bashing threads, I do take a pro-GOG view. I don't usually do so in the GOG praising threads, mostly because there are a ton of people that do the bashing in there.

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RWarehall: 400+ wishlist votes is significant enough.
Let's agree to disagree. 400 votes are a drop in the ocean compared to the number of GOG users. Even allowing an order of magnitude change and saying that 4000 people will buy the game, then GOG may break even selling it. So while it is commendable, it's like saying a city demonstration that had 400 people was significant. If the city has a 100,000 citizens, then it's not significant.
Unless of course you assume GOG has fewer than 100,000 customers, in which case carry on.

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fronzelneekburm: Actually, I salute the balls of every dev who would put the cards on the table like that.
Oh, me too. I do salute them. I just wouldn't continue working with them.

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fronzelneekburm: They could write "Sorry, but from the looks of it and judging by the sales of similar games in the past, we don't expect this to sell more than 10 copies.". Not very diplomatic, but infinitely preferable to the frankly insulting and just plain stupid shit they put in their rejection mails in the past.
This could also be a cultural thing. I know that English people tend to be very diplomatic about what they say ("Are you sure about this?" usually means that it's a horrible idea) while Dutch tend to be much more direct ("This idea sucks" means that they find it a bad idea). So when a Dutch person gives feedback to an English one, the English could be deathly insulted by what the Dutch sees as polite feedback, while in the opposite case the Dutch could think that the Englishman is praising his work.

As for the curation, I'll just say what I've said before. If you think a game deserves to be on GOG, convince the people to vote for it on the wishlist. That is the way we can convince GOG to take another look.
Post edited January 07, 2018 by JMich
http://store.steampowered.com/app/591380/Bomb_Squad_Academy/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/454320/the_Sequence/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/597190/Lunaform/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/332830/Prelogate/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/760360/Android_John_21/
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eiii: So these votes very likely represent a much larger buyer base.
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JMich: Ah, true. Forgot to take that into account. Thank you for correcting me.
So, what would your estimate be for how many copies a Zachtronics game would sell on GOG?
I have no idea. GOG does not give me enough numbers to make an educated guess.
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JMich: Personally, if that was the reason GOG gave and Zachtronics tweeted it, I would stop all business relations with Zachtronics, no matter their games. Why? Because I believe that business dealings between two partners should stay private. But that's just me, a horrible human person.
That was the public reason GOG gave Zach to tweet.

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JMich: Let's agree to disagree. 400 votes are a drop in the ocean compared to the number of GOG users. Even allowing an order of magnitude change and saying that 4000 people will buy the game, then GOG may break even selling it. So while it is commendable, it's like saying a city demonstration that had 400 people was significant. If the city has a 100,000 citizens, then it's not significant.
Unless of course you assume GOG has fewer than 100,000 customers, in which case carry on.
Bullshit [wikipedia_cat.png]. The votes are a small share of the userbase, BUT they are (mostly) representative of the userbase. That's how sampling fucking works. If 400 people out of wishlist voters say they will buy the game, then a large percentage of the general audience will buy it, too.
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198086248484/recommended/558990/
I'm currently really sad to be a GOG enthousiast as there are more and more games I'm truly waiting for that did not pass the curation. I would totally not go to a platform where no curation exists, and I know this is a normal thing with curation to have misses... but wow, so much money I'm willing to throw that is staying in my pocket is insane.

Opus Magnum
The Next Penelope (waiting for 2 years that the dev tries again after GOG first refusal)
Drifting Lands (dev told me that they will probably never submit a game to GOG again as the contact was pretty bad)
Northgard ("one of the most money-earning indy game of 2017" according to Steam awards)
Game Dev Tycoon (dev told me they could perhaps resubmit the game now the definitive version is out)
[...]

Sometimes it just need a resubmit with a better / more actual build. Lethis Path of Progress for example had been refused, then accepted one year later with better patches. But we still not have Lethis Daring Discoverers...

My feeling is more that GOG has problems correctly curating puzzle and management games. Perhaps they lack some expertise here (I'm not saying I would do better though...). They seems to be really more enlightened when talking RPGs and adventure. With the company growing, they will probably establish better expertise processes.

Gorogoa is one of my best games of 2017 and it is all about a non challenging mobile game but we satisfying feedbacks. I would not take this review as a good argument of not porting the game here.
Post edited January 07, 2018 by garkham
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RWarehall: There are 2184 distinct titles for sale and I looked up where every Zachtronics game ranks:
SpaceChem = #393 (82nd percentile)
TIS-100 = #791 (63rd percentile)
Infinifactory = #1267 (41st percentile)
Ironclad Tactics = #1296 (40th percentile)
Shenzhen I/O = #1379 (36th percentile)
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SirPrimalform: Very surprised to see TIS-100 in second (out of Zach's games).
A main reason for that probably is the price. Infinifactory and Shenzhen are much more expensive and have not been on sale for less than $10 so far.
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Frozen: "We take into consideration many other factors than just the actual game itself"?
"We do it from the angle of our entire user-base"?
WTF?!
They rejected some games 2-3 years ago with the reason that they were "too close to other games they have" or "too complex / obscure concepts". So it's not always the quality of the game, but more how it would fit it their catalog.
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Starmaker: That was the public reason GOG gave Zach to tweet.
The "looks like a mobile game" was the public reason? I thought the other tweet "no specifics, it just didn't pass our curation process" was the public reason. I might have been unclear about which tweet I meant, or I may not know that the "mobile game" was the public reason given. Apologies if I'm mistaken.

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Starmaker: If 400 people out of wishlist voters say they will buy the game, then a large percentage of the general audience will buy it, too.
Does that mean that 400 people are a large percentage of the wishlist voters or that a small percentage of wishlist voters means a large percentage of the general audience? Remember that the current most voted wishes are in the 40K votes area, which means we do have at least 40K people voting. The 400 votes are 1% of them, let's adjust it and say it will eventually reach 4K votes. So 10% is a large percentage of the general audience? I guess it could be.
Feel free to speculate further with said numbers about what 400 votes mean about the percentages that have voted for the game.
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JMich: snip
I wonder how many from those 400 people will ask for a Gog Connect if the game will be released in here at the end of this year .
hmm... that review is full of mistakes. such as:

"-no way to higlight instructions to track changes or repeated instructions" - the timeline is highlighted
"-the repeat instruction copys from the start always, so you cant use small chunks over again" - using the reset instruction allows copying chunks
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JMich: snip
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i_hope_you_rot: I wonder how many from those 400 people will ask for a Gog Connect if the game will be released in here at the end of this year .
I hope none. But seeing the number of user review beginning by "I do not own the game on GOG but on Steam, but let me annoy you anyway with my critics", it is probably more than 0...