Wrack

Instead of telling them why they should like the game. Show them.

Yeah, I think instead of the title screen/menus in the beginning (and the first part of E1M1 where I'm just standing there), I'll splice in some gameplay footage from another level, and then go to the E1M1 footage after I'm done introducing the game. Generally in TotalBiscuit's mailbag videos where he's just answering a question, he's got gameplay footage going in the background - instead of a blank screen. Seems to work well.

Carnevil said:

What do you guys think?

Marvelous! Keep this up and I might have to buy it.

Alrighty! Here's attempt #2! I redid it with (hopefully) a lot of improvements. How's this?

Even without watching the video I can tell one thing: It's way too long. You need to have a short, max 1:30 long video to get people's attention. You can have longer and more meaty material available in addition, but expecting everyone on the Internet to watch 13 minute videos just to find out about a game is silly.

The dev commentary is nice and all, but who ever listens to DVD commentary BEFORE they've watched a movie? It would be a neat addition to the game a-la the Valve dev commentary in Lost Coast, etc., but not for a taste. You're basically doing exactly what you don't want the game to do: tell people how to play the game.

Just throw up a quick video with some some nice gameplay highlights (without spoiling any GOOD parts, of course!), along with one of Bobby's kickin' tracks, add some explosions and that's all you need!

Jodwin said:

Even without watching the video I can tell one thing: It's way too long. You need to have a short, max 1:30 long video to get people's attention. You can have longer and more meaty material available in addition, but expecting everyone on the Internet to watch 13 minute videos just to find out about a game is silly.

A gameplay video should be a trailer? No, I think a trailer should be a trailer! We've already got that (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc-MawuS__c). It's almost exactly 1:30, though I'm quite sure you'll hate that as well.

Nomad: TONS of people watch "Let's Play" videos before playing the game themselves. The only difference here is that I'm the developer.

Nomad said:

The dev commentary is nice and all, but who ever listens to DVD commentary BEFORE they've watched a movie?

I'd say it's more akin to a creator of an exercise product demonstrating its use on an infomercial.

Carnevil said:

Nomad: TONS of people watch "Let's Play" videos before playing the game themselves. The only difference here is that I'm the developer.

People watch Let's Plays or "WTF is..."s for the show, not for the game. Certainly the game has a part in it, but it's a very minor part. Take the player's persona away and no one will watch it. And if people do buy the game afterwards, it's because they thought the game was worth buying. But LPs are very, very rarely used as a primary method of sampling games.

Carnevil said:

A gameplay video should be a trailer? No, I think a trailer should be a trailer! We've already got that (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc-MawuS__c). It's almost exactly 1:30, though I'm quite sure you'll hate that as well.

Gameplay videos are trailers, at least in this context. Take a look at Trine 2 in Steam, for example: http://store.steampowered.com/app/35720/ It only has one video, a coop trailer, which also demonstrates gameplay. That is what you want your video to be like: Short, concise and straight to the point. You want it to make the viewer want to pay for your game. A +10 minute commercial for any game, especially an FPS game, makes it seem like playing the game is rocket science. That, or it makes it look like the developers are trying way too hard.



But, I guess it's easier for you to be butt hurt over any advice than actually take it into consideration.

If the vid is for Steam and Desura, keep a few things in mind:
- Sound, by default, is off, because by default it starts playing automatically and sound can be annoying if you open the page to look at other things than the video.

- Dev commentary is what you're going to look for once you're already hooked to the game. Nobody would ever have cared about this if Doom hadn't been such a hit. Look at any sort of "behind the scene", "making of" or "dev commentary" vid as a bonus for the fans. You don't want the Desura/Steam presentation video to be a bonus for the fans, you want it to be something that'll sell the game to non-fans who are merely checking out what's new on the catalog.

- There are hundreds of thousands of LP vids out there. Excessively few people have made it their life's mission to watch all of them. More likely, people watch a few series in particular because they like the style of the commentator(s) and discover games like this. For that reason, it is good business to send free copies to people like TotalBiscuit or the Yogscast. To give an example, Terraria's success was partly thanks to beta copies send to people like Minecraft LPer "Piratebat". But hey, speaking of Terraria, notice how they put a trailer on their Steam page rather than the dev LP series.

So, the commentary vid isn't useless, but it's not appropriate for what is basically your shop window.

This is from the email I got back from Desura:

"You will need to upload no less than 10 screenshots and at least 1 game play video, and more is better. If you have a game trailer upload that as well."

That sounds like a trailer AND a gameplay video to me. So, I need to do something like this. Last time I put out a gameplay video, it was just raw footage so I thought I'd spice it up with some commentary... but hey, you guys will complain about anything and everything, so whatever.

Carnevil said:

but hey, you guys will complain about anything and everything, so whatever.

Carnevil said:

It's almost exactly 1:30, though I'm quite sure you'll hate that as well.

