Sell More Games

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.

If I would have to name developer friendly portals, Reflexive would be on one of the top positions. Now, after release of Runes of Avalon 2 I can say that they are not only a portal that let’s you earn quite good percentage of sales price.

Do you need an e-commerce provider? Well, if you sell on your own for sure you need one. I use eSellerate, some use Plimus, a lot of developers uses BMT Micro and many others. But this may change… because if you set up affiliate account and sell your own game through it you can earn 90% of sales price, which usually is $19.95. That’s one of the lowest rates in the industry.

But that’s not all. Since they wrap your games (without putting Reflexive splash screen) you don’t have to worry about DRM. Forget about home made solutions, forget about Software Password.

And last but not least, you can use it as hosting service. No more worries about bandwidth.

The best thing about using Reflexive?

Read the rest of this entry »

This was very interesting week for me. I could watch closely release of two games that I cared about: Runes of Avalon 2 (my own game) and Stoneloops! of Jurassica (game made by friends from Codeminion). Both games are of similar high quality, as you probably already know. Well, the week has passed. We haven’t broken into the top10…

At first, I thought we will struggle to hold in the top 100 chart, but it wasn’t so bad. Actually, beside one day both games have been climbing up in the top 100 chart. Runes of Avalon 2 reached position #45 today, and Stoneloops! made it to #56. RoA 2 made it to the position #4 in match-3 games, Stoneloops is #2 marble-popper.

What was interesting to see is the #3 position that Stoneloops have held for almost a week and a correlation with the top 100 chart. So while for all this time it was #3 marble popper, it was ranked between #117 and #63 position in the top 100 chart. No change in it’s own category, but a shift of 54 spots in the top 100.

Here’s the snapshot of match-3 top games. I hope that Runes 2 will continue to move up on this rank.

Runes of Avalon 2 also launched at Reflexive (same day) . So far it have made it to position #36 for PC Games and #14 for Mac games (browse by top sellers).

May the sales be with us, little developers :)

On April 15th 2008, Big Fish Games released Runes of Avalon 2 (RoA 2). This event led me to watch the top 100 chart even more closely than I did before and brought me to a few interesting conclusions. Now I am sure that whether you “get in the top 10 or die” is even less correlated with how high the production values of your game are or how polished it is. It is strongly correlated with… game genre.

Stoneloops! of Jurassica launched one day before Runes of Avalon 2. This game was developed by my friends at Codeminion so I watched both releases very closely.

Both Stoneloops! and RoA 2 have very high production values and are very polished. RoA 2 was put in the match-3 category, Stoneloops! in the marble poppers category.

The top 100 chart is updated daily. Stoneloops! debuted on 81st place. The next day RoA 2 debuted on 73rd place, but Stoneloops! fell out of the top 100 chart. After another day RoA dropped 8 spots to 81st place, but Stoneloops! made it back into the top 100 chart with a climb of 27 places (ranked at #90). One day later RoA 2 made it back to position #73 and Stoneloops! peaked to #81.

While I was happy that we stayed in top 100, I was wondering how high both games are ranked in assigned genres. To my surprise… they ranked quite highly. Stoneloops! is the #3 game amongst marble poppers. RoA 2 was #7 amongst match-3 games, then #10, and then #6. That was quite a shock to me. Games ranked at #3 in the marble poppers category can sell worse than games ranked at #7 or even #10 in the match-3 game category.

The top 3 marble games are (as of April 16):

The top 10 match-3 games (as of April 16):

While the #1 marble popper and #1 match-3 games are ranked on very similar positions, the #2 marble popper sells a lot worse than the second and third highest ranked match-3 games. Its potential is close to the fourth place match-3 game. The #3 marble popper sales are even worse… its sales potential is about equal to the #13 match-3 game. To make things look even worse, Stoneloops was the #3 marble popper on April 15, but was not even in the top 100 chart.

So lets check some other genres. The #1 brain-teaser game (IQ: Identity Quest) is ranked at just #51 on the top 100 (peak at #35), the second (JigSaw365) is at #65 (peak at #6), and #3 is… not on the top 100 chart.

Are you working on the best platformer game right now? I’ve got bad news for you. The #1 platformer game - Supercow - is not on the top 100 chart. #2 (Super Granny 4, which I have heard was a successful game) is not on this list either…

Hottest genres?
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I check Google Analytics every day. I want to know what’s happening. The good thing about GA is that they update it daily (just daily), so you can’t get too addicted.

Today, for the first time my site conversion was over 1%. Site, not game. That means that 1 of each 100 visitors, not downloaders bought a game from my site, or actually… bought one of my games, since I don’t track affiliate sales in GA.

1.01% site conversion is an average for last 30 days (little update, next day it went up to 1.05%). You can see on the graph it peaks to as high as 2%. Unfortunately there are still days where I sell nothing.

