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13607
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Developer / Business / Re: Pricing tips?
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on: September 29, 2008, 09:53:54 PM
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Another approach to pricing is just be experimental.
Start high, at 30$ or so.
Go lower every month by $1.
When you start to lose, when the value of "number of sales divided by number of downloads, times the price" stops going up, stop.
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13608
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Player / Games / Re: Magical Unicorn Adventure
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on: September 29, 2008, 09:17:07 PM
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"People praise the goofiness in my game and say "that looks fun" a lot more than they notice how the programmer got the guy to jump just right, etc."
That's true of every game. People praised the ability to go back in time in Braid more than they praised that the programming was just right. Superficial things that people can see on the surface matter more to most people than under-the-hood things, and I'm not sure that's a bad thing.
As for the videos you posted
- I can't understand what's happening in the first one, the character just seems to be wandering around touching lights and picking up glowing things. Looks kind of pointless, but that could be the video editor's fault.
- The second looks good, it's the only one I'd consider playing besides the MUA one so far.
- The third one is probably innovative for the mainstream but since I've seen a lot of GM games where you can manipulate the environment in a way similar to what's done there it doesn't look too new to me. It also seems like it's not a mechanic that can be taken very far, whereas the central mechanic in the time-warp shooter looks like it'd have a lot of interesting uses. In other words, it's hard to imagine the mechanic in this game being varied enough that you can sustain a significant number of distinct and interesting challenges / levels revolving around it.
- The fourth one has a similar problem: the mechanic itself is interesting, but I'm not sure it'd lead to interesting gameplay. The video didn't look "fun" -- it wasn't something that I wanted to try to do myself.
By contrast, creating a moving platform which you can swing off of (in MUA) does have a lot of applications and seems like it could potentially lead to interesting gameplay in a platformer. So I'd still say the two most innovative games I've seen in all the videos so far are the time-warp shooter and MUA.
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13609
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Player / Games / Re: Dream Build Play XNA contest discussion
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on: September 29, 2008, 09:03:47 PM
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In that case, another reason could be that they aren't playable by the public. It's hard to get excited about something that you can't even play unless it's a big-name game with lots of hype (like Braid and Aquaria had).
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13610
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Player / Games / Re: Dream Build Play XNA contest discussion
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on: September 29, 2008, 08:41:49 PM
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Here we have one of the richest companies on the face of the planet, and they make you sit through f$%&ing commercials before you can watch a video on their crappy video portal which they're ostensibly trying to position as a YouTube rival.
Sometimes you really wonder what those guys are thinking.
I believe that most of them also wonder what they are thinking. I know someone who worked at Microsoft, and she was just as baffled by them as anyone else. As an aside, arrogancy, the reason why this thread may have gotten fewer replies than the MUA one is that it's a lot of information all at once. My post was just a link to a strange video, which is easy to reply to. Here, it's more challenging to reply to because there are links to a lot of different games, it has no obvious focus. I'm sure if each of the games had their own thread they'd each probably have more replies than this thread, it's just a psychological issue of having too much information in one post. |
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13611
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Player / Games / Re: Magical Unicorn Adventure
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on: September 29, 2008, 08:32:31 PM
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Didn't Cave Story have that 'use a weapon to boost yourself up' thing too? I'm sure a lot of them have innovative parts, but MUA is the most innovative one I've sen just judging from the videos (and if a video doesn't give a good representation of a game, that's the video editor's fault rather than the game's fault). A game with "innovative weapons" with alternative uses for each doesn't sound exactly like a game I want to rush off and play. I'm kind of tired of innovative weapons to shoot enemies with and explode them in new ways, I personally want more games that are about things other than shooting enemies with weapons, even if those weapons are innovative.
I think you're pretty mistaken if you believe that most of the people here like this game in order to be a part of an alternative crowd or to feel different, that's kind of an offensive thing to say. Though I admit that one reason I probably like this game is that because a lot of people I know worked on it (SDHawk, Sew, Jazzman -- I know them all from the Ohrrpgce community). And I like unicorns -- don't underestimate the power of an interesting premise, it's more important than execution a lot of the time.
I also think this isn't similar to bionic commando at all: bionic commando has a static line as the arm, wheres this one is stretchy, like a bungee cord, more like the umihara games. It's much more like the umihara games than bionic commando in general, because those games also had a female lead and they were also fairly non-violent.
