Archive for July, 2009

31 July, 2009 | No comments

Jay Is Games: Link Dump Friday

a href=http://jayisgames.com/archives/2009/07/link_dump_friday_124.phpimg alt=Link Dump Friday src=http://jayisgames.com/images/icon_linkdump.gif align=left width=50 height=50 //a
This week on Link Dump Friday, we give thanks. Thanks to aliens for always trying to steal our cows. Thanks to robots who help us succumb to the beat. Thanks to bunnies with eerily photogenic smiles. And thanks, most of all, to the men, women, and alien hive-minds of the casual gameplay industry for bringing us games and not enslaving our race.

29 July, 2009 | No comments

Game Producer: How To Use Alexa To Find More Places To Get Traffic

pThis is a brief tip on how to use Alexa to get hints on where you might get traffic. Alexa is a free system that compares (inaccurate) traffic amounts to several sites. While it#8217;s inaccurate, it#8217;s still usable./p
pFor example, if I want to get some ideas on where I could try to hunt people who like Dead Wake game, I can type the following url in the browser and get a list:/p
pa href=http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/deadwakegame.comhttp://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/deadwakegame.com/a/p
pOn that page, it says:/p
blockquotepSomething Awful - The Internet Makes You Stupidbr /
www.somethingawful.com//p
pGoldeneye Source - A Half-Life 2 Modificationbr /
www.goldeneyesource.com//p
pGoa.combr /
www.goa.com//p
pGameProducer.netbr /
www.gameproducer.net//p
pDark Thronebr /
www.darkthrone.com//p
pThe community of Dark and Lightbr /
www.darkandlight.com//p
pCronousbr /
www.cronous.com//p
pBetawatcherbr /
www.betawatcher.com//p
p12FootTall - Your Gaming Portal!br /
www.12foottall.com//p/blockquote
pThese related links appear based on this: if many users go directly from site A to site B, the two sites are likely to be related. Basically, people who visit in Dead Wake site, also visit from these sites (More details on Alexa#8217;s page)/p
pFrom these, I can see that there#8217;s several gaming sites to which I can approach and consider advertising, link exchanges, email list renting - or simply participating in their communities and promoting my game./p
bIf you liked this entry, feel free to a href=http://www.gameproducer.netvisit GameProducer.net/a to read more similar articles./b

27 July, 2009 | No comments

Game Producer: About the Insiders Service: (Answer to “Any plans on restarting this?”)

pI#8217;ve been getting some questions about re-opening the game producer Insiders service. Right now I#8217;m still keeping the doors closed to finish things and to finalize the new service improvements. I#8217;ve been asked #8220;when it will be open#8221; and right now I can say that #8220;in 2009#8243; is my best call right now. I don#8217;t have an exact date, but I will be mentioning it as soon as I know it. /p
pThose of you who want to be first to hear about the reopening of the service, please subscribe to the a href=http://www.gameproducer.net/insiders/Insiders waiting list/a. /p
pThose of you who don#8217;t know what the Insiders service is, it#8217;s basically a service for game producers and developers - with close to 100 members right now. Members get access to press release service (which the existing members really enjoy), and to access to various resources about game production. All sort of good stuff to help with the development and sales. Last time the service was open half-a-year ago, and it will be re-opened this year./p
pI will be getting you guys more information about this in the future, so a href=http://www.gameproducer.net/insiders/join the list/a./p
bIf you liked this entry, feel free to a href=http://www.gameproducer.netvisit GameProducer.net/a to read more similar articles./b

