Hello, I am right now building up a promotion website for independend developers. Actually the core is a download site, but I want to add more. From the discussions in the past I thought that such a site would be welcome, but I got not very much feedback from the developers I emailed. Is there no interest from your part in such a site? What should such a site offer? You can find the URL to my site in the announcement forum at GameDev. Take care, Jester101

We'll, my biggest complaint is that it's pretty difficult for a game developer to impartially run a game download site. In fact, it appears you've already proven that. It appears as if you have an agenda behind the site, and that would be to promote your own games (and your friends' games). Is it any coincidence that the "top favorite" game is Smugglers 2? Or that Smugglers 2, Coffee-break: Star Trader, and TV Manager were all favorites with top listing in the Strategy & War games category? Or that Dexterity Software has Dweep as a "sponsored listing" (which, according to your site, is supposed to be for sites that drive a lot of traffic to your site) despite the fact that (as far as I can tell) they dont have any links back to your site? I can only assume that Midnight Synergy is also a friend of yours in some way (since they have the other sponsored listing).

I'm not trying to pass judgement on what you are doing, just calling it how I see it. As someone who knows you, what your games are, and (to some small degree) who your friends are, it kinda leaves a bitter taste to see you/your games/your friends get preferential treatment on the site. It would make me question some things about listing on your site. If I dont drive enough traffic to you or work out a special promotion with you, will you rate my games lower than those who do? Sometimes no promotion is better than bad promotion, and if I felt that my games were going to be rated down in favor of games from preferred developers, I might not want to take part.

Of course, this might all just be because the site is just starting up, and you are forcing certain games/companies into preferred positions just to demonstrate the different features of the site. But like I said, it just kinda leaves a bitter taste.

That said, when I finish up my game next month, I would consider listing with you (so please dont take this as a bashing, I wouldn't to have the only game with a 1 star rating ). Another suggestion: looking at the ad banners you make available, they seem to look quite busy.

Ron Frazier
Kronos Software
www.kronos-software.com
Miko & Molly - Coming July 2002

[edited by - LordKronos on June 28, 2002 7:56:36 AM]

I think there might be some interest among independent game developers that are just getting started and need some help promoting their shiny new games. You could have some basic tips for marketing and such, and improving sales. The problem (and lack of interest here) is that there aren''t alot of people at gamedev.net that have finished game products to sell! There are still alot of beginners that are trying to learn DirectX, and don''t have any realistic goals for making/selling a finished game. Maybe you could get more attention posting at the www.regnow.com Discussion Area

I found your www.downloadpal.com site yesterday, by coindicence, and the reason I didn''t submit my game was that I didn''t want to stick a banner on my page. Maybe if I just stuck it on a links page that would work, but otherwise I''d rather not. I have to second LordKronos about your own games getting the ''favorites'' treatment on the site. I''m sure you are allready getting plenty of sales on your own games if you are trying to make a site like this

- Chris
www.toastsoft.com

Good points....

Well the main thing that threw me off was the site design...While its good, its abit confusing (not intuitive, especially with the alternating colors of the genre links)
I still plan on submitting a title there, but these are all good points that should be addressed.

Alex
weaponstudios.com

Hello,

thank you for all your replies. It proves that I was right to openly put this to discussion. Let me address these points.

Sorry this is gonna be huge, but there are a lot of complaints also.

1. MAINLY PROMOTING MY OWN GAMES?
---------------------------------
I start with the really biggest complaint: Lord Kronos says that I mainly promote my own games.
Please notice that I have a big banner for downloadpal at each of my companies websites (at the bottom): www.nbsd.de
Additionally I pay for the webspace and the traffic. I designed the site and I am updating the site. And this really costs a lot of time.
Now take a look at Intensity XS: Recharge in the Action category. He sticked to me (and linked back) all the time since I had the (failed) site smugglersfiles.com. So I gave him a favorite listing.
The reason why I gave Dweep a favorite listing was, because I believed that Steve would help me and I did the first step. Now as he hasn't yet linked back or replied, you can be sure that it won't be a favorite listing for long. On the other hand I really believe in the quality of Dweep, so it doesn't hurt me (and the customers) to let the favorite listing stay for a couple of days. But I am disappointed.
Take a look at Aldo Vargas utilities. He said he is gonna add more than one link to my site and if he does you will see that he gets a favorite listing and maybe from time to time the TOP favorite listing.
All other favorite listings are there, because the developer either linked back (I hope he hasn't removed the link now??) or helped me a lot. For example one site submission developer (big company, at least looks like) gave me a free $200 worth copy for testing. Although this is selfish as I am the only one having this copy now, it is going to help to make downloadpal.com registered in 680 000 search engines!!
So all in all I believe that I am not doing anything unfair in the promoting process. Right now everyone who links back to my site gets a favorite listing - in general! I can only have three favorite listings for each category. This means later I might need to drop one favorite listing for another, if this other developer is just driving more traffic or has more links to my site. I need to change the text on the partner site, it is misleading.
Did I convince you?

