Lemma Soft Forums

Well... I don't like talking up my work. It makes me feel dishonest. Besides, if I say "You should play this" in the form of an advertisement or otherwise, I'm asking people to trust me with their time. If they don't like what I made, then I'm responsible for wasting part of their life. I know just writing a story is inherently asking people to trust me with their time, and I try to write things that would be worth reading (even if only for a laugh) but there's a difference between quietly leaving something out on a table and walking right up to someone with it in your hand. If I just leave it there, it's not my fault if someone picks it up out of curiosity

Besides, I figure if I write anything actually good, people will recommend it to others.

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“When I stand before God at the end of my life,
I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left,
and could say, 'I used everything you gave me.'”
— Erma Bombeck

I don't know if I've really done much marketing, the game is still a WIP and far from finished. I do have a dev. blog, WIP thread in lemmasoft, and a twitter for it. If that like, counts? So I do try to kind of get it known, but not too much at this point. Maybe once i get a demo out I can do a bit more marketing.

Maybe i should of at least put 1 square or 1/2 a square for the little bit i did do?

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Blog | Twitter | Starlight Melodies | Papercut [NaNoReNo 2013]

That would count, Cidz. Marketing's definition is thus:

2. the total of activities involved in the transfer of goods from the producer or seller to the consumer or buyer, including advertising, shipping, storing, and selling.

In this case, the producer (you) is providing a product to the consumer (your readers), and you do so by advertising (WIP threads, devblogs, Twitters), shipping (providing thread with links/instructions how to get it) and storing (download location/links). Everyone's very much relying on marketing to get anyone to download.




Let me ask a blunt question: Is your work crap? If not, it's not talking up your work. It's addressing why we should read it/why it's great. And anything anyone creates should be "great": There's no reason to produce things and market them if you think they're not that good and we don't need to consume it.


EDIT: I'd do the assessment rating thing but really, Mugen, a jpeg artefact file?

I was once told to think of selling/marketing as introducing people to something they might like.

Susan

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In order to understand recursion, one must first understand recursion. (Anonymous)

Money, the only reason... Actually, producers are not interested about ours needs - they just force us to consume (that's what marketing is for).

I liked the jobs other people added, so I put them all in mine. For this I had 0 meaning "Can't even properly explain what I want to the actual person doing it." and 10 meaning "High professional quality"

Character Sprites - I'm probably too hard on myself here. I can make something that looks rather nice, but not professional. My poses and expressions are too stiff, I've gotten lazy with my anatomy, I'm not as polished with coloring as I'd like, my clothes are boring, and I'm also very slow!

Backgrounds - I'm very bad at this, but thankfully, full traditional isn't necessary. I'm in the process of learning sketchup and how to speedpaint, and my experience pixeling tiles for RPG's has helped. I hope to learn enough to bring this up from barely acceptable to mildly plesant by the end of the year.

Event CG - I'm to bad at composition and conveying enough emotion for my higher character art score to bring this up at all. I probably just need practice.

GUI Design - I know how to do it, but for some reason it just never looks good and I always feel so lost when I'm starting a new GUI or HUD. I always end up doing something I've done before.

Writing - I know what to do, how to do it, my first drafts aren't bad, but I haven't practiced enough to impliment all my knowledge properly. To be perfectly honest, I have no idea how good or poor I am at this. The people who've read my novel liked it, even though it was a first draft, so I guess I'm not horrid.

Editing - I don't know how to edit at all, but I gave myself a higher score because my grammar and spelling aren't too horrible.

Music - I would love to be good at this, and I have written music before, but I really don't know what I'm doing and trying to figure out music programs makes my brain hurt.

Sound effects - I know enough to pick out sounds someone else has made, but no clue how to make them.

Marketing - I don't want to do marketing, but I do know a few things about how it works so that I don't annoy people and I can make it easily found by the people who want to find it.

I redid the template for my card, here's a copy if anyone else wants to use it.

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Works in Progress: Twin Crowns | Weather Wizard

Well, that's a good point. I wouldn't say it's crap (okay, I might, but only in the throes of artist's depression ) but... "great" is such a relative term... I mean, even if I do try my hardest to make something great, and I think it's great, is it really great, or is it only the greatest that *I* can do? What if the greatest I can do only falls very low on the True Literary Greatness scale? Then am I even justified in asking people to put aside True Literary Greatness to read something that I wrote? If I read a book that scores a 75/100 on the True Literary Greatness scale, and my writing ranks somewhere around a 7/100, then it feels dishonest to say "Hey, you should read what I wrote!" instead of "Hey, I just read this really great book and you should too!"

