Wednesday, November 27, 2013

You're not important

I was reading an article the other day by Indie Gamer Chick, where she talked about doing a kickstarter correctly.  Well, mainly it was a list of what not to do.  One in particular was to not set a really high reward for people to come out and meet you.  After seeing some ridiculous high costs for being able to meet the developer, she had the following to say.

You would be lucky to have someone eat lunch with you and pick up the check, let alone get $10,000, or $1,000, or even $100.  If the reward involves anyone flying out to meet you, save it.  I don’t know who you are, but I assure you, you’re not worth it.

This made me remember something that happened at Indie Game Night a while back.  I was walking down the halls when I met up with a large group all heading to Indie Game Night, but weren't quite sure which room it was in.  I offered to guide them and asked if they all happened to take the same bus or something.  They chuckled and said it was something like that.  Then they told me they were Triple Slash Studios.  I wracked my brain, but couldn't think of who they were.  When we got into the room I googled them and realized that they were the group that made Magnetic by Nature.  I'd read a positive review about that in the last week and was somewhat familiar with the game.  If they had introduced themselves as the team that made Magnetic by Nature, I would have had some idea of who they were, and had something more to talk about.

I'll admit that I made a similar mistake on March to the Moon.  One of the testers mentioned that they didn't like it when a company put the company name first in the installer, but since I was allowing them to set their own path it was probably okay.  But really, me setting the default installation path to be "Califer Games/March to the Moon" was a BAD idea.  Say someone bought March to the Moon and left it at the default install path.  Later on they want to mod it, but they can't find March to the Moon anywhere.  I know that I'll look around in my folders and wonder what on earth they're holding.  Gaslamp Games?  Who's that?  Oh, this is the Dungeons of Dredmore folder.  NIGORO?  I don't think I have a game called NIGORO.  Oh, it's La-Mulana.

Gaming news outlets have it figured out.  If they do mention the company name, they'll usually clarify it by adding in a "makers of _____".  Again, it's not the developers that are really important.  If you're doing things right, many more people will play the game and have a good experience with it than will ever meet you and have any real experience with you.  Put the game first.  If it does well, you can make things easier by declaring that you are the developer that made "Awesome Game 1".

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