It’s a shame about the game. I really enjoyed it. Enough to pay for it, actually; I think somewhere between twenty to forty dollars. It had a lot of heart which is not something you see often since the SNES days.
Thanks Doc, it really means a lot to me to hear it.
I agree that it is a shame, and I might return to it one day, though unfortunately not anytime soon.
Cheers!
Well. What an amazing misfortune, that this brilliant game dies on the vine.
Here’s the thing: I pay for things. Frequently. I even pay for games, despite the availability of free games. However, I despise premium content, and I hate paying for things to become unlocked. I guess that makes me a bad target demographic. But here’s the thing: what I D…
Well. What an amazing misfortune, that this brilliant game dies on the vine.
Here’s the thing: I pay for things. Frequently. I even pay for games, despite the availability of free games. However, I despise premium content, and I hate paying for things to become unlocked. I guess that makes me a bad target demographic. But here’s the thing: what I DO like, and what I will pay for (and have in the past) is this: new games, kickstarter style.
If during the course of this game I saw a progress bar letting me know how closely you’ve funded your NEXT awesome game (that will be free for all), I’d probably find myself chipping in for it. If you insisted on adding premium content, I’d be cool with that, as long as the premium content didn’t disrupt the game (like better weapons and armor, or quests that short-circuit the main game process by making things easier, or quests/premium items that are necessary to properly enjoy the game, etc.) Stuff like a cool looking shirt design that matches the stats of whatever armor I’ve bought would be the sort of thing that didn’t turn me off.
Strategygamer’s strategy of $7 for an infinite quest timer probably wouldn’t get my dollars. It might be a workable strategy overall, I can’t speak for anyone else; but it wouldn’t work for me.
But if I knew my money was going to directly contribute to a new episode in the Misfortune series, and I could see the progress of it every time I logged in to play, well… it’d take a few weeks, maybe, but I’d be almost guaranteed to break down and shell out some $$ to help the cause. ESPECIALLY if I finished the game and had a really positive experience from it, not feeling like it was gimped or too short or anything.
I did start toying with the idea of kickstarter, but I am currently a bit too busy with some other things so…
For now Misfortune will remain one of the unfortunate games which have …
I did start toying with the idea of kickstarter, but I am currently a bit too busy with some other things so…
For now Misfortune will remain one of the unfortunate games which have a first part with no second. Hopefully in the future I will be able to amend this.
Hi, so I read that you stopped working on Misfortune.
Does this mean that, after I’ve upgraded every possible skill, and I’ve been playing lever 25 quests, there’s nothing more to do? Even if it was like that, it is still a great game, and it’s a shame you had to stop working on it :)
Yo
It’s great to hear you say that. I never tire of people telling me that the game is good ;)
Unfortunately, yes, you’ve probably finished all you can possibly do. If I’ll add any more content, I’ll …
Yo
It’s great to hear you say that. I never tire of people telling me that the game is good ;)
Unfortunately, yes, you’ve probably finished all you can possibly do. If I’ll add any more content, I’ll be sure to let all the great people in Kongregate know.
Dear Smikeo,
You said in a previous post that you suffered from bad marketing for this game. I know nothing about semi-pro game development, but from a player’s perspective, let me tell you my view on this. Some of it may seem harsh but I’m doing it so you can understand what players dislike about the marketing, so you can hopefully make in the fut…
Dear Smikeo,
You said in a previous post that you suffered from bad marketing for this game. I know nothing about semi-pro game development, but from a player’s perspective, let me tell you my view on this. Some of it may seem harsh but I’m doing it so you can understand what players dislike about the marketing, so you can hopefully make in the future a system that doesn’t frustrate players as much (as you can see is the messages).
First, you should understand that no player in his right mind will pay more than $20 for a game like yours (and even that is a lot – for me personnally it’s more like $10). Since you can get a professional game that is made with far better means for $40 at your local store, it’s logical. So what do I get if I spend $20 for your game? $20 = 225 Kreds = 100 mission credits (MC). Yeah. Not very convincing. I get what I could have gotten for free by playing a bit each day for a few days. I REALLY don’t get my money’s worth.
My advice is that you shouldn’t sell MCs. They are basically worthless. What you should sell is the ability to have infinite MCs. This ability would turn your demo (the game limited by MCs) into an actual single-player game thay people would genuinely ENJOY playing. You should sell this ability at a rather low price because, after all, it’s just a flash game. You make money by selling it to a large number of users, not by putting a high price. I would suggest something between $5 and $10, so lots of people will buy it, and your popularity will rise.
In short, stop selling MCs because people won’t buy them. Sell the ability to have infinite MCs for $7, and lots of people will buy it (including me).
Yo, strategyfan.
Naturally, you are absolutely right. I find that my biggest mistake of all was the way I launched my game. You didn’t even mention (perhaps you didn’t know) that at launch players cou…
Yo, strategyfan.
Naturally, you are absolutely right. I find that my biggest mistake of all was the way I launched my game. You didn’t even mention (perhaps you didn’t know) that at launch players could only play 4 missions a day. And I wondered about my high bounce rate…
Anyway, if I could do it all over again, I would do it differently. I would let players play as many missions that they want, selling only content which can also be unlocked for free with enough dedication. I would provide an option to play without logging in, thus making my demo much more attractive. I wouldn’t have launched the game at all without implementing the facebook/twitter APIs much more thoroughly. In short, I wouldn’t have f****ed up.
