The Hype

from Stardock Forums
Just to warn you guys, I've been bragging about GalCiv to everybody here in Denmark, so don't be surprised if you get swamped when the game comes out..

Actually that might be an idea for your marketing division: Interviews with the Alpha testers?
299 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
GalCiv will be the best first person shooter ever!
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
lol!

I wouldn't even joke about such things though in case someone actually quotes you!

Paul.
Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
;) We have an uphill battle in terms of marketing.

We're an indie game and the gaming media is a very different animal than the non0-gaming tech media.

Let me give you an example, yesterday I opened up this week's issue of eWeek and right on the second page is an article on the GUI Olympics (www.guiolympics) - an event we created and run. We didn't even have to do a press release. At any given time, our products like WindowBlinds, DesktopX, ObjectBar, Object Desktop are in some newspaper or magazine somewhere.

But when when it comes to getting the word out on our games, it's an excercise in humility and frustration. I can send personalized screenshots to game sites and be totally blown off. We can send tons of press releases and have the media relations folks keep contacting the mags and when they do a round up of "hot games of 2002" or even "hot turn based strategy games coming out soon" we'll get totally ignored.

When we try to get previews, we're told that we have to submit a full beta to get a preview. Meanwhile, at the same time, games like Duke Nukem Forever and other vaporous games can get away with sketches on napkins and get previews.

Realistically, I can tell you from experience that GalCiv's only real hope for large scale success comes from users like you guys. We'll never get serious complete coverage on par with something like Masters of Orion gets no matter how "good" of a game we make. If GalCiv were a Microsoft game or an EA game, it would be a totally different situation.

It's just very hard for indies to get attention. It's not due to any sort of conspiracy. There are lots of reasons ranging from indie game quality being inconsistent to simple cynical laziness.

I wouldn't be so annoyed about it if I didn't KNOW the difference between good coverage and a coverage black out. When WindowBlinds can get into Businessweek and be shown on TechTV or DesktopX show up on TheRegister or hear about ObjectBar being mentioned on a radio show where we didn't have to do that much "marketing" AND then to have us working really hard to just get new screenshots shown on some site, it's frustrating.

Especially since games are a lot less profitable than non-games generally. I can speak for the GalCiv team when I say we are in this for the fun and love of gaming. We love games. From a business point of view, it would make much more sense to have the grpahics team making WindowBlinds skin and DesktopX objects and the other developers working on other Object Desktop software. But we don't want to do that. We really love what we're doing. We love talking to you guys and having you as part of our team.

I don't think it would be an exageration to say that the *commercial* success or failure of Galactic Civilizations will depend largely on the community of players here. It'll be word of mouth that makes the difference.

That's the main reason why we're working so hard to make sure that you guys can make fundamental changes to the game without having to be a techie. Why we are going to have a library for uploading new techs and improvements. Why we're going to have a metaverse. We want to put the pieces together for you to have a community that can take charge over the destiny of the game itself.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Brad,
have you considered letting some other company make a first person shooter in your universe? If you could persuade a larger mainstream company to do so then you could piggyback GalCiv on the advertising of such a product. Obviously there would be risk involved if the FPS was poor, and it may be impossible to persuade someone to programme the FPS, but the rewards in marketing would be noticeable.
You could sell the concept as a genre swap. GalCiv strategy players would buy the FPS, and FPS players would hear about the strategy game and be interested.

Paul.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
I have a lot of short stories I've written over the year about the Drengin and Arceans and such. ;)
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Wow,
a Galciv novel series!
Paul.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
The GalCiv game is really a manifestation of a bunch of stories I've been working on since I was a kid.

That's where the Drengin, the Torians, the Arceans, the Yor, and such come from and why there's so much of a back story for it. I hope to get as much of that back story into the game as possible.