Black Shell Media Blog
Check out marketing tips, development advice and more, authored by our team of expert writers, marketing professionals and industry veterans!
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Business | Developer Spotlight | Game Design | Game Development
Guest Post | Interview | Marketing | Technology | Writing
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5 Steps to Finding the Perfect Indie Team
If you're just starting out a career in game development, there's plenty you should know. Luckily, there's tons of resources out there (including this blog!) so it's all a matter of making the time to sift through it all. You already know the basics: assembling a...
The Happy Entrepreneur Game Developer
One of the main concerns in the game development world is that as studios focus on using their products to make money, they sacrifice their happiness. You have to remember that creating games is an act of love, and you have to keep that in mind in order to obtain the...
9 Useful Business Tips for Budding Game Developers
We're going to cut to the chase: you're here for the tips, and we're here to give them to you. Without further ado, let's jump into these 9 useful business tips for budding game developers! 1. Know Your Numbers To make a living from indie games, you will have to start...
7 Design Tips From Super Metroid
That's right, we're talking about that 1986-2016 side-scrolling action-adventure series that spawned a bunch of copycat games and made up 50 percent of the inspiration behind the Metroidvania genre (the other 50 percent being Castlevania, of course) . . . Metroid! An...
A Life and Games Career By Your Design
This is a guest post by Rachel Presser of Sonic Toad. Check out her website if you are interested in learning more about freelance work, game development and marketing! “Is this game EVER going to come out?! When does the part where I get to solely focus on...
Creating a “Good” Villain: A Miniature Guide on Evil Character Crafting
Many times, I find myself unimpressed by a game’s faulty plot. I end up feeling disconnected, uninterested, and generally disappointed when I complete a video game. However, I do find solace in knowing there is hope for a game lacking in plot. My hope is found in...
Minecraftian Narrative Mini Guide Part 2
Today’s guest post is by game designer and developer Will Nations and originally appeared on Will’s website. Last time, we discussed the concept of a narrative scripting language that could revolutionize the way players interact with a game world. We considered the...
Minecraftian Narrative Mini Guide Part 1
Today’s guest post is by game designer and developer Will Nations and originally appeared on Will’s website. Minecraft’s capacity for simple, direct, consumer-level editing of the 3D world has brought upon revolutions in game design and has joyously perforated...
The Dialog Miniguide: Writing for Voice Acting and World Building That Doesn’t Suck
The village has been set ablaze, its once calm mountain vista transformed into a horizon of ash and flickering flames. The Big Bad looms over the cowering village leader. “Do you know why I’m here?” asks the Big Bad. The village leader rubs his singed gray facial...
Design: How It Works, How to Engage, and How to Retain
Game design is one of those things that gets highly debated all the time, by both game developers and players. Everyone has theories on why something works, why something else doesn't, and what you should do. With that in mind, clearly, it's safe to assume that we're...
A Day in the Life of a Content Marketing Specialist: 6 Tips to Help You Captivate and Keep an Audience
First thing's first, if you're a regular reader, you know I specialize at content marketing. And I find there's a lot of confusion about what that entails. Obviously I handle a lot of gaming related projects, because of the industry, but what exactly is content...
How to Force Your Font of Inspiration
How many of you aspiring game developers hate creating characters, either playable or not? I myself was guilty of jotting down only two to three bullet points for a character's blurb. My problem is that every time I revisited that character’s blurb, I changed, altered...
6 Tips For Marketing Your Mobile Game
Thanks to Gummicube for this awesome guest post! While mothers across the world can complain about the time their children spend on video games, there’s no doubt that the gaming industry is at an all-time high. With revenue of $108.4 billion in 2017, it’s safe to say...
The Ultimate Guide to Networking at Gaming Conventions
How popular are conventions? Well, Game Developers Conference 2016 had over 27,000 industry professionals under one roof. That’s a heck of a lot of networking opportunities! And honestly, that can also be incredibly daunting. Regardless of where you are in your game...
Is Becoming a Solo Game Developer Worth It?
Last week, we covered how to minimize risk when trying to become a solo game developer, so this week, let's dive deeper. In the age we live in, anyone can be an artist. Anyone could write the next best selling book, film the next festival award winning flick, or make...
How to Become a Solo Developer Without Starving Yourself
If you’re reading this, then chances are you want to become a solo game developer. Perhaps you dream of being the next Notch and making millions off of a single game. Maybe you've found the passion and drive to create your magnum opus. Or at the very least, you’re...
Don’t Just Treat Symptoms, Solve Problems
Last week I had a bad cold. I was coughing, sneezing and trying to stop my head from exploding. To try and alleviate my suffering, I was ingesting every cold medicine I could find. While I was lying in bed, I thought that my problems were: 1. A stuffy nose 2. A...
How Many Games Should a Good Game Dev Play?
It is reasonable to ask the question as to whether developers need to play games to help them be good game developers. It would be misguided, however, to assume that not playing any games at all would benefit a game developer. Like with any profession, having an...
How to Keep Players Excited and Bring That Excitement to Events
I have been playing Pokemon Go for a while now as my new phone supports it. It has been getting slightly stale to no fault of its own—I don’t normally play mobile games. However, since late October I have been playing more as things within the event have grabbed my...
Steam Keys: How to Send Them And Avoid Scams
It's astonishing how many game developers have no idea when to send Steam Keys out. Some send them before the game is launched, while others wait until a few months after. And truth is, both approaches are wrong. The thing about Steam keys is that they work, but only...
7 MMO Lessons from World of Warcraft
It's the granddaddy of all MMORPG's. It reigns supreme. The iconic MMO killer. It's World of Warcraft. Originally released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment, it was the fourth released game set in the Warcraft universe. It's had 12 million subscriptions at its peak,...
How to Write Strong Gendered Characters
Battleships of foreign metals and humming plasma scream overhead and skyscrapers collapse in upon themselves. A mother stands in the rubble clutching her young, frightened daughter to her chest. While she may be the key to saving all of humanity from the alien...
How to Effectively Email Journalists and YouTubers
Reaching out to content creators is all about personalizing your approach. You can’t try to connect with every journalist or YouTuber in the same way. Some YouTubers are super colloquial and talk very casually to their fans, and some journalists take a very...
The Art Of Shamelessly Stealing Mechanics
You can pick any game, pick out some mechanics, and what do you know—they exist in many other games. The reason for this is developers usually borrow ideas and mechanics from other games. Some might call this stealing, and the title of this article would suggest as...