Help fund the Strike Fighters 2 Windows 10 update!

[DaniloE31]

I just found out that there is something going on here! So I did my donation of a Blue € Bill 

The time frame is ridiculously short... and I even haven't fired up the game for weeks. But I'm sure I wasted my money in the past in many worse ways

 

[CowboyTodd41]

If TK put SF2 on GOG and Steam he would make an assload of money and the traffic to CA would be gigantic as well once word got out this is where all the mods are.

Like, no-one but us is buying SF2 from ThirdWire.com, and there is currently a large amount of people getting back into flight sims because of Steam distribution.

[+russouk2004]

wonder what $3,760 is going to get us..?....New Box Art ?  a skin or ?

[+sophocles]

8 hours ago, CowboyTodd41 said:

If TK put SF2 on GOG and Steam he would make an assload of money and the traffic to CA would be gigantic as well once word got out this is where all the mods are.

Like, no-one but us is buying SF2 from ThirdWire.com, and there is currently a large amount of people getting back into flight sims because of Steam distribution.

I guess one does wonder why he han't gone down that route.. anyone care to speculate as to why not?

[Wrench]

loss of personal control of the product. nuff said

[JosefK]

10 hours ago, CowboyTodd41 said:

If TK put SF2 on GOG and Steam he would make an assload of money and the traffic to CA would be gigantic as well once word got out this is where all the mods are.

Like, no-one but us is buying SF2 from ThirdWire.com, and there is currently a large amount of people getting back into flight sims because of Steam distribution.

 

1 hour ago, sophocles said:

I guess one does wonder why he han't gone down that route.. anyone care to speculate as to why not?

 

I personally think SF2 belongs on Steam or GOG.  Word of mouth is so key to games and unlike DCS, there isn't a steep learning curve to fly the planes.  Nor a relatively few planes and especially maps.

[TempestII]

I genuinely wish I could contribute more than the $70 I have but it's been an expensive couple of months. There's definitely a few things I wouldn't have spent money on and donated instead even though I believe there's no chance of the 25 grand getting met.

I remember first getting WOE back in my teens, mostly because it gave me the option to fly the A-10 (my first PC game was A-10 Cuba when I was about 5) and then finding this site very shortly after. Along with the Command and Conquer series, GTA series and the (original) Star Wars BattleFront series, the SF series is irreplaceable to me even now that I'm nearly 30. 

Some days it drives me mad, such as when I've spent a good hour or so building a mission in the Mission Editor only for the game to CTD repeatedly when I attempt to launch the mission. But it offers an experience that no other game on the market can. 

I genuinely believe that SF2 and this site have increased my knowledge in military aviation, especially when it comes to recognition of aircraft and SAMs. Many of my friends/coworkers are in the intelligence field and seem somewhat surprised when I can identify and link together a lot of military hardware that they spent learning about during their trade training. 

[CowboyTodd41]

It's wild how many people play DCS just for the challenge, and if they had a game at the midpoint between say, Ace Combat and DCS (seems like there's a very popular sim around this place that would fit just great hmmmmmm) lot's of people would buy that game

[Platinum Rogue]

Given that I never got a reply to my support request for the missing codes required to qualify for the complete SF2 series, nothing from me. This might seem harsh but I'm nobodys fool & you only get 1 chance to let me down. I had my hundred ready to lay out but when I never even got a reply to my email, I bought a couple each of X-Plane & Orb-X add-ons instead.

I'd rather pay some of the talented & dedicated SF modders since I never fly missions in a standard install, and rarely with a stock plane. My most-flown planes are the F-111A in Green Hell & the Tornado & F-15E in Desert Storm.

Now that I have VR I'm flying non-VR sims very occasionally. Single-player non-VR sims even less so.

War Plunder has VR and multiplayer support... Not playin, just sayin' - I detest the 'pay or grind' marketing but Gaijin seem to be doing OK out of it.

[Spinners]

Seems to be stuck on 60 contributers now. A real shame!

[GunnySonics]

I think Steam is the only way forward to reach a wider audience and achieve the £££$$$$$ required to upgrade this series, a few people have mentioned in this post that there are a lot of people out there that don't even know SF2 exists.

