Why isn't Psychonauts selling well?

[Duncan]

Your words, not mine.

Well, yes, but change 'piece of shit' to 'not that good' and my point still stands.

[DanJW]

Twilo brings up a good point: the matter of taste. I'm betting that the big money market just doesn't play games like Psychonauts at the moment. FPS, Stealth and Drive and shoot are in. If there were more good games that were a little bit like Psychonauts then it would do a lot better. People tend to stick to their chosen genres, and only edge out of them gradually. In summary, the problem is not Psychonauts itself, but it's peers.

[Twilo]

Psychonauts fits very tightly into the Platformer genre. Very tightly into the late 90's platformer genre...

No, I'm not happy about the proliferation of cookie cutter driving and stealth games, but describing the gameplay of Psychonauts is special or original isn't entirely accurate.

Sure, it's wonderfully realised artistically and in terms of the characterisations and dialogue, but it's a fairly middle-of-the-road platformer otherwise.

[Duncan]

Twilo brings up a good point: the matter of taste. I'm betting that the big money market just doesn't play games like Psychonauts at the moment.

Yeah, taste is definitely a big reason. Taste doesn't necessarily imply that the 'big money market' thinks that Psychonauts is necessarily a bad game, though, just something they're uninterested in. Twilo seemed to be saying in his earlier posts that people weren't buying Psychonauts because it wasn't that good, which I disagree with. (er, both parts of that sentence, but most importantly that its alleged not-good-ness is a reason why people aren't buying it.)

it's a fairly middle-of-the-road platformer otherwise.

Ah, okay, I get what you mean now.

[Oath]

Can't say I disagree about the gameplay of Psychonauts itself, but people have been buying games with the same mechanics forever. I really can't imagine that the general public would be taken aback with the lack of variation compared to other games in the department of actual core gameplay.

However, platformers aren't doing too hot at the moment (as has been discussed previously in this very thread). So, uh...

[Udvarnoky]

Psychonauts fits very tightly into the Platformer genre. Very tightly into the late 90's platformer genre...

Yes, but take away the familiar controls and you're left with something that no one has ever seen before. I think a lot of people look at the game and are unsure of what to make of it, hence it's too different to take a chance with.

[Twilo]

You're not giving the public enough credit.

Psychonauts isn't super super-bizarre impossible-to-grasp game; you could argue that ICO suffered from leftfieldedness, but it doesn't hold for Psychonauts. There's really not much that sets it apart from other games if its type, other than an interesting base concept.

[baconian]

gotta disagree with you there.

The concept is great, but on top of that, the excecution is exceptional in every way. Music, writing, art, pacing, variety, smoothness, writing, sense of humour, depth of sidestoryquestystuff, imaginativityness, writing, inclusion of bacon as an important game element, this game has everying.

edit: PS: you can never give the public little enough credit. Look at that last referendum in Ireland, for fuck's sake.

[Udvarnoky]

I'd disagree that little sets it apart from other platformers, but my point was not that the game is difficult to grasp. I think anybody could find it easy to get into, but that can only happen if they play the game first. To a lot of people who see it on the shelf it might seem too bizarre to gamble the fifty bucks on when they have the option of picking up something familiar they feel more comfortable about.

[lailoken]

It's not a bad game, it's possibly not quite as good as some hype would suggest, but then I would say that hype is merely a compensation because so little people got into it in the first place. Clear and simple it's the concept that's in the way. You can't make a game that plays like a holiday in the life of an acid freak and expect the general public to buy that! Imagine pitching the game to one of your friends and imagine how often you would have to use the word "but"! It's a platformer BUT it's not like other platformers... etc. It's simply too far out there conceptwise. Once you would get people to play it, they might actually enjoy it, but I think it's simply not appealing on a very basic "gut feeling" leve where you have to be to get the general public.

As it is, if you are a fan of this game, GET MORE PEOPLE TO PLAY!!!

[SoccerDude28]

Well to me personally, forgetting all the hype, Psychonauts IS the best game I have played this year. I have played LOTS of platformers lately, including all Sony's franchises (Ratchet and Clank, Jak, and Sly), and I even rented Tak, and Psychonauts is the most fun among the bunch. The platforming was solid, and unlike Ratchet and Clank, this game is much more varied. After Lungfishopolis, no two levels play, look or feel the same. Also Platformers DO sell judging by the sales of Ratchet and Clank, Jak and Sly. Even Tak is in his third incarnation, so obviously all these games are making money.

