I've Got a Prescription
No, not for more cowbell.
See VS
Life has not let up. Over the last eight weeks, every animal in our house, with the exception of Sir Gawain the Hog Island Boa, has gotten sick to the point where emergency room and emergency vet visits were had. From me being in the ER, to Nikki being sick for half a month, to Satsuki not eating for 72 hours, to Athena becoming woefully ill and then finding a growth…
We need a damn break. Like, just a week or two with no major injuries, illnesses, or cars breaking down would be fantastic. Nikki and I haven’t had an honest to goodness vacation in years. It’s to the point where every day feels like I’m waiting for a breakdown.
I’ve been trying to find things positive to focus on, because there is an absolute dearth of positivity in our life.
Write Aid
After a very, very long “creative break” where I found myself unable to write anything, I started poking the nearly-finished draft of the second novel. I’m still not 100% set on the name, but mostly that is just my imposter syndrome telling me that nothing I do is good, worthy, and certainly not “right”.
I’ve got most of a new chapter finished, and have identified where in the story I’m going to begin the second new chapter. Those two chapters are the last things holding up the next round of beta reading; I’ve incorporated or process all the thoughts, suggestions, and complaints from the first round.
At this point I need to crack the spine of Pallas Lost and re-read it myself, so that I can definitively finish the recap section for the new book. That is the last major piece of back matter I need to finish.
I’m toying with getting a cover artist to make the cover for the second book. And to make a new cover for the first one. I’ve never been 100% happy with the first cover, and when I look at books in the same genre as mine, it doesn’t have the same weight or visual impact.
The major thing I really need to start soon is the marketing push. Also known as the thing I suck at the most. I’ve tried various forms of social media, and I’m not consistent enough to build an audience. This SubStack has been the only one I’ve really kept up with, and the newsletters are seeing a roughly mid-fifties open rate consistently. Which is actually pretty good! So thank you all!
I need to figure out how to market more impactfully and effectively, and that begins with getting some information. That’s right, market research. Part of that is also considering dropping the exclusivity that Kindle Unlimited requires and “going wide”, as the industry calls it. This means my book would be available for other vendors to sell… but the tradeoff is that it means a lot more work on my part. And Amazon is 70-80% of the ebook market these days.
The worst part is there are as many “best practice” posts out there as there are grains of sand on a large-sized beach, and almost all are contradictory.
With that said, it’s time to invite some audience participation! Here are some quick and dirty polls, but also I encourage you to comment with your thoughts!
Finally, if you could leave a comment with what you personally consider a fair price for an ebook, that would really help me match the expectations out there. I want to get this book out there as soon as I can, so I can work on the third book. And also work on other ideas…
This month’s bonus section is that weird free-for-all book/game review segment, which I’m just going to call Media Reviews!
Wall Games
Yeah, that’s the weakest section title in the newsletter. I had a conversation with a friend earlier today that set me to thinking. It turns out I have a pretty big soft spot for redemption. Not necessarily story-wise, but absolutely game developer-wise. Those kind of developer stories make me want to throw all my money at them.
It’s a story as old as time. (Perhaps not time, but certainly as old as capitalism-led creative endeavors.) Some developer pushed a game to release before it is finished, and predictably it launches in a broken and often unplayable state. The truth is pleasing shareholders and making a quality game are fundamentally incompatible win states.
The superlative example of the video game developer redemption story is, to my mind, No Man’s Sky by Hello Games.
It wasn’t exactly broken at launch, but it wasn’t exactly fun either. Hello Games was a small team, and they absolutely bit off more than they could chew. NMS was hyped up to some pretty ridiculous levels, and Sean Murray, founder of Hello Games, has said that they did a terrible job of controlling the hype and setting expectations.
Honestly the entire launch is perfect for a case study of how not to market a game.
I was on that hype train, unfortunately. I was so excited to see it release, because honestly taking a starship and exploring distant weird worlds is my life’s dream. So a procedurally generated universe that you can fly through is right up every alley I’ve ever had.
The game upon release was criticized to hell and back. I don’t have the time or characters to list out what was missing, but a Redditor at the time, who deleted their account sometime in the nine years since launch, compiled an excellent overview: Wayback Machine Link: Where's the NMS we were sold?
As you can see, it’s an awful lot of awful. To be clear, Hello Games had their back against the proverbial wall at this point. The launch date had to be met, and they did what they could.
Other game companies after getting the kind of hate and backlash NMS and Hello Games got post-launch either lashed out at the world or shut down.
But Hello Worlds did something else.
The put their heads down and got back to work. They were pretty quiet after launch, mostly just releasing patches to fix major issues. Two months later, they announced a content update, Foundation, to introduce features missing at launch. They didn’t say when it would release, and speculation began immediately that it would take a long time to come out and that Hello Games would charge for it.
It released two days later and was free.
This started the trend of Hello Games releasing a decently major content and game mechanic update two or three times a year, every year. All free. The latest came just a few days ago and introduced corvette class ships, which are multi-person spaceships. Meaning you can down jump in a customizable ship with your friends and explore the universe.
I tend to drift back to the game every year or two, and every time I’m always astounded by how much has changed. They’ve put so much work into making things right that they have well more than made up for the deficiencies at launch; a common refrain amongst the fanbase is, with each new update, to beg Sean Murray and Hello Games to let them pay for the update.
I can’t think of another medium where fans clamor to pay more for an experience. At this point, I’ve spent around 350 hours playing the game over the years, and full disclosure I downloaded it again this morning to check out corvettes.
An honorable mention in this weird dev redemption genre is Cyberpunk 2077 by CD Projekt Red, which released actually unplayable on console, and has the distinction of the only time in my life I have ever demanded a refund for a game. CD Projekt Red also spent years fixing the game, mostly through free updates, including a recent total overhaul that made a “definitive” version of the game. I actually purchased it recently and finally finished the game. This 2.X “final” version is fantastic, and absolutely enjoyable.
The takeaway of all this is that we shouldn’t be too quick to pile on and bury games, books, TV shows, or movies that release in a terrible state. It’s worth giving the developers, authors, or other creatives a chance to fix things. Criticism should be constructive. It should be given with the intention and goal of helping the other person or entity improve their product.
With that said, what are some other games that you love which released in a terrible state?
Goals Update:
This is the last newsletter of year two! The next one is the start of year three, which is wild. I’m typing this in the waiting area of my Subaru dealership as my car gets serviced, which is exactly where I was two years ago, writing the first newsletter! Things have literally come full circle. Please, share this with your friends, family, strangers on the street, and more!
Thank you so much for following and reading! Don’t forget to subscribe, like and comment. Let me know what you want to see more of from this newsletter! Engagement is crucial. I look forward to posting throughout the rest of 2025!