Grab.com - July 2005

[tc_bobo]

In an effort to continue to court the indie game community at Grab.com with our "Homemade Games" section, I wanted to give you an update on a few things.

1) The "Pop-Up" on indie downloads is now gone. It is elsewhere on the page.

2) .dcr files should be working on Grab.

And finally, we just launched a "Homemade Toons" monthly contest on Grab - http://www.grab.com/fun/homemade/contest.php

I wanted to get your opinion on if you think it's worth it to offer it for games as well. The obvious question is: "If I win, does Grab get my game?" The answer is: "NO. You retain all rights to your game."

Obviously a contest like this will skew toward web games and downloads that feature web games. People would rather play online than download, or at least get a taste of the game beforehand.

Just curious on your thoughs.

Take Care!

[tc_bobo]

Can I assume by the lack of comments that the answer is:

"Put the checkbook away!"

The $1k, $500 and $250 monthly prizes for best Homemade Games are not appealing to most indie devs? I can certainly see that - Probably better suited for Flash Game developers.

See, even if no one responds, it still helps.

Any new or old indie games out there, would love to feature on Grab.com - If you add it, let me know and I'll make sure it's featured.

http://www.grab.com/games/homemade/

Take Care!

[BinaryMoon]

Hoorah - the removal of the download pop up is much better. I'm going to look into the competition thing. It sounds quite good.

[soniCron]

The $1k, $500 and $250 monthly prizes for best Homemade Games are not appealing to most indie devs? I can certainly see that - Probably better suited for Flash Game developers.

I'm confused. You said in your first post, and it says on the site, the contest is for homemade movies, not games. Is it games now? Because I'm excited!

[ErikH2000]

The $1k, $500 and $250 monthly prizes for best Homemade Games are not appealing to most indie devs? I can certainly see that - Probably better suited for Flash Game developers.

Personally, I do more salivating over a chance to bring in sales and contacts from those 333,208 (!) members. I would certainly enter if the contest didn't require me to do something really time-consuming or conflicting with my interests.

I don't even know if my game (DROD: Journey to Rooted Hold--recently submitted) is even something that belongs on Grab. The games there are very casual, and DROD asks for a higher level of involvement than the others I see. One thing I don't understand is after submitting the game, is it supposed to list immediately as the web pages seem to imply? Or is it waiting for review? I don't see it listed, so I guess it has to be reviewed first.

I'm actually really interested in Grab for promoting my game. I like how you have a real community there and not just download-and-go people like on say... FileFront.

-Erik

[Frozen In Ice]

Erik,
I did the same thing when I first submitted. I learned afterword the following...

Go back to the listing page and hit "Publish" It should then ask you if you are sure (hit yes of course)... after a few moments it will show up :-)

[ErikH2000]

Ah! Now I am getting someplace. Thanks very much, fella.

-Erik

[simonh]

I submitted Super Gerball to Grab a few days ago and so far my experience has been mixed. While I've had a high number of downloads from Grab and a few useful reviews too (and some not so useful ones ), there's been no sales from there. While I admit Super Gerball is not the best converting game in the world, I wonder if there is simply so much on offer on Grab, that the visitors (who mainly seem to be kids), are content to keep on trying all the free stuff and never pay for anything.

[tc_bobo]

Kids are the most VOCAL part of the site, as with any site. Young people love to "show their backsides" in public.

It's not the majority.

[Cuculain]

Maybe a separate monthly price of 1k for downloadable and web playable each?

Btw, I'm not sure your statistics are working properly. Had the same number of page views for months, not to mention the "23000 reviews".

[simonh]

Yeah I get the 23000 reviews thing as well.

Some of the actual reviews I've got though have been classics.

aint aloud to download so donno any thing

Coudn't Play Because I Had to download this free trial and it probably would make me buy it. So I said "Screw it"

took a few min. to download but once its downloaded it is good, have a mac so i wasn't able to play it cause the script doesn't work for those mac. users out there.

On the upside though, Super Gerball is at no. 5 in the top 10 list! Hooray, I've made it into a top 10 list at last!

Next aim: to make it into a top 10 sales list.

[Frozen In Ice]

I keep getting asked to verify my email address. When I do, it tells me it has sent an email to my address, but it never arrives. Needless to say, I can't do much on the site till they fix that part.

[fog4711]

I have an experience similar to Frozen In Ice. The emails never arrive. Mayhaps the spam-filter keep killing them. I use lycos/mailcity for mail.

I keep getting asked to verify my email address. When I do, it tells me it has sent an email to my address, but it never arrives. Needless to say, I can't do much on the site till they fix that part.

fog

[Frozen In Ice]

Hi Fog,
Originally I used a Yahoo address and the emails arrived. However, I've changed the email to my domain address with full permission to receive from Grab. For some reason though, their emails are not even making it to my server. I sent them a note by using their "Contact Us" option, but never received a response. Hopefully they'll get to the situation soon

[KNau]

I hate to be a stick in the mud but very few of the movies you have on your site for the contest actually qualify since they are using works not owned by the authors (Mario, Zelda, etc.) - are the game rules going to be as lenient?

Reason I ask is that I'd hate to put time into creating and submitting an original movie or game only to compete with and, knowing the voting audience, probably lose to a bunch of Super Mario music videos or fan-games.

Don't get me wrong, some of those flash anims are brilliant - but they aren't original, wholly-owned or copyrightable works.

