A simple thank you

[Gandalf Parker]

Murph said:
I don't think Shrapnel needs to put games on shelves in stores, or allow you to download their games directly, although both I'm sure open up their own portion of market share - they need to make more great games and get the word out there through marketing that they exist - Field of Dreams was wrong - you have to build it AND tell them about it, before they come... How you get them to it will work itself out, because people will come to quality.

There is a difference between marketing and publicity. Both are things that the publisher handles. Publicity requires time and effort, while Marketing requires money (ads, visits). If you remember, companies like Intel had full page ads for every one of their titles in every game magazine and they went bankrupt. An extreme example I know but it points out the diffrence. Marketing is like chain-store retail. It serves to increase brand-name and logo recognition, but it creates a larger gap before there are profit checks in the mail. Its all gambling.

I think Shrapnel does the publicity very well. I dont think there is a game magazine or major game site or forum or games newsgroup that you cant do a search for Dominions on. And the info is correct (you would be amazed at how many emails it takes to correct little things). If you see any gaps, let us know.

Im outside my element (I should stick to talking about servers) but I think marketing would be more than a decision of the publisher. Since it involves money-investment it would be more of a discussion between publisher and developer. Just a guess

[Arryn]

Gandalf Parker said:
If you remember, companies like Intel had full page ads for every one of their titles in every game magazine and they went bankrupt.

As a shareholder of Intel, I'd say that the world's biggest chipmaker being bankrupt might be news to a lot of folks. Did you, perchance, mean "Interplay"?

[Gandalf Parker]

Arryn said:

As a shareholder of Intel, I'd say that the world's biggest chipmaker being bankrupt might be news to a lot of folks. Did you, perchance, mean "Interplay"?

Yes sorry. I meant InterPlay

[Saxon]

Niche markets have their problems, but throw in a niche customer and you have a problem. I live in Kenya and like the turn based strategy game niche and find it hard to buy any game software, never mind within our little niche! Recognizing that I am an unusual and rather small market, I will still throw out my two bits.

Game software is pretty much not available here, with the occasional pirated CD coming in from the Far East. If I want legitimate games, I can do one of three things. One, download. Two, mail order. Three, fly to Europe or North America and buy retail.

This year I took my vacation in Zimbabwe, so I did not get to do my yearly pilgrimage to a games store and I am hurting for new games. I have used mail order before, Dom II and SEIV amongst others, but things also go missing in the mail at a fairly high frequency. As such, I have been exploring downloading games. From my somewhat arbitrary survey, based upon my tastes, I have found that this is an area which is not terribly well developed on a commercial basis and problems arise fairly often. Good, secures systems may exist, we handle our payroll Online after all, but they are not common. I find downloading to be about as problematic as my regular losses to the Kenyan Postal Service.

As such, I find myself booking a trip in November and planning to get my games that way. Well, actually, Mom put her foot down about not seeing me in over a year, but I will take the opportunity pick up games along the way. What my point is that in locations where the mail service is decent (most of the rest of the world), it would beat my experiences with downloading. I would argue, as a customer, that while downloading is seductive, until the systems improve, mail order is better.

PS Any good games stores in Phoenix? I am stopping there on the way to Mom and Dad in Canada.

[deccan]

Saxon said:
As such, I have been exploring downloading games. From my somewhat arbitrary survey, based upon my tastes, I have found that this is an area which is not terribly well developed on a commercial basis and problems arise fairly often. Good, secures systems may exist, we handle our payroll Online after all, but they are not common. I find downloading to be about as problematic as my regular losses to the Kenyan Postal Service.

I worked in Gabon for about two years and I've been working for four years in the Solomon Islands. One of the problems with downloading games (or any other kind of digital content) is the often poor quality and unreliability of internet connections in these countries.

[Saxon]

deccan,

We have direct satellite link (VSAT), so our connection is pretty stable. At least since the admin guys got the genarator fixed...

