I started Cheerful Ghost because I wanted to create a place where I could talk about video games with my friends. When the site shipped it needed to do three things: hold my video games to my list, allow me to write about any game in my list and share that conversation on the everyone on the web. As the site marched on we started interviewing people in gaming, the Cheerful Ghost Roundtable started & the event system was built. Over the last year I have been involved in the Portland Indie game scene and in our last Roundtable episode, was able to get Will Lewis, the founder of PIGSquad to join us.
As Cheerful Ghost has evolved as a community we have become much closer to the Indie Games movement and as such am happy to announce that by years end we will publish our first Indie Game.
As I have been thinking about this announcement I decided the best way to convey the information is to break it up into two parts. Feel free to read it all or just the relevant bits for you.
What Does This Mean For The Cheerful Ghost Community?
If you love Indie Games, this will give you a better look at them as we will have a unique perspective of the games we will publish. I have talked to a few community members before this announcement to get a list of concerns they had and because of this I think we will get the balance right between talking about awesome stuff and not being annoying.
One of the things community members have mentioned is transparency about what games we are publishing. Since I love talking about stuff I love, this seemed like a no-brainer. We will note on the site if a particular game you are looking at is published by us so there is no confusion what is going on.
We will still be covering other games as we are currently have no plans to change that. Ultimately anyone can post an article to Cheerful Ghost and if it isn't junk or SPAM it gets promoted to the main page. This won't change because we publish games.
What Does This Mean For Indie Game Developers?
As we have been talking to the developer of our first game we are publishing I have been thinking a lot about how to approach publishing. I want to create a system where it's easy to join as a creator. As someone who created this site and plans on making video games too, I want to create a system that I would want to join. Because of that I think way we approach publishing is pretty special.
Most publishers make you sign away the exclusive right to publish your game until the end of time. With us, it's a few years and developers love this.
Most publishers take a huge cut of the game price, leaving you with little in return. With us, you get the biggest slice of the pie and developers love this.
We will take care of helping Indie Game developers get their games out on all the digital game stores we can and work to promote their games. Since we start with a vibrant community, this allows us a pretty unique perspective to do good work.
If you are making something amazing, we would love to know about it to see if we can help you release it.
A Few Ending Thoughts
Cheerful Ghost is walking humbly into an area very close to our hearts. The independent games movement is one that I am really passionate about and I can't wait to help game developers release great stuff. At the end of the day if Cheerful Ghost can make Indie game developers happy by helping them find an audience of people that love the games they build, we are doing what we set out to do. Hopefully you are intrigued by this news and if you have any questions, feel free to drop them on this thread or send them to me directly.
-jon
As Cheerful Ghost has evolved as a community we have become much closer to the Indie Games movement and as such am happy to announce that by years end we will publish our first Indie Game.
As I have been thinking about this announcement I decided the best way to convey the information is to break it up into two parts. Feel free to read it all or just the relevant bits for you.
What Does This Mean For The Cheerful Ghost Community?
If you love Indie Games, this will give you a better look at them as we will have a unique perspective of the games we will publish. I have talked to a few community members before this announcement to get a list of concerns they had and because of this I think we will get the balance right between talking about awesome stuff and not being annoying.
One of the things community members have mentioned is transparency about what games we are publishing. Since I love talking about stuff I love, this seemed like a no-brainer. We will note on the site if a particular game you are looking at is published by us so there is no confusion what is going on.
We will still be covering other games as we are currently have no plans to change that. Ultimately anyone can post an article to Cheerful Ghost and if it isn't junk or SPAM it gets promoted to the main page. This won't change because we publish games.
What Does This Mean For Indie Game Developers?
As we have been talking to the developer of our first game we are publishing I have been thinking a lot about how to approach publishing. I want to create a system where it's easy to join as a creator. As someone who created this site and plans on making video games too, I want to create a system that I would want to join. Because of that I think way we approach publishing is pretty special.