24 July, 2009 | No comments

Game Producer: Here’s My Old New Idea On How (Portal) Games Could Be Priced

pSome time ago I posted a blog post with thoughts about a href=http://www.gameproducer.net/2009/07/06/how-could-all-games-be-free-to-play/how games could be free to play/a and the comments and further pondering got me thinking about a new type of system for pricing. I don#8217;t know if it could work, but I think this type of approach could be interesting to try out. /p
pHere#8217;s the idea in a nutshell:/p
ul
liThere would be this Big Game Portal that would have all the games in the world. Well, as many of them as possible anyway.
/li
liMembership for this Big Game Portal would cost $9.95 per month (maybe with a free 30 period trial).
/li
liGames wouldn#8217;t be multiplayer games - instead of one big game (think of World of Warcraft) to play, you could play any games.
/li
liDevelopers would get a cut based on how many people play their games.
/li
/ul
pThe idea is simply to #8220;play all games for $9.95 per month#8221; (or $6.95 or $14.95 per month could be tested as well). For 10 bucks, it could be a fun deal for players. For some games it probably wouldn#8217;t work, but I think for many developers this could work - and it could mean extra revenue for them as well. For portal, well, it depends./p
pI#8217;m thinking that if WoW has like more than 10 million players (just a figure I heard some day), then perhaps we could see 10 million or 100 million players each paying $10, I think there could be interest from developers too (that#8217;s 1 000 million bucks to be shared among the developers#8230; per month - plus some for the portal)./p
pThe games that would be played most would get the most revenues./p
pYour comments #038; thoughts?/p
bIf you liked this entry, feel free to a href=http://www.gameproducer.netvisit GameProducer.net/a to read more similar articles./b

22 July, 2009 | No comments

Game Producer: Twitter Brings Traffic, So It Seems

pToday I spotted that 9.6% of my site traffic comes from a href=http://www.twitter.com/gameproducerTwitter/a. I presume many people use it to track blog posts (instead of RSS). Not sure how many retweets there are, but I#8217;ve seen some guys doing this./p
pI#8217;ve been testing Twitter for month or two, and I kind of have mixed feelings about it./p
pOn the other hand I feel like it#8217;s one bloody big swamp - a time sink iif you want/i. Even the guys who have interesting stuff to say, they seem to also have some unrelated stuff I don#8217;t want to hear about (how strange is that). Of course that#8217;s natural, and it#8217;s pretty easy to skip one unrelated comment. But when the same guys make more #8220;useless tweets#8221; versus #8220;useful tweets#8221;, it#8217;s time to think whether to follow that guy or not. /p
pIt becomes some sort of signal versus noise challenge./p
pAnyway, it seems that Twitter indeed brings traffic./p
pAnd#8230; sometimes there#8217;s something pretty useful too (in fact - something surprisingly fun stuff, since all happens so fast there)./p
pStill haven#8217;t made up my mind about the service#8230; but meanwhile a href=http://www.twitter.com/gameproducerfollow me/a and send me a message there, and I#8217;ll follow you (as long as you have game/business related stuff in English)./p
pWhat#8217;s your thoughts about Twitter now?/p
bIf you liked this entry, feel free to a href=http://www.gameproducer.netvisit GameProducer.net/a to read more similar articles./b

20 July, 2009 | No comments

Game Producer: I’m Back (And Just Spend An Hour Digging Through My Emails)

pI#8217;m back from the holiday trip (was nice to get away from this chair) and will do another trip next week. Today I started going through my emails and spent almost an hour deleting, replying and archiving emails (and there#8217;s still some of them). /p
pThere were important posts and I still need to take some time to go through the rest, but I just started to ponder #8220;is this really how we communicate#8221;? /p
pWith the typical pill spam and whatnot, I also received posts promoting some gears and some guy asking me to partner with him for 6.5 million African something something./p
pIs this how we are forced to operate? /p
pHow much time is the whole world combined spending time deleting spam emails?/p
bIf you liked this entry, feel free to a href=http://www.gameproducer.netvisit GameProducer.net/a to read more similar articles./b

17 July, 2009 | No comments

Game Producer: How Not to Sell…

pI picked up a couple of video cam leaflets from a local store: Sony#8217;s and Canon#8217;s. Sony#8217;s video camera leaflet was praising everything. Full HD. Their cameras. Memsticks. Features. Whatnot. Where ever I looked in the leaflet I felt like they tried to say to me that everything was awesome (at least according to Sony) and that I should buy their stuff. I felt like they want me to buy something fast. Something Sony. The leaflet left me a pretty disappointed feeling after all, since it too techy approach and too pushy way to represent stuff. It looked like they didn#8217;t want to help me find a solution - just itrying to sell/i./p
pWhen I checked Canon#8217;s leaflet, I actually read the whole thing. It was educational: it wasn#8217;t (only) praising their stuff, but was simply saying how different things work - and they were using a language that a average guy from street can understand. They mentioned how different things are suitable for different people and helped me to choose. I was immediately sold to their non-selling approach and got more ideas about what kind of camera could be for me./p
pCan you guess which leaflet is now in the trash can?/p
bIf you liked this entry, feel free to a href=http://www.gameproducer.netvisit GameProducer.net/a to read more similar articles./b

