Comments on: Could you be the next PopCap?

By: Sound Advice

Sound Advice — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 03:34:46 +0000

I am forever astonished at the limited initial capital investment required to start something like this. Talent is the key, really, and plagerist accusations aside, there is so VERY little talent coming from the corporate universe that I think the average Joe has a much better shot than they might think. Hollywood has remade everything they can think of… badly. The Taking of Pelham123… need I say more?

By: Doug Rickenback

Doug Rickenback — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 04:18:22 +0000

1.)Yes
2.)Yes

Kenneth makes several good points. There is nothing wrong with being inspired by something, but an exact ripoff is nothing but that.

By: Duds

Duds — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 16:14:07 +0000

“Could you be the next PopCap?”

No, sadly I have too many morals to steal the games of companies I know can’t afford to sue me and market it as… well let’s say “Xuma”.

By: Kenneth

Kenneth — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:07:01 +0000

The most valuable quote here is;
“1) Are you an XNA or XLA developer? and 2) Have you downloaded the iPod/iPhone SDK? Because these would be the actions of someone who wanted to get ahead in the industry.”. It is a fair assessment that these are the places that will have the most attention at least within the next couple of years. I also kinda hoped that Nintendo with there WII platform would open up a little at let the rest of us play(develop). I have been experimenting a bit with a WIImote on my Macbook Pro but an actual api/sdk and a market place would prove beneficial to Nintendo and the Game Dev world in general.

Opinions and personal morality rant follows:

The overpopulation of puzzle games has more to do with the over abundance of free clones than anything else. Free is OK within our ranks we trade code, assets and ideas, see what others are doing and collaborating etc…. but free to the general consumers is not as beneficial as some may think as the expectations and motives of the general consumer are not the same as people actively writing, designing and developing games.

We (developers) have got to learn to trade, experiment and share within our domain and sell the best output of that process to the consumer. Competing games in the same gameplay domain are good. copying a game and making it free, is not evil but, should be discouraged. Take the idea expand it! Let innovation drive.

Case in point, “Bejeweled”, I love “Bejeweled”, I love “Puzzle Quest”, I don’t love the 1 hundred million Bejeweled clones that took the game and copied it and added nothing to make it different or more interesting. Only release clones if there is no adequate version of the game on the platform you are writing for.

By: BC

BC — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 06:18:42 +0000

Now isn’t a good time to start making casual games.

People are starting to realise there is a lot of rubbish and similar stuff out there. Xbox Live now doesn’t accept any puzzle games (unless it’s homebrew XNA) to hold back the tide and become tougher in general to get stuff on there. I expect others to follow suit and start thinking more about the big picture considering their releases (as box publishers do).

By: Joseph Young

Joseph Young — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 19:44:51 +0000

Interesting post. I’d have to counter by saying that you can compete outside of blue ocean marketing if you have a good enough product. I agree that digital distribution is the future, so you have to start building for it now. Casual is actually too competitive in my opinion right now and you might have better luck in mainstream where publishers are looking for more outside developers to shed the cost of internal development.