Alpha will be starting on the 27th, or thereabouts.

[windgen]

Sometimes it seems like the stickied threads are actually LESS visible in forums, to me, for some reason.

I think it's because they don't change very often.  If you get a "reward" (new content) with high probability when you look at the top of the non-sticky threads, and with pretty low probability when you look at stickies, then after a while the human mind will become conditioned to look at the non-sticky threads and skip the stickies.

[x4000]

That is an extremely good way of putting it, yeah.

[Tridus]

Yeah thats exactly what I was going to say. In the AI War thread for example, some of those stickies have been there forever. It's fine for new visitors, but regulars get trained to look past them and that becomes a habit everywhere.

[Cyborg]

I think it's the coloring.

[x4000]

I think it's the coloring.

I think so, too.  Something about the NEW icons doesn't show up well, either.  I've just altered the color of them to stand out more from the rest of the colors, so we'll see if that helps.

[YukaTakeuchiFan]

If it's any use to know, it certainly worked for me. I was wondering why the 'new' icons suddenly stood out a lot more than they did.

[x4000]

Excellent!

[Teal_Blue]

Just a thought on price...
everyone wants a relatively cheap priced game, but to be honest it usually means the devs work harder for less money if the customer gets a cheap price right off the bat. $19.99 seems a round ball park figure for a lot of indie games, i have even seen a recent rise in that going to $24.99 and even $29.99 and $39.99 (I think Prison Architect is $30.)

Anyway, the point i am trying to get to is if you price it moderately, so you are not working for peanuts, say sell at $24.99 or even $19.99, then if things do not take off very quickly, you could have a fire sale and reduce the price to say $14.99 or $9.99. But don't start your prices at those low points, because you could be under-pricing yourselves when you don't need to. You have worked easily twice as long on preparing this game as Bionic Dues, so a $19.99 price doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

Of course this is just an opinion and you should really do what you feel is best. Just don't sell yourself short. Giving away Valley 2 maybe hurt by losing possible revenue. Where if you had given it away just to those who had already purchased it, you may have had more sales. But to be honest, I am just guessing there. I am not a marketeer or a business consultant, so my opinions may not be as good as i am hoping they are. I just thought if you had a middle of the road price, then it wouldn't be too high to start, but if necessary you could lower it a bit if you needed and not start at the bottom of the barrel.

Sorry, i'm repeating myself. anyway, good luck, looking forward to the game, i'm hoping it does wonderfully!! 

-Teal

[x4000]

I think the general consensus these days is that anything above $20 is too much for most indie games; certain of our major distributors have also made this very clear.  When a price is set on a game, then aside from promotional discounts that price is pretty much needing to stay the same for an extended period, or early adopters get mad.  It was a couple of years before we reduced the price on AI War or Tidalis.

I think that looking in the $10 to $20 range is the appropriate range, to be moderate as you say.  But where in that range really... I'm just not sure yet.