I'm curious about something. Does anyone know if there's a way you can "pre-hype" your game before there's even a demo for it? I know that if you don't get seen, you don't get downloaded, and if you don't get downloaded, you won't get sales. So i'm thinking of finding a way to advertise my game and site (when it has sufficient content to do so) before the actual demo is even finished.

Right now I could only think of, getting your website onto search engines, making sure you have some content for anyone who happens to actually look at your webpage. Some other ideas I have are somehow making and distributing trailers for the game (like in the alpha stages) like Patrox did for his wizard game. Another idea could be signing up onto gaming forums, and just getting into the communities with your url in your messages, basically just getting known by pc gamers. Maybe press releases or whatever... although I don't know if they do press-releases before anything can be downloaded.

Now before you say "forget the hype, work on the game/demo first", I want to say, I will be for sure. However i'm going to try my best to get my game seen before the demo is ready. Of course the actual game itself will get most of the development time and budget, but whatever I can do before hand, i'm going to do. I'm not going to just forget about the pre-hype or premarketing, it's just I want some ideas...

Any comments are appreciated.
Keith Weatherby II

"forget the hype, work on the game/demo first"

:)

It all depends on your scope. Games "pre-hype" all the time. A perfect example is what Dragon Empire is doing/has done. They have been running major publicity for about 2-3 months before closed beta.

However, the game is HUGE with a HUGE budget and a couple people who work ONLY on marketing.

So, can you do it, yes, do games do it, yes, will it be worth it to you, depends on the size of your product.

Joseph Lieberman

Hype is something that is very much game and genre depdendent. Some genres are more hype-able than others for sure (FPS, RPGs) just because those have the kind of culture of players behind them that really want to dig their loyalty into a specific game for a long period of time.

In the indiegamer world things are quite a bit different, and offhand I don't think hype is really something you can take advantage of. If your game posesses hype-able features, like keen designer art (mockups) or some fancy-looking terrain engine, then you might be able to hype it a bit. But you can't just hype a name and a concept. Hype is all about soundbites and shiny objects and if you can't deliver effective-enough shiny objects you aren't going to have much hype. A website with news content, screenshots, and promos is certainly necessary (as you already theorized).

Anyways, once you have that hype-able product, the best way to get the news around is by getting it announced anywhere it seems appropriate. For FPSs and the like that means places like bluesnews (http://www.bluesnews.com) or submitting press releases to magazines. For your more typicial indie game, I would think most of your focus should be forums and fansites of similar genre games (if they exist)... and also sites like http://www.diygames.com and http://www.madmonkey.net. Relying on search engines or posts on gamedev.net are generally pretty worthless though.

Make sure you can get your game done soon if you're going to go for pre-demo hype! Our problem right now is we've gotten a good bit of attention (mentioned in all the major game magazines, Gamespy, UGO etc), but the game's been delayed. A lot. We can only hope that people will still be interested when the demo arrives (which will be pretty much when the game is done, which will be...uh, I gotta get back to work).

Thanks for that vote of confidence Sparky ;-) I'm sure being a little late isn't going to hurt you as long as you can show people you're making progress, and as long as it is indeed going to be out.

Yeah, I have to have stuff to pre-hype with of course, and i'll be getting to that. I'll be putting up sketches and design treatments and mockups, etc... Early alpha shots and all that.

How did you manage to mentioned in major game mags? Unless it's a project for retail (non-indie)...

Originally posted by Uhfgood
How did you manage to mentioned in major game mags? Unless it's a project for retail (non-indie)...

Their project (http://www.theycamefromhollywood.com/) is quite a bit bigger than your average indie game. :)

Oh by the way, Sparky, on the front page it says "planned for release in 2003" you might want to change that. :)

Originally posted by Fenix Down
Oh by the way, Sparky, on the front page it says "planned for release in 2003" you might want to change that. :)
Doh! Thanks for the heads up. I'll fix that when we update tomorrow. Or maybe I'll just finish putting together my Lego Mindstorms Time Machine so we can hop back to July and finish the darn game - if only I could find those three little gray pieces and the wheel...

