Bay 12 Games Forum

Oh wait, you have to have some sort of game-site account? Darn.

Sort of. You have to own Pixel Piracy somehow and you have to have an account here before 20 June 2014. Where did you get Pixel Piracy?

It's good that the Russian list is long since they are the #1 supplier worldwide since 1972. Although China is likely to surpass the US and Russia in the next 10 years.

You would be surprised how many weapons you know! We are exposed to them in so many movies and games that when they pop up and we see the name, it's like "Hey, I know that from The Terminator!" or whatever. Next to the weapon in the catalog we will have info about the weapon as well as where you may know it from.

Just a random thought/question: are you not taking risks by targeting a possibly small gamers niche? In my opinion weapons enthusiasts are "usually" FPS gamers, not gamers fond of strategy/simulation games.

Define small niche. Let me be overly cautious and say that 5-7% of gamers would be interested in a gun based business strategy game. Seem fair? 5% of PC Gamers (that buy four games a year or more) = 4,450,000 according to an average of 2013's figures. Let's say that because I chose my publisher well, who sold well over a million copies of a similar themed game on PC and another 3 million on mobile, that I expose my game to 1/3 of that 4.45 million interested gamers. Now let's say that I can only convince 1/8 of them to buy my game at launch price.  That doesn't take into account crossover interest from people that like strategy games, people that like guns, people that like business/tycoon games which would probably double or triple the final number, but we will ignore it for now to be conservative. That's roughly 185,000 sales at my launch price. I am trying to assume I will only sell 30k copies but in truth, my partners are talking about numbers much bigger than I was talking about here and I have received one generous purchase offer. However, I will pay my team bonuses, make sure I set aside double my projected budget for the Weapon Factory Tycoon Game TM and pay myself a decent salary before giving the rest to charity. I am keeping the game price low so that I don't make a ton of money even if I happen to sell a lot of copies. I don't believe in taking advantage of an audience. Fair price for fair entertainment. If we treat it like a commodity then we rob it of the magic that made it wonderful and we begin to consume for the sake of consumption and wonder why we feel hollow even though we buy and play more games than ever. The solution, imho, is to return to some classic game styles and focus on simple joys. When we play a game we should be closing out the world and stepping into a world that was made for our joy and wonderment. All too often now we are shopping while playing games, or integrating our egos digitally and broadcasting our apathetic screenbased, formulaic routines based on the information from the excel documents we have open in another tab or on another monitor. Is that my phone vibrating or is it the controller on the desk or is it yet a phone in the game? I'll check it when I am finished eating these chips and checking the latest snarky, too cool for gaming school editorial piece on the latest hipster game website that pretends that it doesn't only write about games that suck up to them or pay $10k a week in advertising. Somewhere in there is a game and a gamer, but they couldn't be further apart.

I want to change that. I'm not saying I did it with Arms Dealer. I'm not even saying I can. All I am saying is I care about gamers. I miss gamers. And when I make a game, it's like I am ringing a triangle and calling to those who once spent their entire night in the dark just playing a game. Nothing. Else.

lol. I don't want hype to get out of hand here. It's just a trading game with some extra strategy and a lot of randomization in it along with a lot of cool guns. It has a nice style as well, but it's not some game that's bigger than Distant Worlds or better production than Hitman. It's an indie game made by a studio of three and some freelancers. If you like trading/business type games you will like it. If you like strategy games you will probably like it. If you hate games that are mostly menus, you won't like this either. It plays a lot like Plague Inc meets Patrician.

Quote from: Mindmaker on June 20, 2014, 04:03:59 pm

I'd love to see some more Romance of the Three Kingdoms on PC.

It makes me so sad they stopped porting and translating Romance. Been playing the pkup of 11 with a fan translation recently, but all the fan translations out there are really bad.

This. So much!

OK, as you may or may not know I am a long time member of this forum and am known for giving away games. Now I am also a soon to be ridiculously famous and handsome(already) developer, with the release of my game, Arms Dealer™. Arms Dealer™ can best be described as a cross between Drug Wars/Dope Wars and Europa Universalis. Ok, that's too grand. How about M.U.L.E. crossed with Civilization II hoped up on a handful of Vitamin B and PCP? No?  Ok it's a weapon smuggling sim where the player can meddle in international politics while outrunning multiple international law enforcement agencies in an effort to amass a fortune and be cooler than The Most Interesting Man in the World®.

Anyway, how to win stuff and make friends! Anyone who posts in this thread between now and the release of Arms Dealer(est August) and certifies that they own a legal copy of Pixel Piracy is entered to win one of 50 copies of Arms Dealer. You must have registered a B12 forum account on or before 6/19/2014. Winners can claim their copy of the game on Steam, GoG, Gamersgate or a personally compiled edition with their own name and serial on the start screen. * Pixel Piracy is currently on a huge 50% off sale on Steam for $7.49. Contest entries are closed on June 30th at 11:59PM EST(GMT-5).

Consideration: I ask that you don't redistribute my game illegally and abuse my pro-consumer, anti-DRM attitude. Download it on all of your computers. Let you friends play it for a couple of days if you want. I just ask that you do right by me and the industry. There are a lot of pud knockers out there who don't value other people's hard work because they haven't done anything themselves ever. Don't be a pud knocker. If you don't want to pay full price for a legit copy of my game, send me a few bucks through paypal if you like playing the pirated copy I asked you not to use. Other than that, have fun. Be inspired by my story. I was a career soldier who got fucked up and couldn't work a normal job anymore. I put myself through the MBA program and forced my way into the game industry. Then I financed my own game and paid a fair wage to everyone involved to make a game that 5-12% of gamers will dig. 60-75% of them will pay for the game and not contract genital warts. Another 5% will also pay for the game. In the end I will have made enough money to make a second, bigger game, with more cool buttons to press and make enough money to keep my wife from leaving me out of spite. Hopefully the next game will make enough money to keep her from leaving me for the rest of the valid reasons.

Over 6,000 7,000 people in 12 14 days have found and liked Arms Dealer. Facebook is lame but liking Arms Dealer on Facebook will make your Cool:Embarrassing ration much better. https://www.facebook.com/ArmsDealertheGame?ref=hl            Also, I don't have a real website for the game because I was going to make one but I was a little hungover that morning and then my friend came over to play Xbox but when he got here he started talking about his relationship and feelings and it became this whole big thing........anyway....I'll get to it. Most likely.


EDIT: Edited the number of likes to stay accurate. The important thing is I am accumulating 1,000 likes every 2 days with almost no advertising beyond word of mouth.

Pixel Piracy is on sale for 50% off and is a fairly new game. It is also produced by our own Alex Poysky who was a member of these boards long before he was involved in making games. We need to support our own, chaps!

*Full disclosure: He's a buddy of mine and also I am one of those other B12 Devs that I would like you to support