Dispatch's creators thought it would take three years to reach their sales goal, but they are “on track” and will achieve it in three months. The workplace superhero comedy-adventure has sold at least 1 million copies and continues to grow in player numbers with each release of weekly episodes. Its final two episodes were released today, which means another influx of players who have been waiting for the entire “box set” to get drunk.
The two founders of AdHoc Studio view the strong sales as proof that these kinds of games—narrative-driven adventure games in the style of the old Telltale games—are still a viable business proposition, even if no one at those pitch meetings believes in you.
“I think it'll be really interesting to see who tries to pick this up and follow what we're doing,” says Nick Herman, creative director. “Because I think if you have the wrong type of content or the wrong type of game, it might not work. But it at least opens the door for people to talk about it as a model.”
AdHoc didn't share exact sales forecasts, but they did say Gamesindustry.biz that they had a target figure that represented a “bullish case” they hoped to achieve over the game's lifespan, projected to be three years. In fact, things went much faster.
“We're going to do it in three months,” said Michael Chung, executive producer. “So, the case of the bull in three months… We were sure that people would like it. “I think the degree of success of this thing is something I definitely didn’t expect.”
He also gets more attention the longer he is away. Steam releases often expect to see a large number of players at launch, and then a quick drop with a (hopefully) long tail as players wipe their hands. Spikes will appear in a few months with major updates or exit from Early Access. But the picture of Dispatch's concurrent users looks different.
This is largely due to the fact that the game plays out like a network TV show, with a double set of new episodes each week. At the time of release, the game had approximately 12,000 concurrent players. according to SteamDB. Very healthy, but not a massive amount. A week later, in episodes 3 and 4, this number increased to 65,000. The following week, the number of players doubled to 131,000. It is not hard to imagine that sales will increase along with the number of players, especially considering that casual players prefer to wait until the game is “ready” before purchasing a copy.
So players don't drop out. “It’s the other way around,” says Herman. Word of mouth and attention from streamers played a role, as did positive press, although it didn't make it to launch: “To be honest, I think the press only started caring once the audience confirmed it.” Whatever the reason for this surge in attention, the decision to produce weekly episodes was not guaranteed to be successful.
“There were a lot of internal discussions before the release,” says Chung. “Like, should we do it this way? Should we release it all at once? Conventional wisdom tells us that we absolutely should not have done what we did… I think that is absolutely proven.
“I mean, we don't invent anything. It's worked for TV shows for the last 70 years or so.”
This is an excuse for developers. According to them, it was a difficult game. It's hard to reach video game investors who are used to data-heavy presentations when you have a game that focuses on storytelling and performance, where it's all about the writing, animation, direction and acting. Faced with this prospect, skeptical investors naturally point to similar games that haven't sold well.
“They say: well, this the game failed,” says Herman. “And it's like, yeah, but we look at this game and think, 'The creativity was bad.' You wouldn't point to a bad movie and say, “Cinema is dead.” There is no way for us to ever make a film again because this film failed.” But that’s how people approach our genre.”
“You wouldn't point to a bad movie and say, 'Cinema is dead.'”
According to AdHoc developers, game investors don't understand what it takes to make the genre work. Chung uses an analogy to explain the problem.
“If you create a Formula 1 team,” he says, “all the discussions and conversations are centered around the cars. What kind of car is this? What kind of engine is this? What tires? All these things, things that can be measured and built. It's not a good thing to talk about racers. And I think you need both if you're going to make these types of games.
“We are a studio that has both. We have a car, right? But we also have drivers who can actually drive… We have something that others don't have. It's just hard to talk about these things without sounding boastful.”
Much of that experience comes from the founders, many of whom are former Telltale veterans who have learned hard lessons about how these kinds of games can survive in the industry. Telltale was closed in 2018and despite the fact that resurrected many years later in the case of new teams, some see this as evidence that such a game is not profitable financially. As a result, AdHoc had difficulty gaining support and even lost partners who “lost hope halfway through.”
Eventually they found financial support in Critical Rolea media company that primarily broadcasts tabletop role-playing campaigns and has branched out into game publishing. It helps that it's a treasure trove of advertising and voice-over talent—streams and podcasts have large audiences, and one of the stars of Critical Role, voice actress Laura Bailey, plays a big role, as she did on Dispatch, as Invisigirl.
“Ultimately, they were the perfect partner with CritRole because they share the same values as us,” says Herman. “And they started their company in a similar way: it was just a group of creators who got together and were passionate about telling interactive stories and sharing them with people. And so they immediately saw and believed in what we were doing, and took a risk. Honestly, it was absolutely critical to getting this all done.”
However, it's unclear how much the game costs to produce, and cost has historically been a stumbling block for games of this type. AdHoc was founded six years ago and this is their first release. They also have a cast that includes big names like Breaking Bad star Aaron Paul, which won't come cheap. For developers, this kind of investment is worth it, considering that their type of game requires strong acting. Even though voice acting production costs are a touchy subject right now.
Embark Studios, creators of the shooter Arc Raiders, came under fire this week due to the decision to use AI voices to cut down on the cost of voice actors. But the creators of Dispatch believe that such a solution is simply not an option. There are things you can't skimp on.
In Dispatch, popular Westworld actor Jeffrey Wright plays Chase, a retired superhero who has aged unnaturally quickly. Herman uses his speech is an example about the dangers of being a curmudgeon in voice acting.
“AI feels like a production decision rather than a creative one. Maybe it's a creative solution if you're not creative.”
“No AI can do what he did,” says Herman. “He brought something to this character that we didn't expect. I mean, his performance, Aaron's performance and our entire cast bring to the table and enhance the material in a way that you just can't get. [with AI]. You won't be surprised because it builds on something you've heard before if you go the artificial intelligence route. So yes, to be fair, AI is perceived as a production solution rather than a creative one. Maybe it's creative if you No creative”.
“Whatever we build, it has to be interconnected,” says Chung. “It has to be done by people. It must be connected to people. We look at AI, we follow what AI does, just like everyone else. But…he seems to have a lot of trouble trying to get to a “good enough” place. And “good enough” is the enemy for us.”
“Also, we don’t get up every morning and say to ourselves, ‘Hey, what if we did this with fewer people? What is the smallest number of people we can use to do this?” It's not something that worries us too much.
“We're certainly not going to sit here and judge others for making different decisions… I'll let Embark speak for himself. However, it just doesn’t make much sense to us right now.”
