The head of Manor Lords' publisher, Hooded Horse's Tim Bender, talked about the community's growth expectations of the medieval city builder following a successful launch earlier this year.
The statement comes after claims that the game is an "interesting case study in the pitfalls of early access." Bender said that assuming games can continue to have endless growth results in so many problems within the video games industry.
Growth Expectations for Manor Lords
(Photo : Slavic Magic, Hooded Horse / Screenshot taken from Steam)
The original post about Manor Lords' growth was made by Hinterland CEO Raphael van Lierop which forced Bender to respond in kind. The latter suggested that if the industry is looking for a sustainable path moving forward, these kinds of perspectives must end.
Bender claimed that this was exactly the kind of "distortless endless growth/burden of expectations/line must go up" perspective that is causing so many issues in the industry.
He noted that Manor Lords just sold 250,000 in the last month. In the game's first three weeks, it sold more than 2 million copies, according to Eurogamer.
The Hooded Horse head also noted that the medieval city builder currently has a comfortable 88% Very Positive review rating on Steam. It also has a media playtime of eight hours and 48 minutes, which he called very long for any game.
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Bender said that players who are hands-on with Manor Lords are happy, the developer is happy, and the publisher is thrilled beyond belief. However, he could not believe it when the game was apparently a case study of the pitfalls of early access.
This claim was made because Manor Lords has been out for two and a half months and has only had three fairly small patches. Bender noted that one of the patches in question which was referred to as small runs over 3,000 words and over 10-spaced pages.
Success in the Video Games Industry
He also pointed out that regardless of the post-launch support or lack thereof, there was nothing wrong with players "enjoying their purchase of a premium, single-play title" before jumping to a different game for a while, said GamesRadar.
Bender said that success should not result in an ever-raising bar of new growth expectations for various titles.
He added that not every single game should be aiming for a live-service boom or bust, noting that a release should begin an ever-accelerating treadmill where developers are forced to run until their mental or physical health breaks down.
The original post that the Hooded Horse head was responding to also claimed that in the video game industry, early access is a marathon. Lierop noted that when developers launch a game, they need to have their next major content expansion "pretty much in the queue."
Before Manor Lords launched, Bender said that he told the developer that he would hear from all sorts of commenters about missed opportunities due to failure to grow as fast as they wanted.
The Hooded Horse head apparently told Greg Styczen to ignore the comments and focus on his core vision for the city-builder, according to PCGamesN.
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