Rejected by Steam

[adam]

jay conrad levinson is one of the low budget marketing specialists:

http://www.gmarketing.com/

you could have a look at his stuff... much was written pre-internet but he has updated some... has written loads of books but theres articles on the site to keep you busy for a bit

i'd say it's worth having it saleable somehow or other, even if it's a paypal shopping cart and you emailing the game to people, then creating interest via youtube and social networking sites, forums and games sites... or it can be "coming soon"

[disciple]

There are also other distribution newtworks.

I've bought some games from http://www.gog.com/ , but they're not as big as Steam and I have no idea what their acceptance policy is like, there's another digital distribution network that pops up too which I can't remember off the top of my head atm. =p I'm not sure if there's any reason you couldn't submit SoC2 to all three networks.

[Iain]

My advice- send the demo RockPaperShotgun's way. They generally quite like this sort of thing.

It's already there (previous version anyway), and they did like it:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/tag/spheres-of-chaos/

And I provided that link to Steam
And these too:
http://www.rotheblog.com/2008/07/arcade ... asteroids/
http://www.reloaded.org/download/Spheres-Chaos/436/
http://www.hotud.org/component/content/ ... tion/23108
http://jayisgames.com/archives/2006/10/ ... _chaos.php
http://www.pctips3000.com/spheres-of-ch ... bout-zuma/
The best one:
http://web.archive.org/web/200902260034 ... .php?id=78
(I'm just showing off with all these review links btw)

I'll send the demo to this lot again, and anywhere else google suggests.
Last time I published this I just made a pad file and let it get on with doing its stuff, I didn't really do much hardcode promoting. Things seems to have changed these days, there seem to be 1000's of indie coders around now.

Cheers for all the advice.

[sack]

RE: the cracker thing

Cracking is a game to these folks - it always has been. Nothing about who does or doesn't deserve it, more who can crack the most games to work their way up a monthly chart to be the top release group. If you make it harder to crack you'll take time out of your schedule to give them a challenge and they'll just take it up.
I reckon the best thing is to just make it a ballsache for the casual pirate and concentrate more on the fans who would actually buy it.

[disciple]

You could release your own cracked version (that isn't properly cracked).

[CharlieF]

Just a little comment as I went to watch the video, and it was pretty destroyed due to encoding artifacts. How about a higher resolution/higher bitrate video ?

Agree with exobuzz about the quality issues. Also, I think it should be shorter and possibly include some explanatory text. I dunno about others here, but short of a playable demo a vid is the quickest way of assessing a games appeal.

[adam]

You could release your own cracked version (that isn't properly cracked).

i'm reminded of http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pete/upside-down-ternet.html i would go for strangeness of some kind that increases as the levels go on, ideally entertaining and making people want to buy rather than just obstructive, i'm sure people on here can help with ideas for that

[gravy]

Do you reckon a name change would help? At least called it Sphere's of Chaos 2

[Jamesac]

Surely S'phere's of Chao's: The EnChao'sening would be best?

James

[Firefox]

Yeah, change the title to "Balls of Mayhem" and resubmit it.

[disciple]

or Portal 3, that should get it through,

[Kamineko]

To do list:

[ ] Tone mapping
[ ] Vignetting
[ ] Cover system
[ ] Regenerating health

[Tmuk]

You don't think all that blurb about crack and LSD could be putting them off do you?

[Iain]

Do you reckon a name change would help? At least called it Sphere's of Chaos 2

I already used '2', this is really '3'. But I'm using 'Spheres of Chaos 2012', and the rather crap tagline 'Forget Planet Niburu, here's Spheres of Chaos 2012'

[Jamesac]

Do you reckon a name change would help? At least called it Sphere's of Chaos 2

I already used '2', this is really '3'. But I'm using 'Spheres of Chaos 2012', and the rather crap tagline 'Forget Planet Niburu, here's Spheres of Chaos 2012'

If you need a tagline-

Nibiru's Plasma Soaked Hangover Fantasy
The end of everything or just Spheres of Chaos 2012?
Ultrahued Hyperkinetic Arcade Brainfry Madness

And such.

James