My game on Indiegogo

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rorschach
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My game on Indiegogo

Post by rorschach »

Hello friends,
I have been working on a naval simulation game for the past one year and decided to put it up on Indiegogo to expand the concept any views on the project would be great and any advise would be greater :D

Regards
---------------------

Released !

Poseidon - Project Dark Sky

Screens:

http://www.daggerproteus.com

Video:



Game Link:
Itch.io https://procyon.itch.io/poseidon-project-dark-sky
Steam http://store.steampowered.com/app/67277 ... _Dark_Sky/
Last edited by rorschach on Tue May 08, 2018 1:22 pm, edited 6 times in total.
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mkultra333
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Re: My game on Indiegogo

Post by mkultra333 »

The indiegogo page looks good. Nice screenshots.
"In theory there is no difference between practice and theory. In practice, there is." - Psychology Textbook.
xrgo
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Re: My game on Indiegogo

Post by xrgo »

yeaahh really nice screenshots!
wish you great success!
try to post a trailer or something to call more attention =)
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rorschach
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Re: My game on Indiegogo

Post by rorschach »

The concept of funding projects/ideas online is not very prevalent in India and 95% of my friends are Indians so the chances of raising funds is minimal no matter how appealing the concept is.
The video that I have in mind is pretty detailed and would do better justice to the project if it was 90% complete, it's currently at 60% completion and I prefer showcasing completed or near completion work which is why I didn't upload a video.
The game will be very detailed and I am known to be obsessive to perfection, my journey from Pathfinder to Odyssey Version 2.0 is evidence of that and the projects are only going to get larger and more complex exponentially with time.

Good news is that I funded the project partially myself and I have raised 2450 USD in 5 months by cashing in on the Stock market taking full advantage of the Chinese yuan devaluation, so I can proceed with phase 1 & 2 of the project.

Thank you for the feedback and I hope to complete the project in early 2017.

Regards

Pro
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Re: My game on Indiegogo

Post by BigMan »

Hey,

looks good. I have a few points of feedback, hope some of them are helpful.

- The look of the game is great - love the moody skylines
- The UI could do with a bit of tidying - the elements are disparately placed at the moment. Connecting them together a bit more as a visual display would do wonders for your screenshots.
- I don-t get enough of a sense of what the moment to moment gameplay is. Is it more strategic or tactical or action based? Is it direct control of one ship or can you order multiple ships. do I take control of guns on the ships. More detail like that would help.
- More detail about your past experience in the games industry would be useful to help - what complex technical stuff have you done? Has it been used in any released titles.

Thanks!
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Re: My game on Indiegogo

Post by BigMan »

There are some good tips about successful indigogo campaigns in this article, by the way. From the CEO himself no less.

https://techcrunch.com/2013/10/29/crowdfunding-tips/
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rorschach
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Re: My game on Indiegogo

Post by rorschach »

BigMan wrote:Hey,

looks good. I have a few points of feedback, hope some of them are helpful.

- The look of the game is great - love the moody skylines
- The UI could do with a bit of tidying - the elements are disparately placed at the moment. Connecting them together a bit more as a visual display would do wonders for your screenshots.
- I don-t get enough of a sense of what the moment to moment gameplay is. Is it more strategic or tactical or action based? Is it direct control of one ship or can you order multiple ships. do I take control of guns on the ships. More detail like that would help.
- More detail about your past experience in the games industry would be useful to help - what complex technical stuff have you done? Has it been used in any released titles.

Thanks!
Well what you saw was just 3 months of work, ETA for Aegis is close to a year and I have a habit of extending the concept on an endless loop so you can very well imagine where it will be a year or two later.
The UI is just for my comfort and nothing close to the final design, I have removed certain elements from the UI as they were taking a little too much space so rest assured it will be legible when complete.
That's precisely the intent no gameplay disclosure, a video would give away too much of detail and I can say that yes you can control/order one or multiple ships and you can control the missile launches, the AI handles the guns, adding a manual mode for the guns wouldn't hurt.
The techniques I use would be too expensive computationally for a game which is precisely why I make tech demos, you may have seen Odyssey Version 2.0 on my blog have a look at Odyssey Version 1.0 which was made with Ogre http://www.ogre3d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=85186 and it runs at a theoretic 6000 physics based calculations per second, I am not sure that would have any use in an actual game, I achieved the same effect which is more of a hack in Odyssey Version 2.0 at more or less zero cost.

