Jeff Hangartner – Revealing the Path Less Travelled in Video Game Industry

Jeff HangartnerJeff Hangartner, the founder of the gaming start-up, Bulletproof Outlaws has been a professional developer of games over the last half a decade. Creator of Pixelation, the 1st Pixel Art Forum and also originator of the Pixel tutorials which have been published in the form of a book. Jeff has always been a pioneer of the gaming industry.

CG Today is proud to present Jeff’s exploration as he shares the whole process of creating a start-up right from day 1. With the belief that gaming development is coming back to its original “one programmer in the basement roots” idea, Bulletproof Outlaws is chronicling every step of its start-up process from strategies, to marketing, setting goals and outsourcing, successes and failures. The aim is to help other developers who have ideas but are intimidated by the whole start-up process and are not sure how to go about it.

You can visit his website Bulletproof Outlaws to know more about him or send an email to get connected.

Bulletproof Outlaws - Game 1 - A Diary of a video game studio!

Whew! It took a few days worth of editing footage and timing stuff to music and adding effects and sounds and all sorts of fun stuff but finally the official trailer for Elusive Ninja is done! I’m going to be posting this all over the place and hoping it gets some positive attention! I wanted to make sure it included a little of the Bonus Feature stuff (which I’ll be making in the next few days before heading off to LA for E3), because I put a lot of work into documenting the progress of the game and Bulletproof Outlaws in general and I want to make sure the people who are interested in that kind of thing (the way I was back when I was a young’un) know that there’s a bunch of it…and ideally it’ll draw some more people in to follow the progress of my next game when I start that up! Anyway, here’s the trailer! Link it around!

Elusive Ninja: The Shadowy Thief:

I don’t when exactly the game will get approved, I’m just waiting to hear from Apple but I’m hoping it’ll be available just in time for E3 in the next few days! Exciting times!

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Man the timeline is getting tight! I’m going to be hitting up E3 this year, so I have a flight booked for 6am Monday morning. At the same time, Elusive Ninja was approved early this morning (for anyone keeping track, I submitted it Friday at 9:30pm last week, so that makes it about 7 days exactly! Awesome work, Apple!!). It feels awesome to have the game in “Ready For Sale” status, but I still have lots of work to do! I’m filling in the Bonus Features content for the next day or so, so I’m basically working 24/7 to get it done by Sunday, when I can finally launch the game!

Elusive Ninja: The Shadowy Thief

June 5, 2011

Here’s an updated trailer, if you dig how the game looks please link this around and help me make enough money to cover development costs and get to make more games (and get hammered at Moxie’s while scarfing down a delicious honey-garlic steak haha) Here’s a short URL link you can use: http://bit.ly/kdG1Ym

Wow, what an exciting weekend!! So much chaos in such a short amount of time! My flight to LA for E3 is in like 9 hours, and I’m going to be working not just up to my flight but ON my flight. I made a promise to myself not to bring my laptop with me to LA so that I could finally relax and not end up thinking about working all day when I’m trying to enjoy the convention and see the sights in Los Angeles and everything (plus we’re planning a little drive through the desert to Vegas for a couple nights at the end haha).

Alright, I’m back! Sorry for the delay but I wanted to leave that last blog entry up while I was attempting my marketing stuff because it has a big fancy image of the game’s features and everything so it looks good if you’re visiting bulletproofoutlaws.com for the first time and I figured right after launch there’d be a handful of new people checking the site out so I wanted to leave good visuals up promoting the game. But don’t worry, I’m not goin’ anywhere! I’ll be updating regularly again soon. ;) Here’s a quick catch-up of what’s been going on:

Last update I talked about doing a big marketing write-up talking about all the stuff I’ve tried, what I’ve learned from it, where I’ve wasted money, where it was worth putting money, all the good and the bad of it.  I’m finally almost done that document!  I’ve got the main writing done and I’ve broken it down into 5 articles.  Right now I’m just editing it and adding diagrams and pictures so it’s not overwhelming to read.  I should be able to start posting it up this week, but here’s a preview of what each of the 5 articles contain.  I saved the Optimal Marketing Plan for the end because I feel that to get the most out of it, a person should read the articles that lead up to it so the plan makes sense:

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ARTICLE I – Social Marketing

Using word-of-mouth marketing via Twitter, blogging, forum threads, etc. to build awareness for your game, and a realistic look at the pros and cons of price drops and using microjob services.

ARTICLE II – Traditional Advertising

An in-depth look into the sketchy side of the industry that people don’t seem to talk about like buying downloads, paying for reviews, etc. Also covering traditional expensive marketing like banner ads and marketing agencies and ad services like AdMob.

ARTICLE III – Game Related & Maintenance

What to put in a Press Kit, using Press Releases, creating screenshots and trailers, etc. Plus how to efficiently maintain everything we’ve talked about so far.

ARTICLE IV – Psychology

How to survive the internal side of marketing as an indie developer and dealing with the stress of spending your money, watching sales figures rise and fall, making big decisions, handling critics and pushy marketers, and a big blunt look at how rampant iPhone App piracy is.

ARTICLE V – Optimal Marketing Plan

A summary of everything, condensed down into 36 steps from Pre-Launch to Launch Day to Post-Launch, that I feel make up an Optimal Marketing Plan for an indie dev with little to no money who needs to make sure every dollar spent counts.

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Once this is all posted up I’m going to be looking into getting the HD version of Elusive Ninja working and then starting my next game!  I’ve got lots of ideas for the next game, it’s just a matter of narrowing down which one to flesh out and prototype up.  And as always, I’ll be documenting the progress of it as I go.  :)

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Bulletproof Outlaws Diary