Sell More Games

Gaming industry is global. That’s why we create games in English. To maximize the chance that the person that plays your game will understand it. But just because people can undrestand what your game is “saying” doesn’t mean they wouldn’t prefer to play it in their’s native language.

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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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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Three weeks after the launch I can say a little bit more about Runes of Avalon 2 performance, as well as Stoneloops! of Jurassica performance on the Big Fish Games top 100 chart. Both games for most of the time have been climbing up, but few days ago started to fall on the chart. That’s too bad when you prove one of your not optimistic theories with one of your games. We didn’t get into top 10, so it looks like our games will fade away. It’s just a question of time.

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?

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Making the game is difficult, getting it on portals is even more difficult. Just look at two replies that my friends and I received from two different portals that we don’t want to name publicly.

While there is nothing technically wrong with the game (it is quite beautiful in fact), the core rotational mechanic makes the gameplay a bit unforgiving and stressful so we will be passing on distribution at this time.

The rotational piece mechanic to make matches is simple enough but as pieces are improperly placed the difficulty ramps up quickly and the game becomes much more difficult by orders of magnitude. This means that players can easily become frustrated though they are simply looking for a game that gives them a bit of relaxation during their normal work day.

That’s about Runes of Avalon 2. I always admire people that are able to say our audience is too stupid too play this game is such a nice way. I don’t blame them for it, but it makes me laugh.

The next one is even better, but sooo scarring

In fact we haven’t played your game at all and we know it could be of high quality. We just looked at how it performed on BigFish and decided that launching it is not worth the effort – especially if we can have plenty of better performing hidden object games to launch.

It’s about Stoneloops! of Jurassica. I read about it on Maciej’s blog.

You better contact all portals at once otherwise you’re risking getting same reply. You see, both games are great and would easily make it into top 10… but not today, when match-3 and marble-popper genres are not so popular anymore.

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