Garage Games Popularity?

#1 We don't know yet. The Player's site will not be open until late May/June of this year. Even then, it will not launch with Torque Game Engine products because the engine has not been out long enough.

Even if we have lots of player traffic and some games are selling great, we cannot tell you how well your game will sell. That will depend on how good your game is.

Jeff Tunnell GG

#2 It also depends on marketing -- sad but true! Lots of great games sell crappily due to poor marketing and many stinkers sell hundreds of thousands of copies due to great marketing! You shouldn't just rely on people showing up at GG and finding your game, you should have a plan to actively market it, even if that just consists of informing people who might be interested on public forms (don't spam though, its bad form and will always cause you more harm than good, unless you're selling a penis enlargement game I guess).

I can't speak for GG but I'm guessing that they will choose which games are eligible for seeking box distribution based mostly on their own impression of the game, how fun it is, how polished, how marketable to the masses, etc.

#3 Jeff, will GG be helping with Marketing activities for games on the Player's site? A few ideas might be:

- Press releases to the industry about new games (like you did for Realm Wars)
- GG email newsletter talking about the games being sold on GG, possibly hilighting new games.
- Top Ten Download list on the Player's Site
- Player reviews on the Player's Site

Garage Games obviously has some "name" recognition in the industry - just look at how popular Realm Wars became after one press release - for a pre-alpha product. It's seems like a great way to help some of our indie projects get recognized and increase sales (which is good for us all).

I also agree that we (indie developers) need to be actively marketing our game as well - through interviews, public web sites, forums, and the like.

Thanks for any info,
Justin Mette
21-6 Productions
www.21-6.com

#4 here is my 2 cents worth,

trying to get a masive ammount of people interested in your game just on the gg site alone isnt going to get you very far (since this is a dev site), you will have to advertise on gaming sites where a lot of gamers go to find news of new games/mods they can down load to play (and it then will be important to release minimal tests/alpha's/beta's/demo's to entise players to mod or even just be a follower of your project and to want to buy the finished product, then be sure to name/link/exploit the gg site and the torque engine all you can in those free downloads) (just one way to be discovered imo)

edit
i didnt really read all the posts here
/edit

#5 Hey Jeff,

Will we be able to use Garaga Games as a selling point for a our tool!
What i mean is that you, support us, not financialy nor webhosting but just telling us what the tool needs changing and such.
One of the programmers has already started, on it, myself and the other can only start on it coding wise after our exams for our degree.
So what we need from you and the garage games teams is what you would like to see on the tool, we are aiming it for Torque then later on we will incorporate other game engines support.
if you can come up with a list and we will compare it to our one and then will come up with what can be done.

#6 On the topic of marketing, here's my advice:

1
Make your announcements professionally. Big announcements, such as new projects, beta versions, etc., should be written as press releases. This means you might have to take a journalism class or just read a newspaper and copy the style there. This will convince players that your company develops games professionally and cares about what they do.

2
Once you get to beta version, contact large gaming websites and let them preview your game. It's a general rule of game previewers to not diss a game before it releases, so most of the time only positive things will be said about your game. This is an excellent way to build up the marketing.

3
Have a nice website with plenty of information about your game. System requirements, storylines, screenshots and once your game gets previewed, forums are all great ways to impress players.

Just my thoughts on that.

#7 When I first started lookin' at the Torque Engine, I hit Jeff T with questions concerning this. One of the things that he pointed out is that just because GG isn't doing heavy marketing of a game doesn't prevent you from doing it yourself. Granted, handling most of the marketing for the game yourself is a PITA, but, it might be worth it.

Marketing, IMHO, is the only real problem I've had with licensing the Torque Engine / having GG 'publish' my games. I don't really do that much marketing in the first place, but, I'd love to see GG eventually set up ways to work with the game developers to do some really solid marketing. But, it's kind of a non-issue until some Torque based games are ready to roll. And of course, the more income that GG starts generating, the more likely that they have the resources to do somethin' more with marketing. (Just my opinion, of course.)

#8 Marketing activities from GarageGames will be centered on promoting GG as a whole. The idea is to bring people to the site, then show them the great games that are available. From time to time, we may highlight certain games if they fit in with the marketing message.

Unless your title is a AAA release, even a game created for a major publisher gets essentially no marketing. About the only marketing you get is that your product is put in a box and placed on the shelf. No kidding, all of hose expenses come out of the marketing budget.

Jeff Tunnell GG