New Dreamcast releases - How to make more professional?

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Post by Freeze »

To be very honest, I don't like the current look of the GOAT Store cases. I don't mean the title images (they look very good, especially Inhabitants), but the black / orange design doesn't fit in my collection as you can see. ;)


Image


But it isn't only that it doesn't fit in my collection, I simply like the white / orange design the most. And due the fact that Japan is the only country which still gets Dreamcast releases, I think it would be better to have a design which is more like the NTSC-J one.
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Post by Strapping Scherzo »

I think the black makes 'em stand out in that pic.
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Post by racketboy »

IMO the key to games looking professional is top-notch graphic design (in addition to solid gameplay, of course)
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Post by gamedudex2 »

i have a great game idea, thats different, if you could get a really nice 3d game engine, or cell shaded one.

a tennis game but futuristic, space platfformer. think martio tennis, mix some looney toons /slash anime style. make it 4 players and if possible online with atleast broadband support and if possible both brad and dial up. also use a bitorent client so you can distribute a private server client that can be used on your pc :)
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Post by DaMadFiddler »

...The Goat Store is just doing publishing; they're not a developer. This thread isn't about game ideas, it's about how to PACKAGE the games that people come up with to sell. The Goat Store takes games that people create for Dreamcast and gives them a chance at a commercial run--in other words, getting the CDs made, all the labels and cases and whatnot done, and handling sales/distribution.

Game ideas should be given to the developers.
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Post by Hilltopper »

gamedudex2 your game idea sounds like a sequel to cosmic smash.....

Back on topic! To get the commercial scene going we need to get people excited about the DC. We call this second commercial life of the DC, Dreamcast v2.0 or something. We need to do something to distinguish these new releases in the eyes of gamers.

Easy ways to do this:
- Hack the ip.bin to say "for Dreamcast v2.0"

- When a new game loads have it save a copy of the cool graphically updated bios (from puyo puyo fever) to the users memcard, and display instructions on how to use it.

- Make new DVD game cases that have a new logo, or a modified swirl logo. (p.s. is there any way to change the swirl in startup?)

- and above all quality releases. Come up with a list of games you are going to release and hype the hell out of them.

- have the dreamcasts you sell at the goatstore have a v2.0 sticker on them, and have them come with the new bios already on the card, (maybe with a cool DC v2.0 background image)

just some random thoughts. tell me what you think. :)

edit: Getting some gaming magazine to interview you and dan potter would be cool to. If you could get them to do a preview and then a review of the games you release then that would be even better.
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Post by bizzle »

Hilltopper wrote:gamedudex2 your game idea sounds like a sequel to cosmic smash.....

Back on topic! To get the commercial scene going we need to get people excited about the DC. We call this second commercial life of the DC, Dreamcast v2.0 or something. We need to do something to distinguish these new releases in the eyes of gamers.

Easy ways to do this:
- Hack the ip.bin to say "for Dreamcast v2.0"

- When a new game loads have it save a copy of the cool graphically updated bios (from puyo puyo fever) to the users memcard, and display instructions on how to use it.

- Make new DVD game cases that have a new logo, or a modified swirl logo. (p.s. is there any way to change the swirl in startup?)

- and above all quality releases. Come up with a list of games you are going to release and hype the hell out of them.

- have the dreamcasts you sell at the goatstore have a v2.0 sticker on them, and have them come with the new bios already on the card, (maybe with a cool DC v2.0 background image)

just some random thoughts. tell me what you think. :)

edit: Getting some gaming magazine to interview you and dan potter would be cool to. If you could get them to do a preview and then a review of the games you release then that would be even better.
I'm not trying to be a dick, but I think that's extremely stupid. Not only is it stupid, I'm pretty sure it's illegal to modify the Dreamcast and sell it as a different product, sort of like Treamcast. Anyone with half a brain will know it's the same Dreamcast as what came out in 1998.
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Post by Hilltopper »

I not saying that it is a different dreamcast. I'm saying that some hype needs to be created for the new wave of commercial releases. People who haven't followed the scene need to see that their old DC can still do some new tricks. I am not saying tell people that this is some new DC with a 2Ghz processor and 1gb ram or anything. I am just saying that some sort of serperation needs to be made from the original commercial releases and these new commercial (and free hombrew releases for that matter). I don't think that a sticker counts as extreme modification or else I better tell GM that the car dealership put a sticker on my car. SEGA themselves released the new graphics for the bios, and I have seen it up for download. Again the v2.0 is for the new releases, to distinguish that they are new, not that the DC itself is. Thanks for the response, I could see how my original post could be misinterpreted.
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Post by DaMadFiddler »

No, but what you're looking at is (1) assuming a massive movement toward repopularizing the DC in the mainstream (which just simply isn't going to happen, especially without any new units being produced and with everyone anticipating the next new Sony/MS/Nintendo systems), and (2) is deceptive advertising. No, it's not doing anything to the system itself, and it's not doing anything illegal, but it's bound to confuse people. I'm sure if you launched a campaign like that, there'd be plenty of people who thought it was either for a new system or a Dreamcast upgrade.