15 July, 2009 | No comments

Game Producer: How Much Time You Spend Tracking Time? (Is It a Good Use of Your Time?)

pI talked with couple of friends of mine who reported that their companies track everything they do. Ranging from pretty much going to toilet to drinking coffee to sitting in meetings to other stuff one does at work, they track everything. /p
pAnd#8230; then they (seemingly) don#8217;t do anything with the numbers (or read them wrong, or give such penalties that people start to lie about numbers which effectively leads to the same thing)./p
pI know some guys like to track their time (and it can be a good thing, maybe), but I#8217;ve always liked to track more about the result side of things. Of course both are important if you want to analyze (it#8217;s important to know how much certain project took resources and compare this with the results), but if you#8217;d need to pick one: pick the results - count the achievements accomplished in certain time for example./p
pSome managers make it a must thing to track everything in micro level. You need to calculate how many hours you put into planning and brainstorming and meetings and coffee drinking and whatnot. Sometimes it starts to puzzle me how much these guys put time into tracking time (maybe some companies actually track time they put in tracking time#8230;)./p
pIf they actually use the numbers, then good#8230; but if they first require everybody in the team to give a detailed numbers of how many hours they spent coding different things, I think they are quite in the wrong track./p
pIf they only ask Joe to report his 151 hours of programming (and do nothing), then things are bad./p
pIf they actually use Joe#8217;s numbers to estimate how much something took time, and what Joe should do (and whether he should do more programming) then we are getting somewhere./p
pAlthough#8230; people work in teams. Team consists of several people. Tracking Joe#8217;s, Tim#8217;s and Eric#8217;s time separately doesn#8217;t necessarily help much. Knowing that these guys spent 308 hours last month to program doesn#8217;t help much either. If they know that these guys managed to finish X number of features in 308 hours can be helpful. You can use it to estimate future features (and their costs) and help make decisions. If on the other hand you #8220;do this stuff anyway#8221; - what#8217;s the point of tracking time?/p
pHow much your team spends in tracking time? Is it really useful? Do you use the numbers for something?/p
bIf you liked this entry, feel free to a href=http://www.gameproducer.netvisit GameProducer.net/a to read more similar articles./b

13 July, 2009 | No comments

Game Producer: Do You Have a Firm Handshake?

pEvery now and then I meet some dude who has a weak handshake. It feels something like a dead fish greeting or something. Not necessarily a totally bad thing, but kind of sends a bit bad image about the guy. Similarly, I occasionally meet some people with a really firm handshake (strangely enough, they are often pretty old folks). /p
pIt gives you a strange feeling when a somebody gives you a lousy handshake, and on the other hand - when you meet somebody (almost) stranger giving a firm handshake you immediately form an opinion about him. A firm handshake gives me a sign about a strong person (businesswise), a weak handshake about a weak person./p
pWhat your handshake tells about you?/p
bIf you liked this entry, feel free to a href=http://www.gameproducer.netvisit GameProducer.net/a to read more similar articles./b

10 July, 2009 | No comments

Game Producer: Take This Test To See If Your Company Is On The Path to Success

pIn many companies, it#8217;s summer holiday time. Here#8217;s one interesting phenomenon to watch: how eagerly are employees wanting to start their holidays? /p
pHopefully this blog post doesn#8217;t make anybody paranoid, but couldn#8217;t it be a bad sign, if all the people in the company #8220;can#8217;t wait to start their holidays#8221;. /p
pIf people really, really are doing what they love and have a job in their dream company - why would they be cheering out loud (and thanking gods) for upcoming holidays? Could this mean that your company has hired the wrong people? Is the work atmosphere bad? /p
pOr#8230; is it just so that people really enjoy working, but they gotta take some time off and get some energy - and cheer for the fact that after holidays, they will be even more motivated to work./p
pThoughts?/p
bIf you liked this entry, feel free to a href=http://www.gameproducer.netvisit GameProducer.net/a to read more similar articles./b

« Next entries