As far as people not buying Psychonauts because it's not good, I don't buy that. People are not even giving it a shot, judging by 3000+ units sold on the PC. It's not like people care about quality anyway, seeing that the top seller a couple of months back was a WWF game. DOOM 3 maybe had a higher score than it deserves, but unlike Psychonauts, it was the top XBOX seller. I really don't think it's a matter of quality here.

[Thrik]

I think the problem lies in people simply not trying out the game in the first place, rather than the game's quality itself. Whilst the reviews aren't as pristine as some would like (99.9%!!!11), they are generally very positive. I've also kept tabs on many different forums thanks to incoming referrer logs - ranging from generic fps communities, to Christian gaming communities, to totally random communities - and have seen very few users have bad things to say. The fact is that those who play this game generally think very fondly of it.

I'm not going to sit here and debate why it hasn't sold as much as other games, because we all know why -- it hasn't been advertised properly, the release execution was an abomination, and it has been released in a time where gamers are generally more liable to pick up the latest hot FPS, rather than the latest hot 3D platformer, should they see both in the shelf side-by-side. To even stand a chance against the latter point, the former two really did need to be done flawlessly; sadly, they didn't.

[Chris]

You're not giving the public enough credit.

Psychonauts isn't super super-bizarre impossible-to-grasp game; you could argue that ICO suffered from leftfieldedness, but it doesn't hold for Psychonauts. There's really not much that sets it apart from other games if its type, other than an interesting base concept.

What are you talking about?? How are you supposed to distill well-honed character development, settings as diverse as they are in this game (and what game has levels this diverse in design terms?), and this brand of off-beat humor into an easy-to-describe pitch? The stuff that makes this game appeal to people is totally different than the stuff that makes something like Jak and Daxter appeal to people. I've tried explaining Psychonauts to people who have never heard of it before, and it's fucking hard. I work at a games store, so believe me, I get plenty of practice trying. I leave the game on our interactive displays to try and get people to notice it, but they usually just say "that looks weird" or something and then go fucking play Medal of Honor: There Are a Fucking Trillion of These Games, which we are required to display permanently on one of our consoles in the store. I am not giving the public too much credit. I personally see what the public buys, and I take their money and give them the games they want, and the games they want are fucking shit. They buy every fucking movie-based game that is released, they buy every fucking Medal of Honor game, they buy every fucking game released for the PSP, regardless of how unplayable they are and how badly they get panned, they buy the same old shit. You complain about Psychonauts being derivative, and about us giving the public too much credit?! That's just fucking classic. If you even knew how badly people want carbon-copy derivative shit, there's no way you could keep a straight face while saying that. I know how badly people want it, because I spend at least eight hours a day giving it to them as a requirement of my job. How would you explain Psychonauts concisely and actually retain the spirit of the game, anyway? You can't just say "It's like a late-90s [by the way, late-90s? Where'd you get that from? This is like the platformers of this generation, like Jak and Ratchet etc. much more than like Mario 64] platformer with an interesting base concept." That's like calling Half-Life "Like an early-90s first person shooter with an interesting base concept." The funny thing is that neither of those games even DO have an interesting base concept, at least to me. Well I guess Psychonauts sort of does, in that you're a pre-teen at a psychic summer camp, but I hardly find that the really appealing part of the game. The thing that makes both games so good is the subtlety and craftsmanship of the games as they unfold. That's what sets them apart from other games in their genre, and any number of reviews of EITHER game will quite easily state the same. Even PlayStation magazines, whose audiences are deluged with quality platformers, singled Psychonauts out as a fresh and original take on the genre. And your point about "Doom 3 getting better reviews" is ludicrous. I don't even know what you're trying to imply there. That any old game gets great reviews? If that's what you're saying, you can be easily disproved by simply going to any site that compounds review scores and looking at the mediocre averages most games get. If you're saying that any game that's sufficiently hyped up and anticipated gets great reviews, well, hardly fucking anybody knows about Psychonauts so I guess that's not helping it. In conclusion, I guess the only way you could have arrived at your thoughts about Psychonauts and the public is to not actually know anything about the public.

