http://www.steampowered.com/

Half Life 2 will be sold through retail BUT ALSO ONLINE, with the STEAM system developed by Valve Itself.

What's happening? I didn't believe they would act so soon...! :mad:

So seems that COMMERCIAL games are moving toward the digital delivery system too.

Well for sure no one of us will be able to compete with those BIG names... :(

I think you are right, when it's about FPS, car games etc. But I doubt when it's about puzzles, card games. I am a bit afraid, that if the big companies are investing more in online delivering of demo's & complete games, they can be arranged as a serious competitor. For indies developing RPG/Adventure/3D Platform games/ FPS/Car action/Simulations/Strategy and realtime strategy there will be more serious competition. This is bad news.

Yes, and it is even a more bad news for publisher (retail ones).

It was a smart move from Valve: they're gonna get about double earning selling it online than with a normal retail distributor!

it's a nice start but you've gotta remember quite a few people are still on 56k modems so its not quite competing with indies who generally stick to less than 10mb downloads...

Things should start to get interesting as soon as everybody starts to catch up and broadband becomes the minimum connection over the majority of the world.

I can always see a market for our type of games, it's just making sure you get a slice of it which looks like we'll all have to up our production values in a few years. The advantage being of course by then we should be able to get away with larger demos if need be ;)

I'm pretty sure buying HL2 through Steam is going to be a big nightmare for anyone who tries it. Talk about choked servers.

I think that we don't have to be afraid when we continue developing traditional casual games like puzzle action, puzzle character, board games, arcade games, casino games and platform side scrollers. But I am afraid that for RTS/Strategy, RPG, Adventure, FPS, vehicle games etc. it will be a bit difficult, if this method will continue (and be a succes) by the big developmentstudio's. I agree that it will also be a difficult time for retail publishers/distributors.

To be honest, I'm not too worried.

First, I reckon HL2 will be in the house of 1GB, I don't know many ppl will be able to download this. Low speed and limited bandwidth will cut much of the world.

Second, the game will still cost 35-50 bucks for sure. It may have some appeal, but will still be a costy game that has no manuals or cds over a game that is 5 bucks more expensive but has a nice box, cds and manuals.

Third, Valve's Steam Engine is nothing new, and players never picked it up, don't see much success them doing it now.

Fourth, I don't think big games really compete with small ones, online or not. There is room for budget game in shelves along with the big ones, and for sure there is space online for it to. I don't think that the target audiences overlap that much for one to be directly competing with the other, not to mention the fact it is much easier to make a compulsive buy for a 15 bucks product than for a 45 one.

Fifth, I don't like half life !!! ;p

I've been figuring on this for a couple years now... The future of indies will probably change, along with the rest of the industry.

Online game streaming systems may become very commonplace. If that is the case, then the game industry will be come even more like the rest of the entertainment industry: Websites will offer general subscriptions to users which give access to a wide wide variety of games, from which the user may choose to play any particular game at any time-- sorta like flipping channels. Since it is streamed and no persistent local copy is maintained, they never actually own the game unless they go out and buy it (like a movie DVD).

Another idea I had is similar to the idea of how stand-ups and small bands open for a big show of someone seriously famous. Indies can't afford to market themselves and don't necessarily have a product that markets well-- but if we can get our games tucked into the corners offered by larger names then we have a chance. But in most cases it probably won't be a per-copy buy of the indie game; instead the game would be a free add-on to other things (in the eye of the user) and the indie would get a small (very small) slice of sales, or pre-paid deal. But the game industry is growing large enough that a 'very small slice' could now in fact be a decent paycheck to an indie.

We could take a lesson from small-time channels and shows on cable television as well. Small-market channels can't really survive if they rely on people to order their channel directly, so instead when the cable stations bundle bunches of channels together they throw in both the big names and a few extras. Whereas very few people may have subscribed to TechTV by itself a couple years ago, having it as part of an overall learning channel package with TLC and Discovery means lots more people ended up with it-- and then possibly liked it.

