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[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Cross-posted in the indiegamer.com forums. Hope it's alright to post this here too!

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As an experiment I thought I'd offer these services to my fellow indie developers, as a way of sharing my experience and to see if there's a demand for services like these. You can read more about it here:

http://studioeres.com/games/content/game-development-services

Summary:

- playtesting your game with a multiple-page report (suggestions and remarks on the experience): $25 for shareware, free for freeware.

- video playtesting (recording video footage of me playing your game): $25 per 10 minutes for commercial games, $5 per 10 minutes for freeware. This is in addition to the above (i.e. you should first order the above, and this would be added onto it).

- creating a video trailer for your game: $50.

I know most of these are available for free, and you can often do them yourself. But sometimes you might not have time, it's a hassle of looking for playtesters willing to test your game, and often they give limited feedback; and creating a game trailer for your game can be time consuming and you might want to outsource it to save yourself some time.

Also, to my knowledge, the idea of playtesting your game with a video recording, so you can see someone playing your game almost as if you were there watching them, is still rather new and unexplored, and you can't as easily get that anywhere. I find watching someone play my games to be far more valuable than having them playtest it and write some advice, so I thought there'd be some demand for it.

Let me know if you're interested or if you think the prices are too high and should be changed, etc. etc. -- I'm just starting this up so it's all experimental now.

[Eclipse]

I think it could be interesting... i'll let you playtest my game when i'll have a proper demo

[falsion]

$50 for a trailer? Doesn't that just usually comprise of gameplay footage with just some text or maybe the logo added at the end? That usually doesn't cost anything and takes very little effort even if you do it yourself or not.

Unless you mean something like a movie trailer or something spectacular (*deep voice* IN A WORLD WHERE... er.. n/m), but yeah $50 sounds a bit steep. I don't think you'll get many takers when people can easily just open a movie editor and do it themselves within minutes.

[moi]

- video playtesting (recording video footage of me playing your game): $25 per 10 minutes for commercial games, $5 per 10 minutes for freeware. This is in addition to the above (i.e. you should first order the above, and this would be added onto it).

I hope the camera is turned toward the game AND NOT TOWARD YOUR FACE

[weasello]

- video playtesting (recording video footage of me playing your game): $25 per 10 minutes for commercial games, $5 per 10 minutes for freeware. This is in addition to the above (i.e. you should first order the above, and this would be added onto it).

I hope the camera is turned toward the game AND NOT TOWARD YOUR FACE

both are valuable to me.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

$50 for a trailer? Doesn't that just usually comprise of gameplay footage with just some text or maybe the logo added at the end? That usually doesn't cost anything and takes very little effort even if you do it yourself or not.

Unless you mean something like a movie trailer or something spectacular (*deep voice* IN A WORLD WHERE... er.. n/m), but yeah $50 sounds a bit steep. I don't think you'll get many takers when people can easily just open a movie editor and do it themselves within minutes.

well, there's a lot of editing work involved -- plus there's a difference between good and bad trailers, mainly in the editing. for instance, matching the action to the music is important. i've never had a trailer take 'minutes' -- all the trailers i've made for my own games have taken around three days to a week.

also, it's funny -- on the indiegamer.com forums someone said that $50 is insanely cheap for a trailer and it makes him doubt my skills.

I hope the camera is turned toward the game AND NOT TOWARD YOUR FACE

for you, i might cut to my face for exciting parts, like when i see something shocking and i make an face

[ElijahKatz]

I think the pricing is very reasonable...
Though I would like to see a trailer you've made first 
When I finish my game I will hire you 

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

in the like provided are a few trailers i've made

[BlueSweatshirt]

Your prices are pretty reasonable, I think I'd consider coming to you for some of my larger works.(that I eventually get around to.)

Although I think the pricing for a written review is a bit expensive for commercial games, in relativity to the cost for video footage and a trailer. Still reasonable, though.

[Klaim]

- creating a video trailer for your game: $50.

I personally find it very cheap for what you offer, because just getting the raw capture is a lot of time a developer can spend on making the game even better.

What I'd like to know is: at this cheap price, will you make modifications to the trailer if it don't suit the author of the game? What are the limits of your efforts?

