I seen many cool and good concepts/games that being develop in Esenthel. I thought maybe a good idea to start a thread to discuss about game publishing/promotion. Question is Do you plan to be publish by 3rd party publisher or go direct/self publishing route.

Digital Publisher/Distributor
I always wonder the role of traditional publisher and what use of them of this digital age. It seem like more games are being sold via digital distribution such as steam, gamestop and as such. Also these platforms would accept better polished indies games and they have been selling the games the thousands if not millions, which many were self published. Therefore I yet to see a better reason to go with publishers unless for funding i think.

Self Publishing
Would you go to this route? For many including our side, this might not be a good options as we would not have the bullet (i.e. money) to do our own promotion, marketing and so on. But yet I seen many indies games such as Frozen Synapse, Dear Ester are on self publishing route but still successfully appeal to mass market.

Whats your thought of this?

Depends all the much more on the need though, paying a download server ensuring that players ain't kept waiting to download the product, lots of projects gather advertisement during development. However placing the product on an already established platform such as steam or impulse etc, covers some basics of advertisement and download is through steam/impulse servers, not sure what publishing rules/requirements steam and impulse etc have for indies.

(03-13-2012 04:30 AM)Zervox Wrote:  not sure what publishing rules/requirements steam and impulse etc have for indies.

Hi I'm new to these forums and plan to lurk a lot more.
I have been developing MMORPGs for a while now and I think that going through a company may be a good thing. I know my products as good as they were still held a small following. My team and I started a brand new MMORPG and I seriously will be looking into impulse and steam. A local company here Stardock has started using Impulse a while back. As a stardock member I have had the chance to see impulse system. At the end of the day if you still make money have a good product do what you can to get the name out there so everyone can enjoy it. This is just my opinion coming from someone who refused to outsource and has paid for it in the past.

(09-28-2012 07:21 AM)ICON Wrote:  

(03-13-2012 04:30 AM)Zervox Wrote:  not sure what publishing rules/requirements steam and impulse etc have for indies.

.... I have been developing MMORPGs for a while now and I think that going through a company may be a good thing. I know my products as good as they were still held a small following. My team and I started a brand new MMORPG and I seriously will be looking into impulse and steam. A local company here Stardock has started using Impulse a while back. As a stardock member I have had the chance to see impulse system. At the end of the day if you still make money have a good product do what you can to get the name out there so everyone can enjoy it. This is just my opinion coming from someone who refused to outsource and has paid for it in the past.

I see... That's sound good. However I was told that if we are to looking to make some serious money (thus serious effort is needed on the game too), you need to get into steam. But I think to get into steam, you need either 1 of the three things. 1st one being that you are super popular developer coming to make it on your own and previously have some relationship with Steam, or 2nd, you work with Publisher (again who has some working relationship with steam or have published game in Steam, or finally (3rd), you and your game are lucky enough to be notice. Now with the Greenlights, you need even more luck to be properly notice unless of course you have some followings and your game suit the taste of the gamer in Steam + some serious marketing effort.

The bad thing I am seeing in Greenlight right now is that some of the comment made by some of the users are downright mean/destructive and could potentially demoralize the developer. I can see a lot of nice indie game made there but some of the comment made are totally uncalled for. But that is something a developer need to handle if they wished to get a chance to be "listed" in Steam. Its a scary place to be right now and it could be more damaging than it is constructive. But then again everything does have pros and cons. Depend how big of risk appetite a developer has.

As for my side, we are making serious changes in the game, and hopefully it would taken seriously as well. But I don't think we are ready to go and do this on our own. We decided to get some 3rd party help (i.e. PR or Publisher). BTW whats does Stardock do? Are they developer or Publisher?

Stardock makes things like windows blinds and desktop X. Basically they are a company who makes visual/Useful tools for the windows experiences.

As for the comments by the users, As a developer you will always have this no matter where you go. A strong developer needs to be able to pick the good and ignore the bad comments. This will only drive themselves crazy trying to be perfect and pleasing everyone. Its like everything we can't make everyone like us so we need to focus on the ones who do. I tend to like darker games. My Darker games have been rejected by the hello kitty kids, I also like to make Pvp games and I get care-bears Join the game and want me to remove the whole pvp system and cry and wine even though they knew it was pvp when they started. I just make the game I wanted to in the start and fine tune it to what the players want in the end. I do have a publishing company that I'm working with, But at the end of the day it's did you make a product people want to play have to play.

(10-01-2012 05:08 PM)ICON Wrote:  Stardock makes things like windows blinds and desktop X. Basically they are a company who makes visual/Useful tools for the windows experiences.

As for the comments by the users, As a developer you will always have this no matter where you go. A strong developer needs to be able to pick the good and ignore the bad comments. This will only drive themselves crazy trying to be perfect and pleasing everyone. Its like everything we can't make everyone like us so we need to focus on the ones who do. I tend to like darker games. My Darker games have been rejected by the hello kitty kids, I also like to make Pvp games and I get care-bears Join the game and want me to remove the whole pvp system and cry and wine even though they knew it was pvp when they started. I just make the game I wanted to in the start and fine tune it to what the players want in the end. I do have a publishing company that I'm working with, But at the end of the day it's did you make a product people want to play have to play.

Yes, you can't please everyone. If you try to please everyone you may end up pleasing no one. I think it all boiled down to the individual developer on how they want their game to be. Thanks for sharing ICON.

Np anytime.