#49003 - Shoxz - Mon Jul 25, 2005 12:14 pm
is this a gba game or DS?
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#49042 - Touchstone - Mon Jul 25, 2005 9:35 pm
I don't want to ruin anyones joy but I have a couple of ideas why the game would not sell. I understand that you guys have put a lot of work into this game and the material have a lot of potential, the problem is that the potential isn't showing in the demo. Oh, by the way, this post is for anyone who are trying to pitch their ideas and not only feedback to your demo. These are problems I've noticed with both companies/projects I've worked on and when receiving other peoples game demos for evaluation.
Primarly I couldn't find a point with this game, as with many other game demos. It was a character walking around in a big world slashing enemies, with very little progress showing. (I played level 2, maybe that's not done yet, but I assumed that was the most complete level since it was pre-selected) After about ten minutes I still didn't feel I had made any progress so I got bored. I didn't find a cooler weapon, I didn't get into a new area with new graphics, the music was the same all along. I did see new enemies though, but they all seemed the same basically but with more HP.
I think the reason why the enemies seemed the same, although they looked very different, is because none of the variants didn't actually require any specific manouvers for me to kill them, I could just walk up to any enemy and slash it. If we look at Castlevania for example they have a variety of enemies based on the same graphics. Take the skeleton-warrior in .. uhm .. one of the later GBA titles. There are at least three enemies that looks almost the same but equire me to attack in three different ways. Either it's the bone-tosser which I have to time my attack so I don't get hit by his bone. Then we have the one that shoots arrows, I have to dodge them to get close enough for a kill, and then theres the dude that electrify the floor so I have to either attack him from behnd, shoot him with a ranged weapon or time a jump just right.
When I create a game prototype, which I have done a couple of times now :) I try to showcase the funniest parts of the game in a very short time period. For example, I did a puzzle game once and for the demo we cramed as much of the different problems from the game into one level and we worked our hardest to make that one level play as fun and look as good as possible and we spent alot of time tweaking and polishing the demo. Because if the demo isn't fun then who are gonna belive that the entire game will be fun? The biggest problem is often to be self-critical. Peronsally, if I've done a demo I often fail to see the problems with the demo, and you need someone to be honest about problems in it. What I'm trying to say is let someone with a good knowledge of games play your demo and tell you what's wrong with.
I don't know what your sales material looked like but if you're pitching the idea of your company developing the game and the publisher is just supervising the production you have to realize it's a VERY risky business for the publisher, even though he at any time can pull the plug. If you're selling games you have to make sure to prove that you can actually make games, not just game engines or concept/design documents.
So when you are pitching your idea, make sure to keep it short and easy to identify the big unique selling points of your game. Generally people are reluctant to read 50 pages design document without any prior knowledge of the concept, and if given a demo, a potential buyer expects to discover the USP's pretty much immediatey and absolutely within 5 minutes game time. (Imagine your self being absolutely bored for five minutes, it's quite a long time)
I'm sorry if I'm being harsh, pleaes don't hate me. All I want to do is help people who are trying to selling their game idea.
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#49125 - Sintax - Tue Jul 26, 2005 6:42 pm
I'm interested in how you pitched the game to publishers. Did it just come down to finding companies that publish GBA games and contacting them?
#49230 - Nessie - Wed Jul 27, 2005 2:42 pm
To be fair, I'm not sure how you can tell someone what they did wrong when you have no idea what they did? So while I'll agree with most of your advice, I don't necessarily agree with your suggestion that there were certain thing that could have been done that we didn't. I'd honestly like to say more in this regard, but see my closing statement for why I won't... ;)
I will say this though, the source of most of the problems was that the funds to drive the development were limited to start with and it didn't take long for things to get to the point where we either had to quit or get someone to help with the funding.
And to be honest, the game wasn't half of what it was supposed to be at that time and I think everyone on the development team was aware of this fact. ...But after showing it to certain people in the game development industry, they suggested it was probably good enough.
We did get some interest from a certain publisher but...
So yes, I'm being extremely vague and this is deliberate....because as soon as I go into any specifics, I run the risk of making someone look bad and it's not really worth it, in my opinion. I already know that there are things I could have done better, so it'll just be easier if I take all of the blame for this not working out. ;)
![[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]](http://www.gbadev.org/demos/ElementsOfDarkness.png){kind=link}