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***UPDATED AFTER 2 YEARS !!!*** The sad story of my start as Android/iOS game developer

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by maximalniq, Aug 22, 2015.

  1. Ony

    Ony

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    I deleted my post because I realized I was responding to the wrong person. And yes you can yawn all you want. Good luck out there. "Sexism"?? You're the one who went there in the first place with point number 2 of your post up there.

    Let's bring the thread back on topic and talk about actual ways someone might get attention with their games, instead of imaginary ways.
     
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  2. Ony

    Ony

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    Yup, sorry I misquoted and attributed to the wrong person. I'm just going to get back to work now.
     
  3. Master-Frog

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    In fairness... I also implied men can do the exact same thing if they are good looking/handsome. In a thread that has repeatedly hit upon the question of "do looks matter" I am surprised that this is surprising to... well, anyone.

    This phenomenon is the same reason why some people use thumbnails of attractive women to get more hits on YouTube. Why some people spend time and energy carefully selecting the photo they use for their profile picture, and some people pay professionals to take their photograph. In all cases, people have realized that first impressions do matter, that appearances matter, that visual appeal matters and so on and so forth and they have decided to simply use this knowledge to their advantage. News companies hire attractive anchors. Fast food companies bring in celebrity spokespersons. And of course, companies like Carl's Jr. and Godaddy spend millions of dollars on those superbowl commericals. Or why Game of War decided to hire Kate Upton to be their official spokesperson... and look, it is currently the #2 top free app on the Android store.

    What we can do is pay a professional artist to draw you an icon that makes your game look a thousand times cooler than the actual gameplay looks.

    By the way check out game of war's icon:

    gameofwaricon.jpg

    THIS IS SPARTAAA!!!!!!

    and the actual gameplay:

    gameofwargameplay.jpg

    This is.... Warcraft 3????

    game_of_war_fire_more gameplay.jpg

    To me this looks like any other PC RTS I have ever seen.

    Game-of-War-Fire-Age-Android-System-Requirements_thumb.jpg

    Note the relative size of the spokesperson, the background artwork and the logo to the actual footage of the game itself...

    They have really done a fantastic job of marketing their game though, of surrounding it will all kinds of positive energy and making you feel like everybody else is playing it.

    megaman 3.jpg

    "Sorry, it's just... you don't look like your profile picture... and you didn't mention that you had a cat."
     
    Last edited: Aug 26, 2015
  4. tedthebug

    tedthebug

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    So, to get lots of downloads it helps to be on the front page/featured on the App Store.
    • To do that your game has to be popular, to be popular it has to have lots of downloads or have an insider at the company that a) likes your game &/or b) has been paid to like your game enough to get it out on the front page.
    • To get downloads people have to like the visual appeal & quick 2 second description on the landing page.
    • To get them on your landing page you need to come up on the search screen. Without the aid of additional search terms that means relying on a game name that a) suits your game & b) has key search words.
    I think my next game is called flappy space zombie cat mine shooter.
     
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  5. tiggus

    tiggus

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    I think when we hit the point that consumers are fed up with sifting through the trash to find the gems something like a premier digital marketplace will emerge with a focus on curation and standards. Theoretically this could/should something like Steam, could be as simple as dividing up the steam store into premier and uncurated with very clear distinctions.

    Just my .02, but seems like this exact conversation is happening more and more so I am convinced it is on it's way. I wouldn't be surprised if Google does the same for their play store out of the blue.
     
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  6. tedthebug

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    Even something as simple as sorting the games & allowing filtering by number of downloads (range) & then average rating within that range.

    New games are ones on the App Store for < 1 month, after that they move into the normal ones by download #'s.

    Doesn't help you get viewed but may gradually help to segregate titles.
     
  7. Master-Frog

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    Also... look at this graph. Look at the green line. This is a greenlight campaign for a game called Nantucket. The first uptick was right after they put it up, then it slowed down for a bit That last jump is when they were covered by Rock, Paper, Shotgun. And presumably because of that, they succeeded in getting their game on Steam.

