Roqua said:
Ack. Hmm... less than we would have liked.
Roqua said:
Do you think a big mistake was not enough exposure? Did you harrass other rpg sites into covering your game, or try to?
No, I think our biggest mistake was biting off more than we could chew. We had a fantastic group of advisors who all told us the same thing... start with something smaller. But we were dead set on creating the game we had wanted to make. I mean, after all, that's why we had gone off on our own rather than hopping on board at a game company. So, armed with far less experience than we though, we made the joint decision to take on a monumental project.
I'll discuss the exposure issue a little bit further in the post...
Roqua said:
What do you see as the future of the indie rpg market? How many units do you think AoD will sell with its level of exposure and awarness?
I think that there is a viable business model in developing RPGs independently. It's very tough and requires a lot of grit, but I think it is possible to create a self sustaining business by developing indie games. The fact is, however, developers that create successful games or cultivate 'cult' followings will always have the option of opting for cushier jobs, or to distribute their games through developers. This begs the question, how many folks would actually turn down a great contract to stick to their indie business model? Vogel seems a good example of someone who has. VD will... we would have as well, and very well may rebuild. But I'm not sure that there are many people out there have that kind of grit and commitment towards the creation of good RPGs. To that end I think the indie RPG game development industry will, unfortunately, always remain small and fragmented. Course I could be wrong, but that'd be my guess.
VD has set the standard for marketing indie RPGs as far as I'm concerned. I have no doubt that this title will sell well, and will be the first of many games for him. I certainly hope that he makes the most out of his venture by leveraging any success with proper financing. This way he can get paid to do something he loves and is clearly good at for a long time :D
Roqua said:
What is your take on McCarthy's interview here?
Haven't read it yet
. Will get back to you on that.
Roqua said:
Do you have any advice for people who want to make rpgs without funding, as VD did? Is there any material you recommend for game developers so they can avoid making the mistakes you guys cited?
We made so many mistakes from a software devlepment perspective, I'm not sure where to begin. We jumped right into programming rather than following any type of staged development plan. There was no design doc, no milestones, no feature creep guidelines, no risk analysis, no requirements development, no structured q/a, etc. Essentially we dove right in without knowing what we were getting into, and by the time we knew what we were doing, it was too late to rebuild the foundation.
Books: Anyone who develops any software should read the Software Project Survival Guide by Steve McConnell. I think he also does Code Complete and Rapid Development, neither of which I read, but are supposed to be great.
Roqua said:
What is the guy who isn't making games doing? Is he now a chefe? Why isn't he still making indie games? Too much fame and money to handle? Can't you guys talk your bosses into financing PtD 2?
Haha. Besides me and Ryan, the entire team went back into the video game industry. As for me... well, not sure you'll believe me, but I'm the VP of Internet Marketing at an international fashion company. I had been in the gaming industry all my life, and after Prelude I wasn't too keen on working on other people's ideas. So I took a different path. Ryan is fast becoming a well recognized actor having had leading roles in notable productions including Shakespeare in the Park.
As for raising more money... it might be possible to do again, but I just don't have it in me right now. Dunno if you checked out my article (
http://www.zero-sum.com/press.html), but it's not easy to raise money. The people who financed ZS lost money, and though I am still on very good terms with them, they would not entertain another stab at game development (despite how the market may have changed). Besides, to pull off the kind of financing structure we had before would be near impossible nowadays.
FrancoTAU said:
I think the guys readily admit that they sucked with all the producer/marketing aspect of the business. I too, never heard of PtD until i started coming to this site in 2005 and i'm huge RPG fan.
It wasn't so much that we sucked at marketing as that we (and by 'we' I mean 'I') didn't market. I am currently a marketer by profession, and in hein sight I think that the mistake I made was the product of both my academic background and my exasperation. Indeed, I spent lots of time studying marketing and had a very well developed marketing plan for Prelude. But when the actual product created was so buggy, I was not sure how to market it. We had no budget left, so we were left to rely on word of mouth marketing. Rule#1 in word of mouth marketing is that bad word of mouth spreads 10x as fast as good word of mouth. As a marketer, that left me in an awkward position. I had seen the positngs on the codex and, generally speaking, we were getting reamed. That said, I felt that any effort I expended to market the product would only expedite people's knowledge of our product as being extremely buggy. This would of course harm not only Prelude's potential revenues, but Zero Sum as a brand. So... I opted to wait. I hoped that one day we would come back, fix it up, and put my marketing efforts towards a more stable game.
In hein sight, this was a mistake. I should have gone on a marketing blitz. But at the time my academic logic, feelings of discouragement, and general fatigue led me to not do all that I could have done. Now that we have rerelease I plan on making more of a marketing effort, but only once we fix a few of the most important bugs.
Hope this answers some of your questions. If you have any more, feel free to fire away.
Thanks.
CP
