The first about the challenges of wearing multiple hats as well as some PR-related stuff.  Essentially, many indie developers seem to struggle with balancing the business side of their work with the game-development side of their work.  I know I do, and this post breaks down some of why this might be, as well as reasons and goals for overcoming these challenges.

Case in point: by any objective measure, I really messed up the PR for the release of Tidalis.  We had far too little PR, and now that awesome reviews are coming in it’s still too late for the actual launch of the game.  This has led to sales being about ten times lower than my minimum expectation for the game, even though the game has still been very successful compared to most indie games in its first two weeks.  It certainly beats the pants off of what AI War did at first, and AI War went on to sell around 30,000 copies of itself and its expansion.

So what does that mean for Tidalis?  Is it to be permanently harmed due to the lack of advanced press before initial release?  Short answer: No.  That certainly wasn’t the case for AI War, and the reviews are even more positive for Tidalis than they were for AI War.  Longer answer: I wrote a second article about the secrets of Arcen’s success as an indie company, which outlines how we took AI War from a complete unknown to a cult classic.  It’s worked for us, I suspect this is what worked for Dwarf Fortress, and I know this is what worked for the likes of Doodle Jump and similar on the iPhone.  And best of all, it’s the sort of thing that big companies by and large would never do for their customers.

Happy reading!

So about those updates…yea, they’re still updated.

ItBGames was really in need of an update. We changed things a bit. Like the original post states on ItBGames:

The store is gone as well, at least temporarily. And we have this handy little thing:

If you click that button on the sidebar on the right you will be redirected to a random indie game, so if you are in the mood for an indie game, just click there. We’ll be adding more games to the button as time goes on.

There’s more I could post about our new ad rolls (and how you can get free ads here), but go see it for yourself.

Oh, and one more thing…remember that old contact form where you had to go to ItBGames.com and use that to send emails to us at all? Even if you don’t, that’s gone now…

Look at this < the new Contact Page
And this < the new About Us Page

Yup, links are updated, our “About Us” and “Contact Us” are now updated. You can send direct emails to us from a form on our site, or email us directly. If you are looking to do that just click go to the Contact Us page. There’s a link in this post and on the side so I’m not going to re-link one here…hopefully you’re not that lazy…

Enjoy.

floating point from Samuel Cockedey on Vimeo.

Source: pinktentacle.com

Well…now it’s on to ItBGames’ new website. The new ItBGames and MangaPage sites will be up at the same time.

Oh…and we’re getting rid of the store for now.

The first MangaPage bundle pack website is up. We are still working on the CD version.

*Link fixed below

That’s right, if you want to blog on our site about Anime or anything Otaku related then hit us up and let us know.

No, not here on the side of the page.

Everybody say Hi Chris.

(Image Googled)

Chris is a Indie Game developer and Lead of Arcen Games (website here). You might know some of their games like AI War. Chris has now joined Jonathan and I as Blog Authors, so look forward to his posts to be up here too.

Source: My Yahoo referred me, the link is here: video.yahoo.com

If you haven’t already heard the next possible big “platform” might be the new OnLive service, which makes some question “will console and pc people finally be able to fight?”. This question, to my knowledge, still hasn’t been answered. There is one thing though that is a fact, OnLive could be a great gaming service. There are still questions to the logistics and how well things will work for playing games on the platform, but this post isn’t about that. If you haven’t heard of OnLive, check this link out.

Onlive Service Website

OnLive has recently added the ability to be added to the “waiting list”. With the signup there is a special offer on a first come first serve basis, where you can win free OnLive service for a year. There are some stipulations, like if you win you won’t be playing games with a free membership. First year free users will mostly have access to demos, videos, and the like. They also get the option of signing up for another year at about $5 a month, which is great (and might include games[diddn't look that up], which you will have to pay for separately).

Well, if you want to sign up, check it out, if not it’s at least worth looking into. Oh and one more thing, you only have until July 15th to sign up, so hurry!

Register for the Waiting List (the free year stuff, you aren’t guaranteed a free year)
OnLive Service Info
OnLive Support (check the FAQs for more info on the service)
Source: yahoo.com

Pixel Prospector has released their new site. According to the News post at Pixel Prospector / indev, the site features:

* 235 Free Indie Games (only full versions)
* All with a Gameplay Clip (2 min – 10 min)
* All with at least 5 Screenshots
* All with essential info (Download Link, Developer, Size, Year, Homepage)
* All with additional info (Dev Tool, Links to other Reviews, Links to additional Let’s Plays and other Videos, Info whether a game needs to be installed or not)
* All with a short description
* New Logo by Jason “JaJitsu” Boyer
* 1 New Game Every Friday

There’s a little bit more info in the source link below, so go check it out, and be sure to check the new website out at the link below:

Check out Pixel Prospector | the indie goldmine

Source: pixelprospector.com/indev

Well I hope you all had a good weekend. I know I did.

Yeah I know it’s two years old now but it still got a good review, an Overall Score of 73%.

They gave it an Overall Score of 87%.

By the way, the source for this was: kotaku.com

If you want to watch the second series, Il Teatrino, it is also up on hulu (and has been for some time). I didn’t finish it and don’t feel it’s up to the standards of the first series, but in case you’re curious or have seen it and want to see it again, here’s the link: Watch the second Gunslinger Girl series here

And yea, some of you might be like “Glen, you’re crazy the second series is great”, but I say “I watched the original first, it has much higher standards and owns the second one”. But hey, post your opinons…