Prismata Reddit

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What is Prismata?Prismata is an easy-to-learn, fast-paced hybrid strategy game that borrows familiar elements from real-time strategy games, collectible card games, and tabletop strategy games, combining them in a radical new way. Think 'turn-based StarCraft', but without a map. Or, think of Hearthstone with workers and build orders instead of decks.In Prismata, players take turns spending their resources, building up their economies, constructing an army, and obliterating one another until only one side remains.

Games last only minutes, but always feel fresh thanks to randomly-generated unit pools that are different every time. Game Resources.

Social.Spoilers: !I am hidden! Disclaimer: The post below reflects my opinion on, and recollection of the history of prismata.This is gonna be a long one, for the TLDR scroll to the bottom.​Lets start off with establishing why it should be a huge success:1) The gameplay in Prismata is unique, the whole idea for the game is very creative.2) There is no RNG after the set is rolled and p1 and p2 is decided.3) The kickstarter was a success (it reached its goal).4) Many popular streamers and personalities played the game daily. Including Kripp, Timex, Kolento etc.5) People were (and still are) sick of the childish, RNG heavy Hearthstone and its publisher.

Meaning there was a huge playerbase up for grabs.6) The core gameplay was 100% functional years ago. Like before kickstarter was even launched.7) The community of players was amazing.

Many people making guides, streaming, forming teams, tournaments and other content.8) The game is perfect for competition. It is like a dream for hardcore players.9) Prismata is a combination of chess, hearthstone and starcraft and should therefore have the possibility of being competitive with these games in terms of reach, revenue potential, playerbase and interest.10) True Free to play with no bullshit! (quoting the kickstarter)​How did loonark mess this up? They should have struck gold here!Elyot was doing good initially at creating HYPE. He definitely understood that this game was really good. He excels in getting the word out there.

He could probably have a decent career in marketing or as a salesperson. Then there was Will who was the real boss of the company. A workhorse and very smart person with a very sharp, calculating mind. He excelled at making the correct decissions and getting stuff done early on. So far everything is looking great. The kickstarter completes and the game has been ready for release for a long time allready. But what happends?

We later find out that at some point around here, Will has left the company. I suspect he might lack charisma or some other leadership quality to get his employees productive while in a positive mindset.

There is also the chance there was some internal dispute, but we never got all the details. Nobody outside knew that Will had left. So from our perspective it could get released any second and everything was looking ready to explode even further. But instead the developers spent ages on adding cosmetics, new units, delaying the release and eventually backtracking their entire decission of being a true free to play game.

These decissions, I assume they are made by Elyot, are all horrible. I will examine these decissions below and argue for my position on them.Adding cosmetics: This should not have been a priority. The only 2 successfull games I know of that makes lots of money from this is Dota2 and CS:GO.

The 2 flagship multiplayer games of Valve that they use to attract people to Steam. Over time this could indeed be a potential way to earn money in Prismata, but we were never near that level. The plan to earn revenue needed to be a subscription-model of some kind. Lets say you have the subscription for free for your first month, but after that you need to pay.

Behind the subscription you can have any of the following: (unranked quickplay, ranked quickplay, cosmetics, replay analysis, new units 1 week earlier). This subscription model is easier to adjust if needed, since you can always add new content behind the paywall to get more people to pay if needed. Keep in mind that you also want a large playerbase, so it is not wise to start off with too much behind the paywall while you build the playerbase. I would keep either ranked or unranked quickplay outside of the paywall as long as it is financially viable to do so. To be clear: the ability to play in some form should always remain outside of the paywall.New units: The game had a huge amount of units allready. This made Prismata way more complex than any other turn based strategy game out there. New units should not be a primary focus at all.Delaying the release: This is bad for 2 reasons, The first and most obvious is that you have to ride the hype-wave.

There were so many active players, so much content being produced, so many streamers. And the game was absolutely ready to go.

The second is that without releasing the game you are just delaying or erasing potential revenue, causing the company to be lower on funds when you finally do release.Backtracking their entire decission of being a true free to play game: This is what totally killed the game. Disregarding the morality first, it is not the way to make the most money. What addicts people to prismata and could get them to spend money on it is the gameplay. The gameplay is what is amazing in prismata.

Therefore it is unlikely to get people to spend money on Prismata before they have experienced the gameplay. This just locked out 99% of potential players, including people who would become paying customers.

