I edited Roody's earlier post, as I put a new torrent up with the latest / final version.

http://www.seedpeer.com/details/3801252 ... inux].html

I also uploaded it to The Pirate Bay, but it hasn't shown up yet.

The IF Wiki was hacked. I think #ifwiki-editors on the mud had more. I will probably have to reupload the photos.

Heh, I didn't see my picture the other day when I checked. It still isn't working on the page itself, but I could see it when I clicked on the image link.

Anyhow, yeah, looks good. I need to start incorporating doors into more of my pictures.

Roody says I should submit it on a flash disk to the Onion AV club. I will decide on August 1st if I am making DVDs, if not I shall submit a flash drive to the Onion AV club.

In this thread, what follows will be me working on the text of how I am going to notify "Metafilter Projects" about my project. I already paid the $5 and waited the obligatory week you have to wait before posting.

I am a man of few sorrows, I'd like to apologize to Flack for not doing exactly what he told me in that earlier post. I got depressed for a bit, but I am back on-board.

I'd like to apologize to Roody, IF the picture used is not deigned flattering. I think it's fun. (David shrank the size of it, though.)

I'd like to apologize to Flack for not making pages for his games yet.

I will now continue "be"ing jelly.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:I created or updated pages for Vark, Lex, Roody and Flack at the IF Wiki tonight!

Well, huh. That's something.

Should I go make entries for my games as well? I need to check someone else's profile to "get it". I should have done that, instead of typing this. Where my fucking coffee. At McDonald's, that's where.

I'm famous-er! I'm famous-er!

I created or updated pages for Vark, Lex, Roody and Flack at the IF Wiki tonight!

Flack wrote a review of it here:

http://www.robohara.com/?p=3662

Thank you, Flack. You raise a number of good points, and I appreciate you taking the time to put that together.

I can't go like feeling I am not creating something, so I am onto the next project. I'll make 50 hard copies starting August 1st. I'll make a note of it in the "Projects" subsection of Metafilter, and I'll ask Jason to mention the game when the hard copies are ready to ship, but that's pretty much it. I've spent the last five years saying how horrible the gaming press is on Caltrops, so I can't be particularly surprised at their collective behavior. I learned a number of good lessons that will pay off, but it's back to the IF Comp for me.

Hmm. Let's brainstorm.

I suppose the first thing I would do is go after the people you know that write reviews (one of which is me). I'd track down all the people that wrote reviews for the IntroComp and the big fall IF Comp and e-mail them all and ask for reviews.

This is an idea that I'm not sure applies to you, maybe it does and maybe it doesn't, but whenever you create X about Y, that really gives you three demographics to advertise to (bear with me). For example, if you make a movie about UFOs, while the ideal demographic is "movie fans who are interested in UFOs," you've also got movie fans, and UFO fans. In that scenario, you might advertise your UFO movie in UFO circles.

So for Crypto (and again, maybe this is a stretch) you've got "text adventure fans who are into Cryptozoology" (a niche almost as narrow as a book written about people who grew up calling Commodore 64 BBSes ... and maybe narrower!), but you've also got fans of text adventures, and fans of cryptozoology. Maybe hit up some bigfoot forums or something and post an ad? I dunno, maybe it's a stretch and maybe those guys aren't into IF.

Here's another idea. Write up a really good press release type thing and start submitting it to game news sites. I'm telling you, those places are starving for news stories. They have to post news updates every day, several times a day. The less editing the press release needs, the better. Just write up a thing about how your game has been released and that it's free for download and ... hmm ... definitely mention how it combined classic IF and RPG elements, and has pictures and music and that it's free. A quick blurb from Kotaku or one of those sites could double your downloads overnight.

Speaking of media, you could e-mail Earl from Retrobits (the guy who interviewed me) and tell him about your game and ask if he would like to interview you and do a podcast. At least once a month people buy my book and tell me they heard about it from the Retrobits interview I did 4 years ago. That's one cool thing about the Internet ... shit lives forever.

I read about this type of marketing once in a book ... you could make up some little 1/4 page ads for your game, maybe just the cover of the DVD, and then go down to the public library and stick them in Bigfoot/Crypto books. I don't know if the payoff would be worth it, but how awesome would it be if you were a kid and you opened up a library book and found an ad for a free game?

Personally if it were me and I had the bail money available I'd fake a Bigfoot sighting and then write the name of the game on your back.

