Troika's PA RPG shots!!
- Thread starter Odin
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rikus said:
Oh, I know one. Consider that the most important reasons people claim it's not possible anymore to create a game with almost zero budget and a tiny dev team are graphics, sound and programming (read: writing the engine that does all the pretty 3D effects).
If we lost that "eye candy is keeeng" attitude, we could very well create good games with a low budget. I've seen some very enjoyable games produced by independant developers with no noteworthy funding. The only important drawback are marketing and sales, that's where the music and the gaming industry both got their problems.
Independant artists sell their works online -- either by allowing you to download the MP3s (sometimes even for free -- in these cases you are asked to share them via P2P because that's free advertising for them) or by buying their CDs for a low amount of money. They usually don't have fancy booklets or covers, but therefore you get the CD directly from the guys who made it and they earn more per CD than they would if they had a contract.
Independant game developers could distribute their games on DVD instead of CDs, that would reduce the production cost because most multi-CD games can fit on one DVD, two tops, each. The sad part is that it's not that easy to produce a pretty paper manual or a cardbox. As most games are distributed in DVD cases with either no printed manual or only a short quick manual of sorts anyway, that is not much of an issue really, other than in terms of aesthetics.
As of a certain size the devs could have an in-house marketing and sales department. Then they could create better manuals and boxes and even advertise their games more efficiently.
Sadly the present market is all about eye candy and nobody cares about the actual games anymore. If there were a proper medium to advertise niche games to the niche markets, it'd be less of a problem.
Fatty Lumpkin
First time out of the vault
Out of curiosity, where might I find some independent games developer's works? Is there anything of any significance out there?
Bradylama
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
I particularly detest this kind of attitude among game reviewers. (this is making the assumption that said reviewers are actually competent, which, obviously, the majority of them aren't) They fail to realize that pretty graphics are browny points, not game-defining. Unless said pretty graphics actually have a legitimate impact on the mechanics of the game, then bells and whistles, or a lack thereof, shouldn't affect an objective reviewer.
I'm tired of seing otherwise excellent games receiving lower ratings because their engines are a year or two out of date.
SimpleMinded
Vault Fossil
Fatty Lumpkin said:
I believe spiderworks software is a biggie in that field with their geneforge series. Thats the only one I know of though :-\.
in reply to ashmo:
first, if your plan worked, i should've seen it.
second, it didn't because people see products through the conventional means of communication, either by radio or by the internet.
if you want to populize your product you'd still have to invest alot of money in advertising-and i think that's where the big cut of money is, why is that? because no one would know who bill clinton was unless he uses to huge amount of finance to introduce himself to his nation, that's exacly the same, it is known in industry that the product quality and its commercial application is just about 20% compared to 80% invest in publishing it.
the grand p2p networking still isn't working, people will always download the popular songs they hear in radio or tv shows, or the stinking mtv, but no one will ever start downloading annonymous artists because the search for them would take too long in compared to what the marketing companies have already introduced.
ashmo, your ideal is great, but cutting on graphics and cd package is maybe 30% of the product, so you'd still have to pay the 70% of advertisment>only big companies have big money.
you wrote:"As of a certain size the devs could have an in-house marketing and sales department. Then they could create better manuals and boxes and even advertise their games more efficiently.
Sadly the present market is all about eye candy and nobody cares about the actual games anymore. If there were a proper medium to advertise niche games to the niche markets, it'd be less of a problem."
i will take it even further , would people, would the market, turn to such niches, or will he turn to where to fancy graphics are, and the big production games lie?
the answer depends on your belief in alturism in the world, but it is well known that the fancier graphics game take the more of the cash, or generlizing it, the better produced game.
first, if your plan worked, i should've seen it.
second, it didn't because people see products through the conventional means of communication, either by radio or by the internet.
if you want to populize your product you'd still have to invest alot of money in advertising-and i think that's where the big cut of money is, why is that? because no one would know who bill clinton was unless he uses to huge amount of finance to introduce himself to his nation, that's exacly the same, it is known in industry that the product quality and its commercial application is just about 20% compared to 80% invest in publishing it.
the grand p2p networking still isn't working, people will always download the popular songs they hear in radio or tv shows, or the stinking mtv, but no one will ever start downloading annonymous artists because the search for them would take too long in compared to what the marketing companies have already introduced.
ashmo, your ideal is great, but cutting on graphics and cd package is maybe 30% of the product, so you'd still have to pay the 70% of advertisment>only big companies have big money.
you wrote:"As of a certain size the devs could have an in-house marketing and sales department. Then they could create better manuals and boxes and even advertise their games more efficiently.