    That's the power of media coverage in a nutshell.
     
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  8. tedthebug

    tedthebug

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    Does it say something about steam & the quality of games being greenlit now that the average for the top 50 games greenlit is 36% yes? & the game shown only had 75% of viewers care enough to take part in voting, with 54% of those voting yes?
    I wonder what steam green light would be like if they had a compulsory voting system I.e. If you view the page you can't do anything else in steam until you cast a vote.


    What would the app stores be like if all new titles had to be up with a landing page, description & gameplay video that was voted on for 1 week? > 60% yes gets it released otherwise bye bye.
     
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  9. Master-Frog

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    People would stop trying to be indie devs.

    Which means a lot more good games vs. bad games, at least so it would seem.

    But also, the industry that serves the massive aspiring game dev community would be destroyed if the barrier to entry becomes so high nobody can participate...

    So it's a tricky situation.
     
  10. HemiMG

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    Steam would have to change the question for 60% yes votes to be practical, especially in a forced vote situation. The question is "Would you buy this game?" There are a lot of games I wouldn't buy that are worthy of being on Steam. Not every game is everyone's cup of tea. Some people may interpret that question as "Does this game deserve to be on Steam?" and answer accordingly. Although, even if that were the question some people would still answer it from the perspective of whether they personally would buy it or not. This is one reason why user votes aren't particularly a great way to determine what gets through. Professional reviewers know how to be objective, random users don't.

    Of course, all of this is based on the assumption that Steam still cares about quality. I don't think they do. I don't think it is even on their list of priorities. They openly want to make the same mistakes that the mobile markets did with having no barrier to entry. Whether they do a good job of helping users navigate the waters after they've fully opened the floodgates remains to be seen, but my hopes aren't high.
     
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  11. Ony

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    One of my games got covered on Rock Paper Shotgun and seriously... BOOM. It exploded. That was in 2010, and immediately afterwards, earnings from the game shot up from $3k per month to $10K per month, staying at that level (and often above it) for almost three years. The article was actually making fun of the game, because it was a sex game (the article was hilarious, though) and it brought in a TON of traffic. The game is still going strong today, and although earning eventually dropped after a few years, it still makes more money today than it did before that article.

    My latest game got featured in an article last month, and although the site it was on has no where near the level of traffic RPS has, it still brought a nice bump to earnings and started my newest game on an upward climb, where it had otherwise somewhat plateaued.

    Never doubt the power of media coverage.
     
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  12. Master-Frog

    Master-Frog

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    Maybe you could give some tips on getting your game covered?
     
  13. Ony

    Ony

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    1. Learn how to make games. They don't have to be the world's greatest, but good enough for the target audience.
    2. Quality over quantity. A game you write in three days is not generally as powerful as one you write in a year.
    3. Graphics, audio, and game play are all equally important. Don't neglect one because you think it doesn't matter.
    4. Be vocal and talk about your game on Twitter, etc. Also talk about other people's games. Don't be annoying.
    5. Get lucky.
     
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  14. goat

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    Ugh! I've seen that Game of War woman more times from Looney Tunes Dash advertising than Miley is doing something stupidly crass for media attention.

    Music is important, I sometimes played Wolf3D or Crayon Physics to hear the music. Also Looney Tunes Dash has music that fits Looney Tunes cartoons from decades ago. And I can say having finally played a version of Angry Birds (AB 2), I'd only play it again to hear the opening music.
     
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  15. angrypenguin

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    They might not see the in-game graphics, but there's a good chance they've seen logos, colour schemes, graphic design... heck, even the name is important, and if we put aside video game terminology for a moment those things are all a part of the visual appeal of the game. It's not limited to your screenshots.

    Think, what drives people to the page where they see your screenshots? What graphics (logos etc.) from your game do they see before they click that link or go to that store page? (See: sales pipeline, earlier.)
     
