It should focus heavily on practical aspects, as with all creative work. Maybe assignments that do like one iteration every 1-3 weeks.

Prototyping class is almost mandatory.
I'd consider a class where you figure out a complex game design and build it as a mod.
Maybe stuff like UI design and basic (e.g. python) coding too.

I'd do marketing in this form - put a steam profile or box art of a game and ask people if they'd buy it. Get them to list turn ons and turn offs... this can be as superficial as not liking the name, words used, word of mouth, or the color tone of a certain screenshot. Maybe even give them 2 minutes to google reviews/testimonials on that game. Then collect together all the turn on and turn offs and compare with the rest of the class.

But by the end of it, students should at least grasp iteration if nothing else. Some people should have specialized in either code or art.

Designing a board game is good practice too. Logo designers are trained to quickly dumb down the look of something into a few lines to understand the essence of what earns that look. Board games can greatly dumb down a game concept, making it a useful tool. But I wouldn't go so far as to make it mandatory, because plenty of game styles don't work that way.

Eh, what do we care? I made my first site at 12, when the legal age to make sites was 13. Back then, website programmers made a ton of money so that was kind of a big thing. I think most of us did stuff like that.

Personally, I hate videos. They can't really be viewed on the train or in parties and so on.

So here's some other alternate stuff from YC for those interested:
https://www.ycombinator.com/resources/

I did sign up for the course and joined the FB group and all though.

I've done marketing for physical products, not with games so far.

Marketing is a full time job. It's not like you bombard marketing on release of your game. Good marketing is repetitive. If you're lucky, someone will hear about you once and buy it on the spot. But that's not the norm. Normally people hear about a product several times before purchasing.

Take something like Destiny for example. How many have bought it? How many times did they hear from it? I hear it from a friend on Facebook. A couple of gaming sites. I still haven't bought it, but if my brother suddenly loads it up and claims it's the best thing ever, I'd buy it. My siblings do claim a lot of games are the best thing ever, but if I haven't heard of it before, I likely won't buy.

It's best done from multiple angles hitting in close succession. A lot of indie marketers have this rather dum concept of using one channel. They'll use one channel, analyze the results, stop, then move to another channel. That's like trying to get a girlfriend by dating her once every few months. It's just not going to work unless you keep dating her steadily, but you have to time things so you don't sound too pushy.

Look at cliffski - he hits from Facebook, Google, blogs, posts on forums, Steam, writes articles, gets his name up on gaming sites. That's how it's supposed to be done.

A lot of indies talk about the long tail. But honestly, there's only a long tail because some people are only recently crossing the purchase bar.

Alternatively, you just raise the quality extremely high that people will buy it no matter how vague it is. Then you've got yourself a cult classic. But unless you've spent millions developing it, it's not going to be good enough to cross that mark. Dwarf Fortress is arguably one of the most complex games ever made, but it's got a full time programmer and a full time marketer/designer/fundraiser.

Marketing is also a lot of hard work. If you're maintaining a Facebook page, website, or a blog, you'd need to update Facebook daily, website/blog at least once a month. Blogs/sites are even more picky, because if you're not consistently updating them, your Google ranking drops.


So, to answer the question, you can get the ball rolling yourself to decide if it's worth marketing. But you better be marketing consistently, not only at launch. If you're going to keep making new games, then just pay someone to do marketing.

Don't do it if you don't have to. It's not like all companies do something like Microsoft Electronics, Intel Microprocessors, Nike Shoes. The shorter the better.

Fallout 2
Civ5 (with all the expansions)

A lot of people play the sims just to build houses. My sister and her friends used to cheat a lot just to get enough money to build houses. Also one of the expansions unlocks like an interior designer job where your sim gets paid to renovate other sims houses. You might like that.

Got Heroes of Loot from Humble Bundle for $0.01.
Not worth the money, uninstalled it by 30 minutes.

Thanks will check out some of these.

I don't really like the classics. I was a Wizardry fan a long time ago but they're unplayable now IMO. And FF7 feels horrible because graphics. It's just these things age badly. Betrayal at Krondor still looks good, but the gameplay still feels clumsy by today's standards (like having to sharpen weapons or the large map).

I'll check out Mass Effect too. Been avoiding it since it's been quite mainstream.

vampire the masquerade: bloodlines
fallout 1

Played both. They're the right kind of games I'm looking for.

Check out how dwarf fortress does it, if you haven't. DF is basically community built. A lot of the voting mechanics were put into place by fans, so the creator doesn't waste time on it.

but my gut says don't bother.

Give out the main story for free.

1. Sell new episodes.
2. Sell side episodes (like the ones that revolve around supporting characters or viewing the scene from the bad guy's perspective).
3. Sell alternate storylines.
4. Sell merchandise, like online comic writers do.
5. Donate is ok, but give them a recommended donation. I like how some free apps have the donate button which charges like $3 every time people click it.

Don't make story unlockable with pay.

Nope no portfolio, sorry.

I've had good success selling physical goods through physical channels. I've worked with plenty of startups, tech and non-tech. I've sold apps to very large companies. I have a near 50% success rate with cold emails. That is, to people I don't know at all. You don't need 'contacts' or whatever to sell a game. It's just hard work. And there's a working system to sale games (or whatever) systematically.

Hard to prove online which is why I'll do a full job for nearly free.

