These days I see a lot of concern about the future popularity of Kaw. Issues with promotion overload, power creep, and attracting new players. It is nice to see we still have a community that is passionate about the game. In this thread I won’t be offering solutions; instead I hope to give insight in what ATA is thinking and the company’s attitude to the game as a whole. In the early fall of 2013, I had a business trip to Vancouver. I had one free afternoon that trip, and seeing that ATA was near the downtown core, I emailed ahead and booked a visit. I’d like to offer my insights about that trip, not in order to either condemn or defend ATA, but to give insight into what makes them do what they do. First of all, let me say they treated me royally. They were outgoing, respectful, and generally interested in my opinions. In the end they even gave me a free ATA umbrella. Now let’s get down to what I learned and what it means to us. 1. There are only 4 people who work full time on Kaw. We should feel lucky. There are only two who work full time on PIMD. Sure they use the occasional artist from time to time, but they vast majority of ATA’s 70 employees are working on new projects. Now part of this makes sense. Kaw is in many ways a finished product. Creating a product takes much more time than managing a finished one. 2. Yet Kaw is still expected to bring in the lion’s share of the revenue. In spite of the skeleton staff, Kaw is still the bread winner for ATA. That means the primary focus of the those four people is to monetize the game. This is why some of the little things never get fixed. While it might be nice to get a better pm system for the PC version, LB reform, or more detailed clan rankings, none of this will make any money for ATA. If it is not going to help the positive clash flow, why bother? This was driven home to me when the two composers there took me into the sound room to listen to their soundtrack for S.M.A.S.H. I told them how much I liked it, but I also told them how much I disliked KaW’s theme music. They agreed with me that Kaw’s music was fairly lame, but rewriting KaW’s music was not a priority Which brings me to my next point. 3. ATA’s leadership is bored with maintaining KaW and more interested in creating new games. When I met the founder in 2013, he was a nice guy and all, but he was far more interested in discussing my opinions about S.M.A.S.H. rather than my thought about KaW. I quote, “What interests me the most is finding the next Kaw”. Looking for new projects is all fine and dandy, but it alienates the users of the old products. I have to admit though, S.M.A.S.H. in 2013 looked like an awesome game-ATA were no slackers- but the fact is I prefer the Medieval kingdom war setting over the whole monster movie scenario of S.M.A.S.H.. Despite all its cool music and graphics, it just wasn’t that appealing to me. Not to be too critical, ATA leadership seemed far too occupied in creating new games and not interested enough to maintaining the ones they have, which is a bit of a shame. Of course this was 2013, hopefully they will discover the beauty of KaW and restore it to former glory. These are the big revelations from my ATA tour. I will go into more minor details in the next installment next week. Philo
That's terrific that with all the revenue kaw rakes in only four people are working on it. I'd really like an estimate of their yearly earnings from kaw. They were making multiple millions years ago before the hte cash cow hit and the introduction of events. It's disgusting how much they make off us and how little interest and resources they give back. Seriously, screw these guys.
Brilliant insight into ATA and although things change a lot in a couple years I wouldn't say that things have changed too much in regards to kaw. It's a finished product and the only reason for them to improve it would be if they were going to launch a kaw v2 so to speak.
It will be 3016 one day and i guaranDamntee there will be a medieval Kingdom builder out there somewhere. long live the dragon slayers
It's no surprise that Kaw is the cash cow for the company. What I find interesting is that there are only 4 people working on it full time. ATA gives the Kaw assignment to these 4 ppl, with the goal of driving more income. What I take away from that, is if there is a larger customer service issue, like so many upset about the new updates, we won't get the help we need or the ear to listen to us. Because if the 4 ppl assigned to Kaw, have to get their bosses involved, they look like they can't handle their assignment. So they are not likely to ask for help, and we all suffer for it
It's funny how they keep creating new games and they all fail. We all know how it went with perfect drift. Imo it's pathetic that they only have 4 people working on kaw. Kaw is the biggest cash cow they have, and yet they dont care enough to keep it that way. I am not suprised that kaw is shrinking if it actually has stayed like this since 2014.
The place in in smash is getting more money to the debs than any other game at the moment. Pimd is not far behind. Kaw is nowhere to be found. Rip kaw I believe since we are nearly getting money to the devs we probably only have 1-2 workers now
Thank you very much for this valuable insight. I have some analogous insights as well, will post here when I have time, but may not be before the weekend.
Not even half of the employees are working on current games... what other games are they trying to make? They should focus on the games that they actually have instead of flops like that drift game
Interesting. Thanks for sharing. I played Smash for a bit on my secondary device (still Apple only I believe) but found it more repetitive (ironic considering I press 'repeat action' hundreds of times a day lol) and not as socially engaging. We all realize KAW has reached its maturity phase of its original growth curve; it would be great to see ATA revamp and foster a new growth curve instead of letting the game die and slowly milk the cash cow.
Nothing here that isnt common sense and exactly what i figured. Oh and i didnt need to go to vancouver to figure that out.
This. There are bound to be developers somewhere that want to buy this game. These devs are crap, and every move they do confirms this. New developers are what this game needs, developers who actually care about the games they have.
Yesterday I looked up kaw daily cash flow and it was like ~11000. Which is actually not very much divided amungst 70 people.