In my opinion SF2 is the perfect air combat platform for those of us that don't have the time to take up the more complicated challenges that DCS offers. 

[EricJ]

I think the crowdfunding route should have gone on longer, to accommodate the players that want to pay but can't at the moment. Star Citizen is a good example of crowdfunding, where they play the long game as far as funding goes (and those who have kept up with it, know it's working out pretty good) and through concept sales they get the money through its member base (which off the top of my head was around two million players). But the point is that there isn't enough hype to attract the crowd that TK is looking for. It's just marketing the game through the mobile games and then returning back to the PC platform to find out that there are players willing to pay for a new patch so it will be free, but it's going to take some time to get the hype back after he chose to go mobile, which turned me off quite a bit. Nice idea having different planes (though of course some were done by the mod community) but no cockpit, no interest. Just my .02

[+streakeagle]

It is not really a matter of time. TK could extend it two more weeks, and neither the number of donors nor the amount donated would double. TK cast his lure based on ripples in the pond. But it was nothing but minnows nibbling on the bread.

[Foxhound1]

If TK put out the Strike Fighters 2 Complete package, with Windows 10 support, on Steam and GOG for $15 or $20, I would be very, very surprised if sales and the revenue they brought in didn't exceed the game's lifetime numbers up until now in fairly short order. Personally I'd be willing to pay as much as $40, but I don't think that's a realistic price for a ten year old game, regardless of how many expansions it has - sales would plummet and it would make far less money than if it was sold for less. $100 is right out.

Money would continue to trickle in for years, during Steam sales there would be a sharp increase in sales, and TK would find it much easier to fund his future projects. Hell, he might even get those $2 million he needs for SF3 - especially if some of the mainstream PC games media gave his $15 SF2 Complete Steam release the attention it would deserve. Rock, Paper, Shotgun most certainly would.

But that's just my opinion. I will never understand why the game isn't already out on Steam. Wings over Europe is already there, and maybe TK found its sales on the platform disappointing. But I have to believe that SF2 Complete would do much, much better. I just don't see what he would have to lose, and there would be so much to gain.

[JosefK]

22 minutes ago, Foxhound1 said:

If TK put out the Strike Fighters 2 Complete package, with Windows 10 support, on Steam and GOG for $15 or $20, I would be very, very surprised if sales and the revenue they brought in didn't exceed the game's lifetime numbers up until now in fairly short order. Personally I'd be willing to pay as much as $40, but I don't think that's a realistic price for a ten year old game, regardless of how many expansions it has - sales would plummet and it would make far less money than if it was sold for less. $100 is right out.

Money would continue to trickle in for years, during Steam sales there would be a sharp increase in sales, and TK would find it much easier to fund his future projects. Hell, he might even get those $2 million he needs for SF3 - especially if some of the mainstream PC games media gave his $15 SF2 Complete Steam release the attention it would deserve. Rock, Paper, Shotgun most certainly would.

But that's just my opinion. I will never understand why the game isn't already out on Steam. Wings over Europe is already there, and maybe TK found its sales on the platform disappointing. But I have to believe that SF2 Complete would do much, much better. I just don't see what he would have to lose, and there would be so much to gain.

This is an opinion I share also.  

I'd be willing to pay $50 for SF2, especially if it was made clear purchase of SF2 on GOG or Steam helped pay for SF3 development costs, full Flanker series inclusion, a good F-35 series, and more dogfights.

[EricJ]

1 hour ago, streakeagle said:

It is not really a matter of time. TK could extend it two more weeks, and neither the number of donors nor the amount donated would double. TK cast his lure based on ripples in the pond. But it was nothing but minnows nibbling on the bread.

Fair enough.

[fallenphoenix1986]

On 9/15/2019 at 7:54 AM, Wrench said:

loss of personal control of the product. nuff said

Most likely, though at this stage in the game what good is control when his market base is too small to drum up more than a few thousand $.

