There was some caller (old woman), and the astrology-woman explained how that old lady’s future looks like. I wasn’t exactly sure what they did… but apparently it looked like that the scam artist, I mean the astrologist looked some space map and explained how Jupiter’s transition suggested that there will be changes coming next year. According to Uranus and some moons, the lady’s career will bring something new (to which the lady said that she is retired).

It cost like 1,95 euros per minute, and in the very end of the call, the lady asked if they could also tell the future of her grandchildren. To this, the astrology woman pointed out that “they cannot predict the future of other people, only the people who call them”. That’s quite interesting statement, after taking into account that they just predicted to future career changes of this old retired lady… from positions and transitions of planets.

I don’t think this is the approach to take in game development. Especially indie game development where you have the chance to actually care about your customers.

But maybe this will make somebody to think a bit.

(At least you now have a backup plan: if your game isn’t selling, try astrology instead)

P.S. I’m not suggesting that adorable old lady would be an idiot. She sounded like a nice lady. Nothing against her. This blog post was made in more general sense.

I really recommend reading that, thinking a bit, and then coming back here to comment.

Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

For PC you have these fine options:

• GOG – good old games to download in digital format for small price. PC rocks.
• Tons of more places to get indie and AAA games: Direct2Drive, Steam, Gamersgate… and more. I don’t need physical copies for PC, I can buy them in digital format.

The point is… if for example I want pretty much any game (that was published to) PC, I can get it. Consoles don’t have proper digital delivery. Yes, PS3 offers some demos via playstation network and sells some minis and classics and whatnot, but their catalogue is lacking badly. Xbox live is doing a better job in live area but if I understood correctly, you cannot get for example Alan Wake as a digital download. You (most likely) need to get a physical copy. Same with Wii and others. (I didn’t bother to check but I’m sure somebody will correct me, that’s the beauty of the Internet: there’s people who are always ready to prove you wrong.)

Anyway.

Let’s take an example. If I’d want to hunt down old game called The Incredible Hulk for PS3, I can go through their network and different online shops to see that “it’s not manufactured anymore”. Then I can try ebay (or huuto.net, the Finnish alternative) and with some luck might find some seller. Maybe after some painful research and work, at some point I might eventually get the game delivered to my house. But since I don’t live in the US (where ebay is used much more than here), the odds are against me. In short: it will be tough to find that game to my PS3.

Now… I could switch to PC and check for example D2D and after 17 seconds of time, I’d find this. Downloadable version for about ten bucks. I’d be playing in minutes.

That’s the beauty of the beast. The PC beast. And that’s where PC rocks and consoles suck.

I hate playing disc version of games. They make loud noise, I need to switch discs (since I can have only one inside the machine, not two you know), they might not be available for purchase, package delivery takes time. I nowadays buy mainly digital downloads for my PC, and it feels like I’m forced to go to the stone age with consoles.

I do like playing NHL on my fancy PS3, but seriously… it’s 2010 for heavens sake. We might not have teleportation invented just yet, but could I at least get my console games in a digital format.

Please?

This is how the Move controller looks like:

I was browsing for some more info about Move (since I’m planning to get the thing) and saw some old discussion about it. Some gamers were laughing at it’s appearance and said something that the marketers could have listened.

“Sony should have made them gloves.”

I think that’s a brilliant statement. A brilliant idea. Sony’s marketing team took Wii’s controller, improved the tech, and are now bringing a bit funny looking cone saying that “hardcore and casual gamers will all love it”.

Well, maybe. Sony probably has a bit more experience in marketing stuff than I do, but I must say that the current solution looks bit like “we are like Wii except better and try to cater for everybody”.

What if Sony would have made a bold move instead, and play from their strengths?

What if they would have decided to:

• Make the motion controller a glove (or pair of gloves)?
• What if they would have branded it to be the hardcore gamer’s motion controller?

Now they compete with Wii (who already has all those sports games) and Kinect (which has the extra coolness factor of “you don’t need a controller – you are the controller”).

I don’t know if it would sell more this way, but I think Sony could have made a bolder move in this thing – and differentiate them from others.

You know, they could have done something like this that was done 4 years ago (“Wii power glove mod”) – but of course in black…

Move is technically superior in accuracy (from what I’ve read), but I sure would buy a pair of motion gloves more happily (and pay extra) than a stick or two with light ball in one end.

Check the below discussion (click the image)

Basically: I made a comment about corrupted download file (at 11:20). 11 minutes later (11:31) gamersgate replies to me that they want to help me get it working. And a minute later (11:32) they give me idea of redownloading the whole thing. Few minutes later (11:35) I got the thing working.