This is such a weird way to respond to input that you asked for.

I stopped watching the new vid after 30 seconds.

Besides being completely uninterested I couldn't help wtfing at "dev commentary for e1m1 but you're seeing e1m3".

Edit: Watching it further, calling your own product unique, clever and interesting sounds really lame. You should also rehearse what you want to say, I had the feeling that you were coming up with new things as you went along adding small talk filler when necessary. Didn't sound too confident, so it didn't convince me I wanted to play the game. All the stuttering doesn't help either. Don't take it personally, but after 4 minutes I was plain tired of listening to you.

The video seems very dark too, I can't really see much of the game.

Belial said:

calling your own product unique, clever and interesting sounds really lame.

Belial, one sentence later said:

Didn't sound too confident, so it didn't convince me I wanted to play the game.

Just wanted to lay that out there.

So childish boasting and calling every second thing awesome is a sign of confidence to you?

gl;hf marketing your game.

Desura said:

"You will need to upload no less than 10 screenshots and at least 1 game play video, and more is better. If you have a game trailer upload that as well."

Trailer may, or may not, contain gameplay. Trailer is just a fancy word for an advertisement when it comes to games. What they're saying is that they need a video with gameplay, and if you do happen to have other advertisements in video format as well then feel free to submit them. Such trailers would be videos with nothing but pre-rendered cutscenes, celebs talking about your game, etc.

The trailer you have is a gameplay video. And a trailer. Both in one piece. What else do you want?

i dunno, carn's attitude never really bothered me and i respect the fact that he made his own game. the "trailer" likewise didn't bother me

Ditto, was never enough of a bigshot to hate on Carn here. I respect the fact that he made ST and moved along in life.

No one's hating on Carnevil. Everyone's really excited about his game and when people see something they think can ruin Wrack's chances of making it big, they speak up.

Thanks for the support guys!

Well, I've got a big announcement! Right now Wrack is ON SALE! Throughout QuakeCon (which we're headed to) it's going to be a whopping 50% off! So, for some of you guys who have been on the fence for awhile, now would be a great time to check it out! :) With the sale, it's less than $5 now!

We also put out the updates that has all the lighting/saturation changes. Things look a whole lot better now. We're continuing to improve!

Wrack is not on sale. Wrack episode 1 is on sale. Please correct me if I'm wrong. It seems you're being (even if unintentionally) less than transparent about what people are getting.

Even if you think you're being more than clear, please recognize that in a world where people paid $15 for the Minecraft alpha and were given the whole entire game, you've got to be very specific on your website about what people get when they pay you. From what I can tell, unless they read this thread, people have no way of knowing that they're only getting the first episode.

Actually only E1M1 to E1M4 is on sale, because we're still waiting for the bloody thing to be finished! ;)
What I hate about sales is that us people who have already paid for it are watching other people get it for half the price.
It's like when I see my phone provider for example offering better deals to get new customers in, it's like What about us? Your loyal supporting customers? What are you going to give us for being a good customer all this time?

DuckReconMajor said:

Wrack is not on sale. Wrack episode 1 is on sale. Please correct me if I'm wrong. It seems you're being (even if unintentionally) less than transparent about what people are getting.

I'm not being vague at all. Here's everything stated clear as a bell on the FAQ page: http://www.wrackgame.com/FAQ/

I really have no idea how you could misinterpret the text on the preorder page... it does say that "Wrack is ON SALE" but that's right after the list that tells you exactly what you're getting so I don't think anyone's convinced that the full game is on sale.

glenzinho said:

It's like when I see my phone provider for example offering better deals to get new customers in, it's like What about us? Your loyal supporting customers? What are you going to give us for being a good customer all this time?

If you're lucky, they'll send a rep directly to your door trying to get you to pay them more (but less than the standard fee, to be fair) for something you don't even want for a limited time. And if you're super lucky, this will be right in the middle of your dinner. Happened with my ISP a few days ago.

Downloading the Quakecon update now. (Server overloaded? It's downloading really slow.) I'm hesitant about the texture/lighting changes you've made; they look kind of faded out and over saturated in your screenshots. Might look better to me in-game, but I didn't think there was anything particularly wrong with those textures to begin with.

So I bought Wrack and the login box doesn't like my login. I had to run it sandboxed (no Internet access for the game) just to play it.

chungy said:

So I bought Wrack and the login box doesn't like my login. I had to run it sandboxed (no Internet access for the game) just to play it.

If your password has special characters in it (like @(%*), it won't work. At some point I've gotta put a note in there, or just outright forbid the use of those characters.

Carnevil said:

or just outright forbid the use of those characters.

Why haven't you done this already? People will use illegal characters, notes or no notes, unless you explicitly prevent it.

I already used those characters with a password generator. Oops, I guess.

Think that means you lost. :p