Okay, I am open to all suggestions on how someone promotes a game like this in 2011.

Also, this was good news and a bit of a coincidence that I checked when I did. It's from archive.org, which is the only place to download the game from, except for that now out-of-date torrent:

Well, the costs for Mixonic (who never wrote me back when I was trying to give them money, unbelievable) and their competitors to make CDs/DVDs -- that part is fairly cheap. We're good there.

I am trying to see if I can find a company to make JUST the slip cases, cut to size. I would say that cutting 50 slip cases is something I won't do. I'd mess that up pretty badly and hate the whole process.

So it turns out my buddy has a commercial grade CD inkjet printer. You have to buy inkjet compatible CDs with it, but with those, you can print directly on top of them. So, like this:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... CatId=1935

That's $179.95 for 100, or $1.80 per CD. You could burn your game on 50, and the soundtrack on the other 50.

Like I said, you could print and cut the covers for next to nothing. Office Depot will do 50 glossy 8.5x11 "flyers" for $50. So far you're up to $2.80 per package. Then you just need some shrink wrap and you're gold. Figure in an evening of assembly and some margaritas for your helpers (after the packages are assembled).

On PayPal you can set up a free payment thing (I have one for both of my books) and you can even limit it to 50 purchases so once those are gone, no one else can order one.

What was the other place charging for 50 copies? I think we could seriously beat their price.

I have been deep in thought, considering your offer, Flack.

I wish I had an answer for you. I don't know if you were reading when Pinback was discussing his personal philosophy that involved letting go of the future. His philosophy got me through a very difficult time in my li- well, a semi-difficult time. It's not really that awful ever being Ice Cream Jonsey, baby.

The future that I should let go of, but can't, is 50 games in various states of disarray as I attempt to cobble them all together and make mistakes. Like if I put the wrong discs in the box, or if I put two game discs in one box and two audio discs in one box. Or if I sneeze near them or something.

I am also worried if I just do 20 and say (to myself) "Good enough for now!" And then the 21st copy sells. And I don't have it ready. And now it's this giant pain in the ass because I can't do Charlie work like assembling boxes very well.

I am now going to drop a "Remember the agreement" quote for no other reason than someone needs to type that into this BBS every month or so.

Remember the agreement......

I guess I don't know what else to say to finish this message.

Lemme throw this out there.

I have (at least) 50 brand new dual DVD cases. If you did the layout for the case and printed them out on a color laser printer ... well, so far you're at "free". All you would need to do is pay for the 50 discs to be printed up, and then have them shrink wrapped. What would that do to the budget?

It's been about a month. According to archive.org, it's been downloaded 947 times. I don't know if that's good or not.

I've gotten the word out on a few blogs. I'm actually having a surprisingly successful rate there. Sites like TIGsource and Game, Set, Watch couldn't care less, but a lot of lesser-known ones have posted about it.

(GSW cracks me up, as they carried an article regarding an interview I did about Cryptozookeeper three years ago, but when I wrote them about the release of the actual game... nothing.)

I got a quote from bullseyedisc.com about getting 150 hard copies made. The price was beyond what I can afford, as-is. Keeping in mind that this pack would contain the game on DVD and a redbook audio CD filled with in-game music by Bachelor Machines.

(I made FoD and ND through Mixonic, who told me in an e-mail that they offer dual-disc DVD cases... and then ignored me in two follow-up messages asking how to order those, since they aren't on their website. Forget what you heard about this being a bad economy; businesses are back to ignoring orders again.)

So I've got a decision to make. 947 downloads in a month means that it doesn't make any sense to get a bunch of hardcopies made. Then again, what about text games does make sense? I may see if I can have the discs themselves printed in black and white instead of full color. I may see if I can get a quote for 100 instead of 150. Still deciding.

I updated the page here: http://www.cryptozookeeper.com -- been keeping track of websites that have mentioned the game's release, and added two screenshots.

I also tried to make it easier to describe what you need to do to play it on Linux and the Mac. I am interested in feedback if it's still confusing.

Going to try to hit up some Linux game sites next, especially since Nikos's Hugor interpreter works so well.

I rebooted my PC and forgot to start uTorrent again. Anyway, Crypto is up to version 1.02 now. If anyone is grabbing the torrent, you need only head over to the Internet Archive and get czk.hex. You don't need to download the entire game again, the graphics and sound hasn't changed.

Aces! I'll be on that torrent indefinitely.