"Courage and perseverance are important if one is to run anything resembling a news organization...the folks at theOtaku.com have demonstrated themselves to have ample quantities of both."
~ TCJ (The Comics Journal)
"A couple years of experience in the Otaku circle have taught me at least one good lesson--to trust Adam."
~ myO member
"Adam is actually a decently accomplished troll."
~ Allamorph
"The scale of Adam's cunning genius is truly frightening."
~ TimeChaser
Even though I submitted my game at the first of the month, it's still not approved. Meanwhile, the big Korean company's game was just approved and they're severely undercutting us on price. We could have been first if I had a little more luck on my side and Apple was a little faster. Their game is selling like hotcakes.
*Sigh* - I feel like this could end up being the biggest "almost" of my life.
I'll keep you updated, but I'm not really optimistic :-/
A
So 95% of all games submitted to Apple get a decision within the first 7 days of submission
My game is now in the 5% that takes longer :)
For all of you curious about my game, here's a short video of me playing the first Act:
(Yes that's THE Kyle Hebert, voice of Kiba from Naruto, as our narrator.)
What do you think?
I have the biggest fight of my life coming soon...
I worked really hard over two years on a video game. It was a very underground, indie production, and is the first manga-styled bartending video game ever made, releasing on the iPhone/iPod Touch. I'm submitting it tomorrow.
So far so good. I find out yesterday that a big, rich Korean video game company will be releasing a manga-styled bartending video game on the iPhone at roughly the same time(!!!)
This will be a tough, tough battle...I feel like this guy right now, awaiting the massive army:
Wish me luck otakus, I'll need it.
(Thanks to Desbreko for the image)
It's been a ton of hard work but things are moving in the right direction and rocking (knock on wood):
Once we finish moving everything to the new server (ads and OB are both on it already) and with paying off theO's debts (interest payments have been killing me) and with writing some code to use Amazon's image hosting a bit less, we should be able to reduce the costs of running the network by up to 50% (!)
Additionally, because of the "junk ads" (which have been aggressively filtered so they're not as junky as they were initially), theOtaku won't need any "good" advertising to cover its costs. Yay!
My game will also be submitted to the Apple Store on June 1st. I really hope Apple approves it, the only reason they might not immediately is because of sexual innuendo. It's a mature game that's essentially Cooking Mama meets Ace Attorney meets Bartending--it's the first true bartending video game ever made.
Here's the time line of updates for theOtaku:
> Move to new server and iron out any and all bugs that appear
> Make sure our speed bugs are fixed, with regard to slow down at night
> Features
For the last year I took on a ton of consulting jobs for income. This was incredibly draining and I still found myself losing money at a depressing pace, putting me in massive debt. I made dramatic lifestyle changes (moving) and took on a really amazing new job that not only covers costs but leaves me with extra money every month. Now I'm personally profitable and work overall less hours than I did as a consultant.
It feels good to have had such a tough year and then to have fought back and turned everything around.
So yeah, that's where we are now. Thanks for your support :).
