Howdy. I glanced at your blog and -- as someone who has successfully done this -- and I have some advice for you. First of all, I'm not going to dwell on your experience or resources and your motivations for doing this (whether you hope to make money, or this is just a way to fulfill a lifelong dream of having your name on a game you've published). I'm sure others will touch on those issues, and hopefully you've already soul searched about it before going this far.
1) RIGHT THIS VERY DANGED SECOND you need to go to godaddy.com and buy the URL lonewarriorgames.com. It will cost you $10. USD It is available right now, and if you don't get it you will regret it for the rest of your life. You NEED this URL if you plan to do this, even if it's only at a hobby level. Once you've got it, you can use it to point directly to your blogspot.com address. Even if you don't use it immediately, you MUST go grab it before some squatter grabs it.
2) Find out if you NEED a license to start a business. In Texas, for example, game companies (and stores, for that matter) do not require a license. In Texas, we just needed to file a DBA (Doing Business As) and a Sales Tax Permit. That's it. The DBA cost us either $15 USD or $20, the tax permit didn't cost us anything (at least not that I recall). You will need the DBA to get a commercial bank account (and there are lots of free commercial checking accounts available). By the way, you can wait on this. You really don't need these until you get closer to actually selling stuff.
3) Get a logo and add some graphics to your Website. If you can't make one, ask around. Someone you know does graphics (heck, there are nice people here who would help you by whipping up something that you could use as a temporary logo). I'm not saying this to be mean, but currently your Website is very boring and I don't think it will help you generate interest in your game. Graphics and a logo would go a long way to jazzing things up.
4) Speaking of your blog… You should click on the "Customize" link and go to "Layout." Beneath the title of your blog, you should add some marketing text like this:
"Humanity has expanded to the stars, and now Corporations compete to control the resources available in the vast reaches beyond earth. Every day they send armies of MERCS to do their bidding. Sometimes the battles are huge, covering entire worlds… and sometimes they're small covert operations. But the missions are always deadly and only the best will survive: Gear up, soldier -- we're waiting for YOU! MERC is an exciting game universe setting for an RPG, miniatures wargames that will be coming soon to a game store near you."
Hmmmmmmmmmmm. That's a bit long, but some cool flavor text will really help people know what your blog site is about without having to scroll down very far. In the paragraph I just wrote, notice how it paints a picture of the setting (future warfare), includes the scale of the games (huge and small), and engages the reader by directly challenging him to "Gear up." Finally, it clearly mentions that this is a game under development, and clearly describes the type of games you will be creating. This sort of text goes a long way to define the site in the minds of your visitors.
Check out my Hawgleg Publishing blog for an example of what we did: hawgleg.blogspot.com Keep in mind, this blog is NOT our main Website. It's just a little something we started last week to post some mini-info about stuff we're currently working on. Since this isn't our main site, we didn't use the type of text that I am suggesting you use.
4) Become a paid member of TMP. This will give you access to the lounge, and if you pay to advertise, you will also get access to the Sponsor's forum. This is a great place to discuss things privately with other game publishers. Even if you don't become a sponsor right now, having access to the Lounge is also useful, and it gives you the ability to share Private Messages here at TMP. A lot of the game designers, stores, and pros here will freely give you info in private that they won't give you in public.
FINALLY, don't get discouraged. You have a LOT of stuff to do in the next weeks or years. At Hawgleg, we were in pre-production from 1999 – 2004 and finally published Gutshot in 2005. Yup. About five years before we got our game out there. I know many people are a LOT faster than us, but I also know of others who are slower. So, buck up and best of luck on the long job ahead of you.
Mike Mitchell
Hawgleg Publishing
hawgleg.com
PS: I was NOT kidding about that URL. If you don't buy it immediately, you will regret it. There are bots out there that scan sites like this looking for URLs mentioned in the text of the posts, and then they send the info to someone who will go buy it and then try to sell it to you for hundreds of dollars. Don't let that happen. Buy the URL now.
