What Games Are: Game Design, Development, Publishing, Marketing and Art

The Perils of Franchise Fatigue [Single Franchise Publishing]

Q: What’s the biggest mistake that a successful studio can make?
A: Walking away from its key franchise.

Q: Why would a studio do that?
A: Because the staff get bored.

Q: Why is it a mistake?
A: Well…

Find Games For Your Players [Marketing]

A post from Nicholas Lovell yesterday on how to market your indie game highlighted three possible approaches: (1) Launch-focused publicity, (2) metric-driven advertising and (3) permission marketing. The third reminded me of a quote by Seth Godin:

Don’t find customers for your products
Find products for your customers

The idea of permission marketing is to build a following by finding a cause that early adopters care about. Then build a platform to share your ideas about that cause, the gift of which gains their permission to talk to them some more. Then gather customers together to form a community and build products that speak to the community’s needs but which also push the envelope of their expectations. So the community will act as your marketing channel to the outside world.

That’s the general idea. Does it work for games?

Getting the Jumps Right [Testing]

In games, like any art, nothing is as it appears, not even something as straightforward as Mario’s jump. What initially seems to be the simplest action in all of gaming is actually fiendishly hard to bring to a finished state. Taking the time to get the basics right marks out a polished game from a typical one.

So the question for your game is, irrespective of budget, time or platform, have you got the jumps right?