The area that has a couple tables is adjacent to one of the smaller gyms where they have dance classes sometimes.

The teenagers that take the dance classes, as well as sometimes their moms, pile all their bags, boots, fast food garbage, etc. all over the 3 or 4 small tables. They aren’t even using the chairs or tables, but they completely dominate them with all their junk and then go in and take their class.

So today I get there and every table is covered with junk. I pick one that only has a pair of dirty boots (standing, soles down, on the table), two soft drink bottles, a crumpled Arby’s bag, and the dirty peeled off top to a yogurt container, and put the stuff on the (carpeted) floor next to the table. (tons of their junk is all over the floors already too).

The class ends, and everyone comes piling out. Some moms show up as well.

One of the girls and her mom actually start complaining loudly about their stuff being moved. I think they were trying to get me to say something. I didn’t say a word. Then the mom actually taps me on the shoulder and faux innocently asks “Do you know who moved our things?”

Me: “Yes, I did. This was the most empty table.”

The mom: “Oh, I didn’t think anyone would need these tables for anything super important.”

Me: “My daughter’s gymnastics practice is 4 hours long so I try to get some work done.”

She kinda harumphs angrily, walks like 2 steps away, and loudly says to her daughter “I don’t know why he needs to move our stuff to play a game on his computer.”

I almost let it go, but I just couldn’t.

Me: “Ma’am, you MIGHT have a point if it weren’t for the fact that I make computer games for a living, and what you see on my computer is our latest game. Tables really aren’t the right place for people’s dirty boots and empty fast food garbage. There are 4 trash cans within 20 feet of us.”

She had turned around when I said ma’am, but after the above she just grumbled and left.

I get so sick and tired of these entitled, selfish, disrespectful (self censored).

One of the hardest things for indie game developers is getting the word out about their game so they can get a nice core of early players who will test, give feedback, help them iterate on their design, and get their game polished.

Personally, what I would really like to have early on is about 100-500 hardcore, dedicated players who will play the heck out of your game and stick with it for a few months. You want them to stay dedicated so they can understand where you’ve been and become a core group of tested players whose feedback you can benefit from for many years to come.

So the $64,000 question is: how do you get those couple hundred players?

GAMING FORUMS:

Gaming forums SHOULD be a great place to get the word out about your game. Thousands of gamers, many of which are always looking for something new and interesting, gathered in once place, in a medium that has self selected people who like to communicate.

Unfortunately, many (most?) gaming forums are completely insane with how rapidly they shut you down if you post about your game. They accuse you of spam even if all you do is make one post. Even if you check back regularly, answer questions people post, etc. (which is something an actual spammer would never do), they will warn, ban, block, etc. with impunity. I hate that so many gaming sites do this, and I wish they’d change, but I lack the power or influence to make this happen.

I don’t know if this is just overzealous moderation or bad policies. Either way, it is really disappointing and terrible for the industry as a whole. The mega giant blockbusters don’t need to communicate directly with gamers so they aren’t affected. It is the smaller games and indies that need a way to talk to gamers, and the best medium for this is being consistently made unavailable.

Are there any gaming sites/forums that aren’t like this? Where you can post about your game and actually get a bunch of people who will try out your game, give you feedback, and potentially join your hardcore group of early adopters? If so, please share in the comments!

GAMING BLOGS:

I read a lot of gaming blogs, and there are people on tons of them that I would love to have as testers or early/trial players. But blog topics are determined by the blog author, and I rarely see an opportunity in a discussion to say “Oh speaking of (topic being discussed), you guys should try my new game.” It doesn’t feel natural and instead feels disruptive or just too far off topic.

I have tried mailing blog authors and asking them to write about one of our games, and in a number of cases some awesome bloggers have done this. But these blog posts seem to get mostly ignored by the readers. I think blog readers are generally looking for commentary, analysis, or controversy. So when they see an article that is a nice, calm “hey check this cool thing out”, I think blog readers tune it out or say “oh yeah I will check that out later” but never get around to it.

So as much as I love blogs, I am not sure how well they work for getting the word out about your game. Perhaps if there are some specific blogs designed to promote indie games or to help gamers find new and unique games. Again, if anyone knows of such a thing please post about it in the comments.

ADVERTISING:

In my experience this is just a money pit. Indie companies don’t have tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to dump into advertising, so chances are you won’t ever be able to get enough coverage to break through the din of marketing noise. People in marketing know that repetition is the key to making your advertising message effective. It isn’t the first time someone sees your game ad that they try it out. It is more like the 5th or 6th time they see it. Then they say “oh hey, there’s another ad for that game I keep seeing. Maybe I should try it out.”

It is hard enough for an indie company to get enough ad coverage for someone to see their ad once. Getting the ad in front of the same person 5 or more times? Nearly impossible.

Advertising on some smaller, specialized sites might be effective, and once again I’d love to hear some suggestions from readers about sites where an indie company could advertise and actually have it generate some good results.

GAME AGGREGATORS/PLATFORMS:

This is where sites like Kongregate (flash) or Pheeva (html5) come into play. I’ve never made a game that would work with these types of sites, so my experience here is zero. I’d love to hear from people who have put games on sites like this – especially if you did so with the purpose of driving people to your “main” or “bigger” gaming site.