    Last edited: Aug 27, 2015
  16. angrypenguin

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    I could be wrong, but I suspect the suggestion was more specific to the current climate of gaming industry and culture towards ladies. For whatever reason an embarrassingly huge and loud portion of our culture sits somewhere between "unsure how to deal with" and "openly hostile towards" women. As far as I'm concerned, if any ladies somehow manage to turn that into positive media attention for themselves and/or their games then more power to them! (Not so much because it'll help them personally or their games specifically, but because I'd like our culture to be more open and accepting and encouraging and good news stories are a part of that.)
     
  17. Master-Frog

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    It's a little more complex than that... girls are a relative minority in the gaming scene, it's just something uncommon to see a girl game developer. You're right angrypenguin, there's some hostility out there. I think if you use social media and youtube right as a girl game developer, you can really get a lot of attention. You just have to have an opinion on just about anything and our current climate will do the rest. I just think anything different helps you stand out.

    At this point your chances if you just throw a game out there are pretty grim. If you get media coverage, your chances suddenly become a lot sunnier. So what does media want from you...? I also wasted a lot of my life following politics. So, what media wants more than anything is just this: a story that will attract an audience. That's where we get things like Phil Fish. The story is... everybody kind of hates this guy and he acts like some arrogant rockstar, a gift that keeps on giving they like to call someone like him... so we should run a story on him. Huge article, tons of page hits, etc. So it fuels the fire. His game got super duper ultra promoted in the meantime. Not saying anyone should act like he acted... but, there's a lesson there. If you can give the media a story they can sell, they will run with it. Now me as a pretty average person overall... I don't have a remarkable story. But I think a girl game developer in this climate who speaks her mind would have no trouble selling her story.

    That's just my opinion though.
     
    Last edited: Aug 27, 2015
  18. GarBenjamin

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    Very true. I do get that and definitely think it is all of these things. The graphics, name of the game, the headline of any marketing blurbs, timing, events, luck and so forth.

    On the graphics thing itself, I certainly wouldn't recommend anyone to use my approach. My target market (if I had one which I don't yet but one day I probably will) is the people who are like me in that they really don't care about the graphics. I know it is very hard for people here to believe but there truly are people out there who not only do not care about games having great graphics... they actually enjoy playing games with programmer style graphics. Basically the style of graphics in games we played long ago on machines like the TI-99/4a, C64 and even Amiga when there were still plenty (and early on mainly) lone wolf developers who were not artists that did it all.

    There is no doubt the market is much smaller. That is easy to see on the forums themselves (I mean the other forums where such people go... not these). But actually if you really take a look around it is not that difficult to find people all over the Internet from GameSpot to Kongregate and so forth who have this same basic view. You will find people all over having debates about graphics and you will come across maybe 1 out of 50 or so commenters saying they don't care how a game looks only how it plays. Sometimes they even go on to talk about how they have been spending their time playing some really bad looking games and mention them by name.

    Of course, people's tastes in graphics vary dramatically. When some people say bad graphics they actually mean games that were cutting edge 7 years ago. Others mean poorly drawn. Others mean pixel art. It is all just very subjective.

    The people I expect to play anything I ever make are probably very much like this guy who commented on the Kongregate forums... "As for you children, you need to grow up. Appreciate a game for what it is, and not whether it has the latest graphics. Even I have an interest in Pong, though I was not around when the last generation (relative to me, a 23-year old) played it. I disagree that video games “are graphics,” in the sense presented."

    Like I said though I don't recommend anyone take my route because it is a micro niche market I am sure. Basically the gamers I care about targeting are the ones who really don't give a rats arse about how a game looks only in how it plays. Why? Because I can relate to those people. I understand where those people "are coming from" much better. So it just makes sense that if there is any market for me it is my own kind. :)
     
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  19. Ony

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    Again I'd like to point out that there is a difference between "graphics" and "design". By design I mean visual design. A lot of the points in this thread keep going on the idea of graphics when what they really should be addressing is design. "Good graphics" is entirely subjective. Good design? Not so much.
     
