How did you start your game development adventure? How big is your studio now?

I knew I wanted to make games since high school. Soon I began learning C++ on my own and made a minesweeper clone and a simple top-down shooter. It was extremely hard to find info on making games though here in Thailand. About the time when I got to college, the internet explosion was just beginning, so with my top-end (at the time) US Robotics 33.6K modem I tried to find and learn everything I could about making games.

Fast forward 5 years later, I got bored with my enterprise software development job after a year and decided to resign and start a software company, thus ViquaSoft was born. At that time J2ME games on cell phones was supposed to be the next big thing, so we did a few games for that, but then I discovered the Dexterity forums and decided that developing casual downloadable games on PC was more exciting and might be more lucrative. So we started developing Tommy and the Magical Words and have focused on downloadable casual games ever since.

Right now we have 8 full-time people at our office here in Bangkok. We started with 3 in the beginning about 4 years ago and have been expanding continuously. Right now we’re expanding again and are looking for some more good programmers.

I am impressed by execution of themes in your game. You surely get maximum fun out of it. Who designs your games?

Thanks :)

The answer to that question is all of us. All 8 of us are the designers of our games.

The process goes like this:

First when we need to come up with a new game idea, we have everyone go back and try to come up with some and we meet and have everyone pitch their concepts. Then we kind of vote to choose the best one. But I still have the final say of course :)

Then when it comes to the actual designing, we do a lot of brainstorming together. We try to gather everyone’s ideas for the game and choose the best ones. This period consists of lots of meetings where we iteratively refine the details of the game design.

You could call this design-by-committee which some say is bad. I’d rather call it design-by-passionate-team :) From our experience if it is managed well then it leads to a well thought out design pretty quickly. With this method everyone in the team gets to exercise their creativity and build their game design skills. Just by listening to the more experienced team members discuss about the design issues, the less experienced team members learn a lot. Also each team member has a lot more personal investment in the game’s design and the game’s outcome. In any case, the producer (me) has the final say though.

Everyone understands the reasons behind every design decision which helps a lot, otherwise you have team members arguing and complaining to each other (and me) on design decisions all the time which makes everything go slower.

I believe that if you have programmers and artists just developing according to a designer’s vision without being able to give any input, they will feel like machines. Additionally the team members wouldn’t really be growing as “game developers” as design is a big part of game development. So the aim for me is to build everyone’s skill in game design so that together we can create better and better games more effortlessly.

And it is tons of fun discussing the game designs together, bouncing ideas off each other. During the design phase it really makes work feel like play and I sometimes feel guilty that I have a job that is so fun.

So how do you create a best seller game?

I’m definitely not an expert about this as I’m never 100% sure that any of our games will do well before releasing it. It’s been good to see though that we’re seeming to do better with each release. So hopefully that is proof that my strategy of incrementally building everyone’s game design skills with each game works :)

BTW, for our latest game Shop-n-Spree a lot of credit goes to BFG as they helped tons in adjusting our original design to better fit their target market.

Back on topic, I gave a talk at a local game developer conference recently where I listed the main attributes of a “good game” as:

1. FUN
2. Good production values
3. Accessible
4. No bugs
5. Appeals to a viable target market

Compared to Jake’s 10 secrets it looks like I’m missing a few :) But I guess mine are just a little broader and maybe are just the basics. But these really are the basics that you need to begin with. Each of them is only a few words, but I could go into the details of what I learned about each for pages.

I’ll talk a bit about FUN and addictiveness. I consider addictiveness as part of FUN in my list above. On this topic Jake mentioned meta-games .. for me I like to think of it as something – anything that keeps the player going. You have to have a reason for the player to continue playing beyond the current level at all times. They have to always have a reason in their head during the current level and at the end of the level as to why they want to keep playing beyond it. This is about setting short-term and long-term goals and spacing out the “rewards” in a game.

I read about WOW and MMORPG games and about the reason why they were addictive is that players always have something they are about to get if they play just a bit more. It could be a bit more experience to get the next level, or enough money for the new sword, or something else. There’s always something that feels like it is just a few minutes away.

You really have to apply this to your game. The spacing is the important thing. You don’t want to have players have to play too long before seeing the next new thing or even without knowing when or if they will get it. This has been discussed in the Indiegamer forums before but people still don’t do it properly. You really have to make it clear why they should keep on playing, what is waiting for them. Additionally it has to be something significant in the player’s mind. Many times you think you’re giving the player something new, but to them it is just ‘more of the same’.

