Jeff Vogel

Avernum 4: Greed and Glory is out! The 31 year old cult classic Avernum series is back as a unique indie RPG set in a vast underworld nation. Fight a monster plague. Explore the depths. Be loyal or treacherous. Get rich and famous! Huge & full of fun. store.steampowered.com/app/3882020/Av…

A Screenshot Saturday alpha shot of our next game, Geneforge 3 - Detonation. Kickstarter running now! The third part in the cult-classic Geneforge saga will be a massively open-ended turn-based RPG, full of fun and mad science. Almost to Stretch Goal #2! kickstarter.com/projects/spide…

Another Spiderweb RPG that looks like it was made in 1993 immediately crushes its Kickstarter goal pcgamer.com/games/rpg/anot…

New Blog Post! - We write about our remaster of 2005's Geneforge 3. A post-mortem of the worst-selling entry of a cult-classic series, plus fun ancient game history! Kickstarter for Geneforge 3 - Detonation is going great! bottomfeeder.substack.com/p/kickstarter-…

Aaaand ... Funded in two hours! Thank you! We'll be thinking of ways to add new content stretch goals (as the others are reached) and other goodies to buy (as to others sell out). Exciting! This game will have a bunch of cool new stuff and we're having a blast writing it.

The museum montage from Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) turned an unserious "teen comedy" into a meditation on stillness, where the mood shifted from zipping MTV chaos to a slow dance between teen angst and modern art. RIP, John Hughes, the sweet bard of youth 💔

Big news! We have launched our Kickstarter for Geneforge 3 - Detonation! It's our next indie, turn-based RPG, middle part of the epic, cult-classic Geneforge saga. Lots of cool merch and backer rewards, with more on the way ... kickstarter.com/projects/spide…

Big news! Our new Kickstarter starts on Tuesday! We put up the preview page for our next indie, turn-based RPG, Geneforge 3 - Detonation. A huge, fun game, lots of cool merch. If you want to be reminded when it starts for real, go here ... kickstarter.com/projects/spide…

@SerSquiggy I did a full remaster of it and I patched it to improve monitor support last year.

@spiderwebsoft Sounds great Jeff. Will nethergate ever get a rework ? 🤷‍♂️

quick thesis: "kids today aren't even playing videogames the way we were, millennial relationship to gaming is now a cultural relic, like listening to the radio or drive-in movies" TL;DR -- Millennials are the new boomers, Halo is Woodstock, WoW is the iPod, Dad gamers are the only "gamers" left by their own definition (& they don't have time to play anymore), the kids are all cracked out on Live Service Slop platforms that they can't escape and don't want to, competition is dead, E-Sports is dead, creative content is dead, screaming down the mic is dead, couch co-op with your friends is dead, couch co-op with your Dad is dead, AAA games are dead, consoles are dead, Game Pass is dead. And at the end of the day it's all because, if you squint, the kids don't play games anymore. long thesis: supporting industry stuff: - industry publications say average gamer is now ~37, up from 29 in 2004 - they also note that kids <12 have seen the largest drop in videogame engagement post-pandemic of all age ranges (-6%) - Pew's 2008 report says "Fully 97% of teens ages 12-17 play computer, web, portable, or console games", whereas their 2024 report says "the vast majority of U.S. teens (85%) say they play them. Just 15% say they never do" - Gen Z's favorite games are Minecraft, CoD, GTA, Fortnite, and Roblox - PC gaming has a notably larger share of the overall market now vs. console gaming - Console game sales were 4x-6x PC game sales back in 2004 - PC game sales were 1:1 with Console game sales last year - Everyone being stuck at home in 2020 seemed to permanently inflect things here, with PC game sales stagnant from 2015-2019 but then becoming the dominant source of industry growth since - Roblox (2006), Minecraft (2011), & Fortnite (2017) are top 5 gaming IPs for Gen Z.... - ....these are more live-service game-hosting platforms that actual games themselves - Newzoo has a 2026 report saying only ~13% of gametime went to new releases! - 2/3rds of gametime went to >6 year old games! - That same report did an analysis comparing playtime concentration across PC/PS/Xbox platforms and their Top 20 Games vs. the long tail of their library (it's a really good report) Note on the recent restructuring: for Xbox it was called out specifically that Game Pass caused a redistribution of playtime away from top titles and towards the long tail, without any actual expansion of the total audience/playtime.....basically, Game Pass nukes Xbox's ability to monetize it's big blow out titles without any offsetting gains from expanding the market. oops. supporting game stuff: - let's call it the "Roblox" problem -- all the kids exist within a massively multiplayer online gaming ecosystem, with play, creation, socialization, and monetization all embedded in one platform - the creation angle and the monetization angle also i think encourage parents to view these games as "educational" more so than, say, Call of Duty, and are therefore more willing to encourage their kids to play with time and/or money - there is no clear off-ramp from this platform - you can have totally new gameplay experiences within it, with low friction adoption - as this platform captures a larger and larger share of player attention, it sucks the available playtime & monetization out of the rest of the industry - this process naturally changes the incentives around making games, including what kind of games get made, for what audience, and targeted at what price point - we got legions of "WoW killers" and "Halo/CoD clones" in the early 2000s because those games were platform beasts of their own... - ...and so now we're years-deep into every financially motivated major game studio trying to figure out how to build a "Roblox" of their own, aka Live Service Slop 24/7, 365 - the fans might hate it but there's a giant pile of money labeled "Live Service Slop" in the middle of the room and it's clear to publishers & studios that the prize is there, if only they can be good enough to claim it - [of course, all millennials know that WoW and Halo both killed themselves, nobody ever steals the crown by copying it] - and so while all this is happening, it's opened up a previously under-served niche in the "lower-mid price point indie-to-double-A targeted niche game" - Palworld, Enshrouded, Schedule I, Silksong, and so on, were all in the very top % of revenue-earners for newly released PC games in the year they dropped - In console land, Space Marine 2 just blasted a quarter of a billion dollars in revenues of a budget way smaller than a typical AAA release - If AAA studios had been dropping Halo/CoD/Gears-style games every other year chasing success, the niche for Space Marine 2 wouldn't have really been there, not at the same scale - I think there's a similar effect even with BG3, whose awesome success likely would've been a little lower (though still great) if fans had gotten genre-adjacent Skyrim & Witcher sequels already - but instead, we have the "Roblox problem" (Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite, GTA), where cross-platform self-contained game-related live service platforms have monopolized huge chunks of (younger) gamer time and money......and warped the kinds of content big studios try to make in the process supporting adjacent stuff: - there's also a whole cloud of adjacent areas that are impacted as a result of the above - picture everything as a big web and these nodes as farther out on the web - but you see a related decline of "E Sports" and the rise instead of "Influencers", as community figures with large audiences they can monetize become higher status than ultra sweaty competitive pros - the decline of competitive online culture has also coupled with intentional pushes by studios and their hardware platform partners to reduce online toxicity, changing the culture of online spaces - the decline of forums & reddit and the rise of ig/tiktok/youtube has turned third-party game-content-ecosystems into more pyramidal "one mega influencer" structures - chasing the Live Service dragon has led to a massive decline in couch co-op ("local splitscreen") titles, which reduces a certain KIND of gaming experience that, while not the norm from a playtime POV, was nonetheless an integral part of millennial gaming - the above also makes Family Gaming a lot harder with kids, as what was once an expected default across most games has moved into a separate genre reserved for "Girlfriend Games" - game-related content has been nearly totally evaporated by Twitch (which is itself in the process of being evaporated), short form video, and "creator talks at the camera" long form video - "Machinima" and "Parody Game Songs" and "Montages" are both bizarre millennial cultural content that seems egregiously lacking in disaffected irony to the younger audience - it's covered extensively elsewhere so wasn't worth jamming in here too much, but the explosion of MTX means in-game "status" derived from earned rewards & achievement, such as it is, has been nearly totally replaced with purchased status...and in so doing, game studios have *totally* devalued the actual status that playing their game used to convey - we're already dealing with a young generation who is hyper-cynical, hyper-financially oriented, ""crypto-native"" and spammed with ""prediction"" markets 24/7...so to have yet another part of their lives see its earned status replaced with dollar-signs and a casino logo likely seems totally normal to them

