Author Topic: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project  (Read 76605 times)

Slash

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Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project
« on: August 29, 2010, 05:15:30 PM »
Recent developments of the Serial Killer Roguelike hoax make me wonder what's required to draw such massive attention; there are lots of other project around, with people working hard on them yet the developers commonly die of lack of "Feedback Points"... is it required to explore such a dark theme in order to gather response from people?

DrOctapu

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Re: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project
« Reply #1 on: August 29, 2010, 05:42:31 PM »
Dark, no. Original, yes. The idea was a new one, so people flocked to it.

getter77

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Re: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project
« Reply #2 on: August 29, 2010, 05:51:23 PM »
Trailers that people think are well done also apparently help in conjunction with an eye-catching idea.
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Lap

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Re: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project
« Reply #3 on: August 29, 2010, 06:01:45 PM »
The GTA/Criminal style of games will always be popular. Oddly enough, the original GTA was roguelike in spirit.

Seeing full fledged games like Rogue Survivor get less response than fantasy SK is pretty sad though.

Anyways, I heard way too many people say they wanted to start their own similar project, but it'd be way better if people collaborated instead of starting up 5 separate unfinished projects.

I'm trying to gather up the potential authors....

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=64931.0
« Last Edit: August 29, 2010, 06:04:41 PM by Lap »

Fenrir

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Re: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project
« Reply #4 on: August 29, 2010, 06:39:20 PM »
It's the same reason Grand Theft Auto and Dwarf Fortress are so popular; it's the open-ended, high-interactivity that gets people. People like trying things out to see what crazy, unexpected things happen.

Well, that is what I'd like to think, unless people are really so... disturbed? Is that the right word?

Krice

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Re: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project
« Reply #5 on: August 29, 2010, 07:27:56 PM »
is it required to explore such a dark theme in order to gather response from people?

Not really, but what's wrong with dark themes anyway? The gameplay violence has been a subject for about too long, but there is no evidence that playing violent games makes you more violent than you are as a human being. If there was a common effect I think we would be all in the streets attacking other people like zombies.

Ken Oh

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Re: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project
« Reply #6 on: August 29, 2010, 09:22:37 PM »
Say what you will about the theme, but what he showed was very solid (albeit fake).

The game concept was very original and well thought-out. First of all, it was, as others pointed out, not just another orc slasher. The focus was in the right places, with legal status and psychosis being conventions in the forefront. It was very intuitive and didn't seem to have any convoluted details.

The DF-like combat notations were awesome, and, thinking back now, that's where it really started looking too good to be true. His combat notes were quite a bit better than DF's, in that they looked like a human wrote them line by line.

Another reason why this got feedback where others don't? It had a great youtube video showcasing gameplay. I don't think enough can be said about how good the video made it look. In this context, as I'm making my own roguelike, it's a kick in the ass to make one myself.

Ex

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Re: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project
« Reply #7 on: August 30, 2010, 02:23:21 AM »
The problem with the argument that roguelikes must be original to attract attention is that people often reject completely original roguelikes. In fact, most of the popular roguelikes are fantasy themed. And in general fantasy themed roguelikes do much better than more original themes. There have been lots of experimental roguelikes over the years, and practically none of them survived.

I myself developed a fairly original roguelike that was based on the dreams, but no one cared. There's also Privateer Ascii Sector, Triangle Wizard, Prospector, Gearhead 2, Unrealworld and MegamanRL to list a few. All of which used highly original ideas, yet did fairly poorly in terms of attracting an audience and starting discussion. Also, keep in mind that Serial Killer RL's ideas were not original. There are many TV shows, movies, books and comics based around serial killers. JTHM and Dexter are two very popular ones, American Psycho is another.

The only reason why this project received as much feedback as it did was because of how shocking it was. It was the shock value, along with the "decent" graphics that caused all of this discussion. Even the other fake roguelike, MnemonicRL didn't attract as much attention because it wasn't as shocking.

Honestly, I don't know what the secret to attracting decent attention to your roguelike is. It seems graphics play a large part, as does how shocking the roguelike is, but beyond that I have no idea. Even many roguelikes with good graphics have failed to attract much attention.

I would also like to suggest that perhaps how complete and complicated a game looks plays a factor. Serial Killer RL looked like a fairly complex game with a lot of features that looked very close to complete. Perhaps this had an impact, too?
« Last Edit: August 30, 2010, 02:28:52 AM by Elig »

Krice

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Re: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project
« Reply #8 on: August 30, 2010, 05:26:00 AM »
And in general fantasy themed roguelikes do much better than more original themes

Theme doesn't make the game better or worse itself.

Quote
There have been lots of experimental roguelikes over the years, and practically none of them survived.

They sucked. I guess the reason is that you need really more than just the theme in small 7DRL type roguelike.

yodhe

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Re: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project
« Reply #9 on: August 30, 2010, 08:32:36 AM »
What happened with the Slasher RL certainly has made me readdress the direction, and content of the rogue-like I am developing. Apart from encoraging me to dump the D&D/middle-earth genre, and go for something different, it also has made me more aware how better text description can enhance the game experience. It also made me aware of the huge appeal of open-world structure games, like dwarf-fortress, and how integral this seems to be to the "modern" gameplay experience for many people.
Mostly it went to show me how much more work I need to do, and put in, before I can expect anything more than a cursorary interest from the gamers.

Etinarg

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Re: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project
« Reply #10 on: August 30, 2010, 10:00:20 AM »
I've also been surprised about the amount of feedback this project (hoax) has gotten. I suspect the theme has to do with it, since other game projects are advertised rather well, too, (maybe not here but in other game developers forums) and get much less attention.
« Last Edit: August 30, 2010, 10:03:39 AM by Hajo »

Jigxor

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Re: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project
« Reply #11 on: August 30, 2010, 10:11:09 AM »
It's not all bad. I didn't know about this site before, and now I do! And I'm really interested in playing some Roguelikes. So at least you've gotten some positive traffic from all of this :)

ido

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Re: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project
« Reply #12 on: August 30, 2010, 12:29:46 PM »
There's also Privateer Ascii Sector, Triangle Wizard, Prospector, Gearhead 2, Unrealworld and MegamanRL to list a few.

All of these except MegamanRL I'd consider to be fairly well known for roguelikes (I've heard about them being discussed quite often myself).

All of which used highly original ideas, yet did fairly poorly in terms of attracting an audience and starting discussion. Also, keep in mind that Serial Killer RL's ideas were not original. There are many TV shows, movies, books and comics based around serial killers. JTHM and Dexter are two very popular ones, American Psycho is another.

It doesn't have to be original across all mediums of human communication, it's enough to be original as a roguelike. To take one of your examples, Privateer is just "EliteRL"*.

Another example is DoomRL, which for a roguelike is quite original and is one of the most popular roguelikes to come out in recent years.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_%28video_game%29, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_Commander:_Privateer.
« Last Edit: August 30, 2010, 12:36:30 PM by ido »

Slash

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Re: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project
« Reply #13 on: August 30, 2010, 12:37:50 PM »
It's not all bad. I didn't know about this site before, and now I do! And I'm really interested in playing some Roguelikes. So at least you've gotten some positive traffic from all of this :)

Yeah, that's a really possitive outcome :) welcome!

Krice

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Re: Acquiring feedback for your roguelike project
« Reply #14 on: August 30, 2010, 01:36:13 PM »
Another example is DoomRL, which for a roguelike is quite original and is one of the most popular roguelikes to come out in recent years.

Well, except for two minor things: it's not a roguelike and it's not original.