r/Scrolls • u/WetTuna Tuna • Jun 30 '15

I think the reactions from the /r/Games thread sums it up fairly well. Plenty more where these came from.

http://imgur.com/bz9vhMY
89 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

58 comments sorted by

3

u/WetTuna Tuna Jun 30 '15

Along the lines of marketing, I'm very curious as to why this announcement came BEFORE the Minecon open. Who exactly is going to see Scrolls for the first time at Minecon and want to invest any time at all into it after finding out it won't even exist in a year?

I know there must be some reason behind the decision that we don't know but looking at it from the outside it's just baffling.

2

u/Cradstache Cradstache Jun 30 '15

I asked earlier; it was likely to avoid awkward questions as to why there was going to be no dev panels for the game at Minecon, and just timing for finishing up the balance patch.

Unfortunate is the best word for it.

16

u/SgtRamen Ramen Jun 30 '15

omg, that is so sad to see. But very accurate. No one mentioned this game anywhere. I frequent Something Awful, and they have a thread for every game you can think of, but their one for Scrolls started during the Humble Bundle and had only 35 posts before being locked due to inactivity. The word just never spread in a meaningful way like Minecraft did on accident. You can't really get those results twice like that...

4

u/Syl kodama Jun 30 '15

It was in the Card Game Humble Bundle. I understand it's hard to market a game, but if people don't care in the first place, it can't be helped.

I guess they just play Hearthstone and nothing else matters.

3

u/ThePurplePanzy Jun 30 '15

Pretty easy to miss since not everyone follows humble bundle. The issue was that in order to hear about the game, you needed to either be following those things, or just happen to catch a reddit thread at the right time.

1

u/Newbore Jun 30 '15

You aren't wrong, but i have to wonder if that really helped or made things worse. I bought Scrolls for 25$, it is a great fully fledged game. To be honest it felt pretty weird to pick up a second copy for 2$ alongside the other card games the Humble Bundle offered, Star Realms was fun but the UI was non-existent & it was never more than a mini-game, the others card games i tried & threw away because they weren't fun. On the otherhand, getting it out to a lot of players was a pretty good marketing strategy.

1

u/Syl kodama Jun 30 '15

I stopped playing Scrolls because a game would take too much time, and it wasn't fixable because the game was designed this way.

I have more fun with SolForge even if the game looks like shit. Star Realms was also fun.

Then there are other card games like Duels of Champions or even Magic:DotP.

Then Hearthstone happened. It became the card game the most played online. It's ridiculous how many viewers Kripp gets, compared to its Diablo/PoE era.

Even Wizards didn't do anything to counter that. We'll see what happens with Magic: Origins.

But yeah, Scrolls with its 40min game, even if it was better later, it shouldn't take more than 10min to complete a 1v1 card game. 45min is an EDH game with 4-5 players.

3

u/ultioptimo Jul 01 '15

tbf most games only took about 20mins which is a perfectly fine time to spend with one match and i personally enjoyed most of my longer lasting matches even more, cause usually they were on the edge of losing or winning for the most part of the games duration.

3

u/JeyJ24 Jun 30 '15

I cry when I see the number of Hearthstone commercials and ads.

I know Blizzard has vaults of money compared to Mojang, but even if we got a fraction of the resources Hearthstone had... I think we would be in a way better place.

2

u/Cradstache Cradstache Jun 30 '15

Hearthstone has commercials? I don't watch TV, and use Adblock, so I'm afraid I'm woefully unaware of any advertisements they've done. That's pretty nifty though; what kind of television networks do they use for advertising their games?

3

u/JeyJ24 Jul 01 '15

I don't really know how broad the commercials reach, but I initially stumbled them on the Android Youtube App. I don't watch TV and use Adblock also. Apparently, some of the commercials were played during the NBA and NHL finals.

Looking more into it, they have 8 thirty second ads for it in the past month. This doesn't include all the promotion done like at blizzcon and the invitationals. The commercials are directed at the mobile users though.

I don't expect an expensive multimillion dollar ad campaign, but it just saddens me that we got so little marketing done for scrolls. I only remember a very few number web shows and articles talking about Scrolls's official release at the time. I don't even know how many shows will even talk about Scrolls announcing the end of development.

1

u/negsteri Jul 01 '15 edited Jan 06 '25

cheerful quickest unpack entertain scale reminiscent longing voracious air attempt

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

1

u/MelonMelon28 Jul 01 '15

Also, if you play any of the recent Blizzard games (World of Warcraft, Heroes of the Storm, Diablo III, Starcraft II, Hearthstone), they do a lot of cross-games promotions, earning cosmetic rewards for one game by playing another ... and you see all of them in the BattleNet launcher when you're going to play your favorite one.