Likewise, people don't order shows individually: They order channels, and channels work hard to arrange their stuff in such a way that their shows sell. Modern game websites will have to work similarly eventually, I believe. As an indie, our own personal websites might become mostly useless next to getting put on a larger site that people have readily bookmarked and trust to have the types of games they're interested in. You can plaster your personal site all over creation and people might not ever go there more than once, instead opting to flip right back to Yahoo Games for all their gaming needs-- because thats the easy thing to do and well... the customers most indies are targeting are unfortunately not very picky really. We can't expect the consumer to be willing to browse dozens of websites nightly anymore. They're going to latch onto a site they like and stick with it-- and the key to survival is getting on that site somehow.

- Air

from what I understood, Steam will be more like a service, only HL2 oriented. Those who pay 10 bucks a month can stream current levels on their pc and play also addons without paying for them (monthly fee will make it costlier anyway, I think).

And from my previous experience with streamed gaming - mass tech is still not suited for such solution.

Originally posted by Akura
Fifth, I don't like half life !!! ;p
hey get back in line with the other 3 people on earth ;)

Half-Life was great and the sequel looks very promising!

Fifth, I don't like half life !!! ;p
Finally someone who shares my opinion =)
I have finished halflife and opposing forces and didn't really understand why everybody found those games so fantastic.

Actually, I think packaged games will be less and less attractive as bandwidth increases. You will be able to buy games online without leaving your home, and since people are lazy, I think most will prefer that method.
I think people will buy an account at some online game store and be able to download the games they want, maybe for a monthly fee. This method also gives them a bit more control over pirate copying.

Online distribution is not the only thing that makes an indie an indie! It could be argued that it's actually a fairly small part.

Look at it as an opportunity. More retail games online means more people looking for games online.

My understanding is that Steam is an incremental download tool. You don't need to download the whole 1 gig, you download the 10 meg or so that you need to start playing, and then download content as it's needed. That's a powerful thing, if that's the way it works.

Gabe Newell came to our local IGDA chapter here in Seattle and talked about Valves steam system almost a year ago. At the time they were doing scalability testing and were giving the client away. You could log into steam and play halflife, counter strike, and some other valve offerings.

The technology was quite impressive, after a short install, one could be playing counterstrike in under 5 minutes. Subsequent plays were even faster, I have to say having upgraded the base halflife CD to the latest counterstrike too many times (an hour to two hours), this is indeed a killer feature.

Valve also plans to use the channel model where you pay so much a month and get access to all their games, or just the games you want. It also has some very cool features where an owner of a game can grant his friend a weekend license and they can go onto steam and play Counterstrike together.

Valve has been aggressively polling it's users for the last few years and it has some interesting stats. Some 70% of its players have broadband connections and are very comfortable with doing things online. This puts valve in a unique position to capitalize on this distribution mechanism.

One of the primary reasons for steam however, is a means to capture sales from the korean and other asian markets. With steam's license managing and billing features it's very easy to run in a game room type environment. It will be interesting to see how it pans out.

Keep in mind that the infrastructure and servers for Steam have been in place and actively tested for over a year now. I would be very surprised if Valve dropped the ball on this one.

[Rant mode on]

Personal feeling after watching Indie games for the last couple of years is that the end has already passed in some ways.

In order for Indie to survive it has to make a profit. Outside of a very small group of indies, no-one is making a profit without a good distributor. That small group all got in very early on. What they did you cannot do....hear me out...

Instead the new generation of Indie developers has to catch on with Real to make money. If you do not do that, you are not likely to make enough money off of your game to keep you indie developing for long. My favorite example of the trouble is still Orbz. A very good game that had Garage Games distributing it...but that was not enough. It wasn't until that game went to Real that it starting earning a profit.

So if the indie wants to make being an indie developer a paying profession he must make something that Real will sell. If that is the case is he still an indie developer? If the developer is making something to please a company instead of himself how different is that then working for a company...how is that independent?


It is a little over-generalized, but honestly I don't think is too far off of the mark. Of those who are attempting to make money off of their games they must realize that they will have to work a full time job while being an indie developer in order to survive. Indie games will not pay over a year what you need monetarily in a month. There are countless examples of this on these forums. Real is always pointed to as a way to relieve the problem.

(so uh yah I guess I made that point a few too many times, anyone here think I believe Real is good for the industry?)

