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The state of Naval War: Arctic Circle

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Ok, this is the reply to my email I got from JAN H:

Hello Tom,

Thank you for your mail and the kind words about the game.

We were not informed about the posting Paradox made to its forum, but
yes, Paradox Interactive has decided to discontinue further
development, so there will be no future DLCs or updates of the game.
We are obviously really sad about that, but we fully understand the
economic realities behind the decision, and I hope you and other fans
understand it, too.

Our studio, Turbo Tape Games is doing quite well now. We take all the
lessons learned from our first ever game release, including the great
support from fans around the world, and move on to create new games.
We want to go back and revisit Naval War in the future and do it even
better, but this is not imminent.


Yours sincerely,

Jan Haugland
CTO
Turbo Tape Games AS
Tel [+47] 995 29 100
jan@turbotapegames.com
http://www.turbotapegames.com
http://twitter.com/turbotapegames





Sad to say it just confirmed what I already thought. But the may release another game with a different publisher or different brand. They did say the have lessons learnt from this though.
 
stormridersp said:
I'm afraid that can't be any second attempt in this market after this first catastrophic failure. Better if they just stick with iPad games, cause I will never give them my money again.
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+1
 
That's just stupid. The game was basically good, they had some unexpected technical problems that they could not address with the limited budget of a nieche game. I'm unable to play this game and i'm pissed off, but shit happens, this is not an easy work.

Btw, RELEASE THE CODE!!
 
So that pretty much answers everything.


Hi again Tom,

Thank you for your interest! I just have to emphasize that there was
no cutting of ties between Paradox and ourselves, and certainly it had
nothing to do with the community.

We are a small studio, and while engaging with forum users is fun and
rewarding, it is very expensive and we simply could not justify
carrying that cost beyond a point.

We do not have concrete plans for a new NW type game now. It is
something we want to do in the future, though, but there are some
boring but serious questions about markets and budgets we have to find
a satisfying answer to first. :)

The game as is supports extensive modding: units, weapons, sensors,
campaigns and missions are all based on an open database, and you can
also add 3D models to it. We don't have any specific tools for the
game. I'm sorry, but we will not release the code.

Sincerely,

Jan Haugland
CTO
Turbo Tape Games AS
Tel [+47] 995 29 100
jan@turbotapegames.com
http://www.turbotapegames.com
http://twitter.com/turbotapegames
 
You know, I was one of the first buyers of this game, and also one of the first owners to come to this forum (and also to SUBSIM) to complain about it. Basically, I insisted on this being treated as a consumer issue, with an emphasis on our right to complain and to demand answers, if not immediate solutions. I will quote a piece of one of my posts:

"Many people complain about that in paradox's specific forum, but our voices are being muffled by an atmosphere of sheer praise and compliments. A too-good-to-be-true cheer, by the way, as the game is plagued with many shortcomings, both in performance (no save game button in single missions, for instance!) and in realism (aircraft being able to launch within seconds even if you order their ordnance changed, for instance). I'm not saying that these praises are lies; maybe people just dont know better. Anyway, it is obvious that this "hurray!" climate is bringing down the effort from a part of the community (victims of this game's too early, untested release) to point out that main flaws are a fact and no solution is within sight - worse than that, the happiness of a majority of users (could be merely 50% + 1, i dont really know) appears to be posing the complaining ones as: a) an irrelevant group, considering that "so many people" are happy with the game; b) basically, moaners that have nothing better to do than to disagree with the pre-concept that the devs are the best guys in the world, and thanks god for them."

What actually happened is that, other than just me and a couple of other guys thinking alike, the majority of this forum members disagreed - with a touch of hostility too. I got hostile private messages. I was accused of trolling the forum. Some dumb guy in SUBSIM even insulted me several times.

There was one guy actually kicked out of this forum - though in his case, it is possible he was not all in good faith. On the other hand, he could be simply a bona fide user that never intended to join this forum and then decided to do so on account of this particular game. In any case, the fact remains that a user was kicked just for complaining about this game, in a time where this game was getting a ridiculously amount of praise, in a manner that still baffles me to this day.

