(Shocking) News!!!!!

[Will]

Captain Kwok said:
If you're keeping score that's 3 for marketing and 0 for dumb luck.

Well, I can't find a user "marketing", and dumbluck hasn't even posted to this thread. I think it's a bit unfair to be keeping score against him when he hasn't even posted!

I think what the Shrapnel folks are trying to get across is that it's better to make it easy for people *looking* for a game to find at Shrapnel. This works infinitely (or at least, a great deal) better than Grand Spamming people who couldn't give a damn. It's better to quietly release playable demos to free download sites, and anywhere that will offer free or subsidized bandwidth for hosting mirrors. It's better for them to create the atmosphere they did in the forums, effectively making an army of salespeople and tech support. And although the games might not get huge recognition (ie, front page) in any of the game review publications, Shrapnel games ARE in those publications. So, invest a lot of time into making contacts within the industry, slowly spreading awareness of a game for "free", instead of investing a lot of money that could be better spent making more games.

And really, in the end, it looks like the strategy is to market the games in a way that makes everyone *think* they stumbled onto a treasure trove by... *drumroll...* Pure Dumb Luck. Very sneaky devious, and I like it

Hope I didn't give away too many secrets!