RPG Site: So besides Dungeons of Dusk, what should everyone expect from New Blood this year?
Dave Oshry: The best stuff. Bloodwest DLC #2,
Endless West, we're actually changing the name of it. I think it's going to be called Bloodwest Scavengers because we can't just call a game Endless West if it's just DLC. It has to be called Bloodwest something. So we have to change the name of it. Dungeons of Dusk obviously, Fallen Aces Episode 2, Ultrakill Layer 8, more Gloomwood updates like the bank and controller support, and stuff like that. Tenebris Somnia is coming out this year. More console ports of our existing games. More stupid merchandise. I think I got everything.
What else do we make? We make so many games. Yeah, I need more big reveals. Maybe some more fun publishing acquisitions of older stuff that I've been talking about. The Bloodwest thing went really well, so maybe more stuff like that where I pick up an older game and bring it into the New Blood family in order to keep it going. Maybe some older stuff like that.
Maybe working with Nightdive on some more stuff because that would be fun like on
Rise of the Triad. Stuff like that's always fun to me. I love keeping games preserved and shit.
Obviously maybe teasing some more stuff about our old school Fallout RPG, but that's not coming out anytime soon. We're plenty busy so we've always got stuff going on. If you just follow
New Blood on socials and all that, you'll see it. We're super active on there.
I'm trying to be less active on social media. Trying to raise my kids, but New Blood's always got plenty of stuff going on.
RPG Site: I keep attributing this quote to you even though you’ve told me it was said by someone else. Something about the Epic Games Store being a marketing black hole.
Dave Oshry: People credit that to me. I think I single-handedly killed the Epic Games Store with that quote. It's a fucking marketing black hole. It's actually not, so--which is funny. Well, it is if you're launching only on EGS, right? So, we don't have any games on EGS, and Blood West is on EGS. HyperStrange controls that. When we took over publishing for Blood West, they were like, "Hey, do you want the Epic Games Store stuff?" I was like, "No, I don't give a shit. What does it sell? Like, five copies a month? They're like, "Not even."
But they did a free giveaway for Blood West over Christmas. I think it was--Blood West was free on Christmas or whatever and I thought "Oh, man, I guess that's going to kill some of our Steam sales that week or whatever, during the winter sale." It turned out Blood West Steam sales for those two days actually were, like, up 200% because it was just free advertising for Blood West. So, people saw that Blood West was free on EGS, and then they went and bought it on Steam instead, which is hilarious.
So it's not a black hole. It actually advertises for other platforms. That's how bad EGS is. And it sucks because originally the promise of EGS was really good, but you have to build a better store. You can't beat Steam just with free giveaways and high developer percentages. You could give developers 100% of the royalties if you wanted, but if nobody's buying. What's 100% of zero? Like, who gives a shit?
So, the ideas were there, but they failed to build a better store or a better user experience at all and it's been like 10 years, and they just haven't. So, it's dead. End of story.
They had a chance, and they blew it by not building a better experience. Do I wish that Steam's cut was less than 30%? Of course I do. Unless you're going to build something that's better than Steam, it is what it is.
RPG Site: Do you think Xbox Play Anywhere as a feature and the Xbox on PC or Windows Store are worth more for devs like New Blood compared to say the Epic Games Store?
Dave Oshry: Xbox Play Anywhere is good because it gives you build parity and cross progression/saves in the Xbox ecosystem so you don't have to make different builds for Xbox and PC even though you're essentially shipping the console version of the game on PC, and nobody buys games on the Xbox PC app, but the idea is sound. Xbox Play Anywhere is a definite plus for Xbox, but it's probably too little too late.
RPG Site: I'm sick of so many devs and pubs using their own launcher or forcing it even when you boot up something on Steam. What are your thoughts on forced accounts or launchers for single player games?
Dave Oshry: There is no good reason to have your own launcher for single player games unless you care more about harvesting data than selling video games so I think we know who would do that sort of thing.
RPG Site: Back in 2022, you posted about that traditional Fallout-like game that you all are making and said, "Don't expect to hear anything about it soon." Let's talk about that now.
Dave Oshry: I post stuff from time to time. We're working on it. It's mostly really boring engine work right now. We've got tons of art from Alexander when he's not working on
Fallout Bakersfield, the first person, the Doom mod in the Fallout universe that went super viral that he and his brother are working on.
We've got tons of art, and we've been working on the story outline and stuff, but mostly it's just because we're building our own engine for it. There's nothing to show. I can keep showing, every once in a while, I tease art or a scene or some animations on Twitter, and I might start a blog for it so people can keep up.
But when there's something to show, we'll show it. When it's ready to be revealed with a Steam page and stuff, you'll know. In the meantime, it's really boring engine related stuff right now. It's nothing exciting. Unless you like looking at lines of code. Which some people I'm sure do, but that's not something I'm going to Tweet.