@DevinLo17703297 I've seen him. I'd see him again if his current tour was close to where I was. I'm an absolute sucker for that kind of singer-songwriter stuff.

@spiderwebsoft Not going to lie, Jeff actively listening to Shawn Mullins was not in my bingo card. (This is coming from someone who still actively sees Shawn Mullins play live.) 😂

I played Titanium Court. A match-3 tactical roguelite (ugh I hated typing that) that was reasonably fun and incredibly distinctive and indie in the good way. I thought the game part was fine. There are other wacky match-3 variants that are way better. But the strange framing and writing of the game are quite charming and really carry the thing. You are allowed to skip boss fights if you instead listen to the developer play one of his solo indie wistful 90s-style songs. There is kind of a mad genius to this, and it makes me miss the time when a dude could get a record deal with this material. (Oh, Shawn Mullins, where art thou?) After about 10 hours I got the chance to escape and end the game. The game really leaned on me to not quit, but I did anyway. Got my money's worth, but I'd seen enough of the game part of the game. Rating: Huniepop If the Porn Was Replaced By Folk Songs / 10

One day left in the Steam Summer Sale. Lots of fun turn-based indie RPGs for real cheap. Thanks to all who support indie devs! Also, you don't have to worry about Microsoft ever laying me off, because they made it explicitly clear that they didn't want me in the first place.

@thomasbrushdev Steam's generous refund policy is one of the best things they ever did for indie devs. It removes most of the risk from trying weird new products. I unironically think it should be even more generous.

Generally…. A flexible refund policy in business is a good thing. Makes the barrier of entry to purchase very low. I’ll always lean towards a flexible refund policy, even if it means people abuse the system. I do understand it can suck for devs though. But flexibility is a net positive.

(Also, our new Kickstarter is very soon. Lots of unique merch. Watch this space!)

We're having a great Steam Summer Sale! Like turn-based indie RPGs with cool worlds and stories? We've written 18 of them. (!!!) Try Avernum 4: Greed & Glory. Or Geneforge 1 - Mutagen. Or Avernum: Escape From the Pit. Great fun, on the cheap! store.steampowered.com/publisher/spid…

@clairezhoutrail Always good to have goals.

@spiderwebsoft rabies with dignity is going on my tombstone

Raccoons are the most lovable of all vermin. I am old enough to not only have been able to buy a house but to have a physical newspaper delivered to it. Once, for several days running, I found my paper had been chewed on by a raccoon. Unacceptable. But I keep weird hours, and one night I was up late enough writing shareware to be going to bed when the raccoon was chewing on my paper. So I grabbed a broom and went outside. When I got close, the arrogant little paper-munching monster started hissing at me! I almost gave up, but I thought, "This is MY PAPER, on MY LAND, and I will be damned if I'm cucked out of it by something that's 20 pounds soaking wet. If I get rabies, it will be rabies with dignity!" So I waved the broom at it a few times. It contemptuously sauntered off and never chewed on my newspapers again. Circle of life.

Kickstarter filming day. 😬