... over at JavaGaming (http://www.javagaming.org/cgi-bin/JGNetForums/YaBB.cgi?board=GameDesign;action=display;num=1061394712).

(It started off as a bit of a think about Alien Flux again, but really I'm only using it as a convenient concrete example which I know a lot about).

Ignore the cruft and specifics about my game and have a good read about what blahblahblah says. Really good food for thought and could do with being condensed into an article.

Cas :)

http://www.javagaming.org/cgi-bin/JGNetForums/YaBB.cgi?board=GameDesign;action=display;num=1061394712

I guess that link doesn't work if you're not a registered member. Grrr. :mad:

The board seems to be putting a space in of its own accord in the link.

Yes. To be more specific, make sure you delete the space between the ? and the word "board"

Ah-ha! I just couldn't get it to work even when I pasted it into Textpad and fiddled.

Cas :)

I would just like to say that textpad rocks hard. The discussion on JG is good too though :D

"The target market is 30-45 year old males with credit cards who used to play video arcade games back in the 80s, and who hanker after some of that old-school simplicity, and who no longer have the time to invest in today's huge modern games."

When you related your problem converting downloads into sales, i figured i would go out and let my friends try the game to have an honest opinion from other people.

The feedback i have is that your target audience is not what you think. They were all 25-40 years old. They all owned credit cards. They were all hardcore gamers back on the commodor, ataris etc, yet they didnt like your game very much. To them, it was too complicated, and the gameplay wasn't any fun. (I disagree with them, i'm not trying to bitch just telling you valid feedback i had). Oldschool gamers can't compete with today's youth, they dont have the reflexes, and any controller with more than 6 buttons is too hard to handle. Actually, 2-3 buttons is enough. So moving with the keyboard and the mouse, in a relative fashion (some guy on the other board had a good way to put it) was driving them mad. Oh, and those people are looking for pure gameplay, not graphics. So what i'm basicly saying, is that your target audience assumption seems flawed. Kids will enjoy your game more than adults.

(A good example is that they hated the game Swarm, which has the same kind of controls your game has) and they all loved and most still play Asteroid clones (aka mainly Subspace)


Smurf