Secrets suck

[Shadow]

Now that we have officially announced Kivi's Underworld, I want to say that that the conventional idea about keeping a game under wraps until you announce it, really sucks. Supposedly, it's better so you can start a nice big marketing push which is important in the retail world where you typically live or die in the first month that your game is on shelves. In the indie world, I'm not sure it makes as much sense. For example, we sold more copies last month than we did in our first month (without even including the Mac).

Besides that part, it severely limits me when talking to our gamers. I really don't like dodging questions about what we are currently working on or what we are going to work on next. This is part of the benefit of being an indie, talking directly to the gamers and secrecy just gets in the way.

I don't think we are going to do this any more. I think for the game after Kivi's Underworld, I'm going to unofficially announce it almost immediately so we can talk about it. At the moment I have no idea what that game is going to be btw.

As an amusing aside, Seth Godin, who has written many marketing books, blogged yesterday about The Myth of launch PR. He timed that perfectly to match the day we announce a new game.

[(name here)]

You know, i don't actually recall ever noticing a game that was kept under wraps until less than a year before release. mind, delaying it for a while has the twin huge advantages i can think of in the traditional gaming world. 1. People are less liable to get bored with hearing about your game without getting to influence it, and 2. when you remove it from secrecy, you can actually get a pretty good level of gameplay footage for E3 or whatever it is you attend.

neither of those apply to indies or companies that actually respond to customer feedback about gameplay before release. (stardock seems to be one of those)