Why Tidalis is not selling well.

[Zeba]

http://armorgames.com/category/puzzle-skill

Add in the plethora of other flash gaming sites and you may start to see why the puzzle game demographic is kinda saturated atm.

Maybe you could do something similar to Creeper World and put up a limited demo on the major flash gaming sites? I only heard about Creeper World from armour games and eventually bought it due to my experiance with the demo which I liked very much.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

And I play 0.0% of flash games.  

Its like saying no one should make iPhone apps because there are 300,000 apps or Facebook games because someone is already there with Farmville, taking all the money.  

The amount of PC games alone is pretty insane and Steam doesn't even have close to all of them.  Does that mean all the developers should just pull up shop and quit?  No. 

Its a ludicrous statement to just say "Don't do it because someone beat you to it".  If you do it better than them, you can get just as much, if not more business than the person who did it first.  Just watching the Apple app store alone confirms this, as there are plenty of new games that come in and make $$.  Being even more popular and successful than the last companies, because they did it right most of the time. 

So Arcen should just keep doing it because they love creating games and think they are worthwhile.

King

[Zeba]

?

Let me repeat..

?

Tidalis is an awesome puzzle game that totally trumps anything free you can get on any of the major flash sites.

However..

Because there is a plethora of puzzle games to be had on every flash site and its brother its going to be rather hard to break into this demographic on word of mouth alone especially if you are asking for money to play the game.

Hence my advice on possibly making a flash oriented limited demo to farm the literal millions who frequent said flash sites.

Again I never heard of Creeper World until I ran acros it on armour games and would never have even known it existed if it wasn't for the exposure it got on said site.

So all I was saying in my op was if Arcen Games can figure out how to put up a limited flash demo of Tidalis on the major flash sites that get literally millions of hits per day then just maybe they can up sales due to having a massive exposure of said game. 

[Otagan]

I saw this post on Quarter to Three and had meant to link to it here.  I don't necessarily agree with all of it, but it may give some insight into what some people think of Tidalis who aren't quite as glowing in their love of it.

http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showpost.php?p=2410404&postcount=22

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Ok, now I see what your saying, but its pretty unlikely to happen:

That would require precious development time they don't really have to spare atm.  Since I'm guessing there is no easy "Convert to Flash" button for Video games, they would need to test it, change it, do all sorts of unfun stuff that would cost time, which = $$ which = not a smart move.  Especially since they would gain no $$ off the demo.  Sure, it might bring in customers, but I think your better off just putting an Advertisement on the site.  A lot less hassle. 

Its falsely advertising that Tidalis is a flash game.  Yes, this is an issue because there are plenty of idiots on the internet who don't read.  You could scream in their ear that the full version of Tidalis doesn't exist in flash mode and they will still complain about it.  Personally, I'd avoid this. 

And sure, a site that gets millions of hits would be great for a demo, I think your just way better off linking the actual demo of Tidalis on that site.  And that's of course if people realize its there amongst all the other flash games available. 

So I guess what I'm trying to say, putting up advertisements is a lot easier than putting up a demo of a game that doesn't work on flash. 

King

[RCIX]

Ok, now I see what your saying, but its pretty unlikely to happen:

That would require precious development time they don't really have to spare atm.  Since I'm guessing there is no easy "Convert to Flash" button for Video games, they would need to test it, change it, do all sorts of unfun stuff that would cost time, which = $$ which = not a smart move.  Especially since they would gain no $$ off the demo.  Sure, it might bring in customers, but I think your better off just putting an Advertisement on the site.  A lot less hassle. 

Its falsely advertising that Tidalis is a flash game.  Yes, this is an issue because there are plenty of idiots on the internet who don't read.  You could scream in their ear that the full version of Tidalis doesn't exist in flash mode and they will still complain about it.  Personally, I'd avoid this. 

And sure, a site that gets millions of hits would be great for a demo, I think your just way better off linking the actual demo of Tidalis on that site.  And that's of course if people realize its there amongst all the other flash games available. 

So I guess what I'm trying to say, putting up advertisements is a lot easier than putting up a demo of a game that doesn't work on flash. 

King

Unity actually does sort of have a "convert to flash". It's not quite as simple as that, but.....