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Jenova Chen: How Journey’s creator went bankrupt and won game of the year
- speeder 14y agoNow that I have a startup that make games, it became shockingly clear on how easy is to create products that attract praise and still don't make any money, specially without marketing budget leverage or unethical tactics.
- JonLim 14y agoThat's an interesting issue. I think you can make a pretty significant dent in marketing without really spending a dime, and I'd love to chat with you about it. My background is marketing, but I'm currently in a producer role at a game company right now, and maybe I can take a look at your marketing efforts during off-hours and give you some suggestions? Feel free to reach out.
- speeder 14y agoI make games for children, not something easy to market for. In fact, some of stuff that I make are not even game, more like toys. But yes, I would with to talk more about it :)
- mpyne 14y agoOn that note, is there a good "marketing news" site for children's games? I have an autistic son and much of the improvement in his hand-eye coordination we've seen has come because of Mario Galaxy and racing games on the iPad and I'd love to find other games he'd be interested in.
- JonLim 14y agoI think it would be incidentally helpful to hand you a list of these sites - in the act of helping speeder, I would be researching a list of these websites. Happy to share!
- mpyne 14y agoThanks!
- speeder 14y agoBy the way, I would also such list ;) (I will enter in contact with Jon) And many parents of autistic children praised both our music box app and matryoshka apps, because both require good hand and eye coordination. (my site is www.kidoteca.com)
- mpyne 14y agoThanks, will check it out better when I get home (and don't have to use IE 7 ;) )
- JonLim 14y agoMy email and my twitter are in my profile, feel free to shoot over a quick message and we'll talk shop! That's a tough market, but I would love to figure out some way to help you out.
- wslh 14y agoSpeaking about games for children, have you seen http://www.fungooms.com http://www.fungooms.com ? In my opinion they are the best and sadlymthe author didn't raise emough backers in kickstartermfor an iOS amd Android port.
- eps 14y agoPraise from whom? I assume critics, not users, because paying for a full version of Journey was an absolute no brainer.
- kevingadd 14y agoThere are lots of users who will praise your game without paying a cent for it (either via piracy, playing a friend's copy, or whatever).
- speeder 14y agoBoth. My games for example frequently hit 4/5 or 5/5 with critics. And my average score with users is about 4.8, also I receive lots of positive message and so on. But people are happy to settle with free versions and not pay anything, also we have some bizarre amount of piracy even for free versions.
- cocoflunchy 14y agoSingle platform games suck... I really want to play this game and yet I probably never will. Same story with Fez on Xbox...
- hakaaaaak 14y agoSame sentiment on wishing to play both, but I don't think they suck. It's all they have resources for. Have you seen the documentary on Fez in Indie Game: The Movie (2012)? It's on Netflix streaming and it is awesome. Everyone that puts their heart and soul into a game like that and get torn down but trudges ahead despite all odds should be rewarded... even if you are funded by the Canadian government: www.imdb.com/title/tt1942884
- jere 14y agoYou'll see in "Indie Game" that Team Meat got kind of fucked by MSFT. Phil Fish has similar horror stories: he avoided patching a critical bug because supposedly it would have cost him $40k to recertify Fez: http://kotaku.com/5927224/fez-wont-be-fixed-because-microsoft-wants-a-ton-of-money http://kotaku.com/5927224/fez-wont-be-fixed-because-microsof... So, if nothing else, it seems like it sucks for the developer.
- smackfu 14y ago>You'll see in "Indie Game" that Team Meat got kind of fucked by MSFT. I don't know, it seemed like MSFT giving them a hard deadline was what they really needed to actually finish the game. And the sum total of "fucked" was that the promotion for the game in the marketplace didn't go up when they expected it to, and they still had a great first day, and went on to sell great.
- jblow 14y agoNo, actually, they got fucked pretty hard. What you see in the movie is only about 10% of what happened -- but you are also misinterpreting what you saw in the movie, which is already pretty bad.
- robodale 14y agoI came here thinking this was about the 80's band of the same name. I am disappointed.
- jere 14y ago>Journey went on to become the best-selling PlayStation Network game of all time. Chen doesn’t know for sure, but presumably it will earn royalties. I'm sorry. I can't parse this statement. It's the best-selling PSN game of all time, but they don't know if they'll even make royalties for sure?
- Turing_Machine 14y agoLook at all the musicians that have wound up actually owing companies like Sony money despite having a platinum album. I can easily believe it.
- ericcholis 14y agoThatgamecompany was under contract with Sony to produce three titles, of which Journey was the last. One can only assume that they had already been paid according to the terms of the contract. Perhaps there weren't any provisions for royalties.
- clinth 14y agoAs the article said, development ran long. Sony completely funded 33 months of a 10+ person team to make Journey. At $10-20 a copy, it would take a lot to break even.
- DannoHung 14y agoJourney is worth buying a used PS3 for.