Make sure that you get your own independent game added onto this list! It doesn’t matter if the game is still in development or was released 2 years ago. Send an email with all the required info and I’ll add your game to the list ASAP!
Category: Video Games
Free your clutter
Going off of the last post – because I thought about how to bring the reviews/articles over to the blog, I also thought how can I improve the Our Picks page on the website. Previously this page contained tons of subpages going from – Our Picks – Liked/DisLiked Reviews – Game Reviews – Video Game Consoles – Reviews, geez!
Page after page after page! Well I cut out all of those pages and put all the reviews on the Our Picks page. At first glance it looks slopy. But then when you start to use it, it’s very fast, easy, and overall efficient. Instead of annoying the reader by forcing them to visit this page then that page it’s very simple.
I’d say mission accomplished.
Games need to be simple, especially indie games. If you don’t have tens of millions of dollars why are you wasting years on developing one game that will only sell x amount, when you could be developing smaller games that take less time to create and each sell x amount.Â
Which do you think is more efficient 2 years for x amount or 6 months for x amount? Indie developers sometime spend years creating games that only sell hundreds of copies! Don’t bother creating these titles unless you really want to waste time.
You have no way of competing with commercial games so why do you bother to play on their league? Until you’re ready stay small and grow fast.
Use what you have
I’ve added two pages on the right, Video Game Articles and Video Game Reviews. At first glance one may think that the content on these pages is new but in fact it isn’t.
I questioned whether or not people who visit my blog go to the parent site www.stuffwelike.com. So at first I thought why not bring over all the game reviews onto the blog. Well that would have taken me weeks. I decided to dedicate two pages with links to each individual review/article.
The great thing about this is that it adds a ton of content to this blog with minimal amount of time investment.
Now because this blog is about game development and not my site – how about you tell me how this method could be used in game dev?
Write code that can be reused in future titles, create art that can be reused, figure out if things are being effective (demos, websites, etc) and doing what they were originally intended to do, etc. Always adapt to a changing environment. I had no idea that I would start a game blog months ago but now that this is a popular blog, why not use that to my advantage? Figure out ways that you can do the same.
URGENT: E3 No More!
Next-Gen.biz reports: The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) shindig has been a staple of game industry life since the mid-1990s. However, we understand the larger exhibitors have jointly decided that the costs of the event do not justify the returns, generally measured in media exposure.
Publishers believe the multi-million dollar budgets would be better spent on more company-focused events that bring attention to their own product lines rather than the industry as a whole.
ESA president Doug Lowenstein will likely announce the news some time within the next 48 hours, possibly on Monday. It’s likely that the ESA will seek to limit the damage by organizing some form of lesser event in May, possibly even with the E3 brand, but this will be no more than a fig-leaf. The days of an industry event attended by all the major publishers, spending big money, are gone.
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Gamespot.com Reports:
GameSpot has learned that tomorrow the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) will announce changes to the format and scale of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), the game industry event that typically draws in excess of 60,000 attendees and includes over 400 exhibitors.
On July 28, the Web site of UK trade magazine MCV reported discussions had taken place between the ESA and E3 exhibitors which addressed the future of the annual trade show.
Sources said that rather than fill the 540,000 square feet of the cavernous LACC, the show will take place at a location that would support exhibitors in meeting room space only, with companies showing their wares to a select group of attendees numbering in the hundreds rather than thousands.
One reason behind the downsizing of the show can be attributed to the dollar cost of the event to exhibitors, including the demands on companies to assign large numbers of staff to focus on the show, expenses associated with travel to the show, and the added expense to polish game builds and demos to be shown to attendees.
One source added that the new format of the show may actually result in a more productive environment to demo games to the media, although they stopped short of full disclosure: “My lips are sealed until after the weekend,” the source said.
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Pretty major stuff here. I don’t know what to think of it. To some extent I understand why this decision is being made. I mean E3 is really meant for the press and it has gotten out of control in recent years as companies are spending more money on their booths then on their games yet it’s harder and harder to play the demos. Even so this is a major loss… This was the trade show convention to attend and now it seems just like any other convention.
I wonder what impact this will have on GDC since that is already aimed at the core business.
Advertising is useless unless…
You have a great game. Great games do not sell themselves but they do give a reason for the player to buy them. Lowzy games with good advertising will sell well but not to their maximum capacity.
So unless you have a million dollars to spend in marketing, delay the release of your game to fix it and make it shine.
Want to join the game industry? Get an internship.
‘Nough said.
Don’t bother trying to get a programmer, producer, or even a Q/A job when you have nothing industry related on your resume. Go out and apply for any internship positions at local video game developers. They’re constantly looking for additional help, especially when it’s cheap. Ideally aim for a company that has over 100 employees, at least when they’re located in California, because it is a law that they must pay anyone who works for the company – including interns!
Internships are also a great way to realize what real job you want in the company/industry. If you play your cards right you could end up with a job at the company that you interned at in only a few months. It’s the easiest way to break into the industry because you are not required to really have skills in anything. That’s the point of an internship it’s for you to learn and gain experience. Never ask about salary unless it is brought up during the interview or on the first day of work.
You are worthless to this company until you show them you can actually do work at a fast pace. Even if you don’t want to work on developing games directly there are plenty of other jobs that a game developer needs – HR, financing, IT, etc. At many studios you will be working with some of the brightest minds in any industry. Come to your job with an open mind and a ready to learn attitude and you’ll do great!Â