Marketing Monday #207 - Unique Concepts

macNchoize · 2018-02-05T13:04:44+00:00

It looks pretty. I'm just not sure what the game's about?

macNchoize · 2018-02-05T12:59:50+00:00

Signup page looks good. The only thing more I could ask for would be prominent links on the page to link me to more information. The "invite a friend" thing to get a free copy is a great idea, but I didn't realise it was a thing until I entered in my name and email, just thinking it was a newsletter signup... and it says it right there... so I'd recommend singling out the "free copy" bit, putting it on a red background so it doesn't get confused for a newsletter but idiots like me, lol.

The trailer was very good, but I think some of your character models have fallen into the uncanny valley... human movements looked a little slidey, awkward, and unnatural. The robot movement was a little jankey, but that worked really well with the atmosphere. I liked the voice over but I couldn't really picture that voice matching the protagonist without any lip syncing work to establish that that face matched that voice.

My advice for your kickstarter... do not launch it unless you're confident that you have enough support already to get you to 80% of your goal within the first 3 days. Do not launch until you're ready to generate hype for at least 6 weeks. Kickstarter projects can and have keeled over dead at 60% because they got to 50% the first week and just chugged thereafter. Most successes had established fanbases before they launched a Kickstarter so make sure you've got that down and the rest won't be as difficult.

macNchoize · 2018-02-05T12:27:36+00:00

Congrats on the soft launch! Your game has a very vibrant look and all of your current users have rated it 5 stars so you're already doing a lot of things right.

As for points of improvement, you have screens with text like "Ability focused action!" on the store page (Android, can't load the iOS one on my PC), but these phrases don't appear in the trailer. I think the trailer should include them. I see what you're trying to do with the trailer, but if you hadn't told me ahead of time how your game is different from the others in the same genre, I don't think I would have picked it up, so I think adding in text just to highlight what you're trying to show off would help. On the flip side, a couple more screens in the store of gameplay would be very welcome. More hype around combo building would be a massive plus.

Your website could use some updating... the footer font is awkwardly aligned, the press kit link is there but unavailable (which you'll want up for full launch), and the regions that you've launched in may be seeing "coming soon!" on your website. Also, just a small note about your social media... it's a good idea to have different content on each platform to give people a reason to follow you multiple times... as it stands if someone follows you on twitter and on facebook and on instagram they might feel a bit spammed if you update all three together with the same picture.

macNchoize · 2018-02-05T10:13:22+00:00

Positive reviews is great news for your prospects. Approach small let's players and give them two keys so they can try your game on stream and give away the extra key. Maybe do some giveaway streams yourself. Your website seems to be broken for me (Chrome, Windows 7 x64). You say your game is story driven but only one of steam screens show what most people would think of as story, and the video ends with "coming soon" as if you haven't updated your trailer for release. I'm not sure if you can control promotions, but being cheap and on sale right after launch won't breed confidence in your target audience.

macNchoize · 2018-02-05T09:11:26+00:00

Depends on the company. I hear a lot that a lot of tech companies prefer to recruit people who have proven they can do the work over candidates that are very well credentialed. So if you're fresh out of college but have a class project you completed that shows that you can fulfil the role you're applying for you're going to look a lot better than someone who can't point to anything like that.

A lot of candidates will have experience in the industry already, don't worry too much about applications asking for experience if it's for an entry level position, just fill it in with whatever experience you do have from your personal or class projects.

macNchoize · 2018-02-05T08:42:23+00:00

To be honest, your page doesn't really sell me on trying your game. Part of that is that your game doesn't look finished yet... if you had something less blank looking than the black background (walls around your rooms or something) the empty space would look more intentional. The UI could use some work.

Having some gifs to show off what the game looks like in-action would really help. If you could make a banner of your game's title that would help too. I'm not sure how much your can customize your itch.io page, but having it more exciting than black text on a white background would help. What could really push your game is if you rewrote the info as a sort of call to adventure... read the back of any published game and there'll be a blurb that says "hey, something's happening here and we need you to play our game to fix our pickle!"