Have a great day and thank you for the feedback

P.S. I have deleted the campaign from Indiegogo with a little google fu you can find it on the Unity forums.

Regards

Pro
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rorschach
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Re: My game on Indiegogo

Post by rorschach »

Released !

[youtube]-3dRhtJ45HM[/youtube]

https://procyon.itch.io/poseidon-project-dark-sky
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Re: My game on Indiegogo

Post by insider »

Wow, Impressive :D
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rorschach
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Re: My game on Indiegogo

Post by rorschach »

And we're on Steam
Last edited by rorschach on Fri Sep 08, 2017 4:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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rorschach
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Re: My game on Indiegogo

Post by rorschach »

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EricB
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Re: My game on Indiegogo

Post by EricB »

It's probably none of my business, but I have been following your conversations on the forum page for your game on Steam.

You've got a PR nightmare on your hands. Instead of being confrontational when someone criticizes your game ("ultra-realistic" wording for example, which the posters were correct about) or deleting/banning people, you should be more cordial. Everything you say and do are seen by hundreds of potential customers every day. These things create massive negative PR and resistance to you, your games, and any future games you make. Remember, you have to sell your product. Even if that means service with a fake smile. If someone, customer or not, shits in your coffee. You smile, apologize, pitch your product, and help them find a better product that fits their needs if yours don't. Or if you can't stomach doing that, ignore them, but make sure they have a place to speak.

Retail 101.


No offense, and good luck!
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Re: My game on Indiegogo

Post by rorschach »

Understood Eric, thanks for the tip :)
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Re: My game on Indiegogo

Post by frostbyte »

just wanted to say i love watching your work/demos, to me they look ultra-realistic :D
as an ogre-dev i know the hell you went through in order to get to this level , unfortunately the users/gamers do not
as we know everyone is a critic, and while i agree with eric on being professional( the customer is always right, bla bla... )
i think its a waste of time and energy to try and satisfy everybody, especially trolls
instead of trying to please some guy who's obviously resent you and your game, spend this time in finding new customers
as your users base grows, i'm sure that this teasing impolite posts will get lost in a mass of positive and constructive ones
wish you the best of luck...
the woods are lovely dark and deep
but i have promises to keep
and miles to code before i sleep
and miles to code before i sleep..

coolest videos link( two minutes paper )...
https://www.youtube.com/user/keeroyz/videos
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Re: My game on Indiegogo

Post by EricB »

frostbyte wrote:just wanted to say i love watching your work/demos, to me they look ultra-realistic :D
The graphics do look pretty good. But "Ultra-Realistic" is a specific term in the simulation community. His game is tagged "Naval" which is filled with simulation games. The term does not refer to graphical quality in this community, but gameplay. My own game is an example of this, hardcore realistic economics, crappy graphics.

One only has to look at other games tagged with "Naval" on Steam and compare. Here are 5 from the Top 50 best selling Naval games in the last ~8 hours since this post:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/541210/Cold_Waters/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/42044 ... tic_Fleet/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/580720/Carrier_Deck/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/15210 ... unter_III/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/48800 ... _Extremes/

These games are better classified as "Ultra Realistic" even if some of them graphically aren't that great.