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  20. StarvingIndieDeveloper

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    Exposure by one of the big Youtube channels would be ideal, but: 1) they usually expect you to have the game finished or at least in the beta stage (although some of them have run videos on game engines that were still in the early stage, such as I-Novae's engine for "Infinity"); 2) since they get deluged with thousands of notes, they aren't likely to read my request. I think they usually review games that are requested by a large number of their fans.
     
  21. Master-Frog

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    Enough talk. Show and tell!

    Let's look at colors:

    JustNo.png

    So here's an example of something really interesting... this is a group of 8 colors I chose that don't go well together. There are nearly limitless color palettes that each of these colors can be a part of that looks good... but these colors do not work together.

    This is bad design. It's not minimalist... or putting graphics as secondary importance. This is simply bad. If you make something with these colors, it doesn't matter how much you insist that you're not an artist, that you don't put graphics high on your list of important things, etc... it will still cause people to lose their appetite.



    Now look at this... here are some colors that go well together. Do you see why? Because they are found together, and a lot of people agree that they are nice looking.

    There's science behind it, theory behind it, even. If you don't want to learn it... you can still just grab palettes of the internet for free. It's one of the most basic things, establishing a palette... but yet, it's one of those things that I see overlooked most often. People tend to focus on shape and form more than anything, especially focusing on trying to get things realistic. But color's importance can't be overstated.

    Random color bits:



    A blue plate has been proven to lessen the amount of food people eat.



    Red and yellow encourage appetite and consumption.



    Red is also considered the color of love and passion... so it is used quite frequently and with good effect.

    So hopefully someone reads this post and sees the importance of understanding how powerful color is and that it's not something that you just want to ignore when you are considering your design. Otherwise this can happen:



    When what you really want is:



    '
     
    Last edited: Aug 27, 2015
  22. Teo

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    My checklist:

    3 is number 1, and 5 is number 2.

    1. Gameplay, gfx, audio. This achievement includes automatically quality, knowledge how to do it.
    2. Luck. Period.

    About point 4, I am conservative. Twitter, etc works for viral things, regular stuff hits the dust very fast. I would put this at exposure in general. See below.


    This is true at some degree.
    When you buy a product in a store, you don't really know who made it.

    I would say exposure in general, no matter what channels you use. Anything that helps others to discover your product is good.

    Oh, also don't underestimate the power of ads.
     
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  23. Master-Frog

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    Fair. But what we've been discussing at length is that it's easy for people to put their products in the store, but that doesn't guarantee that any people are going to buy it. It's not about who made it... it's about how to get your product noticed out of all the other products. That requires a little more thought.

    When you go to the store, say Best Buy, you are choosing between maybe a half dozen brands to a dozen brands of product. But do you ever stop to question, is this all the products out there that I have to choose from? No. Because you feel good that Best Buy carries the top brands.

    For a lot of people, it's the same experience with the app stores. They look at the top games, the most popular games, the highest rated games, the newest games and not much else. There are formulas for determining which games to show that can be thought of as the way big box stores decide which products they want to stock their shelves with.

    If you don't make the cut, then it can be almost like you don't exist. :(

    At this stage in this discussion, I think that the focus has become on organic, realistic steps people can take to either prevent their games from "not making the cut" or to somehow achieve upward mobility after their game falls off the proverbial cliff.
     
    Last edited: Aug 27, 2015
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  24. Teo

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    Apps, games flood.. and that's the result. You want to be in top, you need a top game. New games may have a chance if they are "featured" or front page or your ads did the right job, else I don't see how. Remember that top is sales top, not artistic impression top.
     
  25. Master-Frog

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    Top is arbitrary. It can be determined by infinite factors, none of which anybody has direct control over. Even if you spend TONS of money, you might still fail to be on top. You don't need to be on top to be considered successful, though. It's important to keep that in perspective.