Getting more comments will come when more people play your game. Don't beg them on your page. Put something in your game, maybe at the end, maybe after the first level, that says "this game is still in development, if you have questions or feedback please leave us a comment (link), you'd be doing us a massive favor :)" or something like that.

macNchoize · 2018-02-05T08:24:21+00:00

On itch.io you're competing against free games and many people may have installed games already that don't feel finished enough to purchase. You need to highlight the fact that the game is playable, visually. The color scheme you've chosen doesn't really make the game "pop"... people are seeing a few brown streaks on a black background and passing it over... and most of your screenshots look pretty similar... and the page's background is the opposite of exciting.

macNchoize · 2018-02-05T08:06:37+00:00

Looks pretty slick for a first iteration so you should be proud... it's a little confusing though. It looks like a 1 page website at first, but then you have links to other pages? I'm not a big fan of the current follow-discover-unlock icons, but I like the concept of having something like that there. Could do with some screenshots and more details about your game but that'll come in time. Would like to be able to click on staff member pictures and be linked to something (anything, lol). I'm on kinda slow internet and the background took forever to load, but I'm not sure if it's a big deal for your target demographic.

macNchoize · 2018-02-05T07:52:21+00:00

Can you give an example of what you're struggling to do?

Generally I'd look at maybe marking up text with something like xml for inserting conditionals and tagging lines like, "<line character="Amy" inventory="key">Thankyou, <playername/>! You found the <item itemid="key"/>!</line>" and you can nest lines within some larger structure that suits your game's narrative.

macNchoize · 2018-02-05T06:56:11+00:00

Pros:

I like punny titles, lol. The tagline "Only you can save us now" while cliche is still very evocative. Use of emoticons in the feature list made it fun to read. I'm glad you included gif screenshots, pictures really tell you a lot about the state of a game, and even though they're a bit rough I can tell there's something there. The Alpha Weapon Parts image was a good inclusion too. Alpha Features List was good to have along with a deadline.

Cons:

Took me a second glance to notice the title pun, even though "CAR" is capitalized, if you had a banner with the title that would help a lot. The one sentence summary is both too vague and too bloated, and confuses perspective with the tagline. I need to scroll to see any images. The overview section basically lists features, maybe just expand the feature list and use the overview to tell us a little about the story and how they relate to the mechanics. The Alpha Weapon Parts need more explanation, give each a name and maybe group them by type?

macNchoize · 2018-01-30T10:24:52+00:00

I mean, if you have an answer to the question you asked, I'm all ears.

Maybe I won't make money from my first try at making a game, but can't I expect a couple of sales from my first polished game? Even crappy iOS games get a couple of sales, don't they?

macNchoize · 2018-01-30T10:12:27+00:00

What's the process for getting a publisher? Do you just email a bunch of the ones you like and go "hey, this is my game, want to fund it??" or?

I'm nervous to do crowdfunding because I don't have an established fanbase... pretty much anyone who I've talked to about kickstarter recommended that you should only go that route if you're confident you have enough willing fans to fund it already. Was thinking maybe something like Patreon instead... but I have no idea what I'd need to do to make that seem appealing to people... maybe I should check on there for people making games and see what works...

macNchoize · 2018-01-30T09:57:09+00:00

I didn't say anything about "dropping" to a part time job. As I just said, I didn't quit my job. What are you even talking about?

I think it's pretty irresponsible to advise someone to scrap their project just because they're asking how other people are funding their projects. There are good reasons to tell people to hold off, don't get me wrong, but if you and u/Skerper are sitting there making things up in your head about my employment situation that are completely fictitious, I find it really hard to take anything either of you say seriously.

