First off, this (the nanogames website) is the worst website I've ever seen. It loads great, and I was thinking "wow, this could go somewhere," but that's when the cheesy early-nineties rock kicks in, and the obnoxious bleeps ring out when you hover your mouse over a game... travesty. My site sucks but I don't pretend that it's great, lol.
Secondly, does anyone else think the Sturmgart box looks freakishly a lot like the FPS Creator box? Same colors, same basic design, just slightly different?
Anyway, regardless of the few faults I see with their poor attempts at marketing this game, at least it's being sold, and they should be proud of that. And if it's being sold in a major outlet like HMV, more power to them.
This isn't the only game they've apparently made using FPSC. Take a look at A.R.C. Lite on their website... looks an aweful lot like base models to me. I'm guessing their game "Bunker 16" will use base models as well. Someone needs to explain to this studio that if they keep releasing games with the same assets, they'll stop selling said games and ruin their reputation with consumers for the rest of eternity. But hey, trial and error never hurts, they'll learn a thing or two about marketing as they make mistakes... it's a growing thing
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Anyway, good for them. Hopefully this means we'll start seeing more FPSC (and later, FPSC X10) games being sold commercially. I'd love to know how many units they've sold so far and what sort of business model they're using... it's important that FPSC gets a few decent-selling commercial games released to provide it with a ground to stand on
Edit: I didn't see pages 2 & 3
my bad!
Congrats Zaku, but I definitely have a few suggestions if you're willing to hear them:
1. Ditch the music on the website, or find better music. No offense, but it's genuinely bad, the raunchy 90's hair guitar needs to go
And the bleeps as well, otherwise it's a good site (better than mine, for sure), but the music is a serious turn-off
2. Post more information about the games you're producing and have released. Put up screenshots, maybe a video and other information as well. If your publisher told you they'd handle all of your marketing, they were lying to you... marketing begins at home, and you should ALWAYS assume that people will find your game's website long before they find it on a store rack somewhere. And if your publisher won't allow you to do this, then it's time to find a different publisher. I live in New York in the USA... we don't have an HMV store here, and I'm assuming there isn't one anywhere else in the United States either, and that's an enormous market that you should be going after. And they'll more than likely discover your website before they see your game on a store shelf.
3. If you crank out games too fast and you don't mix up your assets ("media") a bit, you'll start driving away customers. I've seen this happen a number of times to a number of studios and never with pleasant results.
4. If you don't have a proper business model yet, now's a great time to get rolling on that. If you don't have one and aren't sure how to get it up and running, feel free to e-mail me and I'll gladly take some time to help you create one
. You don't want your publisher owning your soul! Professionalism should always be your first priority, and without it, profit doesn't matter. But if you already have a model set up, I guess this is just aimed at people who don't know that
hehe.
Anyway, good job here, I'm hoping to see more from your team and hopefully in the future you'll expand to modifying the engine and bringing in original assets. Good luck!
"In an interstellar burst, I'm back to save the universe"
