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> Firaxis's Beyond Earth has barely 1 person who played at least 1 minute for every 10 that bought the game. 9/10 buyers just handed over money out of nostalgia, never playing a minute, nostalgia was and remained the only compelling association with that product.

I bought Beyond Earth for full price at launch out of nostalgia for Alpha Centauri (of course).

Unfortunately it had many flaws: - Much less interesting art direction and characters than Alpha Centauri. - Gameplay was very one note, with little meaningful deviation from a few defined paths. - On release, when you finished the game it showed a "finish game" button which unceremoniously dumped you back to the title screen. No opportunity to see stats or review your empire.

My impression was that it was rushed and had a limited budget, and I never felt like revisiting it. As sibling comments note, there is a sizable niche of mostly PC gamers looking for meaty experiences, and I believe Beyond Earth failed on its own merits.

> One brand!

That’s Strategy (and I don’t know if it’s true even there as most Strategy is RTS and I prefer turn based). There have been many deep and complex RPGs released, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Underrail, and Age of Decadence come to mind.

> Okay, was it a bad game? Who knows, hardly anyone played it.

Well, those who did play know it. And to me it was essentially a dumbed-down Civ V that, to make it worse, didn’t have the same amazing modding community behind it.

At the Gates had its own share of problems that wasn't just because it changed too much.

> Firaxis's Beyond Earth has barely 1 person who played at least 1 minute for every 10 that bought the game

It is common for a lot of people to "buy" games on steam that they will never play. Especially with less popular games.

There are a lot of extremely complex, demanding, and unique systems-based indie games which are very successful.

I think you have it backwards - At the Gates is a case of a game simply not being up to bar despite the recognizable name behind it (because the competition has gotten so fierce!), rather than people not bothering with complex games unless they have a recognizable name behind them, and only then for nostalgia reasons.

At the Gates isn't particularly novel, the problem with it was that it was boring. It is very similar to Thea: The Awakening but with a slightly different focus. Thea was developed by a couple of people on their free time and made them enough money to go full time for their next title, so it wasn't that At the Gates lacked budget instead it lacked a skilled game designer. Jon Shafer might be great on an AAA title with already decided direction, but it doesn't seem like he understands what makes a game fun.

> has barely 1 person who played at least 1 minute for every 10 that bought the game.

What's that number based on? Feels like taking some telemetry more seriously than it should be.

> Okay, was it a bad game? Who knows, hardly anyone played it. That's the crux of what he's saying.

I played it a few times when it came out. I had been looking forward to it. Unfortunately it was unbalanced with very obvious exploits. Maybe they fixed it later but I gave up on it.