Sadly the present market is all about eye candy and nobody cares about the actual games anymore. If there were a proper medium to advertise niche games to the niche markets, it'd be less of a problem."
i will take it even further , would people, would the market, turn to such niches, or will he turn to where to fancy graphics are, and the big production games lie?
the answer depends on your belief in alturism in the world, but it is well known that the fancier graphics game take the more of the cash, or generlizing it, the better produced game.
First of all, I do not believe in altruism.
Now to dismantle your post and prove that you deserve your title and failed to give your post any reason to exist...
Did I say it was a plan? No. Did I say it worked? No.
Would you have noticed if it worked? Possibly not.
I'm not talking about the mass market. If everyone was developing for the mass market, the only music people would produce would be the one you see [sic] on MTV. Now unless your innards are blocking your view, you'll know that is not the case.
Let's think about this for a second: How do we learn of a game's existence?
TV Commercials? Maybe in the US, exclusively.
The only thing I've seen advertised on TV so far were N-Gage and Playstation 2. I think I've seen an X-Box commercial somewhere as well. These advertisements were mostly about the platforms rather than the game, I don't even remember any of the games advertised.
The only exception is Hitman, which had a scene from the intro followed by a short message as commercial.
TV Ads require a lot of money because screen time is expensive.
Radio Commercials? I doubt that. I've never heard a radio commercial for a game and advertising a game on radio seems rather inconsequent with the eye candy focus most games have these days, I somehow can't imagine a commercial describing a game in which "you like kinda kill monsters and save the world and stuff", which describes every (second) game you see at Wal-Mart.
Other than while driving only a limited amount of people listen to the radio anyway, especially not any mainstream gamers.
Poster Advertisements? I don't think so. Some games are advertised on billboards, but where I live that is only true for video stores. I have yet to see a game ad in the city or on the road.
Internet Advertisements? Sorry, I meant to say "banners and pop-ups".
Banners? Nah. Most games can't be advertised without Flash because otherwise nobody gives a shit and most people don't like Flash Ads, so if they got half a brain, they have them either blocked or ignore them.
Pop-Ups? Most modern browsers come with pop-up blockers and everybody else has learned to close them before they have even loaded. Inefficient? you bet.
Magazines, eZines and internet news sites? Bull's eye.
Printed and online magazines are where most gamers learn about new games. These are the only places where advertising games can be successful anyway.
Now how do magazines learn about new games? Company press releases for one, press kits for the other. Are there publishers involved? I think so. Are the publishers required? Not likely so.
Large companies don't need to submit their press releases to the magazines, they could just wait for them to visit the website and read them. Smaller companies would only need to send the news to the largest magazines and wait for them to release it.
Why does that not work for independant developers yet? There are no publically known indie game dev news sites, that's why. Why is that so? The news sites do not advertise good enough. Is that an issue the developers should address? No, it's the fault of the news sites, not the developers; not saying they shouldn't help, just saying its not their fault.
So the conclusion is: the only place you NEED to advertise are the large magazines (by sending them a press kit, if only an electronic one or an early beta on CD) and news sites (by sending press info) and maybe make an appearance at a game developer convention -- looking at the E3 this is a pointless move tho. The largest percentage of the target group cannot afford going there and trying to catch the attention of game mags with big breasted modells isn't really worth being called "advertising".
If you want to make a bad game popular you need a lot of make-up, make-up means in this case: eye candy, advertisements and hype. With the vast amount of mainstream games there is, it is insanely expensive to get people to play your game: either you create a game everybody likes or you create a game that lives off the hype. Both things are impossible and eventually fail, management knows that and that's why the modern way is to sell as many games as possible in as short a time as possible. Why do they need to sell that many games? Because their expenses are that high? Why are their expenses that high? Because the engine needs to be utterly complex, the graphics need to be utterly realistic and the advertising needs to be omnipresent. Why is that so? Because the content of the game wouldn't be able to sell without that.