In the future (that will not come very soon) I'd like to have a trailer that would have the same montage than the Rez trailer. I know it's a lot of work (or am i wrong?). Is 50$ enough for that? (that's an example, I'm still far from the marketing stage)

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

modifications yes, but within reason -- like if someone isn't satisfied after two weeks of modifying it, i'd probably just give up and return the money

what do you mean by 'the same montage than the rez trailer'? i haven't actually seen the rez trailer, could you point to it and mention the specific things it does?

also i should mention one problem: currently some of my recording software (FRAPS in particular) records sound out of sync (it didn't in XP, but seems to do so in Vista). cam studio and camtasia do not, but they often record slightly more choppily than FRAPS does. so the choice would sometimes have to be between smoother video without sound effects and music added onto it later (as I did in my recent recording of the

), or slightly choppy recording w/ synced sound

[Klaim]

The original Rez trailer :



I was talking about this one.
Looks like a lot of work to me.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

ah. i'm not sure how to make that text zoom in like that with free software -- my guess is that they used some type of specialized software, like adobe premiere, apple final cut, etc. -- which i don't (yet) own. they're quite expensive too. stand-alone text on a black screen is easy enough, or overlaying text, as i have it in the

(old trailer and not a good example though -- look at the post date), but to automate that zoom effect would probably require that i buy adobe premier elements; which would probably be a good investment if i'm going to make several trailers for people instead of just one or two, but would be more expensive than the $50 for making the trailer (so i'd be losing money at first) --

actually i could always try out this list of free video editing software and see if any of those have that capability; may take a while to go through those though, will update again with my results

[Klaim]

ah. i'm not sure how to make that text zoom in like that with free software -- my guess is that they used some type of specialized software, like adobe premiere, apple final cut, etc. -- which i don't (yet) own. they're quite expensive too. stand-alone text on a black screen is easy enough, or overlaying text, as i have it in the

(old trailer and not a good example though -- look at the post date), but to automate that zoom effect would probably require that i buy adobe premier elements; which would probably be a good investment if i'm going to make several trailers for people instead of just one or two, but would be more expensive than the $50 for making the trailer (so i'd be losing money at first) --

That was what I thought, with 50$ there are limits to what you can do. It's good to know that

[Craig Stern]

Cool! I'm rarely short on playtesters, but I'll definitely bear in mind the trailer offer.

[alspal]

- video playtesting (recording video footage of me playing your game): $25 per 10 minutes for commercial games, $5 per 10 minutes for freeware. This is in addition to the above (i.e. you should first order the above, and this would be added onto it).

do we actually get to see yourself and the screen while you play the game? or would it just be a video screencapture thing?

[iggie]

  I love the sound of the $50 Trailer. It took me about a week to make my last trailer, capturing footage and editing it together - then all I got was comments that it looked like it was made by a kid
  And for $50 I would be willing to take a gamble that you would make a better trailer than I could! Just give me a few months to scrub my game up then you will definately have a customer

  Much as I appreciate playtesting, it is just too easy to find free help, so I don't think I'll go for that side of things (Perhaps at $25 for a day, with a full report, but not for such a short amount of time). I appreciate there is a big difference between thorough testers who return a couple of pages of notes, and casual testers who just want x,y,z features from some other game they once played... but it would get very expensive to hire you for a reasonable length of time.

[Craig Stern]

Sorry to necro this, but I'm just curious: Paul, are you still offering these services? I may be in need of a new trailer pretty soon.

[Akari]

ah. i'm not sure how to make that text zoom in like that with free software -- my guess is that they used some type of specialized software, like adobe premiere, apple final cut, etc. -- which i don't (yet) own. they're quite expensive too. stand-alone text on a black screen is easy enough, or overlaying text, as i have it in the

(old trailer and not a good example though -- look at the post date), but to automate that zoom effect would probably require that i buy adobe premier elements; which would probably be a good investment if i'm going to make several trailers for people instead of just one or two, but would be more expensive than the $50 for making the trailer (so i'd be losing money at first) --

That was what I thought, with 50$ there are limits to what you can do. It's good to know that

I'll make you a trailer like that for $50. PM me if you're interested

EDIT: Oh gee didn't notice this topic was so old. Anyway, at least to me the price for video testing sounds pretty salty considering that the euros in the budget for our potentially commercial project is under your 10 minute tax. So we probably wouldn't use your services for that.

The comprehensive feedback testing sounds pretty nice, but I've also planned to include forced feedback screens in our test builds and inform our testers beforehand that they'll have to give feedback during the game... Dunno how well that'll work out, though.