...Releasing in DVD cases might be an interesting idea, though; DVD clamshells are far more durable than CD cases, and "modern" systems all release in DVD cases, so your DC games would fit in better with the rest of your collection.
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Post by skar »

not sure if this has been posted before, just scanned through the posts... but make sure you get reviews on some frequently-read places like ign. They might do them if you ask them about it and send them testing versions of the games, maybe even publish some neat-looking article on their dreamcast front page...
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Post by Hilltopper »

I just thought that something needs to be done to distinguish the new releases from the old. And if the mainstream gamer isn't the target audience then who is? The hardcore dreamcast fan? If that is the case then why change anything because the hardcore fan is already going to buy it. I thought that we were trying to come up with ways to get more people intterested in the DC than just those already involved in the community.
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Post by Freeze »

GOAT Store as a publisher could use their influences to the developer and force "professional" and "hardcore gamer" features like LAN games (via BBA), Internet gaming, highscore lists, and such stuff even not every official commercial game features.
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Post by gnomes »

How about a name change?

I don't know where the whole GOAT thing came from, but it isn't very professional sounding.
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Post by Quzar »

gnomes wrote:How about a name change?

I don't know where the whole GOAT thing came from, but it isn't very professional sounding.
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Post by DaMadFiddler »

I still like the idea of GOAT store's publishing arm being "Tin Can Productions" :D
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Post by Freeze »

gnomes wrote:How about a name change?

I don't know where the whole GOAT thing came from, but it isn't very professional sounding.
If you want to show more professionality that way, I would first do a cute looking goat and replace it with the photographed one. It's... well... a bad idea to include photos to an official logo of something (in my opinion).
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Post by gnomes »

I agree. It is bad to have a real photo for a logo. A more Macromedia Flash-esque quality/style goat. I hope you know what I mean, as Flash has sort of become it's own style of cartoon. I do not mean animated logo though.

If the GOAT store changes its name for it's production arm, I think the name should somehow be related to goats or animals or something, and yet reflect the meaning of game production.

An exmaple would be "Big Horn" because goats don't have different "arms" to a company, they have "horns" so instead of production arm, production horn. And "big" can be an acronym of something with G being "game" and I know know what for B and I.

I actually think Big Horn has a nice ring to it, especially considering I just thought it up on the spot. Hmmm. I have the perfect idea for a logo for that too.

That way the GOAT store remains the GOAT store, but the games get a more professional production name to them.
Last edited by gnomes on Wed Mar 30, 2005 3:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Ex-Cyber »

I do not mean animated logo though.
That would be very eye-catching if they could pull it off on the packaging, though. ;)
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Post by Sweater Fish »

I think you guys are way off base dissing the GOAT store name. There's a reason why so many independent movie and music industry companies have quirky names, it makes you more memorable and generally speaking indie audiences like that sort of thing. Bland corporate names like Sony and Columbia might work if you have massive advertising departments and a target audience that shops at Walmart, but indie is different. Besides, who doesn't like goats? Y'all's crazy.

I also think it's a mistake to target stores like EB and Gamestop for carrying GOAT releases as a couple people have suggested. That's just not likely to get very far, I know that local managers have some say what their stores carry, but I don't think most of them will go for indpendent homebrew stuff, they're too corporate.

The game plan should be to maximize the underground nature, we (that is, us ordinary schlubs, not just people officially associated with th eGOAT Store or the games) should all be going to whatever indpendent game shops we have in our area and trying to get them to carry the game. Online distribution ought to be more widespread, too. Lik-Sang seems to be carrying the releases, but what about Play-Asia or NCS or any of the other smaller online shops (maybe they've already been contacted and weren't interested, but that doesn't mean we stop trying, and I do mean we, not just the GOAT store as an official distributor, it's all about the grassroots)?

Because the target audience is most definitely serious gamers. It's absolutely false that all of the hardcore Dreamcast people already buy the GOAT releases, I actually know of only one person who doesn't follow the homebrew scene who's bought Feet Of Fury and no one who's bought Inhabitants or Mapiquai. There's a large number of Dreamcast fanboys in all sorts of online communities that simply don't follow the homebrew stuff and so they haven't gotten excited about these commercial releases. Getting coverage place like IGN would be good, sure, and GameFAQs, but I think mid-level and more targeted sites like Insert Credit and The Magicbox should actually be the primary goal and really, we should all just be going to message boards and newsgroups and talking things up as much as we can. And not just among Dreamcast fans, either; what about the whole retro community for one thing? I know you know what I'm talking about, Dan. The Dreamcast has a lot of respect in the classic gaming community and they're also already very familiar with the whole concept of commercial homebrews and indie releases. In fact, I'd be willing to wager that retro-gamers already make up a larger portion of the GOAT Store's DC sales than the hardcore Dreamcast fans who don't follow homebrew.