    ...from checking the app store, you'll apparently never beat Minecraft: Pocket Edition anyway. :/
     
    Last edited: Aug 27, 2015
  26. Ony

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    I did my best here. Keep in mind I've been doing laundry and my cat had a seizure at my feet and I stopped to comfort her (she's really old and epileptic) while I was working, so it wasn't ideal conditions, haha.

    Not the best looking design in the world (!!) but I figured I'd give it a shot, because I'm a smart ass. Got all of them in there.

     
  27. Master-Frog

    Master-Frog

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    nu uh

    Where's my chum bucket red, my puke yellow? You also have orange as the main color of the text. I don't even have orange in the palette. C'mon. You can do better than this. ;)

    Actually I like this image. It reminds me of some seedy nightclub sign you'd see in Las Vegas. It also vaguely reminds me of a popsicle big stick. This should be on the side of a can of some kind of energy drink.
     
    Last edited: Aug 27, 2015
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  28. Ony

    Ony

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    All the colors are there. You can match them up in Photoshop! Some are harder to find than others.
     
  29. Ony

    Ony

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    You sound like one of my clients (from a long time ago!): "I don't want anything green. No overall green designs."

    So, I do 23 revisions, 23! - one after another, and he keeps saying "hmmm. no."

    And finally, exasperated, I do a design that's almost entirely green: "I LOVE it! Perfect."

    Erk.

    Anyway, you said...
    I got all of the colors in there, plus some additional ones to balance it out. Had you said "If you make something with ONLY these colors" then that would have been a different story. :p
     
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  30. Master-Frog

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    Geez Ony... why didn't you just post a white image. All the colors are there...

    HomerSimpson.png
     
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  31. Master-Frog

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    I reduced the number of colors in your image and sampled the prominent areas:

    nuuh.png

    I see my friend Roy G. Biv has showed up to the party even though he wasn't on the invite list...
     
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  32. Ryiah

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    Next time I need a good logo from random colors I know who to ask!
     
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  33. Ony

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    For anyone struggling with getting their designs to look better, as @anselmo.fresquez pointed out (and I so happily mocked), a harmonious color palette can really make a huge difference in how the graphics look.

    I was thinking earlier of recommending one of my personal favorite books. It's called "Color Index" and it's chock full of interesting color palettes and their associated CMYK and RGB values. Looks like there's a volume 2 out as well, which I didn't know about until now.

    There are also a bunch of web sites with nice palettes, but I love to just plop down on the couch and flip through the pages of books like this. :)
     
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  34. derkoi

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    I didn't read all the replies but in my experience and I'm doing rather well I normally say this.

    Either you make something people want to play or you make them want to play.

    No offence but your games don't look very interesting to me and other people judging by your lack of sales/downloads.

    The key is to find a gap in the market that you can fill or spend a lot of money on advertising your games to make people want them.
     
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  35. Teo

    Teo

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    That's the problem. Everything was made. And a game like TETRIS will not come any time soon. All we do now is remake/remix at different levels.
     
  36. Ryiah

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    Games do not have to be unique in order to fill a gap. Some gaps exist because developers don't want to take a risk. Some exist because the concepts were impractical given past technology. Still others exist because developers failed to recognize the presence of the niche.
     
    Last edited: Aug 27, 2015
  37. tedthebug

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    Actually, I've been trying to convince people in class that we should do a version of Tetris where all the shapes are nude people but no one was interested as they only want to make games that will actually find a publisher (go figure :confused: ), then I searched & found it was already made in about 1995.
     
  38. GarBenjamin

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    Oh yeah you are talking about Color Theory. Yeah I am aware of that. There are lot of sites out there covering art theory. Some of the very first foundational things they go over are colors. The basic Color Wheel at first. And then on from there. Also many sites that generate palettes for website design.

