I'm willing to give Viktor Varkonyi the benefit of the doubt, for a time, at least. He's been with the company for 16 years, and therefore probably has a better idea of the potential of the product than a non-programmer who comes in from outside and just tries to milk the product for all the immediate revenue possible.

I'm more interested in seeing a really great product than really great marketing. (Not that they are mutually exclusive, though.) Happy, enthusiastic customers are more likely to sell the product than expensive glossy ads.

I highly doubt we will be seeing any significant change in their product development culture or marketing strategies anytime soon. More a case of, 'more of the same' and 'if it's not broke don't fix ( or improve) it'.

AFAIK, this is one of the primary tasks of new 'GS command' and that is the culture change inside of GS itself.
...and hopefully I will not be forced to eat my own words any time soon.

Richard wrote:
........

I'm more interested in seeing a really great product than really great marketing. (Not that they are mutually exclusive, though.) Happy, enthusiastic customers are more likely to sell the product than expensive glossy ads.

.......Not only are they not mutually exclusive but they are also inextricably cyclically interdependent.

Presumably (and ideally)....

Great marketing = More sales of licenses and subscriptions = more funds and resources for product development/ R&D/Third party Add-on buy-outs = Better product =........

wash. rinse. repeat.

But obviously for great marketing to be effective you have to be starting from a superior product; which archiCAD is to a certain extent. Hence the whole cyclical nature of the whole process.

For the longest time, Graphisoft were sitting on a great product with poor marketing that didn't see them dominate or corner the nascent Virtual Building field and BIM before BIM was ever known as BIM, and it was not until Autodesk got int the game with Revit that general awareness of the whole BIM concept was raised outside of those who were already in the know, and now you basically have Autodesk seeming like it's going to dominate in a field that GS have been for almost 3 times as long, and with a product that may not necessarily be as superior to ArchiCAD.

The point I'm trying to make is even if you have a superior and great product, if you don't market it well and no one knows about it, you're never going to be able to sufficiently expand your client-base enough to a level that facilitates robust development and improvements necessary to keep your product competitive and ahead.

And we all know GS are forced to pick their development battles due to limited resources; the proof is in the pudding - the still lamentable and laughable Stair tool even 4 versions after the disastrous AC v8 speaks for itself, just as a solitary example out of many many more.


Enthusiastic customers can only take you so far, especially in the face of remarks like

"...well all our engineers, consultants and rivals use (Rev)it, so unfortunately we also have to switch and choose it too - but we loved ArchiCAD when we compared the 2 and demoed it - we just have to be practical and choose what makes most sense in our financial environment."

Bricklyne wrote:
Enthusiastic customers can only take you so far <snip>

SketchUp did pretty well with average marketing and raving fans.

I've been paying attention to the enthusiasm level of Revit customers. As it has gotten more complex, the level of militant enthusiasm seems to have dropped off. A few years ago, I used to commonly hear phrases like, "Architecture has become FUN again." Not so much, anymore. I'm starting to see the enthusiasm waning in SketchUp, too, as the features start to bloat, and the learning curve becomes steeper. I think there is a point at which prospective users start looking for simpler alternatives, like Chief Architect or Envisioneer, where you can get productive in a few days, rather than a few weeks.

Richard wrote:

Bricklyne wrote:
Enthusiastic customers can only take you so far <snip>

SketchUp did pretty well with average marketing and raving fans.

......I would beg to differ on that point.

IMO Sketchup's early popularity and modest success had a lot more to do with its unparalleled simplicity, ease-of-use, and unprecedented level of user-intuitiveness - there was nothing like it in the market when it was first introduced (nor, really, has there been since). Naturally, all of this bled onto customer enthusiasm and raving support, but the point being that if they had had nothing to rave about, nobody would have heard of Sketchup. As always, it starts with the program, being a viable product and its strongest selling points which then hopefully lead to happy users..

