Beta release - Seeking content.

[Indiepath]

I am proud to announce the first public beta of our new web site, we are actively seeking your content prior to public launch.

www.pjio.com - pronounced "jahy-oh" (silent P)

"pjio is a video game website where the community controls the content by uploading, sharing, reviewing and playing the games. Video game developers are encouraged to upload and share their latest creations and have pjio members give them creative and constructive feedback, and perhaps even purchase a copy or two. Where else can a developer try out new ideas, showcase their latest creation and get feedback within minutes of release. Virtually any game uploaded to pjio.com be delivered as a web browser embedded game."

"We want to help you sell more of your own games. In exchange for a small affiliate fee we will place direct download, website and purchase links on your game page. Every penny of revenue earned from the affiliate program is credited straight back into your advertising account. Use your advertising credit to purchase further ad-impressions. We want you to decide what affiliate fees you pay to us, experiment with economies of scale - it's your choice."

Please Note that community features such as Messaging, Group creation, Channel creation and loyalty rewards are not implemented in this release - hence some of the hyperlinks will fail. Expect implementation within 2 days of this post.

Please let us have your thoughts, comments and ideas - preferrably via the site contact form.

[Nexic]

Every penny of revenue earned from the affiliate program is credited straight back into your advertising account.

So does this mean we HAVE to spend our royalties on advertising?

[Ricardo C]

"Pjio"? What, was "Wii" taken? Oh, wait... ;)

Spanish reviewers will probably constantly mistype it as "pijo", which might not be the best thing in the world...

I kid, I kid. Site looks great, just not totally taken with the name.

[luggage]

Word of mouth should be interesting. How on earth do you pronounce that?

[Indiepath]

So does this mean we HAVE to spend our royalties on advertising?
Rather than charge you directly for advertising we felt it more appropriate to use any monies you kick back by means of affiliate referrals to fund further advertising of your products. Is there something else you would want that money to be available for? Purchase of other games for example?

[soniCron]

Looks really great guys! Best of luck! :)

[Nexic]

Rather than charge you directly for advertising we felt it more appropriate to use any monies you kick back by means of affiliate referrals to fund further advertising of your products. Is there something else you would want that money to be available for? Purchase of other games for example?


That's also a good idea, but really I'd like my royalties to go into my bank account. From the way the paragraph was worded I got the impression you couldn't actually get the money, rather you were forced to spend it on the advertsing (so I couldn't use it towards paying the rent etc).

[Indiepath]

That's also a good idea, but really I'd like my royalties to go into my bank account. From the way the paragraph was worded I got the impression you couldn't actually get the money, rather you were forced to spend it on the advertsing (so I couldn't use it towards paying the rent etc).
Ok, I think we need to spend some time making the statements a little clearer - I'll update the site as well.

1) We do not pay you any royalties as we do not sell your game, you pay us for referrals that become sales (normal affiliate agreements).

2) We do not dictate the size of the fee, we leave that up to you to find a happy balance of sales vs. advertising spend.

3) When you have an Advertising credit balance you must, currently, spend it on advertising.

With regard to the third point, I am interested in hearing of other ways you would like to use that credit - withdrawing it would be pointless as you need not have paid an affiliate fee in the first instance.

[Pyabo]

Hmmm... why complicate things so much with affiliates? I thought you were going for more of the YouTube type of delivery? This is completely different, and far less appealing.

[TimS]

www.pjio.com - pronounced "jahy-oh" (silent P)

Why fight with english so? If this site travels by word of mouth it will likely travel under a name pronouced "pidjeeoh"...

As for feedback. Looks good so far. You've got to get a handle on those ads though... and pop-ups? Ouch!

-T

[Indiepath]

As for feedback. Looks good so far. You've got to get a handle on those ads though... and pop-ups? Ouch!
The ads only went live a couple of hours ago, a lot of the rubbish is automated and we're working with the provider to filter most of the crap out - please bear with us.

[Jesse Aldridge]

At first this struck me as really cool. But then I started having issues.

First I tried Bullet Candy. I had to let a .dll through my firewall (Symantec)... oof. Ok, not too bad. (I realize now that it was probably the game itself triggered the alert, but at the time I thought all igLoader games had to be allowed through).

But then, I tried Tanx, and it froze my computer like it hasn't been froze since my Win 95 days. No alt+ctrl+delete, no mouse movement, no nothing. I hard rebooted after waiting for about 30 seconds.

...I wouldn't touch this thing with a hundred foot pole... (sorry).

Maybe it was the programs fault and not the plug-in? Not really sure... but geez.

Oh, and the name sucks too :D How bout razmataz, or happyland, or gorp? Anything but pjio!

If you get the kinks worked out, I'd probably be quite interested in this service.

Maybe some kind of quality assurance mechanism is what you need?

[Indiepath]

At first this struck me as really cool. But then I started having issues.

First I tried Bullet Candy. I had to let a .dll through my firewall (Symantec)... oof. Ok, not too bad. (I realize now that it was probably the game itself triggered the alert, but at the time I thought all igLoader games had to be allowed through).

But then, I tried Tanx, and it froze my computer like it hasn't been froze since my Win 95 days. No alt+ctrl+delete, no mouse movement, no nothing. I hard rebooted after waiting for about 30 seconds.

...I wouldn't touch this thing with a hundred foot pole... (sorry).

Maybe it was the programs fault and not the plug-in? Not really sure... but geez.

Oh, and the name sucks too :D How bout razmataz, or happyland, or gorp? Anything but pjio!

If you get the kinks worked out, I'd probably be quite interested in this service.