If customer service is about following people who talk about your game… you certainly are doing something very right.

Kudos Gamersgate.

Basically, I’ve been brainstorming this idea about an indie game portal where people could play any games in the portal for paying $9.99 per month. Gross sales (most of it, let’s say for example 70% to 80% of the Real Money) would be split among developers based on how much people play their games in each month.

Links to more detailed posts part 1, part 2 and part 3.

So, what’s your take in this? Would you submit your game to this indie only games portal?
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

From: Jane ******************
To: press@polycountproductions.com
Subject: Link exchange request with gamerelease.net

Greetings,

My name is Jane ********, SEO Consultant. I’ve greatly enjoyed looking through your site gamerelease.net and I was wondering if you’d be interested in providing a link to the tarot’s website I represent. In exchange, I could offer you a link at:

http://www.**********.com/ with page rank 3

If you are interested, please send me the URL and TITLE in order to list your website. I’ll add your link as soon as possible, within the next 24 hours. When your link is ready, I’ll send you a confirmation email along with the information (TITLE and URL) of my website.

I hope you have a nice day and thank you for your time.

Regards,

Jane **********
Web Marketing Consultant
jane.*******@*******.***

Disclaimer:

PD: I really wouldn’t like this email to be considered as spam, since I’ll try not to contact you again with the same request, but in case you feel annoyed by this kind of requests and want to make sure neither me or anyone from my team contacts you again with a similar petition, you can just register at http://********* That way we’ll add you to our email filters. Thanks for the attention (and sorry if I disturbed you).

I’ll bite:

1. The first thing annoys me is that this is very much a mass sent email to their spam list. If I want to have success in contacting some companies, I really need to craft them a personalized email to get a response.
2. The second thing that annoys me is that they are using press@ in their email, not my personal email. They’ve found it from some website, and put it in their people-to-spam list.
3. Third thing that I think is pretty useless way to approach others is that this is useless. They suggest me link exchange with some Tarot site. I have an indie game press release site. They have a tarot site. Let me repeat: indie press. Tarot site. Like… that’s not going to cut it. (And I don’t do link exchanges there so they are missing the point big time). Bonus point for trying though.
4. Fourth thing is that they put some crap about “URL” – hey you suggested the url already. You are wasting my most precious asset I’ll ever have in my life: my time. But what do you care.
5. Almost last point: “I really wouldn’t like this email to be considered as spam.” I mean for heaven’s sake. It’s not about how you feel. If you plan to suggest something to me then think what I feel. Thinking other people when doing stuff is like a pretty good business practise.
6. Not yet last point: “register at” to “get filtered away”? Like (censored) (censored) you (censored) piece of (censored)!! I don’t “register” any of your spam lists to get away. I shouldn’t be there in the first place. And I don’t want “filter”, I want my freaking email as far as possible from your spam list you spammy spammers. You should kindly ask me if I ever want to be in touch with you. I’m in charge. Not you, you puny spammerers
7. Very last point: “(and sorry if I disturbed you)”. Now, whadda (censored) you mean by “IF”?! If I wasn’t a nice guy, I’d say something that would get censored right now. You know you are spamming me, don’t try to play nice. (It’s much more okay if you really mean it, but if you think you might be disturbing somebody – don’t contact them in the first place, okay?)

Something good turned out from this spam email though. Pretty good business lessons.

Every spam has a silver lining.

Well. Not every spam.

But at least some.

Sometimes.

What if hundred or thousand (or hundred thousand) indies would combine their forces in creating a world that would act as the base for games?
There would be background stories, art, sounds, music, but not gameplay. The theme, art and dozens of characters and so on would be built.

And then… indies could leverage this brand by adding their own gameplay. For example, let’s suppose we’d all agree (after a bunch of fistfights) that we’ll have this steam punk world. Year is 1888, although there’s some technological innovations ranging from limited time manipulation (with non-organic objects) and heavy politics and brink of war between nations. And 1000 other things.

Art would be there, background setting for story would be there. Characters would be there as well.

Now we’d get to the sweet spot. Now indies could jump in and use whatever assets there is and create their own games. The game concept could possibly need some high-level acceptance to ensure that the game is still (at least somewhat) loyal to the world and the stuff would work logically. (For example, there couldn’t suddenly be green zombie monsters from outerspace)

If (when) more art or assets would be needed, the studios could create them by themselves (based on guidelines from existing work) and add to the repository, making it even bigger.

One indie could go and create match-3 game for iPhone – where time manipulation would be done. Another indie would do RTS about the war. Somebody would try hidden object game, and one would create an RPG about politics.

