Yes, that is the game I was working on in the last 3 months. What it is? is a simulation game that lets you take the control of a small TV Station about to go bankrupt. More info can be found at the official site , and the demo can be downloaded from the following links:
http://www.didone.com/games/TSMTrial.zip [Mac]
http://www.didone.com/games/TSMTrial.exe [Windows]
Beta testing is quite advanced and the final game should be released next week. Let me know what you think in my forums!
Yes, I’m almost finished with my new “effort”. It is yet another kind of game, a simulation/management one, but very far from the sport simulation I’ve been releasing until now.
I don’t want to reveal anything yet, but I’m sure you’ll find it interesting enough to download and try it (and hopefully buy it!). It is quite innovative, and so far I know only 2 games that are related (one dates back to the Amiga age!).
I added so many new interesting gameplay elements to the basic idea, that I think the game will appeal the fan of the management genre. The only hint I want to give, is that my next title has something in common with Cinema Tycoon Gold.
But just something eh… !
I’ve decided to write this small post after so many discussions on indiegamer forums. Of course this is just my personal experience, but I think that you shouldn’t underestimate it…
Case Study: my game “The Goalkeeper”
The game was released in September 2004, and was doing good. Nothing exceptional, but a solid seller. Then, in summer 2005 I found all those articles about piracy, and at same time I discovered the Armadillo protection system.
I decided to implement it in the game. That way, the only way would be either to post the serial (but at same time the real name of the buyer, which is something nobody should do) or make a crack/keygen. Keygen for Armadillo are almost impossible to make (don’t ask me why, but I never saw one), while cracks surely are possible.
So you might say, the piracy problem wasn’t solved. No, you’re wrong, very wrong.
You can’t defeat people that prefer to download a “RazorNFOCrackedGoalkeeperTrial.exe” and install it in their pc at own risk. No, you can’t. But you think that such people would buy your game? NO.
Instead you can “convert” people that may buy it, but first just to be sure they google for “gamename serial” to see if they can get it free. Doing a copy/paste is quite different from downloading an exe from an unknown site, at risk of destroying your whole HD and sending your financial/CC info to some nice guy that will happily steal all your money… 😀
Result: after august 2005, when I applied Armadillo protection, my sales for that game went up by 35% PERMANENTLY. Not just 1-2 month. AT time of writing, after almost 2 years, the increase in sales is still here.
What is the lesson of this story? Fighting hardcore piracy is futile – fighting “casual” piracy can help your business a lot!
Note: I had tried all the various protection schemes before, like fullversion download. I tried that with UBM. Unfortunately, there were a LOT of people complaining that they couldn’t download the complete version from Plimus, and every time I had to put the game online for them to download. This method clearly doesn’t work well if you sell at least 15 copies a month…Â 🙂 Beside that, was trivial for me to find the fullversion on the various bittorrent or rapidshare sites. So fullversion was causing troubles to legit user, and at same time was offering trivial piracy protection.
You may have noticed that my game Magic Stones started to appear on some other sites/portals. They sell it at lower price (around $20). Where’s the catch? the version on other sites beside mine doesn’t feature the Quest Mode and isn’t eligible for future updates. I think that this is well worth the $5 extra price if you buy the game directly from my site, that small difference will help the support of the development of future expansions and updates.
So remember, always buy on Winter Wolves site, if you want to get the full version of Magic Stones, with quest and updates! 🙂
I have been thinking about a cool addition to implement in my game Magic Stones. A sort of campaign mode, different from the quest. Basically you could select a deck of cards, picking from all the avatars present in the game (not just the 4 elements) and play battles in a map, in the style of Heroes of Might & Magic.
But maybe is better to start a complete new game from scratch. I love the “card” feeling of the game, but I believe that a grid in isometric view would offer even more strategic fun. Someone remembers the game “Age of Wonders” ? that was pretty cool.
Also I definitely want to try to implement internet play on my next rpg/strategy game. I don’t have much free time right now, but I’ve tried to play the latest expansion of Lux, Ancient Empires, and is really cool in multiplayer. Yes, definitely need to add multiplayer mode to my future games!