One of the ways is by increasing and keeping high the frequency of introducing “new gameplay elements”. This way you keep the player interested because they know that by playing just a bit more they will see something new to play with in the game. Look at how World of Goo does it. Early on you notice how every few levels (or actually every level) there is something new .. new mechanics, elements and especially the new types of Goo balls. Each of the new types of Goo balls adds significant gameplay value. So it is not just cosmetic stuff. This is the true genius of the game. If an “amateur” (non-experienced game developer) came up with the idea of World of Goo, they’d believe that the core mechanic was fun enough and have only the standard type of Goo ball and invest a lot of time into making about 50 levels with maybe 5 different “background themes” hoping that would provide enough variety. People would get bored quickly since they’d feel they’ve seen everything .. “it’s just more levels” and the game wouldn’t sell anywhere nearly as well and people who didn’t know better would even say the idea sucked.

I could write pages more about these 5 topics, but I’ll stop here :)

OK, great news is that you don’t have to be an expert to create top selling games. Lets talk more about FUN. How do you find out what is fun for your audience? I consider this as a one of most challenging task for developers. They just seem to like different games than casual audience.

I guess this corresponds to my no.5 above “Appeals to a viable target market” which I think is the first thing you need to get right before you do anything else because if you make a game that “doesn’t appeal to a viable target market” then pretty much by definition, it won’t sell. No amount of polish will help it.

To make a game that appeals to your target market or in other words a game that is FUN for your target market, the key is to remember that just knowing who your target market is isn’t enough, you have to UNDERSTAND them. Only by understanding them can you make a game that is fun for them. The better you understand them, the more successful your game will be.

It is the same as in any business.

How do you understand your target market? The answer is to not be lazy about doing your market research :)

Do you prototype your ideas?

Yes, we start with prototypes. We don’t really think of them as prototypes, more like the first (internal) builds of the game.

We really follow the iterative/agile approach to development. If the game is not fun, we refine it. We try to get to the point of why it isn’t fun – I usually believe there is a reason that can be found and described in this case – and fix that and continue with this iterative approach for the whole game’s development.

The big thing that helps for us is everyone in the team is required to come up with ways to improve the game. So it’s not just me trying to come up with ideas to make the game more fun, it is all of us. This way it is very easy to improve the game as with all 8 of us, we’re always overflowing with ideas to improve the game and the only thing needed is to just pick the best ones which we do through brainstorming sessions.

This kinds of fits with my “everyone is a game designer” principle above in that during the development, everyone still does game design work.

That sounds very interesting. How much of development time you put into design sessions? Do you add new game play elements until very last moments?

For the first month of the project, it is half a day meetings everyday for about a week, then maybe a day or two a week as the prototype progresses. Then when we get into real production period, after each “iteration” which is usually about a month we have a period of maybe 2-3 days up to a week of evaluating the result of the last iteration and designing for the next iteration.

I’d say it is impossible to add new gameplay elements until the very last moments as we’d probably need another pretty large iteration to develop/test/tune/polish it. Gameplay elements are usually locked down earlier so that the final iterations can really be about polish. The final iterations’ lengths will be shorter such as 2 weeks and then 1 week per iteration then maybe 1 day (if you can call those iterations .. more like just “builds”). During those last iterations of a project there are definitely lots of significant improvements (other than bug-fixing) that we do, most of the time related to the UI, gfx, accessibility. Improvements that definitely make the game better so don’t really need too much further testing/balancing.

How do you plan to adjust to lowering average game prices?

Basically our plan is to branch out into new types of games in new markets and business models. We will continue to invest into developing higher quality downloadable casual games, but also invest into new/different markets.

I think in the current climate (and any climate actually) it is best to spread your risk and increase the variety of your revenue sources.

For us, the good thing is I think our experience in designing games for the demanding casual market will help us do better in other markets.

You sell a lot of affiliate games on your site? Doesn’t it hurt your own games sales?

Since most of our games are casual, the direct sales are just a fraction of portal sales so it doesn’t really affect us.

On the other hand affiliate income has been a nice bonus and it is always steady and increasing so I think it is worth it.

What do you do to promote your site?

The best thing you can do is release games on your site before you release it anywhere else. Send it over to review sites such as Gamezebo (if it is a casual game) and they will kindly link back to your site. This results in lots of traffic which you can hopefully turn some of them into repeat visitors / newsletter subscribers.

I don’t really have much knowledge when it comes to promotion for direct sales. Heck, you’re direct sales are tons better than mine!

Do you plan to become more portal independent?

As I said above, we are trying to branch out into different markets, so the answer is yes. It is only the smart thing to do. On the other hand, portals have been extremely good for us so we aren’t going to just stop using them either.

Any last words?

It’s like I’m some kind of expert to be giving this kind of interview, but actually I believe me and my team are still pretty new and still have tons to learn about all aspects of game development. The methods I described above are just what we found to work for us through trial and error and noticing what works and what doesn’t after developing 6 casual titles.

Finally I would like to use this opportunity to again thank all the good folks at the Indiegamer forums who have helped us during the years both directly and also indirectly by just creating so many damn interesting discussions :) And I have to give extra special thanks to svero (Steve Verrault) who has helped me a lot all these years. And last, BIG thanks to my team for doing such great work!