If you got a game you can advertise without putting emphasis on the "isometric 3D photographic shadows and lighting effects OMGOMGWTFLOL!!!!111oneone", you don't need to hype it. Because the production costs are lower, you don't need much of a development budget.
Because you don't need to hype it, you don't need much of an advertising budget.
That means you don't have to sell as many copies to make up for the invested money.
Actually I don't understand what you are trying to explain because you fail to understand that "The World != The United States of America".
As to who Clinton is. If you payed even half attention to the news throughout the last century, you know that Bill Clinton was the president of GOC and that he "did not have sex with" Monika Lewinski staining her blouse in the act of doing so.
Not really. It costs a lot to pay a huge dev team only to make a new engine, that's why the Unreal Warfare, Half-Life and Doom 3: Arena engines are being extended all the time instead of people actually creating new ones.
Considering how people use search engines that is untrue.
I know a lot of people who sometimes just enter "porn" into a P2P programs if they want porn or "piano" if they want piano conciertos. Whether the majority of the results is pirated mainstream music is not the important thing, the important thing is that the results include independant works as well. Heck, the randomness of the results is resposible for how some people even learn about niche artists or stumble into niches.
I strongly request the mods not to censor the following due to their anti-P2P policy:
After learning the name of the band (In Extremo) that did a guest appearance in the computer game "Gothic", I wanted to find out whether I liked their other works or not and thus entered their name into a P2P program. I learned not only that I liked their music (which is why I went and bought all their CDs) but also found out about similar bands. The result is that I got an entire CD shelf full of CDs by these bands, all legally acquired.
If more independant artists got legally shared via P2P, they'd be better known and sell more CDs.
Once again you base your numbers on mainstream games that need to live off their hype and eye candy.
The market does in fact consist of niches (note that in this case the definition of "niche" is rather .. vague). The problem is that people like shiny things and thus the majority of people will swallow anything as long as you tell them it's great.
In fact even German philosophers have the tradition of calling people's ideas pointless unless they can quote at least ten other, established, philosophers who had the same ideas (interesting thought, hm?). In this case the shiny package would be a label reaidng "Socrates, Aristoteles and Plato agree: "This rocks"".
I'm not stupid enough to think independant developers could reign the market, but I'm optimistic enough (and this is coming from a pessimist) to claim that independant developers could do a lot better if they (and their (potential) customers) did things right.
In German we have a saying. "Sechs. Setzen.". Ask someone what it means, if you care.
Altruism hasn't got anything to do with this issue. Go right back to philosophy class and this time, pay attention.
You are easily mislead, my friend. Fancier graphics don't mean better production, they just mean shinier packaging.
But if you payed attention reading this post, by now you should have understood that.
Now to dismantle your post and prove that you deserve your title and failed to give your post any reason to exist...
rikus said:
Did I say it was a plan? No. Did I say it worked? No.
Would you have noticed if it worked? Possibly not.
I'm not talking about the mass market. If everyone was developing for the mass market, the only music people would produce would be the one you see [sic] on MTV. Now unless your innards are blocking your view, you'll know that is not the case.
Let's think about this for a second: How do we learn of a game's existence?
TV Commercials? Maybe in the US, exclusively.
The only thing I've seen advertised on TV so far were N-Gage and Playstation 2. I think I've seen an X-Box commercial somewhere as well. These advertisements were mostly about the platforms rather than the game, I don't even remember any of the games advertised.
The only exception is Hitman, which had a scene from the intro followed by a short message as commercial.
TV Ads require a lot of money because screen time is expensive.
Radio Commercials? I doubt that. I've never heard a radio commercial for a game and advertising a game on radio seems rather inconsequent with the eye candy focus most games have these days, I somehow can't imagine a commercial describing a game in which "you like kinda kill monsters and save the world and stuff", which describes every (second) game you see at Wal-Mart.
Other than while driving only a limited amount of people listen to the radio anyway, especially not any mainstream gamers.
Poster Advertisements? I don't think so. Some games are advertised on billboards, but where I live that is only true for video stores. I have yet to see a game ad in the city or on the road.
Internet Advertisements? Sorry, I meant to say "banners and pop-ups".
Banners? Nah. Most games can't be advertised without Flash because otherwise nobody gives a shit and most people don't like Flash Ads, so if they got half a brain, they have them either blocked or ignore them.
