Welcome to Wrestling Gamers United Newsletter #318
1) Dark Match 2) Link of the Week 3) Question of the Week
1) Dark Match *************************
So here's the latest deal. It's complicated but I'll try to keep it clear:
A funding agency here in Canada wants to give us a grant (as in free money) to promote a Canadian television show. They want us to somehow incorporate the tv show into either PWX Uprising or create an entirely new stand alone wrestling game to help promote the show. The original plan was for us to simply create some downloadable content based on the show and maybe do some appropriate ad placement. However, that became a bit complicated given our financing structure for Uprising up until this point. So it seems the best course of action is to create a new game for the tv show and use the PWX engine as it's core base. All new characters, venues, etc. Simple enough.
But that poses a new problem. How can we ask people to spend money on Uprising if someone else is giving a wrestling game based on the PWX engine away for free? We can't.
Solution #1: Give Uprising away for free as well and just hope that we can sell enough advertising to make back our development costs. Difficult, but not impossible.
Solution #2: Strip the tv show free game down enough so as not to affect the value of Uprising. It would be a little free promo game so we could get away with stripping down the movesets, remove the Hammerlock and use a simpler standard venue, remove weapons, etc. Think Pro Wrestling on the NES in 3D.
We would retain the right to include in this game an advertisement for Pro Wrestling X: Uprising and direct people to our website. Apparently this tv game will be heavily advertised on not only the tv show but on the entire network and the network's website and radio station partners as well.
It would seem to me that our wisest course of action would be to give the tv a very stripped down game to give away for free and allow it to help promote Uprising rather than trying to melt the two projects together under one game. This way we would have or cake and eat it, too. We would benefit from the mass market penetration a free game would accomplish while at the same time uncovering new customers for the Uprising game.
Win/ win?
2) Link of the Week ********************
Love him or hate him, the guy gets games done. Mat Dickie's latest wrestling game is now available for purchase:
http://www.mdickie.com/prev_wm2008ce.htm
Surf for reviews before purchasing though. While it is surely a great personal accomplishment, this game still suffers from the usual issues his past games have suffered from.
3) Question of the Week ************************
A little market research question today. What is your level of interest in the upcoming UFC game from THQ?