Matt Chat Interview with the Rampant Coyote, Part Four!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 12, 2011

Okay, the last part of my “Matt Chat” interview is up. Watch if you dare. I give a bunch of hints and tips for playing Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon, and I talk about the general future of the series. And rats. We talk about rats.

I also talk a little about sales, piracy, and DRM. I’m amused that at least one commenter immediately knee-jerks to canned reaction to the discussion that has absolutely nothing to do with what was actually said. Straw men are easier to defeat than actual facts, I guess. I can’t prove anything, and I can’t say for certain that there’s a causal relationship. I can only point to the numbers and say that in this one case, there was a correlation that was striking and suspicious. Take it or leave it.

When we did the interview, the question that led up to that was going to be the final question (or close to it), and Matt said, “Okay, I don’t want to end the interview on such a downer note,” and so we went on a bonus round for a couple more questions.

As always, if you like this interview series, consider hitting the ol’ tip jar for Matt. Or subscribing.

Filed Under: Frayed Knights, Interviews - Comments: 10 Comments to Read

Matt Barton said,

Thanks for the interview, Jay! I hope it gets you more sales!

I’ve been exploring and debating the topic of piracy for many years. For awhile I was firmly in the Stallman camp and might as well have worn an FSF armband. I still agree in principal that end users should have the right to copy and modify software as they see fit, and releasing source code is key to that.

That said, I don’t see why people who make software should have to do it for free. In a perfect world, everyone who used a piece of software would pay for it even though there were no legal or technical obligations to do so. Unfortunately, it seems too many people are perfectly okay (justifying however they will) that they should get it for free and to hell with the developer. That really stinks.
EntitlementGeneration said,

Yeah really sad to hear about FK being pirated. Is there nothing you can do legally to ask trackers like Pirate Bay to stop listing it (yeah the cat’s already out of the bag but might help against people who just started searching for it from finding torrents)?

Is seeding fake or demo versions of FK a viable tactic?

Any possibilities of a humble indie bundle? They seem to generate some revenue.
jzoeller said,

I had the same issue with DarkLight Dungeon. Sales were at a steady pace, then a sudden drop. Searched around on the web and found the cracked version that was release right around the same time as the drop. With the release of Eternity coming up, it’s something sitting in the back of my mind.
UDM said,

Great interview as usual Matt and Jay. Hats off to Jay especially. Don’t worry about the pirates and keep the locomotive going. True bros continue to make great games for the rest of us 😀

I took a peek at TPB and Isoh**t (intentionally censored), and found that there aren’t many leechers or seeders for FK. That’s a great sign. Hopefully FK gets more sales once it hits the big DD platforms like Steam and GG. It also reminds me of this thread I saw over at GOG.com, where there are actually people on these pirate sites telling others to buy the game and not download it. I mean, I don’t have the statistics to back me up, and talk is cheap, but I don’t see why an honest, striving developer won’t win over the pirates more easily than someone (or some corporate entity) constantly trying to screw over the paying customer.
GhanBuriGhan said,

Damn, this piracy stuff makes me ever more angry the older I get. I admit it, I started out as a pirate myself, as a kid. But ever since I have an actual income and realized that if I want quality games to exist on my favorite platform, it makes sense to pay for it, I have never pirated again. But it seems I am just a starry-eyed idealist. Maybe PC gaming deserves to die.
Anyway, I hope you take heart and find enough motivation for the next two parts (I’ll buy them, promised). I hope you will at least have a long trickle of sales, and maybe some spikes down the road.
jzoeller said,

I was able to get a couple of sites to take down the cracked version of DarkLight Dungeon, but some of the sites have a very long process “in my eyes, only to make it very difficult” to remove “your own” software.
jwmeep said,

For what it’s worth, I bought the game on the first day, don’t regret it whatsoever, and definitely wish the game could have been successful for you.

If the other Frayed Knights games hold the same, or higher level of quality, I’ll be buying those too.

Sadly there is no easy solution to these sort of things. There is a niche for old school games like this, the catch is how to get those people interested in Frayed Knights, and convince them that Frayed Knights is worth paying for.
Noumenon said,

The piracy part referred to in the post is around the 10-12:30 mark (from the post, I spent a long time searching around near the last couple of questions — maybe he shuffled it in post).
Do not pirate from indie developers @ IndieRPGs.com said,

[…] night, I watched the fourth and final part of Matt Barton’s interview with Jay Barnson, developer of Frayed Knights. In the interview, I […]
Xian said,

Sadly, I guess it is inevitable that anything and everything is going to be pirated these days. A large company can absorb more of the losses due to volume sales, but a niche indie developer really feels the loss. I would guess that the AAA publishers depend more on the initial first launch revenue, where the indies rely more on the long tail, a slow but steady income stream.

I bought Frayed Knights on the day it was released. By following this blog for the several years during the development process I felt I had more of an invested interest in the game – it was like getting a “Making Of DVD” in slow motion, seeing all the though processes and decisions that went into making the title. I hope this was just a temporary speed bump and that sales pick back up to what they were.