Pop-Ups? Most modern browsers come with pop-up blockers and everybody else has learned to close them before they have even loaded. Inefficient? you bet.
Magazines, eZines and internet news sites? Bull's eye.
Printed and online magazines are where most gamers learn about new games. These are the only places where advertising games can be successful anyway.
Now how do magazines learn about new games? Company press releases for one, press kits for the other. Are there publishers involved? I think so. Are the publishers required? Not likely so.
Large companies don't need to submit their press releases to the magazines, they could just wait for them to visit the website and read them. Smaller companies would only need to send the news to the largest magazines and wait for them to release it.
Why does that not work for independant developers yet? There are no publically known indie game dev news sites, that's why. Why is that so? The news sites do not advertise good enough. Is that an issue the developers should address? No, it's the fault of the news sites, not the developers; not saying they shouldn't help, just saying its not their fault.
So the conclusion is: the only place you NEED to advertise are the large magazines (by sending them a press kit, if only an electronic one or an early beta on CD) and news sites (by sending press info) and maybe make an appearance at a game developer convention -- looking at the E3 this is a pointless move tho. The largest percentage of the target group cannot afford going there and trying to catch the attention of game mags with big breasted modells isn't really worth being called "advertising".
If you want to make a bad game popular you need a lot of make-up, make-up means in this case: eye candy, advertisements and hype. With the vast amount of mainstream games there is, it is insanely expensive to get people to play your game: either you create a game everybody likes or you create a game that lives off the hype. Both things are impossible and eventually fail, management knows that and that's why the modern way is to sell as many games as possible in as short a time as possible. Why do they need to sell that many games? Because their expenses are that high? Why are their expenses that high? Because the engine needs to be utterly complex, the graphics need to be utterly realistic and the advertising needs to be omnipresent. Why is that so? Because the content of the game wouldn't be able to sell without that.
If you got a game you can advertise without putting emphasis on the "isometric 3D photographic shadows and lighting effects OMGOMGWTFLOL!!!!111oneone", you don't need to hype it. Because the production costs are lower, you don't need much of a development budget.
Because you don't need to hype it, you don't need much of an advertising budget.
That means you don't have to sell as many copies to make up for the invested money.
Actually I don't understand what you are trying to explain because you fail to understand that "The World != The United States of America".
As to who Clinton is. If you payed even half attention to the news throughout the last century, you know that Bill Clinton was the president of GOC and that he "did not have sex with" Monika Lewinski staining her blouse in the act of doing so.
Not really. It costs a lot to pay a huge dev team only to make a new engine, that's why the Unreal Warfare, Half-Life and Doom 3: Arena engines are being extended all the time instead of people actually creating new ones.
Considering how people use search engines that is untrue.
I know a lot of people who sometimes just enter "porn" into a P2P programs if they want porn or "piano" if they want piano conciertos. Whether the majority of the results is pirated mainstream music is not the important thing, the important thing is that the results include independant works as well. Heck, the randomness of the results is resposible for how some people even learn about niche artists or stumble into niches.
I strongly request the mods not to censor the following due to their anti-P2P policy:
After learning the name of the band (In Extremo) that did a guest appearance in the computer game "Gothic", I wanted to find out whether I liked their other works or not and thus entered their name into a P2P program. I learned not only that I liked their music (which is why I went and bought all their CDs) but also found out about similar bands. The result is that I got an entire CD shelf full of CDs by these bands, all legally acquired.
If more independant artists got legally shared via P2P, they'd be better known and sell more CDs.
Once again you base your numbers on mainstream games that need to live off their hype and eye candy.
The market does in fact consist of niches (note that in this case the definition of "niche" is rather .. vague). The problem is that people like shiny things and thus the majority of people will swallow anything as long as you tell them it's great.
In fact even German philosophers have the tradition of calling people's ideas pointless unless they can quote at least ten other, established, philosophers who had the same ideas (interesting thought, hm?). In this case the shiny package would be a label reaidng "Socrates, Aristoteles and Plato agree: "This rocks"".
I'm not stupid enough to think independant developers could reign the market, but I'm optimistic enough (and this is coming from a pessimist) to claim that independant developers could do a lot better if they (and their (potential) customers) did things right.
In German we have a saying. "Sechs. Setzen.". Ask someone what it means, if you care.
