NoIdidnt Posted February 24, 2012 Share Posted February 24, 2012 I only see good things for Xenonauts coming from firaxis advertising at this time because of anticipation and release times. eg. "I wish it wasnt such a long wait for firaxis game to be released. ill look to see what else is going on.-searches [x-com games]- WHOA!! no need to wait--->XENONAUTS<--- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raidsoft Posted February 26, 2012 Share Posted February 26, 2012 I agree that pushing hard on marketing now is a very bad idea, you usually want to start doing that when you have something very substantial to show. There's a time for the marketing push and it's not right now. Let's not forget the strength of "viral" marketing today, publishers tend to market their things through "normal" channels and they are very often inefficient in terms of cost and effectiveness in bringing in new sales. What any small developer should do is try and get the community involved as much as they can possibly do. Get people such as TB to do a "WTF is" of their game, talk to different websites and news outlets to give yourself as much exposure as possible, maybe have a giveaway on reddit where you give away some free copies of the game over a period of a few hours or something as well as answering questions about the game etc... Stuff like this usually have a much bigger and direct affect on sales and exposure of your game. Big publishers are not needed today unless you are going for massive budget games really and definitely better off keeping all the profits for yourself instead of the publisher taking most of it. This means more money able to put back into the game in ways of free content upgrades and patches (this is very appreciated in the gaming community and builds a good fan base that keep coming back) because it's all too common to see games just get "dropped" by a publisher after release besides a few patches that fix critical issues (sometimes not even that!!) as well as getting more games from the same developer in the future. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buzzles Posted February 26, 2012 Share Posted February 26, 2012 I only just spotted this was out *downloads* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
obev0098 Posted February 29, 2012 Share Posted February 29, 2012 I'm really looking forward to playing this game. It really looks amazing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hellstormer Posted February 29, 2012 Share Posted February 29, 2012 Also, the biggest issue is that publishers always work from the basis that your game will be a failure without their involvement and therefore want a correspondingly large slice of the revenue. I see no reason why we can't be as big as Frozen Synapse or Amnesia when we release the game, and therefore giving up a substantial percentage of the revenue with no guarantee of gains doesn't make sense for me. Not to mention it can also make post release support difficult as that work still requires people to be paid but since sales might not be as high publishers have a hard time justifying to their shareholders the expense of a patch (or patches). I personally love business models like this one where the people who are doing the vast majority of the work get the payment they deserve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
windex Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 Wow, we've gotten way off topic here and going into some brown nosing. Stock shares and advertising for pre-orders now? You all talk like its going to be the next Homeworld or Jagged alliance II that people will be playing and modding till time immemorial. We are a long way off from that. Come on supporters,fans, lets get real: The game is not currently playable at v9. It has no AI because what little it had was removed to put in a basic AI...later, which is causing it to crash every time you encounter an alien. Which by the way, how is this particular bug -which totally makes loading this Alpha pointless- and the next update coming along? I'm sorry but I think there has been very little done since 8.0 to get this excited and draw conclusions already. And there has been some kind of a lockup or crash problem in ground combat in every update. Yes it looks like it could be a good, even great game but there is very little to judge it on in the current state it is in, what with no AI and in all intents and purposes really only one battle map. I'm eager to see it be a little more playable and fleshed out where its actually going to not freeze up in the middle of a ground battle and it looks like these new maps and random generated maps are ways off as well. I see the same map every time with the buildings laid out in the same way. I remember people in this forum saying it was already it beta and would be released maybe in the middle of this year. That's right before I pre-ordered and this is just not the case. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NoIdidnt Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 (edited) Wow! you sound like your pissed off about something Windex. brown nosing? How can people brown nose here? and why would they? its been said that the more money that is brought in before beta and release the more content and the better the game will be in the end. my first reaction after hearing that was to try to help with funds AS MUCH AS I COULD! Excited ? ? dont be excited becouse its still in alfa and some things dont work yet? ......hmmm......hmmmm... and more hmmmm..... the excited part comes from it actually looking like someone is FINALLY trying to make a REAL x-com style game, and yes letting the ones who will be playing this game be INVOLVED rite from the start! the game stoping bug you mentioned took me about 3 minutes to fix.-look in the workaround thread- sorry if i seem a bit pissed off about your post. But i am. read my signature and think about it! Edited March 2, 2012 by NoIdidnt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorlom Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 Windex: I'm not sure where you have gotten the idea that the game is in beta stage from? it's still in alpha and the purpose of playing this early is to work out the bugs not to have a fully playable game already. Sorry if you have missunderstood that. Buying it early gives Chris more money to work with and would theoretically result in a better end game. As an added bonus we also get to help flush out the bugs and contribute to the balanceing of the game. And as noididnt said try looking in the workaround sticky thread in the bugg report forum Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
windex Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 Ok, NoIdidnt, I'll check out that workaround you mentioned. But I don't think we should go out of our way to advertise it and have it go public yet. A lot of people are going to be discouraged and even turned away at this point. If they need alpha testers, I think the only way to do that is through word of mouth or suggesting it in the right forums which I'm doing a little of myself. They need to know right off that it is a work in progress in its beginning stages, that it is a bare sketch and will have some game stopping bugs though it shows great potential. Also, I do remember someone saying in the forums and others agreeing that it was in beta and would be released soon maybe as soon as early/mid 2012 and that was probably right before I got in the pre-orders. Sorry Golom, NoIdidnt, guess I'm losing patients. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorlom Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 I agree with alot of what you are saying in the last post windex. I don't know if starting to advertise right now would be a good idea but waiting untill release to advertise is bad as well. You advertise early to build hype and interest in a game before its release. The only diffrence is that this game is available in early versions if you preorder. If you make it clear in the advertisement that the preorders aren't a full/playable game I don't see why advertisement wouldn't work as usual to build hype? (when were you told it was in BETA and by whom? ie when did you preorder?) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gauddlike Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 Every bit of official information on the game states that it is still an alpha and as such not yet complete. I don't think I have come across any threads suggesting that the game is in a release state yet but many have said it is much improved over the early releases which may have misled you into believing that. The game is progressing steadily and once the new GUI and alien AI is in place it will step forward once again. If you are truly disappointed in the experience this alpha build of the game is giving you then I can only suggest walking away from it for a little while and trying again further into development. Once the game hits beta you should see a much more cohesive product. The final stages of beta testing would be where I would expect to be able to play without breaking anything. That of course depends on the alpha testers breaking as much as possible early on so that Goldhawk can make it less fragile. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NoIdidnt Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 I agree with alot of what you are saying in the last post windex. as do i. it just seemed to me that you were ripping up on the people that were trying to overall help out. and i can understand losing patients if you came into this thinking it was near release, but this is just not the case. the xenonauts team are working very hard to get to beta and doing a good job of it. many games go for a month or up to 6 months between updates but if you look back at the update dates for xenonauts its been 2 days,5 days, 7 days, and so on. the time between release of v9 and this next update coming soon was effected badly by some serious problems such as website hack and the AI coder, both of which were taken care of as quickly as possible. my best advice to everyone is to have patience, play each update for a while and help in the forums if you can. it will come! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trigeminal Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 Sorry, but I've seen this a bit too frequently today not to point it out: Patience not patients, thanks. (Not trying to be a jerk, just kind of annoying.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NoIdidnt Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 (edited) lol. sorry i just dont pay any attention to spelling or CAPS or missing letters or , . ' as long as my point gets thru. just noticed i used it both ways. lol but yes i know the diff between patience to wait and patients in a hospital Edited March 3, 2012 by NoIdidnt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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