Marketing, was Re: Can I make money by writing IF?


28 Nov 1995 21:08:54 GMT

Howdy,

james reese (jreese@leland.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
: The only reason I can see for further IF being produced is a
: love of the genre and a tremendous desire to produce a game of one's
: own. However, without sufficient compensation (monetary and otherwise),
: this will soon die out too.

I agree, self gratification really is the only rewards for IF now. Money
is out of the question. There are too many good "free" games out there.
It's neat to get feed-back about your game. I get a big kick seeing THEATRE
in the top 40 download charts. Thanks guys for voting for it.

: I wrote VERITAS for the love of producing my own piece of IF; with so little
: feedback, and certainly no significant financial recompense, I have given up
: on a sequel, and have decided to channel my efforts into something that
: might be more worthwhile.
: It's an unfortunate state of affairs, but nonetheless reality as I see
: it.

I have to disagree with this. VERITAS may have been considerably more
popular if you had downloaded some instructions. Instead when you get the
game and run it, it has no introduction whatsoever and you find yourself
in the somewhat cliche college dorm.

My advice would be add some introductionary text and re-release the game.
But what a while until the Jigsaw rush has died down otherwise it will be
buried. Marketing and timing of release date are just as important to IF
and it is to the movies.

-- 
Be seeing you,

Brendon Wyber Computer Services Centre, b.wyber@csc.canterbury.ac.nz University of Canterbury, New Zealand.

"Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn."