At Reflexive we have always prided ourselves on maintaining good relationships with everyone in the industry, and are excited that Amazon shares that philosophy. We intend to provide the best distribution platform anywhere, and to continue working openly with all the participants of the casual games space. Together it is our priority to continue this inclusive attitude going forward.

What this means for all you developers is that it’s time to get excited about your future with Reflexive. We can’t talk about everything yet, but we’ll be in touch shortly with more information. All of the features that you know and love about GameCenterSolution will still be available to you now and in the future, and you can continue to submit games through the Reflexive site. If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us at developersupport@gamecentersolution.com.

We look forward to continuing our commitment to offering a broad selection of casual games for customers and to providing the best support to all our partners. We are unbelievably excited to continue working to enhance the online casual gaming experience, for both gamers and game developers.

This is a very exciting day for the entire Reflexive team and community; we are thrilled to be joining the Amazon family. Thanks for your continued support and stay tuned for great things to come.

Sincerely,

Lars Brubaker
CEO
Reflexive Entertainment, Inc.

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I went off-line on September 1st. The first days have been quite hard. I had to finish couple of on-line tasks but without access to Internet it was very difficult. I could check email via dial-up and GMail but answering emails was very time consuming due to low Internet connection speed.

After few days it was clear that without faster Internet connection I will waste time and money. You have to answer support emails and maintain regular business communication. I decided to get ADSL 256kbps, but instead of unlimited access with flat fee I signed up for per hour charge.

Now it’s clear to me that you can survive, but you have to forget about on-line tools. Forget about GMail, about reading forums, doing a lot of guerrilla marketing. It’ll be easier for you if you focus just on game development. Going off-line will increase your productivity a lot (that’s why I tried to go off-line).

I will not be on-line until mid December… at least until that day I won’t have unlimited Internet access. Hopefully my sales will not dry more that they already did.

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I hate advertising because I always feel like the only one that earns money is the Ad Server.  Even if clicks or impressions are not soo expensive it is hard to turn them into profits. Why? Games are either too cheap or too expensive.

But I read a book about AdWords and it gave me some inspiration. I also noticed that Pony World has quite good visitor to download ratio - over 40% of visitors download the game. With that ratio maybe it will not to that hard to turn AdWords into profits?

I created two ad variations for selected keywords and set up a daily budget of a little over $10. And today I got the results (that’s what I love about AdWords - almost instant results).

My ads received 90 clicks total: 51 for ad variation #1and 39 for ad variation #2. CTR for those ads: 1.55% for #1 and 1.22% for #2. Not so bad,  especially one you show it by keywords: the best CTR is 10.38% and the lowest one is 0.77%. The lowest one represents most of impressions and clicks.

Because that’s just 90 clicks I don’t know if it’s profitable yet or not, but we can do some estimations. Let’s go to Google Analytics and check if those clickers download the game. This is where we face first disappointment. Only 19.48% of clickers downloads the game. It’s still much better than what I had for Runes of Avalon campaign where only 11% of visitors downloaded the game.

If Pony World Deluxe has 1% CR (download to sale) then I need 100 downloads to sell one game. And I need 513 clicks to get 100 downloads. 513 clicks will cost me over $68. And I get only $17 out of each sale, so each sale makes me a loss of $51.

Judging just by those numbers you can for sure say that advertising is a waste of money. And it is if you do it wrong. It is if you aim short term. It is if you don’t tweak your ads, your game and your game description web page. It is if you don’t increase your visitor value.

It takes time to turn advertising into profits. Most people are not patient enough.

I made some tweaks to my ads and will do for at least few more days. If I can see improvements then I’ll keep advertising until I make a profit or run out of money :D

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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:

I think there are two separate issues in the article presented as one.
1 - It’s more difficult to make money on casual games
2 - It’s more difficult to make money on games with ‘New kinds of game play’

I think 1 is true to a point, but not for the reasons mentioned.
I disagree with 2 as well, but just because I think it’s always been next to impossible to have experimental game play and make money at the same time. Most experiments fail, it’s part of life.

Some misconceptions that despite saying the same thing over and over again, no-one seems to listen to.

