After living through it, I’ve decided to buy the domain name PiracySucks.com. I thought that having a site where consumers could learn about the effects that piracy has on all sides of the industry could be rather informative and helpful. If anyone reading this is interested in helping out, by writing articles or anything else, please contact me at davidprodriguez [at] att.net.
Category: Video Game Development
Consumers are smarter than you think…
Well at least more so than I thought.
Today I went to the Mountain Dew & Xbox 360 Game Live, a College Campus Tour, at my school and it felt like a minature-E3 – games were buggy, there was a DJ, hot girls asking player’s if they wanted to enter in a contest, etc.
I went around asking students what they thought about the games they were playing – Splinter Cell 4, Eragon, Madden 07, Need for Speed Carbon, FlatOut 2, DOA 4 – are the ones that I remember being there. Players actually weren’t impressed with buggy games. Buggy as in buildings were flickering from textured to non-textured. Crap like that won’t sell a game so why in the world would any developer show this to the public?
It’s different in the case of showing the media a buggy game. They’ll understand that the game might only need a few tweaks to fix the broken parts, but do consumers understand this? Somehow I doubt it. Seriously does any consumer, other than geeks, understand how games are developed?
What’s really sad is that consumers are forced to put up with mediocrity. Have you entered a game store recently? 1,000s of games on the shelves – how are they supposed to know which one is better than the other?
Do they know the hundreds of developers and publishers behind those games? Obviously not! They may know the top 8 names – Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, UbiSoft, EA, Activision, Midway, Atari – but after that…
There’s a reason why so many game companies fold and that’s because consumers are confused. No matter the company or the franchise consumers are not safe from buggy and low quality games. So I ask what will make them buy $60 games that have not been unrestlessly assured in quality?
High Quality is the ONLY Quality
If you are serious and want your game to sell, you have to make a high quality game. Major portals will not accept any game that has poor gameplay or graphics. With a good game, gameplay and graphics go hand in hand. Developers must balance the two.
When designing your game keep this in mind. It’s much easier to make a cartoony looking game rather than something that’s realistic.
When you’re done with your game, go back and look at things that could be polished. There’s no reason why your game shouldn’t be the best that it can be. Spend at least a month tweaking as much as you can. Beta test your game and get feedback!
Mediocrity is not an option in this day and age. There are too many indie games being released every week for your game to get noticed if it looks or plays bad.
Why would you want to waste months to years of your life on a project and not have it sell well?
RSS Errors – Fixed
I was recently informed that the RSS feed wasn’t working. Turns out that by forwarding the domain videogameinsider.net and by telling the blog that that is the new Blog URL, an error occurs. I’ve fixed this problem by telling the blog that the BLOG URL is the actual directory where all of this data is located.
Bottom line is that it should work now.
Don’t be a spammer
You know there’s nothing worse about the internet than spam. It’s the devil in discise.
For game developers it’s actually very easy to spam others, especially when you are in the launch phase. You want websites and distributors to talk about your game as well as sell it. But guess what, if they don’t reply within the first two weeks – they probably don’t care about your title. It is resonable to send them the same PR one more time, but it is better to ask them if they received the original email that you sent.
It’s important to setup a dialogue between you and the person on the other end of the website! Research into the website and don’t bother them if you have a game that doesn’t fit their audience.
Websites receive hundreds and sometimes thousands of emails a day from people just like you. They want their game on that site. Well that’s a shit load of emails to go through! Make it easier on the website and don’t bother them if you don’t need to!
Communication
Look bottom line is that you’re always going to be communicating through email. It’s ruid if you do not answer your emails in a timely fasion. If you are working on a deal and allow for a week to pass before you answer your emails those potential deals will be gone. At a maximum reply to your emails 2-3 days after you receive them. Even if you have to contact someone else before you get the needed answer, write an email to the sender so they know to wait a couple of days.
This is a huge issue no matter what side of the industry you’re in. It costs time and money waiting for people to respond to emails so please be concious of your response time.