However, I did, and at that point I had to decide if I want/can fix my mess. And my very painful decision was that I can’t (not without starving my family, and making us homeless).
I love Misfortune. I think it’s the best game ever. But I just don’t have the resources to do it right. Perhaps someday… a kickstarter project – Misfortune for the iOS… Who knows?
I knew that there was a much stricter MC limit before, yes, but I didn’t know that it was that low. Sure, it made the game rather unplayable. But this is far from being my biggest concern.
You talk a …
I knew that there was a much stricter MC limit before, yes, but I didn’t know that it was that low. Sure, it made the game rather unplayable. But this is far from being my biggest concern.
You talk a lot about the attractiveness of the demo. Understand that my criticism isn’t about the attractiveness of the demo, but about the attractiveness of the final product (the game you get after you paid for it). After all, you can still make money if the demo isn’t attractive, but you won’t make a single buck if the final product isn’t. And it isn’t : that’s the one and only problem ; the rest is secondary.
I admire the fact that you question your past strategy. Still, I strongly disagree with your analysis and your regrets :
“I would let players play as many missions that they want, selling only content which can also be unlocked for free with enough dedication.” → for me, very bad idea. You wouldn’t make money this way, because people would rather play the game a lot to unlock the content instead of buying it.
“And my very painful decision was that I can’t fix this mess (not without starving my family, and making us homeless).” → That’s not true ; you already did the work, the game is made, all that’s left to do is rethink the marketing. That’s doable with minimal time and effort, probably even in parallel with another job.
“But I just don’t have the resources to do it right.” → well, that’s not a problem, because you probably don’t need any resources, except a few days of work perhaps!
What I would do in your place :
1) stop selling MCs complelety,
2) replace the MC selling screen by a screen that sells the infinite MC ability for $7
3) re-upload your game on all the websites, and m…
What I would do in your place :
1) stop selling MCs complelety,
2) replace the MC selling screen by a screen that sells the infinite MC ability for $7
3) re-upload your game on all the websites, and make as big an announcement as possible that you did this change
The cost is negligible, you can do this in less than a day’s work. The potential payoff for both you and the players is immense. Just trust me on this one ; for me, this simple change can solve almost instantly all your marketing issues.
Far more mysterious than the mystery of Rodnia are the mysteries: ‘Where is smikeo?’ ‘Where are the updates?’ and ‘Why did smikeo kill this game despite people paying for it?’
Aaaah… Smikeo disappeared indeed. And for a reason, which can only be described as… failure.
Me and my partners have been working on Misfortune for two years. I’ve invested in this game 10,000$. If we…
Aaaah… Smikeo disappeared indeed. And for a reason, which can only be described as… failure.
Me and my partners have been working on Misfortune for two years. I’ve invested in this game 10,000$. If we add the time we worked on this game, this amount can be tripled. And here is the sad truth. People do love it, people do pay for it… but not nearly enough.
In a different stage in my life, I could have continued to update this game merely for the fun, and it is a lot of fun. However, I have a family to feed, and my son looks at me with his big eyes and says, “papa, can I have a second slice of bread this evening?”
I know we’ve created a good game. In fact, I think it’s a great game. But we failed where many failed before us – in the marketing and sales.
So, I am sorry, but for now, updates of the game are frozen.
And believe me, as much as you like this game, it is my baby, and it hurt a lot to reach this decision.
well smikeo we understand that you got family to feed and you dont have much money left but you could just reduce timer and put something new then you could just get more money.for some time stop spen…
well smikeo we understand that you got family to feed and you dont have much money left but you could just reduce timer and put something new then you could just get more money.for some time stop spending time in this game and then when you have much money start spending time on misfortune.i and many people love this game so if you could then do this.
Yes, it is actually a Misfortune having to wait for something that should be free, anyone in his sanity would pay kreds for mission credits when he can just quit and play another game for a bunch of hours and then come back.
My advice?
Please take away the cooldown for mission credits and stop charging for them, it annoys people and makes a pretty …
Yes, it is actually a Misfortune having to wait for something that should be free, anyone in his sanity would pay kreds for mission credits when he can just quit and play another game for a bunch of hours and then come back.
My advice?
Please take away the cooldown for mission credits and stop charging for them, it annoys people and makes a pretty decent game be downrated, instead, why dont you just add premiun weapons and armor that can be bought with kreds?.
Thanks for reading.
Re: gender selection—personally I don’t see a problem if you keep it as “the story of a boy”, although a more open style like Echo Bazaar would be cool. My issue was more that the description was giving me the wrong impression, haha. Though I suppose I should have guessed from the game icon.
Hmmm. When we thought about that we’ve decided to put an image of the protagonist next to the name dialog…
If you want, I can change your character’s name. Simply PM it to me.
How about this, you take this version of the game to Facebook and put a version without a timer so players can actually play the game without having a rage attack when out of points?
Facebook… I have a love hate relationship with facebook. Well, it’s actually just a hate relationship. We actually do have a “sign in with facebook” button in our site (www.loadingames.com) from which…
Facebook… I have a love hate relationship with facebook. Well, it’s actually just a hate relationship. We actually do have a “sign in with facebook” button in our site (www.loadingames.com) from which you can also share it with your friends, etc. Unfortunately, it stopped working a few days ago, we are still trying to figure out why. Facebook change their APIs a lot, and it is hard to maintain a game there.
As for the timer… please don’t have a rage attack, it’s bad for the heart. We are trying to twiddle with the game configurations so that it will induce less rage. please be patient.
Cheers!
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