Thought it may be useful to share a few of the things that I’ve encountered recently. Now I realise much of this is obvious, but I made a few slip-ups – so its worth a read:
Age Ratings
Pertinent Content
ESRB – be very careful that you declare everything on the online form. We recently missed (apparently) an alchohol reference (one billboard in the game had the name of a mock brewery, “Best Brewery”). We didn’t think to mention this (do the ESRB not know about the thousands of breweries that don’t produce alchohol?) - we got an official warning for this, get 3 of these and you get a fine of $2,500.
SKUs
When you submit the initial rating (this mainly applies to ESRB) ensure you tick the boxes for all planned formats the game is being developed on. So for example, PSP Minis require an ESRB certificate covering PSP and PS3, but you are only charged the one ratings fee. Handily though, you can also do it later for no extra charge. PEGI require a seperate submission and fee for each SKU 
Submission Materials
Ensure you confirm the format the examiners require. The Australian ratings board are strict on this; WiiWare for example - they require the WAD file on an SD card, they will not rate the game if you supply them with the WAD on a CD/DVD (which I did – Doh!).
Translations
Find a good, reliable company to do your translations – and make sure they are reasonable priced and deliver revisions and additions swiftly. Often you will have missed something out with the initial manual translation; using WiiWare as an example again, in addition to the e-manual you also need EFIGS&D translated marketing info for the shop. And the Meta data for PSP requires a fair few exatra languages, such as Russian, to cover the various online stores. You really shouldn’t be paying more than 14 cents (USD or EUROs) per word.
Videos
Keep your promo videos short and snappy. The first one we did was a 2 minute opus, and got slated for being dull. Try to limit it to around 30 – 45 seconds and stick in plenty of the good stuff.
Reviews
For WiiWare/DSiWare Nintendo do a sort of reviews code system, where you can buy point codes in denominations matching the value of your game. For example, 20 units of 500 points.
They are very reluctant to admit this – and it may take a few emails to get an answer. Also note you can only place one order per quarter – so make sure you order enough.
It takes one to two weeks for them to generate the codes. Why? I have no idea – so make sure you order well in advance of your release.
Loading ...
