Does JollyGoodGames care about this game at all?

[Flexman]

I wonder what JollyGoodGames really did for this game.

Last post from Creator in this Forum was 2 Months ago (Mar 16, 2006), a discussion about a better demo mode started half a year ago (see here) and came with a lot of suggestions. All JGG did is trying a 60-minutes-once demo version which - surprisingly - was no success, especially when put on the wrong site.

It's now 1 1/2 years that Turbosliders is marketed by JGG and what happened? The number of players decreased and decreased. While Ande did a great work programming a lot of new features, JollyGoodGames wasn't even able to care about official servers.

Turbosliders.com is not really an improvement of the old site for the beta version, also the word-of-mouth recommendation those days did the job better than JGG does it now.

Seems that the only plan of JGG is cannibalizing this game as long as you can make money out of it without caring about the players and customers.

[Hengari]

Of course things could be better but a lot has been done for TS by JGG and Ande.

+ The forum is now better than before
+ JGG supports some TS-pages
+ The game has evolved and new features is added
+ There are good amount of active players in the evenings and good cups are organized now and then
+ (some things I forgot)

- The full -version players count is not increasing but I would't say it is decreasing
- Waiting for that turbosliders.com -site with added content (although ts-central is kinda ok but still...)
- Some official full-servers with some administrated cups could be nice, but as I understood JGG has no European servers and the USA ones lag as hell (to me at least)
- Lower prize (special offer) could help getting new players
- (lots of things that people moan about)

[Flexman]

+ The forum is now better than before
+ JGG supports some TS-pages

What a benefit! Linking to fan sites and making new forum categories what can be done in 30 minutes.

+ The game has evolved and new features is added

That was was Ande did.

+ There are good amount of active players in the evenings and good cups are organized now and then

That is what some players organize themselfs because otherwise they'd have no opponents to play against.

But where are the improvements that JGG really brought to the game?

What you mentioned was either done by Ande or by some players themselves. But I didn't see any improvements that directly came form JGG. So I really agree with xzeal there.

[wazaari]

JJG is doing NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!!
They really want that game to be dead....
They only improvement are consequent of some players works in organising cups etc in UN-official server because no one of us is administrator of a server....and i ask myself everyday why a game where 90% are european have his servers located in usa....

[Hengari]

JJG is doing NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!!
They really want that game to be dead....
They only improvement are consequent of some players works in organising cups etc in UN-official server because no one of us is administrator of a server....and i ask myself everyday why a game where 90% are european have his servers located in usa....

My god, you are all blaming JGG for not doing this and that. TS is not a big game and cash flows from doors and windows. I know that JGG could have done things a bit better (like lower prize/better demo/central site) but the players must do their part advertising the game in game-sites and to friends.

If TS was like some big game which sells thousands and gives funds for servers and marketing, things could be different. But TS is still a little game with good amount of dedicated players. Also in other games the most improvements and things are done mostly by the players (maps/tracks/mods etc.).

No one is wanting this game dead.

[dede]

+ The forum is now better than before
+ JGG supports some TS-pages

What a benefit! Linking to fan sites and making new forum categories what can be done in 30 minutes.

They are hosting many TS websites.

+ There are good amount of active players in the evenings and good cups are organized now and then

That is what some players organize themselfs because otherwise they'd have no opponents to play against.

There still are many players, they only don't play anymore in Playtrix etc etc because it's annoying (at least for me): it's not fun playing there with 1) car not fixed; 2) no admins at all; 3) 3-4 players only; 4) a$$hole$.

My god, you are all blaming JGG for not doing this and that. TS is not a big game and cash flows from doors and windows. I know that JGG could have done things a bit better (like lower prize/better demo/central site) but the players must do their part advertising the game in game-sites and to friends.