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13612
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Player / Games / Re: Magical Unicorn Adventure
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on: September 29, 2008, 08:19:51 PM
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Yeah, pretty much. It has nothing to do with polish, though. If I'm going to play a game that, in essence, I've played a hundred times before (re: all the videos you posted), it might as well be silly and bad, at least that way I can get some enjoyment out of it. That's exactly why I enjoyed Barkley: Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden so much -- it's a game I've played a million times before (a jRPG) but at least it's a silly, well-written one rather than yet another polished but vapid one. |
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13614
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Player / Games / Re: Magical Unicorn Adventure
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on: September 29, 2008, 08:04:22 PM
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Although I do agree that it could and should have more polish, and that there seem to be big problems with it -- the largest is that it uses the facade of a "young girl game" while being a game that'll probably be extremely frustrating to most young girls.
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13615
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Player / Games / Re: Magical Unicorn Adventure
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on: September 29, 2008, 08:01:52 PM
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I think the difference for me is that all of those have very traditional forms of gameplay (whether they are polished or not), whereas this one at least has something kind of innovative -- and yes, there are games like this, but only like ten other games like this total, whereas there are thousands of games like the ones you link to, so this is exploring an underexplored subgenre (platformers with string physics) and adding something slightly new to it, whereas those are exploring overexplored subgenres like mario clone, shooter, tennis game, beat'em'up, etc.
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13620
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Player / Games / Re: 100 Game Maker Games in 10 Minutes
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on: September 29, 2008, 10:13:07 AM
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I improved the list with time signatures.
0:00 Ad Nauseam 2
0:06 Immortal Defense
0:12 Iji
0:18 Barkley: Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden
0:24 Garden Gnome Carnage
0:30 Hello Panda
0:36 Clean Asia
0:42 Dustscape
0:48 An Untitled Story
0:54 Flywrench
1:00 Magecraft
1:06 Vivid Conceptions
1:12 Return To Sector 9
1:18 Invader
1:24 Hyperwars
1:30 Mondo Medicals
1:36 Painajainen
1:42 Muon
1:48 Jetz Rampage 4: Revenge
1:54 Seiklus
2:00 The Lila Experiments
2:06 Flail
2:12 The Ancients' Tome
2:18 Idealism
2:24 You Found the Grappling Hook
2:30 Johnny 20
2:36 Winter's Heart
2:42 Ac!Dbomb
2:48 Deathworm
2:54 Fatal Hearts
3:00 Varia
3:06 Ark 22
3:12 Magi
3:18 Dominos 2
3:24 Lux
3:30 Fractal Fighter
3:36 The Power
3:42 Lunar Base
3:48 The Boomlands
3:54 Battleships Forever
4:00 Burn The Trash
4:06 Forward Always Forward
4:12 Sixty Five Million and One Bc
4:18 Punishment: The Punishing
4:24 The Pyramid
4:30 Shotgun Ninja
4:36 Kaipuu
4:42 Tut's Test
4:48 Madhouse
4:54 Ancient Ants Adventure
5:00 Bite the Bullet
5:06 Virtual Silence
5:12 Calamity Annie
5:18 The Sandbox of God
5:24 The Cleaner
5:30 Seven Minutes
5:36 Legend of Shadow
5:42 Seizuredome
5:48 Radian
5:54 Lock On
6:00 Terav
6:06 Frozzd
6:12 Minubeat
6:18 Karoshi 2
6:24 Kairuga
6:30 J20
6:36 Hovertank 3d
6:42 Flock
6:48 Battle High: Team Up
6:54 Drop in the Bucket
7:00 100 Invaders
7:06 Alphasix
7:12 The Lost Snowmen
7:18 Byteality Tower Defense
7:24 Zero Point
7:30 Psychosomnium
7:36 Fedora Spade
7:42 Castle of Elite
7:48 Cute Knight
7:54 Arms
8:00 Jumper 3
8:06 Paragon
8:12 Orbit Racers
8:18 Q U I E S C E N C E
8:24 Robbie Swifthand and the Orb of Mysteries
8:30 Mighty Jill Off
8:36 Johnny's Nightmare
8:42 Valence
8:48 La La Land 5
8:54 Gems
9:00 Samurai Railroad Mansion
9:06 The Jeluvian Project
9:12 Ninja <3 Pirate
9:18 The Crypts of Despair
9:24 Runman: Monster Fracas
9:30 Infection
9:36 Soldexus
9:42 So
9:48 Coldgearz
9:54 Mission Extreme
I'll get in links later. If anyone wants to help me with finding links for all these games that'd be appreciated, too.
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