Yeah just add people you know / meet like you would on facebook. It actually is a far better platform than Facebook in my opinion. Way more useful, especially if you are recruiting or job hunting. Less filled with pictures of cats and terrible political opinions filled with misinformation.

I said less filled, not absent of :D

Just yesterday a MAJOR local company reached out to me to see if I was available for an interview... I didn't even apply! So whereas I'd be mad if it were some fly by night terrible spam, it was a legit HR outreach from one of the biggest companies. Not that I will accept the offer, but I did thank the guy and add him to my network just in case.

Mind you that's never happened before, but a great example of the value it represents.

There's BASICALLY two camps of philosophy here.

1) If you are sure you'll be in the Popular New Releases (IE: You have done the marketing work and are expecting solid sales numbers) releasing on Friday makes the most sense as you'll be in the Popular New Releases all weekend.

2) If you are unsure the argument tends to fall on all kinds of weekdays. I'm yet to see any real solid data that confirms one day over another, but here's the arguments for the various weekdays:

Monday - Wed = Low competition means higher chances of being seen. Monday, tends to be the least popular to launch on because people coming back to work dont have as much time to browse Steam and journalists coming back from a weekend are playing catch-up. Tues and Wed tend to get the popular vote for this approach.

Thursday - Almost every week the games that are popular new releases on Thursday are STILL on the most popular list on Saturday, meaning why fight the huge launch group that happens every Friday when you can get nearly as good visibility and launch on Thursday. (Similar argument is sometimes made about Wed).

Dunno if that helped or gave you more questions!

Well, why not create some modular parts?

At the very least you have

"Mode of Movement"

and "Mode of Attack"

- then just mix and match them so you can randomly get a wide variety.

So you have a basic
"Charge the enemy"

you could also do a "flank the enemy" where the AI simply tries to move around the player until they detect being out of LOS, then charge.

Or a "Stay at range & look for cover"

Or a more complex thing like "Shielded when still & plays a game of Red Light, Green Light"

Then you can add a "movement method" which could include at the very least flying and ground, but also different models of flying. Airplanes can't strafe but helicopters can. Animals like dogs don't strafe either (and rarely back up quickly) whereas other creatures could.


Mode of attack is simple really: Various types of attacks. Melee. Ranged. AOE with charge up. Cone of attack. Self destruct AOE.... and so on.

If you create all these modular components and have the ability to assign attributes to each (or even have the game combine them at random) you'll end up with some interesting stuff

I think the lesson is that things take time to get moving but once they do, the dominoes fall pretty damn fast. It's true of gay rights as much as it is the opposite types of things (hate, racism, and so on)...

So in short, always pay attention to things that seem like a big change that is slowly gaining speed!

Really though, kudos to Ireland for beating the US to it and doing it by popular vote. They're ahead of us on this one.

I was hoping this thread was about Farmville Roguelike hybrids :D

Well, BloodBowl has the strategic positioning layer on top of it. That's really what makes it "interesting." Rolling dice isn't interesting inherently :D

That's a harsh view!

I also believe that publishers don't bring a lot to the table these days, but the PR work is not useless and not worthless. It probably isn't worth 50% of your revenue either, but its value isn't zero.

Website reviews are certainly a small piece of the pie these days. For PC RPS still represents a sizable earnings chunk. Last time I had a Wut I think article it generated about 10k in sales.

Youtube however now represents a MUCH larger chunk of the PR world. Good video reviews/lets plays = money.

As for the other items, they're all accretive. It takes basically no work to give a review code to a website and generates a trickle of traffic. Eventually though all that trickle ends up being worth something- and the more people who cover your game the more who will want to cover it. You can sorta build up to success in this way.

I dont know about using small publishers. They'd need to really bring something of value to the table beyond PR.

For instance if they guaranteed you a spot in a Humble Bundle 6 months from your launch date - that's something of tangible value that you may not be able to do on your own. Maybe you could, but the point of a publisher is to decrease the developer's risk and something guaranteed like that would be substantial.

That said, I doubt a small publisher will be able to make such a promise - and if they DO make the promise you need to make sure that you can do something should they fail (IE: an advance against those royalties).

Streamers (IE: Twitch) are harder to get ahold of than youtube casters...
However, here's a good starting point if you're looking for a giant list of people to email!
http://youtubeforindies.com

I had a booth next to ToT when they debuted The Path for the first time... I believe it was GDC. So long ago, sad to see a fellow old timer give it up.

Raconteur, that's a standard Do Presskit format, so some of what you say is a little bit off base (but generally good feedback).


The one thing I can say is you can do more linking in the description area. Overall it looks fine but its hard to screw up a Do Presskit format!

That said, make sure when you send this to people you direct link them to the All Assets zip file, as journalists do tend to not notice it. A flaw in the do presskit design, which you cant really control.

I haven't had a chance to look at the prototype, but I'd say you should/could look at Bloodbowl for a lot of D6 related potential.

Most important in BloodBowl are 2 things: Rerolls and "Doing the least dangerous thing first" (as well as positioning but that isnt quite what your game is about I don't think).