- The portals launch a wide variety of game types.
(For 2006-2007 on Reflexive for example, HO, Match-3 and Click Management accounted for 28% of the new games, meaning 72% were something else. HOWEVER, 40% of the revenue came from those game types and 58% of our Revenue growth came from those game types. If you do the math it means you did better making one of those games than anything else…taken as an aggregate it was safer…but in that same aggregate you see MOST of the games on the portals didn’t fit into that group).

- The portals launch a wide variety of game types.(not a typo)
Take a look at BFG last month and you’ll find everything from crazy indie game Bloom Busters to platformer Turtix 2 to quirky sports title Elf Bowling to a few ‘different’ puzzle games: World Mosaics (picross) & Space Journey. On Reflexive for the last month we had games like Starscape, Laser Dolphin, Oval Office & Depths of Peril (mac). The issue isn’t variety in catalog. The issue is that most of that variety isn’t selling well. However, I state again, that ‘original’ doesn’t usually sell well. Original needs friends and word-of-mouth and can become huge mega-hits, but typically it’s ignored because it is original. Perhaps the portals are the cause for that (though this goes beyond just the casual games industry). I can’t speak for other portals, but for Reflexive’s part we work hard to get original content…and are sad when it doesn’t sell. I too believe it will come back to bite the industry in the behind, but so far our approach of diversifying hasn’t shown that it is grabbing a different customer. Despite our best intent and wishes. Still we continue to carry original because we like it .

So that said, I do agree that it is getting harder, in some ways, to make money. Some of that is self-induced as we narrowly define what the casual market is. If you define the casual market as the portals, then you have to know what type of customers you have on the portals. If you want to make a game for those customers (again assuming you understand them, which many people don’t), you have a great audience who is ready to buy!

If you don’t want to make games for that customer type (the portal customer type), you will sell a few copies, maybe even the 3k Lloyd suggests, but you will have a harder time making money. Think of it as trying to sell helicopters or bicycles at a car dealership. Some people will be intrigued and buy one, but that isn’t why the person went to the car dealership. They went for a car. If you try to sell a car at a car dealership, you’ll see higher sales.

That doesn’t mean the sky is falling or that it’s good to hate on casual games because they are successfully selling and those same customers don’t want to buy your games.

It just means you need to decide what you are doing and do it. It means the casual portals might not have your customer and you need to find them or make games for customers who have already been found. You can be successful doing a lot of things, but that doesn’t mean everything you want to do can be successful.

Many here have mentioned going for a different market. I think there is some sense to that, though I don’t envy the journey, it’s by no means as easy, in my mind, as going after a known audience.

Keep that in mind just in case you want to make a living developing games. I do.

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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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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.

(click to enlarge)

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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Market review

Big Fish Games is one of the biggest, if not the biggest casual game portal. It’s one of my favorite portals. It’s easy to navigate, delivers wide variety of games, is great to work with and very responsive. They’re not afraid to risk the launch of new genres or not so casual games. There’s just one problem with BFG - their game club which offers games at discounted price of as low as $6.99. But is it really a problem?

It looks like other players in the market starts to think so. What’s more, Big Fish Games is very successful at getting exclusive deals, mostly short-period. And that’s another thing that bothers other players. Some portals start to send threats to developers - if you give even short-time exclusive to BFG we won’t launch your game. You can read more about it at The good BIG bad FISH exclusive GAMES… in Maciek’s blog. Initially I was very upset about it. But let’s take a closer look at possible scenarios.

The end of exclusive deals?

If developers take seriously threats of all other portals then Big Fish Games will not have as many exclusives as it has now. Will it help us get more sales? I doubt - other portals will sell your game as they do now, without any extra promotion, and Big Fish Games will not give your game marketing push that would help you sell more games. Will other portals earn more dollars for you if you don’t give an exclusive to BFG? Will be offset possible earning from exclusive deal?

But are exclusive deals really a problem for other portals? Do you know how hard it is to launch your game simultaneously on all portals? Do you know how long it takes for portals to accept or reject your game? When I was launching Runes of Avalon 2 guess who was the first to accept my game? Yes, Big Fish Games and… Oberon. The problem with Oberon is that we stuck in the negotiation of distribution deal (I just can’t accept payments after 60 days of receiving money). Who launched the game first? Big Fish Games! Followed immediately by Reflexive. Two month later no other portal launched the game yet and some have all the materials needed to do so.

