Slitherine As a Whole Needs to Advertise More

[Thunderhog]

I've been thinking about this for a while and others in the community have expressed similar ideas. Slitherine doesn't do enough to advertise their games. Hell I don't even know if Tea Time with Slitherine is even still going on. I didn't even know Armored Brigade 2 was releasing! I don't think I've seen much advertising for Panzer Corps 2 or any Slitherine game besides on their own discords/steampages besides once in a blue moon. How do you guys expect to keep these games alive with new players if you don't do more advertising! Youtube ads, ads on reddit, something man. Panzer Corps 2 is especially criminally under-advertised. Also, the dev teams need to communicate more with players and modders. We can't keep having these very long stints of nothing! Slitherine, you need to do some weekly updates or fun posts to interact with the community! Whether it be here, in the discord (which is dead af) or the steam community.

[Retributarr]

"Thunderhog" i am in 'Complete-Agreement' with your clamor for more PzC2 Advertising-Action!.

"To me"... it seems like they are 'Somehow Disheartened' for some unknown reason?... and are losing interest in their project>PzC2'.

There is 'So-Much-More' that can be done with this 'Gaming-Engine'... and all that is needed is some "Re-Energized-Motivation"... to again resurrect a "Zealous-Spirit" that can "Sally-Forth" with continued or new-ambitions.

They have been hiding in the background (Dark-Forest) for too-long!... its time for them to come out of hiding and "let us know what their mission is".

[Tassadar]

Agreed especially for Panzer Corps 2, since due to a massive replay value and customizability, it should be relatively easy to market, beyond the usual turn-base strategy fanbase and all within existing mechanics, without making compromises for "mass appeal".

I had similar thoughts about Fantasy General 2 and Headquarters World War II. Both titles should have performed much better than they did and maybe it is indeed because they just did not get the publicity.

Mind you, I don't think the correct strategy is to spend more on advertising, but perhaps make better targeted ad campaigns and be a little more vocal about the games as they are released.

EDIT - The thread should probably be moved to a more general section of the forums.

[Thunderhog]

Agreed especially for Panzer Corps 2, since due to a massive replay value and customizability, it should be relatively easy to market, beyond the usual turn-base strategy fanbase and all within existing mechanics, without making compromises for "mass appeal".

I had similar thoughts about Fantasy General 2 and Headquarters World War II. Both titles should have performed much better than they did and maybe it is indeed because they just did not get the publicity.

Mind you, I don't think the correct strategy is to spend more on advertising, but perhaps make better targeted ad campaigns and be a little more vocal about the games as they are released.

EDIT - The thread should probably be moved to a more general section of the forums.

Did headquarters perform badly? I thought the game did alright for what it was. And honestly, I've seen the most publicity for H: WW2 than most Slitherine titles. Maybe it should be moved, I just made it here as I wanted to call out the very little dev and Publisher communication regarding PZC2 and Slitherine as a whole.

[Tassadar]

I think Headquarters did well enough, but for sure could have done better since the roadmap for 2025 no longer has new campaigns. I'm not sure about sales, but based on Steamcharts (mind you, it is not that indicative, as many turn strategy fans buy games directly in the Slitherine store apparently), you can see the following:

Panzer Corps 2 - 537.9 concurrent players daily in the last 30 days on average.
Fantasy General II - 25.6 concurrent players daily in the last 30 days on average.
Headquarters World War II - only 18.9 concurrent players daily in the last 30 days on average.

To compare, some older titles:

Panzer Corps - 262.9 concurrent players daily in the last 30 days on average.
Order of Battle: World War II - 193.7 concurrent players daily in the last 30 days on average.

And some similar titles from other devs and publishers:

Total Tank Generals - just 3.9 players daily in the last 30 days on average.
Unity of Command II - 59.7 players daily in the last 30 days on average.
The Troop - 25.4 players daily in the last 30 days on average.

As you can see, mostly the titles, due to their single-player nature will stay around 50. Anything above 100 is solid, above 250 is good, above 500 is excellent for the genre. As a comparison, a mainstream title, let's say Total War: WARHAMMER III, has 22,647.9 (older Total War are stable around 3-5k). That said, Panzer Corps 2 has amazing replay value so it will naturally keep players interested for longer.