Originally posted by SparkyTCFH
Make sure you can get your game done soon if you're going to go for pre-demo hype! Our problem right now is we've gotten a good bit of attention (mentioned in all the major game magazines, Gamespy, UGO etc), but the game's been delayed. A lot. We can only hope that people will still be interested when the demo arrives (which will be pretty much when the game is done, which will be...uh, I gotta get back to work).

This is why I'm going to avoid attempting pre-release hype before the game is 80-90% complete. Since this is my first Indie game, I'll most likely avoid pre-release hype altogether. If I'm fortunate to get a major magazine/website to do an article on my game, I'd rather it be when it's completely polished with very very few bugs. So I probably wouldn't submit my game to major publications until version 1.1 or something. I'm not in any need of high first day or even first month sales, so I don't mind building hype after the game is released for a couple of months.

Indie games are not like retail games where they have to move a certain number of units within the first month in order to maintain shelve space. Use your first couple of months of anonymity to your advantage.

I figured most people's reactions would be "forget about the hype, just finish a demo" heh. I've completed 3 games (albeit very small) and i've even made pizza money off of them. But this is going to be something much bigger.

I'm going to pretend I "have to move a certain number of units within the first month in order to maintain shelf space" So that way maybe i'll do alot better than pizza money.

I know that if they don't know your game exists you won't get many demo downloads. I know this from my own experience on my own games as well as experience with Grek's Puzzle Challange by Dreamturtle software. No one has bought a single copy yet (not that we expect it to right away anyhow), but i'm thinking not many people know about it. Right now the biggest source of downloads would be from download.com but none of us have the money to list it. So it will remain in relative obscurity until someone plays it and then it catches on by word-of-mouth unless "Dreamturtle" gets an influx of cash anytime soon.

When I was doing lx1, I basically submitted my game to 20-30+something download sites manually (yes i used pad files where applicable, but the point is, that i didn't use a submission program). Now I did manage to get it on download.com before they started charging, and a significant amount of downloads generated were from there, however the game I don't think was good enough to get more than it has. Grek certainly has the advantage of being alot more fun, probably more polished. So it should get certainly more than pizza money.

However, what I did get was the result of being seen. Now the problem is with grek, is not being seen. Blain has submitted it to the indie mags, emailed garage games, I think i got him to post his url onto open directory (which google and a number of other search engines gets their listings from, unless it's changed recently). And he has submitted to 30 download sites, now we're just waiting.

My plan for my game, assuming I get some content finished (and by that i mean design sketches, docs, etc) is to make people know about it before they can see the demo. I may not be successful, this doesn't bother me. I dunno, people tend to not want to try something because they think they'll fail. If I don't get anything out of this, i'll at least have gotten the experience on how to properly market my indie game.

I want people to be itching to download the demo before i'm done with it, thus this post. Like I said, i won't be spending more time on hype and less on the game itself, it's just I want to get moving on this. Thus why I started this thread.

Any other ideas anyone can come up with, is greatly appreciated.

In the thread about Buzz http://www.dexterity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2203 I suggested leaving copies of your game demo around college campuses.

The concensus was that you would need 100 copies to make it worth your time, and you would also probably need to make the packaging look professional (to avoid having it look like it might have a virus on it or something) but also make it look like it was independently made (so people don't think that some major game company is trying to exploit the college campus, and to let people know that yes, someone is independently providing these games).

But it's an idea, so you might want to look into it.

The biggest problem with the hype machine is that if youre game falls flat, it REALLY falls flat.

If hype is what is giving it potential sales, and it doesnt live up to it, its a definitely bad thing.

Its a lot easier to generate hype with a larger product, because you can do things like have "beta demo's" kind of thing.

I expect to have private and public beta tests, the public version of the beta is where I'll start thinking about hype.

I do know what you mean though, in order to get any kind of customer recognition, you want to build up some kind of groundswell and you wont do that without talking about it.

But.. and here's the problem. The game has got to warrant enough interest that the press has an angle.

Puzzle games, or smaller indie games generally dont have that draw.

The last small game I saw with that was bridge builder.

I'm sure sparky will get loads of press when they release :D

The point is, they have a great looking product, which is catering to more than just the mainstream puzzle market.

If you want to hype a smaller game, try and get in touch with the smaller puzzle oriented websites. Or maybe ask DIYGames and GameTunnel and others to review it?

