I thought I would post something that corresponds with Delilah's post about how many writers fail.  Many parts of the process that trip up book writers also trip up game developers.  I'm not really going to talk about the process of making a game today, but I wanted to talk about a few interesting things about pitching games.  As with writers, many developers are frightened of this part and for good reason.  Most pitches are ignored and most of those that aren't are rejected.  This is pretty much just something that you have to get used to.  Assuming you have a good product there are many valid reasons why you might get rejected for a book or a game pitch: they have no place in their schedule, they have no budget left/their slots are full, they already are publishing a competitor, they don't publisher your genre, etc.

So to amuse everyone, here's some of the reject reasons I've heard over the years.  Some of these are for Depths of Peril and some are for previous games/companies.

• Only publish casual games (nothing wrong with this)
• Wanted a simplified Diablo game whereas we went the other direction and added some actual depth and new gameplay
• Only take games for hardcore gamers (hardcore gamers don't like fun games with depth and new gameplay?)
• Too many RPGs coming out (I forget off hand when this was, but I know as a gamer I had no RPGs to play at the time and only a couple that I was looking forward to)
• RPGs don't sell well (I believe this was before Baldur's Gate and Diablo 2)
• The PC market is dying (I have heard this many times over the last decade)

For those who have had their ideas or projects rejected, just remember the first Harry Potter book was rejected many times.

If you have heard any pitch rejections that are amusing, feel free to add a comment.

Comments

For those that haven't played Depths of Peril yet or haven't decided to buy the full version, but are for some reason reading my blog, you really should read this great thread from our gamers, read what reviewers are saying about the game, and then try out the latest version of the demo.

Comments

Currently only 55% of the sales for Depths of Peril comes from the US.  So almost half of our sales are outside of the US, which to me is really cool.  Not only because we only offer the game in English, but there is just something exciting about your product selling all over the world (in our case 22 different countries so far).

Comments

Now that I'm trying to regularly update my blog, what would you guys like me to blog about?  I'm not blogging for me, so thinking of topics is a bit difficult.  I want to blog about things that interest our gamers and readers.  So any ideas?

Comments