BlueCupTools Podcats! Grundislav & ThreeOhFour! Episode 82!

ThreeOhFour · Tue 09/02/2016 02:16:05

Ponch · Tue 09/02/2016 02:42:37

And don't even ask where the dark chocolate comes from!

Grundislav · Tue 09/02/2016 03:06:03

Why is the bottom right teat blood?

Ponch · Tue 09/02/2016 03:12:07

DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MANY BOTTLES I HAVE TO FILL EVERY DAY? IT'S A TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE STRAIN!

Stupot · Tue 09/02/2016 03:14:05

The one above that is pus. Take a rest, Ponch, for crying out loud.

Ponch · Tue 09/02/2016 03:17:51

That's actually Mountain Dew, which is easily mistaken for pus, Stu.

And how can I take a rest when interest in my special flavorings is now at an all time high! Strike while the iron is hot, sir! I have to grunt and strain and fill as many bottles as I can while I'm trending on the forums!

#ThatAuthenticPonchTaste

ThreeOhFour · Tue 09/02/2016 03:30:17

What hath god wrought?

Ponch · Tue 09/02/2016 03:39:17

Quote from: ThreeOhFour on Tue 09/02/2016 03:30:17
What hath god wrought!
#All_The_Flavors_Of_A_Cow

Fixed that for you.

Grundislav · Sat 27/02/2016 16:23:54

Episode 89!

Ponch · Mon 29/02/2016 02:48:18

Ben, you are welcome.
Grundy, did you seriously eat an entire pizza by yourself? In one sitting or over a couple of days? I'm feeling bloated just thinking about it!

Grundislav · Mon 29/02/2016 03:04:57

Two sittings. Lunch and dinner. It was a medium, though.

Fitz · Mon 29/02/2016 05:56:25

"Shardlight" next Tuesday? Yassss!

And don't worry, Grundy, no hard feelings. So many games, so little time... I've promised myself to play through my AGS backlog after finishing my latest game -- and I ended up either staying away from the puter entirely or playing Hotline Miami 2 till I don't even notice the blood anymore

Creamy · Mon 29/02/2016 10:51:33

Hello guys,
I listen to your ramblings every once in a while to improve my english and I really like it. Thanks to you, I've learnt words such as "prototyping" and "crooked crocodile".
Maybe you'd like to talk about pixel art in a future episode. How to get the most out of tiny resolutions?

Quote"Shardlight" next Tuesday? Yassss!

Indeed

Grundislav · Sat 05/03/2016 13:07:49

Episode 90!

AKA "When Will Ben Update the Thread?"

Amayirot Akago · Sat 05/03/2016 20:40:37

Yes, damn you two for getting me into Disco Zoo! Damn you to Hades!

Ponch · Sun 06/03/2016 04:56:00

Another good episode.

Grundislav · Sat 12/03/2016 16:31:12

Episode 91

Ponch · Sat 12/03/2016 18:06:24

Spaceman in space?! Did someone say something about Spaceman in Space?!?

Also, I don't care for steampunk, but here's a game with that setting that I enjoyed: Clockwork Tales.

[delete} · Mon 14/03/2016 09:00:24

Interesting insights. Wrote down some personal notes while listening. Good stuff!

SilverSpook · Mon 14/03/2016 20:38:53

So perhaps the lesson is, "Don't do anything too original, until you've got the market cornered, or you have massively wealthy or well-connected angel investors / relatives and can afford to lose money."

I definitely struggle with degree of genrefication and what hashtags I'm going to tack on to Neofeud when shooting tweets out, put in the synopsis. If you go too genre, you risk blending into the herd, but at least some people might actually take a look at your thing cause it has the word 'cyberpunk' or 'steampunk' or 'it's like Monkey Island but on Mars' or something people recognize. If you go really original, try to be an auteur and do some setting or something never done before, you either have to have CRAZY good and massive marketing and distribution to ensure that it's played by more than a handful of roarin 20's wonks, or professional economists, who *happen* to also be adventure gamers. And, the game has to be mindblowingly, literally *mindblowingly* good. You have to blow people's brain matter out of it's current configuration, and restructure their noodle to account for this brand new "Way of doing things". You do that, and people fall in love with it, you sell like crazy, become a phenomenon, a legend, get asked to all the important events, lifetime achievement awards, etc.. That's how William Gibson *created* the entire genre of cyberpunk, by blowing everyone's mind with Neuromancer, winning the Triple Crown of the Hugo, Phillip K Dick, and Nebula awards. Then Shadowrun borrowed the nuyen, the mohawks trenchcoats and 'hackboxes' and said, 'it's cyberpunk, but with elves!'

If you meet those requirements, maybe you pull a John Romero. Doom was insanely good, and ID software got the word out, and the next year, the entire genre of 1st person shooter became a thing, with copycats turning out left and right. Now you can tag stuff with, "First-person shooter, demons" or whatever and at least some people will find and play your thing. It won't be as good as Doom, but they just want more of that awesome thing they had when they were 14 or whatever. If it IS actually a good game, and does something new, that's a bonus!

Now, if you don't want to be rich and famous and have a gulfstream and all that, and you are trying to run a stable small business as an indie game dev, it seems that you would want to think like a grocery store. You want a steady supply chain bringing in nice, recognizable tomatoes. Maybe those are your nice orangey post-apocalyptic games. If your post-apocalyptic tomato is not recognizably post-apocalyptic (weird green color) then it might actually *taste* good, and it's just an heirloom, but when people are in your market, they're going to buy all the nice orangey, nuclear-apocalypse with dirt and rust and rag-swaddled protagonist tomatoes. The green and purple tomatoes might not get sold, and you need that money to keep the lights on. Then you have your nice dark, maybe a little blue-ish cyberpunk eggplants. If it's not too dark and black helicopters and missing the trenchcoats, people might leave those pale eggplants in the eggplant pile, "Wait... something is wrong with this eggplant. This cyberpunk doesn't have enough mohawks and post-industrial angsty programmers!"

In Richard K. Morgan's Market Forces the central premise of the book, which essentially involves corporate street-war where it's legal to speed, fire missiles at other cars, etc. only becomes legal because the son of someone really, really rich and important does it in a totally glorious, Fast-n-Furious way, and then what was illegal and frowned upon becomes not only legal but an entire sport and multi-billion dollar industry.

This translates, in a way, to anything that has to do with entertainment, especially in music, gaming and film. You've got to play by the genre rules, unless you're either totally awesome or totally rich or related to Warren Buffet.