I believe the need to please another company in order to sell the game takes away from the indie aspect of the game. So in some respects the end has already occured. Control over the indie market is occuring, and that control will cause people to modify the games they release to meet a more mainstream crowd. Meeting the mainstream isn't necessarily bad, but it does take away from some of the originality that was said to be "Indie."

[/rant mode off...for a minute or two ;) ]

I tend to agree with cyrus. Much of the market for ESD games has been sucked up by the big distribution channels. Real, Shockwave, Msn, Yahoo, even the smaller ones like reflexiveArcade and BigFishGames are developing profitable distribution channels. For an indie it's getting more and more difficult to be herd in this ever increasingly crowded market. Especially if you only have one title, even if it's a very good title, it's going to be tough to get the attention of customers who are plugged into the big distribution channels where there are multiple good games for them to choose from with just the click of the mouse.

Is this good for Indies’? In some ways no. Indies have to relinquish control in order to be financially successful, they become dependant on other distribution channels for their success. Is this all bad? no there is still plenty of opportunity. One of the advantages of places like Real, shockwave, reflexivearcade etc. is that they have managed to acquire customers from the 12-18 range. These customers appreciate action games, shooters, and many of the other genera’s that classically for Indies haven’t been as profitable.

Not having to rely on puzzle/strategy games, or araknoid clones to make money, Indies may actually have more options now then they have in the past. Ironically the same basic requirements for being a successful indie remain the same regardless of the distribution mechanisms. Indies need to be able to make a fun, well polished title that meets their customers needs. Frankly, for an indie not having to build their own distribution channel actually gives them more time to focus on what should be their core competency, making good games that sell.

I think indie software is definitely not in trouble. Indie games specifically are also not, however it's important to always be moving with the times. Those people that make a Commander Keen clone, use the same business model, and expect that to work as successfully as it did over a decade ago will not get very far. There will be demand for even the classic small games for a long time, but it will not always be the same markets that demand them. Technologically simple gaming has gone from targetting hardcore gamers, to casual gamers, to online systems like Real (as mentioned by cyrus), to PDAs and cell phones.

The whole "it's hopeless now, we missed the boat" attitude is something I have noticed exist at least as long as I have paid attention to technology. It's an attitude that I have been guilty of as well. I have also noticed that while groups of people are struggling to clone yesterday's success and complaining when it fails, others see new opportunity and succeed by adapting to the current conditions. Hindsight is 20/20, which is why it's so easy to say things like "developers had it so easy back then, I could have easily written <insert successful old game title> and made millions". The fact is though those people couldn't magically forsee the future and had to invent the next step in games just like people have to now. They didn't have Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus to copy paste animation code out of. They didn't have the Internet as a distribution tool. Computers were more expensive. Programming information was harder to get. Surely the road wasn't as easy as people lead themselves to believe. Innovation is about forging ahead, not regurgitating what already exists. This applies to both the game itself and the methods of sale.

I think the future will have more indie game development teams. This is already evident on this board. Many people here are not solo, or if they are, they contract out graphics and sound. The indie is a businessman as well as a developer. Being independent from relying on people above you doesn't mean you can't have partners or people working for you. Trying to be a jack of all trades just isn't working out anymore. In fact, throughout the history of game development, people haven't been going at it alone. Many awesome titles have been the result of team work. A several person team does have the talent to create awesome work that meets the increasingly higher standards of the different games markets.

I also disagree that using companies like Real to distribute your creations is failing to be an indie. I remember a certain company with a two letter name whose owners have many times been regarded as living the independent developer dream. They released their games through Apogee, among other companies. They had real contractual obligations. If you get a job and start earning a salary and complaining about TPS reports from 5 different bosses, then you are no longer an indie ;)

"It's the end of the world!"

Give me a break. There will ALWAYS be room for indies, and good indies will find a way to make money. The reason most indies fail at being indies is because 80% of ALL small businesses fail in the first five years. There's nothing special here about being indie.

This thread is analogous to chicken little saying "the sky is falling the sky is falling!"

What makes you think the end is near? There will always be room for independent game developers. Always. Until the end of time!

If anything, as consumers gain experience and confidence in purchasing games online, it will benefit everyone, especially indies because now digital distribution is mainstream. Once that happens, the playing field becomes more equal than now.