Either way, you want to be max 2 months from shipping I think, because if you generate too much interest and dont deliver, you'll be hard put to generate that interest again.

.Zoom.

Exactly Zoom...

You should be almost ready to ship your product (ie. < 2 months) before you hit the magazines and websites. As an Indie game, it will be hard enough to get press, you'll want to make sure you take advantage of it once you get it.

I also agree that if you're doing a puzzle game, it's going to be very hard to get mainstream gaming publications to review it. If you were doing a strategy, platformer, or action game you might have a better chance.

I want people to be itching to download the demo before i'm done with it, thus this post.

That's fine, I think we all want that. :) But just make sure your game is solid from a QA-standpoint. Unfortunately, with few exceptions most of us Indies don't have access to a QA department or a large set of dedicated QA testers. So our initial customers are often times the ones who find those major bugs. If you get a lot of sales on day one, this could be disastrous if a few moderate to major bugs slip through the cracks. Then your game may be known as a unique, but buggy product.

Remember big retail companies pay hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of dollars on QA before their product hits the shelf. Granted most retail games are more complex than Indie games, but making sure your game has minimal to no bugs after building up hype for it is crucial.

First post in these forums. Hello all...

Wanted to add that the pre-release hype of our game ThinkTanks helped us a great deal and continues to help us to this day. We decided to release on the Macintosh first, and we got a LOT of love from the Macintosh community.

We have also learned that it is never too early to start the Hype machine. We were really bad at it during the production of ThinkTanks and we missed some really good opportunites by not having materials ready when the opportunity to get some free press presented itself.

Joe

-----
Joe Maruschak
Creative Director
BraveTree Productions -http://www.bravetree.com

Related question for Mr. Maruschak -- how good a job has GarageGames done for you in this area?

GarageGames has been more like a partner than a publsiher.

Jay Moore, over at GarageGames, has been a valuable asset, lining up interviews and getting press releases out there. We know how to make games, but the business end is what we are still struggling to learn.

They have given us a lot of good advice on the marketing end of things and are quite open (where NDAs will allow) with information that will help us to tune our demo and marketing approach (download #'s, banner click thru, etc...)

Jay also turned me onto a book entitles "Anatomy of Buzz" that got us thinking about marketing in a non-traditional way.

Joe

Thanks. I've also heard good things about them from the folks who are doing the Dark Horizons: Lore Mac conversion.

Welcome to the forums joe, Better late then never ;)

Well it will be action, and generally at it's heart a platformer. I probably won't do another puzzle game for a while.

Welcome Joe, yeah I noticed you had some previews on indie review sites, (which I found out later after I saw the game come out). How did you manage pre-release hype? Any tips you could share?

I'm hoping to start hyping the demo before the demo comes out... actually like someone already mentioned for indies the demo is out at the same time the full version is (actually I might not do that, i may have the demo out before the game is available). In any case hyping the demo, and then releasing, seems to be better than when you're all done, and then starting to market. If there's bugs in the demo, I can address them before the actual game comes out. So for phase 1, would be to get people interested in playing the demo, then get it done, and out, and getting some people to test (obviously for indies it's a bit hard, maybe betashare will allow demo beta tests), for phase 2, which is then making sure the demo makes them want to play the full version, finally for phase 3 which is launch and post-marketing. At least that's the plan, but I don't know the details that's why i'm planning ahead, so i can figure out the details, see what you guys know, etc...

The first thing we did with our game was to take it to the IndieGamesCon and show it off early. We were in alpha at the time, but the exposure generated some buzz for us (we took second in the ShowOff competition, without any sound and much placeholder art).

We then had a closed beta, which we had a news release about. We included on the testing team a few people that had some connections ( which is how I know Dan MacDonald) that helped us to get a few web previews.

We also got the word out early about the Mac First release. I have to thank Jay Moore for that idea. We had all the platform builds done at the same time, but the MAC platform has a very focused gaming community, and it was easy to hit all the important ones. The MAC gamers were very happy to put effort behind a mac first release, and they did a lot of the legwork about getting the word out.

