Widget Monkey Games ... a redesign and a rethinking

Hi everyone!

I have relaunched Widget Monkey Games this morning after a rather embarrassing attempt at trying to sell other developers games. Two sales in five months is not a good business model :wink:

I have re-thought what Widget Monkey Games is and have now redesigned it to be ...

1. A website to develop, promote and sell my own games (see the home page for the first title officially announced!)
2. A website to showcase (but not sell) games being created by other indie studios and developers using Unity, and
3. A place to promote the Unity game engine

This is what my site visitors have indicated to me is wanted so there it is.

I have updated the entire site, including the News page.

I have tried to be inclusive and mention all of the great games that have been developed by folks like Sector3, Mondo Robot, Graveck etc (and have also linked to all of your games) on my Unity-made Games page.

I have also added a number of Upcoming Unity Games from other developers with links and some basic info.

Finally, I've updated the Partners and Links page.

If anyone would like their game or web-player site added, removed, highlighted, better showcased, etc on the site please let me know. I will have missed some obvious ones and would like to add those in the coming days, so again, please drop me a line (PM here or email to daveyjj at gmail).

I have also added a small banner ad space on the home page ... free for the asking ... to promote your Unity project.

Thanks to everyone for visiting and I look forward to meeting some of you next week in SFO!

 

The site looks good! It can be a real challenge to run a portal site. Glad to see that you're adapting. Hopefully users will be chomping at the bit for that free (!!!) ad banner :wink:

 

Looking great David. I think the new direction is a good move, and will help a lot of people.

(Widget United looks very cool too btw. ;-) )

Edit: I also see you linked our Circus Chairs game on there too, thanks a lot!

-Jeremy

 

Let me know when you want that little banner space on the front page ... in exchange for telling me all about that screen shot here ... http://www.ennanzus-interactive.com/projects.php.

PS. Adding you to the links page now too ... sorry, one I missed.

Anyone else want a link?

 

Haha, nice try. ;-) My lips are sealed...

Thanks a lot David. We appreciate it.

-Jeremy

 

hi DaveyJJ.

I'm just curious to know what your success rate is with the donate button? Are people donating or not?

Cheers.

 

On the original Widget Monkeys site? Not really, no.

Ron and I have had a total of four donations during the last 28 months of WM existing for a grand total of $40. I am happy and replied to each person who donated, but $20 each won't allow us to quit our day jobs.

It's the reason Banana Warehouse 2 is talking soooooooo long. No time after you subtract work, family, personal time, etc.

I am spending $1000 to get to SFO for ... ? Inspiration I guess, and to rub shoulders with cool people who actually know what they're doing and I admire.

Just bummed a bit today. (But on a happy note Widget United is getting there due to the Herculean and brilliant coding efforts of Jedd aka bronxbomber92.)

(I didn't buy Widget Monkey tees to hand out in SFO although I desperately wanted to because it was just one more expense out of my family savings I couldn't justify. BTW, we've sold a total of one t-shirt in two years, and that was because we twisted a co-workers arm until he cried uncle.)

 

Dont be bummed Davey...Revamping the website shows you are keen to go with the times, and thats what makes or breaks careers. You're on the right track...

This does kinda remind me of amazing musicians who are famous but broke. You are famous Davey, Banana warehouse is famous too!

Maybe if everyone in such a position banded together to form a mega team to produce something big we could go for the more hardcore gamer market... thats kinda what Im hoping will emerge from being involved in the "Hope" Collaboration...

Sometimes we're so close to getting there but just miss a final detail...

Maybe with the soccer game, target every soccer team in the world, and for an extra fee put real players faces on the models? Customise each build for a price? I dunno, sometimes a little bit of outside the square stuff goes somewhere...Even do localised team colours, sell the idea to franchises and they can front with the cash as part of their self promotion...

Im about halfway thru preparing my website, so when its ready maybe you could link me up? Yours looks great.

Keepa da faith man, keepa da faith...
AC

 

I completely agree with Aaron's sentiment about not giving up, but, based on many years of making licensed games, I would strongly _discourage_ any attempts to acquire licenses for any major sports franchises or player unions. As an example, after two years of selling 6 different sku's of licensed NFL mobile games across all 4 major US carriers, our net revenues _barely_ broke even on the license fee to the NFL (team names, uniforms, venues). And then there was the license fee to the NFL Player's Association, which covers faces, names player numbers.

Note that generally, the teams themselves do not own the rights to their team name, colors, uniform design, home venue, etc., etc.

Without a license to a professional league, you'll never approach Madden's or FIFA's sales numbers, but as long as the game is solid, you never know what might happen (wow, my insight is so useful, eh?)

 

And love the new site DaveyJJ!

