Dangerous Dave's Dlog

After a successful beta period, Pointed V3 has been released. Congratulations to Rusty for getting the top score in Mine Rescue and scoring himself a copy of Immortal Defense!

On to business. We are looking at having a developer competition this time. If you didn't already know, the Pointed Highscore and Trophy systems are available for anyone to use in their games. Just download the devkit, and away you go.

Only some games are selected to be indexed on the site. This happens when a developer submits their game to be considered for inclusion, and potentially after some negotiation.

The idea of Pointed is that you play games to submit scores, and these scores earn you Pointed Pointed (or PP). PP can be used to purchase new games to play. Because of this, we are wanting to populate the site with games that cost PP rather than games that are available for free (we already have free games, and we also give free PP to new users, so free games are not necessary).

Because of this, exclusivity is a problem. We practically require it. Why buy a game for PP when you can get it entirely free elsewhere? If we were to have a competition, we would want the submitted games (or, at least the winners) to be included on the site, and to charge PP for them. This means we need some sort of exclusivity. The key is to compromise between developers and our site. We have a few options that we have brainstormed, and we welcome your feedback on these, or your new ideas.

The Options:

1. The first option is to have the full version of the games only available on the Pointed website. This isn't ideal. As any developer knows, you want your game to be yours to use. This option isn't really an option.

2. The second option is to have the full version only on Pointed, but have demo versions available to be distributed.

3. Option three is to have the full version on the site, which can submit scores and trophies. A second version would be distributed elsewhere, it would be full featured but not able to submit high scores or claim trophies. Instead of a submit score button, it would have some sort of blurb about getting it at Pointed to be able to submit high scores.

4. The fourth option is that the full version would be available for a PP price on Pointed, and it would not be available free elsewhere. However, it could be available for purchase elsewhere. This way people can get it at Pointed by earning it, they can buy it from your site if they can't be bothered earning it. As far as Pointed is concerned, it wouldn't hurt Pointed 'sales' by having it available for purchase elsewhere.

5. Another option that you have come up with, please comment below


Of course these things can be negotiated with developers when they submit their games, but when there is a competition we need some solid rules so there is no doubt going into the competition what will happen with your game.

Please comment on these ideas, and suggest any other ideas or a compromise of these ideas. I would like to hear what compromise would make you submit your game into such a competition (If it helps, the prize is likely to be a Steam game worth $15 for first prize, and copies of Immortal Defense for second and third).

-Dave