Most publishers make you sign away the exclusive right to publish your game until the end of time. With us, it's a few years and developers love this.
Most publishers take a huge cut of the game price, leaving you with little in return. With us, you get the biggest slice of the pie and developers love this.
We will take care of helping Indie Game developers get their games out on all the digital game stores we can and work to promote their games. Since we start with a vibrant community, this allows us a pretty unique perspective to do good work.
If you are making something amazing, we would love to know about it to see if we can help you release it.
A Few Ending Thoughts
Cheerful Ghost is walking humbly into an area very close to our hearts. The independent games movement is one that I am really passionate about and I can't wait to help game developers release great stuff. At the end of the day if Cheerful Ghost can make Indie game developers happy by helping them find an audience of people that love the games they build, we are doing what we set out to do. Hopefully you are intrigued by this news and if you have any questions, feel free to drop them on this thread or send them to me directly.
-jon
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Interesting. I could see a bit of a conflict of interest, and ambiguity where a review from a community member might be mistaken as advertising. Will the community arm and the publishing arm fall under the same "Cheerful Ghost" name? That sounds... challenging.
I do think it's a cool idea, the publishing!
Thanks for the input.
Cheerful Ghost is a great community site that will also be publishing games. The trick in that no video game site, to my knowledge has ever done this. Can we do it right? I am confident we can and am open to ideas people have on it.
The site will get a few changes to support the games better and before I do anything i'll run them by a few people. If you want to be on that list i'd love to discuss them with you.
This is interesting news, indeed! I'm curious as to what this entails and I may need to do some research on my own about video game publishing so that I can better understand this news. I'm looking forward to seeing more about this new aspect of Cheerful Ghost and I'd be glad to help out.
Exciting stuff! I can think of few things in gaming more rewarding than bringing awesome stuff to gamers.
Side-note: do we use the word "awesome" too much? :D
@Travis: Cut down on the awesome's per minute in the release. And yeah, I do use that word to much.
hopefully i didnt skim too much - whats the game? Genre, developer ..
@Sungorth we aren't talking about the game yet, but don't worry.. we will.
That said, I can say that it's fun and will ship on Windows, Mac and Linux.
This is great! I really can't wait to see what happens!
What parts of video game publishing will CG be participating in (licensing, marketing, financing, etc.)?
It really is a cool thing, and I hope it really takes off! Sorry to be an initial naysayer. It was a rather unexpected post :D. I guess we aren't like most other video game sites, not strictly 'journalists', per se, nor bound by any such creed. I think you can make it happen, and the bit about clarity would be a good thing. Exciting times! :)
@scrypt Conflict of interest was one of the first things I asked about to Jon in person. It's a totally legitimate question :)
Say whaaaaaaaaat? That's crazy, and awesome, and awesomely crazy. Damn it, I think I used awesome too many times...
Does this mean you can go to E3? Or maybe send a CG representative? Like someone who already loves games and lives in California? :D
Yeah it was a bit unexpected. Honestly as I was writing it and then thinking about it after I posted, it was surprising to me to. Surprising in that it's so odd for a game site to publish games. Because of the kind of community Cheerful Ghost is, it makes more sense but it still kind of loops me sometimes.
That said, lets keep talking and if anyone has any ideas to make it better, let me know.
GregoPeck: What we are doing is partnering with people making games to help them get the word out. So i'll help them get it on digital game stores, figure out pricing and the like. Also figure out how to talk about the game, make some videos of it, help them refine it some and take care of a ton of other hard to see details. Basically help them such that they can focus on making the game great.
WhiteboySlim: I imagine after we publish a few games it will open up for us to go to events we didn't go to before. As to which, no idea but if E3 presents itself and I can't go, i'll think of you.
That's cool, Jon. It sounds like you're focusing on the marketing aspect of it. I think it's a cool idea! I'm not familiar with many digital game stores and don't know how many there are, but I imagine Steam is one of the big ones to consider.
Steam is on my list for sure.