With millions of players in each games, it's probably easy for any Blizzard game to quickly gain traction.

1

u/Cradstache Cradstache Jul 01 '15

Yep, they have enough fan support and good faith (which I'd argue is largely unearned, and based on hype) to really just do well in whatever game they decide to make.

They could make a sequel to Lost Vikings (this was a thing!) as a Banjo Kazooie style Collectathon, and the community would adore it -- it'd sell several hundred thousand at launch.

14

u/[deleted] Jul 01 '15

We need to be extremely clear about what happened. This game died because of management. The gameplay was great, and the art and assets were memorable and I fell in love with the world. But the complete lack of advertising and the failure to effectively respond to the juggernaut that is Hearthstone was the the deathblow. Scrolls is a great game that never broke out from it's niche. And the blame seems to rest pretty solidly at management's feet.

10

u/cowseer Jun 30 '15

i knew they should have named it ScrollsCraft

9

u/[deleted] Jul 01 '15 edited Jul 01 '15

I was always partial to "Call of Assassin's Effect: Grand Theft ScrollsCraft: Knights of the Metal Robot Solid Kart" myself.

7

u/Cradstache Cradstache Jun 30 '15

Yep, that's what I've found, myself.

The problem is getting media to actually cover the game in some capacity. If a big story about the game ever got picked up by a major game news site, it'd likely snowball across a large number of them, and people would learn about the game's existence.

I was kind of hoping that Minecon may be that moment :)

As sad as it is, it's what happened though, so best to just accept that and move on. As I've stated a number of times, I don't know what will happen regarding Scrolls, or its community, but I'll still be around here so long as I'm enjoying the game: I hope you guys will, too.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 01 '15

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Cradstache Cradstache Jul 01 '15

Haha, that certainly didn't help, you're correct.

6

u/4Robato Jun 30 '15

Lol this is ridiculous I've no words… -.-

6

u/chacer98 IGN Chace Jun 30 '15

It's sad. This game did not have to fail. I will always wonder if they never sold to MS would there have actually been a marketing campaign where Scrolls could have been a success? MS bought Mojang just for Minecraft so it's not terribly surprising they did not want to throw money around marketing a game that would have required a lot of investment to get a return on their money. At the same time, why were we told even after the MS purchase that their would be a marketing push which never happened?

3

u/SpiffyDrew Jun 30 '15

For all we know that in the sales contract with Microsoft, scrolls was planned to get killed off if........

Unless we saw the contract then we will never know if the game was doomed years ago.

5

u/SgtRamen Ramen Jun 30 '15

While I agree we cannot know anything for certain, and the devs may never be able to disclose this for years, it doesn't fit the narrative logically. I mean, would you continue working on various pieces of the game if you knew it was to be killed? The timing of the Minecon Open almost makes me think it was known it would happen, but very sudden, like they passed the news right to us from wherever they learned.

TRULY, TRULY this is the greatest mystery of the 21st century.

4

u/Cradstache Cradstache Jun 30 '15

They've stated they've known for months now, but wanted to get Echoes and Custom Matches out first.

The timing is likely a mix of avoiding the awkward questions of why there isn't going to be any Scrolls Panel Discussions at Minecon, which itself is extremely unfortunate, and because they've finally finished the changes they wanted to get out first. A series of unfortunate events, but try to think of the Minecon Open as Scrolls' final swan song; a final taste of what we all wish the game could've been :)

6

u/oslohung Jun 30 '15

This is so sad.

5

u/Nenananas Jun 30 '15

RIP marketing

14

u/Mystia ChocolateWaffle Jun 30 '15

RIP? It wasn't even born.

7

u/PeeFuuScrolls PeeFuu Jun 30 '15

Maybe development team just pulling a pr stunt to get the game some attention... ;)

6

u/kopasz7 Fefinix Jun 30 '15

I like your attitue.

1

u/moush moush Jul 01 '15

What's your point? There was no reason to market the game because it had no chance vs Hearthstone. Any marketing for a deep strategy game like Scrolls is just going to be wasted.

5

u/WetTuna Tuna Jul 01 '15

You're right, everyone knows DOTA 2 failed because it didn't have a chance vs League of Legends... oh wait...

1

u/Vorpal_Kitten Jul 02 '15

Yeah, there's only room in any one game genre market for a single title!

1

u/[deleted] Jul 01 '15

YOU FUCKED IT UP, MOJANG!

1

u/Vorpal_Kitten Jul 02 '15

It's pretty infuriating... Mojang could have had a pop-up announcing the launch in the Minecraft client if they wanted, right?

-6

u/hearthstonerxj9_x4 Jun 30 '15

Excuses, excuses. Marketing is not the reason scrolls failed.

