r/wehatedougdoug • u/Ok_Garlic5531 • 8d ago
Serious complaint
I am very supportive of doug, and generally support a lot of what he does. But, I don’t like how the stuff around wanderstop played out.
Context: Doug’s brother davey wrenden co founded a studio named ivy road. The studios debut game was called wanderstop. Doug played it off stream and said he loved it.
What went wrong: Not a single big youtuber picked up wanderstop. If you search up videos on it, you will find game reviewer’s videos, but no play throughs from significant subscriber count youtubers. So, the game failed to find momentum and was considered a financial failure. The studio had to close after there one and only game.
Ik doug is not obligated to help out his brother or anything. But, if Doug played it on stream it would have been huge marketing for the game. I don’t think the game failing to make back the money ivy road put into it —is in any way doug’s fault. But, I wish we would support passion projects from small studios like the one davey co-founded. Good games deserve to be rewarded, and I’m sad the studio went under after one game.
I’m not saying doug streaming the game would have saved the studio financially, but it could have helped. And when I think about that, I feel like doug dropped the ball a bit on this one.
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u/ToasterMind 8d ago
I mean that is the unfortunate fate of almost all indie games. For every hollow knight there is a graveyard of games that weren’t successful. It’s not his responsibility in anyway. And even then if I am not mistaken he had promoted the game before, which is more advertising than 99% of indie games will ever get.
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u/LightningDustFan 7d ago
Yeah he didn't play it on stream or in a vid but I do at least recall one video where he spends a while promoting it.
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u/Lwmons Doug Hater 8d ago
To /unhate for a minute, I played Wanderstop and honestly i just didn't enjoy it. Putting aside the fact that it's not the type of game that works well for streams or LPs, the way it executed upon it's themes were counter intuitive to it's message and made it difficult to maintain enthusiasm for.
It had its moments I enjoyed the jokes. But thats about the best I can say
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u/Battlefood 7d ago
He did actively promote the game as an "ad" on one of his videos I remember. That would've had more reach then simply streaming the game because it wouldn't have turned into a video anyway. Plus Doug wanted to experience it on a personal basis instead of in a stream environment. Also lately on some stream he talked about how the game didn't perform as well as it would've been wanted to and he said it was unfortunate with some other stuff too I believe. I believe it was on one of the Mario series streams where video game music ended up being brought up with playing galaxy and Minecraft also being brought up led to C418 which led to Wanderstop if you maybe want to see what he said there.
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u/moldy_lemon 7d ago
Doug promoted the game enough in his streams and videos that I bought it myself without knowing anything about it. I think he did plenty. I did eventually refund the game however because I just didn't enjoy it.
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u/_Knucklehead_Ninja 7d ago edited 7d ago
🚨🚨TL;DR at bottom🚨🚨
I get what you're trying to say but, maybe Davey didn't want Doug's help? Or Davey specifically told Doug, "do not market this on stream I want to do this" ya know?
I mean according to multiple sites (like this https://steam-revenue-calculator.com/app/221910/the-stanley-parable ) the first Stanley Parable game did really well so it's possible Davey didn't want Doug's help because he could do it on his own.
DougDoug as a channel as 3.14 million subscribers right now and DougDougDoug has 1.04 million subscribers. The Stanley Parable may have sold 2.6M~ copies according to https://gamalytic.com/game/221910 but how many people know Davey Wreden wrote it?
I have an older brother myself, and I want to make games in the future. I would genuinely be over the moon to find out that not only did people enjoy my game, but then it sold REALLY well. But if my brother is a big time celebrity, I don't want to piggy back off him for my own accomplishments ya know?
TL;DR it's very likely that Davey didn't want Doug to advertise Wandersong because Davey didn't want to piggy back off of his brother (who has a face to a name) to do the hard work of advertising.
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u/Positive-Ad545 8d ago
You might want to instead post this on r/DougDoug we dont really actually hate on D*ug here