Take a look at the video below:
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).
You know what’s pretty annoying? Seeing text like “this video isn’t available in your country”. Whose idea was that? Is there a specific reason why I cannot watch some crap in Youtube? (Or Hulu.com for that matter) Is that idea somewhat related to ensuring that money doesn’t travel to wrong region or something.
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.
After hearing the puzz word “social games” (which is a sucky name that pretty much means “games that are played on social platforms such as Facebook” – or crap that you use to spam your friends like somebody put it) I was wondering how come Facebook doesn’t donutize those games.
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 haven’t played many browser based games. I only test some Flash games and forget them right away (there are tons of quality products though). I think Urban Dead has been a browser game that I kept playing for some time… until I forgot it too.
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)?
In the tough school of marketing there’s often mentioned how “target market/audience” and the “potential customer” needs to be thought when creating a (game) product. One “mentor” – sort of speak – I had in the past mentioned how he chose his project by first creating some concepts and then picking the one (Shorthike space simulation game) that had the most market potential. It wasn’t the concept he liked most but he thought it would be most profitable (and of course fun to do as well).
I have been thinking the same way for quite many years now, up until yesterday or so.
Yesterday I was changing diapers for my sweet girl and there was plenty of poo. Earlier (let’s say… close to decades now) I thought that babies are smelly poo factories that eat and sleep a lot. That statement holds true by the way, but something has changed.
I’ve got ownership. It’s my baby. Now I just think the poo is cool thing to wipe off. It doesn’t even smell bad (which is strange since up until this day I’m positive that baby poo smells bad).
By the way, I’m not trying to suggest that my baby is a project, and now way comparing her to a game dev project. I’m comparing the experience I had.
The experience suggests me that if you fell in love with your game project, a strange thing most likely happens: those hideous ugly tasks (whatever they might be in your project) might not seem so ugly any more. In fact, you might even find out that when you are working on the project you truly have ownership and treat it “like your baby” (as I’ve heard some devs mentioning about their products) you’ll go extra mile to get stuff done.
If on the other hand the product is “not yours” and it’s “done for the money” you might translate part of that lack of passion to the product. It might be done well, but something personal might be missing. Something that tells that you love your product.
What’s your experience on this? Have you fell in love with your current or past projects?
I have experience and some clue how much doing 3D stuff costs, and before jumping into 2D world I’m doing a bit of research. Inspired by this fine piece of pixel art. I’m trying to find out how much it could cost to do something like the stuff in the picture. (Scene + some objects + guy with a batt + a 4-5 simple animations for characters, for starters).
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 asked friend of mine who told me that PS3 does not support PS2 games. The reason is – I don’t know – but I’d guess it’s either (1) production costs or (2) marketing thing. Or both. (Or maybe something else)
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 just got informed that Big Fish Games affiliate system is changing. It’s not anymore about “guide a customer them once, get paid for lifetime”.
The new program is a “last to refer” system. Even if other affiliates have referred the same consumer you are referring, if you are the last person to refer the consumer and they buy a game within 90 days, they become your referral and you will earn commissions from all their game purchases for a full year.
The existing affiliates in the top of the food chain are naturally pissed off. BFG has like 60 million consumers in their databases (not sure if I can say this out loud, but just to make sure, if anybody asks you – I didn’t tell this).
I’m fine with all this. I was wondering why I was getting more sales from BFG so it’s fine. Maybe somebody can now “steal” my customers but at least I can steal other customers.
Now… to the slightly shitty thing.
It looks like the *links* might not be working properly. I’m not totally sure, but http://www.bigfishgames.com/?channel=affiliates&identifier=af9a7b34cd50 sure looks different than https://my.bigfishgames.com/index.php?afcode=af9a7b34cd50. If this means that seven trillion developers and their moms need to go through all their files to change codes, it’s bit sucky. Those of you who know how this should be done (such as creating referral link to something like www.gameproducer.net/bfg.php which would then redirect to the correct URL) are fine. The rest of us (who were too lazy to do this in the first place) might need to change the links.
I don’t know. Didn’t see info. Just making a wild guess.
The really good (perhaps) news are that they are finally creating a way to track sales. BFG is giving all sorts of campaign tracking stuff that you can use to see how many people bought this and that, and via which channels.
Me likes these changes.
I’ve been using Aweber to host my newsletter. I got email from one of you subscribers telling me that his email address has been spammed – and that my newsletter is the only place where he has used that email.
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.
Just a quick note for some of you who might be interested in an indie game press distribution. I’m officially opening the thing soonish (couple of guys already sneakily joined a few days ago before I managed to put out any proper info – email me for more info if you are interested).
Now to get some sleep. More info coming later.