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Poo Bear
Pod Team
Joined: 14 Oct 2002
Posts: 4107
Location: Sheffield, UK
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 Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2010 8:23 am Post subject: |
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I have a four phase game buying approach:
1. as this is my proper hobby I make the effort to subscribe to some game feeds, check a couple of websites and even subscribe to Edge magazine. This definitely puts me in a minority, 99% of people don't do this which is why it is so hard to get the attention of the general public. So I can get sucked into the hype and buy something that looks exciting. I think the last purchases were Mass Effect and Dragon Age. As these games tend to be expensive I only buy one every 6 weeks or so. Only mega "indie darlings" can get into this category, Braid and World of Goo being good examples.
2. steam sales often tempt me, probably one game every couple of months. They get a regular mention on the site and the launcher pops up ads so I keep updated. Last game I got was psychonauts.
3. keeping an eye on the indie scene means there is often a new demo to try, a couple a week I'd guess. Free demos are great, all games should be sold that way  I think I buy about one game every couple of months. The downside of demos is you don't buy it unless it's really good so it's harder to get a sale out of me. I think the last game I bought from a demo was PlantsVsZombies. Again, there is a problem here in that I will miss a demo unless it is getting good press and word of mouth attention, so unless something is pretty special I'll probably miss it.
4. if I've bought before or at least had a good play of an older game's demo then I'm more likely to buy a new game. Every game I've liked I've registered for the developers newsletter or subscribed to their rss feed. So any new game they make I will at least try. Last game I got like that was Mass Effect 2 and the next one will be Bioshock2 probably.
Interesting points here when trying to make games for a living - I'm not motivated by adverts, I don't really seek out new and unknown games, I need to be told about it from a few different previews/reviews/friends to get my attention.
If it's indie then I need a free demo, but if I get a free demo there is a good chance I'll "get what I need" from the free demo and won't buy. So an indie has to work doubly hard to get my money, hype and a positive review will often get a sale from me with a AAA no-demo game and I rarely complete them and often think "would I have actually bought that if I'd played a demo?".
It's a very good idea to try and understand the buying habits of your customers, I don't think I'm very typical. I suspect most people who buy indie have a greater than normal interest in gaming, but still need an eye catching sale or a good bit of buzz/hype to bring a game to their attention.
Indie is tough |
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Konedima
Grammar Police
Joined: 25 Oct 2003
Posts: 1068
Location: Sydney, Land of Censorship
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| Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2010 11:50 am Post subject: |
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| Poo Bear wrote: | | I don't think I'm very typical. |
Join the club. Everybody's different, which is why it's so hard to appeal to a broad range of people. |
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codergames
Joined: 20 Apr 2010
Posts: 167
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| Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2010 12:09 pm Post subject: |
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I agree, we're all different, yet we're all brothers at the same time, we originate from the same stuff ... ain't gonna go into details on that one, but you know ... the stuff ... just different information stored in that stuff. Different combination and variation of the stuff.
I wanted to make the game for people who're having old and low-end configurations ... someone's got to think about them ... but then I came here and, its a good thing you bombed me with win7 facts ... its getting popular and in 10 years, when MS gets out with Win8, it'll be the most widespread OS there is ... if we survive 2012 that is. And I need to make sure that people will play Invader Attack on win7, because then it would work on win8 for sure! |
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Konedima
Grammar Police
Joined: 25 Oct 2003
Posts: 1068
Location: Sydney, Land of Censorship
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| Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2010 12:44 pm Post subject: |
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| The latest Steam hardware survey shows Windows 7 with less 4% smaller share than XP. In a month or two it'll probably overtake XP. While this survey is probably skewed a bit towards people who play lots of games rather than people who play a few games, and definitely not people who play no games (hint: your main market should be the first two, your ideal market is all three), it's probably the most detailed of its kind I've seen that's easily available. |
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codergames
Joined: 20 Apr 2010
Posts: 167
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| Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2010 1:54 pm Post subject: |
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| The survey is probably skewed to meet the interest of MS and global economy. I heard MS is making a SP for Win7 called "real XP compatibility mode", as more and more people are getting angry. What the SP will do, is converting your Win7 back to XP. Its just a rumor, can't seem to find the article again, read about it a month ago. |
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Slyh
Joined: 25 Nov 2004
Posts: 476
Location: Karlsruhe, Germany
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| Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2010 3:19 pm Post subject: |
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| codergames wrote: | | The survey is probably skewed to meet the interest of MS and global economy. |
No. |
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Konedima
Grammar Police
Joined: 25 Oct 2003
Posts: 1068
Location: Sydney, Land of Censorship
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| Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 12:13 am Post subject: |
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| codergames wrote: | | The survey is probably skewed to meet the interest of MS and global economy. I heard MS is making a SP for Win7 called "real XP compatibility mode", as more and more people are getting angry. What the SP will do, is converting your Win7 back to XP. Its just a rumor, can't seem to find the article again, read about it a month ago. |
That's pretty much the funniest thing (well maybe not the funniest thing, but only because I have a copy of Sam & Max - Surfin' the Highway) I've ever read, all of it.
Firstly, Valve is in no way associated with M$, and if they were in cahoots, I doubt they'd be releasing Steam (and all their games) on Mac - and there's those rumours about a Linux version that just won't go away (the client itself runs almost perfectly under WINE, games can be a bit of a mixed bag).
