JDHD - Journey Down considers going commercial

[Pinback]

I won't get into the commercial vs. freeware debate too much as I'm really in two minds about the issue myself. On the one hand I think releasing a freeware adventure is invariably good for the community, gamers, etc. On the other hand every artist has to support themselves somehow, and using your skills to do this is logical. As long as you weigh up the alternatives and make a decision you believe in I'm sure you'll do fine.

As for the Journey Down itself, I think having voice acting and an perhaps overhaul of the main character sprites is essential for a commercial release. I felt the colorful characters and great music really accentuated the absence of voices.
While the scaling didn't bother me too much, the jerkiness of the animations and somewhat awkward stance of the protagonist detracted a little from otherwise superb graphics- less of a problem than the lack of VO, but still noticable enough to mention.

Low res I liked, and I'm biased against 3d models for characters but those are just personal preferences, and not something that would neccesarily turn me off.

So yeah, get some half decent VO and I would certainly pay for it. 

[theo]

Ascovel: That's why I call it an economically suicidal venture:) They main issue, as you pointed out, is that it will make the wait for chapter two even longer. This I can not deny no matter how much I wish I could. It's perfectly true. This however is only an issue for people who have already played the game, and not for a wider audience. And let's face it, 14 000 downloads sounds like a lot, but it's nothing but a small, small fraction of the potential players this game could reach out to. If anything, I see JDHD as a good pilot project for trying out more heavyweight stuff. It's a convenient testing ground, as everything else is already in place.

Regarding sharpness, it's just me being clutzy with my sharpen filter, thanks for pointing that out!

Pinback: I agree to the fullest. 3d characters in games usually tend to end up looking really awkward and out of place. In this case however, I'm certain there's a lot more to win, than to lose by going 3d. (For one thing, I wont be doing the animation, but a trusted, madly skilled animator friend of mine will, so say goodbye to awkward stances and jerky movement.)

Everyone seems to like the 1+2 release idea and honestly I too think it sounds like the most profitable and smooth way of doing it. Again however, I'm not sure I'll be able to stop myself from releasing chapter 1 standalone when I actually have it finished. That would be quite the amazing feat of self control, which certainly isn't something I'm known for having.

Again, thanks everyone for encouragement and feedback!

I'm currently looking for free voice actors. If you know one (or are one) that you think may fit into the JD sound scape, please, let me know!

Kaonandodo's charter exterior, and the unwelcome note from the ominous Armando power co.

[Darius Poyer]

Selling games is really an interesting theoretical topic I've been looking into myself for some time. There are a few interesting theories to consider;

Selling an indie game corresponds directly to the law of demand, meaning that there is a strong link between price and demand. lower price, higher demand and vice-versa. Although you can't fully consider it an item without competition, I don't think that any indie game is in any direct competition with other indie games since they are all unique experiences. I believe that there is certainly a price point to the relevance of competition however so if you plan to sell for retail-studio-prices you might have some trouble. The law of demand does rely on having one price however, not something buyer-determined.

The other interesting theory is that if someone is ready to take out their credit card and go through with buying a game for say $5, you might as well have asked for $10 because buying the game is not so mush about price as it is about actually going through with the purchase itself. I think that  $10 or £10 is the limit here though. food for thought non-the-less.

If you where to do this as a pay-what-you-want deal, you need some real exposure, you arguably have it now but a stable price would probably be the better choice since you haven't sold any games yet. It worked for world of goo because they didn't have anything to loose and they also have a large audience. It works for the indie bundle because they get allot of exposure through charities.
The other interesting thing about selling a game for a low price is that the lower you go the less people will care about their purchase, this is irrelevant when it comes to making a profit because of the law of demand, but you might want to consider it.

Finally, if anyone could sell an AGS game I think you can. The game as it stands now is pretty good, amazing for this forum, as an adventure game it is extraordinarily capable. It's a good adventure game, it's immersive and I would pay to play it.

I would like to add that a 1+2 deal doesn't sound like a good idea. Because if you manage to sell part 1 well enough it could potentially have you working full-time on part 2.

[theo]

Thanks for the kind words and your thoughts regarding selling games. I enjoyed reading them:)

One thing I have understood is that it is, as you mentioned, indeed ALL ABOUT EXPOSURE. Nothing else really matters. Granted, if you've got a crap product and it gets loads of exposure, that doesn't mean it sells. BUT if you have a good title that also gets good exposure, you hit the sweet spot. Good titles with zero exposure are epic economical flops no matter how enjoyable they are to play.

