What makes "major" roguelikes different from the smaller ones ...

[mariodonick]

Advertising in roguelike genre means nothing, really. If someone makes a good roguelike it will be found first by roguelike nuts and then other people.

Perhaps Krice wanted to say: "You don't necessarily need to advertise the game yourself. If it's really good, the 'roguelike nuts' will do the advertising for you / spread the word even to non-roguelike sites"

[Darren Grey]

I agree - a bright enough flame will spark a fire.  Dwarf Fortress is a great example I think of a game that came from nowhere and soon rose to huge popularity, all because it got people talking.

[Krice]

I've never played DF much, but I guess it's really something else than average 7DRL. You need that something else. Advertising alone doesn't help if the game sucks.

[Darren Grey]

Not strictly true - look at the modern games market...

[Fenrir]

The difference between this case and the modern games market is that, in the market, they only need you to buy a copy of the game, then they've succeeded. If you find out that the game sucks, they still have made their money. Here, we aren't selling anything; we're trying to build a community. If players don't like what we've made, they'll delete it off their hard drive and never look our way again.

We need some of both: good advertising to bring players, and good games to keep them.

[Ex]

You need that something else. Advertising alone doesn't help if the game sucks.

I do think this is true. Even in the commercial game industry, you can hype something all you want, but if the game sucks and the reviews show it, sales will drop off rapidly. Daikatana is a perfect example. Awful game, horrible reviews and it sold very poorly, despite massive amounts of marketing.

I just think the reverse is true, too. There can be an absolutely amazing game with great features, but without advertising no one will know that it exists. The game doesn't help if the advertising sucks or isn't there. In the case of DF, they got a lot of advertising through the SA forums and other associated high volume forums. I think DF is used as an example a lot because Toady is making a lot of money in donations. But I think this has more to do with a handful of consistent high dollar value donors, rather than the total number of DF players.

For me, Underhall received a ton of downloads when the 7DRL completion thread was at the top of r.g.r.d, and while Underhall was listed as a recently updated roguelike on Roguebasin. The moment that those two ended, so did the downloads.

[mariodonick]

There's an interesting interview with the developer of "Desktop Dungeons" (apparently the current big, although small, thing in roguelike-likes...) at GameSetWatch @Play column.

They talk about the role of promotion and communities in game design. The author esp. acknowledges the importances of IndieGames Blog for getting publicy. Interesting read (and nice game).
http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2010/04/play_interview_enjoy_a_coffee_break_of_victory.php#more

Besides, there are 2 roguelike news mentioned at the end of the article: the release of DCSS 0.6, and the latest update on Dwarf Fortress -- apparently the only relevant news to mention in the blog.

[getter77]

Probably Harris just mentioned those due to prior topics related to them within his various articles---he's surely spent many of his recent articles on Stone Soup in particular.  I figured it was only a matter of time until he had a piece of some sort on Desktop Dungeons considering how well it is going.  If Biskup and such actually DO manage to get an iADOM of sorts going in the near future on the iPad then I'd suspect that's also lead to an article on such news.

That the Harris columns are only semi-regular kinda lend itself poorly to shining lots of spotlights down on various games---hence he tends to shine on ones that are already shining save odd cases like with Legerdemain back when it first came out.

[mariodonick]

That the Harris columns are only semi-regular kinda lend itself poorly to shining lots of spotlights down on various games---hence he tends to shine on ones that are already shining save odd cases like with Legerdemain back when it first came out.

To publish new, in-depth articles on a regular basis is of course very difficult, and thus it seems reasonable for the author to stick with the games he knows best, or is able to learn pretty well (such as Desktop Dungeons). However, I still believe a dedicated roguelike blog / magazine is needed, although my own attempt in 2007 (magazine.roguelike.us , still online) failed after issue 2, and although that nice blog that was started some months ago ... don't remember the URL right now, seems to be dead, too.

[Ex]

I still believe a dedicated roguelike blog / magazine is needed

I would love to see a roguelike magazine, but magazines are very hard things to keep going. With how slow the RL community is, it could never be monthly, it would have to be more like a literary magazine and print only twice to four times a year. Still, it's a lot of work, especially to attract and keep writers to write the articles. Maybe if it accepted more than just articles on roguelikes. We could also accept poetry, essays, art and other things like that are based on roguelikes, which could attract more people. Maybe. I'd love to see one happen, though! Oh, maybe we could even include a CD with the latest releases of things.

[mariodonick]

Elig, I second your suggestions, and I agree to the problems you've mentioned. It does not work if one person alone tries to accomplish it -- and with other persons, it's the same as in many other dead projects: for some moments, there's lots of enthusiasm, but shortly the whole team breaks apart, because members don't take the project as seriously as the person who initiated it. And motivating members which you don't really know except from forums or blogs is very hard

The most realistic thing I can imagine to produce is a magazine that is based on one particuliar roguelike, similar to the World of Warcraft official magazine (published 4 times a year), but include an "What else happened in the roguelike world (in the last 4 months)?" section.