The good thing is that site conversion was not correlated with number of visitors. It means that even in peak times those were quality visits. Obviously, site conversion is correlated with your games conversion. So the better your games convert, the better your site converts.

Interesting peaks
April 1st, Tuesday - 2.17% - well, that was April Fools day - I don’t know if that’s just coincidence but I posted a joke on that day that prices for all my games will rise 10x next day :)

March 23rd, Sunday - 1.96% - I send out newsletters on March 20th

April 4th, Friday - 1.75%

April 8th, Sunday - 1.58%

March 16th, Sunday - 1.39% - well, Sunday is just the day for buying stuff online.

While Sundays have usually high conversion rates it doesn’t mean that I have highest volume of sales on this day. The most busy day is usually Saturday.

When you go to the Big Fish Games website don’t you feel depressed? Almost every game there is a hidden-object game… at least that’s the first impression. But I bet you’ll be surprised when I tell you that hidden-object games state only 35% of top 100 games. Still, it is the largest group. Here’s a full break down of top 100 games on Big Fish Games.

I put all action, strategy, RPG and other games that doesn’t fit into 4 major categories categories.

There are also two interesting colums on the list: peak and weeks in. I was very curious what is the lowest peak for a game to get into top 100. If you are aiming to make an average game you better give up before you become disappointed… or change your thinking and aim higher.

Wonder what is average peak position for games in top 100? Try to guess… Read the rest of this entry »

My last post: “Save 90% on ANAWIKI GAMES” was an April Fools joke. I am sure that no one (that is not out of his mind), including me, is going to fight piracy by increasing prices. Though I thought it suits April Fools perfectly I decided to give it a shot. A lot of people seemed to like it.

It was  also an example of guerilla marketing. I doubt we sold a single game due to this trick, but I am sure it did bring some attention to ANAWIKI (still, we broke the record of sales in one day, but it was probably the effect of last week PR).

Did you make any April Fools jokes?

That’s right, you can save 90% on ANAWIKI GAMES. How’s that possible? Well…

Due to increasing piracy and development costs we decided to rise prices of all our games by 1000% (so it’s 10 times) since April 2nd 2008. We understand that the price rise is quite big so I decided to give you the last chance to buy our games at regular price and save 90% of what you would pay tomorrow. Here’s what you can get:

Runes of Avalon 2 & 1
Pony World
Maggie the Gardener 2
Tom’s Hen House

Don’t wait until tomorrow. This might be your last chance to buy one of our games.

Yesterday I had to run to my post office to pickup a parcel. I had about 10 minutes to find the nearest ATM machine, withdraw the money and comeback to post office. I did it, but man, I was soo tired after all this running. The thing is I haven’t run such a long distance for 5 years or so.

I noticed one thing - before I started to run I said to myself - man, that road is so long. But when I made my first step, then another, then started to run I realized that it’s actually not so long and that it’s getting shorted with each step.

I wish I could say the same about game developmet. Sometimes I believe it takes forever to complete a game. Especially, when your game looks like ready, when all you have to do is just add a popup or two, polish one or few things, adjust levels difficulty. Each day I say: just one more day. But then it happens that we missed the deadline by 40 days. Or more. It is so demotivating when you can’t say it’s ready, but it looks like it is.

The problem is - you cannot skip it. You either get in top 10 on portals or die.

I am sure you’ve heard the 5th Symphony of Beethoven: taa-taa-taa-taammm. The initial motif of the symphony has sometimes been credited with symbolic significance as a representation of Fate knocking at the door. Well, two weeks ago it knocked at my door.

Apple seems to like my games. Everytime I submit our game to Apple downloads it is rated high and gets good coverage. I have also found out that Apple stuff tries to find good software on their own. That’s how they picked Path of Magic (after PR). But somehow they found out about Pony World, added it to their catalogue and made it featured game for kids.

In the first day we received over 2000 downloads and it didn’t dried off quickly. But we received just one! order. Imagine my shock and disappointment. When your game gets 0.02% CR it is a dissaster.

The problem is - the game was not fully ready to be launched. We added it to our catalog to get players feedback, but without pushing it to hard to the crowds. It was also Mac Intel only.

Once Apple featured us we quickly released Universal Binaries and fixed 2 or 3 bugs. That made a trick. CR increased to 0.5%. It’s not a good one, but it’s soo much better than 0.02%. I knew that the game may not sell like fire… that’s why we’ve been working on Pony World Deluxe for last 3 months. Still, 0.02% is something hard to believe for a game like Pony World.

It shows that Power PC has still very big share on Macs. Don’t even try to fool yourself with Mac Intel only release. It will not get you far.

It also shows that you never know when or who can feature you - and once it happen - you better be ready!