A while back I posted about selling on ebay, and have been running a small test the last couple of months to see just how feasible it is. I thought you guys might be interested in the results. When I started posting FF on ebay, I had dropped the price down to $9.99 (to keep it at about the same price as what Xing was selling it for in the retail market), so I posted the initial price as $5.99 on eBay (and charging $5.95 for S&H). Pretty much right away though (I think the 2nd one I posted), the bidding had gone up to over $12. So I changed the price back to $14.95. An added side effect was that my regular sales increased as well after posting on eBay. I'm not sure if this is simply a coincidence, or someone might just be more comfortable ordering directly from the website. Anyways, here's a summary breakdown

Total Posted copies : 15
Copies that sold : 12 (2 of the 3 that didn't sale I set to only 3 days, instead of 5 which is what I normally listed it as.)
2nd Chance sales : 2

So out of 15 posts, I had 14 sales ranging in price from $5.99 to $14.50.

I've only posted 1 to 2 per week, so I may try to double that figure and see how the numbers hold up.

Try a $19.99 pricepoint and see what happens. I think you may be suprised.

I'd be curious in knowing more details - what sort of keywords you used in listing, how many hits the auction would get, etc. I considered ebay at one point but couldn't find any similar games/categories to mine getting *any* attention in their listings...

Dan: I'd like to try a $19.99 price point, but I really hate the idea of needing to go back and change the price on every shareware site it's posted on. Plus I have a vastly superior (at last I think so) sequel in the works that should be ready relatively soon, at which time I'm definetly going to try a higher price point.

[Edit}
Then again, after thinking about the $19.99 price point a little longer, if it could result in more sales, maybe I should go ahead and try it......

Papillion: I'll have to do a little more digging to come up with those numbers. If I get a chance tonight, I'll try to put those number together for you. When I first started, I noticed people selling shareware CD collections, CDs full of game demos, and even screen savers. And they were actually selling!! There was even a CD game demo collection that featured the shareware version of Fetish Fighters. I figured if it worked for them, why wouldn't it work for indie developers to sell their games?

You don't have to go change the price on every shareware site. Just sell it for 19.99 on ebay.

Yes. For some odd reason that I can't even begin to understand, it seems many people on ebay have absolutely no reservations about bidding more than retail price on items.

Yes, I was suggesting selling it on ebay with a buy-it-now for $19.99 or a reserve of $19.99 just to test how effective the price point itself is. If it does well you may want to consider it on your other sitse as well.

What are you selling, exactly? Just a regular blank CD with the game burned on it; no packaging or anything?

Did you offer a free demo link as part of the auction listing? If you'd be willing to post the URL to one of your auctions in progress, it would be great to see it.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3054460355&category=27233

Basically I sell a burned CD, with the white printed CD label, and a jewel cover printed on card stock. It the same way I sale from the website, since the game is too large for most people to download (although I offer a download version 75 % order it on CD.) I don't offer a download link directly on the eBay page, but it does link to my website.

As for some #'s that were asked for earlier,

For keywords, I always use the the game name "Fetish Fighters", and then "PC Game". I then mix some other words in between. Originally I used things like "Female Fighting", or "Cat fighting", and have recently changed it to "Erotic Mature" to see if that would catch any more hits.

As far as hits go, I average about 100.

I've also recently started trying to sell my little space shooter on ebay as well. Since I only charge $7.99 for it (I may seriously want to look at a new price point for both of them though), I posted it for $2.99 as a DOWNLOAD. I've posted 2 so far, with the first one selling (albiet only for $2.99), and the second one is currently posted with no bids.

Here's the URL for it:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3054460304&category=11048&rd=1

I need to do some tweaking on this one to determine what keywords to use to maximize its exposure.

How is selling on CD working out for you, anyway? Personally I'd love to make whopping big games and sell them on CD, but I always thought it wasn't particularly viable.

I have to say that I've tried the FF demo and found it to be quite poor by gaming standards I'm afraid... it's nowhere near the quality of old fighting games like, say, Street Fighter 2. Do you think making it a pervy game has helped? Do people generally download a demo first, or just order the CD?

lol, let's not forget Capcom made Street Fighter 2 , and capcom had a lot of resources when they made that game.

