Thanks for voicing all of your concerns everyone! I am here to answer them.
First of all yes, every file on the site will be royalty free so there will be no problems with the illegal use of the sound effects or graphics. As for the uniqueness of the photos, they will be from sites I have used over the years with royalty free graphics (some dating back to the 90's), graphics I have purchased for games and apps but never used, images my colleagues and I have created, and more that I will purchase in the next few weeks just for use on the site. Many of these images will only be available to users on the site, others I'm not even sure still exist on the web. I'll post a link to a few below. Some are from a project I was going to start but I never actually completed it so I just kept the images around for a rainy day and one is another image I came across a few years ago and used on a website, it was located on a royalty free site. Everything I post will be yours to keep, use, and enjoy and the library will be very extensive.
With other beta testing sites anyone is invited to join in on the fun of testing someone else's game before it hits the app store, on our site beta testers will be only the best ones to aid you (the developers) in creating the best apps possible. We have a few profiles put together from beta testers of my company's apps and from other developers we know that have used beta testers before. As with any company, you only want to keep around the best, so we have compiled a list of beta testers that have given great feedback and support on our apps. They will be the ones testing your games and you will be able to recruit them based on a profile that we write about them. This beta tester profile will include their name, email, experience playing iDevice games, what devices they have, a little bit about them, and games they have tested before. You can make your decision on who to use for your testing and better yet, they are completely free! You will get quality beta testers for the low price of: nothing. They will test your apps for the love of gaming and once they reach a certain status (will be determined between admins of the site and the testers) they may receive a paycheck for their loyalty.
The forums are great because, not only will you have the ability to talk to other devs about GameSalad but a day or two after the launch of the iDev Arena site there will be other developers from other platforms such as x-code on the forums and on the site to add some diversity to the community. There will be people on the forums to discuss almost any topic related to developing apps so this will be a very good community so get involved in. Also, whats the fun of the GameSalad forums if you can't level up for how many legitimate posts you have? The forums will be more than worth participating in and will be for only people really interested in creating and publishing apps to the App Store.
Obviously we are hoping for a big turn out to the site (member-wise) so we have to pull in a lot of beta testers. We are planning on having 50-60 beta testers coming to the site daily to check on the apps, other developers interested in signing up for a membership, and other people that are directed to the site through ads that we will be placing on our own apps and also on some other sites in the near future like facebook and Touch Arcade. Why not get your business out there in front of the users on the site? Your ad will be visible on every page of the site and be "clickable" so anyone that chooses to see more about your business or game will be taken directly to it. Ads are a flat fee so naturally, the better your ads and developer page looks, the more attention it will attract. This can be a very good tool of getting long-term followers of your apps, intriguing someone to buy a custom app from you, or getting your name out there. Users of the site will change so the longer you keep your exclusive status, the more people that will see your ad and developer page.
The videos are still a month or more off in the future so I'm not sure what all they will entail but I will be using personal experiences combined with other developers personal experiences and a professional marketing agent to provide the best, content-rich videos possible. We are putting time and effort into them so that you get your moneys worth.
The site is very minimal right now. There is a sign up page and everything else is hidden from prying eyes. We obviously can't post any content up at this time simply because of the fact that it is only for registered members. The site looks bare bone but when logged in you will be immersed in a wave of information. Gigabytes upon gigabytes of information is either loaded onto the site already or waiting to be uploaded from my external hard drive. The site will be relyable, it is affordable, it will be updated often, you have a sample of some work that will be posted, you have a chance to make your games better with proper testing and its really a good deal all around.
I hope I have answered your questions and hope to see all of you signing up for the site!
By the way, after the 12th of November we are planning on taking membership fees up to $40/lifetime and $15/year. You will be getting a 33% DISCOUNT for signing up now!
If you don't already have the link here it is again and thanks in advance for your purchase!
