The backgroundYou can be a talented designer, developer, producer, but sometimes your product just misses the target audience and won't be successful. There are negative reviews, small number of downloads, even refund requests. The users just don't like what you have created in months or even in years: you had a great game in your mind, and now it seems, that something somewhere went wrong.
During the development process it is very important that you
gather as much feedback as possible: from professionals, from focus groups, from friends - the more the better. This not only will give you power to continue, but also will help ensuring you that what you are doing is right.
Gaming psychology is often missed during the early stages, and even some games are released without any consulting at all. Is it possible that these games will be successful? Of course. There are many times when the project manager, producer, lead developer or the whole team can
feel what is right, and what should be avoided, changed or dropped. But the bigger the project, the bigger the risk, and the bigger will be the damage if they just made a game for themselves or created something that the users won't enjoy - and pay for.
So what kind of answers can you expect from me?In short, it is all about
feelings, so my primary goal is to give you all the information about what will make the player feel good or bad.
At early alpha or beta stages:
- the stage of the challenge - reward balance
- is the concept clear
- do the goals make sense
- player motivation status (short mid and long term)
- is a feature unique or just makes the gameplay complicated
- are there any, or which are the misguiding UI elements
- overall game atmosphere, theme consistency
- disturbing, confusing elements (graphic, level, sound, mechanics)
After release:
- why they don't play the way they should
- what makes them give up
- what annoys them
- how can they not understand/see/use a feature
- when do they quit (and get a refund)
- why is a similar game more fun to play
Individuals, small groups and studios both welcome, and I love to and
need to hear
your imagination of the final game, what
you feel is the most important part of it, what is
your vision of the player's experience.
The type of information, suggestion, feedback you can get: psychological ("what would the gamer think"), story-, UI-, graphic-, gameplay mechanics related suggestions, improvement ideas, marketing solutions.
You can contact me with almost any type of game (I mostly like RPGs, also recently there are many dungeon crawler games), but be prepared that I'll be "honest" if you ask me about a Flappy Bird clone. Please keep in mind that paid requests have priority.
Email -
[email protected] - and later Skype contact is preferred, and all the shared informations will be kept confidential.
Good luck with your game!