Altruism hasn't got anything to do with this issue. Go right back to philosophy class and this time, pay attention.
You are easily mislead, my friend. Fancier graphics don't mean better production, they just mean shinier packaging.
But if you payed attention reading this post, by now you should have understood that.
Well, I've seen several ads here. None of them looked at all interesting ('cept for the Ninja Gaiden one. That one was reasonably funny), but they do cost way too much money for what they're worth. Mouth-to-mouth and magazines go really really really far. If I ask a friend whether he liked a game or not, I'm going to go buy his judgement. If I read in my favorite magazine that a game is really good, I'll go by that (generally). If I see it on TV, I think "Whatever." and wait for a friend or a review.
Also interesting is a very new development in game development world: bribing. The most famous example of this is Driv3r. The game is absolutely shitty, but the magazines that got the "exclusives" or "extended previews" or whatever gave it huge ratings. This was due to the fact that the Driv3r producers said "Okay, you guys get an exclusive prview, or first review or whatever, on the condition that you give Driv3r a high rating."
And annoyingly, there were several magazines who gave in. The high ratings caused huge sales the first couple of weeks, but as soon as word-of-mouth and other magazines started giving it reviews, sales have gone down. This shows the power of magazines and the power of bribes, as well as the sick state of the game producing business.
I would like to point out that in Germany there also is a tv show called "NBC Giga Games" (it is shown on NBC Europe and was originally part of the show NBC Giga, which still also has a small Games section) which playtests games on tv. While the show is (obviously) very mainstream oriented, seeing the games in action is a good substitude for the by now almost extinct pre-release playable Demos.
The new tradition is to hype a game, then revive the sales a couple of months later by releasing a free demo for the folks who haven't bought it yet -- needless to say some games which really only exist because of the hype and suck when played don't even go as far as releasing a demo because playing it would tell people how bad the game actually is, which is why they'll rather produce promo videos instead.
But then again, back in the days they even used to produce Demos which had an actual story of their own and were fun to play, not just small segments of the actual game cut together with "Buy the full version" notes holding it together like duct tape (granted, I'd prefer a good game over a crappy game with a great demo -- Arcanum's demo was just the beginning of Arcanum cut together, but it worked because the atmosphere in those first minutes was dense enough to give an impression of the game already).
On a sidenote, that was how I got into Fallout. I played the demo.
Nowadays I'll read descriptions (not true for mainstream games with an obvious eye candy focus -- they'd be too hype-ish) or reviews or comments.
The corruption you described only works because these sites or magazines write reviews without describing the game in even a single line. They'll write how great it is, how fun it is, how good it looks, but they won't describe the actual game.
I always get suspicious if a review mentions things like polycount, anti-aliasing and other facts about the rendering engine more than things like atmosphere, gameplay and story.
Also nowadays game websites don't say anything about the game but just contain shiny Flash videos meant to sell the product by catching the visitor's attention. Maybe the system specs and a one-paragraph description taken from the back of the box as well and maybe some artsy fake screenshots (fake in that they are fabricated and thus not authentic, if they don't show shots of the few cinematics you will find in the game they'll show the flashiest scripted in-game sequences, not anything relating to the actual gameplay).
The new tradition is to hype a game, then revive the sales a couple of months later by releasing a free demo for the folks who haven't bought it yet -- needless to say some games which really only exist because of the hype and suck when played don't even go as far as releasing a demo because playing it would tell people how bad the game actually is, which is why they'll rather produce promo videos instead.
But then again, back in the days they even used to produce Demos which had an actual story of their own and were fun to play, not just small segments of the actual game cut together with "Buy the full version" notes holding it together like duct tape (granted, I'd prefer a good game over a crappy game with a great demo -- Arcanum's demo was just the beginning of Arcanum cut together, but it worked because the atmosphere in those first minutes was dense enough to give an impression of the game already).
On a sidenote, that was how I got into Fallout. I played the demo.
Nowadays I'll read descriptions (not true for mainstream games with an obvious eye candy focus -- they'd be too hype-ish) or reviews or comments.
The corruption you described only works because these sites or magazines write reviews without describing the game in even a single line. They'll write how great it is, how fun it is, how good it looks, but they won't describe the actual game.
