bablakeluke

Aha wonderful - Well done with the successful campaign! It's a huge relief to know that there are actually others out there and that I'm (hopefully!) not just pouring time away into some kind of ocean of unfinished projects; It's been a huge learning experience though so even if things don't work out I've certainly at least learned something along the way. Yes, the website is right here: http://city.of.gt/ - images on the about page need to be updated at some point; that's on one of the many lists around here! (Lists. Lists everywhere.). I pulled together a Kickstarter a while back but didn't launch it because at the time I had quite a bit of feedback about the video; it was both too fast and didn't show enough of the game itself, so my current plan is to remix the video, spam media companies with summary emails including the video and launch the improved Kickstarter campaign shortly after.

I completely agree about the journalist perspective; I have been planning with that in mind so hopefully that means I'm on track to avoiding being insta junk mailed. In a bizarre piece of chance I have a lot of experience making well timed gaming videos; fortunately that means I have a pretty good idea of the components of a good video (I used to make game music videos as a teen!) so hopefully that'll all come through.

I'm primarily a software guy so I've largely used this project as a testing ground for some fairly crazy ideas; that's had a really convenient side effect of being able to sell various bits and pieces of the tools being made for this project, and one in particular has ended up being fairly popular - It's a bit awkward as I end up spending quite a lot of time supporting people! At the same time though it's exactly that which keeps me going - i.e. it's a cash flow at least! I also use Unity but there is most definitely a point where Unity stops being useful - it's actually ended up as a huge hold-back on this project, but at the same time though if I hadn't have used Unity, then I probably wouldn't have that safety net which comes from selling parts of the project. Near impossible to predict something like that when you're starting off though!

Hello! This struck a bit of a chord with me as I've been doing something very similar; I'm a little over the 5th year into a browser based MMO project and I've made just about everything myself (the servers, website, textures etc) aside from a rare bit of help from friends and family. The response is generally positive with a hint of "you're crazy!", so just a few questions if you don't mind!

It seems like you didn't go for something like Kickstarter/ IndieGoGo - did you ever consider it and if so what was the reason for not doing it?

The dreaded "when will it be out?" question! I get this almost every day and it's a bit terrifying each time someone asks, because going at it yourself it's near impossible to get a good timeline (and the end result is it feels like you're constantly disappointing those people who asked). I guess you got asked this a lot too? How did you answer it?

The media and marketing; you mentioned that you got lucky with media and your trailer - did you actually tell a bunch of media companies about the trailer, or did they just happen to come across it somewhere? Do you think there's any benefit in using marketing companies?

Thanks very much and I wish you all the best!