There were certain UK stores who hadn't even heard of it....

There he is. Hi Randy.

I don't know what Steve thinks - but I never worry about guns it's running out of ammo that freaks me right out. Never such a thing as too much ammo.

Randy, are you after killing my career?

Marketing was a part of this, which is illustrated by the fact that The Adventure Company have just re-designed the box cover. It certainly wasn't a cover that stood out on the shelves, originally. The European cover was even worse.

Competing with so many other titles just before Christmas really hit its potential sales hard. It's insane that so many games are released in the same short time-period. BSTSD failed to gain any momentum that might have done well for long-term sales.

One of the reasons for the complaints about crates is that some of the puzzles weren't placed in a proper context and appeared to be just bolted on. Another one is probably because there's a pretty big one just before the final confrontation and it takes something away from the tension we'd built up at that point. If we'd had more time to polish we would probably have realised that ourselves.

I enjoyed the crate puzzles myself. I thought the puzzles by itselves are well designed and as Steve stated the context insertion needed work. I agree that in playing the game and following the logic of the story - the appearance of misplaced crate puzzles distracts the whole story line.

Hi Steve!
Hi Randy!

Old Peculiar a familiar brew of use in the Martha Grimes murder detective series I have read.At first I thought it was just a faked name until I was at my sisters hose in Wash DC when my brother in law offered me one to drink. I do love MacEwens Ale tho

Hi MaG.

McKewan's Eighty Shilling is delicious.

Hiya Steve!

Ive been starting to notice a shift in the marketing of adventuregames lately. It seems that more and more developers are opting to go the way of smaller episodic adventure that are to be paid for and downloaded via internet only. Do you think that there is a future for this stratetgy? What do you think it would take to get gamers over the negative "Pay-per-download" stigma?

I honestly think that it could be a good business model if you could get the marketing and "distribution" right. Lots of people order their games online anyway, so what it you cut out the publisher and went straight to these sites with some kind of distribution deal. Particularly if they're not holding warehouses full of games, it must pay them to help you sell the game. With the higher royalties for both parties it will make games easier to hit the break-even level for the developer and the distributor has more of an interest in its success.

The trick is getting the game into development in the first place, though.

If the development companies offered mail-orders of their cds, I could live with that. Especially if you could send them a money order.

Susan

One of the biggest hurdles in online distribution seems to be getting gamers to pay to download a file. Shoping online isnt really the issue as most people seem fine with it as long as they are mailed a physical product in return. Asuming the game has already gotten past the development phase, how would you convince people to pay to download a file?

Admittedly, that is an issue. Perhaps we still need to produce the discs until people get their heads around paying for a download. The key could be to offer the game at two different prices to encourage the download option.