The games could be published and expand the brand, making each game familiar and more popular than what they perhaps could be if done solo.

Could work, don’t you agree?

I just saw UltimatePay/Playspan which is a system for purchasing digital stuff. Saw EA and other companies there. There wasn’t too much information available on their site. Anyone familiar with their system? (I’m just pondering if indies could use it)

What ecommerce providers you use for payment processing? Why? Planned any alternatives?

Android phones were selling faster than iPhones (at least before iPhone 4.0, not sure what’s the newest numbers).

Anyone smelling potential for Android Games (only) App portal? (I am, although I bet there already are portals like that)

Just thinking out loud.

I’ve now heard these both things about subscription: “subscription model won’t work” and “it would work”. I have bit mixed feelings about this, but whenever in doubt I start thinking of World of Warcraft. That game is running on subscription model (sure, it’s old as hell) and there’s other providers (like tv channels) that uses the same model pretty successfully.

So, why it wouldn’t work for indie games?

I can spot a few reasons.

Indie games are small fish
Big fishes are all about casual gaming, or facebook gaming. Saying “indie game” brings me the image of zombie shooter.

Eh.

Well, you get the point. Casual games are different beast and indie games are often some sort of shooters (zombies, aliens…) or something bit different. And this means there’s less players.

I’m wondering that does it make sense to have this “indie portal” or indie games service?

Last Christmas, there sure was tons of developers (as those 70+ comments prove) who wanted to promote their stuff. So my gut feeling is that there would be developers interested in this.

But would there be gamers interested too?

Would I pay $10 per mo to get play any indie game I’d want? That’s a bit biased question since I don’t play much games… but I would guess that even for research purposes that could be useful. It might be fun to check new games, play them a bit and then switch to new indie games.

Comments?

This is the third and last post about this spotify indie games portal thing for at least a few days. Tomorrow and next week will feature something else.

Technical issues?
I really like spotify: you can download the music to your computer (when you have subscribed to the service) and there aren’t too big copy protection issues there. So far I’ve managed to use the thing offline as well. So, naturally I would like that this spotify for indie game portal/service/thing would be as easy to use. No hassle playing.

I would think that probably some sort of “wrapper/launcher” software should be in use (thinking similar to Steam for example). There you could find & launch games and get recommendations and all that stuff. I don’t know what would be good technology for this. I have no doubts that it wouldn’t be possible.

Another alternative could be use of website, and play games in your browser. Games would be packed & played via browser (using a plugin). I’m thinking pjio.com here.

Getting developers in
My gut feeling is that if the system would think developers first and give the major part of the cake to them, I think there could be decent amount of developers & games that would get in the system. I also think promoting the system is to developers is not going to be the major issue.

Payment processing
With some experience on payment processing with developers and affiliates, I think this part of the system could be somewhat tricky. I don’t know how, but the system would definitely need automated tracking for payments, then list for example paypal info for each developer and then somehow (not sure if this is even possible) automatically or (more likely) with as little manual work as possible the payment could be sent monthly to developers. I’m smelling some issues here, but not too big ones.

Free version?
Spotify offers free version, but I’m not sure how well this would work in the gaming industry. Perhaps instead of showing ads, you could play demo versions for free. Not sure if this would be a good solution, but I feel that letting players play totally free, and show (annoying) ads wouldn’t work as well as it does in spotify. I might be wrong.

Anyway, the free/demo version thing should be planned & tested properly. I guess benchmarking competitors (Onlive and others) could help in this.

Getting gamers to join
And then there would be of course the trickiest part: getting gamers to actually buy something. It would require enough games, and then probably tons of promotion to get the ball moving. I’m not sure if this would require outside funding or investor (or kickstarter… or whatnot), but I don’t think is totally impossible thing to first get enuf donuts for promoting the thing, and then eventually get gamers to join. And when more gamers join, the more developers join and the snowball effect starts to kick in.

Other issues
These aren’t the only things to take care. There’s also legal issues/contracts with each party. Then there’s servers and their handling. Different platforms and so on. Probably some more.

Why say these things out loud – shouldn’t I like keep these business secrets hidden!?
Possibly… but then I wouldn’t get the ball moving.

I think this concept is a pretty good itself. But, getting from “idea” to “fully established portal” takes a bit more than writing couple of thoughts on paper.

Like said, I’m thinking out loud.

More thoughts on this? If AAA thing is somewhat covered (in several countries), and possibly more companies joining the movement… I’m pondering how well could indie/casual type of portal solution work.

What do you see as the biggest challenges? How well could this work in your opinion?

Would you be interested?