There was an exaggerated ammout of ass-kissing at that time. As if the gamer community were saying, “thanks god for Turbo Tape! Were would we find the games we want, if it were not for them?” The message we were actually sending was: "yeah, go ahead and do anything you want. Release untested games, etc. People are still going to buy your games. If some unsatisfied costumer or two has a complaint, there is a strong comunity to punch him down."

So! Things have came full circle and people seem to be realizing the actual truth on this matter: the company was unprepared to deliver a decent game, and many people were relieved of their money without even a decent answer to their complaints. Eventually the dev simply gave up. Neat.

What I was trying to get at, in that moment, is to a more wide issue. Games cost little money. It is easy to push some crap and then abandon the buyers, because, who is going to sue for 10 bucks? I expected from Paradox to be more careful before involving themselves with unreliable devs in the future, as the main reason NWAC got all this attention was because the good name of Paradox was behind it. An attention which was to be proven undeserved.

I hope some lessons were learned here. I hope that in the future, companies willing to make large bucks on this market will behave as just that: companies, not wonderful people doing a favor to the community, as many people – silly people, as we now know – did an unproductive contribution by kissing up to them all the time, until we finally saw what the devs were all about.
 
Daniel Prates said:
You know, I was one of the first buyers of this game, and also one of the first owners to come to this forum (and also to SUBSIM) to complain about it. Basically, I insisted on this being treated as a consumer issue, with an emphasis on our right to complain and to demand answers, if not immediate solutions. I will quote a piece of one of my posts:

"Many people complain about that in paradox's specific forum, but our voices are being muffled by an atmosphere of sheer praise and compliments. A too-good-to-be-true cheer, by the way, as the game is plagued with many shortcomings, both in performance (no save game button in single missions, for instance!) and in realism (aircraft being able to launch within seconds even if you order their ordnance changed, for instance). I'm not saying that these praises are lies; maybe people just dont know better. Anyway, it is obvious that this "hurray!" climate is bringing down the effort from a part of the community (victims of this game's too early, untested release) to point out that main flaws are a fact and no solution is within sight - worse than that, the happiness of a majority of users (could be merely 50% + 1, i dont really know) appears to be posing the complaining ones as: a) an irrelevant group, considering that "so many people" are happy with the game; b) basically, moaners that have nothing better to do than to disagree with the pre-concept that the devs are the best guys in the world, and thanks god for them."

What actually happened is that, other than just me and a couple of other guys thinking alike, the majority of this forum members disagreed - with a touch of hostility too. I got hostile private messages. I was accused of trolling the forum. Some dumb guy in SUBSIM even insulted me several times.

There was one guy actually kicked out of this forum - though in his case, it is possible he was not all in good faith. On the other hand, he could be simply a bona fide user that never intended to join this forum and then decided to do so on account of this particular game. In any case, the fact remains that a user was kicked just for complaining about this game, in a time where this game was getting a ridiculously amount of praise, in a manner that still baffles me to this day.

There was an exaggerated ammout of ass-kissing at that time. As if the gamer community were saying, “thanks god for Turbo Tape! Were would we find the games we want, if it were not for them?” The message we were actually sending was: "yeah, go ahead and do anything you want. Release untested games, etc. People are still going to buy your games. If some unsatisfied costumer or two has a complaint, there is a strong comunity to punch him down."

So! Things have came full circle and people seem to be realizing the actual truth on this matter: the company was unprepared to deliver a decent game, and many people were relieved of their money without even a decent answer to their complaints. Eventually the dev simply gave up. Neat.

What I was trying to get at, in that moment, is to a more wide issue. Games cost little money. It is easy to push some crap and then abandon the buyers, because, who is going to sue for 10 bucks? I expected from Paradox to be more careful before involving themselves with unreliable devs in the future, as the main reason NWAC got all this attention was because the good name of Paradox was behind it. An attention which was to be proven undeserved.