Thanks for your time.

Thank you too!

At this moment we are tweaking our website to make more social. We have added forum as we get a flood of requests and/or questions about the game. It’s empty right now, but expect feedback from developers directly if you post questions there.

Now we also added news/blog section on front page to communicate to our players and post regular news about games that we have in development right now.

Go read “Behind Totem Tribe” and mine interview if you haven’t done so already.

NOTE: In this interview Jake speaks for himself and not as BFG representative in any way.

Fairway Solitaire was published over 14 months ago. Isn’t it the time for a new release? When we can expect it?

You can expect it around the Weekend of Sat 21st Feb.  This is 100% certain now unless something crazy happens.  I’ve spent a long time on this game (about 11 months) but I’ve been pretty busy moving continent and other stuff…

Should we expect another hidden object game?

No.  BFG in Seattle makes those, we are tasked with making other games in Vancouver.  It will be fun to hear what people say about it – mixed opinions no doubt, but as long as the customer love it (and express their love with their credit cards) then I’m happy.

Ok, so how did you get started in game development?

In 2005 I went full-time Indie after making business software for 9 years in Delphi and SQL.  I’ve always made games as a hobby since the age of 8 (I’m 33 now) in BASIC, assembly, C, C++, Delphi, Blitz and probably a few other things along the way.  I reached a certain point where I realised that I enjoyed making games so much that I just *had* to do it for a living – so I stopped doing business software and started writing games professionally.  I made two downloadable match-3 games and was contracted by Injoy Games to make a 3rd, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which went well.

Match-3 as a jump start in game development career? That’s how you’ve met BFG?

Emmanuel from Big Fish Games Europe saw Oz and thought it was programmed well and asked if I would be interested in programming a game for them.  I had to think about this quite hard because I saw it as great opportunity to learn more about casual games from some of the most knowledgeable people in the industry, yet I also was keen on building up my own business and working for BFG would slow that down.  Also frankly at the time I needed the money because, as many Indies will know, it takes quite a long time to build your business up to the point where you are making a half-decent living.  In the end I said “yes” and signed a contract to program Fairway Solitaire.  However, before I started work on that game I quickly launched Holiday Bonus using an upgraded Oz engine, and it’s done really well for me over the last 2 years.

Fairway Solitaire was a great success for BFG. Why solitaire? Solitaires were not so popular at that time?

So Fairway Solitaire was a downloadable conversion of an existing on-line Java game.  Big Fish Games have an online community site with lots of casual games on it, many of which were designed by John Cutter.  Fairway was one of the most popular at the time.  I worked closely with John to make the download version and to add in lots of improvements and to give it a good level of polish.  It took a long time but when it launched it was BFG’s most successful card game ever.  It got to no.3 and stayed in the top 100 for over a year.  I also made French, Spanish and German versions and a Mac version too.

Why did you make the transition to BFG instead of working as a freelancer for them?

After the success of Fairway they offered me a contract to make two more games for them and I agreed and started on the first new game in late February 2008.  By this point I’d talked to Helen, my fiancée, about the idea of living abroad for a couple of months at a time whilst we worked (we both just need a PC and the Internet to work – she is a freelance Science writer), and we were going to try it out for fun.  Then in the summer I got a speculative email from BFG offering me a job in their new Vancouver studio.  Because we were open to the idea of moving abroad I said “tell me more” and then BFG flew us to Seattle to meet the team and to visit Vancouver to see if we liked it.  I got on really well with the people at BFG and knew that it would be a great learning experience to work with them but in a new studio (kind of like a start up company except you get paid!).  BFG have great designers, artists and QA on tap and will fund and market my games so it’s a really great opportunity.  So I said “yes” and we moved here in November 2008.  I figure that I’ll either stay working for them for a long time, or maybe after a couple of years I’ll use the experience and contacts to run my own business again – I’m flexible, I’ll see what happens.

What is your role at BFG?

I’m Lead Programmer/Designer.  At the moment this is a bit of a glorified title because I’m the *only* programmer/designer in Vancouver.  But soon we are hiring more programmers who’ll work with me on my next game.  Then we’ll expand to more teams and I’ll be overseeing them all.  That’s where the “Lead” bit comes in.  Basically I’ll be co-designing games with the designers at BFG in Seattle then programming one myself and assisting the other teams with theirs.  I’ll also be applying my polishing skills to all the games to make sure that they shine with quality.

A lot of people on the net asks you about perception of BlitzMax at BFG? Do they even care what you make your games with as long as they get what they ask for?

