My game is done. Now, what to do with it?

[Madguy]

For the past couple of years, I've been working on an Out of This World/Prince of Persia style action-adventure game in my spare time. The damn thing is finally complete, and I'm pretty pleased with the results. You can view a description and a bunch of screenshots here:

http://madgames.adventuredevelopers.com/portfolio.htm

I don't intend to sell the game. Rather, I'd like to release it as freeware so that it has the largest possible audience. Unfortunately, I know very little about how to promote this sort of thing-- what kind of sites would list its release as a news item, what download sites could this be featured on.. generally, how can I get this game noticed? Additionally, I think the number of downloads this may receive could put a strain on my host's bandwidth, so I'd like to know of any good sites that might host this.

I'm also kind of curious... could attempting to sell this game be a viable and lucrative option? I haven't a clue if there would be any sort of market for something that follows the old Out of This World/Heart of Darkness formula to this degree. It's very much a niche title, and a good player can finish it in under a few hours, factors which make me doubt the game's "sell-worthiness". Not that I'd really want to go for this option at the moment... I've always been kind of tempted by the idea of working on my games full-time, but I kind of doubt that there's a large enough audience for them, or at least one that would be willing to pay.

[Escapee]

submit freeware sites? (http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=submit+freeware+&fr=FP-tab-web-t388&toggle=1&cop=&ei=UTF-8)

[Emmanuel]

You actually can purchase 'Out of this world' online right now. Eric Chahi is selling it on the game's official page here (http://www.anotherworld.fr/anotherworld_uk/index.htm). I believe the excellent Windows conversion and dusting-off was done by ManuTOO from this board?

Best regards,
Emmanuel

[electronicStar]

I'm also kind of curious... could attempting to sell this game be a viable and lucrative option? I haven't a clue if there would be any sort of market for something that follows the old Out of This World/Heart of Darkness formula to this degree. It's very much a niche title, and a good player can finish it in under a few hours, factors which make me doubt the game's "sell-worthiness". Not that I'd really want to go for this option at the moment... I've always been kind of tempted by the idea of working on my games full-time, but I kind of doubt that there's a large enough audience for them, or at least one that would be willing to pay.
What have you got to lose?
"sell-worthiness" depends on the scope of the game, it's difficult to judge on the screenshots. If the playing experience is smaller or equal to a small flash adventure game or if the player can finish it in an afternoon then it might not be worth selling.
OTOH if it's longer with varied environments and if the graphics are more then the red and blue backgrounds we can see on your website then you have no reason not to try and sell it. Of course you would need to go and make a lot of advertisement work and I'd recommend trying to sell it for a low price since it's an adventure game and replayability is not the same as a casual game.
When I was in the modmaking community I heard someone else make an eye-opening remark about long mods (at this time mods were becoming more and more complex and time consuming with devellopment times of 2 years and sometimes near commercial quality) he said that people who spent years working on a great game and released it for free were losers, if they really wanted to make freeware games, they should keep them short and fun and don't waste their life on it. So unless it's for the learning process, once you know you can make a good game and make money from your work, why should you devaluate the market ?

BTW I think you should not keep the pictures of aftershocked on top of the page (or even anywhere in the page if you want to go commercial) because they look too amateurish.

Oh and I saw the screens for arcanosphere and this game looks funny and more interesting than the other two. I've not tested the game yet(I'm at work), but I'm sure that if you could redo the graphics more professionally and put enough playable levels in the game,it could be a good candidate for the casual market.

[vjvj]

Congrats on finishing your game :)

I downloaded it to check it out, but the game crashes for me after the "MADGAMES" screen :(

[Madguy]

BTW I think you should not keep the pictures of aftershocked on top of the page (or even anywhere in the page if you want to go commercial) because they look too amateurish.

This is just a little portfolio website that I used when I was looking for a job a few months ago. Ended up in Blizzard's QA department, not a bad gig...

When I was in the modmaking community I heard someone else make an eye-opening remark about long mods (at this time mods were becoming more and more complex and time consuming with devellopment times of 2 years and sometimes near commercial quality) he said that people who spent years working on a great game and released it for free were losers, if they really wanted to make freeware games, they should keep them short and fun and don't waste their life on it. So unless it's for the learning process, once you know you can make a good game and make money from your work, why should you devaluate the market ?

I have to disagree with this.. What you're saying is that creating big high-quality freeware games as a hobby is a waste of time. Unless it was possible to make a bucketload of money off of my game, which is kind of unlikely, I'd rather a lot of people actually get to play my work. My last game AfterShocked was released as freeware a bunch of years ago (despite the amateurish graphics it actually turned out quite well in regards to other freeware graphic adventures), and I really enjoyed the positive response.

Congrats on finishing your game :)

I downloaded it to check it out, but the game crashes for me after the "MADGAMES" screen :(

You must have downloaded AfterShocked, Between Heaven and Hell isn't available yet.. Unfortunately, this error started happening on a bunch of people's computers (mine included) after a recent Windows update. I'm currently working on an updated version where that won't happen.

[electronicStar]

I have to disagree with this.. What you're saying is that creating big high-quality freeware games as a hobby is a waste of time. Unless it was possible to make a bucketload of money off of my game, which is kind of unlikely, I'd rather a lot of people actually get to play my work. My last game AfterShocked was released as freeware a bunch of years ago (despite the amateurish graphics it actually turned out quite well in regards to other freeware graphic adventures), and I really enjoyed the positive response.

This opinion is valid too, it's just a matter of finding your own way :)