I think he means just narrow down the list to people you think would actually be interested in playing your game, and then send them personal e-mails instead of copy/paste spam.

Indie games don't need more stores... that part is easy. Indie games need coverage. You say your website gets a lot of views... well... that's pretty much what indie devs want. Eyes on their games.

The most obvious solution is to review indie games... I'm not really sure where the confusion is here. Allowing user generated content is bad, because not all user generated content is going to be great. In fact, a large percentage of it will be bad. That's the reason review sites exist. So the good games can get hand picked for spotlight.

I would say make a review site for WIP and finished indie games. You could earn ad revenue, and also maybe set up a special advertising system for indies where they can pay (a reasonable amount of money) to have their game advertised as a "featured" game on the site temporarily. Would be especially nice for newly released indie games to get a sort of "site takeover" thing where their game is advertised all over the site for a short period of time.

I keep coming back to this game... I really want to play the finished version! 

Cash register interface for Thief Story. This is just a test to make sure everything is moving and displaying properly.



Art by the amazing Michael Hussinger.

I've been busy building the cash register interface for displaying all the loot you collected to pawn for cash. Obviously you won't be stealing 40 beds for $99999 each, but you get the idea...

Ok, since he's not responding, I skimmed through those articles, and basically, the key is to have a booth/table at PAX and/or GDC

Yeah,
I've come to the same conclusion, all our coverage for Kingdoms Rise has come from random youtubers and low level press sites.

It seems the only way to get RPS or Polygon etc. to notice you is to physically shake hands with one of them at some expo.
Pretty unfair on people who can't afford to fly to the USA and exhibit at PAX, especially if PAX reject your applications to exhibit.

Anyway, I would keep venting but we did finally get a PAX booth this year in Boston.
So hopefully it works as well as I'm expecting

RPS recently posted about my game and I've done virtually no marketing of it. The writer was checking out TIGSource dev logs and it would appear that he plans to write about more games being posted here in the future.

I like the art very much. But I have one problem, and that is with the character 'Big Joe'. Isn't an African American who loves basketball and fried chicken somewhat of a racial stereotype?

Most of the characters are heavily playing into stereotypes...

- The standard "cool" boy who plays leader.
- The sweet ginger girl who is always right
- The nerdy guy with glasses and a pocket protector
- The annoying little brother who idolizes his older brother

But I feel like it sort of goes along with the whole "80s/90s" theme of the game, where everything was super cliche/stereotyped to death. Look at Captain Planet, Magic School Bus, Recess, Goonies, etc

So close... 

You should make a "hail attack". Kind of like the snow attack only he looks extremely constipated.

You all were featured at RPS this morning!
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/03/10/thief-story-irkalla-gifs/

So awesome!

The game has potential... Is there a way to buy more food in the Alpha version? I felt like it was kind of a downer that I was playing pretty well but couldn't find any way to buy more food... I understand it's an alpha but it seems like a weird thing to leave out when there's already so much there.

Konidias, if I reveal there's going to be meticulously animated pixel butt in the game, am I in legal trouble with NDA and such?
If yes, I'm retracting the above statement.

Are you referring to..


THIS

PIXEL

BUTT?

Haha, yeah he's pretty awesome but I'm not sure his disguise is going to work out very well.

Costume concepts!

That's kind of a weird comparison to make, though, right? I mean, some concert tickets cost hundreds of bucks, and they generally just last a few hours. It's not like there's some set amount of money you should pay per hour of enjoying something.

Things are worth exactly as much as people are willing to pay for them. Honestly, it probably doesn't even have a whole lot to do with the length of the game (unless it's very short or very long). Really, there's not much you can do other than look around at the prices of similar games. Ask a lot of (unbiased) people what they'd pay and you have an answer.

I think the coffee comparison is more accurate than the concert comparison. People pay to go to concerts to see someone famous perform live. Concerts are not as plentiful and accessible as games.

The thing with games is that there are millions of them out there... so people want "good" games for their money. Nobody wants to feel like they wasted money. It's hard to put numbers on it, but it's about the quality of the game, the replay aspect, the overall fun the player had, etc... It's not possible to calculate a "dollars per hour" figure, because with one game you might find immense enjoyment with just a few hours of play, and another game is just kind of "okay" but then also only lasts a few hours, so you're left feeling slightly cheated, because it never became really fun in the short lifespan that it had.

Then there are some of the mobile "management" type games that aren't really that "fun" so to speak, but they hit the right buttons for short bursts of time and total play time can go upwards into dozens/hundreds of hours just because of that.

But yeah, it's really hard to say. You could have a short, decent linear game that is 4 hours long, and then right next to it you could have another 4 hour game that is just mind blowing and incredible and leaves you wanting more. Are they worth the same price? That's really up to the player.

Awesome looking game. Looks really fun and reminds me a lot of RC Pro Am (

)

I feel like if that giant flag is moving, the little flags should be moving as well.

I think the current amount is fine... but you could combine the arms/torso into one piece. The torso/legs should be the 2 central pieces with everything around those.

Thanks! I sure hope it will be a great game!

Over the weekend I posted the gameplay gif on reddit and received over 200 upvotes and over 30 comments so I'm pretty happy overall with that. It's the first time I've really shown the game to the "public". (outside of game dev forums)

http://www.reddit.com/r/IndieGaming/comments/1yn1d6/thief_story_gameplay_gif/

I'm always apprehensive about hyping the game or posting publicly about it because it's still early-ish in development.

I really don't think Nintendo is refusing to make an online Pokemon game due to it reducing human interaction.

It's more likely that Nintendo doesn't want to have to deal with policing an online community/game. Nintendo is very family friendly, and the internet is most certainly not. So mixing the two doesn't really work.

Sure you could censor profanity, disable chatting entirely, etc... but then you're left with... not much.

Online games thrive because of the communities and being able to communicate with other users. But it also comes with the downside of having to deal with trolls/immaturity/harassment/jerks. Notice that Nintendo.com doesn't have a forum, or anywhere that users could post, because they don't want to deal with what users might actually try to post.

Plus they have basically zero experience in online PC games. Not saying that would stop them, they could just hire people who have experience... but the "letting kids potentially talk to the vilest people on the internet" problem is really what holds them back.

Also I think your Super Mario Bros deconstruction is lacking a lot of details. "were designed for fun"... Don't all games try to design for fun?

There's a fantastic write-up on deconstructing Super Mario Bros that explains a lot of details about level 1-1 and how it teaches the player everything they need to know about the game in the first level.

http://auntiepixelante.com/?p=465

Cute! How do you play?