The Wolverine Studios Twitter Challenge!
 

I know we've got some people who twitter here, so I figured I'd post it. :)

Edit: wolverinestudio is the twitter name :)

+1 follower

done

following

Sent to all my followers

That's mildly insane, me thinks.

Thanks for signing up and for anyone who goes the extra mile trying to recruit new followers for us.

BTW in case anyone is wondering what exactly we do with the account it is not a typical twitter account - we don't post personal info or anything like that. Only news about our games, maybe polls that we're doing, updates on sales, even an exclusive sale or post there. Basically I think its a good way for us to push the info to you about what is going on with us. Anything we can do to try and draw some attention to the company and genre is a plus so thanks again for helping us out.

Wouldn't it be nice if the focus went back to actually developing and then releasing games? Instead we have twitter contests.

Well, without promotions and making money, I'm not sure they will be releasing or developing any games. Cut them a break.

Well if we had thousands of customers purchasing the games we would be able to do them full time. We have to get the customers some how and twitter is just one way we can keep current and potential customers up to date. It takes seconds to make a tweet - something I can do easily on my lunch break at work or whatever and using twitter allows us to push updates to our followers rather than relying on them to log onto our forums all the time to see what's going on.

Believe me, I want nothing more than to release some games. We don't make a whole lot of money by not releasing them. I'm getting close to getting DDS:PB2 to beta, we've got someone new we brought on who is helping with football coding, we've got a developer who is hard at work revamping the face off hockey series, Antuan put out a fantastic simulation with Music Wars Rebirth and he will continue to develop great games for us and Shaun's extremely busy with his job and family but is still putting in the time when he can on baseball.

I think everyone involved wishes we had money behind the company and could pay us all nice, livable salaries or that we had thousands of customers so that we could work at home and do nothing but develop games. Hopefully we can build the company into that. And in all seriousness, if you've got some ideas for us to be able to broaden our audience without any money or effort really from people who could be spending time developing games by all means pass them on.

dola

Just wanted to add on that I hope my post does not come across sarcastically because I'm dead serious. If anybody has ways that we can increase our exposure without spending money then I'm all for it. Dennis actually helped me get started with Twitter - he's been successful in using it for some of his businesses so I felt it was something we can use in a similar way. We've got to market the games somehow otherwise we'll forever be in the same position of being too small to be able to work on them full time.

I guess it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem then. Having something to market makes marketing a lot easier.

Following!

Well I'm not sure if you are aware but Wolverine Studios has released five titles in its short history. Two versions of Total Pro Golf, DDS: Pro Basketball, DDS: College Basketball and Music Wars Rebirth - the latest being MWR last fall/winter. We have games - good games - but not the sales to sustain constant development.

We've done the make a game and try to spread the word thing - its gotten us off the ground at least but obviously we're nowhere near the sales level of a FOF or OOTP. Doing things like twitter or sending out emails to our mailing list every so often or having sales may seem like a waste of time but if the efforts land us new customers it's worth it to me. I'm happy to get even one new customer if the only expense in gaining it is my time.

Like I said, if you've got some ideas on what we can do bring them on. If you came to me and said I've seen strategy "x" work for other people in your situation I'd gladly give it a shot. In the meantime I think its a mistake for us not to take advantage of something like twitter. Just because I spend a few minutes posting here or a minute or two making a post on twitter doesn't mean I'm not coding - typically I am doing those things during times that I have just a minute to be online - not during times I have for coding.

Too bad I do not Twitter or I would follow...I hope this does equate to more sales...

Man, this is the second time in the last week or so that people have thought they get to have an opinion on how developers spend their time. I wish all of you could focus more on whatever it is you do that benefits me in some way, rather than posting on FOFC! :p

i think twitter's a great idea for business and i'm all for businesses (especially niche ones) using anything they can to try to drive sales.

hell if i could only figure out a way that twitter could work in my business

More power to them. Hopefully it works out well for them. I don't twtter or I would sign up as well. I'll forward it to friends who do twitter though.