Expected pay:
- Testimonial
- Getting the full game for free (optional)
- Satisfaction of promoting a good game
- Experience

Criteria:
- I like the game. My preferred genres are RPG and strategy.
- Game is completed and published. I'm not working with betas or 'early access'.
- The more aged the better, especially if it's in the "long tail". That way you see the effects of marketing.
- You're willing to budget about 10% of your returns to marketing

What I do:
Since I'm not really getting paid, I'll just be doing like a few hours a week. I'm not going to be writing ads or prodding journalists, because these take too long. But I'll proofread your scripts. I'll fix your emails. I'll set up marketing campaigns for you, but you set aside the budget yourself. I'll ask questions for you to think about and answer yourself.

But not really doing the grunt work.

Drop me a PM, because I might forget to check this forum. Also a lot of emails end up in spam folder.


Disclaimer:
I'm writing this at 1 AM. Part of me wants to not post this because this is a pretty bad deal for me. So I'll offer the condition of me backing out w/ no hard feelings anytime if I can't make the commitment. I won't be responsible for bad advice and burning out your marketing money, but it'll probably be better than trying things out with no experience.

What's your facebook game page?

Marketing fail just for not exploiting this thread and linking your page I suspect the same lack of energy flows through your FB posts. Marketing is really more about the energy.

My dumb instinctive response to this:

Desura's kinda amateurish. Indie is good but much of Desura is amateurish. You need to polish a lot more to get me to buy something from Desura.
The site colors mean rejection from the start, whether or not it's paid.
Colors make it seem like a children's game.
F!shing is not a catchy name.
"fast-paced fish-flinging arcade game" is not a sales pitch that turns me on.
Trailer doesn't look fun. If you have to put captions, the gameplay isn't selling itself. Also I almost never view trailers, they're only if I'm on the fence or if the screenshots look deceptive.
The tiles and theme look rather lazy. If the graphics are lazy/unpolished, chances are the gameplay is too.

Sorry but dumb instincts determine whether something buys or sells.

My tips:
Dump the game. If you don't feel it's worth anything, it's harder to get others to like it. If it can be salvaged, you'll be defensive about it.

Focus marketing efforts on one medium. Don't spread it out. Sales are determined by how high you rank. If you're getting #100 on a Google Play search, you've failed. If it's #20-#50, you still have a chance. If it's over #20, your sales improve drastically. I'd bet that getting #1 sells 3 times more than #2.

So it's better to focus your marketing resources. I'd only do several channels as a marketing technique. Like if someone saw the same game at Desura while browsing Play, they'll be more likely to click it.

I've been waiting for Kairosoft to release something worthwhile after Dungeon Village..
I'm still waiting :/

Did you check out Grand Prix Story or Ninja Village? Both of those rank among my favorites, have replayed them at least twice. Pocket League Story (1 not the shitty microtransaction sequel) is my favorite football management game on mobile so far.

^

Also you can reward early birds. Something like the first 200 people gets X for $20, but the next few people need to pledge $30 for X.

I want to play a RPG but most have way too much filler. Definition of filler is just unsatisfying crap that makes me feel like I wasted time - pointless dialogue, dungeons that don't effect the plot or give you cool stuff, running around a lot, things like mandatory alchemy or crafting.

I do like games like Avernum, which I consider the benchmark.

Also going for roleplaying games with actual roleplaying and plot and not plotless roguelikes like Crawl.

So any suggestions?

Kairosoft games are all gold. I prefer Dungeon Village over Majesty. Kairosoft are the benchmark about where mobile strategy games should go... I bought pretty much all of their games. The recent ones like Magazine Mogul and that farm one kinda suck, but no regrets because it's cheap.

Rebuild is a great zombie survival city game. They're working on a sequel too.

Conquest of Elysium is ported from PC. Dunno if it's good, but a lot of people bought it. Battle for Wesnoth is ported too... one of them is a great port, the other one sucks badly.

Rev share is ok. Just be upfront about it.

You're a dick only if
1. you claim that you're doing them a favor.
2. you come forth with an idea and expect someone else to flesh it out.
3. you set the terms so that you can cut loose from the project without paying them anything.
4. you hold strong attachment to ideas, and bring along things like NDAs. or if you try to hire people without telling them what the project is about. idea guys are lynched.
5. you expect them to take more risk than you.
6. you look for the best talent but don't have the best budget.

If you want to sweeten the deal, offer an initial deposit of like $50 or something so that they don't lose anything should you choose to bail out.

If the idea is really really really really good, then someone will throw money at you to make it. If you're doing rev share with an idea that can change the world, there's something fishy going on.

Ideally we wouldn't even need a gender setting, but the problem is that as humans we have gotten accustomed to assign a gender to absolutely everything that seems living, so the "make it genderless" idea simply doesn't work at all in practice. I mean, take a look at this (sorry, no scaled up version):



There isn't absolutely anything about that character that implies gender. 100% sure that most (if not almost all) people will assume it's male, due to a lack of female signifiers. If something as simplified as that gets assumed as male, imagine what would be the situation with more complex looking characters.

I actually assumed it as genderless because it's naked and doesn't have a penis.

You could probably hide it a bit by doing something like heavy armor (the metroid way), but if you have customization, you probably have a lot of features.

I'd just make the character female. Guys like looking at females. Girls like having a non-male protagonist for once.