BFG has seen Fairway do really well and that was made with BlitzMax as were my previous two games (and yours are too right?).  In fact QA said they’d never tested such a stable bug-free game as mine.  BFG care about results and I was able to deliver the results with BlitzMax and they are happy with that.  Ideally the new teams in Vancouver will use it too so that they can get a head start by using my BlitzMax Game Framework, but if they end up using C++ or Flash then that’s OK too.  Blitzmax is easy to use yet powerful.  It’s an OOP feature-rich language built on C++ modules and has a great community.  People who don’t know any better may turn their nose up at it, but don’t forget that I’ve used over 30 languages including assembly, Delphi and C++ and I’ve chosen BlitzMax because I think that it’s the best for rapidly making games in – not because I’m a noob who can’t cope with anything else.

Can you tell us what are the differences between working on a game on your own and within a corporation?

For my own games I looked at the top 10 on various sites over time and what was selling and what I thought I could program easily and selected match-3. That turned out to be an OK decision but I sorta wished I’d made some Hidden Object Games a couple of years back (when they were simpler).  BFG has a huge wealth of data to analyze in order to choose a new title.  But to be honest I think that BFG are mainly interested in building up their existing brands, and developing new IP (that’s where I come in) – although they have many other plans too that I don’t know about.  Also Fairway Solitaire was a conversion of one of the online community games that was very popular.  So basically if I was still Indie I think I’d use similar methods to BFG – basically analyze data and use gut feeling based on industry experience and make a choice.  I think that a good method is stick to what is familiar but try to innovate in some way that makes it stand out from the crowd + add in buckets of quality + polish + marketing, which seems to work.

Technically you are not indie now, but I’ve got the feeling that you do still feel so…

Ha ha, yes good point – I’m now an employee but I do still feel like an entrepreneur.  My own games are still selling and generating royalties for my UK-based company (which I kept) and I still have a website and blog.  I’m also still interested in business ideas that don’t clash with my BFG job.  I see it as a two way thing working for BFG; I’m giving them my skills and they are giving me opportunities and experience.

How do you create a best seller?

Lol.  Well actually last Sunday at the Vancouver Game Design Expo I co-presented a presentation called “10 Secrets to Designing Instantly Enjoyable and Addictive Games” that was practically a manual for how to make best sellers. There are many things that help to create a best seller including: having a good idea that is original but not so far out that no one will try it, making the game addictive and fun with great player-feedback, making it accessible, making the game super-polished, getting the learning curve right, building in a meta-game (or three), testing it loads and loads, and tons of marketing :-)  I could talk for days about each of those points (and there’s more), but that will have to do for now.  Of course I’m not saying I have all the answers as games can still miss the target, even if they seem to have all the points, but I’m getting a better idea of how to apply those points as I make more games and study other games.

What comes first – meta game or game mechanic? What is more important for game success?

Both are important.  Game mechanic must be utterly solid and fun and can be found out in the prototyping stage (but hopefully you’ve thought up an interesting overall concept to fit the game mechanic in).  Then a meta game can be layered on top but only if it compliments the game mechanic and better still if it can feed back into the game mechanic somehow (this is a whole topic in itself).  A pure game mechanic these days would feel like a 4 year old game so a meta game is required to add depth, variation and longevity to a title – it will increase conversion rate too.

What would you consider prime indie sin in game development?

This is a good question as there are several answers of similar importance.  Um, perhaps the prime sin is not marketing your game enough, because without good marketing it’s pretty much bound to fail unless it’s amazing and the press hears about it via a 3rd party somehow.  Also I would say another sin is not testing your game on other people enough – so basically making what you want to play and ignoring all (sensible) advice.  Other sins include not polishing it enough (and not spending enough money developing it).

Basically sins are like failing to do the sensible things, or going in completely the opposite direction.  For example you need a good number of the “10 secrets” I mentioned earlier, and if you miss out too many or do the opposite of them, then you’ve “sinned” and your game will probably flop.

So the secret “good idea that is original but not so far out that no one will try it” sounds great, but I’ve not seen that many games that follow it. Why?

I don’t know, maybe the developers just haven’t figured this out yet.  People either seem to make straight clones that don’t stand out and thus fail, or they believe they have to make something totally original and then no one wants to play it (this is not always true in some rare cases).  However, I think there are quite a few games that pick something not new and innovate a bit both in casual and AAA games, and these games are actually often the successful ones.  My next game does exactly this so we shall see if it works again…

Do you have your dream game that you would like to develop?

I might have to be a bit Gemini about this and choose two games.  One would be to resurrect my Iron Fist game that I started in late 2004.  It’s a Kung Fu platform/adventure game.  At the time I realised that there was not really a decent market for it, so I made a Bejewelled clone instead and thus my career in casual games began.  However, now with the success of XBLA, it could be viable again.  I’d like to make that game just for pure fun factor – I’d also like to make a shoot ’em up.  However, my second type of dream game would be an awesome casual game that defines a new genre and that everyone loves and that of course makes me loads of money.  Money isn’t evil, contrary to what some people seem to believe, it can be very liberating.  I see nothing wrong in wanting to earn lots as long as you do so ethically, and are generous with it, and realise that money can’t make you happy, only your inner-self can – although money certainly helps! ;-).