Maybe some kind of quality assurance mechanism is what you need?
Teething problems, sure. Bullet Candy requires connection to the authors site - you do get this with games and home-built on-line score systems. Seems like Tanx has some issues on some machines, and we'll probably find others as we go through this beta phase. The sandbox does not allow the wrapped application to piggyback the plugin connection through the browser for security concerns, if we did we'd be doing you a dis-service. So yes you will get asked by your firewall to allow certain tasks - period.

Please bear with it, the Beta has been live for a couple of days and in true Beta fashion we are dealing with the problems as they arise. And thanks for the feedback.

[tafty]

I went to try Geom. I downloaded igLoader and installed as instructed, clicked to play the game and then experienced the attached Firefox application error. Firefox ditched after that. I couldn't find any log file in the igLoader install directory and only the Firefox error repeated in the Event Log.

And I'm afraid I'm another vote for "pjio" being a completely rubbish name. TimS hit the nail on the head with his comment - that is exactly how my first attempt to pronounce it sounded! Can I ask where it originates and what the thinking is behind it?

On the plus side it's a lovely, clean and attractive site design.

And would it be possible to have 5 letter usernames please?!

EDIT:
System: Firefox 1.5.07 with Win2K on Athlon 2400XP, 1Gb RAM, GeForce4MX Integrated GPU.

I should have said that the Geom loading bar did fill and that was the point at which the crash occurred.

[Pallav Nawani]

And I'm afraid I'm another vote for "pjio" being a completely rubbish name. TimS hit the nail on the head with his comment - that is exactly how my first attempt to pronounce it sounded! Can I ask where it originates and what the thinking is behind it?


I think it is *very* hard to find a reasonable sounding 4 letter domain that's not already taken. I bet Indiepath had to try a lots of combinations to find 'pjio'. But it does not feel so bad it if you look at it in print. The name almost feels like some new thing from sony ;)

[Polycount Productions]

I think it is *very* hard to find a reasonable sounding 4 letter domain that's not already taken. I bet Indiepath had to try a lots of combinations to find 'pjio'. But it does not feel so bad it if you look at it in print. The name almost feels like some new thing from sony ;)

It's obvious what Indiepath is doing here: copying Wii. :rolleyes: When Wii was launched the name itself generated lots of promotion for the product (and is still doing so) - we'll see Pjio doing the same ;)
(just kidding...)

[jimgreer]

Congrats on launching this, Indiepath - I know how hard it is to find a domain name.

We recently launched the closed alpha version of a different approach to this, we're calling it Kongregate. I'm pretty happy with that name but it is long and hard to spell. The reason we're calling it that is we're really emphasizing playing with and against your friends. All games have chat, collectible items, points, etc.

The games are Flash games uploaded by the developers - we'll also be supporting Shockwave games soon and maybe Java a little later on. We give a share of the revenue we make to the game developer - up to 50% depending on whether they implement our APIs and whether the game is exclusive to us.

Game developers will be able to use our 1-click payment system to charge for premium content in their games. For instance you could have a racing game where the first 3 tracks are free, and then additional tracks are $0.50 each or $5 for all of them. The price is up to the developer - here the revenue share will be much higher than 50% - it's your game after all.

One cool thing we're doing that isn't implemented yet is a metagame. By playing the individual Flash games you can earn "Cards" - sort of like Achievements on Xbox Live. Those cards are playable in an online collectible card game, sort of like Magic the Gathering.

A lot of this isn't implemented yet, but you can check out the basics now. If you're interested go to http://kongregate.com and request an invitation. If you mention this thread I'll make sure you get one! We're really trying to get feedback from developers to make sure we're implementing the right set of features and making a site that will be the best place to upload web games.

[Indiepath]

Hi Jim,

I meant to email you further to the intro by Brian, I'll get on to it when the dust settles a little. I wonder if you'll let me have access to your alpha :rolleyes:

Tim.

[jimgreer]

Hey Tim - just sent you an invitation to your indiepath.com address. I think your site and ours are really complementary - yours is better for people writing C++ games and ours is for Flash, Shockwave, etc.

[Indiepath]

Got it thanks :) Nice site, some really cool flash games on there. Yes, I do believe the sites are complementary and I look forward to speaking with you at greater length about some of the ideas I have and how they could benefit both our companies. One thing to think about, we too will be offering loyalty points that can be earned and redeemed in a number of ways - you've got me thinking about a common credit that could be used across both our sites. Anyway, lots to do.

[Indiepath]

Does anyone have a Flash game they could let me use to test the Flash upload and publish functionality?

Thanks in advance.

[jankoM]

you can download and try with this...
http://www.itmmetelko.com/webdemos/bkminisolitaire/BKSolitare.swf

otherwise, great work with pjio ... seems made on a high level like other of your stuff.

[Indiepath]

Thanks Janko - all will be revealed soon.

Update : Groups go online tomorrow - think YT grouping where you add game, invite people and discuss nice things..

We've had a great response over the past week since our initial beta release, the traffic has been impressive and exceeded our expectations - just check Alexa and see how it's comparing to other sites in just 7 days, and we've not even launched!

[jimgreer]

Congrats to Indiepath - we're very pleased with our Alexa numbers as well - especially since we still require an invitation.

[Indiepath]

Group functionality is now online - come make a group and keep uploading them games :)

To do:-

Buddy system, group invites and eXigo API integration.

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I expect the site to be in full release within 10 days.

[Indiepath]

It's just been pointed out that I did not mention the Flash games. The Flash delivery system will go live early next week.