I wrote my previous post because someone asked me to. I did not anticipate how well it would be received by the gamedev community. Thank you, everyone! Some favorite comments:
“I share a lot of similar background.”
“I wanted to contact you to let you know that I was incredibly inspired by your writing.”
“Thank you for this article. It may very well change my life.”
I enjoyed hearing thoughts from fellow developers on what I shared.
Some people wrote (in varying levels of harshness) that I’m going to fail again on PC just as I did in mobile. They stated that past performance is an indicator of future performance. If this were true, only people who have succeeded will succeed, and only people who have failed will fail. But life shows us something quite different: successful people failing and unsuccessful people succeeding. The real issue is not about past performance, but what has changed (the pivot, to use Lean Startup jargon) in the present. My article did not detail how I am applying all of the lessons learned to Archmage. That starts now!
Common Questions
A few questions/comments repeatedly came up that I’d first like to answer:
The logo looks more “casual” than “core.” This was identified to me previously, but your comments have convinced me that it needs to change. So, thank you! We’ve embarked on the creation of a new logo, and I will be posting some samples in the next week or two.
The artwork is concept art rather than in-game art. Actually, the art that I posted (in the article and on my website) is actual in-game art—not fancy concept art. The game is 2D and those are actual screenshots (without all the UI). For those who want a 3D RPG like Skyrim where you can run around, I’m sorry to disappoint you—but that isn’t Archmage Rises. I’m sorry to lose fans at this point, but better to disappoint you now than later. For people like me who can’t get enough of fantasy artwork, you’re going to love this game. I often joke, “If people don’t like Archmage, at least they’ll enjoy the beautiful fantasy artwork.” It’s kind of like wandering through a fantasy art gallery.
The teaser trailer doesn’t feature gameplay footage. I don’t yet have gameplay footage worth showing, so I made a teaser just to share the artistic tone of Archmage Rises. But I am going to do something special for you all very soon; I’ll describe this more at the end.
Social Media
A person asked me to share sales numbers when Archmage releases. I am making a full commitment here and now to do so. I find posts containing real sales and budget data to be the most helpful in game development, so I will try to reciprocate this. In the spirit of sharing numbers, here are the social media results of the first blog post:
100+ Facebook followers
150+ Twitter followers
175 Gamasutra comments (granted, many of these are me responding)
450+ newsletter subscribers
2,600+ views on A is for App trailer
6,000+ views on Archmage trailer
An amazing response! I now fear that everything new I write will be just a shadow of the impact of the first post. I almost wish I had more failure to share! 🙂
Fans. What do I do with those?!
So I’m in a place I’ve never been: People care about what I’m building. I am deeply honored that you consider Archmage worth following. The last thing I want to do is to spam you with too much information or cross-posting (tweets about emails about blogs). So this is how I am utilizing social media to keep you informed—from most detailed/most frequent to higher level/ least frequent:
Twitter – Gamedev articles or resources I find interesting, reflections on game dev, and thoughts on other games about once a day.
Facebook – Step-by-step process of building the game 2-4 times a week.
Defiance Games VIP Forums – I’ll be making these private . . . an exclusive place where I will discuss features, mechanics, and artwork in detail with the community for their feedback to guide development.
Blog Posts – A deep dive into one aspect of game or the gamedev process once a week, on Thursdays.
Email Newsletter – The biggest news about the game and early access to some features once a month.
So if you just want to keep your eye on Archmage Rises to know when it’s getting close to playable, join email newsletter. If you want to be more involved in the dev process—commenting on features, artwork, and more—make sure to follow the Facebook page and see if you can get into the forums.