Release Is Only The Beginning
There’s another great article over on whatgamesare.com discussing the two ends of the current games climate, Nintendo’s trickle of high quality established titles and the iPad/iPhone platform with it’s flood of low quality software.
The XBLIG (Xbox live indie games) suffers from the same problem as the apple app store, actually it’s worse because it has a far smaller install base and is physically separated from the other games in the Xbox UI.
So basically you’ve got to make up your own story and try and drum up your own business if you want to make any sort of money on XBLIG, which is really difficult for a complete unknown like myself. You’ve got to be different to get noticed, but you can’t be too different or you’ll just confuse people.
I think Dirchie Kart has potential to fit this mould, but it needs a few changes, these are the first couple I’m going to tackle:
- Visually it’s a little too close to Mario Kart, so it’s too easily dismissed as a clone.
- Needs a few more tracks to give real value for money.
This leads me to the main point of this post, the release of Dirchie Kart is only the first step and by no means the end of it’s development, I’m not good enough to make it the best game it can be right off the cuff. So I’m going to iterate it over the next year of so till it is the best it can be.
The following quote from the article I mentioned before echoes this sentiment.
“The alternative is to polish in public. Early release, courting influencers, continuous improvement and communication with a fan base are all ways that any developer can get out there. And as their game improves and their fan base grows more voluble, so every release and update becomes a part of the polish process. As they continue to over-deliver, the fans love them and become their marketing machine.”
It’s very unlikely I’ll make any real money off it, but I really like what I’ve created and there’s heaps more I can do with the base I’ve created. So while I’m enjoying it why not keep at it, who knows I might even start a bit of a fan base if the purchasers can see it changing and start some dialog with me.
My XNA 4.0 build is getting there, still got some serious performance issues but the pre-multiplied alpha has fixed up the particle system and the alpha blending in the track decorations, giving the whole game a visual lift.