Tag Archives: Gratuitous Space Battles

Train2Game News: Mid-week round up

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Blizzard Entertainment released Mists Of Pandaria yesterday. The latest expansion for World Of Warcraft. Blizzard have also said that they have no fear of Windows 8 and will release games for any platform their players are on.

Avenged Sevenfold have released a new track that will feature on Call Of Duty: Black Ops 2. The song, Carry On, is the second song the band have released for a Call Of Duty game. They previously released Not Ready To Die with one of the Call Of Duty: Black Ops DLC packs.

Telltale’s five Walking Dead episodic games will be put on disc in December for Xbox360 and PS3. The game is based on the graphic novel turned TV show and through playing them myself I can say, if you are a fan of the series, play this game. You won’t be disappointed.

Nvidia’s head of cloud gaming, Phil Eisler, believes that cloud gaming could take over from consoles. He believes that consoles have one final generation in them before they die out, leaving the world of gaming in the hands of the cloud.

Ubisoft have announced that Assassins Creed 3 will not play on Windows XP. The company has released the specifications needed to play the game. There is a version for Windows 8 in the pipeline though.

Bethesda have released an animated prequel to its upcoming Dishonored. The webseries is called Tales of Dunwall and the gorgeous animated shorts are being released in three parts. The videos can be found on YouTube and they show the downfall of the in game city.

Sony Xdev are giving a small studio the opportunity to win £25,000. This new initiative, called Playstation Pioneers, will reward developers for a PlayStation Mobile game concept and will also offer successful candidates the opportunity to work alongside XDev. Further details can be found here.

An extra four titles have been added to the Humble Bundle 6. The titles are: Bit.Trip Runner, Gratuitous Space Battles, Jamestown, and Wizorb. If you have already purchased the bundle, you will get the new games added at no extra cost.

If you are attending Eurogamer this weekend you can get a special surprise when you play Company Of Heroes 2. Everyone that plays the game or attends the developer session at the event will get a code to access a future beta for the game.

Finally Train2Game will be at Eurogamer this weekend. If you are attending go and say hello, it is always nice to meet these people. I will be attending on the Saturday so if you see me feel free to talk to me. I hope everyone that attends has a brilliant time.

Why aren’t you buying my games?

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So, let’s imagine that you’ve completed your Train2Game course and a small group of you have formed your own little independent studio with a Games Developer, a Games Designer and a Games Artist and Animator. You make a game, a great game that you feel is amazing, but due to the competitive market, your title doesn’t sell as well as you’d hoped. What do you do?

Give up? No, don’t be silly! When did Train2Game ever teach you to do that?

Work on another project and just hope that it sells a bit better? Hmmm, maybe.

Send out a questionnaire asking people why they’re not buying your games?

That last one sounds a bit farfetched doesn’t it? Well, not necessarily because that’s what one independent developer has done.

Positech Games is a UK-based one man games company run by Cliff ‘Cliffski’ Harris, who last year released a title called Gratuitous Space Battles which has generally received favourable reviews. Now in the name of self-improvement, Cliffski is asking ‘“Why didn’t you buy Gratuitous Space Battles?” He says:

“I am NOT complaining. I am NOT moaning about sales. I am NOT unhappy with sales, I am not whining or anything like it. I just like making games that people enjoy, and I don’t know why the people who didn’t buy it, didn’t buy it. I’d like to know. The answers may well make it a better game for everyone, if I fix those reasons (if they make sense). It will make the game attractive to current fence-sitters, better for current owners, and more sales for me and my cats.”

Anyone, including you – yes, you – can email Cliff and tell him why you didn’t buy his game. Responses so far range from ‘I have too many games to play’ to ‘I don’t like strategy games’ to even ‘Before reading this I’d never heard of your game’ Hopefully this information has been useful to Cliffksi and he’ll benefit from it as a independent developer.

However, it isn’t the first time he’s asked the general population on the Internet about issues relating to his games. Two years ago, Cliff asked ‘Why do people pirate my games?’ and the responses he got led to the removal of DRM from his games.

Positech games may be a tiny developer, but he has allowed the general gaming public to have a say on his company’s products and this has had had an impact on sales. This could be an important lesson to any Train2Game students trying to break into the industry – you need to listen to your audience – their attitude towards your games could essentially make or break them.

Would you consider asking people who haven’t played your game why they didn’t buy it?