2. HOW I RATE
-------------
Concerning the rating of the programs. I am simply not able to test all.
That's why I asked for moderators.
However I believe I have enough experience to see what potential a game has from the look and feel. If I am in doubt I check the other download sites, what rating they gave the specified product. Right now I never rated below 3 stars. I doubt that I would add a product that has 1 or 2 stars anyway. That's a very subjective view. And of course I believe that my games are the best. (no I only gave TV Manager and CBST a 4 star rating, because they do not sell that good as Smugglers 2). In the end the unbiased view is how good they sell - but I only know that in the most rare cases.

3. ART
------
Concerning the art and the banners. You are right. Its not really good. I am talking with a professional artist about creating some whiz-bang art...

4. LINK PAGE IS OK
------------------
Its absolutely ok to just put a link on your link page. However I cannot guarantee that you will keep your favorite listing forever then. This is not why I am angry or something, but if everyone else should put big big banners on the frontpage, they would be preferred.
But hey, right now there is no risk that anyone is going to put big big banners on their frontpage, so a link on your link page is enough to get a favorite listing right now.
Oh and a text link is enough too. Check out the partner site. Yesterday I added advice ot how such text links should look like (contain keywords).
I will need to change the partner site though. Again the text is misleading.

The reason I need links is not mainly to get traffic from you. I am targeting 10 000 visitors a day! You cannot reach this goal with this kind of traffic. What you need is a top position in the search engines. And one reason for a good ranking is to have a lot of links from other sites to your sites.

5. ARTICLES
-----------
Ok. I am right now working on a book about shareware marketing. I might add some example chapters to the site. Unfortunately though I want to sell the book, so I cannot already give all chapters away for free.
Any volunteers for writing articles?

6. NOT INTUITIVE SITE DESIGN?
-----------------------------
Last topic for now.
Hmmm. I was sticking to the Yahoo kind of site design. I used the alternate colors to make it more interesting. In my opinion its quite clearly arranged. Maybe I am too easy, because its my own creation. Hmmm.

I did it! I answered everything! Now I am gonna make a break and play GTA 3.
Did I convince you? Maybe some of my "friends" - as Lord Kronos stated it - want to join the discussion now too?



[edited by - Jester101 on June 28, 2002 3:21:07 PM]

[edited by - Jester101 on June 28, 2002 3:22:44 PM]

I''ll address your post a little more thoughly later, for now just 2 quick things.
1)Like I said, I wasnt judging what you were doing, just saying what might go through the mind of someone evalulating your site and which might affect their decision
2) I like the alternating colors, except that the white blocks do just flow into the page. Even if you could just do an off-white/light grey (and make sure it looks good on 8 and 16 bit displays) that would help a great deal. Or find some way to outline it. That column on the right looks good like that (however, just outlining the tables too might not make them stand out from the right column)

Light grey! That''s a good idea. I am gonna try it out!

I believe LordKronos was emphasizing preferential treatment in his original post, as opposed to favouring your own games, which nevertheless poses similar problems by itself. If I misunderstood his post, then let me iterate the problem. I'm not in the habit of pointless flaming and this is certainly NOT my intention. I just want to inform you, hopefully for your benefit, why I decided not to submit our game at this time.

I won't question your strategy as it has its merits, although I believe them to be on a slightly immoral side (unfortunately difficult to find a business that isn't, these days). But I want to explain my perspective on this.

Initially, your method seems to favour the developer instead of the potential buyer. This in itself is a huge turn-off for the casual shareware shopper and it shouldn't take long for them to realize it. I remember being extremelly anal about spending $12 on shareware 15 years ago, so I know how difficult it can be to convince a buyer, especially now. I would never spend money online without extensive research on the store in question, from the accuracy of their ratings to the registered owner of the domain name. A general rule of thumb is: if I think this way, some others do as well.

Now, if one further analyzes your proposition to the developer, one realizes that it only favours developers who are already well established on the web, traffic-wise. So not only are you turning away prospective buyers through potentially false product ratings, but you're eliminating me, a developer dedicated to releasing original top-quality shareware as opposed to more clones. Yamisoft averages 25 visitors a day. It's a ridiculously low count due to our limited resources being spent on product development as opposed to marketing. Therefore, based on your terms, I have very little value to you, when in fact, I have a top-quality product that could keep your visitors returning for more.

