StuffWeLike

This is probably the hardest part about selling a game. It is important to have a press release that includes a release date, but what you don’t want is to have a game that gets delayed past your original release date. In order to avoid this, make your release date vague. Saying TBD-To Be Determined or TBA-To Be Announced is perfectly fine! You can also say Q1/2/3/4 and the year. Never announce your internal release date to the public until you are 110% sure you can follow through on it!

Here’s a thought: why not finish the game first, announce the release date, create a ton of hype for the game, and then release it! This way allows you to focus in on the development side and then on the marketing side. Hopefully you’ll be good at both! 😉

Every now and then it’s good to look back and see what you’ve done in life to get to where you currently are. Understanding how we grow and change allows us to better control this process. I’ve been blogging now for 5 months. It’s a pretty crazy thing to think about. I’m still amazed that people actually come and comment here! Having something to work on everyday makes time fly by. With so many things going on in my life right now I’ll try to make sure that this blog keeps on going for as long as I have something to say about the indie game industry.

AMC (TV Channel – not theater) has been showing scary movies for the past couple of weeks and I’ve been recording some of the major ones. Of course this includes the Halloween series. The first Halloween movie was amazing and the second one wasn’t nearly as good. I watched the third film today only to find out that it has nothing to do with the previous two films. How does one go from a crazy invincible pyscho killer to robots? Seriously where is the continuity?

There was a four year break between the release of the second film and the release of the third film and killer robots was the best story that they could come up with! It seemed like the writers wanted to make Halloween into a science-fiction mystery series where any story can be told and the only thing in common would be the title itself Halloween. The Halloween theme song snuck in occassionally though. But the worst part was when a TV played in the background and it played a trailer for the original Halloween movie. Seriously what is this!?

I bring this up not only because Halloween is right around the corner, but when you’re writing a story for your game think about the future. Think about the possibility that the game sells well and you want to create a sequel. Know ahead of time where you would take the series, but please do not destroy the vision that the original game had! If you’re going to do that you might as well call it a brand new game. I know brand-name is a huge thing, but don’t sell out like the Halloween series did.

On Wednesday, I emailed mainstream developers (Activision, Nintendo, etc.) about an update on the StuffWeLike.com site. Basically News Headlines will now be appearing on the front page, when the news article is posted in the forum.

Within that same day, two of the developers replied saying ‘Thanks for the updates!’ Sure this could have been insincere, but at the same time this is very promising. It actually makes me want to pursue the rest of the updates that I had in mind. I just can’t believe how hesitant I was to actually send this message out to developers.

If you’ve got something to say, say it! Don’t be afraid to promote yourself or something that you own.