Hmm.. I could agree on what you say to waza: JGG sponsored many TS websites, and they did something good, but damn this isn't enough!
I know that making a central site ain't an easy work, but at least they could make this new demo version.
I still advertise to friends etc this game, but demo version isn't enough for them, so they play with crackz0r or in some cases they buy full version (but this happens *ONLY* with a lower price).

[Flexman]

Hengari, i really see nothing that improved since JGG cares about this game. There were player homepages before, there were dedicated servers before (Dutch Server and Playtrix), there even were forums before, there were organized cups before.

They rather should do what most players cannot do themselves - like running dedicated serves or promoting the game. They knew that most players are European so if they have problems with setting up servers there they at least could have tried to make an arrangement with playtrix, but there really wasn't much happening that improved things.

And if they - for some reason - cannot promote the game, they really should consider a better price and demo mode. But nothing happened.

[road_oktane]

JGG gives support to every person who likes to promote the game.

Jani already gave me 9 full licenses as prizes for brazillian demo cups, as he hosts www.turboslidersbrasil.com.

Off course this is not enough, for brazillians the ideal solution were to sell the game on some magazines whose sells cheap games.
Like this: www.cdexpert.com.br

[Hatu]

JJG is doing NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!!
They really want that game to be dead....
They only improvement are consequent of some players works in organising cups etc in UN-official server because no one of us is administrator of a server....and i ask myself everyday why a game where 90% are european have his servers located in usa....

i have to disagree with this statement completely. In no way does JJG want this game to be dead in any form, anywhere.

[Flexman]

i have to disagree with this statement completely. In no way does JJG want this game to be dead in any form, anywhere.

It's a little bit weak that this is the only comment from the official site even if a week passed since the thread was started. This only proves that many of the reproaches here are not without any reason.

I know that you Hatu are not responsible for this, and sure JJG does not want to make this game dead, but JJG doesn't want to care about it either which doesn't make much difference for the players.

[wazaari]

JJG is doing NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!!
They really want that game to be dead....
They only improvement are consequent of some players works in organising cups etc in UN-official server because no one of us is administrator of a server....and i ask myself everyday why a game where 90% are european have his servers located in usa....

i have to disagree with this statement completely. In no way does JJG want this game to be dead in any form, anywhere.

I disagree with your disagreement
It is so evident....

[fasteddie399]

i have to disagree with this statement completely. In no way does JJG want this game to be dead in any form, anywhere.

I believe you... but,

Also, I believe the loyal TS players are really wanting to know exactly what IS being done by JGG. Whether things are being done behind-the-scenes or not, nothing is being mentioned in the forums about it, which leads people to believe that nothing is indeed being done.

Trust me, I understand the excitement of keeping something a secret until it's ready to be unveiled, but I really feel, in this case, us devoted players need to know and *continue to be updated on* what JGG is doing to help the situation.

It's a little bit weak that this is the only comment from the official site even if a week passed since the thread was started.

Exactly.

So, hatu / Creator / JGG , please let us know WHAT IS being done, and do it soon, otherwise people will finally just succumb to the idea that nothing is going to change and that JGG no longer wishes to support the game... which, in-turn, will render the game "dead".

[Hatu]

i have to disagree with this statement completely. In no way does JJG want this game to be dead in any form, anywhere.

I believe you... but,

Also, I believe the loyal TS players are really wanting to know exactly what IS being done by JGG. Whether things are being done behind-the-scenes or not, nothing is being mentioned in the forums about it, which leads people to believe that nothing is indeed being done.

Trust me, I understand the excitement of keeping something a secret until it's ready to be unveiled, but I really feel, in this case, us devoted players need to know and *continue to be updated on* what JGG is doing to help the situation.

It's a little bit weak that this is the only comment from the official site even if a week passed since the thread was started.

Exactly.

So, hatu / Creator / JGG , please let us know WHAT IS being done, and do it soon, otherwise people will finally just succumb to the idea that nothing is going to change and that JGG no longer wishes to support the game... which, in-turn, will render the game "dead".