During development, we would post screenshots on the GarageGames -Image of the Day, I particiapated in a few developer IRC chats (which got picked up by news sites) and did an interview for HomeLan (which Jay at GarageGames set up)

A lot of small things that all helped to get awareness up and had a few people watching for the release (and spreading the word beforehand).

What we did do really well ws made a pretty fun game with some decent graphics. Our Art Style and the name of the game helped a lot with people actually taking a look at what it was. The sort of Tongue in cheek pun for a name and the goofy style showed that we were not taking ourselves too seriously and it helped a lot with user acceptance as we feel the end user expectations were met.

the Biggest thing in our favor at the time was that we were shipping with the Torque Game Engine from GarageGames. They wanted to show yet another game that was shipping with their engine, and they went the extra mile to make some noise about it.

The marketing and sales aspect is where I am learning the most, and what I have learned is that it is never too early and you can never do too much 'hyping'.

Lat thing, A really killer screenshot can go a long way. Take some time and make at least one good marketing image. One really good image can go a long way in getting people excited about your product.

A few more things:

here are a few good 'standard' press release points that will get picked up. A good release will have a developer quote, a quote from a third party (an end user is good) and an image or a link to more info.

Announce the game: So and so has announced production of "MonkeyClubber"..


then, if you make a deal to publish:

So and so announced today that they have signed a deal to distuibute Monkey Clubber on Not-So-Real Arcade..

then at alpha.... and beta... then at launch...

Good tips, Joe, thanks!

My programmer wants to build his own engine, I don't think I could convince him to use Torque, even though it would help the game get off the ground faster.

Being of the genus "procrastinatus non-finishus" I'm not entirely sure I want to start hyping my game earlier than a few months from completion.

I agree fully with what Joe is saying, but in my case, I think the hype CAN come too early.

What would be the problem with hyping early? well, it creates this "vapourware" tag, because you hype it a lot, then a year later it still hasnt shipped.

I can put together some pretty cool screenshots, but my game is far from complete. So at what point do I feel comfortable actually promoting the game?

Its an interesting question, a nice dillemma to have really.

Perhaps I'm thinking about this all wrong. Maybe Joe's spot on (he usually is, the sod), that you cant go too early. Even if a qoute is a year old, well, its a qoute. Its 1 more thing in the list of people's perception.

Perhaps I should announce my game, while I'm fresh from Team17, at least then I can trade off the name a little bit.

I'll have to think on.

Meanwhile, I'll go get that book.

Also I'd recommend "Positioning" be Al Ries, but you already knew that right?

Mm, I'm trying to avoid hype as much as possible too. I want to have a quiet first release, and then if everything checks out well, it's all systems go! What's the worst that can happen? I have to wait a bit for the hype to kick in so I won't have so many sales on initial release. Doesn't sound so bad; I can wait. Better than blowing all your hype too soon when you've got nothing to sell, surely?

And frankly, I've been amazed at how much interest has been stirred up from the very, very slim exposure I've given it so far (just a few WIP screenshots here and there), and I'm trying to keep a lid on it...

I don't even let finishing/non-finishing enter into it. Once I start it, i'll finish it. I've had only one program I didn't finish, on purpose, it wasn't a matter of just jumping to something else, it was about the fact I felt that it wasn't fun enough, and it would take a whole re-write just to make it fun, thus making it a different game anyhow.

Anyways rest-assured i'm going to finish this now that i've started it. Yes it can backfire and yes people might think it's vaporware, however, i'm not going to say it's 80% finished when it's only 50%, that is, when I show the progress, they'll see the actual progress, so they know that it's being worked on. Most people even those that don't make games know that doing games or anything worthwhile takes a little while to make.

"Blowing all your hype when you've got nothing to sell" -- It really depends on what you consider 'blowing all your hype" As if there's a bag of hype I have here, and i'll run out of it... As far as having 'nothing to sell' - I'll have something to sell, don't worry :-)

But Anthony you're cool doing what you want with your game, it's not my place to say whether you should promote it or not, but I know that with my game, i'm going to promote it before the demo is out. The reason you have some interest in your game is because most people don't do clay, and clay still looks really cool. So your screenshots look really cool, you don't actually need to hype it.

