Income has been sparse lately, so I’m trying something a little unusual: people who donate to the site get to pick the titles of upcoming games. Here’s how this’ll work:
- You make a donation through my nifty Paypal button. Use the “add special instructions” link to request a game title.
- I will keep a chart of donations made (and corresponding titles) in the sidebar. At 11:59 PM Pacific time on Sunday, the top-ranked donation determines the title for the following week’s game, and that title gets removed from the list (moving the next one up the chart). Ties go to the earliest submission.
- You determine the title, but I make no guarantees about how I’ll interpret it in making the game. However, chances are very good that it’ll be a substantial source of inspiration – if you want “Dragondot’s Extreme Beach Volleyball”, I’m not likely to make it a shmup.
- This should go without saying, but: nothing spammy (“Game #N: visit www.enlarge-your-mmo-gold-in-8-weeks.com”), patently offensive (according to my own judgment), libelous, or trademark-infringing. If this happens I may, at my discretion, email you to offer you another chance to choose a title. This is something fun I’m doing to thank people for supporting my games, not a service I’m selling.
- I will be selecting donation-titles on July 4th, 11th, 18th, and 25th. If this experiment goes well, it will continue past that point – otherwise, it’ll be back to my usual idiosyncractic naming.
And yes, if nobody donates anything I will be forced to make a game called Placeholder. This is not something that I am anticipating with any degree of eagerness.
If I had a source of income, I’d totally donate.
I gave twice 5. Does it count as ten or can i suggest two titles?
and it’s Pierrec…not Pierrex, sorry
Thank you! I’d be fine with whichever you prefer. If you want to specify two titles, let me know what order you want them ranked in.
No. “No more spheres” is fine.
Wait, if there are competing titles, can I donate towards a name that is already up there to move it up the list?
Also, if you want to monetize your games, perhaps you should consider making them Flash instead? There is a huge audience for Flash games on the web, and you can make them for no cost with the Flex SDK.
Nathan: Not something I’d considered; I’m inclined to say “no” because it seems that’ll lead to incremental bidding = Paypal eating most or all of my donations in fees, and more bookkeeping for me. Keep in mind that other names remain in the queue from week to week when the top one is used, however.
Skofo: I realize that Flash is a much more accessible (and distributable) platform, but right now Processing does just about exactly what I want, is based on a language that I am very familiar with, and is something I’ve already largely learned the quirks of. There’s enough else going on in my life at this point (like seeking a day job) that I really want to spend my time right now making games rather than studying Flash.
Only thing I don’t like about processing:
When I open a page with one of your games on it, I am unable to do anything else with my browser until it loads. For a larger game, like Dragondot’s Sky, I would want to switch to another tab and do something else while the game is loading, but firefox completely freezes up.
Is there any way to implement a sort of preloader in Processing?
Don’t have any money to donate, sorry. Just wanted to mention that I can totally see Dragondot’s Extreme Beach Volleyball as a shmup, where you have to kill all the defending players before the ball gets to them. Extreme!
This reminds me a lot of the webcomic/weblog, God of Ramen. The artist takes a phrase or sentence from his readers, and then paints it to his interpretation. http://godoframen.com/
Would my band name be considered spammy? I always thought our name kind of sounded like a some sort of sci fi arcade game game.
Hm… that’s kind of an edge case, but I think I’d prefer to avoid having names of other things as game names.
thats fair enough. I’ll try and come up with something cool.
I meant to write in the instructions that the name “giant vex” was from me rather than the name on the paypal account. sorry
Would you consider working with a specific game idea pitch for a heftier donation?