03-24-2005, 09:16 PM
I'm no big fan of clones or anything, but...
One thing that's good about doing clones is that you have an INSTANT fan base of people other than just QB programmers. SonicX isn't just popular among QBers, but among the entire Sega/Sonic fan community.
I looked at the hit counter at QBasic Central, and the site gets 30 - 40 hits per day. (For a small QB site, that is a LOT of traffic -- trust me, I know...I put together a links collection of over 350 QB links last summer.)
Anyway, there's no way that much traffic comes from just the Qmunity. I bet you that most of those hits come from Sonic the Hedgehog fans who Googled for "Sonic".
So...if you want to guarantee that your game gets a lot of attention and gets widely played, you SHOULD do a clone...especially if it has some new gameplay elements -- like custom levels and a level editor or something. You'll get a lot more interested players.
This principle also applies to other pop culture tie-in games, such as Jocke The Beast's Middle Earth Tales RPGs (Mirkwood, Riders of Rohan, etc.). Lord of the Rings fans search out those games and play them in droves -- and most of them have never touched QB. Just read Jocke's latest article on his website...there was a granny that wrote in and said she enjoyed playing his games. And a whole lot of kids and other non-programmers too.
Although lots of other original QB RPGs are much better games, they just don't get played as much because they don't have a preexisting fan base. What Lord of the Rings fan is going to pass up the Middle-Earth epic (or so it seems) "RIDERS OF ROHAN" to play... "Ped Xing's Quest", starring some guy they've never heard of? Not many. The quality of the gameplay experience is irrelevant (not that I'm saying Jocke's games or SonicX are bad or anything). It's all about name recognition.
Anyway, that's just my two cents.
One thing that's good about doing clones is that you have an INSTANT fan base of people other than just QB programmers. SonicX isn't just popular among QBers, but among the entire Sega/Sonic fan community.
I looked at the hit counter at QBasic Central, and the site gets 30 - 40 hits per day. (For a small QB site, that is a LOT of traffic -- trust me, I know...I put together a links collection of over 350 QB links last summer.)
Anyway, there's no way that much traffic comes from just the Qmunity. I bet you that most of those hits come from Sonic the Hedgehog fans who Googled for "Sonic".
So...if you want to guarantee that your game gets a lot of attention and gets widely played, you SHOULD do a clone...especially if it has some new gameplay elements -- like custom levels and a level editor or something. You'll get a lot more interested players.
This principle also applies to other pop culture tie-in games, such as Jocke The Beast's Middle Earth Tales RPGs (Mirkwood, Riders of Rohan, etc.). Lord of the Rings fans search out those games and play them in droves -- and most of them have never touched QB. Just read Jocke's latest article on his website...there was a granny that wrote in and said she enjoyed playing his games. And a whole lot of kids and other non-programmers too.
Although lots of other original QB RPGs are much better games, they just don't get played as much because they don't have a preexisting fan base. What Lord of the Rings fan is going to pass up the Middle-Earth epic (or so it seems) "RIDERS OF ROHAN" to play... "Ped Xing's Quest", starring some guy they've never heard of? Not many. The quality of the gameplay experience is irrelevant (not that I'm saying Jocke's games or SonicX are bad or anything). It's all about name recognition.
Anyway, that's just my two cents.
Pete's QB Site: http://www.petesqbsite.com