He's actively limited his market... the player base could have been much larger and much more lucrative if he'd just accepted cold hard financial reality... he needed something like Steam if he wanted to make the series a success.

[+streakeagle]

The addition of the F-14A to SF2 was the biggest draw this sim ever had... and it fell flat. The mission editor had consumed tons of money and time, but didn't draw the money the forum posts promised and the F-14 that "everyone" wanted didn't draw the money either. TK is not without blame. Many of his decisions/code changes were questionable among the die hard fans over the last few releases/patches, but no matter what TK did, the market simply did not want what he was selling. This fund raiser proved that this fact remains true to this day. A few die hard fans does not make a sim profitable. For SF2 to advance, a whole lot of people have to want that to happen and put their money where their mouth is. This fund raiser shows that the fans willing to fund future development just aren't numerous enough. This is the final nail in the coffin of SF series PC development beyond PC ports of Android free-to-play games.

[jeanba]

I would like to write :

"What you say is rubbish, you understand nothing, there is a way to make SF3 profitable easily"

And I wrote it  

Problem : you are right :(

Edited September 18, 2019 by jeanba

[alexis99]

Why would it make no sense?

[alexis99]

Why would it make no sense at all?

[+gerwin]

6 minutes ago, alexis99 said:

Why would it make no sense?

(It would be helpfull if you quoted what you refer to here, but I suppose you are replying to me)

It would make no sense because many of the changes from SF1 to SF2 are in the area of updates for newer Windows OS. Like the mod and settings folder location, unicode strings and much more.  These changes are based on Microsoft recommendations for  Windows Vista and 7 software.

Third Wire is not going to apply these changes to SF1 again, since they have already done that and it is called SF2.

 

[Wrench]

yes, as has been said thousands of times before, SF1 is deader than the dinosaurs. move on

[Foxhound1]

Clearly, Strike Fighters 2 has not performed according to TK's expectations - by his own admission, SF2 North Atlantic still hasn't made back the money it cost to develop. There are a number of reasons why this could be so:

1. The game and its expansions are of poor quality.

I would dispute this, as I'm sure most people on this forum would.

2. Flight sims are an increasingly niche market, and there simply isn't enough interest in them to support decent sales.

I would dispute this as well. According to SteamSpy, the Il-2 games have hundreds of thousands of owners. The main DCS module has several millions. That module in itself is free, but it is at least useful as a tool to gauge the general interest in jet combat. If only a fraction of those people bought SF2, TK would be set for life. Obviously, those games were made by larger teams and their production values are well above what SF2 could aim for (although with the help of mods, it could certainly come close), but SF2 has other qualities that I am certain would appeal to a large portion of the owners of the games mentioned above.

3. Strike Fighters 2 is available for sale only to an extremely limited market, through an obscure website.

This, I believe, is why the game has failed to meet with financial success. It can only be purchased on the ThirdWire website, only a small portion of the gaming community even knows of its existence, and to make matters worse the game and its expansions are severely overpriced. Il-2: 1946, the complete original Il-2 package, can be bought for $10 on Steam, or even less during sales. SF2 Complete is sold for $100 and can only be found on the ThirdWire website.

It is all very frustrating, because I want SF2 to do well.

[+streakeagle]

SF2 failed because the market didn't want it. The market that bought SFP1 knew where to go to get it and outright refused to buy it. SFP1 got a bad reputation from the start. Most people believed a "lite" sim meant low fidelity arcade. Many people who tried SFP1 simply didn't like it with too many complaints for me to list here. SF2 needed to offer something radically newer/better to get a large number paying SFP1 customers to buy it again and to attract people who had already dismissed SFP1/WoX. There wasn't much competition at the time, as the combat flight simulator market pretty much collapsed around that time. But the competition that was there, IL-2:Sturmovik and LOMAC/Flaming Cliffs, was making more people happy with their features/graphics/gameplay, so they were selling much better and are still putting out new versions to this very day. Ironically, I think the most successful of the air combat sims from that time frame and maybe even to this day were all the free mods/upgrades to Falcon 4.0, but only after Microprose went broke producing such a complex expensive game for what had become a very small niche.