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Re: Make "3D Gamestudio" sound cooler
[Re: JetpackMonkey]
#180427
01/28/08 23:27
01/28/08 23:27
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Joined: Mar 2003
Posts: 5,377
USofA
fastlane69
Senior Expert
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Senior Expert
Joined: Mar 2003
Posts: 5,377
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Quote:
Seriously. Is there even a marketing department or a real product manager who isn't a programmer or answers the phones part time? It's Conitec's mistake.
Everyone is in agreement here about Conitec's marketing. There was even a long thread about it a while back. I too was in your shoes and begged Conitec to get some marketing so I could say their product name with pride!!!! And then you know what happened?
I started making games.
I started going to game conferences.
I started talking to developers and investors and publishers.
And about 50% didn't know 3DGS and the other 50% predictably called it hobbyware. The ones who didn't know where mildly curious about it's feature set and then moved onto the game. The ones who did know, after a few minutes talking about it, they did NOT have that opinion and agreed that their opinion was second hand and not borne of using the product.
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Do you think a new name to go along with all the new features of the next version of the new engine would spark new sales?
No. Again, you can call it whatever you want but it's still the same engine under the hood and people buying a game engine look under the hood and not at the hood ornaments.
In all cases, what makes the biggest impression is the longevity of the company. How many game engines have been around, constantly improving (even if not at a rate we may be happy with), and under the same company for over a decade? How many can you think off the top of your head or even scouring gamedev.net? Not many, if any.
What you are asking Conitec to do is essentially throw that away. They have built up trademark and IP recognition in the industry under the 3DGS label. Whether the products rep is good or bad, it is ALWAYS bad business to through away IP equity for any reason. So while the product has been 3DGS for longer than some of it's users have been alive, you would ask them to take a GAMBLE (because no matter how cool the name sounds, it's all gamble) that dropping that name would generate strong and tangible benefits. As I've stated before, I jus don't see any benefit to a name change.
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Because being affilitated with and using the technology of "the world's worst game" isn't really a liability
First off, I find this a ridicoulous point to base your opinion of the engine or it's name on. 99% of our games in this community, IF they were finished and IF they were put up for display would earn that label. Unfortunatley, so would 99% of the games made by Torque, 3DBlitz, and even Unreal! Have you learned nothing from our Showcase Forums? Don't you know that it's easier to say "you suck" a thousand times than to take the time to actually pay attention to a game and say "this is ok" even once? That forums are populated by haters and not lovers and they will try to find fault with a game no matter what? And yet you STILL put weight into some anonymous stranger saying that?
Seriously Jetpack, if you are paying attention to the name of the engine and to what strangers say about a game even the author admits didn't push the engine one iota, then you are paying attention to the wrong things about game dev my friend. 
So actually my ad would read:
""3D GAMESTUDIO - If you don't like the sound of it, it's because you're focusing on the wrong thing!"
I've been where you are Jetpack trust me. It's hard to believe in an engine when there is nothing to show for it. I know. But in the 5 years that I've used 3DGS, I've been able to raise 250k USD to fund my business (and my business is my educational game) through personal, federal, and state grants. And lest you think that this is because these are industries that don't know game engines (which is true), when I go to the Serious Games Conference or to he GDC and mention my game engine, I get the reaction I talked about above and then we move on. Here is the important part I want to impart on you: Not ONE person at ANY game conference I have EVER attended has EVER dissuaded me from using this engine. That means that other game developers, developers who have been in the industry longer and made more games than all of us combined... all knew the reputation the 3DGS had and yet looked past the reputation at what it could do. While this should NOT be taken as an endorsement of the engine by any of these people, it SHOULD be taken as reassurance that some of the biggest names in game development and publishing that I've met care very little about the engine (or it's name) and more about what I'M doing with it.
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Re: Make "3D Gamestudio" sound cooler
[Re: JetpackMonkey]
#180431
01/28/08 23:56
01/28/08 23:56
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Joined: Mar 2003
Posts: 5,377
USofA
fastlane69
Senior Expert
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Quote:
So you're telling me they don't want to make more money? That's not what business is about.
Every company wants to grow and expand. But if you try that too aggressively or beyond your bounds, you are merely sacrificing 5 years of steady profits for one year of spectacular profits and then bankruptcy.
Conitec is a business and they have their price points and balance everything out so they can stay and business and keep improving. ANY change to their current business model is risky and while you are correct that business want to make more money, they will not do it in large, risky steps but rather slow, predictable steps.