[polytope]

Dude, that was some rant.

What store do you work at? Is it in Berkeley?

[Chris]

It's called GameCrazy. It's in San Diego. There are other ones all over the place, though. I think the closest one to Berkeley is in Oakland.

[Steve]

Solution: they should've tricked people into buying it by making commercials depicting a really standard Saving Private Ryan-like WW2 FPS, with the shaky-cam and dust explosions and all that, and then put "PSYCHONAUTS" in big letters at the end. If you buy your games based on a TV commercial you deserve to be tricked anyway.

[Jake]

Heh Steve you joke but I think Psychonauts really would have done better if the commercials were entirely about how you had the ability to burn everything and punch everything, blast things with your crazy laser beam, "see through the eyes of your enemy" (not actually relevant but sounds compelling) and climb buildings and beat up monsters and stuff. I believe that's part of the reason Tim and Double Fine made the game have all that stuff anyway - so it would be more approachable to a regular everyday gamer. The thing is, it seems both DF and Majesco forgot any of that was in the game by the time they got around to selling it.

[Erkki]

The gameplay in the Psychonauts demo didn't really impress me. There, I said it. I'm almost not interested in the game at all, but part of me wants to play it because Tim yadayada.

PS. probably thanx to my previous signature, the forums are now at the top of google results for "psychonauts sex", "psychonauts porn" and top3 or so for "psychonauts nude patches". yay!

[Wormsie]

What are you talking about?? How are you supposed to distill well-honed character development, settings as diverse as they are in this game (and what game has levels this diverse in design terms?), and this brand of off-beat humor into an easy-to-describe pitch? The stuff that makes this game appeal to people is totally different than the stuff that makes something like Jak and Daxter appeal to people. I've tried explaining Psychonauts to people who have never heard of it before, and it's fucking hard. I work at a games store, so believe me, I get plenty of practice trying. I leave the game on our interactive displays to try and get people to notice it, but they usually just say "that looks weird" or something and then go fucking play Medal of Honor: There Are a Fucking Trillion of These Games, which we are required to display permanently on one of our consoles in the store. I am not giving the public too much credit. I personally see what the public buys, and I take their money and give them the games they want, and the games they want are fucking shit. They buy every fucking movie-based game that is released, they buy every fucking Medal of Honor game, they buy every fucking game released for the PSP, regardless of how unplayable they are and how badly they get panned, they buy the same old shit. You complain about Psychonauts being derivative, and about us giving the public too much credit?! That's just fucking classic. If you even knew how badly people want carbon-copy derivative shit, there's no way you could keep a straight face while saying that. I know how badly people want it, because I spend at least eight hours a day giving it to them as a requirement of my job. How would you explain Psychonauts concisely and actually retain the spirit of the game, anyway? You can't just say "It's like a late-90s [by the way, late-90s? Where'd you get that from? This is like the platformers of this generation, like Jak and Ratchet etc. much more than like Mario 64] platformer with an interesting base concept." That's like calling Half-Life "Like an early-90s first person shooter with an interesting base concept." The funny thing is that neither of those games even DO have an interesting base concept, at least to me. Well I guess Psychonauts sort of does, in that you're a pre-teen at a psychic summer camp, but I hardly find that the really appealing part of the game. The thing that makes both games so good is the subtlety and craftsmanship of the games as they unfold. That's what sets them apart from other games in their genre, and any number of reviews of EITHER game will quite easily state the same. Even PlayStation magazines, whose audiences are deluged with quality platformers, singled Psychonauts out as a fresh and original take on the genre. And your point about "Doom 3 getting better reviews" is ludicrous. I don't even know what you're trying to imply there. That any old game gets great reviews? If that's what you're saying, you can be easily disproved by simply going to any site that compounds review scores and looking at the mediocre averages most games get. If you're saying that any game that's sufficiently hyped up and anticipated gets great reviews, well, hardly fucking anybody knows about Psychonauts so I guess that's not helping it. In conclusion, I guess the only way you could have arrived at your thoughts about Psychonauts and the public is to not actually know anything about the public.