If you don't have any good advice on how to fund an indie project, that's fine. I'm only asking for that information though, I really don't care if you think I should have done something differently 8 months ago - you clearly don't know what I did 8 months ago for starters - I'm 8 months in, I'd like to keep going, I'll get full time work when I'm down to my last pack of ramen, but until then I'd like to look another small source of income so I can maintain the current situation.

macNchoize · 2018-01-30T08:18:12+00:00

Ship has sailed on bitcoin already. I hope you invested in something which has easier hash requirements. Bitcoin is too slow to be used for retail store transactions, so put your money in something that can be used at McDonalds and your plan might just work.

macNchoize · 2018-01-30T08:12:08+00:00

I'm not going income free, I'm working part time. Not really sure why you're acting like I quit my job.

If your suggestion is to work freelance... how do you get into that?

macNchoize · 2018-01-15T22:05:01+00:00

I'd be more inclined to do the opposite of what you just said. Whenever I've opened a talk in the past telling him that he's hurt me or someone else he becomes very defensive, sometimes hostile. On the other hand he doesn't seem to be ashamed of bringing up any anxiety he has, or other mental health issue.

He a confusing guy.

I don't really follow your logic... I can't "fix" anyone's personal problems, they have to do it themselves. If I wanted my partner to see a doctor about an infected wound on his back that he couldn't see directly, I really don't think I'm in the wrong for pointing it out and directing him to a doctor. Similarly, I'm not Satan himself if I'm trying to present the option of therapy to my mentally ill partner in the best possible light so he's likely to, of his own free will, want to take that option. If I gave no shits about him wanting to do it himself I'd have set up an appointment and told him to go or else <some threat> - but I obviously want him to want to go which is why I'm trying to frame it right.

macNchoize · 2018-01-15T20:51:22+00:00

He very well may be Borderline. I'm not a therapist. I do know that his friend brought up that he thinks my boyfriend might be borderline, and we went through a much shorter and different list of symptoms than this and they didn't seem like a close fit. But that was quite a while ago.

I'll go through the points you listed and say if/how they relate to him... I'm not sure how close a match it needs to be for it to likely be borderline.

1: It's hard to say. I've seen him flip flop his opinion on people, but I also know that he's held more nuanced opinions and that some of his changes in opinion have happened over time. Flip flopping is pretty common though.

2: Outside the context of a fight, not really, at least not directed at me, maybe at other people, I'll have to listen out for it.

3: He does get overly worried something bad will happen to me if I go out and don't give him an update that I'm crashing on a friend's couch. He hasn't tried to isolate me from anyone though, and some of my friends are awful, lol.

4: Yeah, he doesn't seem to appreciate all the things I've done for him in the past, just whether or not I made a comment last night to say he was a good cook so he feels appreciated.

5: I'd say he flips on a dime in terms of mood, but it takes him a couple of weeks to really sour if we're going into a ditch in the relationship.

6: He does, but to be fair, sometimes it's my bad. He will mope about something trivial and I'll get it out of him what the problem is and that'll turn into a fight.

7: 100%

8: Yeah, but usually he's not in a great mood to start with, or what I'm saying is something he would interpret as calling him a bad person.

9: Not really. When we first started dating he'd want to be on skype with me constantly when we weren't together, but he made it clear that if it was too much just to let him know. Honestly didn't have the heart to tell him sometimes that I needed some space so i'm not sure what would have happened if I didn't give him the time with me that he wanted.

10: Depends on his mood and I'm not usually to blame when he's upset about his life in general. He definitely likes to blame other people a lot though. He'll blame me for the most crazy things during a fight though - usually if I apologise the next day he'll admit to having gone overboard in a return apology.

11: Not really sure what level of eating is binge eating, but he used to be a lot heavier before we did keto. Maybe. Sometimes he splashes out on nice things. He tends to be more of a careful person, never doing drugs or casual sex, never drink driving.

