Tag: Public Relations

Why I Can’t Take E3 [Or Any Trade Convention] Seriously

It happens every year.  Every year, without fail, at around this time, "real" news [and I use the word in inverted commas, because really - game releases and hints at game releases aren't really "news" at all.  They're - at best - terrible product placement] drops right off the radar.

Why?  Because some PR drone way up on high has decided that nothing can leak out prior to E3.  And that results in what fans generally call "lots of slow news days."  While that's a problem, E3 - and shows like it - have a far bigger issue that I want to tackle.

They're pageants. Read more

Opinion: Dear Indies, Communication Is Important

I love indie games. So much so, in fact, that I've basically given up on AAA development. AAA development - to me, at least, seems like an endless cesspool of "generic brown shooter 56," or "Watch The Crew Dogs Cry Far As The Creed of Assassin's" takes over. Or to some degree or other, they're plagued with silly launch day fiascos that involve you paying extra money to get stuff that's already on the disk. Even if you somehow dodge all those bullets, you have to contend with pre-order exclusives, Day 1 "Downloadable content" and my absolute favourite, "we're patching the game on day 1, because we didn't actually test properly, so now we have to fix all these errors at launch." [which, of course, doesn't work for the most part, cf: the fiasco that was Batman: Arkham Knight, where that game just didn't work at launch and then continued to just not work even after patching.]

So, I'll take indies any day over AAA games. The experiences are shorter, more focused, often reasonably tested [within the limits/budgets of the small team, of course] and often, they're just more fun to play.

I'm currently about half way through Evoland 2, a game I've been waiting for for several years, now. It does absolutely everything better than the first game and is proof that indie devs can learn from their previous offerings.

The problem is, indie devs still need to learn one crucial skill and that's communication. Read more