What do you think will be a next big thing in casual games?

The classic question.  The next big thing in casual games will be my next game :-) (after the one I’m just finishing now.)  At the moment Hidden Object games still rule but many people are getting into hidden object games with adventure game elements, which is great because I love adventure games.  Also the success of the Build-a-Lot franchise shows that the casual market is ready for strategy/sim games if they are done right, so we may well see an explosion there (it’s already beginning).  Oh and Farm games have been pretty popular this last year (but they won’t become a big thing).  There may be a brand new genre someone is working on right now…

Of course this is just downloadable games I’m talking about.  We’ve also got on-line community based casual games, and they are very popular, and MMO games (soon one is coming out that heavily focuses on Coop games, which I love), and social games, and mobile games, and console games etc.  So there are many things that could be the next big thing but I don’t have a crystal ball so I’m just as excited as you are to find out what happens.

Your best match-3 game, Wizard of Oz is based on a book for kids. Do you think that childish theme hurt sales? A lot of developers says that while casual games should be kids safe it hurts sales when they look like games for kids.

The guy that thought up the idea, Alex Ahlund, realized that a lot of adults in America are very fond of this story and they are probably smack bang in the target market, plus the game was “family friendly”.  It is listed on the BFG match-3 page AND the kids page and got mentioned in some family magazines/radio shows.  The game did pretty well but could have done better.  Perhaps more levels, more features, more polish and a meta-game would have turned it into a mega hit, but it was just taking ages to develop and so we had to release it.  I could probably improve it tons now.

Also, I think my best match-3 is actually Holiday Bonus, it’s more polished in a number of ways.  Both games have sold similar numbers but Oz is ahead by about 1000 units.  This is largely due to Holiday Bonus being a seasonal game, which is generally thought of as a bad idea (limited window for sales) – although I’ve made money from it three Christmases running and the last Christmas was the best (note to self: seriously consider a Gold version or sequel again for 2009).

How do you think the market will look like in 2010? Will indies survive clone and pricing wars?

Yeah good question.  2010 is only 1 year away so I think it will probably look largely the same.  We’ll have even more top quality games being produced in-house by portals and by third-parties that they hire (maybe more Indies like me will have ended up working for portals, especially if I hire them!)  Portal pricing may well alter again as a reaction to Amazon’s entry into the market place, but I hope not.  Indies will need to decide if they should keep their prices higher because they believe that they represent better value (although I don’t think this is true in many cases), or drop them to fall in line with the price-warring portals.  If they do that then they’ll have to work even harder at their marketing strategies.  Certainly we’ll see lots of Indies who’ve never made decent money just give in, sad, but that’s just business – the strongest survive.   Oh and I predict that a new genre will have taken over (or nearly taken over) from Hidden Object games (that’s bold prediction that could land flat on it’s face).

One complete wildcard is the global economy.  Perhaps the US dollar will go crazy, and seeing as most of the casual game business is done in the US at the moment, this could cause massive disruption.  Although, apart from Nexon, the casual game industry seems to be weathering the storm better than mainstream game companies who are laying off staff on a daily basis it seems like.  It could mean that some portals get bought by the stronger ones or even that non-US portals (European or Asian for example) start to grow in stature.

Meanwhile we’ve got the whole online gaming, mobile gaming and console casual gaming stuff going on which I’m a bit more removed from.  But we’ll see growth in many existing and new areas, and some things becoming less popular (like maybe ad driven revenue as people stop spending money advertising due to the economy).  It’s actually a very exciting time to be making games in.  Lots of uncertainty.  I wonder how we’ll all look back on it in say 2011 :-)

If indie team was to hire just one person to improve their newest game, who should that be?

Me, but I’m unavailable, sorry.  Actually the answer is the Indie team needs to hire the person that they are missing!  So if your team is just a programmer and a musician, get an artist.  A good artist can make such a difference to the game and basically eye-candy sells when it’s slapped on a good solid base.  If your team doesn’t have a marketing expert on-board, get one or get a publisher otherwise your game will sink even if it’s great.  If you can program like a master but your game designs stink, get a decent designer!  You could even hire QA staff but hopefully you can get people to beta test it for free.  Also don’t scrimp on sounds and music, these are key elements to giving your game the correct atmosphere.

Sorry I couldn’t name just one person, because it really depends on who is in the team already.  But let’s say for example that most Indie teams are in reality only a single a designer/programmer – then HIRE AN ARTIST.  It makes such a big difference.

We can see a lot of indie games with crap art, but great art alone doesn’t sell the game (unless you’re EA). The bar for casual games has risen a lot. Where is the end?

