Warning: SPOILERS!
Although…
The discussion of some of these plot points might be considered spoilers in other games but since the focus of The Path is squarely on your visceral reactions and not to the actual narrative importance of the events themselves, we can be fairly specific about what happens without ever really compromising the experience that the designers intended.
COOL! Congrats!
Him OR her! HIM OR HER! *has wolf-related seizures*
*breath in, breath out…* In case anyone who reads this is worried about the text layovers ruining the mood, I wouldn’t be concerned. At the end of Rule of Rose (which was also sort of the beginning, as it flashed back to a previously unplayed month) the character makes all sorts of touching and intriguing observations of her surroundings via text layover without ever ruining the sad, nostalgic mood.
the texts add another way of relating to the content. but you know how we are, in some ways they are meant to be purely decorative too… but i’ll leave it at that til you can see for yourself 😉
“The goal here isn’t to achieve something but rather to experience something.”
Now THAT sounds like a game that I would play! 😉
This kind of publicity is great of course, but I was wondering… Aren’t you primarily aiming at a part of the audience which hasn’t been previously tapped ? Isn’t it so that most of the people who read these reviews will not exactly be part of your target audience ?
There’s plenty of people within the current games audience that are interested in different types of games, in new ideas, new experiences. Not the majority of IGN readers, I’m sure, but hopefully a significant minority. That being said, of course we hope to attract people to the medium who have never played a game before or who don’t even like videogames. But they are a lot harder to reach. Any tips are welcome!
Maybe for that (harder to reach) segment of your audience you should leave the (battle)field of the gaming industry with all it’s discussions and innvations etc., and just focus on what kind of experience your “product” can bring to people. Don’t even bother calling it a game (maybe it sparks curiousity in people who would avoid it otherwise 😉 ) and just place simple advertisement in places like library’s, shops, … . Very basic posters, brochures, …that avoid the big mediacircus and go directly to the customers themselves.
We’re hoping to organize this kind of “guerrilla” marketing with fans of our games all around the world. But I’m not sure how many people we will reach like that. Wish we could spend Nintendo’s budget on advertising… 😉 The games press is nice because it’s very well organized and several journalists are eager to write about our games. And press is like free advertising. Our focus is on the games audience first, but after launch we will try to expand to other types of people as well, as much as we can. We’re just not quite sure how.
Maybe you could try sending out preview copies and so on to some design/art related magazines and websites, pushing it as a piece of interactive entertainment/art?
I’ve been a bit out of touch with the art/design magazines due to moving back to Nigeria and I am sure you guys will know a lot more examples of publications/websites you could send preview copies of your game, like Design is Kinky, Computer Arts, Creative, Fader, Clam etc. I’m sure these types of places and publications would have an audience that would be interested in The Path and are not necessarily the typical gaming crowd.
Dunno if that’d work?
That’s a good idea. We don’t know if sites like that do actual previews or reviews but we know that several of them have shown interest in our work before. Even when we were making websites and net.art. Thanks for the tip! And invite us to Nigeria some day!