I understand where you're coming from. As I said earlier, JGG nor any of its employees want it to die or end in any way. Unfortunately, I have no update to give you at this point in the game. I would like to promise an update soon but I can not say that myself. I'm not as in control as I would like to be, even if I am connected with those who are...

Your opinions, warning, comments, and suggestions are noted I assure you. I will be talking to Creator soon about this matter and get a game plan going. Don't get your hopes up just yet.

Lastly, when an update is appropriate all information will be provided. Thank you

[Creator]

I don't know why anyone expects me to reply to a discussion like this. The tone of the discussion is the fact TS is included in the Jollygood Games selection somehow hurts it. We have no exclusive license to sell TS, and in fact we don't make a whole lot of money per license. I don't want to go into specifics of the deal but honestly, most of the other games we sell make much more money and don't require maintenance such as dedicated servers or forums. We're in no way blocking any other publisher selling it. The fact that we're the only ones selling is just isn't our or my fault in any way.

I admit we probably could do much more to promote it, but it would be pretty much on volunteer basis with no profit. That would be fine if I had the time. I hired hatu mainly to help out on the web community side of things, since I just didn't have time to do anything about it. So if you don't see me on the forums, at least you should see him.

What are we doing?

- We offer free hosting for any TS related website, and in fact we've also paid for the domains for all of the existing sites. While you might say there aren't that many of those, I can tell you that we've done at least twice as many, but most just never see the light of day (people are really anxious to start and bitch about how they would host the best site if given a chance, but a few weeks into trying they just leave the site to an under construction state never to be heard from again).

- We've been paying for listing at download.com (100k downloads) and we've served more than 200k downloads from our site.

- We've responded to ALL sponsorship request for cups and tournaments with free licenses (and in some cases even money) as prizes.

- We have a decicated server box in the US. We probably should get one in Europe too, but it's like 100 EUR or more per month so it's been kind of hard to justify. There have been servers in EU, so the reason for the US server was mainly to make sure there are at least some servers there.

- Early on we paid for ads but that simply was losing so much money that we had to give it up.

- A lot of the orders have been coming from people with no credit card, in the form of bank giro transfers form EU, especially Finland. I don't know of other publishers who accept this type of payment method with no extra fee. Just so you know, we do this using my personal bank account and I generate the licenses manually and email them to the customers. To ensure timely delivery I need to keep checking my email every few hours, all day long (since there are customers on various time zones. It's actually quite a bit of work per license, even though I know it sounds like nothing).

- We've made press releases and I've spend a lot of hours going through hundreds of shareware websites submitting TS to them (mostly this is manual work as all sites are different, require registration, etc...), sent it to review in magazines and websites, etc...

- We paid for (couple years ago) the art for TS. That's nothing, of course, but hey... just saying it out loud.

For all of you who like to complain: Do you really feel that if I closed this forum and all Jollygood-hosted fansites, removed TS from download.com and our servers, closed the dedicated server and stopped sponsoring the cups, TS would suddenly become more popular and a better game?

We don't host TS for the money it makes... I've been happy and proud to have it in our selections because I feel it's a great game. Ande has done an amazing job creating it and I have been happy to see so many people enjoying it.

Jani, aka Creator.

[Creator]

One more thing. If anyone wants to become a publisher for Turbo Sliders, we have no exclusive deal for it so feel free to approach Ande. If you know someone who could do it, please feel free to contact them. I want TS to be succesful so I have contacted all of the big shareware publishers and offered it for them. BigFishGames has it in their selection, with a demo version that offers full version gameplay for a limited time (but it's not selling at all for them... who knows why).

Even if you don't feel you want to be a publisher (believe me, it is some amount of work to setup all the merchandising stuff, etc.) you can always join in as our affiliate and sell TS in your website and get a good commission. Even if you don't have a website, we can offer free hosting for the site and the downloads. So basically we pay for the website and you get a slice of the sales.