So guys, why are you afraid of those exclusives? You can’t launch games soon enough to compete with Big Fish Games anyway. You say that developers should launch first at portals that sell at full price. Don’t blame us - we usually contact each portal at the same time. That’s your fault that you can’t launch our game soon enough.

Or the end of other portals?

Let’s say Big Fish Games takes it seriously and to offset possible loss of sales at other portals will give us (developers) a little bit better terms. We don’t get our games on other portals, but get stronger marketing push at BFG.

And now comes interesting part - BFG offers exclusives to all top selling games. So ask yourself, smart guy in charge of the portal ABC, what games are you going to launch? All top sellers are already taken! So-so performers? Is it going to help your portal compete with Big Fish Games? I strongly doubt it.

Do you think I will cry that my game is not published at smaller portals? Those that according to my publisher reports sell less than 50 copies in the initial month? I will not.

Find a better solution!

If you want to compete with Big Fish Games you better offer better service to game developers. Don’t have them wait 3 weeks for a reply. Provide us better sales. Give players (customers) a reason to pay premium. Do you read game forums, review sites at all? I doubt, because you would not come up with such a stupid strategy if you do. If a game is good, most people comment it: “I can’t wait until it launches at BFG so I can get it via my game club”. If someone is already a member of BFG game club will most probably not buy from others.

We already face a huge risk developing our games at our own cost. We don’t want to take part in wars between portals.

Don’t be evil, be smart. Read Seth Godin, maybe this will help you find strategy that works instead of strategy that is going to hurt your business.

For us developers it is just one more argument to build our own strong direct sales channel. That’s the thing you can count on. It takes time, but time will pass anyway.

To higher sales!

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If you haven’t already localized your games, then start doing it now. While we still get most of our sales from English speaking territories, it looks like German, French and Spanish speaking territories can earn you a few more bucks. The good thing is that Big Fish Games will help you translate your game into German, French, Spanish and Japan (for free, but it’s up to them to decide whether they’ll do it or not). Casual games are not text heavy so it shouldn’t be that hard to get your game translated.

Those markets are not soo crowded so it is much easier to stand out and get into the Top 100 or even Top 10 charts. Runes of Avalon 2 launched on June 9, 2008 on BigFishGames.de and made much bigger impact on the site than it had on global BFG website. Some say they like match-3 games in Germany, but my guess is that it is smaller market and new games due to the spike of sales during launch have it easier to get high positions. Runes of Avalon 2 got into Top 10 and reached position #9, while on BFG.com it has reached “just” #32.

Another good thing about European versions of your game is that those games are sold to game club members for 5.99 EUR which converts to a little bit more than 9 USD (instead of 6.99 USD) so actually you’re earning 30% more. Most probably you would not be able to get into those markets on your own (do you have a dedicated website for each language?) so it doesn’t hurt your own direct sales.

I don’t know yet how much you can earn on those language versions, but I am sure it’s less than you can earn on English version (global vs local market). Still, it’s worth getting those extra bucks.

Another good thing is that once you get translated version of your game it can be much easier for you to get a retail publisher for that market.

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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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It may take a little bit longer for Stoneloops! because it still holds position #2 on marble poppers list, while ROA 2 moved from #2 on match-3 list to #10.

Interesting observations?

Most of the games that reach the top 100 chart fall down on the list the second day after release.

Popular game icon - It doesn’t matter how high your game will get on the list unless it does it quick. If it doesn’t get into top 35 next day after release it will never get it.

If you are not so sure about your game sales potential (read - it is not time management or hidden object) better contact all portals simultaneously. Otherwise you risk that other portals will not even play your game - they will just look at the Big Fish Games top100 chart and if it doesn’t do well they pass on it. Maciej from Codeminion has written great post about it.

Here is a day by day graph of both games performance on the top 100 chart:

In the last few days Stoneloops! kept higher position than Runes of Avalon 2. In the short run it is better to be a match-3 game, but in the long run it may be better to keep #2 position in marble poppers than #10 or lower in match-3 games.

Well, Runes of Avalon 2 had it’s days of glory… or actually one day ;-) It reached position #2 in match-3 genre. And it was so close to become #1. Hidden Wonders kept falling down, Runes 2 kept climbing up, but then Treasures of the Ancient Cavern have been released and outperformed our game. Too bad for us.

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