    The thing is though the graphics look fine to me in your bad example which I instantly recognized as a home computer conversion of Altered Beast. It is very hard to critic the graphics in that because the artist(s) were dealing with a fixed palette and other limitations possibly such as only two colors per 8x8 block. That is a big part of the fun of working on retro stuff. You couldn't choose the palette on those old systems It was fixed.

    Check out CGA and know that all PC games had that for graphics for a long time. 4 colors out of 16 total. The Altered Beast looks like possibly a CGA version or a MSX / Spectrum can't think of the dang name at the moment.... style of display. Your Altered Beast kind of represents the look of all games on certain computers of the time. And likely those who owned it will recognize it. It was actually a quite popular computer too.
     
    Last edited: Aug 27, 2015
  39. Master-Frog

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    Once, all film was black and white and had no audio. Once, radio sounded like you were listening through an old metal pipe. Once, the only way to write in type was a typewriter. Once, computers had like 1 audio channel. Once, the rotary dial telephone was all there was.

    And now nobody bothers with this old stuff. It was all very popular at the time. Then the time changed.
     
  40. tedthebug

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    Then it all became cool again & you have to pay big money to buy back what you threw out 30yrs ago
     
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  41. GarBenjamin

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    And that is what I mean. I can see where people are coming from with all of the graphics (design) focus talk. I just think they cannot see past the graphics to the other side. Why are there sites such as WorldofSpectrum and GameOldies? Why are there people making games for the GameBuino or for that matter why did they even make the system to begin with? http://gamebuino.com/

    There is a whole world out there beyond AAA style art focused stuff. Communities of people who are into the stuff. Why do people make low res pixel art games today and why are there large communities centering around retro art? Anyone into it will know the name DawnBringer.And the DawnBringer palette. But why is it so popular in 2015 when there is no need to use the same restrictions as the hardware imposed 30 years ago? Because there are lot of people who like it that is why.

    Think of Unity itself. Most people here love Unity. Yet there was a time when you didn't even know this multi million member community even existed. What I am saying is this same kind of thing goes on with other stuff too. The people here may not know about it but that doesn't mean it does not exist the same way Unity community still existed back when you or whoever did not know about it.

    The world is a huge place much bigger and filled with far more diverse tastes and interests than I think most people realize.
     
    Last edited: Aug 27, 2015
  42. Master-Frog

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    Last I checked nobody is physically stopping anyone from making dated games that look terrible by today's standards. I say go for it. Report back your findings. I doubt you can have a game be carried entirely by retro nostalgia these days, myself... for lots of reasons. But you can try.

    Three frogs are sitting on a log... two of them talk about jumping off and decide to do it. How many frogs sitting on the log? Three... they never did it, they just talked about doing it and decided to do it.

    If you believe so gosh darn strongly that there is a significant market for retro game fans who at the time were keeping up with the cutting edge graphics but somehow never evolved their tastes to modern games, and are secretly longing to go back to those graphics, yet are still plugged in to the current gaming scene... even though there is zero evidence to support this thinking... then make that game. But don't just keep counting all the money you will bring in and telling us we're wrong about graphics and presentation. Demonstrate it. Show the reviews where people lavish praise on terrible graphics and renounce the evils of harmonious color schemes and basic graphic design principles. It sounds like you actually dislike good graphical design, sometimes.
     
    Last edited: Aug 27, 2015
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  43. derkoi

    derkoi

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    Exactly.
     
  44. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

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    I am done debating the graphics things so we can get on to other stuff helping the OP.

    I can agree with the graphics design plays a big part in catching the attention of your target market. I am fine with that and seems universal. What started all of this debate is simply because I am saying let's look at the other things. Don't you think it is silly to look at 3 games and instantly say well they are less popular because of graphics. Nothing more to see here. ??

    What about all of the games that do have great graphics and yet very few downloads?

    How about that list I posted earlier. Choose one of those games that you think has good graphics design and has 1,000 or less downloads. Or just go to the Showcase forum where you will find a ton of games with great graphics design and less than 1,000 and most likely less than 100 downloads.

