Sell More Games

I’m working on a new game. A game with new gameplay mechanic. Maybe not the whole new genre, but something that hasn’t been done this way in this genre. The thing is that I am really tired of this experimenting. A lot of indies want to create innovative games and a lot of them blames others for making clones. But if you are just starting your game development career… if you don’t want to get frustrated by trying solutions that for most of the time don’t work… if you don’t have a strong team and faith in your project…

Just don’t do it.

Find a game that you like to play and would like to develop and clone it. Really! It’s so much easier and you’ll get things done so much quickier. And when you’re small, you shouldn’t waste to much time on research. It’s not that you won’t be able to develop new and fun gameplay mechanic, but the chances are minimal… and you’ll either find it on the first try or give up in the middle of the project.

This is my third innovative game (after Runes of Avalon and Pony World). We will make it fun. It’s fun already, but can you imagine how much effort it took to make it fun? How many times I wanted to quit and would quit if my partners didn’t push on me to move further?

Generally, innovative games are too risky… but may be also very rewarding as everything that is risky (have you put your savings in stocks lately?). What’s your take on this?

(2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)

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I haven’t posted for how many days? I don’t even know and don’t want to check. I haven’t for so long that people started to worry…

In the beginning of my blogging experience I decided that I’ll post only when I’ve got something valueable to say. And for couple of days it was the reason I wasn’t posting. You can’t get new results or experiments in just couple of days. But then interesting things started to happen, but I still haven’t posted. Well, after another google dance almost all my websites has been hit with new low Page Rank. For unknown reason this blog went down to 0 (zero!) from 3. ANAWIKI main site went downt to 3 from strong 5. And I was expecting a rise in Page Rank. That really put me off from bloggin for quite a while.

Another thing is that March was really bad in terms of sales at some channels. Not that much in direct sales, but after nice spike in February sales in March were disasterous. I’m happy that March is over because April and May sales look so much better.

It’s about time to start posting again. It’s about time to realese new game… but my current game will not be released for 2-3 months at least. Maybe it’s time to release another freebie.

It’s time to work harder… there’s a beatiful car that I want to buy and it’s easier to buy one when your pocked is full of cash ;-)

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Sales stats are always interesting to watch. This time I decided to repost sales stats of Pure Sudoku from Mochek (he posted them on Indiegamer Forums). Highlights are mine. Comments below.

Pure Sudoku was released in January 2006. Initially it was a completely free game, I added functionality and then I made a deluxe version for sale (the old school shareware model!). Simultaneously I have made improvements to the free version, maybe this has harmed overall sales but I think it made marketing easier.

I’ve made several versions over the years, the latest being released in December 2008.

It’s sold 640 copies over it’s life, mostly at the price point of $9.99. For the next few weeks I’m experimenting with a $5.99 price point.

The Free Version of the game has been downloaded around 250,000 times over the years (mostly from download.com where I host the file, and another 50,000 from various download sites and the early days when I hosted the game on my site.) Currently it is downloaded about 2000 times a week.

The original version took me about 1 month to make part time with Game Maker. Add another month, maybe 2 months of part time development work for improvements over the years.

My marketing efforts have included putting the game on as many download sites as possible and sending so many emails to get the game reviewed or linked to it’s unbelievable. On Google.com if you search for Free Sudoku I’m in the top 10. Add another 2 or 3 months (part time) for this marketing effort.

Of those who download the free version about 2000 to 2200 appear on the deluxe (purchased version) information page. Hence the price reduction experiment.

In January the game sold 21 copies and February 27 copies. It generally hovers between 20 to 25 copies each month at this point and seems pretty consistent for a while now. I guess this consistency is an advantage of being popular for a half decent search term.

I also make a little extra money using Google Adsense – worth maybe the equivalent of 2 or 3 extra sales each month.

And finally if any body wants to exchange links please email. I’ve learned that marketing efforts never really end.

The most important thing in the whole post I marked red. Marketing never ends and if you continue to do it your game will continue to sell. His post also shows that it’s better to have something small finished then something big in production forever.

(1 votes, average: 1.00 out of 5)

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When Reflexive announced price drop of all games to $9.99 (or less in some cases) I was really curios how will that affect sales. $9.99 price point is nothing new in casual gamas market. Some portals sell for less and outsell Reflexive by volume, though not necessairly by revenue (at least not that much). After few days Russell Carroll reported that Reflexive observes much higher conversion rates. That’s great to hear, but does it make up for the loss of revenue?

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(4 votes, average: 4.75 out of 5)

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