I hope some lessons were learned here. I hope that in the future, companies willing to make large bucks on this market will behave as just that: companies, not wonderful people doing a favor to the community, as many people – silly people, as we now know – did an unproductive contribution by kissing up to them all the time, until we finally saw what the devs were all about.
Click to expand...

Agreed. You see a similar example of this going on right now on the MotE forum, although MotE is quite obviously still miles ahead of NWAC (it has a save-game feature, for one thing).
 
It's very worrisome that MOTE was a Paradox title and not simply a contractor.
 
Lemont Elwood said:
It's very worrisome that MOTE was a Paradox title and not simply a contractor.
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Well at least, Paradox is famous for constantly upgrading their own games, something they could not push Turbo Tape to do. Hopefully their own games will come up right eventually - at least we can be sure they will not 'give up' as turbo tape did.
 
Lol so I finally have some time to play NWAC. I come here... and I find THIS.

WTF happened, this was shaping up so nicely!
 
Yup, disappointing indeed. I played some when the game was released, then shelved it for a while and afterwards the things were not looking so bright anymore. Anyways I enjoyed the hours I put into this game. IMHO there was potential for this to turn into a gem.
 
The game is finally at a price level that I consider worth buying (since the Paradox Earth Week promo) but I stumbled upon this thread and now I don't know if I should buy a dead game or not. I loved Jane's Fleet Command and I really hoped Naval War will be an updated version of Jane's only to find out that the developers abandon it. So, does it worth spending 5 bucks on it? Or should I wait for Steam Summer Sale and get it even cheaper?
 
I had no idea this game has this many problems. Only problem I have is sometimes when I make a new mission the planes or boats won't fire missiles. If I exit to editor and start the mission again it works. Other than that I've had no problems. Not claiming others doesn't have problems, just that this came as a huge surprise to me.
 
Spookyashell said:
I had no idea this game has this many problems. Only problem I have is sometimes when I make a new mission the planes or boats won't fire missiles. If I exit to editor and start the mission again it works. Other than that I've had no problems. Not claiming others doesn't have problems, just that this came as a huge surprise to me.
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This was the problem for TT. The issues reported were scattered and they were unable to reproduce them. Without being able to reproduce, it's hard to solve :(
 
rawbeef64 said:
The game is finally at a price level that I consider worth buying (since the Paradox Earth Week promo) but I stumbled upon this thread and now I don't know if I should buy a dead game or not. I loved Jane's Fleet Command and I really hoped Naval War will be an updated version of Jane's only to find out that the developers abandon it. So, does it worth spending 5 bucks on it? Or should I wait for Steam Summer Sale and get it even cheaper?
Click to expand...
I bought it and I am very disappointed. Just does not work as should (freezes). How can you sell a game like that?
 
coma_berenices said:
I bought it and I am very disappointed. Just does not work as should (freezes). How can you sell a game like that?
Click to expand...

Did you read the first post in this thread?
 
BjornB said:
This was the problem for TT. The issues reported were scattered and they were unable to reproduce them. Without being able to reproduce, it's hard to solve :(
Click to expand...

Mmm.... more or less, Bjorn. I remember lots of users posting their complete logs - literally, dozens of users did. And besides, though the number of unhappy users was far above normal, they were all complaining about one specific freeze problem, which as I recall, was traced down to a windows XP compatibility issue. It is expected that a game should pose problems in different machines and configurations, but this was not your tipical case-study of a developer team being beaten by the lack of feedback.
 
Daniel Prates said:
Mmm.... more or less, Bjorn. I remember lots of users posting their complete logs - literally, dozens of users did. And besides, though the number of unhappy users was far above normal, they were all complaining about one specific freeze problem, which as I recall, was traced down to a windows XP compatibility issue. It is expected that a game should pose problems in different machines and configurations, but this was not your tipical case-study of a developer team being beaten by the lack of feedback.
Click to expand...

The information I got from the development team was that they did everything they could to reproduce it, but they couldn't. The reasons for this I will not speculate in.
 
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