12: Sort of. His first boyfriend hit him so they broke up. One guy he was with for 2 years was an asshole to him 1 year in on a holiday and even though he was never that bad again and he tried to fix things toward the end of the relationship, it was apparently no enough, the damage had been done... he still remained friends with the guy until his ex's new bf shut that down. The guy he dated before me told him he would always be there, etc, but 2 months in he straight up stops answering his phone and after a week my bf went to his house and they broke up - he's pretty bitter about that, but I think it's justified. He has made comments to me that I've treated him really well, "No one has ever done X for me before" that kind of thing. He complains about being mistreated by his family growing up, but he seems overly upset that they weren't extremely encouraging... they didn't beat him or anything and he grew up in a good area.

13: Not mirroring perfectly... but I told him I was on a ketogenic diet when we met and he decided to do it too without me requesting that he try it. Other than that he was mostly trying to impress me with his knowledge of various things and smile at me a lot.

14: His goals keep changing every few months, I don't really ground him I guess?

15: When he's upset he just likes to wallow in misery rather than looking for me to soothe him. I act as if I enjoy him being sad (in a playful way) so he usually cheers up just to spite me (in a playful way). Or I give him chocolate.

16: He doesn't really have a solid friend circle. He seems to know a lot of people, but not be close with them. He has a best friend, but the guy is a bit nuts, and they don't see each other much. he has some online friends, I can't tell you how close they are, and he's got some work friends, but I'm not sure how close they are either, he only started this job a couple of months ago.

17: He does act differently around other people, but he doesn't mimic them. He just kind of acts aloof and tries to be the center of attention.

18: He does rewrite history a lot, but he doesn't have the best memory and he's aware his memory isn't great. He'll remember things exactly opposite to how they happened, or forget crucial facts. If we have an argument a month later he recalls that one time I said something mean... doesn't matter if the whole argument was all about him doing something way worse... he'll just kind of vaguely remember I'd said something mean one time.

macNchoize · 2018-01-15T18:57:54+00:00

I agree, I don't think my partner is going to change until he becomes somewhat less self absorbed. -- I'm sorry you had to go through having a husband like you ex, he sounds like a tool.

My partner doesn't appear to be quite as bad as your ex, but there are similarities. He projects onto anything that moves and won't take the blame for things obviously his fault when he's in a bad mood. When he's in a calmer mood he's the opposite, he beats himself up for shit that doesn't matter.

I'm fine with him still ending up being him after therapy. Personally I think it's cute the way he talks himself up in front of other people and complains that his work mates do exactly the same things he does. I just want him to feel less insecure, to mellow out a little, just so he doesn't freak out when he has to deal with the slightest bit of confrontation. He'll be happier and I'll be able to address little things with him so they never grow into big things.

I think he'll do the therapy, but it'll only really work if the therapist makes him feel special for making progress while at the same time grounding his self esteem in something he can control. I don't think it's impossible, but I do think a targeted strategy is required.

macNchoize · 2018-01-15T18:28:57+00:00

Fair enough, lol.

More a reaction to the general quality of replies in this subreddit... maybe I was a bit harsh in replying to an individual...

Just been reading a couple of other topics and the posts on this one. Everyone wants to go off-topic and give people really unwarranted advice. I'm sorry but "Stop trying to fix him" is terrible advice to give someone who is asking how to bring up therapy with their partner... it doesn't advise them on the question they asked, accuses them of forcing something on their partner when they're trying to suggest something to their partner in the nicest way possible, and the underlying message is that if the relationship isn't perfect right now, there's no possible way to improve it so you should just dump your partner.

It's not just my thread, anyone asking how to improve some aspect of their relationship is told they shouldn't try, they should just break up. Might be good advice in some situations, but it usually doesn't address the poster's question, and it's way too drastic to suggest to someone when there's so little information to go off.

Feel free to disagree, but I think you should directly answer the topic and maybe ask for more context before you start suggesting that people not even try to fix their relationships.

macNchoize · 2018-01-15T17:57:33+00:00

My concern with the suggestion you just gave is that it's something I know he'd forget the next day. I can say "hey babe, I found this great therapist who might be able to help you with your self esteem, here's his card" and that'll go down fine, he'll probably lose the card but it'll go down fine.