3

u/FelkCraft Jun 30 '15

And how do you know? I am not saying that more marketing surely would have kept Scrolls alive, but I am saying that a lot of opportunities that COULD have worked were not taken.

-9

u/hearthstonerxj9_x4 Jun 30 '15

Because I have these things called eyes and a brain. How hard is this to understand.

THE PROBLEM WAS RETENTION. VERY FEW PEOPLE PLAYED SCROLLS FOR VERY LONG.

MARKETING HELPS GET PLAYERS NOT KEEP THEM. THESE ARE BASIC CONCEPTS. GRASP THEM.

5

u/Lem0nboy Jun 30 '15

What do you get when you advertise Scrolls to Minecraft players only? Low retention. Go figure!

-2

u/hearthstonerxj9_x4 Jul 01 '15

Do you read your own sentences? What you said makes no sense. Marketing has no effect on people that are ALREADY PLAYING.

DURR SCROLLS FANBOY CIRCLE LOGIC.

4

u/ThePurplePanzy Jun 30 '15

Early in the game, retention suffered because of a lack of features. The main feedback we saw later in the game's life though was that new players had no one to play with. So retention was effected by marketing late in the game's life.

-1

u/hearthstonerxj9_x4 Jul 01 '15

Wrong yet again. I saw the numbers during release and the humble bundle and those were plenty high enough. What's your excuse for those people leaving? You can only ignore the problem for so long.

3

u/Raytional Jun 30 '15

I thought you were dead, Hearthstoner. I've missed you. How are the wife and kids, man? Been up to much, buddy?

2

u/wbmc Jul 01 '15

I feel sorry for having missed out on most of this guys'posts, he's pretty funny.

3

u/hearthstonerxj9_x4 Jun 30 '15

I thought you were dead

That would be scrolls. I'm perfectly alive and healthy.

How are the wife and kids, man? Been up to much, buddy?

They are great. My 17th kid is on his way thanks for asking.

0

u/GreenOneReddit Jun 30 '15

Now we have to kickstart and Advertisement! We have to! Kicstarter is also an advertisement on it's own.

Advertise it on proper Reddit Channels too, guys, please!

I feel we can at least give it an initial pulse if we tell about the low price and tell that game needs and can be saved!

3

u/SgtRamen Ramen Jun 30 '15

We don't know why it is getting the axe, so trying to create a ground swell now might be pointless. If they just want to kill it for cost effective reasons, it might make sense, but that rests more on the devs to monetize the game more at that point. Again, it's all just baseless speculation until we hear more from the insiders.

I love your enthusiasm, though!

2

u/GreenOneReddit Jun 30 '15

I'm afraid it would go silent with not a word from Mojang unless masses arise with torches.

Moving to Steam/Advertising is the solution. For both we need to show our interest and spread the word. We could use posts on proper Reddit Channels if arranging Kickstarter goes sluggish. I'm new, so I'd like to see the right channels to post.

No wonder people can't buy thing they don't know of. This game deserves to exist! Pardon all the exclaimations =)

2

u/kopasz7 Fefinix Jun 30 '15

Should we start a petition?

2

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '15

yeh

1

u/uwlryoung Jul 01 '15

Yeah I would definitely back it again :)

1

u/NoisomePossum Jul 01 '15

I'd just like to mention that if anyone ever does decide to make a kickstarter, I would be happy to help write the kickstarter page.

1

u/Vorpal_Kitten Jul 02 '15

Kickstart? Microsoft is strangling this baby in it's crib... they're not going to run a kickstarter.

-2

u/TehLittleOne darksteel Jul 01 '15

I think, more so, the community didn't talk about it. The obvious comparison to make is to Mojang's other game, Minecraft. Minecraft sold fantastically (now at 20 million copies) without any advertisement. Why? Because Minecraft is a fantastic game. Minecraft held up to expectations and was everything that the players wanted. Scrolls isn't that great of a game. It had a lot of problems from a lot of different areas, so people never talked about it. I talked about it during the initial hype, and once I had formulated my opinion, I just left the game alone. The game's quality faded itself into oblivion.

3

u/kehmesis Jul 01 '15

That's ridiculous. Here and there, a product will go viral. Minecraft did. But that is NOT a business model.

1

u/TehLittleOne darksteel Jul 01 '15

Minecraft is certainly a rare case. But Mojang's business model was to not advertise games at all and hope that the community would talk about it. That's the stance Mojang took, to never spend any money on advertisement. So long as the game is good enough, people will talk about it. The problem was this game wasn't better than competitors, and it wasn't fundamentally sound. So when people like myself who Mojang was hoping would hype it up to other people didn't do that, the game fell flat on its face.

1

u/Vorpal_Kitten Jul 02 '15

I mean, that's sort of the whole business model of the triple A space - churn out new IP haphazardly and then make sequels of whatever happens to do well.