[bebro]

Re OP, I'm not in marketing, but Slitherine is doing marketing stuff for various games at the same time, and usually the big new developments get most of it (IIRC it was similar for PzC2 in the run up to the original release, but back then I was not involved in PzC).

For those games which are still popular and get additional DLCs, patches, and maybe extra stuff like MP tournaments marketing efforts are centered around those things.

If it's enough, should be more or different I simply don't know since it's not my field.

[Thunderhog]

Re OP, I'm not in marketing, but Slitherine is doing marketing stuff for various games at the same time, and usually the big new developments get most of it (IIRC it was similar for PzC2 in the run up to the original release, but back then I was not involved in PzC).

For those games which are still popular and get additional DLCs, patches, and maybe extra stuff like MP tournaments marketing efforts are centered around those things.

If it's enough, should be more or different I simply don't know since it's not my field.

Yeah, I'd just like to see more honestly. Especially with communication from the dev team (even though the dev team is sometimes only one person). I know weekly updates aren't really feasible but I'd like to see monthly updates at least from the guys in charge of PZC2. Many game companies/dev teams do monthly updates and I feel that it alleviates some strain on players. Like I said, sometimes you'd get more updates from Tea Time with Marko than this forum or steam. Hell, I heard about Pacific getting shelved from Tea Time first.

[bebro]

Something like another roadmap would be nice

But I guess with several teams, other stuff in between, coming up with a plan that is not subject to short term changes is not easy. So the thinking might be to wait until things are more clear - surely not ideal for players who are waiting for news, but otoh better than announcements that get pushed back multiple times.

[Thunderhog]

Something like another roadmap would be nice

But I guess with several teams, other stuff in between, coming up with a plan that is not subject to short term changes is not easy. So the thinking might be to wait until things are more clear - surely not ideal for players who are waiting for news, but otoh better than announcements that get pushed back multiple times.

Yeah that's true, I'm sure that you and the rest of the devs would love to give updates when you get them but it is what it is. Makes me wish I could work for Slitherine in some capacity just to get an inside scoop on what's going on.

[RVallant]

I think Headquarters did well enough, but for sure could have done better since the roadmap for 2025 no longer has new campaigns. I'm not sure about sales, but based on Steamcharts (mind you, it is not that indicative, as many turn strategy fans buy games directly in the Slitherine store apparently), you can see the following:

Panzer Corps 2 - 537.9 concurrent players daily in the last 30 days on average.
Fantasy General II - 25.6 concurrent players daily in the last 30 days on average.
Headquarters World War II - only 18.9 concurrent players daily in the last 30 days on average.

To compare, some older titles:

Panzer Corps - 262.9 concurrent players daily in the last 30 days on average.
Order of Battle: World War II - 193.7 concurrent players daily in the last 30 days on average.

And some similar titles from other devs and publishers:

Total Tank Generals - just 3.9 players daily in the last 30 days on average.
Unity of Command II - 59.7 players daily in the last 30 days on average.
The Troop - 25.4 players daily in the last 30 days on average.

As you can see, mostly the titles, due to their single-player nature will stay around 50. Anything above 100 is solid, above 250 is good, above 500 is excellent for the genre. As a comparison, a mainstream title, let's say Total War: WARHAMMER III, has 22,647.9 (older Total War are stable around 3-5k). That said, Panzer Corps 2 has amazing replay value so it will naturally keep players interested for longer.

HQ's issue is two fold;

1. Their previous games got silly and a-historical (very off putting for a sizeable number of the genre fans anyway)
2. Their combat system was somewhat backwards.

The development team had that chain around their neck from their work prior to Slitherine coming along.

Fantasy General 2's failures are to do with it just being a very generic game, there's little to recommend tactically or otherwise IMO, I got it for free and I honestly wanted my time back, it was just very mediocre, which was incredibly disappointing as it had such huge potential to be an exciting and dynamic fantasy war game.

PZC2's in a decent spot, but it barely has competition IMO outside of the (now outdated) order of battle.