At the current market size (and low price points) the limit is defined by how much profit you can make after paying for great art, sound and programming.  So maybe the games will not rise above a certain peak of quality and depth until the market grows bigger and companies can afford to invest more money in the hope of greater returns.  Possibly though, if the work can be outsourced to cheaper countries, then you can cram in more quality for the same price, and we might start seeing lots more of that (there’s already a lot happening now).

Also right now some games I’ve seen (like the recent Call of Atlantis (match-3) and Return to Ravenhearst (hidden object/adventure)) seem to have reached a peak of quality.  How do you improve upon that level of visual quality anyway?  It’s already better than many AAA games.  There must also be a point of diminishing returns where you spend more time and money on tiny details that yields basically no extra return.  Many games probably hit that level, and it’s more cost effective just to start a new game.

How indies that don’t have budgets to compete can compete with those games?

By getting out loans or getting investment from venture capitalists, or by teaming up with people who are prepared to work for royalties because their living situation is not pressurised (no mortgage or kids for example).  OR working for a portal as an external developer.  Then the portal spends the money and owns the IP, but you get paid to make it  + royalties – this can make good money (I can say this from first-hand experience of course).  I’m only talking about high gloss casual games here.  If you are making more niche indie games then you can still get away without that top level of polish and make good sales.  But I still feel it’s important to invest good money to see a good return – but make sure you know what you are doing and don’t just end up losing loads of money.  Oh one more thing, you could always make a game with some kind of minimalist graphics style that doesn’t require loads of money, just programming skills, and that might work (until it gets cloned better).

Wow OK so I typed way too much in this interview – I should have been programming!  Thanks for interviewing me, it was fun and I hope that people can take away something useful from it.  Oh and keep an eye out for my next game.  Good luck in 2009 everyone!

Thanks Jake!

You made almost $200k in 2008. That’s pretty impressive for indie developer. My sales are 10 times worse. What have you done to achieve such great sales?

Ahahaha. I didn’t make $200k in 2008. That’s the revenue from direct sales through my main payment provider. I earn other amounts from other deals. And then to find out how much I actually *make* you’d have to subtract all the expenses, and they can be surprisingly high when you actually pay for advertising, and a dedicated server. I guess the way I achieve it is to make games that are not easily copied and cloned, and I put quite a lot of work into promoting them. I also get very into the business side of selling games. if you sell games, and you don’t know which pages on your website have the lowest bounce rates, if you don’t know what the average CPC is for your ads and do A/B testing to increase the CTR…. and much more importantly, if you have no idea WTF I’m talking about, then you are quite simply losing sales to people like me, who study this stuff :D.

Imagine that I know what CTR, A/B testing and all that stuff is… but still my ads are not efficient. Maybe I am just not patient enough? How long do you test them before you pick a winner ad?

It’s a matter of impressions and clicks. not time. If I have 2 ads and one has got 100 clicks and the other got 60 clicks, with the same impressions, I’ll ditch the 60 click ad. That might be a day, or 6 hours, or two weeks.

You are probably one of the very few indie devs that constantly invest in marketing. What is your marketing budget and where do you advertise?

My marketing budget varies, but its basically about 90% of my day to day costs excluding paying contract artists. I probably get through about £450 a month on Google Adwords, and I advertise a fair few other places too. That really adds up. Over the year, you are talking maybe $10,000 on advertising, maybe more. I advertise in absolutely tons of places, but Google gets the lions share.

Does it pay back? A lot of indies complain that advertising is a waste of money?

A lot of indies don’t take the time to really study advertising. My favorite book right now is ‘the advertised mind’ which is like neuroscience for advertisers. You really need to know your stuff. You can’t just throw $100 at the wall and hope it sticks. Also, sometimes ads don’t sell any games, but they give you information. If your ads get 1000 visitors to your site and nobody clicks the demo link, maybe your site design needs work, or you are advertising to the wrong people. It takes literally years of fiddling and tweaking and learning to develop the ad campaign that works for you. I price different keywords for different countries for different days of the week for different ad placements all differently. If you just slap down $100 and say “I’ll pay 12 cents a click for this keyword”, then you are laughably un-optimised.

My biggest problem with Adwords is that even if I get hight CTR (around 3%) people just don’t download – only 1 of 10 or 1 of 5 at best downloads advertised game. If you get better results did you do anything to get them? Did you optimize your download page?

Yes. I use Googles Website Optimiser to do A/B testing. The results are eye opening. In some cases, pages are too simple and people bounce away from it quickly. In other cases, the amount of clutter gives people something to do rather than click download. I found a page where adding a youtube video decreased demo downloads. I had another where listing the awards the game won actually reduced downloads. It’s very game specific. You HAVE to test. Companies test varieties of chocolate bar on customers. Your download button is your chocolate bar.

