Yeah, this is an amazingly weird “strategy” … if that’s what it is 
Releasing a old (March is the build date) pre-alpha, poorly performing build of the game your company’s future depends on wouldn’t seem to be in the top 100 (or 1000) recommended methods of marketing said game.
Seems to be confirmed now with anexi saying “we have been testing marketing metrics for quite some in Philippines and US but just turned the scale on yesterday” and “Learning here is play store discoverability is very poor w/o an actual push”
I’m curious what the planned-for next steps are after such “learning”… and also curious why there isn’t an a statement ready to go, and why it feels like cloaken is drafting his statement now when this crypto-marketing effort has been in development for days apparently.
The good thing though: It’s a fun and cheeky way of building some hype, and it’s leading to decent discord chat as players spread news about in-game features to others who can’t download yet.
sad ios sounds
There’s no way the app in its current state would pass an App Store review, being that it’s described as pre-release software.
Huh, this being intentional is certainly a weird marketing move, but I can’t say it didn’t work - it did spark a lot of conversation about the game.
Haha, this is all really hilarious. Yeah, @DIMTI, definitely inspiring conversation. I can’t say a legit “this is the game in alpha state, have fun trying it out!” wouldn’t have done the same thing though. I’m just confused about the weeks of prep involved and the seeming lack of ability to speak to it immediately. Feels weird. I’m entertained, but for reasons other than what I think this strategy was aiming for lol
I think Jean just got on discord and probably read all the comments accusing him of giving out a ghost copy to the play store 
lol
What’s going through their minds? Internal bets? Does it mean it’s a marketing strategy that wasn’t entirely planned?
Yeah, it seems to be both some sort of test as well as an odd marketing stunt.
Creating confusion about your product is a peculiar approach to marketing – but then, VG’s marketing was odd as well. (And I think it’s the same people doing CB’s marketing, iirc.)
I wonder why other game studios don’t do stuff like this? 
I can’t image a scenario where this was entirely intentional. It’s going to be interesting to see how they spin it.
Slightly delayed but here’s some laggy gameplay footage using the default build I recorded. Sound unfortunately couldn’t be recorded as android requires mic to be on to do so and that causes the noises of me button mashing on the screen to be recorded as well.
Ok, the scoop, via Cloaken in the CB announcements channel:
On “Maskborne” and Roboworld Entertainment -
Community…you make me proud. We had a friendly little wager running internally on whether or not this would happen. I’m happy to have confirmed you all are as dialed in as I anticipated.
For those puzzled by the subject matter of this piece, about 15 hours ago we were alerted to a tweet from a community member that a game entitled ‘Maskborne,’ published by a company called Roboworld Entertainment (http://www.roboworldentertainment.com/) was available for download on the Google Play store. In short, RGDrew14 (https://twitter.com/RGDrew14/status/1264399826105425920) and Joseph Reyes (https://www.facebook.com/SuperEvilMegacorp/posts/3945311178842701?comment_id=4033015790072239) - Yep. It was us. Let me also take a bit more time to explain the why’s; maybe you’ll find something interesting here. I joined SEMC back in November of last year and I was immediately impressed by the passion, drive, and commitment the team had in carving out what has now solidified into Catalyst Black. To me (an openly passionate but cynical mobile games enthusiast), the game was an incredibly promising concept and one the team had spent a long time prototyping prior to my arrival. That being said, there was an unsettled vibe at work inside the company that I couldn’t initially put my finger on. Unlike many of you, I didn’t have the privilege of being a part of the SEMC community during the early Vainglory days; I was so consumed with work and family. The team and the game were both something I was aware of (particularly with Ciderhelm as a long-time friend of mine and, myself, working on a game in the same genre space), but I had a lot of catching up to do on the company’s history when I arrived, particularly in reference to the positives and negatives of the past. It didn’t take me long to realize we felt a bit haunted.
There are a lot of hot takes out there on Vainglory as a game and why things have resulted in its present state. As someone actively working to ensure VG has a long life ahead of itself with Community Edition (https://www.vainglorygame.com/news/vainglory-community-edition), I can tell you this not for lack of love or ambition; indeed, quite the opposite. Vainglory is a deep brand on this company’s soul; both the good and the bad. Kristian has even commented as such (https://twitter.com/ksegerstrale/status/1251559967380799488). But the learnings, the things the company could have done better with VG, are what bring us to the odd nature of “Maskborne” and Roboworld Entertainment. With the publishing of Maskborne, I truly believe we’ve confronted our deepest regrets and fears when facing our past with Vainglory. It’s no big secret that the elements that kept VG from being overwhelmingly successful had a lot to do with how business, marketing, and effective user acquisition interacted with core design. We knew how to make a great game with a lot of love, with proprietary bleeding-edge mobile tech, at an aggressive development pace, but there were business decisions made early with the game that simply couldn’t be undone. In an effort to openly confront the demons of our past, we have attempted to humble ourselves to learn and grow in these areas. “How can we know Catalyst Black will be an engaging game by its own nature, apart from our history and the SEMC label?” “Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe we don’t know what we’re talking about with this game…” “Do we know how to run compelling mobile ads? How do we make sure…” “What about our data pipeline? Is it set up right? How can we improve our approach to analytics?”
