Thanks for the reply Steve. It''s certianly interesting, and I never really thought about that multiplicative effect. I realize I still have a lot to learn. I read your other post on this thread, the story of how you got to where you are today. Needless to say I was impressed :O Although you seem to have skipped on the part where you learned to market, advertise and sell your games so well. Where and when did you learn? Or are you just a natural at it? :D

As an aside, I looked up some of the names mentioned in one of Steve''s articles and found this site : http://www.abraham.com/ The resources section has alot of good reads, and even some audio interviews. You guys might want to check it out :D

- Chris
www.toastsoft.com

quote: Original post by Udderdude
you seem to have skipped on the part where you learned to market, advertise and sell your games so well. Where and when did you learn? Or are you just a natural at it? :D

I wish I was a natural at marketing/selling, but the story there is just a lot of hard work. The mindset needed to market and sell effectively didn''t come easy to me, but I kept force-feeding myself new material on an almost daily basis. I buy marketing/sales books and tapes written by people who''ve become extremely wealthy applying their ideas in the real world. I ignore books written by Ph.Ds who haven''t become multi-millionaires from applying their ideas.

A few years ago I spent $1000 to buy audio recordings of four of Jay Abraham''s seminars, at a time when $1000 was a lot of money to me. Jay originally charged each attendee $5000 - $25,000 for each of those seminars. He offered a 60-day money-back guarantee for the tapes, and he agreed to charge $500 up front and the other $500 at the end of the first 60 days (and only if you didn''t return the tapes).

I listened to the tapes a little each day, giving myself time to digest and apply the ideas. It took me a full 18 months to listen to all 96 tapes, but I listened to every word and looked for ways to apply the ideas. I was training for the L.A. Marathon back then (which I ran in 2000), so I would listen to the tapes while running. In the first 60 days alone, I made back several times the cost of the tapes by applying the ideas.

I''ve always invested a percentage of my income back into developing my skills. When I was broke, I checked out library books for free. As my income increased, I bought books, then audio programs, and then started going to seminars. I''ve spent more on books, tapes, and seminars than I have on PCs.

So no big secret there ... just investing hundreds of hours in practical education.


Steve Pavlina
Dexterity Software
www.dexterity.com

Wow, men! We almost have onboard everybody who counts int this biz. Wow!

This XOP thinggy has shocked me also. It runs fine on my computers. Well, I have just recently started finishing up my shooter, too. And I also would like to distribute it through a major shareware label.

As I see currently shooters are a very busy segment with lots of very very good competitors, Ixs and Demonstar among them.


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bernie
www.bkgames.com

quote: Original post by bernatk
As I see currently shooters are a very busy segment with lots of very very good competitors, Ixs and Demonstar among them.

Thanks!
Intensity and ReCharge were primarily written because we love to play these types of games. The competition is excellent though... I recently purchased and played the heck out of both Star Monkey and Space Tripper, and enjoyed them both quite a bit.

I think, especially in the shareware market, puzzle games do much better - (as Steve has pointed out, although I noticed that Strayfire is listed on his site - I''m sure I''m not the only one who''ll be very interested in hearing how it turns out). We certainly found that our puzzle/board game Colony has a much higher purchase-to-download ratio than the other games. Alas, we can''t get as many people to download it.



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http://www.midnightsynergy.com

quote: I actually was very curious about XOP (especially since I wrote a space shooter as well), but I could never get the shareware to run on my machine (just black screen). Did you test it on a lot of computers? If the game doesn''t run well on many machines, it might certainly account for the lack of success.

Well, you may have downloaded the ''old'' demo which runs in 512x384. The new version runs in 800x600, so it should be more compatible. Try downloading it again and see if it runs

- Chris
www.toastsoft.com

quote: Original post by Udderdude
Well, you may have downloaded the ''old'' demo which runs in 512x384. The new version runs in 800x600, so it should be more compatible. Try downloading it again and see if it runs

Chris,
just downloaded the new demo. Still doesn''t work on one of my machines (P3-450, Win98SE, ATI Radeon), but it does work on the other (A-1000, WinXP, GeForce2) now. (Very) first impressions: looks like a fun game, with a decent engine. I''m not crazy about the graphics style though... a lot of it (especially backgrounds) is very plain, and almost looks 16-colour at times. This could turn some customers away that won''t even give your game a chance to find out that it''s fun. You might want to look into PovRay (if you haven''t already), it''s a freeware raytracer at www.povray.org, but you obviously have a huge amount of graphics in your game. Reworking them might be more work than its worth.

But this is getting totally off-topic - so I''d better stop.





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http://www.midnightsynergy.com