The newsletter is a bit early this week guys. Hope you don't mind!
There will be eight playable characters in Uprising and so far six have been announced. They are:
Tirador Dane No Cara Jr Cesey Cannon G-Rush Troop
Of the two characters remaining to be announced we are finally ready to unveil one of them. There was some minor controversy with this one character because we had led people to believe all Uprising characters were designed and developed by PWX crew as original characters. This is not the complete truth and I want to give proper credit the the man behind the newly announced Uprising playable character. He's been supporting PWX since back in 2002 and he's none other than... Scotty Mac!
Thats right. Scotty has been such a big help to us going all the way back to 2002 when he posed for reference pics for our first character model. Scotty is a popular wrestler here on the West Coast circuit and has never failed to give us a hand when asked. He'd come to studio to help the animators, give us tickets to local wrestling shows, arrange access to training facilities for audio recording sessions, and invited us down on more than one occasion to meet with him before events and take more reference pictures of venues, props, etc.
He's been a great supporter since day one and as our way of saying thank you we wanted to make him a playable character in Uprising complete with his signature taunts and moves. The announcement is a bit late considering Scotty already appeared for a few seconds in the latest trailer but we wanted to finalize the paperwork before officially making the announcement.
Thanks Scotty! We look forward to jobbing you out to Cesey!
Here's some pics of Scotty and the resulting character model for Uprising. Special thanks to Darrell and Tim for working on the character model and animations. They all turned out great!
Here's a little YouTube video of Scotty in action as well. He's a solid worker and is especially entertaining when he's playing heel with the bad hats and dorky dance moves:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AdG9S9fhtI
There is one more character to be announced...
2) Free Uprising? *******************
Well this month got off to a good start in a lot of ways. We received our first letter of acceptance from a publisher for Uprising (woo!) and then we had another company make a very interesting offer. They would like to be the exclusive online distributor for Uprising and they would like to give it away for free in order to encourage more people to visit their site.
WHA?!
I told this company that we already accepted pre orders for Uprising and asked them how exactly they would address that? They replied that they would refund all pre orders. Very interesting. We'll see how this plays out. We haven't signed anything with anyone just yet...
An investor of ours recently teased me about spell checking the investor updates I send them after a few minor goofs. But sometimes auto-spell check can work against you as witnessed when I almost sent out an update to them this week in which I excitedly told them how the company was well on it's way to, "...strong revenue generated anally."
Annually. Dammit.
4) Link of the Week ********************
This is pure gold. Thank you to Greg for sending in this link and for M*-*K*-*O at the Fire Pro Club for posting these scans. They show screenshots from quite possibly the worst wrestling game never released, WCW 2000 for PS2. Which reminds me, I've got an old magazine from Blockbuster that shows a preview of the first Legends of Wrestling and talks about the match types that were supposed to be in it like scaffold and barbed wire matches. Maybe I'll get that scanned for next week. In the meantime, enjoy this little treasure and thanks again to the guy that posted it:
So what do you think of the job Darrell and Tim did on Scotty? It was the first character we've ever done of a real person from proper photographic reference. Do you think he looks as good as the rest of the roster? Worse? Better?
Please post your thoughts on the PWX forum and let us know what you think:
Wow. I watched that video with the Undertaker's Attitude era theme song playing. It sinked up perfectly, which leads me to believe that Scotty is in fact the lord of darkness.
? what are you talking about? the vid had nothing of undertaker. and as for the question of the week, of course he looks better, you used great photo reference pics of real attires.
One, I was really scared when I started reading about the new character. The fears were irrational and I am relieved and happy that its Scotty.
Two, what do you guys thing about a free Uprising? I was really excited when I read that, not that anyone will find that surprising. I think that free uprising will really expand the fan base as well as change peoples view points. Any shortcomings of a free Uprising could be seen in a much more positive light when compared to people looking at something they paid for. Any remaining negative buzz could easily be countered by the "try it and see for yourself" argument. Also, peoples opinions, positive and negative could be funneled into constructive feedback more readily from a free Uprising where as a pay per demo version could really just result in a big rift in the community. The last thing we need is a war between a few die hard blind loyalist and a few people bitching about the games faults that would lead people in the middle to just not care.