• “PC gaming is dying”
• “iPhone app market is saturated”
• “Casual games market is too crowded”

I bet you have.

When I start thinking these statements, I feel that indies (those brave solo wolves that travel the snowy mountains without hope to see anything to eat, figuratively speaking) need to pay attention. The indie developers, when they hear “something is dying/crowded/saturated – no point trying going there any more” they know that now it’s the time to consider this market. (If the statement is really true)

Let’s pretend for example that “PC gaming is dying”it’s not, but let’s pretend it would be). Then it would suggest that Big Corporations will stop doing stuff for this platform. Wouldn’t that be a totally good news for indies then? More room for indies. Better start making PC games then eh?

iPhone app market saturated? Well, couldn’t this mean that the clone wars have been started and everybody is doing the same fart applications? I’d say an innovative approach and good marketing could do wonders. Pricing premium for your game (when others are thinking of lowering their game prices due tough competition) might do wonders.

Wherever there’s a dead corpse, vultures will do just fine.

• $12.14
• $36.54
• $60.99
• $60.99
• $12.07 (9.99 eur)
• $18.11 (14.99 eur)
• Free
• $2.52 (2.09 eur)
• $12.07 (9.99 eur)
• $24.15 (19.99 eur)

I marked bold those games that I’ve completed or which are something I’ve spent time playing (Mainly Half-life 2 mods and Garry’s mod is on that list as well). I marked italic those that I purchased for 98% research purposes (Garry’s mod goes in this category too).

As you can see, there’s couple of games in the higher end ($60ish) – games which I nowadays hardly ever touch. Cannot actually remember when I last played either one.

Couple of games (10 to 20 eur) were purchased mainly for research (and I only tested these like few times to see how they work and all that).

And then there’s couple of 10ish eur (bit over $10) games which I’ve actually played recently.

In fact, from this chart it looks to me that I’m willing to spend some money for games (up to $61), but the games I really enjoy fall in the lower end (around $10).

Starting to think of it… somehow that $10 sounds a good price point. Ten bucks is something I can throw in a small game, and I know I don’t necessarily need to spend tons of time (as a slightly busy dad my time has become even more precious…) so those small games actually work quite well. If the price goes to $20 or $30, I might actually not do the purchase. Not sure if it’s because of the price, or whether it also means that I need to spend time playing these games (since I think they probably last longer than those $2 or $12 games)… and of course the barrier to spend $10 is few times smaller than spending $30.

At that price point perhaps I don’t care too much if the game isn’t that fun. And if the game is good, then perhaps I get a nice surprise (as in “oh, this was good! and only ten bucks”). And $10 games I get to buy double more games than with $20.

I know I can waste that $20 by buying couple of subway meals and I can get rid of $20 by buying some shit… but somehow the “ten bucks” feels good.

This doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t pay more (or less) for games that I think are good. It simply reflects that somehow I feel good about that $10 price tag.

I know in this matter we are probably going to get a very twisted poll results from a game developer audience, but let’s ask anyway.

How much you’d like games to cost?

There’s smaller and bigger games and naturally this means there’s variation for how much I want to pay for games. But… let’s keep it simple, let’s take one price tag. You are free to comment your vote.

I’m sitting here in front of my computer and thinking:

“What these “weekly deals” will do for casual games?”

Maybe these and other deals slowly but unsteadily mean that other portals will start doing the same. And when everybody is doing weekly deals, it won’t last long for others to start do weekend deals. And then daily deals.

And soon the expensive $6.99 turns into $5.99. Then $2.99. Soon iPhone games will cost more.

Who knows when eventually casual games also start doing micropayments and “selling extra content” inside games. (For $0.99 to $2.99 per package).

Your thoughts?

It didn’t take long to jtrencsenyi to point out that there’s already 3D realtime shooter in Facebook… which sort of took the carpet under my feet.

The morele of the story, I will admit that yeh, when more games become browser based and work realtime (like, real competitors to Left 4 Dead or whatnot) then there’s chances that FB gaming replaces something. Those Farmville clones will never stop any Fifa ‘10 player to from playing virtual football. (Maybe).

But… when? The Paintball game there uses Unity. So yeh, when there’s decent option for browser based gaming (like Unity does) and when there’s more than 1 realtime game to play there… then there’s some chances that some gaming might go to that direction.

But morally I was right.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.
(Define “playing” as you want, “short testing” is not “playing” in my books)

And by the look of results, everybody and their mom will notice that no game developer really plays these games. Okay, there will be some odd sheeps that play these games but 89%* of the developers will think like whadda heck are these social players thinking. FB games won’t replace their playing habits.

