{"id":710,"date":"2010-06-05T09:08:16","date_gmt":"2010-06-05T09:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/?p=710"},"modified":"2010-06-05T09:08:16","modified_gmt":"2010-06-05T09:08:16","slug":"talking-with-customers-or-potential-ones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/2010\/06\/05\/talking-with-customers-or-potential-ones\/","title":{"rendered":"Talking With Customers (or potential ones)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Years ago, I did <a href=\"http:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/talkingtopirates.html\">this<\/a> blog post, which is why I now run a dedicated server, because mine just <strong>MELTED<\/strong>. I was even on the radio, in several countries, yabbering on about piracy. Its still a huge big deal in terms of people recognising my name.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway. I&#8217;m sort of going to try and do the same thing, sort of, but on a different tack. it won&#8217;t be <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">vaguely<\/span> as popular, and I bet I get 10 replies, rather than 10,000, but that&#8217;s cool. So instead of &#8216;Why do you pirate my games&#8217;, todays question is<\/p>\n<h2>&#8220;Why <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">didn&#8217;t<\/span> you buy Gratuitous Space Battles?&#8221;<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Please<\/span> read this next bit:<\/p>\n<p>I am <strong>NOT<\/strong> complaining. I am <strong>NOT<\/strong> moaning about sales. I am <strong>NOT<\/strong> unhappy with sales, I am not whining or anything like it. I just like making games that people enjoy, and I don&#8217;t know why the people who didn&#8217;t buy it, didn&#8217;t buy it. I&#8217;d like to know. The answers may well make it a better game for everyone, if I fix those reasons (if they make sense). It will make the game attractive to current fence-sitters, better for current owners, and more sales for me and my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cats.html\">cats<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/images\/cats\/jadzia3.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/blog\/whygsb.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #999999;\">This cat demands answers NOW.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>You can post here, or email me at <a href=\"mailto:cliff@positech.co.uk\">cliff@positech.co.uk<\/a>. Subject could be &#8220;Why I didn&#8217;t buy GSB&#8221;. As with the piracy thing, what I 100% absolutely totally want is honesty. Here are some prompts for what you might be thinking, and please email me if any of them are true:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;I Thought it would be an arcade game, but it wasn&#8217;t and I don&#8217;t like strategy games.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;I Don&#8217;t like 2D games, or at least won&#8217;t pay money for them.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The demo was too easy&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The demo crashed&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;It ran badly on my PC&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;I already have lots of space strategy games&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The demo was badly balanced&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;I heard bad things about it&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;I don&#8217;t trust buying it from your website&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;It&#8217;s too expensive&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;I wanted direct control of the ships, and that was frustrating&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>I wanted a campaign wrapped around the battles. It was too sandboxy&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>etc. Obviously, feel free to add to the list, above all, be honest. I&#8217;m not offended if you email me and say &#8220;The games shit, my dog could make a better game&#8221;. I would disagree, but that&#8217;s your opinion :D.<\/p>\n<p>If you have friends or interwebs-buddies who you know saw or heard about the game, and don&#8217;t own it, I&#8217;d love to know their opinions. Obviously if you *did* buy it, you don&#8217;t get a vote today. Sorry, and thankyou for buying one of my games. You are clearly happier, more intelligent, discerning and probably <strong>more attractive<\/strong> than other people.<\/p>\n<p>My intention here is to hoover up all those comments that invariably get made, that could, in a perfect world, be fed back to the creator of something to make the product better. We, as a species really need to get our shit together on that. If you are like me, you *always* find something about everything you buy which is annoying*, there just isn&#8217;t a direct route to the inbox of the designer to send your feedback. My email address is <a href=\"mailto:cliff@positech.co.uk\">cliff@positech.co.uk<\/a>. Tell me what improvement would make you a buyer of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gratuitousspacebattles.com\">Gratuitous Space Battles<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">*those new nozzles on ketchup bottles give me less control over ketchup distribution, and are affecting my purchase decisions&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Years ago, I did this blog post, which is why I now run a dedicated server, because mine just MELTED. I was even on the radio, in several countries, yabbering on about piracy. Its still a huge big deal in terms of people recognising my name. Anyway. I&#8217;m sort of going to try and do<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-right\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Continue Reading&#8230; Talking With Customers (or potential ones)<\/span><a class=\"btn btn-secondary continue-reading\" href=\"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/2010\/06\/05\/talking-with-customers-or-potential-ones\/\">Continue Reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-gratuitous-space-battles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=710"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":711,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710\/revisions\/711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}