If I’m being honest. I don’t see this game lasting another year. But who knows more surprising things have happened before.
As much as people want new things to do/craft, it would be a lot better if everyone could step back and all agree the bugs we have need to be squashed first and iron out the NPE a little more before any more additions. All we keep getting is rushed additions and more bugs with old bugs still persisting.
Here’s my main concern. WS supposedly has 20ish full time employees. How do they pay them all? I don’t even see how they paid everyone for the past year, let alone the past four years, even with Kickstarter money, Squeenix money, game sales and gleam club.
Many, many players wonder how sustainable the game is, and worry about spending a ton of time on the game when we don’t know for sure how long it’ll be around.
Well, since it has already blown up, a thought on monetization -
I know a different form of GC that fueled portals was suggested in the past, but I was thinking one thing that could really bring in some revenue for them would be a premium portal fuel. Something even better than Amalgam, maybe 5x as good as a regular shard. Sell for like a penny USD each. So a smart stack is $9 or so. I think at that price point it would be too expensive for most people to totally spam (unless you’re a whale, then good for you, give them your money!), but in a range that if you needed it for a break or convenience for a bit it would be an option. I’d be happy to pay at that price point to keep my larger ones running through a summer vacation. But would everybody totally freak if that were added? I don’t see it as too different than GC with beacons but hard to predict what will set people off sometimes.
I don’t think the monetization is an issue as much as expanding user base, myself.
Say there are 500 active users currently, highball estimate. If every single user bought GC that comes out to 2500 usd a month, not even enough to pay a single developer.
This post is rather pointless and is amidst a forum of people who generally don’t know anything about the health of the game and structure of Wonderstruck since they are private.
All this group has are guesses at steam numbers and what that could maybe mean. Guesses at sales numbers and guesses at what that could mean.
This thread has the illusion of knowledge, but is just guessing.
MY GUESS is the game is going to go on and on forever and James will be the richest man on Earth!..and is just as valid as every other guess in this pointless thread. Not sure why you need to ask a group that has no information…I can get Amazon to send you a Magic 8 Ball if you need to pass the time…
Also, pretending that this topic has no impact on the community is wrong. I have heard it brought up now twice in passing where people who think that those that are in this topic KNOW something are worried about the game. So, in effect, it is just causing concern and worry for no reason…since this thread isn’t going to figure anything out.
I think the people in this forum would love some real information
They are a business, they aren’t going to share any of that information. They aren’t obligated to and we aren’t entitled to it. The most we are going to get is a PR post that says “Things are going well” which any company would put out even if the building was on fire. There is ZERO incentive to share that information and it can only do more harm to them then good. No business that is private shares their financial information if they can help it. It can push away investors and cause problems with consumers. It is a stupid idea.
Feel free to share all your bank account information 
and your financial viability as a player…since you are so eager to talk about money lol (This is not a real request, please do not as it would be wrong to share such information and I am not truly asking for it)
As long as game gets engine updates and not just mtx hats its development is in good hands 
They’d share numbers if they were beautiful, positive numbers. And all this alleged “guess” work, it’s not pulling numbers out of a hat. There are websites that show actual active player counts, not just steam. And we know the price of gleam club. And we know that, given a gaming population, there are upper limits to gleam club memberships. Not all active players have GC, and some inactive players still do.
These are reasonable estimates. Additionally, we know the real world costs associated with ballpark salary figures. Bandwidth and servers are also not free. Therefore the question remains - how are they paying for it all, and is the game sustainable?
AAA titles don’t make a dime during the 2-5 years they are in development… until their release date, to include cumulative preorders.
What we want to hear as gamers is one of the devs popping in to say, “Hey, guys… got something reeeally cool in the works 
”
At any rate, it’s all in conversation.
What other games share numbers? Can you post links of the type of numbers you want shared? Maybe give some examples of what people want and see if you are heard…
Personally, it seems to not make sense to assume that a company will share even positive numbers. With how this community responds to some of the smallest issues and tries to read into everything to prove their points for good or bad, I don’t see any reason why we should be given numbers.