I always get suspicious if a review mentions things like polycount, anti-aliasing and other facts about the rendering engine more than things like atmosphere, gameplay and story.
Also nowadays game websites don't say anything about the game but just contain shiny Flash videos meant to sell the product by catching the visitor's attention. Maybe the system specs and a one-paragraph description taken from the back of the box as well and maybe some artsy fake screenshots (fake in that they are fabricated and thus not authentic, if they don't show shots of the few cinematics you will find in the game they'll show the flashiest scripted in-game sequences, not anything relating to the actual gameplay).
Ashmo said:
ashmo, if i offended you it wasn't my intent at all, i wanted to discuss this but it may came out aggressive(due to some adminstrators who put nice avatars very wrongly).
stop right there. no publishers needed? no public relations? no web sites? no forum manager? no one to talk with all the magz and try to push the way toward a headline game?rikus said:
let's continue:
why? because before they became big they were small and they had very motivated publishers who made them well known to the community and after a few years they became that big, no one starts big right off.
smaller groups can send thier work, sure, but who will review it? some big companies actually pay the magz site to review thier games(or bribe them,but that's just unrelated phenomenon
).i've never heard of them, and that's also part of the problem(and don't start with the avatar because then don't bother to answer), you have to have those news site also in the headlines so people will know about them, guess what? not enough headlines space left.
there is only so much space you can make available for headlines, and the fancy polished games will get there first,count on it.
true, so what you are saying that you know these devs aren't really attraction catchers-which is exactly my point as well-so why are we arguing?
not exactly true, they could also make better produced games now that they have the money, but even so you prove my point exactly, no win situation for the niche devs guyz.rikus said:
you mean to tell me, that those low budget devs will be happy with the donations they get for someone downloading thier games?
you mean to tell me that this low budget formula can finance each and everyone of them , providing with housing, food, car, etc..?
again we go back to your theory, if it worked, people would use it and live by it, if SO...then who are they?
its not the first time i heard that idea, but nothing seem to work without a big finance from the back to keep you pushing, someone who pays your salaries-and not someone who waits for a click from a credit card donation.
rikus said:
i am not american, but i know all about the lewinski scandal, and i dont understand what you say either. i am merely saying that even bill clinton need the press to back him up, and for that he need tons of money, so i just metaphored it toward game publishments, that's it.
rikus said:
so its just enhance my claim, they still use tons of money for ads even though no new engine is built.
rikus said:
maybe people search by piano, maybe people look for bands they hear from computer games, i really don't know. what i DO know is that the majority of p2p files are popular songs.
it could mean alot of things, to me it means that most people know the popular songs by the conventional means of communication(again my 1st post). that's my interpetation. the fact that you CAN aquire annonymous products doesn't make the artist well known and famed and profitable like any artists would want-it just makes him available.
yes, because that's what sells and that's what brings jobs for devs and artists, and not the other theory.
it just proves that the truth is subjective that's all.
if you say that now, why the HELL are we arguing??
definition:Altruism, like passion, is the key intent that philanthropy expresses; a concern for the welfare of others; selflessness.rikus said:
that's exactly the defenition of making the ultimate product, not being selfish and thinking how to make to more money out of it, but to make it actually serve the people to whom you are giving/selling your product.
no, don't go there, fancier graphics don't mean better produced games, i said "in general-*including fancier graphics* a bad ass produced game will be more profitable", read it again.riuks said:
after reading it again, i still don't understand what the hell are we arguing about:you say there is hope for unknown artists/devs through various unknown news sites..lets refrain this please to smaller doses of words and forum space.
rikus said:
No publishers needed because you do the advertising by telling the right people of your game and can distribute it on your own.
No public relations because that's done in-house. No forum managers because they are in-house as well.
You don't need to push the way forward to a headline game because the sites I'm talking about would determine the headlines based on what's interesting to hear about, not what's got the better PR.
What do you think press releases are for?
Noone starts big right off, I never said otherwise, but it's not due to the publishers, it's due to their own skills and a lot of luck and THEN the publishers.
The only case where it might be other is where a publisher like the Evil Ampire [sic] might run into a small developer and buy it.
smaller groups can send thier work, sure, but who will review it? some big companies actually pay the magz site to review thier games(or bribe them,but that's just unrelated phenomenon
I'm not talking about the mainstream game market. I'm not talking about mainstream game magazines either.