I'm all for small studios trying to make it (as long as they don't go Maximum Football on us ;) ).

Good luck Gary. If I twittered or knew people who twittered I would follow, but it's just another one of those things I'll probably do a year or two after it's mainstream simply because I'm too lazy to sign up.

As for marketing, every little bit helps. Don't let Lynch bother you. Some people don't understand that developing a game is usually a passion for most independent developers and not a full-time job.

Don't worry about Lynch, he's about 8x smarter and better looking than the rest of us. If he were running your business, you'd have the greatest game in the world that nobody would want to buy for fear of his insults. You should be honored he thinks you can code so much in 10 minutes of work (the amount of time to set up a twitter account and post the promotion) that it would damage your timetables.

I just purchased DDS:PB and it is an awesome game and I can not wait for the football title.

I dont twitter either, else I would sign up.

Wow, I just realized you're trying to increase your followers by almost 10x :)

Yeah why make a small goal :)

But really, if 100 of our followers could get 10 of their followers to follow us then we're there.

I think companies/individuals that recognize now that twitter is a great, free marketing tool are smart.

Now, I'm not signed up for twitter - but I've thought about it quite a few times recently. It's growing and there is an interesting culture building around it in regards to these things.

facebook? wolverinestudios?

I have 33 followers. Probably 10 of them are on this board, does that count? Otherwise, I don't think any of them will care :(

We should have a facebook page - or someone should start a fans of WS facebook page.

It doesn't matter if they care. Will they follow if you asked them to do it as a favor to you? The reason it doesn't matter is that maybe they might not care but a follower of theirs might care - one that you don't even know. What if you said you really want the company to do this promo so can you please just join their list of followers? It takes them two seconds to click the follow button and if they never care or read what we put out that's fine but maybe one of their followers would find out about us.

I'll give it a go. :) I already retweeted the original announcement. I have no clue if that got any traction, though.

Thanks - there's definitely been a boost in our following. An account titled "sportslist" who mentions which athletes are on twitter even made a post today explaining to its followers that we do GM-style PC games. That was pretty cool to see - like I said even if it introduces one new person to our kind of games I think its worth it.

That could be a big one, I need to follow them and then RT their post.

Hope you see an increase in followers!

Now if I can only get Shaq to mention us :)

Maybe I'll run the 2009-2010 season once we finish the ratings and tell him what his stats will be :D

Honestly, that might be a good marketing concept with Twitter and the games....

I hate twitter, but I signed up for an account to help Gary out. So one more follower.

If only you could get Jimmy Fallon to mention your Twitter page like he did Bryan Brinkman ;):



The guy has over 30K followers as of today.

I'm completely aware of your products and your company.

I didn't mean it personally, and I'm sure you have invested a lot of time in your games at a very low return on that investment.

My point wasn't that Twitter wasn't keeping you away from programming or that the incremental time even matters. My point is much simpler. If you want to have a successful business you are going to need a compelling product.

That being said, I do not know if there is a strategy that will allow a text-sim programmer to survive as their only project. (Non-SI divison)

That isn't so much an indictment of the you or the quality of the games that you and your peers provide, it's a reality of the splintered nature of the text-sim purchasers.

I think the worst strategy is the one that most of the text-sim developers use. Letting the community dictate how the game is programmed. That is how you end up with OOTP - a game that somehow tries to be everything to everyone and still manages to not appeal to a broad demographic.

There isn't a pickier more difficult customer in the world to please then the people who play text-sims. A mature game like OOTP it's painful to watch a few vocal customers continue to beat the drum for the most obscure minimal features.

The programmers have let the message board crowd take them away from 'fun' and towards 'work'.

I stand by my statement that if you want to succeed in this genre you need to build an impeccable game and it will market itself.

It almost has to be football. There really is no need for another baseball game and there just isn't demand for basketball or hockey. The most successful hockey game was freeware and when SI can't make it work, no one else is going to either.

So you'd need to build a football game, more likely pro then college. Just seems to have a bigger potential audience.