Comments
First of all yes, every file on the site will be royalty free so there will be no problems with the illegal use of the sound effects or graphics. As for the uniqueness of the photos, they will be from sites I have used over the years with royalty free graphics (some dating back to the 90's), graphics I have purchased for games and apps but never used, images my colleagues and I have created, and more that I will purchase in the next few weeks just for use on the site. Many of these images will only be available to users on the site, others I'm not even sure still exist on the web. I'll post a link to a few below. Some are from a project I was going to start but I never actually completed it so I just kept the images around for a rainy day and one is another image I came across a few years ago and used on a website, it was located on a royalty free site. Everything I post will be yours to keep, use, and enjoy and the library will be very extensive.
http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/6186/wizardanimated27dragged.png
http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/697/pageanimated27dragged.png
http://img600.imageshack.us/img600/8601/defaulta.png
http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/761/dankofriendlyrabbit.png
http://img574.imageshack.us/img574/9899/sethsapps.png
With other beta testing sites anyone is invited to join in on the fun of testing someone else's game before it hits the app store, on our site beta testers will be only the best ones to aid you (the developers) in creating the best apps possible. We have a few profiles put together from beta testers of my company's apps and from other developers we know that have used beta testers before. As with any company, you only want to keep around the best, so we have compiled a list of beta testers that have given great feedback and support on our apps. They will be the ones testing your games and you will be able to recruit them based on a profile that we write about them. This beta tester profile will include their name, email, experience playing iDevice games, what devices they have, a little bit about them, and games they have tested before. You can make your decision on who to use for your testing and better yet, they are completely free! You will get quality beta testers for the low price of: nothing. They will test your apps for the love of gaming and once they reach a certain status (will be determined between admins of the site and the testers) they may receive a paycheck for their loyalty.
The forums are great because, not only will you have the ability to talk to other devs about GameSalad but a day or two after the launch of the iDev Arena site there will be other developers from other platforms such as x-code on the forums and on the site to add some diversity to the community. There will be people on the forums to discuss almost any topic related to developing apps so this will be a very good community so get involved in. Also, whats the fun of the GameSalad forums if you can't level up for how many legitimate posts you have? The forums will be more than worth participating in and will be for only people really interested in creating and publishing apps to the App Store.
Obviously we are hoping for a big turn out to the site (member-wise) so we have to pull in a lot of beta testers. We are planning on having 50-60 beta testers coming to the site daily to check on the apps, other developers interested in signing up for a membership, and other people that are directed to the site through ads that we will be placing on our own apps and also on some other sites in the near future like facebook and Touch Arcade. Why not get your business out there in front of the users on the site? Your ad will be visible on every page of the site and be "clickable" so anyone that chooses to see more about your business or game will be taken directly to it. Ads are a flat fee so naturally, the better your ads and developer page looks, the more attention it will attract. This can be a very good tool of getting long-term followers of your apps, intriguing someone to buy a custom app from you, or getting your name out there. Users of the site will change so the longer you keep your exclusive status, the more people that will see your ad and developer page.
The videos are still a month or more off in the future so I'm not sure what all they will entail but I will be using personal experiences combined with other developers personal experiences and a professional marketing agent to provide the best, content-rich videos possible. We are putting time and effort into them so that you get your moneys worth.
The site is very minimal right now. There is a sign up page and everything else is hidden from prying eyes. We obviously can't post any content up at this time simply because of the fact that it is only for registered members. The site looks bare bone but when logged in you will be immersed in a wave of information. Gigabytes upon gigabytes of information is either loaded onto the site already or waiting to be uploaded from my external hard drive. The site will be relyable, it is affordable, it will be updated often, you have a sample of some work that will be posted, you have a chance to make your games better with proper testing and its really a good deal all around.
I hope I have answered your questions and hope to see all of you signing up for the site!
By the way, after the 12th of November we are planning on taking membership fees up to $40/lifetime and $15/year. You will be getting a 33% DISCOUNT for signing up now!
If you don't already have the link here it is again and thanks in advance for your purchase!
http://idevarena.jimdo.com/membership/
http://gamesalad.com/forums/topic.php?id=12629
I have two posts going and I need to narrow it down to one. Thanks everyone!