Category: Game Business

The leap of faith

I have jumped off the edge of the mountain. Over the weekend I made a deal with United Minds Games to publish their upcoming game Space Renegades: The Series. The deal includes me doing the same things that I do for marketing any game but as a publisher the game will eventually have a recognized name behind it. Names and brands go a long way with consumers. Normally they don’t like to buy things made by a company that they don’t know.

The other great thing about this if Space Renegades becomes popular I can created a boxed version and get the game into retail outlets.

So it is really going to be an interesting ride from here on out. I’ve wanted to publish games for years and now I’m finally here. It took me a while to learn the ropes and gain the knowledge that I needed so now it’s all a wait and see process.

My goal isn’t to grow at a fast rate. College is my first priority so I have to see how that goes and how much I can handle before it becomes too much. 🙁

Register your team name

If you’re going to deal with real companies, you better have a registered company name. It doesn’t matter what type of business you are as long as you look professional. Using a name Roxors probably won’t get you the respect that you’re looking for. Ideally you would come up with something that has meaning. Of course you don’t have to do it that way. Making up your own word like Yahoo and Google allows your company name to be unique and stand out above the crowd.

Get ready for Phantom!

Yes it’s back! Finally! And this time it’s with a vengeance!

Seriously this company can have this service released. Now that they’ve dropped the actual Phantom unit and gone with just the service avaiable on Winodws XP and Vista.

The reason why this is good for indie developers is that there is random coding that you have to insert in your game to get it to work with Phantom. If your game runs on Windows it can run on Phantom!

Check it all out at www.phantom.net

Now hopefully they can get their act together and release something before they go bankrupt… Expect the lapboard to be release in October, if they miss that date well they’re definitely dead.

It’s time to use BlueHost!

I’m dead serious, drop your hold hosting provider and join Bluehost.com now! They just upgraded their standard hosting account to 30 gigabytes storage and 750 gigabytes bandwidth!!!

You’d think that a company like this would have problems maintaining all of this but the only downtime that I’ve experienced with them was a couple of weeks ago when there was a major rain storm in Utah. But we were back on within a couple of hours. They always backup the data at least once a month. They have a fast answering technical support line.

Bottom line is that unless you have your own server, you should switch over to Bluehost.com. All of this for only $6.95 per month! Best of all every 6 months of so they upgrade their accounts for free. So who knows what kind of storage they’ll be offering in the future… I’ve used mutliple hosts in the past and Bluehost.com is the best out of them.

Xbox Live = YouTube?

Note: Before reading this article please read Microsoft’s XNA Press Release URL http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/aug06/08-13XNAGameStudioPR.mspx entitled “Microsoft Invites the World to Create Its Own Xbox 360 Console Games for the First Time.”

Eventually this will be the world of games. Of course the major players, EA, Activision, etc. can and will survive in this changing environment, but this is the future. A time when players can alter pre-made games using their PC and then uploading it onto Xbox Live. Users rate the quality of the game so obviously you don’t want to make just a clone. Alter the physics settings, add in new 3D models, etc. BAM! You’ve got a working FPS, Racing, or sports game!

Now the foundamental gameplay wouldn’t change using the template. The template would just be the key to unlocking the door of how to 100% make your own games. Every now and then when a new gamelay mechanic comes along, Microsoft would buy the rights from the developer/hobbyist and add it to the Xbox Live developer’s template program collection.

If you can imagine this, then you can imagine what will become a reality very shortly. Whomever is able to break down this wall between players and content providers, will be rolling in the money.

Nintendo has stated that they are supporting indie developers with the Wii. Nintendo will release its online service called WiiConnect24. Sony is putting their money also on a system like Xbox Live. I’d bet that at least one of these companies has something to challenge what could become an industry dominated by Microsoft.

I was an Xbox basher all the way through its lifetime, but the 360 is another story. I’d definitely love to try out XNA. I saw the GDC 06 interface design and lets say that I won’t touch the program until they give it a game designer’s touch, instead of a programmers. Hopefully the final product will be very easy to use…

Copycat

Remember those people in school who always used to copy anything you did? Well I sure don’t but someone here must! Anyways…

It’s ok to copy someone else’s game idea/gameplay as long as you change it just slightly enough to offer something new. If you make a game that has already been made before, you’ve just hung yourself. No distributor wants to sell a game that they just played a year ago. That’s how portals are run to the ground. Portals have to offer their visitors the good and unique stuff.

A genre that is really hot is serving tables - Diner Dash, Mystic Inn, Snowy: Lunch Rush, etc  all use the same type of gameplay but they coat it with a completely different style of graphics. Each one of these games has sold very well because they all change the formula just enough that players feel at ease with the game.

This is just how the industry works. Like it or not, it’s better to make money then waste money.