Manifesto Games

Manifesto Games (www.manifestogames.com) has been up and running for a while now.
If you're reading my blog, you probably read Greg Costikyan's blog too, so you probably already know about it and have been there.
But for the few of you who haven't - go there.
Enjoy.
It's a candy store.
One game that I discovered, thanks to the good folks at Manifesto, is *Lugaru* - sort of *Watership Down* meets *Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon*. 
Ben Cousins once studied a bunch of succesful games and decided that the optimum time for a jump in a videogame is half a second.  I, personally, enjoy games with big, delicious jumps.  *Galleon*;  our very own *Spider-Man 2*;  *Hulk Ultimate Destruction*.  You can add *Lugaru* to the list.  The knowledge that there are people out there that consider big, delicious jumps "incorrect" adds to the sweetness for me.
There's more to *Lugaru* than that and you should really just try it out rather than listen to me talk about it.
But this post is about *Manifesto Games* - I really hope they succeed, but I worry.  Greg Costikyan hopes that Manifesto is going to survive by earning revenue from the "long tail" (Google it if you don't know what he's talking about.)  This is the same thing MP3.com hoped to make money off of;  but because they didn't have any big names to draw people to the site, they floundered.  Not that I care if Manifesto has a "Half-Life 2" or "Prey" for me - I'll go to Manifesto anyway. 
If only I had more time, so I could play more of their games!
I just want to make sure enough other people go to make it profitable and keep it around, so when I do find some time it'll still be there.

Comments

[Peter Harkins]

I think MP3.com's failure had more to do with the MPAA suing them and eventually taking $200 million.

[Carl Pinder]

As the original designer of Paranoia, Greg Costikyan will always occupy a special cockle in my heart of games. I fear, however, that he is trying to attack two parts of the problem with Manifesto Games. The first, a business venture and I wish him all the luck in that endeavor. The second seems to be a personal vendetta on the publishing model as a whole. While I think that this is a laudable goal, his vitriol detracts from his mission. The bravado with which he attacks the majors echoes too much the rants of Dave Perry of Shiny and John Romero of Ion Storm. Both of them thought they would take the world by storm and both became laughing stocks of the industry. I am not now, nor will I ever be John Romero's bitch.

[Chris Busse]

Glad to see you are alive after the poweroutage. These are your first couple posts since then. =)

[Nathan]

Just found your blog, kind of purusing through.

Looking at the manifestogames site, I would say there are a few factors they could consider if they're going after the longtail.

For example, taking the amazon approach and encouraging and spurring on customer reviews or ratings. Then show those ratings in the aggregated mode (stars) when a user is just browsing the titles.

In addition, recommended games based off of previous purchases is always a plus. With the recent GGE site, one could even see if there is some sort of open API for GGE that would allow them to utilize that 'recommendation' functionality based off their gaming archive.

There are a number of other things that could also be done.

One last comment is their site coudl be more 'clean'. When I first hit their site, I was overwhelmed with content. There was text everywhere, no idea where I was supposed to start, what I was looking at, or for. No direction.

That's not to say that they don't do a number of things right, which they do.