VideoGameInsider.net

This is probably the hardest part about selling a game. It is important to have a press release that includes a release date, but what you don’t want is to have a game that gets delayed past your original release date. In order to avoid this, make your release date vague. Saying TBD-To Be Determined or TBA-To Be Announced is perfectly fine! You can also say Q1/2/3/4 and the year. Never announce your internal release date to the public until you are 110% sure you can follow through on it!

Here’s a thought: why not finish the game first, announce the release date, create a ton of hype for the game, and then release it! This way allows you to focus in on the development side and then on the marketing side. Hopefully you’ll be good at both!

StuffWeLike.com Video Cast Episode 5 - Now Online
www.stuffwelike.com/podcast/vidcast/vidcast-e5.html

Covered Stories:
Command & Conquer 3 Gets Fame
Sam and Max Game and TV Show on GameTap
Eragon Gets Fame
Xbox Live Milestone
Postal 3 Announced
Wii Goes 480p
EA Loves PS3
CubeDrift (Game Review)
Squishy The Starfish (Game Review)
Internet Explorer 7 Now Available
Halo Movie Dead?

Vote here: http://stuffwelike.com/forum/index.php?topic=1879.msg20375

Every now and then it’s good to look back and see what you’ve done in life to get to where you currently are. Understanding how we grow and change allows us to better control this process. I’ve been blogging now for 5 months. It’s a pretty crazy thing to think about. I’m still amazed that people actually come and comment here! Having something to work on everyday makes time fly by. With so many things going on in my life right now I’ll try to make sure that this blog keeps on going for as long as I have something to say about the indie game industry.

AMC (TV Channel - not theater) has been showing scary movies for the past couple of weeks and I’ve been recording some of the major ones. Of course this includes the Halloween series. The first Halloween movie was amazing and the second one wasn’t nearly as good. I watched the third film today only to find out that it has nothing to do with the previous two films. How does one go from a crazy invincible pyscho killer to robots? Seriously where is the continuity?

There was a four year break between the release of the second film and the release of the third film and killer robots was the best story that they could come up with! It seemed like the writers wanted to make Halloween into a science-fiction mystery series where any story can be told and the only thing in common would be the title itself Halloween. The Halloween theme song snuck in occassionally though. But the worst part was when a TV played in the background and it played a trailer for the original Halloween movie. Seriously what is this!?

I bring this up not only because Halloween is right around the corner, but when you’re writing a story for your game think about the future. Think about the possibility that the game sells well and you want to create a sequel. Know ahead of time where you would take the series, but please do not destroy the vision that the original game had! If you’re going to do that you might as well call it a brand new game. I know brand-name is a huge thing, but don’t sell out like the Halloween series did.

On Wednesday, I emailed mainstream developers (Activision, Nintendo, etc.) about an update on the StuffWeLike.com site. Basically News Headlines will now be appearing on the front page, when the news article is posted in the forum.

Within that same day, two of the developers replied saying ‘Thanks for the updates!’ Sure this could have been insincere, but at the same time this is very promising. It actually makes me want to pursue the rest of the updates that I had in mind. I just can’t believe how hesitant I was to actually send this message out to developers.

If you’ve got something to say, say it! Don’t be afraid to promote yourself or something that you own.

I realized that not everyone could access all the boards on the StuffWeLike.com Forum home of the VideoGameInsider.net Forum. The correction has been made.

I look forward to all you of posting in their soon enough!

Wadjet Eye Games (www.wadjeteyegames.com) is proud to announce its latest adventure game entitled The Blackwell Legacy! Unlike their previous games The Blackwell Legacy is structured in an episodic style.

The Blackwell Legacy is a miniseries of adventure games that stars a medium named Rosangela Blackwell and her spirit guide Joey Mallone. Their mission, it seems, is to assist tormented spirits and investigate supernatural events.

The Blackwell Legacy has been built for old school adventure gamers. Wadjet Eye Games has hired Ian Schlaepfer, who made underground adventure waves with his Apprentice series (http://www.herculeaneffort.com), to create the sprite art for The Blackwell Legacy! Wadjet Eye has gone on to ensure that this game has an authentic adventure feel.

Screenshots:

http://www.davelgil.com/boe/BL1.gif

http://www.davelgil.com/boe/BL3.gif

http://www.davelgil.com/boe/BL4.gif

Promo Poster - http://www.davelgil.com/boe/BL_poster2.jpg

The most important aspect of your work life is keeping an up to date and easy to read resume. Yesturday I received a resume from a 3D Artist. The layout of the resume was fine: work history, education history, self-taught education history, summary of skills, and a little more information about him. The guy seems to have worked on some interesting stuff, but he forgets one thing - URLs! Even if you don’t have a portfolio provide some direct links to rendered pictures, hosted on ImageShack or some other provider!

An employeer won’t sit down and email over 5,000 applicants and ask where are your pictures. If you don’t want to put the direct links in your resume then at least include them in your email.

Click here to download.

Remember that if you want your game to be reviewed on our show, send me an email.

File Size: 83 megabytes
Length: 18:00 minutes
Hosts: David Rodriguez, Spencer Beebe, and Mark Gravender
Edited by: Andrew Cefalo
Music by: Rob Davidson
Covered Stories:
Wii Production Exceeding Expectations
Buy Xbox 360 Get Free Game
Wii Kiosk Troubles
Burger King Games
Preorders for Wii’s and PS3’s
Napster for College Students
TerraWars NY Invasion (PC Game Review)
The Departed (Movie Review)
Employee of the Month (Movie Review)

Some of you probably know that there’s a difference in this 3D term. Triangles are half of a quad. So when you’re counting your polycount - a triangle is half of your quad. Now the issue comes into play when you wonder, which one to use in game. Well check which one your counting!

I finally found a 3D Aritst for The Divine (after 2 months of searching!) and now bam - he’s working at bullet speed and then Keanu Reeves comes in and does his Matrix bullet stopping moves! Well I didn’t tell him to count triangles and not quads… Instead of reducing the polygon count (done in quads) to half of what it currently is, he has decided to redo the entire ship. What that means is that we’ve wasted two days.

But fear not! We’ve decided to use those ships afterall as the high poly models for cutscenes! I don’t know when the new models will be made public but if we can get them to look any similar to what the high polygon models (over 2,000 tri polygons, we want a max of 1,500) look like I know that anyone who sees the screenshots will be even more amazed than what is currently on the website!