What I Learned from Cube World
4/27/2018
If you've followed our blog for any length of time, then you are already aware that I like to occasionally review a failed game or company. Doing so allows me to analyze what I think went wrong with that game or company, and determine how I can best avoid the same pitfalls. Today, I'm looking at an excellent game called Cube World. Cube World was a very popular game when it was announced, however just a few short months after going public the store page was taken down and the game was no longer available to be purchased. The developer, Wolfram von Funck claimed that he had to take the store page down due to DDOS attacks, but the store page never came back up. Since the store went down, communications from Mr. von Funck have been very limited to one or two tweets every couple of months. Updates to the game have been much more rare. Take this in consideration along with the closure of the store, and its a no brainer to why I count the game to be a failure. Sure, you could say that he's just silently working on the game and when he finally releases it, it will become populare again, but I don't think that will really be the case. You see, the fame of the game has dwindled. For nearly a year after the store closed, you could still find new Cube World videos being released by big youtubers. Now, only small channels even dare present its content. So, its easy to see what went wrong, the real question is, how could Wolfram von Funck fix it? And I have a few ideas on that one too. Of course I'm not an expert in these things, so what I suggest are merely my observations combined with my own analytical thinking. If Mr. von Funck wants the game to succeed then he needs to make the game available to be purchased again. I'm stressing the word if in that sentence, because based on his communications it doesn't really feel like Mr. von Funck really cares about the success of the game. It feels like he already earned the money that he wanted from the game. Let's say that Wofram is interested in making Cube World a successful game. Then he needs to make the game available for sale again, but not on his own website this time. He needs to use a publishing service, such as Steam, so that his game can sell without him having to worry about the store front being hacked. Once the profits from sales start coming in, he should NOT put that money into his own pocket, instead, he needs to use that money to hire full time developers, 3d modellers, project managers, Quality Testers, and a public relations officer, at the least. Yes, I'm suggesting he use all of his profits to form a full time company around the game, dedicated to continuing the development he began. Of course he will need to keep some for himself, but he needs to set a wage for himself just like he will for everyone else he hires. Notice that I indicated that he needs to hire a public relations officer. Its been obvious that he can't handle the public himself. He just isn't the type of guy to be blogging weekly or tweeting daily. Heck, I'm not that guy either, but I make the effort where Wolfram clearly doesn't. The PR officer would help to spread the news about Cube World, and might even help to get people interested into the game again. They would also be responsible for keeping the public informed about what was going on internally regarding the game. The biggest problem that Wolfram will face in following this plan is time. Just too much time has passed since the game initially came onto the scene. It landed on the market at the time when voxel games were all the rage, when games like Minecraft and Terraria were making headlines and stealing the limelight. Cube World landed amongst them and caused quite a stir, catching several headlines itself. While Minecraft and Terraria are still quite popular today, the voxel fame wave that they washed in on appears to have ebbed. This leaves me to question if Cube World would still recieve the same welcoming today that it did then. The current version of Cube World is a great game, even though we know that it is missing a large portion of features that Wolfram had planned for it. I know that it will be a totally awesome game if/when it ever gets completed. But I don't feel like it will have the same reception that it once did. That said, I haven't really indicated what I learned from Cube World. Like so many other game fails, I learned that communicating with the public is vitally important. I also learned that it is NOT a wise idea to try handle your own store front to sell your own games. I learned that if you plan to actually sell the game, don't take it off the market for any reason. Lastly, if you make a game that starts selling like hot cakes, build a company around that game to keep it going.