Clay has the advantage over traditional media of looking interesting already. If I made a few clay figures and arranged them in what looked like a game screenshot, people would be interested in it too. (Although not as much as your game(s) because your models look cool aside from being clay). Anyways I think if you can wait 6-months to a year for sales then you're fine doing whatever it is your doing. And you probably don't even have to wait that long, Cletus looks like it's shaping up really good, you might have sales within the first month.

my point will be to generate interest based on production sketches, mockups (which will be conspicuously labeled as such), alpha screens, trailers, and the like. Grek's Puzzle Challenge is a good game, but it doesn't have the exposure and as such doesn't have any sales yet (btw this is not the game i'm talking about pre-hyping). So I figure my next games I will try to expose to the public so they know it's out there before getting to actually playing the demo and buying the game.

I guess it just amounts to being a little more impatient than other people. Other people have this view of "well i'll do what i like, and if it makes money then great". I'm the other way around, "I'm going to do what I like so that it makes money", and what's the difference between these two statements? The first one is reactive, and the second one is proactive, meaning i'm going to make it happen, i'm not going to wait for it to happen.

Phil - it seems you're doing a pretty good job of hyping your game already. Your website and updates over at GG seem to be building a bit of anticipation for your title.

Me... I'm planning on hitting the real effort about two months before release... about the time I'm in a solid alpha. I was HOPING that would be early this month, but now it seems to be about a month away. That may be delayed due to the fact we're trying to sell our house and move.

It's a tough call - hype it too late, and you've missed your best window for trying to get critical mass with your "new" game. Hype it too early, and people lose interest long before release. And as small software houses, we have another problem, in that we don't have a big marketing arm to do that for us --- and time spent pushing marketing is time NOT spent getting the game out the door. I'm a little worried, myself, about getting caught up in my own hype, and neglecting effort on the game once I go into full-tilt marketing mode.

I really do need to start the "trickle" of news to get the ball rolling, though.

You probably just want to assess your resources at pre-determined intervals. Pick some time in your development cycle to see if yo have the money and the type to do some marketing, and if you do, then do so, if not, continue development

Hype it too early, and people lose interest long before release.
That's what I mean by blowing your hype. My release is still quite a long way off, and people are already waiting... they won't wait forever though.

Also, as I say, a quiet initial release is what I want to make sure everything runs smoothly. Perhaps when I have more experience I will be bold enough to attempt a blockbuster approach to game launching... but heck, I don't even have my e-commerce whatzits working yet and I don't want a gazilion cutomer support problems in week 1!

Anthony that's cool, no one is telling you to take the blockbuster approach. It all comes down to priorities... we just have different priorities. I started this thread so I could get some ideas :-) Thanks for your input though.

Oh yeah, totally - I fully realise that everyone's situation is different and there's no single correct approach.

Coyote: Yeah, i released some screenshots and actually visited a few space sim sites and posted a request for help with the design, but in reality, Ive not even started promotion of the game itself.

There are plenty of things I could do to start hyping the game. Plenty of good angles. Once I get nearer the release, Ive got lots of things planned (lots of press releases, press interviews, developer diary, small gameplay movie, open beta calls etc).

But its too far away to be useful.

Having said that, by the time IGC comes around, I should have a pretty stable game with some nice gameplay elements, so I hope to start using IGC as my kind of marketing milestone.

That gives me a good solid timeframe to try and get the game playing well, plus it'll be fun to actually have something there to play and show others :)

.Zoom.

Heh - from your screenshots it looked like you were a bit closer to release. I was thinking summertime.

I wonder if there would be any advantage at all in you, Milo, and myself trying to pool resources to try and get more coverage for all three games. Sounds like we're all paying attention to the neglected "3D Space Sim" genre, but we're all approaching the niche from very different directions. But fans of the genre may be interested in all three games.

Hmm, might be. Have you got a website? maybe we should setup the "Space Sim Webring" :))

Ah, milo's game is starshatter right? is that the one??

i do think we could maybe do something for each other though, because the space sim is a kind of forgotten genre, so there are very few websites with any interest in them now.

Strange, because its one of my favourite genre's ever.

As for the screenshots. Well, maybe theyre misleading to some extent, its hard to show how dumb AI is in a screenshot :) or how bad some elements are. Maybe thats a good thing as well though :)

.Zoom.