Now I know I have said this all before, but this is an opportune time to re-evaluate the situation. Before Dave felt like he had to charge, because he did need the cash. If an online vendor refunds the original purchases, Dave will still have the cash Uprising supplied him as well as the donations. Now those where a huge help, but I really don't think it's wise to ever count on future donations for survival. For PWX to really accomplish what it set out to do in a time frame that makes it mean something will require a lot more money.Include in that at least a 100K as Dave estimated for network development which could turn out to be more but I really believe its a necessity. I think the best way to generate that money at this point in time is to build a big of a fan base as possible. With a big enough fan base you could have serious leverage in getting funded, and if its really big enough theres always the option of using full, partial, or even episodic pre orders to finish the game. The current fan base has kept this ship afloat, but it still hasn't got it to the final destination. So I think the fan base needs to grow and have something that everyone can be focused around, and I think a free uprising is the best way to do that.
As long as the vendor still pays Dave and company for each download of Uprising.
The pre-orders have kept them afloat for now, but they wanted the actual sales of Uprising to be a cash influx. So, something along those lines would need to be in the contract, otherwise in a couple months, weeks or whatever, the cash shortage could hit again.
At least that was my understanding of why they wanted to release Uprising in the first place.
Question of the Week ************************ "So what do you think of the job Darrell and Tim did on Scotty? It was the first character we've ever done of a real person from proper photographic reference. Do you think he looks as good as the rest of the roster? Worse? Better?"
I think he looks better than the roster especially the fictional guys with normal faces with the exception of the masked wrestlers.
Also in reference to the link that featured the WCW 2000 wrestling game that never came out...when does a wrestling game feature NO RING...God Damn game designers gotta be on CRACK!
Unless you have a lot of time just hit back on your browser, thanks in advance to anyone who reads all or even some of this.
To be clear, I'm actually pushing for Uprising to be completely free. Charging for Uprising downloads may seem lower risk now, but I don't think thats the case. If your goal is short term, that is having a job for a few more months making a game, then releasing a small game and making a small profit (the current Uprising model) would make sense. However, if your focused on long term goals, on having a career from making a great game, then charging for a small release geared to a small target audience will not help you.
First of all, there is no guarantee at all that Uprising will be purchased in high enough numbers to continue development. The only guaranteed income from Uprising has already been made from the pre-orders. Accepting that someone else pays to refund those, the WGU will loose absolutely nothing that they can count on. We know for sure that people wanted to pay for Uprising, but those people already have.
If Uprising is not well received, then what? You will eventually loose the cash flow your business model is geared towards and you have to very quickly decide on and implement a plan B. Problem is by charging for Uprising you wont have much of a plan B. One problem is that you could basically demonstrate to publishers that people wont spend 15 dollars on your franchise. Also, if theres a strong vocal minority of players that doesn't like the game, they could easily counter the good buzz you'll need to get more sales and get more attention. The lack of positive buzz left by an unsatisfied silent majority would have the same undesired effect. As I have said these threats would be greatly reduced in the form of a free release.
What we know is that the game is far from finished and will take a crap ton of cash to get it there. Can the revenue generated from selling Uprising at $15 dollars make you the game? Just to get a decent online mode up and running you would need to sell at least close to 7 thousand games. Some way you will need more money than Uprising can realistically provide.
One way of doing this is to get a good publishing deal (creative freedom and all that). An unsuccessful release of a $15 dollar game will not help you do that. How will a publisher see less than desired sales and fan support? On the other hand, how could the see an expanding user base of a free game?
I remember talking to Dave on a message board five years ago about PWX needing to be both attractive and fun to non hardcore wrestling gamers to reach its potential commercially and as a fun game. I assume we still agree on that. A free Uprising has a chance to start attracting new types of players to the franchise. However, charging for Uprising would from the onset alienate PWX from the millions of non wrestling gamers on the internet from the get go. With marketing, user feedback, the consequent development, and all of the presentable numbers (downloads, forum activity) generated from Uprising representing only hard core wrestling gamers, how could you attract people from other demographics? How could you prove to a publisher that you can do that? How can you attract the funds, and the feedback, needed to fulfill PWXs' potential without that?
