DevMaster.net's Image Of The Day: Commando Xenidis

**Traveler** · 04-03-2006, 11:04 AM

I think there's definitely a market for shareware. Have a look at the Independent Games Festival entries. Many of those were really cool and have even sold. Some even became big hits like Alien Hominid and Gish.
Granted, at first a glance, these are not your everyday games but when you give them a good look, you'll find that they're are reallly not so special. Alien Hominid, in its basic form a simple horizontal shooter. And Gish, a mere platform game. Sure, they're briliantly adapted to give gamers new gameplay but in essence they're still remakes of old games.

Trick is, like Dirk said, to find an idea that has never been done or thats only been done a few times. Create a game that has been done a thousand times and you'll find that people are going to be less interested. (no offence intended firlefanz)

**Firlefanz** · 04-03-2006, 11:32 AM

That's what I already realized myself now.

**WILL** · 04-03-2006, 01:47 PM

Firle, I think your trouble area may lay in lack of advertizing. Most games don't get enough of it. It can be a troublesomething to manage, but it can do worlds for your game should you be able to afford or have the capability to get your game(s) noticed in a big, flashy and colourful means.

Fortunately adertizing can be approached as creatively as game development it's self. You just have to think outside the box and think big. Then you'll probably get only 10% return on your efforts, but thats usually the going rate with everything, no?

I think if you want to sell more games you'll need to advertize both Magic Storm [size=9px](a rather quiet and mainly unheard of entity to be honest)[/size] and your Xenidis series... Make posters, T-Shirts, banners, a website for the game or Xenidis series it's self. This will help create a fan base for the Xenidis brand and setup for a flow of ideas that may culminate into deticated followers of the storyline. :lol: write a book or short story as a follow-up...

Basically kick some butts and get noticed. If you want people to come to your party, you have to send the invitations.

**AthenaOfDelphi** · 04-03-2006, 01:56 PM

The lack of advertising could be handled quite easily... to a point.

We have an banner system setup for serving banners to our Outer Reaches sites... providing the banners are hosted on your servers, I would have no problem making a banner rotation for PGD. Then peeps who want to put banners in the rotation and who want to serve the ads on their site... let me know.

I mentioned this as one possible approach in the game marketting discussion thread... and to be honest, its a pretty simple, low cost approach to increasing the exposure of your products. All it would take is a bit of cooperation between PGD members. We could all benefit :-)

So, Firle, if this is of interest, mail me (athena at outer hyphen reaches dot com).

Edit:- I can't do anything today... busy with stage 3, but tomorrow would be no problem.