The website should be up in a couple of weeks. I've been much more focused on "Getting the game done" instead of "Getting the website done," so it's been languishing half-complete.

I'm in the same boat. Wing Commander is what made me decide to go into game development professionally in the first place. I was severely dissapointed with the sales of Freespace I and II... and it looked like that was the nail in the coffin for the genre. At least that left the door open for indies and small companies like us (and like EgoSoft).

Yeah, that was my motivation too. No publishers in this genre, so why not! :)

Freespace.. hard to tell why it didnt sell. It was reasonably good, but not quite as good as XWA if you ask me :)

Space games are still viable, but on a much smaller scale than most commercial developers can make any money with.

My game is probably more of an experiment for me than a real commercial venture, so I am trying different things to see if they work.

One thing I think we can definitely offer over the "big boys" is the fact that we will support the game for a lot longer. Look at how dead freelancer is a few months after its release (well, less than a year).

That said, we dont want TOO many space games :)

.Zoom.

Well, if you consider the fact that Freespace 2 was a failure with "only" 30,000 or 40,000 copies sold... those numbers would make my year. I think Freespace's big failure was not in gameplay, but rather in story. It's a shame, but as the creators of Babylon 5 kept saying... it's not about the special effects, but about the people.

I don't know how well Freelancer did... I'd like to think it was a reasonably big hit, and I seem to remember seeing it on the top 10 / top 20 charts for a while. It's failing was the opposite, IMO... it lacked much gameplay beyond following the story.

Anyway - I was just thinking that as indie developers, we have a bigger problem marketing than we do with the competition. As we get closer to release, maybe we can toss some ideas around with some cross-marketing (and cross-sales?) ideas. Is your email addy listed in your profile at GarageGames still valid?

Yeah, 30 or 40k sales would pretty much make me happy too :)

I think freelancer was one of those projects that got released in spite of itself rather than because it was "finished". Frankly the time that was in development, I'd have expected far far more.

Yeah, my other email address still works. Or you can get me at zoombapup at blueyonder.co.uk

Honestly though, I think there is a big gap between potential in the space game genre and the approach of any developers for the last few years at least.

I've still got to get a copy of X2, but Ive managed to get hold of a load of different space sim games over xmas, doing some research and trying to get things clear in my head.

I guess I'm mainly pushing towards the combat end of the genre, but I do have it in mind to get a bit more in-depth over releases. If people are attracted by the combat, hopefully they will stay for the deep gameplay.

Frankly, this is a project for me, not a given audience, i think a quality experience will attract an audience if its compelling enough, or novel enough. Beyond some simple conceptual market testing (i.e. do I think its a good idea and will sell) Ive no idea of the potential market for it.

Frankly, I dont care if I finish it and only have 1 customer (me :))

.Zoom.

The one I'm waiting for (or would like to build in the future) is Falcon 4.0 meets Wing Commander. And Elite with the graphics of Freelancer, a combat system that doesn't stink, and a truly open storyline and lots to discover (though it was amusing finding the planet of the monkeys in Freelancer...) --- and maybe even multiplayer (if you can make it work). There was something of a strategic version of Wing Commander (Wing Commander: Armada, I think) that showed promise, but suffered from extremely lame AI and too shallow of a strategy game. Allegiance really broke new ground, but it still had too much of a rough edge to it.

You are quite right --- there's a ton that could be done in the genre. It looks like you, Milo, and I are all going in different directions with it to start with, and we're only scratching the surface.

I have an Interesting Idea in the space genre, but there's a lot in my queue, so who knows if it will ever get done. It is neither multiplayer nor 3d nor detailed ship-to-ship combat, though, so it might be considered quite dull to you. ;)

Couple of minor corrections -

Descent: Freespace (1998) 147,158 units ($4,563,000)
Freespace 2 (1999) 83,484 units ($2,703,000)

Those are NPD numbers for North America, and both include Gold/GoTY versions.

You may be thinking of Starlancer, which apparently sold fewer than 30,000 units in its first year.

My understanding is that Freelancer sold about as well as Freespace 2 - between 60,000 and 80,000 units in the USA. And rumors persist that Microsoft has already greenlighted Freelancer 2. I don't know if they are planning to do development offshore to cut costs, or if FL2 will have an XBox version, or what.

