Mongoose Publishing and Seventh Sense

[archcorenth]

First of all, I would like to say how much I love this software. I haven't played Lone Wolf since I was in middle school and yet spent all last night playing them again on Seventh Sense. And honestly, I think it's more fun this way. The pictures can be made larger (particularly helpful for Fire on the Water ;D) and I even like the options for the product to force you to die when you make the wrong choice, as it encourages me to try different paths rather than just back up a page. I don't think a commercial product could possibly be better -- except maybe for the edition of a soundtrack, but then I just put in my 1979 Lord of the Rings CD by Leonard Rosenman and everything was perfect.


That being said, I've heard a lot about these new special editions from Mongoose Publishing and would love to try them, but as I already own all of the books -- at least of the ones that were published in America -- I don't really want to pay for the new ones. Also at ten pounds a book they are prohibitively expense even if I was more willing. I think you should ask Mongoose Publishing if they'd like to buy your program to release their books commercial on the computer, they would reach a large new audience -- not just of people like me -- but if they were to sell them over Steam and the Playstation Network -- perhaps even whatever it is to download on the DS, a huge audience who don't even know or else don't remember what Lone Wolf is! They could give the first book away as a demo and then people could buy each subsequent book for maybe $2.99 or each set: Kai, Magnakai, etc. with one book free. I think that not only would they make tons more money than the way it is now, where you really have to already know they exist to find them and read them, and I could actually afford to read them! :-)

I think they could be a big hit.

[Dave]

First off, Thanks for the compliments, archcoreth. I'm very glad you enjoyed Seventh Sense. I continue to work sporadically on the next release, which includes some Killer fun new features. All in good time...

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the only "special edition" Mongoose book, the first one? The rest of the books are simply the project aon editions, in hard copy. So, with the exception of Book 1, you *are* getting the republished versions, and playing them in Seventh Sense, to boot!

(Though some of the ridiculously hard combats (Altan, Choas Master?) have been tweaked to be easier. Those numbers will be easy to incorporate.)

[beowuuf]

I think there are tweaks, but you are rigfht, each book after the first has a bonus adventure instead of more sections in the main book.

I would imagine releasing digitally on any of the listen networks securely involves a reduction in profits as other people are added into the mix, aswell as an investmnt in knowledge on how to actually do that. Have any other games publishers like WotC, etc done such a thing already?

[archcorenth]

I think it's awesome that the creator of the program got to me :-)

Wikipedia makes it sound like the books after book 1 are expanded but just not by Joe. I don't know though. I've only see the first one and that belonged to a friend of mine. (Who was over protective of it and wouldn't let other people play with it )

[beowuuf]

Yes, the bonus adventures are written by others, but then edited and approved by Joe.

[curunauth]

The advantages to releasing on Steam or other established game distribution services are generally worth whatever said service(s) charge, I think -- rolling your own is non-trivial, requires a commitment to servers, and doesn't come with a ready audience; loads of people already have Steam on their machine, it has built-in advertising and promotion of sales, the ability to be found in searches or by relation to products people liked, and you don't have to manage the servers . . . there's a lot to gain. (And as people are getting used to those services, it's probably getting harder and harder to go it alone, especially as an indie or small-studio title.)

Publishing companies seem to generally resist digital publication pretty strongly though . . . especially without some sort of DRM with a name they're paying for (this doesn't necessarily mean *effective* DRM, but executives appear to believe salespeople).

Ultimately, that would involve closing the code (even if it were a homebrew DRM system), which would be sad. And I can't remember if it requires any GPL libraries - if so, excising that dependency could take a significant re-write.

. . . all that said, I'd buy it!

[Dave]

Pretty much, if you want Mongoose to release a computerized version of Lone Wolf (like Seventh Sense, or Magnamund Commander), you're going to make a lot more headway approaching them, than suggesting it to me...