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Questioning the Manifesto
Next Generation has a Q&A with Greg Costikyan, discussing the reveal of the ambitious Manifesto Games portal business. From the article: "If you look at almost any other medium there is a way for people to succeed with product aimed at more of a niche audience, with more manageable development costs. But that largely doesn't exist in the games industry because of the narrow nature of the retail channel, which is 'hit big or don't try at all'. My belief is that it possible to be successful with niche product. The technology is there; there are plenty of good games out there; the issue is probably about marketing. The question is, figuring out how to reach consumers and make them aware of it." We discussed the announcement yesterday. Relatedly, Next Gen also has a look at digital downloads from the developer's point of view, and from that of the digital distributors themselves. We took a look at the first part in that series on Tuesday.
Let's not forget that there are plenty of "niche" games that survive via downloads, the shareware model, or downloadable client. EVE Online is a perfect example of a niche game that is distributed primarily (I admit I have no numbers to back this up, so I could easily be wrong) to the best of my knowlege through a freely downloadable client.
IMHO Shareware is still the most successful strategy. I downloaded (and later bought) demos of DOOM, Duke Nuke'm, Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft, etc. Of course most of those were available through traditional retail channels, but they also predated broadband. The reality is that if I could have commercially-downloaded the full games I would have.
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Kinda, but your peers didn't just "happen" across it. I work real close with a couple of PR guys doing clandestine marketing for them. You can generate buzz for much less than it costs to inundate someone with branding. Not only that, but it's not evil in the sense that we don't make up your mind for you as branding attempts to do. Buzz marketing is all about placing the product in front of a key group of people. People who are the authority on your product type in their social group AND posess the curiosity and intelligence to do thier own research on a product. That way they feel like they "found" something new (which they did with a little help) and will speak about it in a very avangelical manner if they like it. Their friends WILL follow.