The domain I want to register is taken and not for sale. The most common variants I could think of are taken, and some of them are for sale for ridiculous amounts, so buying them is not an option.

Say I want to register www.foobar.com but I can't, but I can register a variant (ie www.foobar.net, www.foobar.biz, whatever).

First of all - I assume most of the people going to my site go through a link or from the game itself, so it really doesn't matter if the URL is easy to type. Is that right? What do you think is the real impact of having a less than 100% obvious site name?

Second - what to register? A different TLD? A country TLD? The least ugly hyphen-augmentated .com domain available (ie www.foobar-games.com)?

My personal viewpoint is that the name doesn't matter too much. However, I kind of expect an indie website's main domain to have either a .com or .net extension (weighted more towards .com) if they are aiming to sell internationally (which I would expect most are!). Bonus points for a company that has a .co.uk extension :P

.biz domains to me give off a negative impression. If I see a .biz - my thoughts immediately go towards a cheap, not very successful offline company that has 'expanded' into an unsuccessful website. While this obviously isn't the case for a lot of them, I just have a higher sense of professionalism from .com, .net and country tld's.

www.foobargames.com

No hyphen. Special characters of any kind makes a site address hard to remember (for word of mouth or repeat customers). Marketing articles seem to discourage using special characters for the names of products and businesses for the same reasons.

www.foobar.net or www.foobar.co.uk would be fine too, if they're not taken.

I agree (as my own domain indicates). And the simpler the better. Even with website links in all my games, I still get the most traffic from "direct request," so ease of remembering and typing correctly is really essential, I think.

Is direct request when they enter your url into their browser?

Originally posted by Davaris
Is direct request when they enter your url into their browser?
yes

that can also be if its launched from your app right?
I would NEVER use a .biz. I'd always go with .com, if I could get mine ;( .co.uk or equiv is fine, but most people assume .com.
dont use a hyphen, and I'd avoid .org or .net too (many people haven't heard of them).
I have positech.co.uk and starshiptycoon.com
starshiptycoon.com gets a LOT of hits ;)

Not to be too blunt but .biz or .net type addresses always give me the impression of amateurs. Like they weren't clever enough to come up with a .com address. I know of quite a few people who feel that way, too.

a domain name doesn't really count for anything except maybe google ratings :)

eg foobar.com/foobar.net/foobar.org would all probably be around the top of a foobar search. Note how foobar2000.org beats foobar.com in the foobar google search!

The most important thing is getting people to your site, and stretching in the morning.

Here are a few popular non .com sites:
slashdot.org
gamedev.net
go**s*.cx

none of which attract your average user.
ones that do:

amazon.com
about.com
ebay.com

Your target market must also play a part here. If you're gonna make family type games, then .com must be the way to go. But if your games are a little more targeted, then it becomes less of an issue in my opinion.
I certainly dont feel weve suffered for it. I would guess that the people that have problems visiting non-.com sites probably would never like our games anyway.

Originally posted by illume
Here are a few popular non .com sites:
slashdot.org
gamedev.net
go**s*.cx

These also aren't trying to sell you a (tangible) product. If you're selling a product, you should probably have a .com or .co.uk link.

I tend to associate .net with internet groups (or personal/portfolio sites), and .org as organizations. Anything else that uses those just seem a little strange to me.

But basically, as long as you have a .com, .co.uk, .net, or .org, you should be okay. Those are pretty universally well known. I wouldn't mess with the others though, at least not yet :) (or unless you can come up with a clever name using the domain name, like go**s* did).

A .com is definitely a must, because it gives off the best impression. But there's no harm (if you've got the money) in getting the .net, .org, .biz etc domains as well, and then having them all 'look at' the same site.

If your products are in any way localised then a .co.uk or similar for that market it also a must I think. Domains cost what £5-10 a year, which you can earn back with just one sale, so I think getting more than one shouldn't be an issue.

There is one thing that I'm curious about though, say you have foobar.com and foobar.biz, both pointing at the same webspace. Will google etc see these as two different sites and list both? or realise the pages are identical and only list them once??

Originally posted by Rockingham Games
There is one thing that I'm curious about though, say you have foobar.com and foobar.biz, both pointing at the same webspace. Will google etc see these as two different sites and list both? or realise the pages are identical and only list them once??

Google combined our arcadetown.com and original url freewebgames.com. I'm guessing they saw same html on same ip address. It's not good as each url still keeps it's own page rank but only one appears in search listings.