Did anyone else do Ryan Macklin's Flash Game Design Challenge (http://ryanmacklin.com/2011/09/flash-game-design-friday/)?
There's still about a day left (not sure of the official end time) if anyone wants to join in. (I meant to post this earlier when I was reminded about it, but the forums kept crapping out).
Here's my entry, There's A Body In The Trunk! (http://www.kingyak.com/temp/theresabodyinthetrunk.pdf) (PDF format).
there's some of your game still stuck in your head.
perhaps an example game would dislodge it?
Actually, I think expanding it beyond the 500-word limit of the challenge will do the trick.
yeppa. 500 words is pretty limiting, no?
Definitely. Of course it didn't help that I forgot all about the challenge until yesterday afternoon (when my pal Josh posted that he was working on his Moleman game), so I was only able to spend about 4 hours on it from concept to completion. I've already come up with several improvements and changes.
While I'm posting this kind of stuff, here's:
Scene of the Crime (http://www.kingyak.com/downloads.html?func=startdown&id=17) (One-Page Dungeon Contest)
Reaper Madness (http://www.hexgames.com/qags/downloads/file/3-reaper-madness) (24-hour RPG)
Zoe The Zombie Hunter (http://www.fuqitgames.com/) (obviously written by some fuckwit)
For some reason (maybe it's the Discordian references and user names), I get the impression some of you guys ended up submitting 500-word games.
Still need to do some editing and clean-up, but there's the first draft of the "Director's Cut" of my 500-word game (which runs closer to 5,000 words):
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1T1RaNdxOZedyNXOBWCaUiNOS1VjLhUopQ6Uzva3cQHQ/edit?hl=en_US (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1T1RaNdxOZedyNXOBWCaUiNOS1VjLhUopQ6Uzva3cQHQ/edit?hl=en_US)
I totally would have participated if I had found out in time! that's a really fun sounding challenge.
posting in this thread so I can find it later! want to read more of your stuff. :)
That last comment makes me duty-bound as a whore to point out that you can buy lots of stuff I've written at http://www.hexgames.com/ (http://www.hexgames.com/) and read a whole bunch of gaming-related stuff I've written at http://www.deathcookie.com (http://www.deathcookie.com).
Also, most of the non-gaming stuff (and some of the gaming stuff) I do ends up on or linked from my personal site at http://www.kingyak.com (http://www.kingyak.com)
</Shameless Self-Promotion>
You guys publish a lot of cool stuff! I knew QAGS sounded familiar - I've definitely seen you cats at conventions, likely Origins. Well damn good to meet ye!
Good to meet you as well, and it's always great to hear that someone's actually heard of us.
Yeah, we used to go to Origins a lot when more of us lived within a few hours of Columbus, and one or two of the Ohio guys and occasionally some demo team members still run games there every year.
These days, we focus more on GenCon because it's more central (we've got people in Cinci, Toledo, Columbus, Louisville, Nashville, and me in western Kentucky) and usually more fun--it seems like GenCon attracts more of the kind of people who like the kinds of games we do than Origins. The only other con we usually get most of the crew together for is Archon in St. Louis (which is this weekend), but most of us do at least a few local-ish cons a year (and Ian, our guy in Columbus does every damned con in Ohio and occasionally ranges as far as New Jersey).
that's really cool. We've got a few people on this board who are in the con circuit. I only just started making stuff to sell at cons. http://cramul.us/2011/06/not-under-my-roof/
I used to do like 8 cons a year when I was running stuff with NERO LARP.. GenCon and Origins were definitely on the list. I've been away from that for a few years though.
Is "game publisher" your full time gig?
Quote from: Cramulus on September 27, 2011, 02:34:44 PM
that's really cool. We've got a few people on this board who are in the con circuit. I only just started making stuff to sell at cons. http://cramul.us/2011/06/not-under-my-roof/
Looks like a fun game. I'll have to snag a deck when I get a chance.
Quote from: Cramulus on September 27, 2011, 02:34:44 PM
Is "game publisher" your full time gig?
No--completely a part-time thing. Most of our stuff is kind of off-the-wall, so we don't really have the sales to support a full-time operation.
I hear you there. I've worked in the infant LARP industry and was BRIEFLY able to pay the bills with it, but it's hard to make a living off of games. I'm trying to carve myself out a DIY publishing side gig myself. So far I've just got that Not Under My Roof game and a book I edited, but more will come.
If I could ask, how do you market your stuff? Other than conventions, do you do a lot of web advertising? Do you get more sales from cons/demos or from the web?
Most of our advertising is word of mouth (IRL and on the web). One of our guys does a Podcast (Monkeys Took My Jetpack) where they sometimes play QAGS, and that's gotten us some awareness and a few mentions in the podcaster community. And of course we have Facebook pages and Twitter feeds and websites and all that stuff and (as you may have noticed) aren't shy about mentioning our stuff on forums and such we frequent if given the opportunity.
The only "traditional" advertising we regularly do are press releases, banners, and occasionally a featured product ad at drivethru, though we have occasionally done ads in con programs for cons that are willing to trade ads for prize support. We also send (PDF) review copies of each new product to a bunch of reviewers and podcasters, but the vast majority of those either don't get downloaded or get downloaded but never reviewed or mentioned. If we were sending physical product, I doubt the extra sales would be enough to cover the cost of the product and shipping.
When we first started out, we ran a few ads in Knights of the Dinner Table, but didn't really notice much of a sales bump. Since we no longer sell our books through the usual distribution channels (we tried it for a while and it was more trouble than it was worth), print ads would probably pay off even less for us. Since our games are pretty niche, broadcasting isn't really our best marketing strategy--most gamers will take one look at a lot of our products and write them off as either "silly" (not serious, like when you pretend you're an elven wizard) or not shiny enough. We're better off finding the other people on the fringes who like the stuff that we like and letting them know we exist rather than trying to win over your typical D&D player.
The best advice I can give you is to join the Game Publisher's Association (http://www.thegpa.org/). A full membership is, I think, $75 a year and there's a cheaper associate membership option and it's worth every penny just for their mailing list. There's not a lot of traffic on it, but it's full of people who have been doing this a long time, so you can ask just about anything about the industry and somebody will know the answer.