Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Banana Town - The Magnum Opus

So my great game, my magnum opus, Banana Town is released upon the world.  There was a lot of hubbub about the price of the game being too much, but I disagree.  The game is the whole world to me, and I plan on making it much better.  I have a lot of faith in the project and I have a five year plan for it.  But currently, the game is in beta and is just getting noticed.  I have outlined a one year plan for full release.  This plan will give me enough time to make the game so much better. 

The problem thus far is that not enough people are willing to take the dive into a game so early on.  Originally, the game was meant to be released around December, before the steam winter sales.  But I decided that my birthday was a better day and got it out in it's current state. 

Also, the game has gone through a whole lot of changes that hampered production time.  The game had been on greenlight for about six months.  In that time, I was actually moving it to android so that I could at least get it into the hands of the public for scrutiny and feedback.  The game went through drastic changes and consumed a lot time for this conversion to android.  But then Valve dropped a news bomb that they killed greenlight and will allow all sorts of games on it's platform for just $100.  My fee was waived because I had already paid the greenlight submission fee of $100. 

This meant that Banana Town could see the light of day on the steam platform.  I hurriedly transfered the game back to computer platform and tried my best at fixing all the problems that went along with it.  I was tired and exhausted from all of this and couldn't get my vision for the game fully realized in time. 

I thought that the only way to get through this hump was to release the game and see the feedback.  I thought there really wouldn't be any, or not very much.  I looked into how to price an indie title and there were so many opinions.  So many experts said that indie games were too cheap.  Rooster Teeth did videos about this.  Web sites had articles written on this.  That indie games were selling their products for way too little.  They were all hoping they could bank their game on a million sales.  But that just isn't reality.  The fact is that games only ever sell less than 21,000 copies in a lifetime (two years).  There is no correlation between the price of a game and how many copies sell.  There is NO EVIDENCE OF ANY CORRELATION BETWEEN THE PRICE OF A GAME AND THE COPIES SOLD!!!!!   I realized that there is only one truth in gaming, that gamers will buy what they want and will not buy what they don't want.

Will any one ever want my game?  Will they ever play it?  Will they mock my grand vision for Banana Town?  It really doesn't matter because as far as I know, steam doesn't have any rules against making a game nobody wants.  Banana Town will remain on steam for a long time and I will update until my goals are met. 

There can't be any other path than the path of the Banana.  The first banana that ran for the castle.  That was scared and frightened by the dark forest.  He did not give up.  He ran forward.  Farther and faster.  He finally did meet his end, on a beach.