We are in no way whatsoever stopping anyone selling or promoting Turbo Sliders. We do help anyone who wants to support TS.

If you feel the best way to support TS is bitch at the forum and make everyone feel unhappy about Jollygood, then keep on doing just that. We'll continue our support the way it is and try to improve it with the resources we have.

Jani.

[xzeal]

Thanks for "Special: Visit the forum to talk to other TS players! Get the latest tips, tracks, cars and find other people to race with!" that on the turbosliders page though, a lot of people don't even know there is a forum.

Ok we have done it, we pissed off JGG wooo.. . Who's next? Anyway i keep my mouth shut about ranting someone as long as we have a dedicated punaball server and we have that, for now. Oh and you may want to read an interview with Ande where JGG is mentioned. http://tsnews.pri.ee/interviews/ande2.htm

All this time i thought you guys owned the rights to the game... like every normal publisher. *cough* bad deal*cough*

I feel kinda bad, i got a feeling the entire topic grew out of my little post scriptum of a post in another topic.


Alright and i have to comment this

I admit we probably could do much more to promote it, but it would be pretty much on volunteer basis with no profit.

There are a lot of people in the TS community willing to do volunteer work. If only they would know what to do.

[Creator]

Ok we have done it, we pissed off JGG wooo.. . Who's next? Anyway i keep my mouth shut about ranting someone as long as we have a dedicated punaball server and we have that, for now. Oh and you may want to read an interview with Ande where JGG is mentioned. http://tsnews.pri.ee/interviews.ande2.htm

It's a nice article. Ande is a really smart guy and it's been a pleasure working with him.

All this time i thought you guys owned the rights to the game... like every normal publisher. *cough* bad deal*cough*

Well, we're not a normal publisher, we're a shareware publisher. Most shareware games are owned by their makers an the games are published by more than one publisher, and distributed by even more. I never ever ask for exclusive rights to a game we publish as I feel that would be cheating. We didn't create Turbo Sliders, it's not our intellectual property and I feel that's the way it should be.

There are a lot of people in the TS community willing to do volunteer work. If only they would know what to do.

There's a lot of people in the community who are doing volunteer work. You know, there's one guy (I don't want to name names here) who has sold a whole number of TS licenses to his friends. He keeps coming back every now and then with another license request. He earns a nice little extra for his work and the world keeps getting more TS players. That's a nice way to support TS!

There are people who build websites, organize cups, build content, etc. If you want to know what the community needs and wants, all you need to do is read this forum - there's a whole lot of things that people are looking for...

[CHUD]

Thank you for the great reply, Creator.

Lurkers like myself appreciate that the game exists at all. Many thanks go out to everyone involved in the game.

I will post in another thread regarding my ideas on how to improve the game. It would take effort from everyone. I think the key would be to make a concentrated effort in a short time frame. (one to two months).

David R

[Anthony]

The fact remains that Turbo Sliders is still JGG's most popular game. They used to have sub-Forums for every game they had, but once they realized all the other games got pretty much no replies, well, now Turbo Sliders is the only game with a sub-Forum, in fact, it has its own Forum.

You can't expect a publisher to constantly do what you think it should do. Every company runs differently. If what JGG is doing with TS now is what they think is right, then so be it. But don't make a topic like "Oh they don't care about this game", else they wouldn't still be supporting it.

Also, how's it been, everyone?

[dede]

"Oh they don't care about this game", else they wouldn't still be supporting it.

They don't care about these sentences, I guess (and I hope). But the fact is that we are speaking about making a new demo version since 5/6 months and new versions only have new features without the one we required. This is why some players get angry. I understand both JGG and these players. Everything is up to Ande, I guess.

[Flexman]

But the fact is that we are speaking about making a new demo version since 5/6 months and new versions only have new features without the one we required.

So does anything happen or is at least anything planned now to make this situation better?