as an ogre-dev i know the hell you went through in order to get to this level , unfortunately the users/gamers do not
I think the game was made in Unity, but yes, kudos to rorschach for the graphical quality.
as we know everyone is a critic, and while i agree with eric on being professional( the customer is always right, bla bla... )
i think its a waste of time and energy to try and satisfy everybody, especially trolls
instead of trying to please some guy who's obviously resent you and your game, spend this time in finding new customers
as your users base grows, i'm sure that this teasing impolite posts will get lost in a mass of positive and constructive ones
wish you the best of luck...
This is where I disagree with you. And the only reason I'm taking time to reply. Everyone should work box retail in their life. It teaches you quite a bit of skills that are useful in the future. I guess I'll let out some trade secrets, maybe it'll help some fellow Ogrers out there...
( the customer is always right, bla bla... )
This is incorrect. The customer is not always right. The customer provides feedback on what he wants or knows. Leaving out tech support issues, your job is to take that feedback and either: 1) Sell the product to him, 2) Improve your product, 3) Point him to a product he'll be happy with. #3 is not always possible or reasonable. But both #1 and #2 should always be your goals when interacting with a customer in a non-tech support role.
i think its a waste of time and energy to try and satisfy everybody, especially trolls
I disagree with this as well. You don't know what is being read by potential customers at any given time. It is an opportunity to sell to people who are not posting on the thread. Now of course, at some point the user may have to be banned, a post or two may have to be deleted if they ascii penis's or something, but never delete the thread. Never ban people for simple negative comments, etc. It shows you have a weak backbone and you're insecure about your product.


Lets give you guys a good example:

poster:
This game looks like shit! I could crap this game out in a weekend. It seriously looks like it's made by teenagers in game maker or something. I don't know why steam is letting this shit on. Fuck the dev! Fucking $15 for this piece of shit!
Dev:
The game was actually written in C++ and is using Ogre3D as rendering middleware. Development has taken around 4 years because most of the code has been written from scratch. The artwork was blah blah blah, keep explaining the project, but not too much. 5 sentences max.

That being said, I'm sorry that you don't like the looks or the game play of NAME OF GAME. What do you think would make it better? What features are you looking for in a game similar to this? Yes, the game is expensive now, but there will be discounts over time during sales. Thank you for your feedback.
(Although if the poster is this vulgar in his post, you don't have to thank him. However if there are no personal attacks and not too much bad language, always thank them.)

If the poster chimes back with another flame post, you can ignore him. But don't close the thread, don't ban him**, don't escalate the situation by taking the attacks personally, and don't delete the post**. Other wise you will get negative reputation via word of mouth.

**The only time to delete a post is if they are throwing out NSFW images, doxing, etc. The only time to ban people is if they're massively insulting/harassing other users, posting too many NSFW pictures, doxing users, etc. You do not count. You are fair game. You are allowed to be insulted (not harassed though, learn the difference). Don't take it personally. It's just the way retail is.

If the poster or anyone else accepts your request for feedback, be thoughtful of their ideas, discuss it with them. Even if you debate things with customers, be sure to let them know, you are pushing back to make sure that the best ideas come forward. Listen to people. Implement the good ideas, be nice about the bad ideas, explain why things are, and above all don't be too stubborn if someone makes a logical argument against the way you've done things. Specially something as little as wording on the front page.

And with that, you've turned a troll post into a positive post for you and the silent majority reading the forums and are on the fence about buying the game.
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Re: My game on Indiegogo

Post by frostbyte »

hi eric, i feel like were hijacking this thread( but at least its for a good cause( i think ) :wink: )
TBH i've never released anything and never had to confront users, i don't even have fake-book or twitter account, so i'm quite ignorant about communication with the crowds
anyways, i posted back to thank you for your experienced advice, i'm digging bits of info here and there and i've read lots of indie devs posts scattered around the web, but i still feel clueless about anything regarding publishing and beyond( or anything that is not coding for that matter ), starting from how to price your product, how/where to advertise it, how to handle pr, etc... etc... etc...its a huge task/subject, i guess its a bit like learning how to swim, one must jump into the water first...
i'm sure that if you write a book about this stuff it would become a best seller, until then i'll keep following your posts, digging for scraps of useful info, thanks again for the free advice

edit: Thank you for your feedback. :)
the woods are lovely dark and deep
but i have promises to keep
and miles to code before i sleep
and miles to code before i sleep..

coolest videos link( two minutes paper )...
https://www.youtube.com/user/keeroyz/videos
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Re: My game on Indiegogo

Post by rorschach »

frostbyte wrote: i'm sure that if you write a book about this stuff it would become a best seller.
I second that too, Eric is the most seasoned developer I have ever seen and all his posts are written with excellent judgment, I am sure the book should be named "Psychology of Gamers and Game Trolls". :D