Based on the details of your proposition, consider my submission of a hypothetical top-quality game. Due to the low traffic I generate to your site, I would remain at the bottom of your list, add very little value to your site despite the product, receive little traffic from YOUR site, and quite probably receive an inaccurate rating due to your inability to dedicate time to a full evaluation and comparison of my product with the fodder saturating the shareware market.

Furthermore, any buyer seeing a bad rating (any shareware rated lower than top score isn't worth buying in my opinion - there's too much competition) on my product could very likely turn him/her away from my title and possibly future ones as they wouldn't bother visiting our site to see what else we might sell. In the worst case, the whole deal would have been detrimental to the success of my products. In the best case scenario, we would both have gotten a few more clicks.

Anyways, this may be pointless babbling to you if your priority is traffic, not to mention I did exagerate the issue to prove a point, but I hope you at least understand why I, and possibly others who think the same way, may pass on your offer, as appealing as it may seem.

Honestly though, if you were to revise your terms a little, I would certainly consider submitting my games to your site and maybe even helping out a bit. But I would definately want accurate ratings both on my products AND the others, based on quality and fun factor (how can my game get fair treatment if other weekend fodder games are unfairly rated just as high?). Secondly, based on the previous requirement, games should be listed from best to worst, regardless of traffic generated by the developer. I strongly believe that applying these 2 changes would favour BOTH the potential buyer and the developers who are committed to producing solid software.

Just my friendly $0.02, plus taxes, plus interest, minus deductions, plus small-print fees.

Yamisoft Entertainment Inc.


[edited by - Yamisoft on June 28, 2002 7:30:23 PM]

quote: Original post by Yamisoft
I believe LordKronos was emphasizing preferential treatment...
Furthermore, any buyer seeing a bad rating (any shareware rated lower than top score isn''t worth buying in my opinion - there''s too much competition) on my product could very likely turn him/her away from my title and possibly future ones as they wouldn''t bother visiting our site to see what else we might sell. In the worst case, the whole deal would have been detrimental to the success of my products.

You said it so much better, but thats basically what I was getting at when I said "Sometimes no promotion is better than bad promotion". And it could be so much worse than "wouldn''t bother visiting our site". Because of the reciprocal nature of the linking, suppose that a customer comes to my site, starts looking at my game, but before downloading it they find my links page. They go to downloadpal, see my lower rating and think "hmmm, maybe that game isnt so good...I''ll try this one instead".

Granted, its really difficult to find a panacea for this problem. Put them alphabetically, and you get a bunch of loser games name aaaawesome-something-or-other getting top listings. Go by number of downloads and you get a "the rich get richer" type of situation, where it becomes more difficult (but not impossible) for an excellent late-coming contender to break in. If you go by user feedback, you get people spamming the counter. If you require logging in to vote, nobody bothers logging in (except the counter spammers).



Ron Frazier
Kronos Software
www.kronos-software.com
Miko & Molly - Coming July 2002

>1. MAINLY PROMOTING MY OWN GAMES?
Yamisoft's and my previous post sum up my position. It's admirable that you are remembering the person who helped you out so long, and that you are making the effort to do something like this. It's just the conflict of interest that would add another variable to my decision.

>On the other hand I really believe in the quality of Dweep,
Now that is the type of philosophy I like. A good game goes to the top regardless. Now if only it could be done consistantly in such an unbiased manner.

>registered in 680 000 search engines!!
Is there really that many???? Funny, because even if you count download sites as search engines, I rarely use more than 5 or 6.

>2. HOW I RATE
Not sure what you plan is regarding the moderators, but if at all possible, try to have several moderators rate each game (so you dont get that guy that hates puzzle games giving dweep 1 star)

>You cannot reach this goal with this kind of traffic. What
>you need is a top position in the search engines. And one
>reason for a good ranking is to have a lot of links from
>other sites to your sites.
Yes, thats understandable. So, as you say, a simple text link on the links page should suffice.

>Maybe some of my "friends" want to join the discussion now too?
I already joined the discussion. What, you dont consider me your friend?

Jester: As an aside from all of this, where are you located? Your profile always said Germany so I thought that's where you were. Your email and the whois for your domains go along with that. However, I see now that downloadpal mentions Ontario, Canada.

Ron Frazier
Kronos Software
www.kronos-software.com
Miko & Molly - Coming July 2002

[edited by - LordKronos on June 28, 2002 10:20:17 PM]