FACEBOOK:

Ugh. I hate the dominant position Facebook has taken as a gaming platform, mainly because it is a pretty bad platform for gaming in general. Tons of screen/UI real estate is eaten up by Facebook, a third party can (and does) change the API on you at will, and if you want to charge money they force you to use THEIR currency from which they take 30% (at least) of your gross.

The only option here, imho, for indies is to make a light or simple version of your game and put it on Facebook just to entice people to play your real game (similar to the aggregators above).

Alternatively, what about just sending updates, high scores, etc. to people’s walls. Does this still work? If so, is it effective? Also, how hard is this to build into your game?

Way too early for a brilliant visionary who affected the world in many positive and amazing ways.

It would have been great to see what else he could have done given another 20 years.

A huge loss for humanity, regardless of how you feel about Apple or specific Apple products.

10 ways Steve Jobs changed the world

World reacts to death of Steve Jobs

Former Mythic boss explains EA split

It sounds like Jacobs’ is saying that from the time EA bought Mythic, the direction of game design didn’t go the way he wanted or the way he felt was best.

Very interesting.

Perhaps this starts to show a little more insight into what went wrong with Warhammer Online.

Please give this article a read, and let me know what you think.

Facebook Games: Where Monetization Gimicks and User Growth Matter More Than Good Game Design

I look forward to your opinions.

It is the first game where I did not write a single line of code. It is the first game playable by people of ALL ages. It is our first game without built in chat!

This article explains the basics of Coin ‘n Carry while also delving a bit into some general aspects of the social gaming space and why putting your game on Facebook is not necessarily the best move.

Coin ‘n Carry: Putting the GAME back into Social Games

Check out the article, and then give our game a try please!

http://www.coinncarry.com

Is it really so hard to just stop there? Is it really necessary to start giving Apple credit for things they don’t deserve any credit for?

Apparently for the media cultists who worship Steve Jobs like a god, it is indeed necessary:

Apple’s Steve Jobs revolutionized TV too

Sorry, he didn’t.

“While the VCR and later the DVR already started to free viewers from being held hostage to network schedules, iTunes and the platforms that followed took it to the next level.”

Total bullshit. The DVR is what killed “appointment television.” NOTHING else deserves credit. Everything else simply rode the coat-tails of the DVR. Period.

DVR ownership is expected to break 50% of all households next year. That’s ~200 million daily DVR users.

After DVRs, Netflix played a HUGE role by letting people cheaply rent entire seasons of tv shows. Far, far cheaper than buying them in iTunes.

Blown up:

Full section:

The inside front cover of the magazine, that shows the date and other contents:

Now, I could be cheeky and leave it up to you to draw the same conclusion I did. I have very smart readers, so I don’t think it would be that tough. But just in case members of the lesser entertainment mediums blow through here, I’ll summarize:

In 1991, Secret of Monkey Island cost $70. That’s 20 years ago, and the cost of the game was HIGHER than what you’d pay now for a similar quality release.

It just goes to show you that the value of video games is not just great, but getting greater over time. No wonder the gaming industry is destroying movies, music, and all other forms of entertainment. We’ve got them beat on quality, depth of experience, AND price.

Major Cancelled MMOs:

Motor City Online (EA): 2003
Earth & Beyond (Westwood/EA): 2004
Asheron’s Call 2 (Microsoft/Turbine): 2005
Matrix Online (Monolith): 2005 (effectively)
Shadowbane (Wolfpack): 2006
The Saga of Ryzom (Nevrax): 2006
Auto Assault (NCSoft): 2007
The Sims Online (EA): 2007
RF Online (CCR): 2008
Hellgate: London (Flagship): 2009
Tabula Rasa (NCSoft/Destination Games): 2009
Dungeon Runners (NCSoft): 2010
Mythos (Flagship): 2010
Earth Eternal (Sparkplay): 2010
APB: All Points Bulletin: 2010

Pre-Release Cancelations:

Dragon Empires (Codemasters): 2004
True Fantasy Live Online (Microsoft): 2004
Mythica (Microsoft): 2004
Ultima Online 2 (EA): 2004
Imperator (Mythic): 2005
Marvel Universe Online (Microsoft/Cryptic): 2008
Dark & Light (NPCube): 2008
Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising (Perpetual Entertainment): 2008
Stargate Worlds (Cheyenne Mountain/FireSky): 2010
The Agency (Sony): 2011

Studios/Companies Closed:

Westwood Studios: 2004
Wolfpack Studios: 2004
Nevrax: 2006
Perpetual Entertainment: 2008
NPCube: 2008
Destination Games: 2009
Flagship: 2010
Sparkplay: 2010
Realtime Worlds: 2010

Facebook killed this.

The little reminder that pops up every day to tell you which of your friends are having a birthday (or will have one soon) means that nobody actually remembers anyone’s birthday any more. When you see a friend’s birthday notice, you can go to their wall and see 90 gazillion “Happy Birthday!” wall posts.

There are so many, and from so many random people, that they have been rendered meaningless.

Nobody actually remembered anything. Oftentimes, the people posting happy birthday messages barely even know the person they are posting about. They might just be Farmville friends someone picked up in order to unlock more features.

There are tons of huge benefits from a site like Facebook. Overall, I think it is a titanic achievement and a marvelous tool. But we have lost some things too – not just privacy. We’ve lost the good feeling we get when someone remembers our birthday, or the joy of remembering someone ELSE’S birthday and making them feel special just by the remembrance.