If a niche magazine is addressed, it will review the niche game. Simple as that.
I said it above, but you either missed it or misunderstood: The reviewing sites fail to advertise their existence properly.
If someone does a post-nuclear game, pages like NMA are a good place to start advertising their game (by telling the mods about it and asking them if they could do a news item on it).
However a news site can't do that. They have to do a couple of reviews, tell the developers about it and the devs might put a news item on the review on their site or list them otherwise. If a reviewing site is mentioned on a game site it's got a good chance of being noticed by the audience of said site.
You don't need much headline space if there's not many things to do a headline about.
As with everything else, you don't need to start in the headline. As long as you're in the news, it's good.
We are arguing because you are talking about competition and I am talking about coexistence. It's not the same market, so there's no competition. The only thing I'm explaining is how independant games can ensure their further coexistence and what both the reviewers and the developers have to do.
They could make better games, but that'd mean they'd aim for a lower revenue with a lower investment. Exactly the opposite of what publishers want. Greed is an essential part of human behavior, especially in capitalism, and thus in economy.
Again you misunderstand. I never said they should provide games for free. The only people who believe that works are the members of the Free Software Foundation. It's a market in the economy.
I was talking about independant music artists. They can afford producing music for fre because they have "real" jobs aside and thus can tell people to advertise them by putting their stuff up via P2P.
Free independant games can do the same. A lot of free things are funded solely by advertisement or "sponsors", which basically advertise by donating money, hardware or services a lot.
Commercial independant games can either sell via download (some software application developers do that very successfully) or via CD -- shipping costs aren't really that high and with the publishers non-existant they can afford to sell games at the same price.
Most independant game developers are people who have other jobs, at least in the beginning, because they could not live off the developing. They either make a little money with it on the side, or they try to establish the company before they are well-known enough to feed their families with the job.
Ever heard of the Independant Games Convention?
Also note that computer games are a new thing. If you want to see it work properly, look at books and music: ever heard of BooksOnDemand? There are companies who print books as people buy them. They allow less well-known authors to sell their works without having to find a publisher first.
Lots of bands produce albums on their own and distribute them on their own via similar companies, others do it entirely on their own.
A lot of independant film crews produce their own movies and sell them online and in certain stores on DVD.
As games are maturing and becoming more socially accepted, they could share the same fate.
You are talking about electional campaigns, campaigns in GOC in particular. That's a country with a de-facto two-party system. The difference between that and the game markets should be obvious: in the game economy there aren't just two big companies and there isn't just one winner. Companies are trying to ensure their existence, once they succeeded in doing so they'll usually try to gain market share, which is something they do ad infinitum.
so its just enhance my claim, they still use tons of money for ads even though no new engine is built.[/quote]
So it just supports my claim: they still need tons of money because they can only sell their games by hyping them and convincing people it'd be different from the rest, which it isn't.
The majority of games, videos and music in shops are popular titles. Your point?
Such medium does not exist for independant games, or if one such exists, it is not well known. I already explained that we're talking about two different markets.
Niche things are niche things. Mainstream is a very broad niche. Fame means being known throughout all niches, which can only be archieved if you cover the mainstream market already.
I'm not talking about making niche games popular beyond their niches, I'm talking about making it possible for people to learn about these games. This is getting easy for other things, but still utterly difficult for games.
It proves that people want to be impressed and if the game can't do it, the hype has to do it.
How the hell am I supposed to know? You started it for christ's sake.
Altruism is the opposite of egoism. An action that is altruistic, is one that is done with no personal benefit.
Furthermore altruism is purely theoretical. It is long agreed on that seemingly altruistic actions are egoistic because the personal benefit is the pleasure you feel, or at least the relief caused by having given in to an urge and thus feeling better.
Altruism is a philosophical theory concerning ethics. We are not talking about ethics, we are talking about economy and arts.
I quote: "<snip/> the fancier graphics game <snip/>, or generlizing it, the better produced game." You are saying fancier graphics would be a part of a better produced game. That means a game is better produced if it has fancier graphics.
Production quality does not have as much to do with invested money as you might think.
I do not say there is hope, I just explain how they can get out of the bloody ocean and learn to walk. No hope needed, this is a question of technique.
Complex discussions need complex posts.