Anyway, this is all just what kingbuzzo was talking about. It's called street teams and it's huge in the musice industry not just among independents, but even the majors are catching on. Thing is, your street teams need some guidance, there should be a section on the GOAT site (or as someone else suggested, individual game sites) with downloadable media and info about the games that we canuse and the we can direct people to.

Plus there's more, you could have some sort of prize system for people that managed to rustle up a lot of sales for the games. There should also be more coordination and cooperation with the various like-minded groups such as Lik-Sang and Dreamcast-Scene and Dream On magazine (if MetaFox *EVER* gets that off the ground...you're too much of a perfectionist and an idealist, man, I can see it because I have the same problem, but there's people here who will bring all these ideas of yours into the real world, you really ought to get some of them involved so that it's not such a one-man thing, even if the first few issues looks more like a zine than the professional dealie you have in mind, you really need to get the project going and then you can worry about making it better and better like a rolling snowball; the Dreamcast scene totally *NEEDS* a magazine like what you've described). And blah blah blah, there's a thousand ideas in this vein and they're all ripped wholesale form the independant wing of the music industry.

Then there is the question of the games themselves that people have brought up. Not so much their quality as I don't think anyone can dispute the quality of game like Feet of Fury and Inhabitants, but the concepts themselves really aren't the best for generating excitement. I don't want to offend anyone here, but I mean, another Shanghai clone and a generic puzzler don't really create buzz especially among hardcore fanboys. Feet Of Fury was closer to the mark, but still not quite there I don't think. What would be? Well, something like Noiz2sa for sure or Beats Of Rage or maybe Super Mario War with some improvements...these are all ports, though. Where's the killer, well-polished DC homebrews? Personally, I think the closest currently is DRxLax (now that's a name that would have to change for marketability...I think just "Rx" would be cool). I was planning on taking up the source and working on it now that Danial Fairchild has abandoned it, I was gonna add an MP3 player with visualizations that interacted with the gameplay, but I don't have the time (or computer) to do that these days and besides, it also really needs Ai and I wouldn't know where to begin with coding good AI, online play would also be keen if KOS could support it in the future.

This is all to say that the Dreamcast homebrew scene doesn't have it's killer app yet and like others have said, I really think that could do wonders wonders WONDERS to push things along. And keep in mind that such a killer app doesn't necessarily need to be anothing hugely original, it just needs to be addicting and satisfying and polished and most of all have really good and catchy design (look at Rez for the paradigm example). This is what Feet Of Fury almost did right, but they should have taken the kitsche theme further, had a totally over-the-top announcer doing like at the title screen doing play-by-play, invlovled the characters and storyline more and made them even wierder, etc. That would have caught people's attention more and got them interested.

I don't know how we're supposed to bring about those sorts of killer app games, there's probably no way to intentionally do it. It'll happen eventually more or less on its own, I'm positive. Having more contests is probably a good idea, especially themed contests. And the benefit of that is that you can produce a compilation disc at the end like the upcoming retro remake compilation and in this period while we're waiting for the killer app to show up, I think compilations are a good idea, not that you shouldn't realese anything but compilations, but I have a feeling that they'll generate more interest than most single game releases (and since the coding labor is free or nearly free...which is the real key to homebrew commercial success, it won't cost any more to produce a compilation than it would a single game disc).

One more thing on anoth note, I remember Dan Potter talking a while back about the possibility of moving towards some sort fo shareware-esque form of distribution for the future. I don't think anything definite came out of that discussion, but I think it could be a very interesting idea if the kinks were be worked out. Like the street team marketing comes form the music industry, the shareware idea comes from the PC gaming industry and so you can end up copying all sorts of ideas from them, too, once you start thinking about it. It's like they say, there's no need to re-invent the wheel. Indie production and distribution has arisen in other industries (where were of course never perfect parallels to the current console game industry, which is a pretty unique iron-grip monopoly by a very few companies) and I think we may be right on the verge of seeing the same thing happen right here in Rapid City.

Okay. Damn. That's my two long, rambling and probably incoherant cents.


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Post by Sweater Fish »

You know, it likes in all of that that I just wrote, I didn't even reply to the original question.

I guess my suggestion, though, would be that you don't need to make the GOAT Store releases look more "proffessional" or make the GOAT Store seem more "professional" or anything like that. You should be doing things differently from how they've been done in the game industry for the last 20 and especially 10 years. That's exactly your greatest strength.

I'm not too concerned about the packaging, the template you've chosen is not the one I would have gone with (if you were gonna loosely copy the U.S. packaging, you should have at least chosen the original white design which was really pretty nice compared to the generic black releases), but now that you've started with this design, you should keep it up. It's not a problem that they don't exactly match the rest of the releases form any given territory, I don't think they should. It's kind of like they're their own territory, so in a couple years we'll all have dozens each of the North American, Euro, Japanese and Homebrew cases in out collections.

That's one more cent.


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