Orusaka said,

I would be all over this, if I didn’t have a massive back log. Actually, I should just buy this to support you, but I kinda promised myself to stop doing that, considering the very literal backlog of several hundred games I have by now.

In other news, the game just got cracked and got an official scene release, as it were. I was hoping for your sake that the game would fly under the radar, so to speak. On the other hand, the fact that it didn’t probably reflects well on the attention you’ve managed to draw to the game. Hopefully, it won’t affect your sales too bad.

Orusaka said,

Yeah, I am in no way advocating heavy DRM. It really doesn’t matter, it will get cracked no matter what you put on there. The thing with Indie releases, though, is that a lot of them fly far under the radar of the so-called scene. Which is why I groaned when I saw your game had been made available.

Being a former pirate myself back in the day when I was poor and had no money (I should note here that I use pirated versions of virtually every non-steam game I own in place of the original, as I find it daft that I have to insert discs.), I know a thing or two about the mentality, and I think the best thing an Indie developer can do, is to stay on top of them with updates. While your game might get cracked, it will have to be really high profile for the updates to be cracked. More than once I was driven to purchase a game because the latest update wasn’t available cracked. I honestly think that’s the only thing a developer can do actively to stagger it. Monitor the scene, and whenever a new update might be craked, however unlikely that is for an indie game, make to make another update available, however minor.

All that said, I broke my promise to myself, and bought your game. Haven’t even gotten around to playing the demo, but the reviews were rave, and when have those ever been wrong, huh?

GhanBuriGhan said,

How about an little “I’m a pirate!” button on the main menu, that takes players to a little explanation of what it means to be an indie dev, and a friendly reminder that its never to late to get a legit version? 😀

Kelly said,

Well, I haven’t bought the game yet, but when I do it seems like the very first thing I’m going to have to do is have each character commit suicide so I can see this famous death dialogue everyone keeps raving about.

Tales of the Abyss had a death dialogue for each boss, and the dialogue provided hints on how to win. I get the feeling this is a little bit different than that though.

SteelRiverSavior said,

Hey, just bought your game. I would just like to point out that none of the normal Torrent sites even have this game listed, which I would hope is heartening news to you.

Been wanting to buy this since I first heard about it. I am also a hobbyist game developer (as you might remember, I asked you a question about it many months ago). Awesome to see you finally released it! Although 23 bucks is kind of a high price for an indie game, I hope enough people don’t mind paying it for a quality experience (I, for one, don’t mind at all).

–SRS

Calibrator said,

I don’t think that a five-hour “full” game will sell for five bucks. At least not with the current tech, even if the few dozen fans here will swear by their lives to buy it.
That’s a psychological thing. People will think they are getting screwed, even if they know it in advance.

Yes, there are episodic games that have had some major successes like for example the Telltale games but most of them are a known franchise (Sam & Max, Monkey Island).
Problem is your Frayed Knights aren’t a well-known franchise, yet!

Another way to sell five-hour games is to charge fifty(!) bucks for it and provide outstanding graphics to make people buy it (compare with Call of Duty single-player campaign for example. Most people apparently buy it for the multiplayer party, though).
Problem is your games doesn’t feature multiplayer and your graphics are at best indie standard (not even of a particular high one, given your resources). Of course us retro RPG-fans dont’t have a problem with that but it *does* limit your audience.

So what’s the solution? Something that worked for other developers and spares you a whole bunch of work on the tech sector: DLC
That way you “only” have to provide content (some texts, some maps, some 3D-models). That’s also work of course but you would perhaps create 5% of the content of the original game and charge around 20% for it. See?
And it doesn’t stop here: Benefits for the customer include easy installation (no new game), no new controls to learn, their favorite characters in new situations…

Any game could get DLC and most publishers seem to like that model as can be seen on PSN for example. Just take a look at what they charge there: I don’t know the US prices but 2 Euros for a single small avatar icon? An Euro for a desktop wallpaper?

Where exactly is your desktop wallpaper for Frayed Knights, Jay?

While I’m at it: Why is you game still not at the top spot of the three games at the left side of your blog layout? Hammer it into them, Jay! You *are* losing money!

Calibrator said,

Correction to my post above:
“Why is you game still not at the top spot of the three games at the RIGHT side of your blog layout?”

Rampant Coyote said,

Yeah, the pirates went all out spamming the warez version yesterday. How the crap do they do that.

And yeah, I’m working on my Steam submission now, but my hopes aren’t high.

Rampant Coyote said,

But Din’s Curse was rejected. And a lot of other very good indie games. So it’s kind of a crapshoot.

Demiath said,

Yes, I knew about Din’s Curse having been inexplicably rejected, but even so, it sure can’t hurt to try…

Calibrator said,

> The code should be displaying FK in the upper right list almost every time. Evidently I’ve got a bug. 😛

It works for me now! 😉

Rampant Coyote said,

I know about some of them, but it would be handy to have them in a list. If you could send them my way to jayb … [at] rampantgames.com that’d be way cool. Thanks, SteelRiverSavior!