Orcs Must Die 2

What we are playing is a weekly column published on Sunday. Select members  of the team talk about the games they’ve been playing over the past week and  which they’re …
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A certain platform that became one of the homes of the original Orcs Must Die last fall was conspicuously absent from the recent press release announcing its sequel, Orcs Must Die 2. Realizing that a number of Xbox gamers who purchased and enjoyed the first game feel slighted by what they perceived to be Robot Entertainment turning its back on them, the developer posted an explanation on its official forums today.

Justin Korthof, a community manager at Robot, explained that the reasons are not personal, but monetary. Korthof reaffirmed that the Steam/PC community playing the first game is “significantly larger” (note the emphasis) than the audience for the tower-defense title on Microsoft’s console. That being said, he did note that “Both communities are very passionate and loyal. We appreciate that immensely.” So the small-scale developer is extremely grateful for the support of all of its fans, but game development is a business like any other; and business, as it turns out, is business.

This decision was entirely about spending our resources in the best ways possible. We won’t get into too many details because it’s been noted already by many indie developers, but it’s important to understand that developing and supporting games for XBLA brings with it several additional processes and costs above and beyond the core development of the game itself. This can make development increasingly expensive and time-consuming. As a small developer, we have to be as efficient as we can with our resource investments. We can make a better game and we can make it in a shorter period of time by focusing on PC for the sequel.

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