    Choose one of those so we can rule out the graphics and get on to other stuff.
     
  45. Master-Frog

    Master-Frog

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    Yes, and they have selected a palette as a community. Pixel art is also not retro, anymore, in case you have been paying attention. Pixel art is digital art. Digital art is kind of big right now. Pixel art is not the exclusive domain of old games. People are doing flat design and choosing pixel art the way artists choose watercolor vs. oil paint. There are probably people using these palettes because they look good, they offer a range of solutions for shadows and highlites and convey a variety of moods, well. Some palettes just work better for certain applications than others. 32 well chosen colors that look good together and have been used in a ton of different games... actually I am probably going to grab that and try it out myself now.

    But how does this prove that visual design isn't important? You're referring to a community obsessed with the placement of individual pixels and the precise selection of colors... pixel art is an obsession with color and form.
     
  46. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

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    I am not saying it is not important. Lol And have said the opposite several times now. In fact, I just said in my last post "graphic design plays a big part in catching the attention of your target market".

    I am trying to get on past the graphics discussion to other stuff. Sometimees it seems like some people here think there is no other stuff only graphics. It seems to be the thing focused on the most and like in this thread we get stuck on it and seemingly unable to move past it.

    You graphics design experts can choose a game. Find one in the list I posted earlier in the thread or go to the Showcase forum and find one that has good graphics design. AND 1,000 or less downloads.

    If one of you does that then we can rule out graphics design as the deciding factor, right?
     
  47. Master-Frog

    Master-Frog

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    But we can't do that... we will never be able to simply make graphics not matter. They will always be part of the equation.

    It's just the first thing that people notice, so we have to get it right if we want people to appreciate the rest of our hard work. And people insisting that good visuals don't matter that much... this isn't helping anybody. It's just an opinion that is unsupported by the evidence. And it is misleading. Every company has artists. They pay these people for a reason. We are not going to conclude this discussion with "graphics don't matter, so what else could it be????". Because that's untrue. That's wrong. They matter and they will matter as long as humans have eyes.

    So... if we were to move on, we would say "okay, graphical design/ visuals / impressions matter.... moving on" not the opposite.

    You're engaging in a logical gymnastics routine. If you can find one good looking game that failed, and one ugly game that succeeded... to you that is proof positive that we have all wasted our time studying art and design. When the vast majority of well performing games look great, and the vast majority of poorly performing games look amateurish... to you, this is invalid thinking, because beauty is in the eye of the beholder and there is no actual good / bad graphics it's all just opinions, etc.

    "Sometimees it seems like some people here think there is no other stuff only graphics. Itseems to be the thing focused on the most and like in this thread we get stuck on it and seemingly unable to move past it."

    We will never move past it as long as we have to keep being dragged back into how the thing we all agree on is wrong, regardless of every single successful developer having already chimed in and agreed. We can't move on as long as this concensus is continually being undermined and challenged.

    So what else can I say? Just have to agree to disagree.
     
    Last edited: Aug 27, 2015
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  48. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

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    Ha ha! That is funny because when I wrote that I thought I wonder if they will take that in a way other than intended.

    What I mean is if you graphics design experts choose the game with good graphics design and less than 1,000 downloads then we can rule out graphics design as being a main factor for that specific game not having more downloads.
     
  49. frosted

    frosted

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    I just really wanted to post my own greenlight stats.



    I didn't get any press coverage anywhere, which is probably why the graph is kind of unusually linear for greenlight. But I had a pretty eye catching icon and I worked for about 2 weeks trying to put together a decent trailer.

    There was no press, no social network, nothing at all.

    I guess the only point is that you don't always need media attention, if there's something about your presentation that manages to capture the gamers eye and imagination then you definitely have a shot.
     
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  50. Master-Frog

    Master-Frog

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    This actually is very encouraging to me, personally. Thanks man.
     
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