Sell More Games

Photo by: Simon Davison

Or do you develop games that you want to play? I know a lot of indies takes the latter aproach. I do (or actually did). We hope that games that we want to play and develop are also the games that sell. And once those games are done and hit the market we end up disappointed that they dind’t reach the top 10 charts.

Do you want an example? Here’s one: Runes of Avalon 2. This is one of my games that is highly rated by reviewers and developers. It’s chellenging, forces you to use your brain, has a lot of particles… all the stuff that developers love. But what masses think? It was just a #32 on the top 100 chart at Big Fish Games. (but there are still customers that love my game though I don’t know how to reach them without losing money).

So if you want to sell more games, then make games that sell. Russell Carroll made a great post on Indie Gamer Forums and here’s a quote for you:

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Life is strange. When I least expected it, it happend. It did not happen with Tom’s Hen House. It did not happen with Runes of Avalon, though I was sooo sure it will make it (and not only I). It didn’t happen with Runes of Avalon 2, though I didn’t hope for it.

And now, Pony World Deluxe made it. On the first day after release.

It’s a great feeling to see your game in the top charts. A lot of portals is skeptical about Pony World performance due to choosen theme. Hopefully when they see how our game sells on iWin they will be much less skeptical.

UPDATE: It’s #5 today :)

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From all the portals I know only Big Fish Games adds gameplay videos to every game. Reflexive does it from time to time. There must be a reason most portals don’t bother with it.

But I am not a portal and I want to check my chances. I want to know if and how it will affect my downloads. I can’t create videos for every game, but I already have one for Runes of Avalon 2 (please don’t check out the game site just to see it so you don’t screw up the test). To be honest, I was initially very skeptical about it. I thought: once they saw the video they might have another reason to not download the game, since they already know what’s inside. Fortunately, it looks like it’s the other way.

I’ve set up Google Website Optimizer experiment a while ago and here are preliminary results.

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It’s to early to give final statements, but if in the end improvement will be in that range it will be really worth it. When your marketing budget is small and every download counts then it may be the one thing that will let your ads break even.

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I was checking Runes of Avalon 2 performance on Big Fish Games yesterday (well, not good at all) and was very surprised by what I saw in the top-10 list.

First of all, I stopped checking the TOP 100 chart becausemy games are no longer there and I don’t think it’s going to change until I release Pony World Deluxe. I went straight to match-3 chart and saw a new game – FISHDOM on #1 place.

Well, #1 in match-3 genre is not something amazing, but breaking into TOP 10 is (#8 on June 19th). It’s even more amazing because FISHDOM is not BFG exclusive and because it was done within one day of launch of the game.

What is FISHDOM? It’s a classic match-3 game. It’s well polished and it has a little META game – you can build a tank and put in fishes. I would say it’s a straight Big Kahuna Reef rip off.

Which only proves that casual players don’t like too much innovation.

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