*Fact that will reveal itself after we see some replies on that above poll

I’ve tested some facebook games. Tried Mafia Wars. Tried Farmville. Maybe tried something else I cannot remember. Stopped playing every single of them. They were no fun (to me). Pretty much the only browser based game I’ve ever played more than “just tested” is Urban Dead (among Werewolf) and here I’m slowly getting to my point.

The reason why I think social games will never replace anything is pretty simple. It’s a different market. The people who play WoW or the people who play fast paced games… or strategy games or any anti-social games will keep doing that.

A quick look on Farmville makes it easy. It’s just not my thing. If I want to play a match of let’s say Left 4 Dead, I don’t seek to use facebook. FB games are not realtime. The people who play hardcore games won’t touch FB games. FB gamers hardly will touch hardcore games.

I believe FB and these social games are expanding the market. Maybe some MUDders will join the fun (since you can have those type of games in Facebook) but I think this is mainly about expanding the market, not replacing it.

And… the few people who play FB games are doing this on their work days, so the only thing Facebook games are replacing is “work time” that turns into “playing time”.

But of course I know shit about this whole non anti-social gaming so take my word as a grain of salt.

As always.

Here’s some things on top of my head:

• Creating Facebook applications and benefit from the viral aspect. Those into browser-based games can leverage the viral aspects of FB and can spam their friends. That’s “nice”.
• As a “discussion forum” alternative. Instead of setting up big boards, one can create a game page in facebook and start creating a community around it.
• Then… I can… uh. What else can I do?

How you use Facebook?

Update:
Here’s some more suggestions from you guys:

• Use it to import RSS feed to my Facebook Notes (thanks Jerrac)
• Great networking tool (according to Jake, thanks)
• Events: you might get invited to events via Facebook. (thanks again Jake)

Worked for this advertising copywriter: he spent $6 to get his name in front of the top creative directors in his industry – he bought google ads that were shown when creative directors were googling for their own names. (but don’t go spending your bucks in google/facebook/wherever without realizing that this like might – you know – not work for the job you want).

Country regions. Region codes. DRM.

This region restriction is almost as disturbing as those unskippable copyright notices.

They sure want to give people reasons to start pirating.

Well, they now figured it out.

Basically -if I understood correct – Facebook wants that all Facebooks apps where people buy stuff they ought to use facebook credits. That’s 30% split to Facebook, 70% to the developers.

I wonder what Big Fish Games – who recently has moved into the social games bandwagon – people have to say on this (if this really means that FB is going to take 30% from all transactions).

I think I’ve never paid a cent for these games, but I think I’ve clicked some ads some times.

At some point I played Mafia/Werewolf forum version in various places, but also stopped that.

What’s the best browser based game you’ve ever played? Have you paid for any of them (like purchased in-game items or whatnot)?

I have no clue how much it costs to do pixel art. If you happen to know a pixel artist (or happen to be one!), I’d appreciate if you could give me some insight on this.

I’m asking this because I realized that if PS3 would support PS2 games, then purchasing PS3 would be a no-brainer to me: I would get blu-ray, fancy new games AND all the good classics (which PS2 seems to have).

But since PS3 does not support PS2 games the choice becomes trickier: Now I can consider Xbox 360. And PS2. Or PS3. Or something.

If it is a marketing trick (meaning: they want people to buy newer expensive games), then it sort of is a good, but it’s also eating their own leg. By monopolizing this thing “you can no longer play PS2 games on PS3″ it means that I’m thinking the alternatives as well: Xbox live has pretty decent Arcade place so I’ve heard…

I was puzzled, and contacted Aweber.

They told that they had data compromise during December.

To me this sounds bad. Basically, all of you who have subscribed to my newsletter, might have got your email stolen by some hacker. Basically, my address might have been stolen as well.

And this was due “data compromise”.

I can’t but say that I’m very sorry that this has happened. Aweber is probably one of the world’s largest newsletter provider and I have never had any trouble with them… but this thing is just sad.

Sorry guys from my part. I promised that “Your email address is kept 100% confidential and never given to anyone”. Well, now (possibly) it got stolen. If you have received more spam than usual, then it might be possible (I really don’t know).

Really shitty thing.

I’m now looking at YMLP to switch my newsletter hosting there.

It’s also sad that I wouldn’t have found out about this unless one of you subscribers hadn’t emailed me about this. Now I wanted to say what has happened. And when I asked about this, they mention that there was “data compromise”. Why not say “we got hacked and your email got stolen” - which is true.

Note to self: never use any important emails in newsletter systems.

Sorry from my part. Didn’t saw this coming.

Now to get some sleep. More info coming later.