That's what we have bought into folks, slow and steady as opposed to fast and flashy. FF is the way that the majority of game engines work... they build great demos, wow the GDC and are hailed as the next unreal, and then the either get bought by unreal or become vaporware. SS is the mark to a successful company and by proxy, a successful game engine.
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and if 3D Gamestudio has bad PR, we get the bad PR by proxy, because people will associate your game with it, regardless if your game is good.
I think the root of your misconception is that you are confusing game developers with customers.
The game developers will hold to the PR. They may not want to join your team or ridicule your game for your engine choice, that is true. Every bad game that is made with 3DGS merely makes the game developer happier because they did NOT choose that engine! But the customer is ignorant of these things. I challenge you to find a customer that follows the Unreal franchise of games or the 3DBlitz francise of games, or even the Torque games! They follow "doom" and "gta" and "ff". They care about games and not game engines. And I would argue that a publisher is in the middle: they have to pay attention to the PR lest the game engine truly has a critical failure that will affect the game (and sales) but they also have to pay attention to what a customer would think of the game. IMO unless the publisher cites a critical failure (such as 3DGS's inability to be put on the web), if you get dismissed by a publisher for using 3DGS, that is not a publisher you want to deal with in ANY engine!
Hence the only people that will unjustly associate bad PR with your game because it was built with 3DGS will be the people that aren't paying you (the developers) and not the ones that are potentially paying you (the customers and investors), so I don't see the problem!
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Re: Make "3D Gamestudio" sound cooler
[Re: Nems]
#180434
01/29/08 00:05
01/29/08 00:05
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Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 4,134
Netherlands
Joozey
Expert
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Expert
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Posts: 4,134
Netherlands
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Dunno if you replied to me or not, I shall give an answer nonetheless  . Quote:
So you're telling me they don't want to make more money? That's not what business is about.
I'm telling you that earning more money might not be on top of their ToDo list. I do not know Conitec's goals and visions, but seen how close JCL works with the community, I think their customers are on number 1 rather than expanding the company. And I think they do very good to focus on their community and customers.
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and if 3D Gamestudio has bad PR, we get the bad PR by proxy, because people will associate your game with it
They associated Big Rigs with gamestudio as well. As far as I know, it's not made with 3dgs. So if your game is good, they wont bash it down because you made it with gamestudio, they wont bash it down at all because you made a good game. They do use 3dgs to empathise how bad a game is, but it's a matter of time before things change. The A7 engine has yet to prove it's power, and it's in full development.
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If you seriously want to get the name on the lips of gameplayers then collaborate and make something they want to play
Agree on that one .
Last edited by Joozey; 01/29/08 00:07.
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Re: Make "3D Gamestudio" sound cooler
[Re: Joozey]
#180435
01/29/08 00:12
01/29/08 00:12
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Joined: Nov 2003
Posts: 1,659
San Francisco
JetpackMonkey
OP
Serious User
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OP
Serious User
Joined: Nov 2003
Posts: 1,659
San Francisco
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Quote:
They associated Big Rigs with gamestudio as well. As far as I know, it's not made with 3dgs.
Why would they have jumped to such a conclusion? So a game sucks, they automatically assume it was made with gamestudio... and that is not a marketing problem why? ....
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Re: Make "3D Gamestudio" sound cooler
[Re: JetpackMonkey]
#180436
01/29/08 00:17
01/29/08 00:17
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Joined: Mar 2003
Posts: 5,377
USofA
fastlane69
Senior Expert
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Quote:
I've noticed! That doesn't mean it isn't there.
I actually started another thread in Business Forum to tackle this exact question. I've never run into this problem so for me it truly isn't there. But it may be there for you and others that is the crux of that thread: trying to find out exactly what effect the name 3DGS has on investors.
Quote:
I am talking about producers and people who are considering investing in a project, only to jump to the conclusion that the project is not worthwhile, not serious, because of the game engine's "click-together" reputation.
But isn't it true that someone investing in your game would play it first and then base it on it's merits?
And if like it's been stated, people don't even click start for knowing that it's a 3DGS product, are these the people you want to do business with?
People that put a name and a rep above the actual product? Aren't these the same type of producers that allowed Doom 3 to be published becaus it had the hottest "name" in town (only to find the game sucked)?
I'm sorry but it just doesn't make sense to me that a company would dismiss a good game merely because it was built by 3DGS. I've never experienced it and I'm curious to find out about other peoples experiences with rejection because of this.
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