I don't know any politer way to say it: but please give it up on the minigames. There has to be an identity for a game. People want to know what a game is, described in a sentence. They already know AI War as being pretty hardcore; anything I do would not change that.
If ai war were not yet out, had not already run the review gauntlet a year ago, and had tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend on advertising, then that would be one thing. But the game is what it is, and no amount of minigames will change the perception potential customers have of the game. Also: I have no interest in minigames, so there is no way I could do them effectively.
It seems you are posting about minigames every day, but I don't think you have much perspective on how all this really works. I could put out a video every day, for example, and it wouldn't make any difference to sales. Also, I have done advertising with google and facebook -- spending $50 per day on each of them -- and saw a 0% increase in sales.
But, when someone talks about the game on some other forum, or when we do a sale with a partner, we see a huge spike in sales. With our partners, 300% boost or more.
When we want to approach a different audience, we will make a different game, not try to make this game something that is so broad in appeal that it loses all identity. In fact, that is what we are doing with Tidalis and Alden Ridge and all the rest we have planned.
Regarding advertising, for AI War, for whatever reason, it does not work. People don't want to hear about he game from me, they want to hear it by other fans who are excited about the game. And that excitement has been out key asset, when people take time out to talk to other people about our work.if we take our eye off the ball in pursuit of an audience that is more interested in adrenaline and graphics anyway, we will lose. I can't compete with Starcraft or command and conquer. But what I can do is offer a game that scratches a certain itch for a certain niche, and which nobody has ever seen the likes of before. And that's what I've done.
I appreciate the sentiment, and I know you are only trying to help, but I have already explained why minigames aren't going to happen multiple times, and yet it seems like you still bring it up almost daily, as if you didn't even hear me. I don't mean to be rude, but it is very frustrating.