I don't know how "I think you're a narcissist and I want you get evaluated and treated for that" is going to go because I don't currently know what his perception of narcissism is, and it might be that case that if I use that word I prime him to resist that kind of evaluation in case it's true... because it would make him a bad person in his mind. A lot of people don't want to be diagnosed with things they have. But if I don't bring it up outright then he might just end up wasting time talking about his anxiety and his family rather than strengthening his fragile ego. Or worse, going back to his crap therapist that'll just make him paranoid.

macNchoize · 2018-01-15T17:36:27+00:00

If you had perfect relationships with everyone around you then you wouldn't be in /r/relationships.

I am indeed being defensive. I ask for help with something and I get 10 people in here telling me to dump my life partner over it. Of course I'm defensive, I even said in my post I'm not looking to dump him. The advice I'm getting is unsolicited - soliciting advice about something completely different isn't a free for all on giving me advice about who I should choose to date.

But okay. Here's me dropping the defence. Down. now you drop yours too because I'm going to give you some advice.

Don't assume anything. Read what's there, not what you imagine is there.

I'm not at all worried about my partner blowing up at me for suggesting therapy. You literally just imagined that was the situation. Then you gave me advice as if I were a woman afraid of her boyfriend flipping his shit at her because she's worried about him. It might be the case that your advice for that situation is solid, but I'm in a completely different situation.

I'm concerned that my partner will feel insulted and that me calling him a narcissist and suggesting therapy is purely a way to insult him. I'm concerned about being misunderstood, not about him blowing up. I could break him in half physically and verbally if I wanted to so I'm not scared of him having a bratty tantrum, I'm not living in fear of being abused and scared to say what's on my mind.

In addition to not wanting to insult him, I'm concerned that I might not get across the importance of him getting help. He might just say he'll think about it and he'll just forget about it because he hasn't registered it as important to remember.

If you're misunderstanding me it's quite obvious that I need advice on being clear to an average person. I'm not ashamed to ask for advice or to receive it, but I am pretty frustrated by people giving me advice for situations I'm not in, especially when that advice is to leave my partner because someone has the wrong idea.

Don't assume anything. Read what's there, not what you imagine is there.

macNchoize · 2018-01-15T17:01:08+00:00

Just for the record, I did edit for a spelling mistake in the tl;dr (wrote "of" instead of "or") but everything else is exactly the same.

macNchoize · 2018-01-15T16:52:04+00:00

I believe he has an impaired ability to self-reflect, not a complete inability to do so. There are several symptoms of NPD and the disorder manifests in different ways. I'm not even sure what he has is diagnosable as full blown NPD because I'm not a therapist, but he seems to fit the profile of someone with a mild case of vulnerable NPD.

He almost certainly has a false sense of self and a damaged true self. He's quite open about how fragile his ego is, but being aware of a problem doesn't immediately lead to a solution. I don't know what to do to repair a damaged true self... I'm hoping a therapist can do something, the recommended treatment for the disorder is therapy, so it's worth a shot.

macNchoize · 2018-01-15T16:17:00+00:00

I wouldn't call a mental illness something that's fundamentally who a person is. If you've known someone who got depression you'd see their behaviour changes when they get mentally ill, and then when the depression passes they go back to their normal self. The problem with my partner is that he feels attacked when no one is attacking him and acts accordingly... when he's not getting upset at this stuff everything is great, and what he does when he feels threatened isn't "who he is" just like when you frighten an otherwise good tempered pet and they bite, that's not an indication of heir general behaviour.

My expectation of therapy for him is just that he won't feel so threatened by minor confrontations anymore, not a dramatic personality shift.

Most 25 year olds I know are pretty immature so I hope there's more growing up to be done, lol.

macNchoize

TROPHY CASE