Theres another option that we need to keep available for funding PWX, and it also requires a broadening of Uprisings user base. That method is by being directly funded from your fan base. Uprising itself proved that this is at least possible for the WGU. However, charging for Uprising is a temporary solution. It may be something like a tourniquet. The WGU was bleeding financially, and bad. The pre-orders stopped that bleeding. However, if you don't loosen a tourniquet you loose blood flow, and then your either killed or crippled. If you give Uprising away you could let your user base, your word of mouth, and your fan community grow. In itself that could lead to outside investment. Still, just broadening your user base might not accomplish your final goal, but it would make doing what you needed to do more efficient in the long run. "Sharpen your axe," right?
By getting as many as people on board with a free release you could then re-open pre-orders, ask for money that would go towards a full pre-order, or charge for incremental releases leading to a full PWX. If you had a large user base, you could ask for very little money from people and get big returns. If however you try to charge a small user base who has already spent $15 dollars for anything less than a full game, that will get you nowhere, both in financial gains and in investor confidence, and then your sunk.
I know that charging for Uprising has kept us afloat, and would likely keep us safe for the near future. However, to get where we all want to go, theres going to have to be a leap of faith.
[quote][cite] PunkDraco:[/cite]If you give Uprising away you could let your user base, your word of mouth, and your fan community grow.[/quote]
It would be much easier for me to show Uprising to my friends if it was free. I'd just make some copies on CD-R and give em to my friends. They can then give copies to others, and so on. Soon we have a huge number of people interested in PWX. "Talk is cheap" but giving away good samples will really bring them in.
Or they could go the democratic route and allow people to pay whatever they want, including nothing. Don't know if enough statistical information is in to make that an attractive business model or not, yet.
I suppose giving it away for free removes the liability of relying on sales to push the company, but what do they depend on then? Financial backers expect to be repaid. If there were an online distributor who could cover all the financial debt the team has accrued, they wouldn't need to purchase the rights to a video game in the first place. And the financial backers are stuck asking "Yes, well, it's not the full, complete, epic vision you hoped to realize, but you've released the game. Where's our money?"
And isn't the demo version free anyway? You're now suggesting making the cheap demo-plus the actual demo and asking everyone to wait for the full release, which they're going to do anyway. That could go on forever. "This version doesn't have a ladder match! It's not the full version! We can't charge them for that!"
Excuse me leaping into the role of a devil's advocate. I tend to do that.
[quote][cite] action937:[/cite]lol... yeah i don't seem to remember the undertaker coming out to U2. unless you're talking about a relate video.[/quote]
I meant that I had the old taker theme playing on my comp. I always mute Youtube vids because I always have tunes playing. The vid synced perfectly with the old taker theme.
Punk, you'll be happy to know that the offer we've received to distribute Uprising as a free game is looking to be a serious offer. You just might get a chance to be proven right after all ;-)
[quote][cite] PWX_Dave:[/cite]Punk, you'll be happy to know that the offer we've received to distribute Uprising as a free game is looking to be a serious offer. You just might get a chance to be proven right after all ;-)[/quote]
Dave will Uprising be released within the next 4 weeks?
[quote][cite] RoadWarriorAce:[/cite][quote][cite] PWX_Dave:[/cite]Punk, you'll be happy to know that the offer we've received to distribute Uprising as a free game is looking to be a serious offer. You just might get a chance to be proven right after all ;-)[/quote]
Dave will Uprising be released within the next 4 weeks?[/quote]
Nobody, not even Dave. can say that. They don't have a publishing deal in place. So making any promises would be very counterproductive
i'm still a tad confused. if a deal is made that results in uprising "full version" distributed for free, the PUBLISHER is who's gonna refund those who had already pre-ordered it (presumably cuz either the money was already spent to pay ppl or some other reason)? if no refunds are in order, are these pre-orders going towards the big bad pwx?