The only way to know the answers to these questions would be to ship a game similar to Catalyst Black as early as possible so we could learn as fast as possible. This very idea made us crazy uncomfortable; we’re all perfectionists and we want everything we do to be the best it can possibly be: “There’s no way this will represent the final quality of the game we’re making…” “What if people absolutely hate it and we weren’t able to put all the polish into it that could have ensured they would love it?” “It will not be optimized at all. It’ll be ugly and still perform horribly on popular devices. Won’t that make the engine look bad?” “What if people find out? What if people realize this is an early version of Catalyst Black?” Maskborne is a directional idea, whereas Catalyst Black will be a destination. Maskborne is a prototype. There is so much broken, missing, and temp in this early version of our game: art, effects, sound, animations, optimization, on and on…but…it has enough to teach us what we need to know. There’s enough here to humble us, help us confront the ghosts of our past, and to move on into the future of what we need to become. We want to make cutting edge games that define the future of interactive entertainment. But, we also have to become a company that knows how to make smart business decisions that allow us to continue to make great games long into the future. Maskborne is a critical step in that journey for us, just as Vainglory has been before.
Let me dive into what are some specific questions likely on your mind:
Did you intend for us to find Maskborne?
No, but we knew it was highly likely that you would (some of us more convinced than others ).
Is this it? Is this what we can expect from Catalyst Black?
It’s probably most helpful to think of Maskborne as a prototype for Catalyst Black. Maskborne is directionally correct only in relation to Catalyst’s moment-to-moment play while even then being in a super early state. There are major elements missing from Maskborne like progression, gearing, itemization, multiple modes, social features, music, art polish (missing models, effects, animation, environment work…), performance optimization, etc.
Isn’t Roboworld Entertainment the company your Technical Art Director (Jean-Eric Khalife) started?
Yes! You all are sharp (and you’re watching our videos!). He was super cool to support the company’s ability to publish under that name.
Is it ok to play?
Sure. Let us know what you think. We encourage you to download it directly from the Google Play store as we cannot vouch for any APKs from various third parties.
Where is Maskborne available?
It is currently only available in the US, Philippines, and Singapore.
The game is not running well on my device. Will it be the same for Catalyst Black?
The optimization and performance of Maskborne is a poor indication of where the game will be when Catalyst Black becomes available. No time was spent on this. Not even the basics. We attempted to restrict our test to the most recent devices where performance was passable, but ended up having to open it to a wider audience. We also only have two servers supporting Maskborne at the moment which will have an impact on your performance both depending on where you are in the world, and how many people are playing at a given moment.
Will Maskborne be made available on iOS or via Testflight?
We don’t currently have plans for this.
If new questions pop up related to Maskborne that are helpful to answer and add here, we’ll edit this post with an update. Thank you for being here and "Never settle for the lesser evil."
I find this really interesting. It’s a stealth alpha, of sorts, and hopefully they got a big enough sample of folks trying maskborne without the knowledge that it was semc. Petitioning to call it Catamask Blorne in the time being.
Huh, even with the context, I feel like the Maskborne release is still strange. Not complaining in the slightest though seeing as the game is in a lot of hands now. Regardless, it’s really nice to hear about what’s going on internally. SEMC realizing how they messed up a lot on VG is refreshing to hear and it seems like they actually have learned a lot from their mistakes on it. Hopefully they can turn CB into a great game on it’s real release.
This is such a strange approach.
I just … I’m baffled.
Yeah, it’s interesting. I’m glad it turned out to be a fully planned thing that they could stay in front of, minus a half day of baited confusion. I’m still a bit unclear on whether the exercise was necessary, because what’s the conclusion, really? That relying on the app store to passively advertise the game isn’t ideal? That if there isn’t enough interest, do your own advertising? Those aren’t groundbreaking insights in my eyes. I suppose it’s good to know the numbers won’t be what they want on the strength of the app icon and game name alone. But I’m glad they got the knowledge they wanted! And it was a fun diversion, so I’m happy. 