Anthony, sorry you didn't like the game. Creating a 2D fighting game was a lot more difficult than I'd originally thought it was going to be. The sheer number of animated sprites, creating characters, moves, etc is a lot for one person to do. That being said, I've learned a lot from the first one, and my next one I believe is going to be a huge improvement.

To answer your questions, I definitely think the all female/underwear concept has helped the sales of the game, along with the fact there are so few PC fighting games.

Honestly, I don't know if I can answer whether I'd have more sales if I could somehow shrink the game down to a small download only version instead of shipping via a CD. But I do believe that most people download the demo before purchasing the game (at least that's what I've been told by some customers I've emailed back and forth with.)

I know that making a 2d fighting game isn't easy, and that capcom have a lot more resources than a single person. But still the standard has been set... and you know, excuses don't make sales, even if they're valid excuses. However, it appears that girls in underwear *do* make sales ;o)

Besides, Archer Mclean wrote IK+ almost singlehandedly and it's an undisputed classic. Of course that had only one character to play, but the gameplay is where it"s really at.

Is your next game going to be a fighter too? You're definitely brave to attempt this genre I have to say.


there are so few PC fighting games.

That's very true. But there are lots and lots and lots of them that people are playing for free in MAME. And I would expect a new game written specifically for the PC to be better than these games. Even if written by a single person. That's why I think you're brave to attempt this genre.

Of course none of the MAME fighters are pervy. - well, actually most of them are a little bit pervy.

Honestly, I'm don't feel the need to make any excuses. There are things I'll do differently, and new things I'll add in a sequel, but overall I thought the game turned out well. I've never received a negative comment from anyone whos purchased the game (I've gotten lots of emails asking how to performs certain moves, or from people with ideas for new characters), but I've had a lot of positive emails.

Yeah, my next game is also going to be a fighter. I've spent the past year tweaking on the FF engine, so it's going to be a sequel to it.

I don't think it's as brave as what you think. I have very little competition in the fighter genre for the pc. I don't really think MAME is a factor, as the average gamer probably hasn't heard of it before. Also, it I'm not mistaken, the ROMS MAME uses are copyrighted by there respective authors, and not freely available.

Anyways, it seems this thread has gone way off topic.

Have you tried listing it in eBay's Adults-only section? Might get a strong draw there...

Heh. At least in the past, ebay's adult-only section was rather a waste... you couldn't search it even if you were *in* it, you certainly couldn't get results from outside of it, people didn't think to look for it so they'd never see your listings there, and non-US browsers are banned from it.

In fact, now that my location on my ebay account has been updated, I can't view it either. So I can't tell if it still gets no bids or not. :)

Yeah, I'm sorry about the OT. I didn't mean to imply that you were making excuses, that was purely in response to Chandler's comment.

Well, if you look on the "see all eBay categories" link on the left side of the main page, and then scroll to the bottom... under Everything Else you see a "Mature Audiences" category. This currently has 81,509 auctions listed in it. I gotta think they're getting some bids. Of course, 99% of it is going to be XXX videos. But the people who know the category is there and look for stuff there... well, that is going to be exactly JerryF's target audience, yes?

Originally posted by JerryF
[B]Anthony, sorry you didn't like the game. Creating a 2D fighting game was a lot more difficult than I'd originally thought it was going to be. The sheer number of animated sprites, creating characters, moves, etc is a lot for one person to do. That being said, I've learned a lot from the first one, and my next one I believe is going to be a huge improvement.

I agree with Anthony. While I can understand the issues with producing a game on the level of something Capcom produces, and content is always difficult, I think the game's basic mechanics are flawed. While it's obvious you were a lot more inspired by Mortal Kombat than the SF games (a bad choice IMHO, not all of the MKs are bad but SF generally plays better), your game is even slower and less responsive than MK.

A game with faster animations, quicker attacks, movement, etc. would be overall more enjoyable. The AI also didn't do much of anything, maybe I was playing on super easy mode, but the AI would kind of just stand there and not do anything. One of the things that I disliked the most was how close the characters got and how much they overlapped, you could do stuff like kick or punch past the other fighter, it just didn't feel right. Also, punches and kicks don't seem to properly connect most of the time. You have a weak damage animation.