Do you track your ads? What tools do you use?

Oh yes :D. I track everything with google analytics, and sometimes compare it against awstats data too. Analytics is the best free tool that I know about. Most people use maybe 1% of the features in that software, it can do amazing stuff.

What is the most important feature of Google Analytics then?

The bounce rate is the thing I check most often. After that, I check time spent on site, but I do this per-ad campaign, and per-referrer. A visit from gametunnel is valuable to me. A visit from stumbleupon is nearly worthless. I also do the two metrics stuff a lot, where I can compare the behavior of visitors who actually convert to downloads, versus those who do not.

Do you create your banners on your own? Who gives ideas for them?

I used to use a flash banner artist who did some great ads, a guy I used to work with, but generally I do my own ads. I find that changing the ads often gives a good response, and it’s suprising what works best. I always do LOTS of variants I can tell you, for example, that people are more likely to click on a democracy 2 ad themed around socialists or patriots, than they are around commuters, capitalists or the defence budget.

What are the other places besides Google Adwords that you advertise on?

Ah that would be telling :D

What is your typical day? How many hours do you put into marketing, development, and support?

I am always working, mainly because I love it. Maybe once I move house and get a safer garden I’ll take up more time with archery, but to be honest, my main hobby is writing games, which is also my job.  I start work around 8.30 AM, and will work through to around 7PM, but from then till midnight I’ll occasionally be checking emails and handling support if there isn’t much on TV. I spend a lot more time on business and marketing than most indies. When I *do* code, I can zone out and get lots done very quickly.

You are famous for making a lot of guerrilla marketing, like the one with talking to pirates. What is your favorite trick? Beside getting more eyeballs did you get any sales?

yes it did boost sales, but although nobody ever believes me, it was a genuine question and not a PR stunt. PR stunts can work, but they have to be tied in to your games. A discount on inauguration day works for me, because it makes sense in the context of the game. I’ve made games that have some kind of ‘story’ and ‘angle’ to them in PR terms. If you make a match3 game, you really don’t have any way to leverage it as PR.

You sell Democracy 2 for $24.95, but Kudos 2 for just $14.95 and RockLegend for as low as $9.95? Why?

These prices maximise my revenue. Trust me, I tested it :D

I had to click “buy it” links to check out your games prices. Do you think that it helps you sell more games this way?

Possibly. There is some chance that you increase the emotional connection with going through with the purchase by making them click, so they are already closer to a sale once they see the price. I’m not sure about that, because it’s an extra step in the process. I do it because it makes managing price changes and discounts easier.

What will be your next game? When we can expect it?

It still doesn’t 100% have a name yet. It’s a bit of a departure for me in some ways. It’s a space battle management simulator thing. basically you configure a big space fleet and go kick alien ass. It’s not an RTS, at least not yet, and it’s not really turn based either. I’m still a bit nervous about whether my idea for how it works is genius or madness, so I might chicken out and make it a bit of an RTS too. It will be done ‘in 2009′.

Who will survive in the casual game business in 2010?

Big Fish Games, Popcap.
I think I’ve got the full list there.

Really? That’s a scary scenario. Not much developers on that list. Who will make all those games for “a new game everyday” idea at BFG?

BFG.
If I owned BFG, I’d buy all the developers that make my top ten games, and ignore the rest. Thats why I listed Popcap. They are possibly too big to be bought. Maybe there will be a few other devs working for 10% royalties, but they will be part timers or Eastern Europeans.

What is the most important thing for indie developer to do?

Sell your games. Don’t expect other people to sell them. Read a few books on business, marketing and advertising. This stuff is just as important as learning pointers and vertex buffers. In fact it’s much more important.

Can you name three must have books for those that lack business, marketing and advertising skills?

‘The Advertised Mind’
‘Predictably Irrational’
‘The Long Tail’

I recommend watching Dragons Den, if you are in a country that shows it on TV. I’ve read the biographies of most of the dragons, and they are an interesting read too :D

Has portal sales hurt your direct sales?

In some cases yes. In other cases no. It depends a lot on pricing. The danger is that portals undercut you. Not all portals will do that, and you can discuss this with some of them. Some portals just insist on having total freedom to sell your game at whatever price they want, and just give you a percentage. Nobody should do deals like that, and I don’t do them now I’m older and wiser. Thankfully I can tell portals where to stuff their contracts if I don’t like them, and I’ve done it more than once :D.

Do you think there is a win-win solution for portals wars issue?

A win-win for developers too? I don’t see one. Not in casual gaming. The portals have defined the market as being controlled by subscriptions to big publisher websites. The problem is the developers have no leverage, because they are all scared to turn down portal deals. Not only that, the devs help to fuel the situation by actively working as the affiliate arm of the big portals. At this point, the devs only have themselves to blame. My hat is off to Reflexive. They are like Valve, they saw the portalisation coming and made a quick transition to being a publisher. Maybe more devs should have done that. I probably should have.