The government here recently broke up the government monopoly on internet and we are starting to see some really positive changes. Privatization is good. Free trade is good. Those of you who do not believe it should come visit and see where trade protectionism costs lives, not jobs. Sermon finished.

I hope things pick up for your link, it is frustrating to have such a poor connection.

[deccan]

Saxon said:
Privatization is good. Free trade is good. Those of you who do not believe it should come visit and see where trade protectionism costs lives, not jobs.

Aye to that!

[Murph]

Well, that worked better than I thought it would. Back on track and everything, which is good, because this is an interesting thread.

As to publicity and marketing, I know exactly the difficulties being described with niche markets. I'm helping a friend develop a board game for Columbia Games based on the Peloponnesian War (Pre-Roman Athens vs Sparta - but I'm sure most everyone on this forum does NOT need me to tell them that). Board wargaming is as niche as niche markets get, so the way we're doing it is developing the game, setting up options for pre-sales and printing and shipping dependant upon the amount of interest as shown by pre-sales numbers.

Of course, we both have other jobs... But the niche problem is the same. Actually, sometimes the thing to do is really burrow into your specific niche - for example, this game is going to be: 3 hours long, 2-player, at least 2 scenarios, using the core block rules - everything else is up in the air, but with boardgames, you almost have to pick a niche and go with it.

It's not exactly the same with computer games of course, there are notable cross-genre (and what's a genre but a pretty big niche, really) successes - sweet Rome: Total War, my copies in the mail.. But by-en-large, cross-genre is more of a risk than simply doing something within established fields. Hence all the Diablo, or Warcraft or FPS clones out there.

So yes, how do you do niche marketing? Word of mouth is best, really, although making your product available in demo form is a good way to get people (like me) interested. I absolutely agree that a full-page ad in PCG is not the way to go for Dom2, but similarly, neither is investing all the money in server architecture and software development so that a few people can buy and download the game Online. I mean, the point of any business is to figure out the way that works best for you - that is effective both in terms of cost and time and customer happiness. If Shrapnel feels that they found there solid ground on this, wicked, because it means that we can get the benefits of great developers work, AND that they can get the benefits of our cash money.

Oh, and Saxon and deccan, I've been to south america where free trade and privatization, enforced by the World Bank and the WTO have allowed multi-national corporations to gain control of water supplies and other essentials of life. I'm all for limited free trade and privatization, but I have grave concerns about "free" trade that the WTO enforces, which does not allow countries to stop selling products or resources once they start.

I live in an area with vast water and energy resources, and as the water and envery shortages get worse in the next 20 years, I fully expect to see armed US soldiers on the dams and rivers that flow past my door, and free trade will justify their being there. But that's a whole other can of worms.

[deccan]

Murph said:
I'm all for limited free trade and privatization, but I have grave concerns about "free" trade that the WTO enforces, which does not allow countries to stop selling products or resources once they start.

I'm not sure what that means. How can countries be forced to sell things they no longer want to sell?

Murph said:
I live in an area with vast water and energy resources, and as the water and envery shortages get worse in the next 20 years, I fully expect to see armed US soldiers on the dams and rivers that flow past my door, and free trade will justify their being there. But that's a whole other can of worms.

Water and energy resources issues are normally subject to specific (and sometimes very old) treaties that fix prices and supplied quantities between countries, hence creating huge distortions, and not directly through free trade (i.e. varying prices and quantities traded according to supply and demand).

But this is really a whole other can of worms.

Start an OT post on this subject and I'll happily jump in.

[atul]

deccan said:

I'm not sure what that means. How can countries be forced to sell things they no longer want to sell?

Perhaps because they're obliged to do so by treaties they've had to sign in exchange of loans and such?

The book's obviously biased, but nevertheless I found Michel Chossudovsky's book "Globalization of Poverty" a good read. If nothing else, at least it gives several case studies on subject of How Can I Totally Mess Up Weaker Economies. Such education is always good for aspiring rulers of the world.