ArchiCAD users haven't had a whole lot to rave about in recent times; The Curtain Wall tool is great, but really, unless you design the types of buildings that regularly benefit from such a feature (mid-size to large scale commercial), then you're not really going to have any motivation or interest to use it or even learn it. And while we all can agree the Virtual Trace was an invaluable addition; truth was that, it really wasn't so much an addition or new tool as it was an enhancement of an long-time existing AC feature (Ghost Storeys). In fact you would have to go all the way back to the Complex-profile manager, 2 versions ago, - which, as you may recall, was introduced in piece-meal fashion, as an incomplete tool at the time - to find a really significant upgrade and new workflow feature/tool. And other than Lightworks before that (which obviously isn't even GS developed) and the now-defunct, although once much-ballyhooed Maxonform (also not really GS fare), new revolutionary tools (and particularly modeling tools or stand-alone workflow enhancements) in ArchiCAD have really been slim pickings and problematic at worst or incomplete at best, once they appear.

Again, not much to rave about from a long-time loyal user standpoint.

Richard wrote:
I've been paying attention to the enthusiasm level of Revit customers. As it has gotten more complex, the level of militant enthusiasm seems to have dropped off. A few years ago, I used to commonly hear phrases like, "Architecture has become FUN again."

On this point I would posit that in Revit's case, it's been a case of Autodesk's financial dominance not quite being the anticipated boon in terms of engendering user-interest and enthusiasm, that one would imagine it would (although, not that it would really need it given Autodesk's market position). As the program becomes more and more ubiquitous, as Autodesk hands it out like free tic-tacs with their AutoCAD bundles, everyone and their third cousin has a copy sitting somewhere on their shelf and is either using it or has used it a couple or times. Or worse yet, they are forced to use it because everyone else is using it. It all takes out that 'wow' uniqueness factor that one would get from using a special program that no one else knows about, but also as the software-development culture of Revit becomes more Autodesk-ized and corporatized, rather than the community-based approach of an independent developer, the gap between developers and users gets widened, leading to less contact between the developers and the users, who then become less enthusiastic about a program whose development they are no longer as familiar with.

Same thing happened to Sketchup when Google bought them out versus when it was just little old @Last developing it. Contrast that to the enthusiasm level of Luxology Modo users who are in constant communication with not just the developers of the program but the actual creators and the company owners, who perpetually let them know what's being worked on for the next version on a constant basis. Same thing to a lesser degree for Rhino users (via Rhinolabs forums) and the McNeel developers.

And then contrast that again with what's happened here over the last couple of years. When was the last time you heard someone (meaning a developer; preferably sitting somewhere in Budapest or so) giving a somewhat satisfactory response as to why the Stair tool's modeling capabilities are still largely or seriously lacking on so many levels and so many versions thus far? Or why SEO functions still can't display correctly on plan? In fact other than hotfix announcements the only time you get to hear from developers, it seems is if there's really REALLY critical issue and after they've had numerous numerous complaints and inquiries, or when the problem is really as a result of a third-party developer (e.g. Google, Mac, Maxon; i.e. not really their fault).
It didn't always used to be like this; in fact for a brief period after version 9 was released and after, I believe, Gallelo (sp?) had just been appointed in charge ( and also when, presumably, they were still trying to make up for the AC v8 debacle), there was quite a fair bit and certainly much larger developer presence and participation level in these here forums where we would hear from them really perpetually. Something happened and all that changed and now you'd be hard-pressed to get a response when you need one.

Richard wrote:
Not so much, anymore. I'm starting to see the enthusiasm waning in SketchUp, too, as the features start to bloat, and the learning curve becomes steeper. I think there is a point at which prospective users start looking for simpler alternatives, like Chief Architect or Envisioneer, where you can get productive in a few days, rather than a few weeks.

Sketchup has always been a relatively, or at least comparatively easy program to learn and to use; even with their recent attempted forays into more BIM territories. It's the increasing perception that they (blame Google) are no longer listening to their customers any more or as much that has more to do with the waning interest, as may have been observable from the level of disappointment in version 7 which had a collective number of new features less than the third party plugins and ruby scripts developed by independent coders and Ruby scripters between version 6 and 7 and which genuinely increased productivity far more than anything Google produced in version 7. Revit has always been complex and if anything is less so now that they are starting to adopt more Autodesk-like features, tools and workflows functions (like the Viewcube, fewer dialog-box commands) into the program - again, look to the connection to developer-user interaction trend for user enthusiasm level.