Here is what you need to do:
Replicate the NFL structure
Program an AI that can playcall against a human
Build a GM AI that can compete with a human for the long run
Simulate the draft and everything that surrounds it
Graphically represent what is happening on the field in a reasonable manner, say similar to CM (or whatever it's called these days)
Have an accurate roster set
Model player and career development very closely to real life
Have some sort of interaction module with the players and media to give the game some personality


Until someone makes this game it's going to be the Gindin way (work on the game but project work on the side), the Markus way (an amazing run but I'll give you 50/50 odds this is the last version of OOTP), the everyone else way (call it the Labour of Love).

I have a lot of respect for you and your games and the work you have done, but the more I look at the situation the less commercial viable these games and this genre seems. These games don't resonate with kids today. They grow up on MLB The Show, not Avalon Hill baseball.

i somewhat disagree with the end of your post lynch, but i'm too lazy to quote it and delete the stuff i don't want to mention.

i agree that kids today grew up being button-mashers, but i think as they inevitably age and increase in their sophistication as sports fans they will find text-sims fill a great niche. particularly in this "fantasy sports" obsessed era.

Maybe I'm wrong about that. I don't think it matters anyway. I think if you are going to reach that younger generation it's going to be on a future smart phone type platform and it's going to be a game that costs 4.99. Maybe a BM type game that you can play the current season with real players.

I don't see how you are getting a teenager who plays MLB The Show behind a laptop to play an OOTP style simulation. Certainly those kids don't care about historical replays. If anything it feels like even those that post here are moving from the computer text sim to the console. Look at the interest in the threads for the console releases versus the lack of OOTPX interest.

MAKE A GAME BUT DON'T MAKE THAT GAME AND OH MY GOD WHY TWITTER ARRRGHGHHHGHGHAHRHGHH

I know that when Pumpy follows us on twitter that we have arrived. Plus then Kathy Griffin is a lock to follow as well!

I BE FOLLOWING THE HELL OUT OF THIS

Based on my multiplayer experience, I would have to disagree. Most of the multiplayer leagues I'm in have actually gotten younger not older. The mainstream games will likely always be graphics based ala MLB The Show, but there are younger players who enjoy the challenge of a text sim over graphics based games. Online text games like Hattrick, Gridiron, etc are filled to the brim with younger players.

OOTP interest level on these forums isn't necessarily your best measure. Look at the interest in FM, FOF, etc. Text sims are still alive and well though they are definitely being challenged by the newer consoles. That shows you how strong the text sim fan base is as games like Madden, etc have added GM responsibilities to their games when they were originally simply pick a play and run it. Text sim games have had a huge impact on game design this past decade.

Thanks for everyone who is adding us - even if you're only signing up for twitter just for us! Just as a sample of what we use it for I just made a tweet about a new DDS:PB2 feature change that I think people will like :)

Of course Hattrick has a younger demographic, it's free. Any free game is going to attract young players.

Looking at OOTP interest on the leading text-sim message board isn't a good way to judge interest? How about looking at the interest on OOTP's own board? It's severely lacking.

Games like Madden have added GM responsibilities. What happened to NFL Coach and Front Office Manager. Straight sims don't appeal to that customer base, and this customer base knows that half baked versions of text sims aren't even worth trying.

FM is in it's own world, the rest of these business models can't be compared to what they do.

My guess is you'd need to move >5,000 units of a 34.99 text sim every year before it's even worth someone that talented to consider moving to full time development. You'd probably need to get to ~10,000 games to get to where it's worthwhile financially for someone with a family to take that plunge full time.

There are maybe 3 text sims that meet that criteria. FM certainly, Mogul probably gets that many units but not at that price and potentially OOTP although I doubt it.

Is there a solo text-sim developer besides Markus that works full-time on developing their game?

Solecismic.

He doesn't. He talks about the side projects he's worked on. If he was working full-time on text sims he's running the worst business model ever created.

jackass. now i'm going to have to go sign up for twitter! :D

Show me somewhere that he has talked about side projects.

Pumpy signed up - that's reason enough to do it