Anyhow. I need to be clear here. The "HD" version of chapter one is (at least in theory) a commercial project because I think it deserves to be one. Not because I believe it will actually generate any decent revenue. (Frankly, I'll be happy if I sell 1000 copies, I know how difficult that is.) But IF I do charge money for it at least there's a chance it could become a financially OK release (if I'm lucky with exposure and good reviews etc.) If I don't, there's no such chance.

Anyhow, thanks again for your encouraging words and thoughts. I appreciate them.

I did some more cleaning up yesterday:

Aboard the yacht, outside the lounge

[blueskirt]

I knew I was not crazy when I asked for higher res backgrounds, these are stunning! :o

As for working on JD1 HD after you're done with JD2 or the next chapters, think about it for a moment, if you do JD1 HD after JD2, people will complain you're remaking that old game instead of working on the next chapters, and if you remake the first game when you're done with the last chapter, you will have lost most of your market already because most people will have finished your game and only the hardcore fans will be interested in revisiting it. Nah, if you want to update that game, you don't have much choice but do it before JD2 is out.

I don't know if you should release them at the same time however. You said it yourself, it's all about exposure, both before and after release. If you release both at the same time, you'll have your week of glory and that will be it. What you could do instead is finish JDHD, keep it in a drawer and bring it out some months before JD2 is ready, this way you'll maximize your exposure. If you play your card well, you'll hype JDHD, release it, spread the word, give interviews "Oh, btw, here's a teaser of JD2, which is coming out in a couple of month"... beating the iron while it's hot.

But the expert on the subject is Dave, it's him who should be giving you advices.

[theo]

Nah, if you want to update that game, you don't have much choice but do it before JD2 is out.

Believe me, I've had the same thought many times. Thanks for pointing this out to me though. I needed to hear someone else say it, heh.

We'll see what happens I guess... Right now I'm just working on it because I need the break from chapter two. Also, as mentioned previously, it serves as a very convenient testing ground for new techniques that I may end up utilizing in chapter two.

Oh, in other news there's a new JD interview on line. It is however in Swedish which admittedly does render it quite useless to most of y'all, but hey, I'd be an idiot not to spam about it.

I just finished the engine room! Might have to revisit this later though to add some control details etc.

Two lovely airplane engines to be, just waiting to be liberated!

[Igor Hardy]

In this whole situation there's at least one thing about which there can be no doubt - the updated backgrounds look grand and I'd love to wander around the JD world in that resolution!

[Armageddon]

Wow, these backgrounds are coming out fast. They all look great, you do need to polish the engine room a bit more, I noticed some very bad edges, it might just be image compression though.

[theo]

Ascovel: Thanks! I'm glad you like the look of it:) I think the trick is to keep everything as close to the original as possible, just cleaning up and adding details.

Armageddon: Heh it's not compression, what you are seeing is actually some of the aliasing from the original 3d model of the engine that I painted over. I was just too lazy to clean it up all the way. Hopefully I'll remember to give it a couple extra brush strokes, next time I'm working on it!

Been cleaning out Makena's kitchen today... Man, she sure had it in a mess.

Makena's kitchen interior

[theo]

I can proudly announce that this project has now become an official SLX GAMES project, which means I will be dedicating some of my day-job-time working on it.

As a first way of trying out what the higher resolution lets us do, we have now released a small tech demo, which I would be very grateful if you took the time to run - and give me your feedback on.

If all those things run smoothly, the only thing truly stopping us from going full on with this project is the display resolution issue.

[ThreeOhFour]

Great news man! Good to hear this going official, great to see the touched up screens, I look forward to seeing how you get along!

[Darius Poyer]

I checked out the concept art page here: http://www.slxgames.com/consept.html

That's some beautiful work you've done. Its especially interesting to me at the moment since I'm trying for the first time to take art more seriously. And finding concept art that I like and find useful has been a bit tricky. I know about conceptart.org and there are a few concept artist I find inspirational except from you (I adore Keith Thompson quite a bit), but there's something about your art that makes sense to me technically lets say, and I like finding artist like that.

[Dualnames]

I think I just lost my jaw. Those look impressive and awesome to say the least. Somehow I got an anime vibe, which makes them even more awesome to my eyes. Carry on!

[SuperDre]

aha, now I get it, I just read a review on a dutch gaming site (www.gamer.nl) on the journey down and it had HD graphics, but I just found the original here on AGS which was far from HD and it was free, so I wondered what the hell was going on, but the paid version is HD..
BTW looks cool, but I'll just wait with buying and playing until you're done with the serie as I hate 'to be continued' (it was also the biggest negative point they made in the review).. So I really hope you'll finish the whole game..