 

A lot of us get most of our work not by shipping to the masses, but by delivering solutions to clients...This is more like what I meant. It is good to hear about the heavy licensing side though. I guess what I meant was more of a "Send emails to recreational clubs" type approach, that may be completely ridiculous but i was just trying the "outside of the box and around the corner" train of though going...

gotta keep em ideas comin'...
AC

 

The soccer still looks very Wii like...

 

Congratulations for your big work !

Your website is beautiful and I admire your effort to show other games.
Here in Gamepulp, we actually think a collaborative platform for Unity Indie developers can allow better sells.

So, it's too early for us (first game in development yet, no website...) but we are already applicant for this first step of collaboration.

 

Sorry Targos, I didn't mean to imply any criticism of your suggestion, just vent a bit about my personal frustration with producing licensed games!

What I would suggest to DaveyJJ for his football game would be to (if at all possible) allow the player to completely customize uniforms (colors etc), player character (on the pitch, not users of the game ) names, ability stats, etc etc. That way a user can essentially create whatever team they want, and no need to deal with any sort of licensor approvals.

For those of you not yet completely bored with me, I've had to do this in the past, as certain lofty star athletes actually don't belong to their respective player unions, and must be licensed separately. This is a huge hassle, and additional expense, so we provided this type of customization ability so that user of the game could create their very own Barrys <*cough* steroids *cough*> and Michaels <*cough* shoes/air *cough*>

 

Good idea DaveyJJ!

It's nice to have a site that will assemble all these various-information-about-unity-made-games pieces...

Nice design also... pro lookin'

kaaJ

 

Thanks for the encouragement all!

One of the things I'm going to discuss with the OTEE folks at the conference (that we've discussed before, but lack of time has gotten in our way) is some grand idea of a huge portal/evangelist site for Unity games. I know Sam and Tom are all over this, and I hope to push the guys even more while I'm there.

snowzerko, I do have some features planned for 1.1 that had to be cut for the initial release. Custom textures is something I can add to the future/update ideas list.

D

 

Boy is all that good to hear !
It's great to know that's somebody's nagging OTEE about all this.
As you already are in touch with them, please relay my opinion that this portal/evangelism/indie dev platform is very important to me/us at Gamepulp.

I saw a thread recently about Torque and how they're going to have a webplayer too, and people were talking about the race that's starting. I agree that the technical side is very important, and Unity's top-notch quality is a blast, but I think the race could be very tough on that side too.
I think one of the reasons why so many people choose Torque over Unity (Windows vs Mac aside) could be because they promote themselves so much better, and because they babysit their developers to help them sell. Hell, the first time I heard about indie games was when I played a Torque game!

What I mean in the end is, OTEE helping increase sells with a good portal (or other means), would help them keep up in the 3D-web race.

Of course the Unite conference, and TopDog + IGF registrations are great efforts, so let's make sure they do more of that .
Too bad we can't go to Unite, but a plane ticket to Frisco is a little too much for us... hell, a LOT too much!

 

It's a lot too much for me to but I begged and pleaded and raided all of our family savings to be there. I've been here too long to not go and I was able to at least save on my room by staying with friends out in Oakland.

It also gives me a chance to hang out with a couple we are tremendously close with in Soquel ... he works for Apple so I go to campus on Tuesday to hook up.

Plus, I lived out there two years and want to go back to that great Thai restaurant in Oakland!

 

Yeah but you live in Canada, planes in US Canada aren't that bad. Try crossing the Atlantic ocean... and then the whole US...
But hey, maybe the next Unite will be in Europe! (wink wink OTEE)

 

DaveyJJ: Very good looking site! Keep up the good work, I think the site could become 'the' place to go for Unity made games.

Benblo: I totally agree with you. Torque has awesome marketing and the fact that they actively market their developer's games must have a huge impact on their success.

OTEE: I know you guys are busy with creating THE BEST game development tool out there. But, maybe its time to hire an outside company, perhaps DaveyJJ and Co., to build a Unity game portal? That would be awesome! It would make Unity a total "one stop shop"; buy the tool, build the game, sell the game.

 

You said it best in one line than I did in 3 paragraphs... that's exactly my vision, and I think it's so Mac-like too. It just makes total sense.

 

Rest assured that we understand the need for folks to have readily accessible channels for publishing content. To start our efforts have been focused on ensuring that existing portals are open to Unity content and then longer-term we can see what, if anything, might be done about a Unity-specific content site.


Davey: nice work on the site and best of luck, it looks great.

 

Boy, do I really like that idea That's definitely a possibility for future releases!

 

You also need to be careful that Unity doesn't get a bad reputation ("Made with Macromedia" was a marketing disaster because so much crap was "Made with Macromedia"). If you create an open channel for anything made with Unity, it will tar everyone with the brush of the lowest common denominator.