Returning to the morality again, this decission made the developers liars. Their kickstarter became a scam. There is no excuse, even if it became free2play later.I will also list some honorable mentions for things that could have helped make the game more successfull:1) 1on1 chat window between the 2 players in an active game. This would help people do meaningfull communication and build relationships in game.

Which the emotes do not. This would also be an outlet for frustration that naturally build up in a competitive environment. The ability to message people in the client privately should also be enabled without the hassle of friending up first for the same reason.2) The graphics and art could have been upgraded, if it wasn't so locked down due to all the cosmetics.3) The timesystem could use a bit of tweeking, making it more simular to Chess would be an improvement. The sims 4 parenthood game pack free download. This would incentivise people to play quicker, leading to less waiting for your opponents to finish their turn, which is not fun, specially not on the early turns where the incentive to play quicker would be greater.​TLDR: Prismata core gameplay is amazing and the game should have been way more successfull!. I believe the single player was a mistake and actually drove people away from the game since usually that's where they went for first experience.

The proper single player should've just been bot matches with introductions of new units maybe (so just an extension of 'Tutorial'. I don't think a subscription model would've worked, I'd never play a monthly fee to play any game, especially a card game.Personal opinion, game should've probably just been 'pay once to play', get an established player base, pay someone to upgrade the visuals, then go free to play with the cosmetics.Also, regarding the cosmetics, the prices are absolutely insane. There are what, about 100 units in the game?

If they were about $0.50 per skin, I would be down to pay some money to support the game and get some unique art, but the current pricing is definitely not warranted.I hope the game gets a revamp and a relaunch with a narrower focus. 100% agreed with the campaign thing. I recently tried to get a friend into the game, and even though he was doing very well for a complete newbie (he managed to not lose any Hellhounds on the first try on the defense mission), the campaign annoyed him so much he couldn't even bring himself to finish the first episode and hasn't played since despite my insistence.

In particular, he hated when Logan would pop up with his stupid little dialogue box in the middle of a match just to blabber on about nothing. Difficult to attract new players for the same reason that the game is so good; it's unique, it's very difficult, and doesn't give you any randomness to hide behind making mistakes incredibly punishing. In that sense Prismata has the same challenges as the entire RTS genre which has been dying for the past 10 yearsThe art isn't the best, if you look at all the successful multi monster CCGs or deck builders the one thing they have in common is that they're gorgeous.

I have no idea how Magic works but the cards do look cool. Similarly with Pokemon, terrible game, cool artwork that makes you want to use the cards. Prismata's unit are all a bit cereal boxy - but it is hard to blame an indie developed game for not sharing art quality with market leading titles in similar genres.Your point about the timer actually makes sense, a chess clock that encourages quick play early on does sound good - as long as there's an extra bit of time made available at the start to look at the units and decide a strategy. The fundamental reason we were never able to get huge numbers is that we never found a way of advertising the game that was break-even or better. It's really interesting hearing about your experience and insight as a developer. You talk a lot about getting players in a profitable way, on both ends of the equation.For acquisition you mention the art, the game layout, and the extreme uniqueness of Prismata as barriers to entry.

Regarding the unique part, I agree but also that was one of the game's selling points and what made me love it so much, so I see this as a necessary cost for the kind of game Prismata wants to be. Regarding the layout, I agree that it is both extremely confusing to new players (and more importantly, twitch stream viewers whose hands you can't hold at all) while simultaneously being extremely useful for actual experienced players.

I don't know a solution here, maybe this is a problem you can't fix given that prismata is such an abstract game (it's basically an RTS abstraction / simulator in many ways). That leaves the art, which you identify as a key aspect to rework.

I remember hearing people complain about it, but this always confused me as it looked quite good. I guess it didn't have the flashy animations of hearthstone (somewhat a necessity to allow quick actions / undo) but the art was never bad, it just rarely made me marvel at it. I guess I have to agree this is the best place to improve, even though I personally don't take issue, because I recognize the general opinion of others. Would you try to make the art end up at a quality like Hearthstone / Artifact / Stellaris?On the revenue end I get confused by your message. I agree that f2p + cosmetics is a tough line to walk, as you get almost no profit.

