The Downside of Game Bundles and Sales

If someone asked me whether or not they should sell their game in a bundle, I would be inclined to tell them not to. This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been a hypocrite: as we speak, indiegamestand.com has my newest game “Unfinished – An Artist’s Lament” in a PWYW deal until September 17, 2015. This is only about 40 days after its release on Steam. All the same, I probably won’t include “Unfinished” in any other game bundles like I did with “Drew and the Floating Labyrinth,” and here’s my reasoning why.

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Game Conventions In Ontario & Beyond! A Helpful Guide For Local Indie Game Developers

One of the best parts about indie development is the ability to participate with the community. There are many conventions and events every year throughout the world that celebrate video games, anime, comics, television, and geek culture in general, perfect opportunities to promote yourself. However, I noticed that most major game events in North America are on the West, East and South sides of the United States, central North America (specifically Ontario, Canada) has very little for indie games. Comics and tabletop games, sure, but indie games don’t really have much to be at. Its also really difficult to find any reviews or information outside the events’ homepages, so its hard to know what to expect.

If I Want To See Indie Games in this "Dead Zone," Where Do I Go?

If I Want To See Indie Games in this “Dead Zone,” Where Do I Go?

The following is a list of events I’ve been to, with my impressions of what type of atmosphere they provide. I hope the following information will be useful to developers in the Ontario area. This comes from me being in Windsor, Ontario, depending on your location you might have other better options.

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Special Thanks To Some Press That Covered Me & My Games!

SOME COOL ARTICLES THAT MENTION ME BEING AT CONVENTIONS:

(A shout-out to a handful of the awesome people who wrote about me and/or my games, this list also gives a fair representation of how much “press” going to such events gets you. Generally, very little: larger events may have larger press representatives, but its still a lottery as to whether they even see your work, let alone care about it. Sadly, small press will also garner little to no business, but small press is better than no press. The dates give a vague idea of where the writers/bloggers saw me. For a detailed list on what conventions I’ve been to that correspond to these, see my next blog post.)

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Retrospective By The Numbers: One Year After My First Game, One Week After My Second

For several months I’ve promised to write a retrospective about the release of my first game “Drew and the Floating Labyrinth.” But then it was released on Steam, on IndieGala, and available during the Steam summer sale.  Then I was working on my second game “Unfinished – An Artist’s Lament,” which took longer than expected, but has now officially been released for one week. This gave me a lot more perspective to write about, and a year after the first game, I think now is the time to write about it from a functional point of view. This summarizes in-depth time and money spent and made for my first two indie games as an indie developer, which were not necessarily successful, but hopefully helpful for others wondering how their experience in game development may go.

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“Unfinished – An Artist’s Lament” is Available Now!

“Unfinished – An Artist’s Lament” is officially available now on Steam (and soon other stores)! Hooray!

Buy it here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/388680/

Plus, if you are still unsure, please try the free demo of the game here: http://unfinished.fromdustscratch.com/#system

Plus, see this little launch trailer!

The game is also trying to be on IndieGameStore, MacGameStore and WinGameStore. I should have remembered they need a few weeks to prepare a store page for it, I only submitted the game last week. Hopefully anyone who doesn’t want to use Steam can use other outlets by the end of the month.

I always feel insecure when releasing a new game, or even revealing it for the first time, knowing that this is what it is, and not everyone will like it. A few close friends tried the game for the first time this week, and while they certainly weren’t the intended audience, their appalled reaction when I said I planned to sell it was discouraging. I was tempted to not release the game at all.

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