Play Designs

Got a game ready to go out to the public, but the big companies just aren’t listening to the greatness of your game? Tired of the man knocking you down? Tired of not having any money to call your own, even though you’re ready to sell that game of yours and make millions?! Well, now there’s a place for you to advertise. A place for you to call home. And it’s called Manifesto Games. Manifesto Games was created by two gaming developer greats, Greg Costikyan and Johnny Wilson. Manifesto Games aim is to “to build a strong and viable independent game industry”. That’s right. They’re trying to push off the man and make the thriving independent game industry a strong and exciting place. Pretty sweet.

Manifesto plans on getting games out of the shelf at your local retail store and to allow gamers to buy and download games right from their web servers. I think it’s a great idea and have already seen several companies use this method to get their games out to the general public.

This is what Costikyan says about how Manifesto will sell games: “The typical game store only has 200 facings,” he adds. “They can only carry best-sellers. On the Internet, there is no shelf space and you are limited only by how well you can market yourself, your site. This is where niche product can rule.” [Edge-Online] Well, that sounds pretty cool and it makes a whole heck of a lot of sense. Looks like Manifesto has a lot going for them. Costikyan also has a blog that he likes to rag about the gaming industry on and can be found at www.costik.com. I like when people rag on industries. It’s amusing.

It looks like Manifesto is still in the process of getting their company all together, but once they’re up and running (probably early 2006), maybe you can be the next Lucas Arts or Blizzard.

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