Secondly, your "real XP compatibility mode" idea is about the stupidest thing I've ever heard - firstly, 7 already has XP mode (it's just unsuitable for most games, being a virtual machine it's slow for some things), which is only there to try to convince big business to upgrade, saying they don't have to wait for 7-native versions of their favourite applications. M$ is MUCH busier trying to get everyone to make 7 native versions of drivers and applications, using all their fancy new technologies which were probably designed to make it harder to port to other platforms (because if you can only make a version for one platform, Windows is the biggest market).
Here's the thing - most programs that work fine on XP also work fine on 7 - and most of the time when they don't, the developer made a boo boo (no offense). It's perfectly fine to like XP, and to recommend people stick with it instead of upgrading to 7 (that's just your opinion, and my opinion is that if you should upgrade). But please, don't spread BS like this. It just makes you look stupid and causes people to mock you behind your back (or in my case, to your face - but that's only because I'm nice enough to let you know I'm not nice). |
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codergames
Joined: 20 Apr 2010
Posts: 167
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| Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 7:54 am Post subject: |
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lmao ... Its not me who invented that, there was an article. People got ****** because of slow and ****** XP compatibility mode, so M$ decided to make a new service pack called "real XP compatibility mode" or something like that. In reality the SP would convert your Win7 to XP, leaving only visuals, so that user won't suspect anything, they'd continue thinking its Win7, because of the looks.
Hey man, its not me inventing this, there was a long article about it. I'm not saying I know what M$ is doing, I come from Linux, Slackware, RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake and now, probably the most user-friendly ever existed distribution - Ubuntu. |
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Poo Bear
Pod Team
Joined: 14 Oct 2002
Posts: 4107
Location: Sheffield, UK
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| Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 8:09 am Post subject: |
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| Probably for the best to leave the XP vs win7 debate alone now |
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Konedima
Grammar Police
Joined: 25 Oct 2003
Posts: 1068
Location: Sydney, Land of Censorship
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| Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 8:57 am Post subject: |
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| codergames wrote: | | Hey man, its not me inventing this, there was a long article about it. |
If I can't blame you for coming up with that, I can blame you for being gullible enough to believe it. The speed is fine in XP compatibility mode, there's just only so far it can go pretend to be XP.
The speed in XP mode (important distinction: NOT XP compatibility mode) is a bit of a problem, but if you have a fast processor (like mine) it's more than enough for most applications, it just wasn't designed for games.
| Poo Bear wrote: | | Probably for the best to leave the XP vs win7 debate alone now |
Probably is, but I'm not good at leaving things alone. |
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codergames
Joined: 20 Apr 2010
Posts: 167
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| Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 3:12 pm Post subject: |
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Yes, I made a mistake, now that you mentioned running in XP mode, yeah that was it ... new SP will introduce real XP mode, its advertised as that, but the guy who wrote the article (not me, don't shoot the messenger), said its a hoax and all that it'll do is converting your Win7 back to XP while preserving the looks of Win7. You'll see what will happen and if that SP will ever come out.
I sincerely hope nothing will change as you guys seem to like Win7. |
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Konedima
Grammar Police
Joined: 25 Oct 2003
Posts: 1068
Location: Sydney, Land of Censorship
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| Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 12:02 am Post subject: |
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| codergames wrote: | | I sincerely hope nothing will change as you guys seem to like Win7. |
I sincerely hope nothing will change too (wait - I know nothing will change, never mind), since I like a lot of the changes in 7 (and I'm not just talking about the UI). XP can't do a lot of the tricks 7 can (run DirectX 10/11, connect to multiple networks using the same wireless networking card (which I know isn't officially supported, and there's no function for it, but they were planning it and there's code left in that lets you do it without much effort), mute individual programs (which is a godsend IMO), and tons more). |
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codergames
Joined: 20 Apr 2010
Posts: 167
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| Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 7:42 am Post subject: |
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| Sounds like a bunch of useful features to you. I had to switch the original XP theme back to 95 theme and old-style main menu scheme, because of nostalgia and ease of use, for me. Can that be done under Win7? |
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Konedima
Grammar Police
Joined: 25 Oct 2003
Posts: 1068
Location: Sydney, Land of Censorship
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| Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 8:52 am Post subject: |
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| codergames wrote: | | Sounds like a bunch of useful features to you. I had to switch the original XP theme back to 95 theme and old-style main menu scheme, because of nostalgia and ease of use, for me. Can that be done under Win7? |
You can make window borders look like 95 (well more like 98 or so, gradient title bars, same basic idea).
You can change the taskbar back to a more classic look (by default it has big icons, no text labels, and multiple program windows stack onto the same button, clicking the button opens a list of windows - probably the biggest change from Vista UI-wise).
Unfortunately there's no way to get a 95 style (or even an XP style) start menu, at least not in Windows itself - I'd be surprised if there wasn't a program somewhere which gave you a classic start menu though.
Doesn't affect me too much, since I spend a lot of my time playing games fullscreen I don't see much of it, though on my laptop I do have all the fluff disabled for the sake of battery life. |
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codergames
Joined: 20 Apr 2010
Posts: 167
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| Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 10:58 am Post subject: |
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The MS promotes Win7 as something people wanted with slogans like "because I wanted it this way", or something like that. Its good MS is more open to the needs of people. But my voice is not taken into account ... I want XP ... I know, I'm even annoying myself, I'm not prone to change.
I'm programming all day long, if not game then either development of systems based on Zend or CakePHP framework. I have it all setup on me XP and just can't get meself to change anything, all I need is to focus on the work at hand and not reinstalling, installing, configuring, etc. all the time. On top of everything paying around $200 for Win7, is not really my thing until everyone switch to it.
Plus, you guys have beasts, running one loop under 1ms is really powerful! I wasn't aware things changed that much. |
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