Hi Dennis,
Yes, all of those are great suggestions. Especially, the point about creating several free games for practice instead of attempting to sell games right off the bat.
Creating free games for practice will help a developer become more well known as an audio game developer because people will be attracted to the developer's site. Everyone likes free stuff and if they like the free stuff a developer has it will get the word out that the developer has a lot of free stuff on their website. Although, it sounds counter intuitive its a pretty decent marketing ploy as it makes a name for the developer and his/her company so that when a developer does begin releasing commercial games they'll have a decent customer base to start with.
The other advantage is simply practice. I've certainly not started out writing games like Mysteries of the Ancients. I started out with several very simple games back in the 90's like Guess the Number, Number Stumper, Paper Scisors Rock, Hangman, etc to get the basics of programming. Naturally, I've never really released all those games to the public and I suppose I could do so as freeware. However, the point is I didn't start out with a complex game. I started out very simple and worked my way up to bigger and more complex projects.
Although, one thing I have been looking at doing is rewriting all those simple games in Python 2.7 and releasing them as open source. That would offer two advantages. One, more games for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Two, they'd be open source so people could learn from them. Finally, it may bring more people to my website because the games would be free and open source. So using free games as a marketing ploy might help get the word out that developer x has free games and bring people to your site to see what commercial products you have as well.
Cheers! On 3/28/2012 9:23 AM, Dennis Towne wrote:
Ken, The only thing that makes for mastery of programming is doing it. A lot. I would argue that I've finally reached near mastery in the C programming language; I've only had to write a mere quarter million lines of code to do it. Regarding AI, Alter Aeon actually doesn't have any, and while I know fuzzy logic is often used for it, none of it is used in the game server. Instead, we use random number generators and add-on special procedures that can make creatures do special things. Random numbers are extremely useful, and my advice would be to become comfortable with using them for practically everything. In regard to people buying games, I would argue that it's because the conventional model of selling games as standalone packages is failing. Those packages can be traded, given away, and copied so easily that it's pretty much just not worthwhile. If you have a central server, it's a bit easier. I'd actually recommend giving away games for free to build up a reputation and to get a lot of feedback from people on how you can improve them. Your first handful of games probably won't be good enough to even give away; but after you really get settled in with your programming language, tools, and audio libraries, the quality will really improve. When a lot of people really like and play your games, try selling expansions to them. Dennis Towne
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