The only ones who should be pessimistic are retail game publishers because they are analagous to the major publishers in the music industry. These music companies have been caught flat-footed and their future is bleak. The internet has created a new paradigm shift for the music industry and it's unlikely the old paradigm will ever return.

Why the pessimism? If Joe Retail Gamer ends up realizing games are also available digitally--and not just through his favorite store--maybe he'll discover more indie channels. He could wander on over from Steam to R1Arcade, or ReflexiveArcade, or Dexterity, or your website...

Just another way of looking at it. Personally, I doubt the digital availability of HL2 will overlap much with the casual market (a Diamond Mine addict isn't going to go from simple puzzle to hardcore FPS).

Note the heirarchy of opportunity for Joe Public to be parted with his cash:

Steam to R1Arcade, or ReflexiveArcade, or Dexterity, or your website...

The more layers above your website the harder it is to get a sale.

Cas :)

I don't see how this whole internet thing will be any different than it has been with retail. The only difference is that bigger companies are going to start distributing games online. So what? Are the games going to change just because they're being sold online? Bigger companies will always try to reduce their risk as much as possible, mostly releasing low-risk, copy-cat, proven-to-sell gameplay kinds of games. Thus there will always be room for independent developers. People will always be looking for something more interesting or different to play than the big mainstream companies can offer. DavidRM makes a very good point about this in his book, by the way.

You are 100% absolutely spot-on.
I saw David's book at ECTS in London a few weeks ago but I only had 50p so I couldn't afford it.

Cas :)

I think the rise of the "instant millionaire" internet business mentality makes indies more impatient today than they were five years ago. The market is different today, but the same basic techniques still allow indies to thrive. In fact, I think there are far more opportunities available today. But too many indies think with a time span of only 6-18 months or less. (I.e. my first game must be a hit.) Just about every new legal business will look extremely bleak with such a short-term outlook.

It can take years to build solid traffic and distribution. A week from today is Dexterity's 9-year anniversary, and it took almost 5 years before the business was making a sustainable profit. And this has been a full-time operation for me during all of those 9 years. This kind of timespan is not uncommon at all. If I recall correctly, Paul Hawken wrote in his book that Growing a Business that it took him about 4 years just to reach break-even when he started up Smith & Hawken. And even after that there were unprofitable years ahead.

If you're starting from scratch with zero products, zero customers, and zero distribution, plan on sticking around for a decade or so to build these assets. Trying to squeeze instant profits out of a brand new business is like expecting a baby to walk and talk straight out of the womb. Give it time, nurture the business, and in 5-10 years you'll have something that can sustain you.

My two cents... for all the reasons posted above and more, I'm not exactly worried about Steam.

Like Dan said, Gabe Newell came to the Seattle IGDA to talk about Steam, but I think you got the time frame wrong. If I remember correctly, it was actually spring of 2002. He claimed then that Steam would have its official launch in the fall when Condition Zero shipped, and they would release that simultaneously online and in retail. Here we are 1.5 years later and nothing has changed. Yea you can still get Counter-Strike off Steam for free... big deal. It is actually rather impressive how quickly you can get up and running with CS compared to a CD-install from scratch. However, Steam is still very much a work in progress and so far is 12 months late (and counting) for any major release or monetization.

Secondly, don't forget that for retail games, publisher DO actually provide quite a bit for their share of the profits. Number one, they do all of marketing. Two, and more importantly, they often FUND development teams with advances in order for them to actually make the games. When I asked Gabe what Valve's plan was to replace these rather important services he said, "ask me later." Meaning, they had no plan. Maybe it hadn't even occurred to them. Obviously, for Valve this really isn't a problem, they are self-funded and already have a huge and eager audience. But for others developers, online distribution becomes a lot less advantageous when you factor those two things in. Basically, it turns everyone into an "indie" business if they decide to go that route.

The other day I downloaded Wolfenstein demo - 114MB - at a public library in 10 minutes. Surely, in a year or two you will see that capability in almost every user's hands in the developed world. Think about it. That sort of bandwidth changes the way games are made, distributed and sold. Customers would demand streaming content and lots of it. Can an one man indie developer or even a decent team produce that amount of content? If your game is 1mb, it will download in about 20 seconds. If its 10 mb, it will take just over 3 minutes. If so, why download and install? What stops from the game being played online itself with streaming?

