Posts by zaphod

  • Congrats Zaphod/Nimblebit

    It would take a long assed article to really analyze all the stuff we have done and to try and figure out which things specifically were the most effective, but here are some bullet points of stuff off the top of my head:

    :arrow: The iPad market is still pretty small compared to the iPhone / iPod market, so it is tough to sell a lot of units there. It will grow over time though, especially every holiday season.

    :arrow: Try to leverage free if you can, it can be a very powerful tool, especially if your game has mass appeal.

    :arrow: Try to get on TA, the more your game is in the press the more chance Apple will feature you. *edit* Have a video of your game!!!

    :arrow: Do promotions.

    :arrow: Listen to feedback and make changes to your game.

    :arrow: If your game is a niche game, charge a niche price.

    :arrow: Have a great looking icon.

    :arrow: Make more than one game, try to gauge what worked well in each one. Experiment.

    :arrow: Use whatever resources you can to cut down on development time.

    :arrow: Don't make it perfect, polish it enough for initial release and then see what the reaction is.

  • Congrats Zaphod/Nimblebit

    I agree that ZG had a lot of untapped potential, unfortunately we were completely tapped out personally just getting it to the point it was at and we didn't have the drive to continue on with the amount of work it would have taken to explore it's full potential. I really want to set it free at some point, I just don't know when that will be exactly due to some other complications.

    Jumping into any market with the expectation of earning money on the first shot without building up experience in that market is probably a little foolhardy.

    I feel like that is what we did with Zero Gear on Steam, and I see lots of developers doing the same thing on the App Store. You can't just drop in one fishing line and then give up when you don't come up with a fish in that spot.

    We have made plenty of games that didn't make much money on the App Store, and have gained enough experience from all of them to have a clearer picture of what works and what doesn't on the App Store as a result.

    I think the days of a game just expecting to make money because it is on the market and looks nice is slowly coming to an end. There are some places where the supply of games is artificially limited like console retail and XBLA where they only release so many games a year where you can probably still ride that scarcity to steer a certain amount of people towards your product, but I actually relish the challenge of being in a giant sea of other games and having to work our asses off to get them to rise to the top.

    How many of the people you know making iPhone games simply toss it out there, and then are befuddled when the dollars don't start rolling in? It is a common mistake to think that since you see so many obviously crappy apps going gangbusters on the App Store, that if you just put out something of any quality at all it HAS to just rise to the top on it's own!

  • Congrats Zaphod/Nimblebit

    I have specific regrets about it, but I don't regret the entire thing. I doubt many people hit the bullseye on the first throw, but hopefully with every added effort you can inch a little closer. So mainly I regret that it took 3 years to get my first throw off .

  • Congrats Zaphod/Nimblebit

    There was a lot of things that went wrong on ZG in hindsight. We never wanted to do a console game though, in the end it probably would have been better to have made a different scope of game... probably something we had more experience in, and something that didn't rely so heavily on multiplayer and other technical factors we didn't have a lot of control over.

    But it was definitely a gigantic learning experience, and fun to work on for some parts of it . It gives me more perspective on what I want to do now.

    The iOS stuff up until recently has provided enough to make a comfortable living, but Pocket Frogs is earning enough to make a comfortable living.

    *edit* If there is one thing I learned most from making ZG, it is to never build too much on top of assumptions. If you are going to spend 3 years and your life savings on something, make sure it is something you have carnal knowledge of and have done before successfully.

  • Congrats Zaphod/Nimblebit

    Just a PC release was already stretching beyond what we were really capable of, spending even more time on a console release probably would have been a step in the wrong direction. I think we just aimed too high with ZG, and after the whole experience I find smaller projects on iOS to be the real sweet spot for me and my bro.

  • Red Dead Redemption

    RDR was the first single player game I played all the way through since portal came out. It was absolutely fabulousness. I live in the same climate / region as the game is set in and the environments are just spectacularly done. I don't think I have played another game in recent memory where I could play for hours without seeing something in the environment that looked out of place, but the environments in RDR just look natural.

  • Zero Gear - an indie multiplayer kart racing game

    yea, although currently you have to go into the settings menu and bind them manually. The controls are also still binary (off or on) for turning even with the controller - so you might get a better feel assigning them to the dpad for now. One of the overwhelming community requests is for analog and better controller support ( just plug in and play) so we are hoping to look at getting those in there in the somewhat near future.

  • Zero Gear - an indie multiplayer kart racing game

    Quote from Skjalg

    Congrats on finally starting to sell the game =)I know some people get offended by anything cash-related, but I was wondering if you guys would please be so kind as to share the amount of pre-orders sold, total, on the release date?

    I'd totally understand if you'd want to keep that sort of information secret, but its incredibly useful knowledge for other start-ups to see.

    We are going to see eventually about sharing our numbers like we do with our iPhone stuff, I have not figured out if we are allowed to do that yet. The pre orders have not been selling much but just started to pick up this weekend due to the massive holiday sale being over. Our numbers won't be very interesting to look at until the game has been out for at least a few months and we can see where things level out at.

  • Zero Gear - an indie multiplayer kart racing game

    Starting today, Zero Gear is available for pre-order! Players who pre-order will get 25% off the price of the game, as well as immediate access to the beta version! Visit the Zero Gear product page for pricing information. Zero Gear is slated for release on January 12th, 2010. Stay tuned for more release information in the weeks ahead, including a 4 package deal!

    [Blocked Image: http://www.nimblebit.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/zgpreorder.png]

    Also included in the latest beta update (which you can access by pre-order), is a new goal mode map, Hoops.

    [Blocked Image: http://www.nimblebit.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/hoops.jpg]

    A special thanks goes out from us here at NimbleBit to everyone who has helped us beta testing the game. We hope you will pre-order and continue to be the foundation of the Zero Gear player community!

  • Zero Gear - an indie multiplayer kart racing game

    new build out on steam:

    * Added Eight Iron race map

    * Added Space Race race map

    * Added Touchdown goal map

    * 44 Achievements!!!

    * The server browser now reports ping times for servers

    * Added support to invite friends to the game you are in and added an "Invite Friends" button to the escape menu

    * Experimental Steam Cloud support saves your kart setup and key layout between multiple computers

    * "Find Game" button added to the escape menu to browser servers while in a server

    * Friends only games now supported (your server won't show up on the server list, you must invite your friends into your game)

    * Alt tab crash fixed (it appears there is still a problem if you have multiple monitors hooked up, will fix ASAP)

    * Fixed problem with wheels rotating erratically when the client was lagging

    * Added support for keys above arrow keys and in number pad

    * A minimum resolution of 800x600 is now enforced correctly in the settings GUI

    * Removed the dialog box asking the user if they wanted to run the game even though their video card doesn't support SM 2.0

    [Blocked Image: http://www.nimblebit.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/eightiron-thumb1.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: http://www.nimblebit.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/spacerace-thumb.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: http://www.nimblebit.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/touchdown-thumb.jpg]