Trees in the house
(x-posted to the devblog)
I am stoked to announce that you can now buy both flavors of Treehouse from our store.
There's a lot of nice things going on with Treehouse, actually. It is apparently the first retail configuration of Icehouse pyramids that the Looneys have been able to sell at a profitable pace. It turns out that the concept of $9 for a fun, complete game is a much stronger sell than $9 for some pieces with no rules included.
Phrased that way, it sounds rather well, duh, but it took many years for both the Looneys and their many fans (myself included) to come to terms with the fact that an abstract board gaming system just won't sell if you only sell it as a system. Selling it as a fun but rigidly defined (and inexpensive!) game that, oh look, happens to have an entire rich and storied game system attached to it is really the way to go.
Volity Games can take a lesson from this. One way to really grow our userbase - in terms of both players and developers - involves putting out a great game and saying "Hey, come play this great online game with your friends! It has its own chat lobby and friends roster and everything!" Hook the user with that, and then let them discover the whole Volity Network from there.
I am stoked to announce that you can now buy both flavors of Treehouse from our store.
There's a lot of nice things going on with Treehouse, actually. It is apparently the first retail configuration of Icehouse pyramids that the Looneys have been able to sell at a profitable pace. It turns out that the concept of $9 for a fun, complete game is a much stronger sell than $9 for some pieces with no rules included.
Phrased that way, it sounds rather well, duh, but it took many years for both the Looneys and their many fans (myself included) to come to terms with the fact that an abstract board gaming system just won't sell if you only sell it as a system. Selling it as a fun but rigidly defined (and inexpensive!) game that, oh look, happens to have an entire rich and storied game system attached to it is really the way to go.
Volity Games can take a lesson from this. One way to really grow our userbase - in terms of both players and developers - involves putting out a great game and saying "Hey, come play this great online game with your friends! It has its own chat lobby and friends roster and everything!" Hook the user with that, and then let them discover the whole Volity Network from there.