You say only Valve has success here because revenue isn't the only goal. This may be largely true, but LoL also comes to mind as a massive f2p + cosmetics success. Still, the success stories are rare, involve mass appeal games (at a scale that Prismata never would be), and don't really involve tiny game studios. So the two alternatives are pay2own (like overwatch was, and WoW even though it was a subscription) or, generally, microtransactions and pay2win. Pay2own is problematic as it is a barrier to growing the player base (and Prismata definitely knows the struggle of a low playerbase), but the alternative seems unpalatable - this is where I get confused. Are you suggesting that Prismata or a game like it, as the only real shot at profitability and growth, should compromise the gameplay by adding convenience micro-transactions / pay2win? This is a bleak reality to consider.

It's obvious that making a niche multiplayer game will be difficult and perhaps likely to fizzle out, but is this the best solution? I can't imagine a version of Prismata that retains its core playerbase while including near-mandatory microtransactions or pay2win. Are there really no alternatives? What are your thoughts on the pay2own model like in Overwatch? Maybe coupled with the graphics upgrade you dream of, to justify to new players that they should spend money on you?.

The most marketable way to do the UI and visuals might be 'make it look as much like RTS as possible', complete with scrollable battlefield and 3d everything. Games could start out with small numbers of units on both sides and sorta zoom out more unit types were added. RTS-style animations for building things. More visual combat.

It would be really hard to do that while still being as convenient as it is now (e.g. 3-second blitz being actually playable).LoL sells champions, unlike DOTA which has all of them for free. And even then, their ARPU is not that great (they added hextech to improve it but that was sorta after loot boxes had peaked).I think pay-to-own is probably the most viable path to profitability, but in general I'm kinda bleak on Prismata-like games really having a good chance of doing what we set out to do while being highly successful financially.For a while, I thought battle passes might be the answer, but it turns out that they're not doing that great either (at least not for cosmetic-only ones like the one in Drodo Auto-chess). Fortnite gets away with it because they have millions of players, and the 'kid audience' factor actually makes a big difference (because demand elasticity is completely different when parents want to find a gift for their kid and the kid is just obsessed with Fortnite).

I forgot LoL sold champions, so they do have some convenience microtransactions. Still my impression was that most of their money was from skins. They also made it big, so that they can afford a low ARPU. Definitely fortnite shouldn't be compared to.I guess we are mostly in agreeal that pay-to-own might be best, but even then it is a very uphill battle. As someone who never played blitz, personally I think giving up a little convenience for animations would be ok. You could have a toggle for fast animations, or make it game mode specific to allow blitz. I think leaning into the rts feel is the best way to grab the attention of potential players.

I get the sense that tons of people watch but don't play SC2 (myself included), often largely because stuff like real time APM is dumb and runs counter to strategy. Rainbow Six: Siege is primarily cosmetic with a pay to own retail price (but on sale very frequently) and does extremely well for Ubisoft. You could argue that there's elements of paying for new operators, but it takes very little time to unlock them through normal play. They do season passes but those just let you play new operators a week early and get them unlocked immediately which again isn't much and with the exception of extremely powerful operators on release, isn't really any kind of p2w.

There are some skins in the game that unfortunately do the job of being camo a little too well depending on the map being played, but that's a minor flaw mostly related to the lighting system.I bring the game up because it's been extremely successful without being horribly frustrating to force your wallet out and without doing any pay to win. Obviously they have some things going for them like being a well known franchise (although this is different from previous games in the franchise), and getting some money up front with the retail purchase. One way they deal with user acquisition is running frequent free weekends in parallel with the big tournaments (because well, they are spending millions on these tournaments for user acquisition). They didn't even have loot boxes (alpha packs) until a year or two after release and only recently introduced a battle pass system (both are still cosmetics only).Not everyone could copy what they did, but there's definitely some takeaways from their success.

It's also the game that took me away from Prismata haha.N. I'd argue that comparing the two games is hard for many reasons.Not only is Rainbow Six: Siege by a huge publisher, but also an already established franchise. It doesn't matter that it is different from previous entries. Name recognition is important because when you know something, you'll immediately prefer it to something you don't.Also, the genres are miles apart. Anybody can pick up and play a shooter. You immediately grasp the concept, and it is similar to other shooters. I don't have the numbers, but I'd argue the shooter genre has more players than RTS.

The problem is, there aren't 10 million Pentamind champions. Games like Magic and Hearthstone are miles better at recruiting a broad base of average-skill players because of better accessibility and RNG.

Prismata tends to only retain really smart players, which are only a fraction of the audience.This always seemed to me to be the overarching problem. I'm sure there are decisions you could have made that would have led to a better financial outcome, but ultimately, I don't know if there was ever a big enough audience for this beautiful game, as much as I've always hoped there was. I've thought a lot about this. I've been playing the game since beta and I was a Kickstarter supporter. This is still my favorite game.