[Olivier]

I PM'ed tc_bobo here on Indiegamer to get that "mail verifying" issue solved.

[Musenik]

simonh,

How long did you have to wait after you submitted supergerbil, before it was posted to Grab?

I hear it can be a week or three before a homemade game goes up.

I also PM'ed Malcolm, but haven't heard anything back... four days and counting. I just don't want to PO him. :-)

[fog4711]

Hi Frozen In Ice,

Good to hear that Yahoo works fine @ grab. Maybe I should consider getting one. One can't have too many e-mail addresses. I hope tc-bobo and the
grab team can solve the issue. The grab stuff looks promising.

Hi Fog,
Originally I used a Yahoo address and the emails arrived. However, I've changed the email to my domain address with full permission to receive from Grab. For some reason though, their emails are not even making it to my server. I sent them a note by using their "Contact Us" option, but never received a response. Hopefully they'll get to the situation soon

[Frozen In Ice]

Hi Fog,
It does look promising in some respects. They haven't fixed the email problem yet, and I just noticed something else. Let's say you release a game with version 1.0 and a few months later you release version 1.1 (or however you identify your versions). Once you update the listing, it doesn't show up as a new release.Seems the only way anyone would know is if they actually click on you specific listing. Maybe they should add "Just Updated" section. As long as it's a new file,size,etc, it shouldn't be a problem. That way , no abuses the idea by just chaning the description text every week.
Other than that, Grab does seem to be a promising place to submit to.

[Duke]

simonh,
How long did you have to wait after you submitted supergerbil, before it was posted to Grab?
I hear it can be a week or three before a homemade game goes up.
I also PM'ed Malcolm, but haven't heard anything back... four days and counting. I just don't want to PO him. :-)

Here's my experience from a couple of days ago:
I uploaded our Crime Puzzle and then checked for the next 20-30 hours and it wasn't in the listings. I wondered how long it would take them to approve the game. Then, by pure chance, I noticed that "Publish" button I missed before, and after I pressed it the game instantly appeared in the listings.
Now I don't know for sure if this "instant" would have happened if I pressed that button right after I uploaded the game, so I'm not sure if they actually reviewed the game before allowing me to "publish" it. Though I seriously doubt it.

Forgot to mention, this is our second game on Grab, so maybe this speedy "publishing" has something to do with that.

[Musenik]

Then, by pure chance, I noticed that "Publish" button I missed before,

Thanks Duke. There's no way I would have suspected this after all the hoops Grab requires, to successfully 'submit' a game to the site. For me, the results were, 'waiting for review'. You're probably right about being a 'trusted' Grab developer. Now, if only Malcolm will find my PM about featuring the game.

May I touch the hem of your toga, for luck?

[Duke]

May I touch the hem of your toga, for luck?

Go on.

...

Now, there, there, enough of it.

[tc_bobo]

Lots of hoops?

Adding a game to Grab is a pretty simple process. However, it seems a lot of devs are missing the "PUBLISH" button. I'll see if I can improve that procedure a bit to make it a little more obvious.

Yes, if the developer has already had a game approved and adds another one and publishes it, it will appear immediately.

The Witch's Yarn is the featured game right now.

Competition makes everyone better and I see that for Grab.com as we have a little site called MySpace.com under the same roof. Makes us work harder being in that gigantic shadow...

Ta,

[princec]

Hm, I'd submit mine, except... they're not homemade. Mostly they're written in an office, and involve at least 5 people all in.

Cas

[ErikH2000]

Hm, I'd submit mine, except... they're not homemade. Mostly they're written in an office, and involve at least 5 people all in.

Yeah, that term rankles. Like I've been sitting in a rocking chair for the last two years knitting my game. Malcolm went over reasons for using "homemade" at some length--I guess for grab.com, the phrase works way better than "indie" or other things. It still looks like a decent site to submit a game to. Hmm. Averaging 3 downloads a day. So for the twenty minutes of work making the submission (mostly cropping and resizing images), I may get 3 or 4 sales from grab.com this year.

-Erik

[princec]

Hm, not really worth it. If it got 10x that I'd bother.

Cas

[ErikH2000]

I'm guessing my game is less popular than others there. Personally, I would work 20 minutes for 3 sales, so it's no big deal, really.

-Erik

[Duke]

Hm, not really worth it. If it got 10x that I'd bother.

I've got 318 page views and 54 downloads per day, for seven days the game has been on grab.
So I guess it depends on whether the game is attractive to the public.
The visitors definitely are there.

[ErikH2000]

I've got 318 page views and 54 downloads per day, for seven days the game has been on grab.
So I guess it depends on whether the game is attractive to the public.
The visitors definitely are there.

Aw, now you made me feel bad. My low downloads are the fault of this one reviewer guy. He totally destroyed me:

"Don't download this game, it's boring! no action, no fun! U need to use the numberkeys to play it. The graphics are boring, I didn't listen to the sounds. You can watch a demo before you start the game, but I don't think that will make u enthousiastic. It's not worth downloading, trust me."

Okay, my low downloads are probably the fault of unimpressive screenshots, Grab's ultra-casual audience, and a large demo download size. But I prefer to blame it all on one mean little boy.

-Erik

[Duke]

@Erik:
Tell me about it.
The first post on the message board for Crime Puzzle was
"didnt work"
The guy said the game shut his computer down every time he started it.
Not a good recomendation for downloading and trying.
Luckilly, two of the more positive posts followed, so the average is ok now.