While you said it was a lot of work to create the sprites for the game, these are obviously done with Poser, which means you didn't hand draw or model sprites and a large part of the work was already done for you. You just had to get the right clothes, adjust some sliders in Poser, set the right camera angle and capture the images. While I'm sure it took time it's a lot less work than doing all of the art by yourself. Fixing the long loading time, especially the loading time between rounds, would be very nice also.

I hope you're improving some of these things in fetish fighter 2. I'm sure most people that buy the game just get it to look at the girls, but I think a lot of people would appreciate a good fighter behind the poser girls in lingerie.

Originally posted by Impossible
I hope you're improving some of these things in fetish fighter 2. I'm sure most people that buy the game just get it to look at the girls, but I think a lot of people would appreciate a good fighter behind the poser girls in lingerie.

And those people are not really his target audience... or maybe they are, but he's missing the mark by miles.

Originally posted by Pyabo
And those people are not really his target audience... or maybe they are, but he's missing the mark by miles.
Well, obviously his biggest selling point is the girls. But I think even the people that are buying the game just to look at the girls would appreciate a better fighter. Improving the gameplay would also draw more people toward the game.

Here's a thought... if it really is all about the girls, I bet a whole lot more people would be interested in the sequel if it used actual photos instead of poser models - providing you can find enough willing subjects of course.

Originally posted by Anthony Flack
Here's a thought... if it really is all about the girls, I bet a whole lot more people would be interested in the sequel if it used actual photos instead of poser models - providing you can find enough willing subjects of course.
There is a game kind of like this already though. Bikini Karate Babes (http://www.bikinikaratebabes.com/) has real girls and a bad fighting engine. If he made a game with real girls he would be competiting pretty much directly with them (although the fetish costumes may be more appealing than the bikinis.) Now, if you took this game, gave it a decent fighting engine and had more attractive models in it (some are good looking, others are pretty average imho), then you may have something, but he'd have to beat these guys if he wanted to go with a real girl game.

Hmm, I would have thought that BKB (heh, it's a new one on me!) already represented direct competition - using poser models is hardly a unique selling point.

Ok, I didn't expect so much feedback about the game in an selling on eBay thread :)

The target audience is, of course, the 18 to 30 something year old males. It's not, however, directed at the hardcore fighting game fans, even though the two groups definitely overlap. I was told early on it was hard for a fighting game to succeed because it would always gets compared to the top AAA titles, such as DOA3 or Tekken3.

Definitely the main selling point of the game is the girls, which is the main thing that differentiates it from most of the other 2D fighters.

I did use poser for the characters, but I spent a lot of time designing the costumes (texture and transparency maps), and props (other 3D models) used in the game. For example, the bunny consists of a texture/transparency mapped outfit based off of one of Poser original clothing figures, with the ears and the tail being newly created models.

I can see a couple of problems with using actual people instead of character models. The first is the cost of hiring 10 or so people to do the game. The second is the cost of the equipment needed to bring the characters into the game. Plus, the only game I've ever seen that was able to pull this technique off well was the Mortal Kombat series.

The game was definitely based around Mortal Kombat (the original). It was, probably, my favorite all time arcade game. I never really cared for the Street Fighter 2 series IMHO.

This is what I have so far with the sequel:

* Shrunk the characters down to about 80 % of there original size. I think the game seems to play much better that way.
* All the characters (and stages) are now anti-aliased, so they look much sharper.
* I'm cutting the total characters down to around 10 (instead of 17). That way I can spend more time polishing the look and feel of each character.
* Each character nows has over twice as many basic moves as before, including the ability to uppercut and sweep an opponent.
* I've added 2 randomly appearing powerups that fall from the sky. One being a health powerup, and the other powerup puts your character into a bizerk type mode in which you do double damage.
* I've completely re-written the fighting collision detection system.
* The combo system has been re-written
* More attention to detail is being given to the stages. While several of the stages I really liked in the first one, a few of them were admittedly a little bland.
* I also plan on revamping the AI. I want each character to fight more uniquely.

I'm always open to suggestions to improve the game.