It's like Solitaire but way more interesting and addictive. The things I love:- A game is quick, maybe 5 - 10 minutes so it's good for a break from work. Like DOTA or SC2 which take hours.- Every game is different.- If you practice you slowly get better.- I've put hundreds of hours and well over $300 into Prismata.I've been following the discussions on Reddit for years. The question was always:- How do we attract casual players? Emotes, skins, campaign, puzzles.- How do we monetize? Emotes, Skins.For me these would be my last concern.

I would be asking:Who is our audience? Hardcore strategy players, people who like chess.

Definitely not casual players.How do we expand the player base? Forget making money.

Make money later when the game is popular.The developers were so fixated on making Prismata a viral casual hit that they completely missed what Prismata is and who is playing it. And it crippled the growth of the game. When it should have been growing, the game was going through many iterations of black lab, armory, emotes.

The game was basically ready and two years later, it still wasn't free to play.The crazy thing is that the game isn't dead. You can see that by looking at the passion in this thread. And who are the people posting here? Casual players? No, they are the hardcore players who like intense, intellectually stimulating 1v1.So if you were able to set up an optional subscription for Prismata, I would be happy to sign up today.

I would happily pay $30 per month to keep playing my favorite game. Maybe other people would too. Maybe you could set up a Paetron account. With some community support and slow organic growth, I think the game could not be dead.Even if it's not a huge success, Prismata is still a great game with a great community. I would be very sad if the game stopped being available (although I'd probably waste a lot less time).

Elyot Grant, the founder and CEO of Lunarch Studios, the makers of an indie title Prismata, did a GDC presentation for this year’s event that took place in San Francisco, California between March 21st and March 23rd.

The presentation was about getting eyes on your project using Reddit. Grant uses an example of an event that happened where the studio messed up and deleted all of the e-mails that they had collected from a convention. Grant posted about the screw-up on Reddit, which ended up garnering lots of upvotes and put thousands of eyes on their game, Prismata. This was back in 2014 ahead of the game’s Kickstarter campaign.

The presentation, called “Advanced Reddit Tactics: Front-Paging and Winning big When It Happens” is available for viewing on the GDC Vault. There’s also a back up on the Wayback Machine and on Archive.is.

Grant explains that after originally posting about the incident in the TIFU sub-reddit, he logged into his friend’s account and reposted the story with some meta-commentary in a separate sub-reddit /r/bestof/. Grant chronicles this process with screenshots of the process.

The idea was to leverage the elasticity of the viral event by spreading awareness of the event across other largely populated sub-reddits, and then stealth-edit the posts and link to Lunarch Studios’ game, Prismata. It helped put eyes on the game for the alpha tests, and raise interests for the eventual Kickstarter campaign that would take place later that year.

Grant lists different legitimate ways to get your posts on Reddit upvoted quickly in order to put as many eyes on the post as possible. He also discusses ways to vote manipulate your way into the top spot, even acknowledging that it’s against the terms of service.

Over on Reddit’s account and community restrictions page, the top of the page states that vote manipulation is against the rules, especially using multiple accounts to boost or artificially help inflate a post. The rules state…

“Vote manipulation is against the Reddit rules, whether it is manual, programmatic, or otherwise. Some common forms of vote cheating are:
Using multiple accounts, voting services, or any other software to increase or decrease vote scores.
Asking people to vote up or down certain posts, either on Reddit itself or through social networks, messaging, etc. for personal gain.
Forming or joining a group that votes together, either on a specific post, a user’s posts, posts from a domain, etc.”

In this case, Grant admitted to using his friend’s account to pretend as if he were just a random user who came across the original TIFU post, doing a meta-post on the original TIFU post in another popular sub-reddit, thus further boosting the presence of the original post, and the game his team was working on.

There’s even a graph that breakdowns the list reach that their traditional promotion had versus the reach they achieved gaming Reddit’s system.

With the presentation at the Game Developers Conference, it essentially allowed Elyot Grant to teach other indie developers how to game Reddit’s system, either with manufactured stories or real stories. Some gamers and developers who came across this presentation felt it was unethical for an indie developer to use GDC to promote breaking Reddit’s rule to self-promote content.

I did reach out to the GDC about the issue and if they decide to respond the article will be updated.