By the way Coyote, Starshatter is basically supposed to be Falcon 4.0 meets Jane's Fleet Command meets Freespace. There are no Elite trading or exploration elements, but it does have multiplayer support and a dynamic campaign engine.

I didn't know about the dynamic campaign, Milo. I thought it was pre-scripted (but very broad and dynamic) missions.

Very interesting. Do you have an expected release date yet?

Thanks for the corrections on the numbers. Those were a lot higher than I had heard. Freelancer is a surprise... I think what that game needs now for a 'shot in the arm' is an expansion or two.

Papillon:

You know, the 3D space combat side of things is what always got me excited (I was influenced by Star Wars at the tender age of 8, what can I say?) But it certainly is *NOT* all there is or can be to the genre.

Shoot, one of the best "space" games of all time only had one spacecraft in it, and all took place on a single planet. That was M.U.L.E., which is about 20 years old.

Originally posted by Coyote
I didn't know about the dynamic campaign, Milo. I thought it was pre-scripted (but very broad and dynamic) missions.
Well, Starshatter does include a half-dozen stand alone scripted single player missions, and you can create more with the built-in mission editor (or download scripted mod campaigns over the net). But the heart of the game is the dynamic campaign engine.

There are five campaigns in all. The first one is a scripted training campaign, the remaining four are dynamic. The campaign engine is kind of a hybrid, blending planned story events into a persistant world and dynamically generating missions based on that world. In a typical campaign, each side starts with about fifty starships and more than a hundred fighters (plus neutral ships like freighters as well as a variety of ground targets and space stations). The campaign engine tracks the state and location of each of these ships at all times. When ever any ship is destroyed in the campaign, it is gone for good.

Most campaigns last for about ten to fifteen days of simulated time. Each time you complete a mission (win or lose) the campaign clock jumps ahead by ten or twenty hours. The campaign engine evaluates the strategic state of the game, runs a few statistical skirmishes and gives you a tactical update (similar to a JSTARS or AWACS report) on what has been happening. There are also scripted news bulletins describing the political situation, and email from home that will sometimes clue you in to events taking place behind the scenes.

The player gets to choose which unit he is assigned to. You can transfer to a different unit whenever you want, (subject to rank limitations - you need to be at least a Lt. Commander to skipper a destroyer squadron, and you need to be a Commodore to command a carrier battle group). This really helps replayability, because not only are the missions dynamically generated, you can actually choose to experience different facets of the war each time you play. One time you might be a fighter pilot in the sixth fleet defending Silessia, and the next time you might be a cruiser commander hunting enemy ships in Haiche Protectorate.

Assuming you succeed, the campaigns form an overall "story arc" for the game, with each campaign building on the political climate resulting from the one before. For example, the Operation Highland campaign is a cold war scenario in which the "good guys" intervene in a civil war in a neighboring neutral star system. This annoys the "bad guys" and eventually leads to the cold war heating up in the next campaign, Operation Shining Fortress.

All of that means that the campaigns aren't completely dynamic. The overall shape and duration of each campaign needs to be controlled so that it will lead into the next one. I'm sure the purists will shudder, but I've tried to strike a balance between narrative and pure randomness. Oh well, at least it's something different, right?

Just a FYI, the common thinking is that you can double the NPD sales for north america to get rough figures for worldwide sales.

I guess my game is fairly different in that its online only. For now at least.

.Zoom.

My game (in the process of being re-named) is going the arcade-action route, emphasizing simplicity of controls over hardcore simulation (even though I'm a hardcore sim *fan* myself). It hearkens back to the vector-graphics space games that started back with SpaceWar in the late 60's... but of course updated to a 3D world, with more modern gameplay elements. It's more of a "kick the tires and light the fires" sort of space-combat game. It should be well-suited as an introduction for players new to the genre, but since I'm writing it for my OWN enjoyment as well, it should appeal to veterans.

I'm also experimenting with some novel (to the 3D space combat genre) gameplay features, and this game is something of a testbed for those ideas.

Sounds pretty close to what I'm heading for. The hook being great combat play, but the actual meat being a bit more involved.

I see it as a testbed kind of thing though really.

What engine are you using btw?

.Zoom.