I am impressed with this game Tranquility at:

http://www.tqworld.com/

I recommend every indie download it and try it. Classic indie game with a revolutionary game architecture. All levels are algorithmically created and streamed over the net to a "game browser". You can create a user account, setup your favorite levels etc.

The website for your game needs to be a community for the gamers. It must let gamers find gamers. Play against each other. Setup tournaments. Post high scores, game replays (I once saw a website with video of all Monkey Ball "world records" - best times/scores recorded for each levels) . A puny forum isnt going to cut it.

In short the games have to move from a single player program to a multiplayer friendly / community friendly client server program. This also comes very handy for license management - you could in fact turn your game into an arcade machine with a micropayment service like: http://www.bitpass.com/. For example: weekend license for say $2 or play a level for 20 cents.

I suggest reading up on how to create and use web services. You could do most of the stuff by HTTP on port 80.

One complaint is : my users wont have a persistent web connection / costly dialup etc. Then let ppl download a level, save it and get off the web. Only if they play online, they need to connect.

Of course all this assumes your game is fun. The game is the most important thing and everything else is just details.
As an indie your success is making your game, knowing its not crap and releasing it. Whether it has a particular bell or whistle doesnt matter. Release a simple first version and see how it fares. If people start liking it, then you can slowly modify it to support multiplayer, community features etc. No point in building all that and have only you and your girlfriend turn up :)

Customers would demand streaming content and lots of it

Ah, I believe they wouldn't. I believe that in the same way that people still demand books instead of interactive movies, they'll always demand nice, simple, one-player simple games to wile away a few idle minutes.

It's the same old trap that everyone falls into: a new market appears, so everyone attempts to jump into it, deserting the existing market in the process. The existing market merely evolves a little, but it doesn't change the core satisfaction.

Cas :)

The website for your game needs to be a community for the gamers. It must let gamers find gamers. Play against each other. Setup tournaments. Post high scores, game replays (I once saw a website with video of all Monkey Ball "world records" - best times/scores recorded for each levels) . A puny forum isnt going to cut it.

Actually, this whole community deal has it's limits, when everyone is trying to build a community around their product the cookie will get smaller. I think there a limit for how many communities people wants to be part of. And when that limit is reached, you're back where you started, having the same problem reaching out to possible buyers.

Originally posted by princec
Ah, I believe they wouldn't. I believe that in the same way that people still demand books instead of interactive movies, they'll always demand nice, simple, one-player simple games to wile away a few idle minutes.

It's the same old trap that everyone falls into: a new market appears, so everyone attempts to jump into it, deserting the existing market in the process. The existing market merely evolves a little, but it doesn't change the core satisfaction.

Cas :)

My favorite way to explain this phenomenon is: The new is always built on the skeleton of the old.

There will always be room for indies. Indies, like retail publishers, are not static entities. They evolve and adapt or they perish.

Indie or not, There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

To respond to the thread: Now is the best time to be an indie.

Here are a few reasons why:

1. Cheap tools for programming, content creation, project management, etc.

2. Readily available resources and personnel, just a click away in most cases.

3. Internet distribution with an amazingly low barrier to entry.

4. Blockbuster mentality at retail.

#4 is probably the most important, though it might be in a dead heat with #3. And the blockbuster mentality of retail-oriented games was the primary source of #1 and #2, at least so far as game development is concerned. It also creates such useful concepts as profitable niches that are too small for a publisher to bother with but are ideal for smaller teams to exploit.

-David

amazingly low barrier to entry.

I believe this is illusiory. Any fool can sell lemonade for 20p from a bench at the bottom of the garden but a business it ain't.

Some of this is illusion is down to the confusion between two very different types of indie that hang around in these forums: there are indie publishers, and indie developers, and they're rapidly polarizing just like the retail game industry did way back when*

Cas :)

*opinions belong now to a bottle of Penfolds Bin 389 Cabernet Shiraz, not necessarily those of the author or his brain

Originally posted by princec

Some of this is illusion is down to the confusion between two very different types of indie that hang around in these forums: there are indie publishers, and indie developers, and they're rapidly polarizing just like the retail game industry did way back when

I don't think it has to be one or the other for us. You can develop AND publish your games. The barrier to entry IS very low compared to retail.