This means understanding the odds of various rolls, but they make it pretty simple:  Being able to use 2 dice is better than 1. Having skills that augment those dice are even better. Basically their dice system works like this:

When attacking 2/6 of the base dice are a "hit"
2/6 are nothing
1/6 "you get hit instead"
1/6 "You both get hit"

Then you take into account various skills. Dodge turns one of the "hit" dice into nothing when defending.
Block turns the "you both get hit" into a "hit" die. Those are the basic ones that you see most common.

The result, is partially knowing what will be the safest thing to do and the second is knowing when to re-roll. Since re-rolls are limited sometimes getting hit is ok, saving a re-roll for when it is more critical. Also since you can only re-roll once per "turn" you'll sometimes find doing NOTHING is better than risking a roll.

As you find ways to get "2d" rolls (or even 3D rolls) the odds become massively in your favor, usually in the 80%+ range with re-rolls... but it's always a bit random! Double snake eyes happens every game, just about, so part of the game is also planning to fail.

I think there's a lot of good mechanics you can take away from their system anyway.

Monopoly really is a terrible game.

I'd rework your mission statement :D

"Game First, Graphics Second. Monopoly kinda sucks but made a lot of money... What's that say about us as humans.
-Genius Interactive"

:D Something like that!

(Also was there a goal to this thread? I just figured it was to talk about the mission statement!)

Conversion rates, as you see in the other post, vary immensely by how targeted the traffic landing on your page is. That is to say: While you are on the steam front page your conversion rates will be significantly lower than when you are not (but your sales will be significantly higher).

It's really REALLY important to get apples to apples comparisons or you'll be playing with bad data. So you need to be finding not only other people's conversion rates for the same action (IE: Landing on your steam page) but ALSO data that matches the same set of circumstances that bring them there (IE: A front page feature, a big youtube promo, or just residual no-promotion traffic etc).

The old industry standard for "general traffic" is 1% or higher and you're in good shape. So .8% isn't too far off, but it is 20% below average, so it also isn't great. That's about as general as I can make it and it such a rough rule of the thumb it isn't worth much, so don't put much stock in it.

I think the gender bias of games is largely gone at this point from a sales perspective - though I have no data to back that up other than the rise and sustained success of many female lead characters in both movies and games.  Though, if you make a GLBT protagonist you'll likely reduce your sales... which may be ok if your goal is social change but not ok if your goal is pure profit.

However, you can make a male protagonist nearly any way you want and get away with it. Females, however, you have to be cognizant to avoid certain stereotypes that will damage your sales. Your female lead has to be REAL without following some of the negative associations that society has placed on being a woman.

I think the problem is (and Star Citizen is trying to solve) is making one type of game is hard enough, but combining the two is more than doubling the work (because you have to keep things consistent and that means restraining the design in unique and unexpected ways).

As we can see by Star Citizen, that is EXPENSIVE - and risky. That game could end up sucking, quite frankly. Time will tell.

E-mail is a good start, but also I find Twitter a good place to reach people directly. Just toss them a quick message... but you know, have some tact too Make it interesting, not just "PLAY MY GAME PLEASE!!!" :D And it often takes more than 1 email.

I don't mean to naysay someone, but I have to disagree with Bakkusa. A narrative driven exploratory game is a hot genre that is easy to promote.

The problem you may face is yours may not be as good! I mean that in the nicest way possible, but if you want to stand out you need to be as good as the other games in this genre both in the visual appeal, narrative direction, and whatever theme you're focused on (horror, suspense, etc).

I have NOT played your game, so I honestly don't know how close you come to the best sellers of this fairly new genre (I call them Experiential games), but if it IS on par with them you've got to double down your efforts to reach videocasters. That's where your sales will come from for sure. It will only take one big score!

Thre are two things to really consider here: the first is obviously "is this really worth continuing to promote?" The answer to that comes in two forms. Is the game generating sales from my PR/Marketing efforts? And what is causing or preventing that coverage.

The fact is that not all games are worth promoting and the review scores may be disconnected from sales "scores" - so first compare what you are making per view generated!

Is your game generating strong appeal to casters? If so, focus on making yourself visible to them, especially via social media and if possible in person. It's the same plan for major publications but strangle more difficult and less impactful.

Next up, plan an event. Not a live in person one, probably - but it may be time to use the secondary market for a second wind. Let's say you get into a good bundle. Using that you coordinate a push to have casters drop videos and help promote the sale. Timing a sale to pr is a huge deal. Then hopefully ride that renewed interest in the product to pick up review/news/casters you missed befrore. Rinse and repeat this process till it stops working or you die


Ps: apologies for typos, writing this from my phone while waiting for someone :D

A minor aside, but maybe you should try playing a pen & paper RPG where the DM doesn't fudge anything... and failure of a clutch moment will simply result in the death of the player or party? It isn't as bad as you may think ... as long as you know going into it that you're going to die. Doesn't even have to be a game of Call of C'thulu (though that is the most obvious example of an RPG where  your death is almost certain).

On the other side, I'd simply look at Fallout 2. There's a lot of times you'll be like "pick the lock" and that will be the last time you ever interact with that door. Don't put anything you need to finish the game behind such a door and you're golden :D

Ideas are worth nothing. Literally nothing If your idea is super amazing, go get the skills to make it real. Unfortunately, odds are by the time you have the skills you'll realize the moment has passed (or realize it wasn't as great an idea as you thought).

Still, if this is your springboard to seriously get into game development, make it happen. You'll never be able to prove all us negative folks wrong otherwise