Welcome to Wrestling Gamers United Newsletter #343
1) Back on the Air 2) $10,000 CAW 3) Buggin' 4) Link of the Week 5) Question of the Week
1) Back on the Air ******************
First I want to give a quick shout out to longggggg time PWX supporter and original crew member (who wishes to remain anonymous) who took the time and care to rewrite a portion of last weeks newsletter in a much more positive manner. Heh, lesson learned, I should carefully check my Happy Meter before sending out newsletters. What I meant to say was:
1. PWX needs to be more than just characters and content to catch people's interest 2. Uprising will impress people if it was more than it's own merits 3. WGU is capable of operating 99% more effectively
With that being said let's start by sharing some good news this week. Remember that wrestling tv show we were involved with? The one we were supposed to make a game for? Well they lost their funding this past summer but they just bounced back. Turns out they were able to score a deal with one of the new HD networks and they recently retained a license fee to produce the new season. Why is this good news for us? Turns out there is some new grant money available to produce that game project after all. Nice!
2) $10,000 CAW ****************
A long time ago we dreamed of releasing a stand alone CAW application in advance of our game's release. Great idea, if you can afford it. The company who licensed us the game engine recently told us that distributing such a stand alone tool would amount to using their technology for marketing purposes and would cost us up to an extra $10,000 in license fees.
Eep.
3) Buggin' **********
A shadow casting on the wrong surface, a ring apron that was made a bit too narrow, apron animations that would have to be redone if we made the apron wider, etc.
These are the kind of 'bugs' we're debating fixing or not before release. They're almost all aesthetic and don't affect gameplay and our bug fixing budget is not the biggest you've ever seen. But that's just the kind of sexy vibe we've got going on. Happy happy joy joy bug hunting.
For you collectors out there here is a limited edition hi-res mega action shot of yours truly bug hunting. A signed poster size edition of this pic (with Japanese text and graphics for the 'real gamers') will be made available for purchase shortly. Sorry, limit of one per household.
Everybody claims to want a story mode but I have a question for you. How many story modes in wrestling games have you actually finished? And how many of those did you finish because you were having fun or just because you had to finish it in order to unlock things?
Please leave your answer and join the discussion here:
For the tool? I'd say, yeah, it's worth it IF, and only if, it's powerful enough. Basically, look at the Spore Creature creator. $10 for a tool that let you just make a character. This thing sold TONS of units, was a great marketing campaign, and allowed the game to have over 3,000,000 new creatures on release date. Charge a small fee for it ($10 IS fair), make some money off of it, but look at it is a positive investment tool. Once the game comes out and people have had time to really open up the CAW, they will feel so confident and comfortable buying the game.
It might be a solid idea to get some buzz about PWX happening sometime soon, and this could be a way to do it. If the initial game doesn't sell as well as you would like, it won't matter that you didn't spend the 10K... it wasn't worth saving it. If the Create-A-Wrestler pre-game idea goes ahead, it could plant the seeds for a strong market before the game comes out, and you would hopefully end up off-setting the cost of it by then, anyway.