Clearly, no matter what numbers and assumptions are being made about the income, the company is not out of business. There is content coming and development happening daily. So somewhere money exists and somewhere it is coming in. Where, how, why, who, what or anything along that path of thought is really none of our business… Our “job” and “responsibility” here in this equation is to play the game, not worry about its finances and the business side. That is about it beyond maybe provide some suggestions for things we want in or changed in the game.
Games share milestones all the time, just look at World of Warcraft.
So if I hear you right, you want them to share that we have had 1100 people play in the game and 20,000 buy the game (those numbers are an example only)?
If these were shared do you feel that will answer your or other concerns people posting here seem to have?
This seems very different information than what Tagris was kind of replying to before your response to him. Most of the conversation here has been about financial viability of this game and the ability for the company developing it to stay in business.
This whole thread is just a rehash of “the game sucks you wont make it unless you give us xyz”. If you wanna trash the game stop making statements about the companies financial state which you have no clue of tbh. And go write some bad reviews or something to get it off your chest.
Like when Minecraft shared their amazing numbers on how many sales they had across the world/platforms, right when they wanted to be sold?
or when WoW shared their sub numbers…only on investor calls?
Businesses don’t share numbers unless it gets them something and ‘good feels’ of players isn’t a return on putting the information out there. Even large sale numbers can be perceived by some investors as a risk who worry about market consumption and possible growth. Each time you meet for possible investing you want to tailor the information carefully based on who you are meeting with.
As little information in the public eye the better.
In short: the company providing us information to make us feel better about financial stability outside of displaying that information after an agreement with a significant investor (partnership/sale) would be of greater risk then just letting us worry about it.
I would never advise any company I work with to put their financial information out there. And if they insisted I would advise they do so in a very fluffy letter format without any numbers. “Strong Quarter, Sales are Up” vs numbers that can be tracked/used against you later.
Everything dies. It is not a question of If but a question of when. And because of that I never really understood why people are so keen and focused on talking about rather or not the game will still be here in a month, a year, 5 years, and so on.
How many people here who are not Terminal, wonder about their own death? How many people here focus on and pounder about when and where your death bed is at? You don’t? Then don’t focus on when the downfall of the game is.
Enjoy the journey not the destination. And if you can’t do that then ponder silently, This type of topic serves little other then to create a racket and push bad feelings.
How is it pointless when you are commenting and replying?
Since nobody knows any hard numbers, it’s all speculation vs. speculation = pointless without facts
I think the game is definitely sustainable long term.
My thoughts on the new player experience is mixed. I know they made some changes to make it easier for new players, but I can 100% say I would not have stayed around if I hadn’t had friends that I played with who helped me understand what I was doing. I found the tutorial kind of vague. I am not sure how it really is now for a new player because there is a lot more experience in the population and a lot of the community is willing to help.
As for the game play itself… I think the game has a lot to offer both the casual and hard core players. It is what you make of it and you can specialize in so many different things I think it gives a ton of diversity where the game play is concerned.
As for the numbers of players out there… there is no real way of tracking how many PS4 players are playing and in my opinion there are more PS4 players than PC players. Although, even if you double the PC count, the game doesn’t have near the amount of players as other games, but I have confidence in the devs that they know what they are doing because they, themselves have said the game is a slow burn… I feel in time when all the ducks are in a row, they’ll have a bigger marketing campaign.
As for a free weekend… I am personally “meh” on the idea. While I would love the community to grow, I also don’t want a bunch of beacons and noobie first builds scattered around and left to rot like we had last time. If we did have another free weekend, I think there should be some beacon changes that will cause those beacons places by new players who do not continue or purchase the game to expire at the end of the weekend, perhaps with a few day grace period.
Also, the community itself needs to hold themselves accountable for the population as well… trolling puts off players and causes people to not enjoy the game and quit. All of us should keep that in mind… kind of hard to complain or question the lack of player retention or the game’s overall sustainability without keeping that factor in mind. 
Nothing lasts forever so lets just hope it is here for many years to come and enjoy it