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Usefulness of a pile of contacts

GFLPraxis

GFLPraxis

macrumors 604
Original poster
Mar 17, 2004
7,152
460
So I'm just in a brainstorming mood today, going over my take-over-the-world schemes, and I'm curious to see if anyone else can come up with some ideas.

I'm sitting on a pile of contacts. I've got the email addresses of quite a lot of journalists, developers, PR guys, etc. that I've obtained at press events or other things related to running my web site, and I can obtain more if needed. I seem to have a knack for being able to get in contact with people through the internet.

Is there anything I can do that is actually useful with this, other than just using it for my site (which generates virtually no income)?

Selling the contacts is out of the question. So is spamming them for cash, and so is posting them here :p I don't want to abuse priveledges...

But there's got to be something I can do that is useful to the industry with it.

Anyone have any ideas to help me on my way to world domination?
 
Tell developers good things about me so I can more easily get a job as soon as I graduate from DigiPen. :D

Oh, and if you have contact info for Matt Casamassina, let him know he rocks. :cool:
 
I've met Matt but didn't get his email :( Got some of the IGN Australia team's emails though.

You're at Digipen? Hm. We'll have to talk :D PM me your AIM.
 
Take some basic marketing classes if you don't know what to do with the contacts. You can leverage your relationship over time to build friendships which could equal exclusives, leaks, etc which will give your site more hits...say if you leak some video game info first from your site then all the biggies like Kotaku are linking to your story since you broke it...more hits, more cash.

These things don't turn around quickly though and sometimes turn out next to worthless. I go to networking functions like two or three times in Bangkok. Rarely do I meet anyone new at this point and rarely do they pan out. But I stay in people's minds for the day they do need some photography. And when it pays out it pays well. Be a real friend, contact and stuff will come out of it. New stuff you can't even plan for sometimes too.

Paul
 
I've studied enough marketing to know that much :) Still, though, I don't know how much I can count on the site as far as profits go. It's very hard to make money off a gaming site; we HAVE had big articles that were posted on Joystiq and other places, and we made money off it but the traffic is always a spike and it's not something that can be done consistently.

I've been told that it's very hard to make money off a gaming site by other webmasters (especially one with as much competition as a Nintendo fansite, there's a lot of them), and it's proving true. I'll continue to build relationships and keep in contact with them, but I doubt I can count on NP to replace my actual work (in the IT field).

I'm just trying to come up with ideas to use the contacts for. One idea that came to mind is acting as a PR guy for indie devs (Jimmi?) with good projects and riding on any success. I'm curious how PR jobs compare to IT jobs though; I'm probably already in a really good place.
 
As an indie I won't be getting paid till my game is out the door. I suppose it's not good on both ends unless your foot is well and truly in a publisher or developers door. For lack of a better business-climbing euphemism ;)

You've done a nifty job getting my name out to some folk for which I'm very grateful! Can indies get agents I wonder? :D
 
Since I mentioned I go to DigiPen, I suppose I should show you guys my Independent Games Festival student game submission.

Our game is Crayon Caper Rescue.

I was in charge of most of the physics, almost all of the art, and some misc stuff.

Our development team consisted of 4 people when we were developing it for our game class for a length of about 5 months, then two of us continued some work on it after the class for IGF for 2 additional months.

Unfortunately, we didn't get to accomplish nearly all that we wanted to since within our development time, we had so many other things going on.

Our game can be found on the DigiPen site here. (Nevermind the screenshots. Those are ones from when the game was submitted at the end of the game class. The game now looks a little different. We're trying to get the game instructor to update those.)
 
Uh-oh, we have a little competition here! Seeing as both Jimmi and Michael'll be in the IGF in the same category :D
 
That is a good idea...leveraging contacts to small time developers. I think more and more of this kind of thing will start happening as more small developers have access to systems (XBLA, etc)...

I'm still for not pushing them too hard for anything immediate and getting a nicer payoff in a couple years time as things have really developed. Sink more time into the site...to me it's still not a place I'd visit regularly TBH and I'm actually wanting a Nintendo site. Design/content wise it doesn't feel like a place I'd want to spend time. If you had that going when you had the spikes from exclusives people would stay longer.

Paul
 
Ew, Jimmi, why is that Tormishire screenshot so low-res and stretched? Get a better shot up there!

And pcypert, I will continue to put time into the site and expand my contact base and built up relationships with existing contacts, I'm just kind of brainstorming right now.

My biggest problem is Nintendo themselves. Almost all my contacts quit with this marketing shakeup at Nintendo! I knew some of the PR people like Julia Roether that left and now I'm left with minimal contacts there. Grr.
 
Aye, I'm hoping for the guy working on my superscaler effect to get it ready before the IGF judging begins. Get it whacked up to any resolution and looking stunning. Could be another month though :eek:
 
No, I mean the screenshots I've seen all look better than that one does, even when I view it small. Looks like there's way too much compression on that shot.

You're targeting 640x480 right?
 
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