Anyway, it's not that I think my work is garbage/don't want anyone to read it, but I just feel like I don't have a right to market, aka advertise, aka manipulate* people to read it, knowing it is not 100/100 on the scale. In that regard, it does feel like I'm talking up my own work. I'm trying to convince them to spend their time on my story vs. something else. But that something else could be a greater work than mine.

*I don't mean this in a derogatory way. Marketing by nature is manipulative.

Edit: You know, on second thought, please disregard this entire post and carry on with the thread at hand...

_________________
“When I stand before God at the end of my life,
I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left,
and could say, 'I used everything you gave me.'”
— Erma Bombeck

Marketing is only manipulative if it's taken too far. Most of the time it's presenting things in such a way so that the customers get out of their own way and can find what they really want.

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Works in Progress: Twin Crowns | Weather Wizard

Yeah, on second thought I think I might have used the wrong term there. I did a search for definition after your post and didn't find too many people using the term "manipulation" in the way I was thinking of it when I wrote this.

_________________
“When I stand before God at the end of my life,
I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left,
and could say, 'I used everything you gave me.'”
— Erma Bombeck

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If I'm not misunderstanding the definition of marketing, it starts before projects; Researching the customer's demand and market's supply. My game (rio) is a free game and I didn't advertise widely. But it's becoming popular as I planned, for I know this type of game has high-demand but low-supply. Isn't this a part of marketing?

(oh, I have no right to participate this rating D:)

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Character Sprites - Well, I normally stay with only sketching characters, not making real sprites, but from one to two is it just a little step.
So I guess I'm quite good at it.

Backgrounds - My one, real weakpoint in art...
Stuff like beach with ocean or dark forests or really simple rooms are ok, but for as much as I love architecture...
It always frustrates me to do it and I almost always hate the outcome.
It's also the only thing I really need samples for...

Event CG - Well, I draw mangas and there is every panel a little Event Cg.
So this is kind of my forte.
Especially since I can play around with light and expressions

GUI Design - I guess, I'm just in the middle with this.
Have only designed around three different GUIs (two were for the RPG Maker XP), but I always only heard praise, so I would say, I'm more or less ok.
Even though I sometimes think I overdo it.

Writing - I did write short novels regulary before starting university, so I hope, it is still ok.
But I'm not half that good in writing as I am in art, so I'm maybe only a little above average.

Editing - My computer hates me which makes it hard to recognize spelling errors (I always have to check my script on the university computers).
I'm kind of bad with script (especially if it get's more complicated then inserting a pause or using the "extend" command), so that also drags it down.

Music - Well, I am able to sing and play a bit piano, but!
I have never composed anything and I doubt I will ever. I also have a cheap microphone which would make all my singing go to waste.
So no points here, I let others do that part for me.

Sound effects - Well, voices can I do by myself as well as some simple sounds.
But I get most of the stuff from the internet where people allow others to download their sounds for free.

Marketing - Well, since at least the game I'm working on right now is a gift for my fans over at Animexx, I did a lot of marketing. Not only did I do recherche in looking what characters were most liked but also in what kind of story was their favorite (seemingly supernatural themes) and of course I'm doing a lot of advertisment right now, even though they still don't know the fact that I'm making a game (they seem to believe I make a short movie ôo).
But I kind of doubt I will do that work again for any game that is not realted to my fans over there...
It's already really hard looking for all that when you only have to see what ~1700 people like that you have more or less known and painted for for 3 to 8 years...

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>Open image editor
>Change "E" in OELVN to "J"
>????
>Profit

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MESI Games/Personal Twitter/Death Rule: lost code Demo

Ahhh ok gotcha! Well then i guess i should add a 1 or 2 for marketing, i've at least seemed to get people intersted and looking forward to the completion of my game, so that's something!

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Blog | Twitter | Starlight Melodies | Papercut [NaNoReNo 2013]

Well... What you're seeing is what i can draw =__=...
Even though i am making game with people, my own skills are meh lol.
I'm more about programming but the anime love is burning =D.

Anyway, i always want to make more friends =). At least that's what i'm good at lol. So, please don't forget to give me a shot if you're bored and want someone to chat with.

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