It seems that you have pretty active forum on your website. How important that forum is for your website? Is it something you would recommend for developers to add to their site?

It’s great, once there are posters, but it’s a lot of maintenance. It’s worth doing, but you need to make a game that will encourage discussion. Modding really helps, and they are a must for strategy games. I think more relevantly, I recommend designing a game where forums are a natural side effect of the design.

Roman: Please introduce yourself and Enkord.

Yaroslav: I am Yaroslav Yanovsky, the man in charge behind our team. I started Enkord in 2003 being a one man company and then grew it up to 10 people with aim to make small downloadable games. Our initial success was with niche shooter game called Clash’N Slash, then we’ve moved to traditional portal stuff like match-3, but after releasing like ten projects we decided to go back to drawing board and make something never done before, therefore Totem Tribe and GUNROX are those games we wanted to make.

Enkord released two pretty unique games recently – Gunrox and Totem Tribe. You can’t find any of these type on casual game portals – why did you decide to abandon casual market?

Casual market is really crowded, but it’s not the main problem for me. The problem that I’ve become bored there – I joined game development business because I wanted to have a lot of fun while making money and lately that fun factor started to decline as you were forced to make clones with good production values in order to make money. Therefore we decided to focus on our own audience.

Totem Tribe seems to be simplified RTS. Do you think that casual players are ready for that?

I think they are quite ready fom something different than flood of hidden object and time management titles. I haven’t been checking portals for a year and now when I checked them again – nothing changed much – same old story. So yeah! Players are ready for light RTS, like Totem Tribe, as long as you keep it casual enough. And to back my words up you can google for Totem Tribe discussions – this game spawned a lot of talking barely been released and people love our new approach.

What about Gunrox – will it be ever released on portals? What is your strategy to monetize this game?

I would happily release this game on any portal, but the truth is – all hell will break loose before they will accept it. Portals are ultra-protective about their customers and they will treat releasing MMO as a breach in their customer protection even if we hide away all external URLs leading to our site. I hope we will find some good partners to push this game forward, but unlikely it will be casual game portals of any sort. We monetize this game through free-to-play model selling virtual items and so far it been doing quite well, our ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) was around $1.5 last time I checked.

Who do you count as active Gunrox user/player?

Player that logged in at least once during last month.

Can you tell us how many active users Gunrox has? And what is your plan?

I can’t talk about amount of active users cause I have to ask our tech guys to fetch precise data for me but we have several thousands active users and 100-200 players online constantly.

How do you plan to keep those users active? MMO without community is boring.

The GUNROX game itself is main community building factor and this is what I meant by talking about community. Of course we have website that constantly updates, vocal forums, etc.

Gunrox and Totem Tribe is your aim to build dedicated community, but I don’t see any community features on your website – why?

You should look at www.gunrox.com, we are yet to redesign enkord.com.

You plan to be portal independent – how strong are your direct sales and how long did it take for you to get them to that level? What was the key factor to it?

We did a lot of different stuff for the last several years to build traffic to enkord.com, but the main incentive for users is good games of course. With GUNROX we used our previous user base to jump-start player base.

Enkord offers quite interesting affiliate programs. Tell us more about them? Is it worth going beyond setting up a contract in Plimus?

Let me put it other way around – it’s worth trying a lot of different things, not just sitting around and waiting for something. So improving affiliate program over default cookie stuff our e-commerce offers was just one of those steps to encourage other people to promote our games. We don’t expect it to blow your socks off, it’s just one of those numerous steps you need to do to spread your game.

What is your take on casual portals wars?

That’s natural with increasing flood of games, and that’s one of the reasons we decided to focus on our own audience. We don’t want to rely on portals, that’s why we tried ourselves in community building with our GUNROX MMO game and so far we have high hopes on that game.

Would you mind to give any advice for starting indies?

I think best platform for starting indie is Flash hands down. Make a really good flash game and spread it over. You can put some ads in it to monetize, or you can cooperate with some more established developers like us that can help you with both monetizing and developing the game. Contact me at yaroslav@enkord.com if you do.

And for those that already released a game or two?

After releasing a game you will have experience behind your back. You will be able to understand what you can do and what you cant. You can try making a portal game, but it probably has to be a precise clone, or you can make something niche. If you will take a second route – think about how to build and keep community around the game. Community is golden if you will decide to make it true indie style.

And last but not least for the fans of your games – why mushrooms?

Why not? They look funny and add some light fantasy appeal. You can find them in many video games – Morrowind, Maple Story, Super Mario Bros. And people love mushrooms too :)

Update: I removed the paragraph about Gunrox being the first indie MMO. As my readers pointed out, I was wrong.