In retail, there's basically no such thing as an independent developer unless they also publish their games (Blizzard, Id, etc. though I believe even with Id, it's Activision that publishes). Reason for this? Barrier to entry in the retail market is enormously high. Assuming that you could somehow develop a game that could compete with other boxed games (let's say Uncle Richie left you $2 million in his will), publishing it would take more money than any retail developer could possibly have lying around.

Now on the flip side, let's look at an independent small game developer who sells online. Cost to develop the game: negligible. Cost to publish it online: besides a few sites that might charge submission fees, also negligible. Even if you spend a few thousand dollars on development and publishing, how much of a barrier is a few thousand dollars compared to a few million?

The reason for the developer/publisher split in my opinion, is that it's very difficult to pull off doing both if you want to expand the business. It'll take a lot longer to expand if you develop games in 6+ month cycles and publish them. Think about it.. if you do make a game every 6 months it'll take 2 years for you to make 4 games. The 6 months is probably too optimistic since those previous games would require continuous support and updates. If you instead focus on publishing, you can probably gather 4 games in less than 6 months, and you can focus strictly on marketing and selling them, which is a lot more efficient. However, as Steve P. has mentioned, publishing has its own headaches. Not all developers will want to improve their games after they finish them, for instance.

On the other hand, you can go the strict development route and just crank out games every 6 months. While this would free you from having to deal with marketing/sales/customer support, you still have to find a publisher and hope everything goes well with them.

The choice depends on what your reasons for getting into this business were. You CAN make a perfectly fine living making and selling your games yourself, and you also CAN expand by hiring employees and forming development teams to produce more games. Hiring employees to expand is obviously more difficult to pull off than taking on games to publish, but it's certainly not impossible.

Just a few comments..

It doesn't much matter what the retail companies do online or offline - if you're competing directly with them it's a losing prospect unless you happen to have their kind of resources

The barrier to entry into the marketplace is evey so slightly higher than it was 3-4 years ago. It use to be that releasing a game to download sites was enough to gain good exposure. Nowdays realistically you have to either already have an auidence, pay some money to promote, or you'll go mostly unnoticed unless you game is fantastic and spreads very well due to word of mouth. Average or above average won't cut it. A game merely released to the download sites can still sell 3-10 copies a day though without promotion of any kind depending on how good it is. I've seen it happen with titles from new companies recently where I've been told sales numbers by the developer privately.

If you're starting from scratch you should expect an uphill battle for the first 2-5 yrs. All the so called successful indies have been around at least 5 and as SteveP pointed out he was in the game for many years before he could turn a profit

Most indies are terrible at business. Horrible. The marketing and sales aspects of their business are not worked on at all. It's amazing how little I hear about new titles that could easily have been noticed by me much sooner. Instead all the effort goes into product development which results in more unnoticed titles or title improvements. I suffer from this problem myself although I like to think things have gotten better the last few years.

The idea that you MUST publish through Realarcade to survive is false. I know people that don't have a single game on real and do very well. Realarcade advertises. If you want their kind of traffic you'll have to as well - and for many years. If you have no money for promotion then there's a limit to the amount of expure you'll generate if you're not willing to put a lot of hard work into gorilla marketing. Of the 20-30 games released every month (maybe more?) I get press releases for 1 or 2 at indiegamer. Ok indiegamer is not a huge site... but it indicates to me that people aren't really pushing to get their games out everywhere they can. (I'm also guilty of this - gorilla marketing can be thankless uninteresting work)

Most indies don't advertise. The problem is that many start with little or no money so they cant afford to. As well they lose money on early ads. But take as an example 2 companies. One advertises from day 1 and the other does no advertising. The 2nd company makes a small profit. The 1st company loses money to the ads unable to make back the original sales. Now the 2 companies release a 2nd product. The company that advertised already has a client base of 10,000 users and a mailing list of 50,000 people. The company that didn't advertise has 1000 customers. Suddenly the 1st company is starting to eek a profit. By the time the 3rd release comes around the company that promoted is doing well... the one that didnt is still struggling. Advertising and promotion are basically bootstraps to the amount of time you have to wait before you have a good core audience that you can rely on.

