I've noticed that for the most part, byond gamers tend to have a certain mentality.
I feel they are used to certain mechanics in games, thus they shun work that doesn't have those same qualities.
Oddly enough it's usually the "stat panel in the corner, chat in the bottom" set up that they favor.
On that note I've also noticed that the majority gamers don't really care about gameplay, they care about the coolness factor or associate with popular entities that they find cool -hence the naruto gamer crazy and dbz, so on.
So as someone who is seeking to really not make a "byond" game, and actually make a traditional game that provides traditional game play values-- what are some ways to sort of help steer people away from what they are "used" to, long enough to get them to give something new and different a try?
The most obvious way I've though up is to just have really good eye catching graphics..but that's not always possible. The second and one I favor most is game play-- but people are pretty shallow in terms of what they wanna play, if it's not highly visually appealing or associated with a popular ip, they are more apt to just log out.
The third way I've stumbled upon is socializing. People are more apt to try a game out even if it's unique if they know you or at least know something about you.
I suppose what I'm interested in however is how to get new players to try a game long enough to give it a fair shake.
ID:1296449
 Jun 18 2013, 2:43 pm
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Dariuc wrote:
I suppose what I'm interested in however is how to get new players to try a game long enough to give it a fair shake. Market your game outside of BYOND. Unless you're making an anime game using stat panels crammed full of verbs and an entire committee of abusive game moderators, the majority of the user base here isn't even going to give your game a chance. | |
I find a lot of control schemes to just be icky and that makes first impressions generally bad and can be a major turn off- and games generally take investment to play through. (Investment of the player is why they continue to play, believe it or not the more time you sink into a game the less likely you are to stop)
Also when discussing your game to outsiders use proper terminology in terms of genre and gameplay - especially in advertising. | |
Also, you always have to make your decision on your own but ask the players if they'd like to see "X Idea"
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Fair enough, and take makes sense. Once you fished in a community it helps that you don't alienate them with dramatic changes lol.
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I was just thinking about that. And a while a go a guy just logged on my game. He just created his character and saw the graphics saying, "What the hell is this!?" In the end, he logged off without even giving me a chance to explain what it was. I sometimes wish I had the ability to icon wonderfully so my game would look more appealing. But I have to have a login page that is plain colored and has plain buttons. I can always draw on paper, yes. But not on a computer. I'm an excellent artists. But.. NOT on the computer.
As for my shell server, I just asked a few friends to chill out on it with me and some more players started crawling in today. We were dropping in daily visits bit by bit each day and today it rose up by just having a few friends stay with me on it. So that's the community side of it. One person will refer to another. The whole chain thing. Edit: Dariuc is one of those friends I asked to come chill with me. >.> On Shell Server. :o | |
Oh, and DVF. I really liked that comment. But you should say who it was by. *nods*
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You should draw up everything and scan it in... I've been thinking of doing this for a specific project or just for fun.
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Yea I get that. I just have played many games, for much longer than most. I don't even look at graphics anymore. I look at what is presented. Substance. Presentation. Atmosphere. The ability of the game developer to draw someone into that world.
Maybe my expectations are too high for most, but that's what I feel is important to me. Games can be dressed up in any way you want them to look, they can be as pretty as you are able to get them, but nothing can compensate for poor controls, poor execution of game play mechanics and the like. I find alot of people criticize games on what they want them to be-- it's strange though since Byond stands for Build Your Own Dream. I don't think that innately the stuff I mentioned in O.P. is "wrong" but I do believe it's not the type of experience I'd like to provide. I do believe my standpoint is better, but that's because I grew up playing a different era of video games and that's precisely why I'd like to share that with people. Some of my fondest memories in my younger days were playing RPG's with my brothers. We would take turns, all gathered around the TV, each of us watching the story unfold, as the other played and after a few hours we'd swap, so we could all play and watch. Spent 2-3 days doing it one weekend. So I get what you are saying-- but that doesn't always hold true. I learned a long time ago to look past graphics and find what a game is really about. | |
I don't have a scanner. That's the thing. I was going to add that in my post because I knew someone would bring it up lol.
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I have as well. I tried it a few times. The only downside is that, when you scan it, the color white, or whatever color paper you use, will scatter into like 50 different pixeallated versions of that color.
It makes cleaning up a terrible terrible chore. Like say if I wanted to apply a transparent background. I also have been thinking about a way around this issue. I was thinking maybe of using the pixelate feature of GIMP in order to make the image less pixellated. Although just maybe I should change the settings on my scanner maybe? | |
Those were the wise word of an old monk of BYOND.