Welcome to City Hall, here you will find out what's happening amongst various city builder titles, both new and old. Feel free to discuss with your fellow advisors and mayors, and share your successful and less-than-successful cities alike.
Remember, you're a representative of your city so be on your best behaviour.
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As much as it hurts the developers, for me the wishlist is also a reminder function: oh yes, I was interested in this game at some time. It doesn't necessarily mean I want to buy it immediately and right now.
But only 1 % conversion is sad, I would have thought it's more like 10 % or so.
I use wishlist as a reminder only, doesn't mean I plan to buy everything when it is released. Sometimes I get it in EA, sometimes I wait for full release, sometimes I just skip it.
I mean, the game is in early access. They are asking $30 for a game that is not complete, and if early access is anything to go on, it may not be complete for a further 7 years.
It also has cosmetic DLC available already, taking the total cost so far for an early access game $40.
The game looks fun, but I don’t blame people for wanting a more complete product before shelling out what little money they have these days.
"I spent 7 years making Generation Exile, a solarpunk city-builder," Anderson announces on Reddit. "Trailers in PC Gaming Show June '24 & '25. Top 70 most played demo during our Next Fest. Did all the things you're supposed to. Launched in Early Access last week with over 35,000 wishlists. So far, we've sold fewer than 300 copies."
That is really rough, especially considering how much press the game got.
Sad to see indeed
Early Access
Well there's your problem. Why would a dev expect significant sales when the game isn't finished?
That is also true. I got burned by EA games (pun intended) before, in the sense that I didn't want to play it anymore when it released. I played it enough during the EA period, that the finished game wasn't interesting to me anymore, even though they added more stuff.
So now I'm only rarely buying a game in EA to really support the developers.
I’ve heard about this, but I’m not convinced it’s my type of game and being early access adds a second layer of risk that I’m not interested in taking. Since Valve doesn’t protect users, EA is no more safe than a Kickstarter.
I wouldn't go that far. You can still refund EA games and there is some game there. Kickstarter for video games has a far worse track record.
That’s a rough launch but hopefully sales pick up given people have it on their lists.
Wishlisting and early access game seems a sensible approach - if it ever actually releases one might buy it.
Aside:
Is GamesRadar pulling a BuzzFeed? E.g. slowly growing thoughtfully written journalism out of its SEO clickfarm business?
…I’m totally okay with that. I’ll take it.
Enough people have been burnt by early access games to simply wait for titles like this, where there is no fomo.