The bane of my existance: A DX8-based homebrew engine.

The project started at the end of last year as purely an exercise to keep my game development skills sharp (I've been out of professional game development for over three years now). In retrospect, if I'd known I was going to take this as a commercial product, I would have started with something else more mature. It wasn't until August I got serious about it.

The plus side is that I know the engine inside and out, and can easily make modifications, and it's well-suited to the project.

The downside is that it's always needing modifications. And it's been getting "crufty" over time and in need of optimization. But unless I layer on the transparency, it's generally fast enough for all of our test machines.

Thanks for hijacking my thread, guys ;-)

Sorry :)

Originally posted by zoombapup
Just a FYI, the common thinking is that you can double the NPD sales for north america to get rough figures for worldwide sales.


Out of curiosity, does that still ring true? Both Wal-Mart and EB don't report numbers to NPD anymore, and Wal-Mart was/is the single largest retailer of games in the country. Course, those figure could be from before they stopped, not sure when all that happened.

Hi Gregg,

It was only ever a really rough estimate. This was from one of the AAA studio bosses, so I'm guessing that as a rough guide its not too bad.

Any sort of figures can be misleading, hell, even publishers can write down one figure for sales and have actually different numbers (i.e. they write off certain amounts of stock, or start doing dodgy accountancy things to match thier quaterly sales figures).

Still, you can see why the genre isnt considered viable to publishers anymore.

In fact, as someone mentioned Freelancer 2, I strongly doubt its going to be made. The market just cant support it anymore.

.Zoom.

Originally posted by Uhfgood
[B]I'm curious about something. Does anyone know if there's a way you can "pre-hype" your game before there's even a demo for it?
I'm working on building a user community before my product is released, through a web forum (http://www.drod.net/forum). I'm averaging about 40 new users a month, with 405 right now. The last 200 came in recently after I started uploading the previous version of the game to about 80 sites. The challenge is to get people to stick around on the forum and stay interested while my little team gets the game done, but I don't want to hype the game release when it is at least six months out. I've started having monthly contests related to the game, offering a prize from the DROD Store (http://www.cafeshops.com/drod_store) to whoever wins. The first contest was for haikus based on the game. The second contest was for maps drawn to depict the game's fictional world. And our latest contest involves people using the previous version of the software to create levels that meet some strange requirements.

People also talk about many things not related to DROD on the forum and have conversational games like guessing which movie a quote is from. An interesting side effect of these discussions, is that we get many people coming to the site from search engines for strange reasons. For example, if you type on Google "insaniquarium help" (Insaniquarium is a nifty game by Popcap, much more popular than my own), our site pops up #2, sending many people from Google to a forum topic on DROD.net where hints for insaniquarium were given. Another happy accident: type "good puzzle game" in Google, and DROD.net comes up #1 because of a certain post made on the forum. HehHehHeh. I get a lot of joy from that one! The nice thing here is that I don't have to engage in sleazy SEO tricks like making fake pages.

So my advice is get a good forum community going and try to broaden the topics of discussion beyond just your game. But I am not a success story yet, so I won't ask you to take me too seriously.

-Erik

Yes this is the kind of info i'm talking about, thanks erikh. Yeah I didn't remember the name to cafepress.com i'm going to use that too, and yes i'm planning a forum when i get my website and everything all set up. But those are very excellent ideas. I'm of course not going to hype it before I actually have anything done, i'll probably jump on it when i've got my design locked down though. I don't know how to make a forum, however, i'm going to figure out what I need to do so and add it to my website once i get it up and running too. The point would be to do just what you're doing, generating pre-game buzz. And I don't mean resorting to cheap tricks either, i just mean by press releases, and letting people see the artwork, and development progress and such.

Originally posted by Uhfgood
Yes this is the kind of info i'm talking about, thanks erikh.
Glad to be of some help. What kind of game will your next one be?
Yeah I didn't remember the name to cafepress.com i'm going to use that too,
For the record, I've made very little money from my cafepress store--less than $40 after a few years. I mainly think of it as a way to provide prizes for contests. I've talked to a couple of other people who've set up Cafepress shops, and the consensus seems to be that it is very difficult to sell game-related t-shirts and other decorative merchandise like that.

-Erik