FOR GOD'S SAKE! USE MORE PARAGRAPHS, THANK YOU!

[Jake]

The gameplay in the Psychonauts demo didn't really impress me. There, I said it. I'm almost not interested in the game at all, but part of me wants to play it because Tim yadayada.

PS. probably thanx to my previous signature, the forums are now at the top of google results for "psychonauts sex", "psychonauts porn" and top3 or so for "psychonauts nude patches". yay!

The gameplay in the basic braining level is the most simplistic of the entire game. The further you get the more inventive things get. Possibly they should have started you off with something more amazing? They didn't unfortunately, but the game gets increasingly awesome (until the last level, which is more of a step down than up, but ignore that for now).

[lailoken]

FOR GOD'S SAKE! USE MORE PARAGRAPHS, THANK YOU!

paragraphs...in a rant? you gotta be kidding!

[SiN]

i'm gonna have to go out on a limb here and say that psychonauts isn't all that difficult to sell. bare with me here ...

the last two Schaefer games have been rather ingenious ... they both place you in odd worlds (Land of the Dead, peoples minds) which is kinda overwhelming & difficult to understand, yet, have some sort of familiarity to them. In Grim, you were a salesman. EVERYONE knows what a salesman is! Same with psychonauts ... yeah, you're in this odd world and stuff, but shit, you're a kid at camp! EVERYONE was a kid at one point, so everyone knows how it is. when i heard those kids talking, i identified with it immediately. ("We're going out ... but don't ask her, its a secret" "Whys it a secret?" "Uhhh, the reason its a secret is a secret, THATS how secret it is!" )

I havent seen any of the tv ads, but i just re-watched the trailer and it seems like it would make the PERFECT ad ... except of course its 2:45 as opposed to 30 seconds. it just needed a bit of trimming. I mean, what needs to be established is

1) the basic story line

2) its a platformer

3) pschonaut = person psychic powers

4) funny as hell

5) diverse levels

6) you can burn stuff !!!!!!!!

1,3,4 were done by showing bits of cutscenes ... using the intro as well as other bits ("the good news is that you're insurance will cover the whole thing!" & "oh my god, lets make out!"). 2, 5, 6 are done by showing ingame stuff.

i really do hope it sells well ... its a great game, and dammit, we need more double fine!!! TBH though, im just really glad (and a bit surprized) the game was released ... with Sam&Max2 canned along with Unity i really wasnt holding out too much hope.

but doublefine got thru this once, and i'm confident they'll go to any measure to get us more quality games!

SiN

[Lechimp]

I think that psychonauts is selling poorly just because majesco screwed up. The ads suck (what's the point of adverstising on the radio) and there's no need for them to have contests that cost them millions of dollars to have and that no one knows about. They can't even get copies of the game to stores, it's kinda hard to buy a game when it's not in stores.

[unimural]

Ouch. Less than 4000 copies for PC. I'm shocked. I guess that includes the two copies a friend of mine orded for us (from EB iirc). Last I asked from local retailers, still no date for release in Finland. We've both been trying to pimp the game, and everyone we've forced to play it has loved it. A crying shame it hasn't done well.

Regarding the ads, I haven't seen them, but I do think it could not have been the easiest of games to market. Atleast the game got done and I got to play it. Even though I fear the people sitting on top of the money will see this just as another proof that different doesn't sell. Even if Psychonauts really isn't different at all. Just a bloody solid game. Just what games should be like.

The gameplay in the Psychonauts demo didn't really impress me. There, I said it. I'm almost not interested in the game at all, but part of me wants to play it because Tim yadayada.

I do think they should have chosen some other level for the demo. It was tons of fun to run around and jump and try all the stuff at the camp, but the Oleander level isn't the neatest of levels, imho. I do get the tutorial aspect benefit.

[nsps]

I think the demo was disappointing to people who wanted to see all that the game had to offer. The gradual learning process makes sense in the game, but in the demo, it would have been nice if they let people burn shit and levitate, etc. I enjoyed the demo for the art direction and the writing and all, but my friend had a similar reaction as some others because he didn't get an idea of all he'd get to do. He said, if they'd had the budget, it would have been better to have a separate level for the demo.