574 karma · joined December 9, 2010
We're huge fans of tactical strategy games here in the office, so I've shot the link around to get a few people up and running. Small game studio based out of Toronto here, so if you'd like some feedback from peers, let me know and I'd be happy to collect what feedback we can offer. :)
Congrats on launching!
I've taken the long view that making a really awesome game leads to people wanting to give you money. However, my personal take on that is that it's just another way to spin funnels, in a less aggressive and predatory way.
If I'm mistaken, I'd love to learn why.
However, the iOS version was released over two years ago (March 24, 2011 on iPad and April 27, 2011 on iPhone) while the Android version was released in November 2012.
I was wondering if these numbers are standard, or is availability the main issue here? Or something else that I haven't thought of?
I'm just trying to figure out if you guys make them or just talk about them. :) Either way, a lot of great content on there.
Me and a buddy of mine are really big CAH fans, and we had been playing on a set of cards that he printed and cut at that point. We had also been meaning to start a project together, so to test the waters, we started working on a digital version of CAH that would be open sourced and could be freely enjoyed by everyone.
I made the wise decision to reach out and get their blessing before we really began working on it, and one of the founders replied in short order, essentially telling us that we couldn't go ahead with our project because they wanted to control what was released. It's been a while since the correspondence happened, so please excuse my memory, but it was something to that effect.
However, they were very courteous and concise the entire time, and were not even close to being rude. So I find your account a bit hard to believe.
It seems convenient and well made, and I'm now considering getting one.
That's a tough market, but I would love to figure out some way to help you out.
My background is marketing, but I'm currently in a producer role at a game company right now, and maybe I can take a look at your marketing efforts during off-hours and give you some suggestions? Feel free to reach out.
The movie trailer analogy is perfect, by the way. Thanks for that.
This really hits home - I'm not an entrepreneur (anymore) but this is something I used to do on a regular basis: compare my own achievements based on what others were telling me.
I wasn't at the point where I considered taking my life, but I did doubt myself. I doubted myself for a very long time, settling for mediocre results and mediocre work, because I just had no idea what I was really capable of anymore.
Like Micah, I stopped and I thought. Mine went like this: "Ya know, I may not be achieving as much (on paper) as these other guys and gals, but I'm certainly very proud of what I have set out to do. I should stop comparing myself with them and start comparing myself to what I would love to be doing."
And here I am, working in a role that I qualify as my "dream job," with a wicked smart team doing really challenging work.
I just had to stop putting myself down because of the achievements of others. Celebrate with them, and then celebrate yourself, and then kick your own ass the next year.
Sorry for the ramble.
I was going to comment on this. As someone going through it now (working for money in the morning, and working on craft in the nights,) it seems that many of my peers who do the same thing are burning out because they charge on until 2-3am, and get up for work at 6-7am.
You aren't going anywhere faster because you work yourself to death. A solid 3-4 hours at night, some great sleep, and I'm good to go. I just expect the payoff (of working on the craft) to come much, much slower than if it were my full time gig.
It works for me, and I take plenty of breaks from working at night because girlfriend, friends, and family would all leave if I didn't. I just take it slow and steady.
That's off the top of my head, so take it with a grain of salt. :)
Judging by its usage rate in previous projects I've been a part of, many other people operate the same way or simply ignore any sort of sharing aspect.
Hosted all of my images for our GitHub Game Off entry[1] README file there. Always a solid solution if you want any sort of image hosting.
I'm not sure how accurate pre-orders is as a sign of platform popularity, but with Assassin's Creed 3, (and if the numbers are accurate,) it seems like PC only makes up about 9%~ of pre-orders[1] with the rest being dominated by XBox 360 and PS3. That's an incredibly poor number to justify any sort of effort in PC gaming.
But of course, there are so many variables at play that these numbers could mean almost anything. Heck, I could even attribute it to AC3 being far more comfortable to play with a controller/console than a keyboard/mouse. And of course, they did release it 21 days after the console, so there's that.[2]
[1]: http://www.vgchartz.com/article/250519/usa-preorders-chart-2...
[2]: http://assassinscreed.wikia.com/wiki/Assassins_Creed_III
This was a first crack at game development with my friend and I, and we are both relatively new to our respective roles. However, GitHub Game Off gave us a really great opportunity to make our dreams come to life, and it was more fun than anything else.
I'd love some feedback on our game too!
So many. However, it's a very large market that is still seeing plenty of growth, and being able to reach your captive audience reliably and consistently is still a problem, especially when your customers may be in different parts of the world.
Deliverability is a different case in other parts of the world, funny enough. Different gatekeepers and even processes sometimes.
In my opinion, the games that are still far from being released are doing just fine by not marketing themselves a little too early. If I'm not mistaken, games typically ramp up their marketing efforts much closer to actual release dates than during the development process.
Kickstarter enables a different method of capitalization, sure, but I think the game development process remains consistent as with other types of funding available to developers.
What about the branding decisions made long before? Or the work put into the marketing framework? The work that went into creatives? And I'm not even getting into the coding that goes into bringing everything together.
SEO can provide growth, but only after you've used everything else in your arsenal to get the platform to the point that you are ready to start optimizing.
I mean, I'd do it in a heartbeat, but you aren't saving that much more, I gather. If at all.
And you can view it yourself here: http://here.net/43.6461465,-79.3878013,15.9,349,72,3d.day
Very visually impressive and doubly so that it runs in my browser without any extra plugins and at such a smooth level.
VERY impressive. Especially considering how smoothly it works in my browser.
I was voting on some dog against a door stop, which was nice, but the following video was a clip from Portlandia, which I was not allowed to watch (in Canada.)
There were only the choices to not enjoy, or enjoy the video. There was no "skip this please" option.
Otherwise, keep working on this, it definitely has potential!
May I ask where you got the source for the transcripts of C-SPAN from?
I ask because I'm curious. Other than this episode, I haven't really heard much else about KISSmetrics being a bad company.
It seems like he's spent an extended amount of time complaining to internal channels, and he just needed to let other people know about his experience of not receiving the promised levels of service.
I knew not to expect the moon with Popcorn, but they have a lot of work ahead of themselves. I wrote a hefty block of text for feedback, but essentially, the drag and drop interactions really needed work, the Events need more elements inside of them, and there's no good way to get rid of Events other than moving it to another layer and trashing the layer.
There were a few other points I made as well, but I hope they take the time to really study how people interact with video editing software and emulating that behaviour with Popcorn. As it stands, it's a tad too unintuitive to use and remix with Popcorn.
Really looking forward to what they can do with this though.