Not directly the case, but if you think in terms of "digital publishing channel will beat physical one" you can always ask: "Are digital eBooks replacing normal book?" Or: "are people buying digital MP3s instead of physical cds?"

It's true that digital approhance is coming more and more closer, but it's fact that bandwiths aren't yet too fast to download gigabyte sized games.

Originally posted by svero
Most indies don't advertise. The problem is that many start with little or no money so they cant afford to. As well they lose money on early ads. But take as an example 2 companies. One advertises from day 1 and the other does no advertising. The 2nd company makes a small profit. The 1st company loses money to the ads unable to make back the original sales. Now the 2 companies release a 2nd product. The company that advertised already has a client base of 10,000 users and a mailing list of 50,000 people. The company that didn't advertise has 1000 customers. Suddenly the 1st company is starting to eek a profit. By the time the 3rd release comes around the company that promoted is doing well... the one that didnt is still struggling. Advertising and promotion are basically bootstraps to the amount of time you have to wait before you have a good core audience that you can rely on.

Can you please mention some good examples of (succesfull)advertising (promoting). Thanks in advance!

Originally posted by johnson
Can you please mention some good examples of (succesfull)advertising (promoting). Thanks in advance!

It's actually very difficult to tell how successful a promotion or advertising campaign is just by looking at the numbers. The first basic calculation would be to see if you sold enough extra games from the site you advertised on that your ad cost was paid and you made more profit on top of that.

So say you normally sell 10 games a month from download.com exposure with a regular listing. Then you place and ad and sell 20 games the next month. If the sales of 10 extra games is more than the cost of the ad you've made an immediate profit. I think that's normally how people calculate whether an ad is worth their while. But I also think it's wrong.

Why is it wrong? Because it doesn't take into account any of the risidual effects. As the owner of a game business you want to build up a good core audience and keep selling to that audience. Essentially you want repeat customers. Imagine if a book store in your local mall only ever sold one book and then that customer never returned. They wouldn't last long. The store might have a special promotion. The goal of that promotion is not only to sell more books while the promotion is running but also to introduce the store to new customers and gain more general traffic. Imagine a comic book store runs the ad.. maybe some new kids start collecting batman and spiderman and soon enough they're in there every week buying a comic and maybe a graphic novel and later some playing cards and so on... So even if the owner of the store loses money the month he runs the ad he may in the long run do much better than his competitors.

If you place an ad for your games and you have a good product there's a good chance that those customers will buy more than one game or come back later or buy a sequel or join your mailing list etc.... What's the value of that? Like I say.. hard to calculate.

What promotions have worked for me? Well I have an ad on palmgear right now that is paying for itself just at the raw calculation level and is probably bringing me new long term customers as well. It would be more effective if it was a pc ad since I dont have many palm games but all the same many pda owners also have desktops. That's just one example. There are others, but I'll leave it to you to figure out where you should spend your money.

Note that not all ads are good. I've run some useless campaigns and been burned. So be careful. Make sure you're advertising to the right audience and make sure that the statistics your provided about a site are reasonable.

Originally posted by Fenix Down
Think about it.. if you do make a game every 6 months it'll take 2 years for you to make 4 games.

You say that like it's a bad thing. Name one retail-oriented development team that has completed and shipped 4 titles in the last 2 years.

Don't fall into the trap of thinking that you have to produce at some superhuman level to be successful.

-David

Originally posted by DavidRM
You say that like it's a bad thing. Name one retail-oriented development team that has completed and shipped 4 titles in the last 2 years.

Don't fall into the trap of thinking that you have to produce at some superhuman level to be successful.

-David

I'm not saying that's a bad thing per se; I know that it's possible to be successful with just a few titles. I was just trying to explain why some indies would prefer publishing other people's games over developing their own. In that respect, 4 titles in 2 years is pretty slow, because you can publish a lot more than that in a much shorter period of time. For an established indie, publishing a few games could provide a good amount of extra revenue at a much lower cost than developing a new title.