Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

Category: business

Kudos 2 on Gamers Gate, more to follow

Soooo… Kudos 2 can now be purchased somewhere else other than direct from ME. Why you would do that is beyond me, but in case you have some sexual fetish that makes you order games through third parties, you could go HERE and buy it from gamersgate. A few other ‘portals’ will also start selling the game later today, and in the next few days.

I’ve been very busy with marketingy stuff, and checking for any bugs in Kudos 2. Now the code is all finished and put behind me, I start getting twitchy fingers on the topic of improving btis and adding new stuff. I’m on holiday from the start of next week, so there isn’t enough time to get anything big done, but providing the entire positech business empire isn’t crumbling when I get back, I’ll hopefully find time to add some more stuff to the game.

Patch day

Today I patched Kudos 2 to version 1.04, the fourth patch since release, and it’s my intention to leave it like this (barring major screw-ups) until I get back from holiday.

I tweaked a number of variables, added a few minor polish things like hotkeys, and hopefully fixed some crash bugs. Crash bugs are a nightmare to find. I got excited when I thought I’d found some code where I actually skipped a variable entirely (which normally would mean instant crashing), but it turns out that in their wisdom, Microsoft added some ‘templates’ when they changed sprintf to sprintf_s and it was safe anyway. Ho hum.

For some reason today has felt a bit demotivating. There is a lot of tedious admin crap associated with patching the game, and it’s still only half done really because now I need to prepare updated versions for the online portals who will hopefully start selling the game soon. I’ll get that done tomorrow morning, then I can do some marketing stuff in the afternoon.

Sales are ok, but I haven’t ordered a Porsche yet. In fact I still have a dent in my Peugeot :(

Getting the word out

Getting heard about when you are a small PC developer is a nightmare. Many websites are console only, some cover just a few ‘Triple A’ pc games, and most of them have the attitude that it’s their job to cover the games their readers are currently interested in. That might sounds reasonable, but let me re-phrase it.

“It’s their job to cover games their readers already know about.”

What’s the point in that? I don’t turn on BBC news to hear what I already know. That’s not the point. I expect there to be journalists out there finding interesting stuff I need to know, or may be interested in. I buy PC magazines that I like the style of, i don’t go in a shop and see a certain game on the cover and think “I’ll buy that one”. Why would I? if I already know about the game, I can just google for the developers site and read everything about it msyelf. I need games coverage to tell me about the games I do NOT know about.

I wish more gaming news sites, blogs, forums and magazines actually did what they used to call ‘investigative journalism‘. That means scouring the web, asking around and seeing what’s new and what’s cool. Running emailed rpess releases through a spell-checker and then sticking them on the front page is *not* journalism, it’s just working for the extended PR dept of EA/Activision.

I’m sure Kudos 2 has a big audience if people hear about it, but the web is becoming so corporate that unless your new indie game is on the front page of bigfishgames, it flies totally under the radar. If you know any gaming sites that might cover the game, do me a big favour, and email the editors and tell them about it. It’s always best to hear about new games from a gamer, not the developer.

And if anyone hangs out on a forum with a graphical sig, and wants to stick this in their sig, even for a few days, that would be awesome.

I really appreciate any help people can provide in getting the word out about the new game.

The “Get indie games on steam” petition

A lot of people ask me why my games aren’t on Steam. I always reply with “why not buy them direct” or “valve don’t reply to me”, both of which are true.

Because steam is so popular, I AM missing out on a lot of people getting to know about my games, and I still would love to have my games on there. So I was pleased to be added to the ‘get our games on steam’ petition that mode7 games (of determinance fame) recently started.

The petition is here. If you have a spare 5 minutes, please sign it. Indie devs need all the support we can get. My eyes water when I look at how much most advertising companies charge to promote my games, so getting on steam is one way I can get in front of lots of gamers without needing the megabucks that the big established companies like EA have.

And please tell other people about the petition!

dugg here:

http://digg.com/pc_games/Indie_devs_start_petition_to_get_listed_on_steam