Category: General Game Development

Pre-Development Research

Sometimes I question as to whether or not indie developers research into the market before they set out and make a game. In most cases I would say that they don’t. At the indie level, it doesn’t matter if your game sells, you just want to make a game. But isn’t it nicer when thousands of people actually buy your game rather than a couple hundred?

The most effective way to achieve this is to do your research. Find out if there is an audience that you’re aiming for. Is this audience large or is it niche? Niche audiences are extremely hard to find without the proper marketing so what is your marketing strategy? What will you do if your strategy fails? Are there portals/distributors who would be interested in your game? If you cannot reply to these questions with specific details then you’re screwed.

I’ve played some great indie games before but some of those never sold well. Some were even higher quality than the ones that do sell well. So what’s the difference? The ones that sold well did the research before they developed the game.

Never lose your cool

Yesturday I found another 3D artist forum so I went ahead and posted a help wanted thread for The Divine.  (http://www.cgchat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=25285)

You can see from reading the thread that members keep on questioning my intentions. I understand where they are coming from. It does make clear sense that volunteer projects could be considered scams.

At the same time I’m replying to their posts with a calm tone. It’s important that in these situations you represent yourself and your game with a clear and conscise voice. If you lose your cool, you have lost a potential market for your game.

This will happen to you multiple times throughout your career, so just be ready for it. Always avoid a flame war.

I laugh at any developer who doesn’t support Wii

Faster development cycles, cheaper budgets, creativity, innovation – that’s what the Wii brings. Does it make business sense not to support this console if you’re a commercial developer?

I predict that any developer who has games coming out on the launch for the Wii will make a serious amount of cash no matter the quality of their game. Gamers will be hungry from day one, they want the new experiences that all of these games bring. It doesn’t matter if the game is a port because graphics don’t matter. It’s the gameplay that makes the game.

Technically each of these games/franchises are starting off on a fresh start. It doesn’t matter if the series was bad on previous consoles because with the difference in gameplay, no one will be able judge, if the game is good or not, until the game is actually released.

Even if the game sucks, it still will be fun because you’ve never played a game like this before. It’s a fresh and exciting new experience. This experience will wane after sometime but for those that release a game within the first six months, their game will sell like gold.

The creativeness of each developer will truly show in the next couple of years. In the near future, sales charts will prove that creative and fun games will often sell more than games that follow previously designed gameplay mechanics for the Wii.

By the way, now is the time to invest in any game company stock, especially Wii developers. Sell come mid-January/early-Febrary.

Is $9.95 the new $19.95?

It was only two and a half months ago that Ethereal Darkness Interactive Games (EDI Games) reduced the price of Morning’s Wrath from $19.95 to $9.95 (Download version). The month before the price sale reduction we sold three copies of the game. In July we sold seven copies. In August, we sold eleven copies. Almost half way through September and we have sold eight copies. Now keep in mind that the game is about to have it’s one year anniversary of release on October 1, 2006!

It was our hope that Morning’s Wrath could be a game that has longevity rather than a complete wipe out in sales over its lifetime. In the first few months of release we usually sold 20-30 copies.

There are a few key strageties to getting your game a healthy sales cycle.

#1 – Within the first month of release make sure that the press has reviewed your game! Give them tons of screenshots and movie files so your game stays on their front page for as long as possible.

#2 – Be aware of the time period that you launch the game in. With Morning’s Wrath EDI has had several different types of sales – winter, spring, and summer.

#3 – Be prepared to lower the price of the game if it isn’t selling as strongly as it did when it launched. Your first price reduction should be within 6 months of the launch saying that you currently charge $19.95+. The boxed version of Morning’s Wrath originally cost $29.95. It currently costs $19.95.

#4 – Add your game to portals and retailers. It has taken EDI a while to get Morning’s Wrath onto some portals but the game is currently selling on three portals along with one retailer.

#5 – Patches are a beautfil thing for games. After announcing the release of a new patch, your customers all come back and make the community alive again. Listen to your customers and add in the features that they want!

All of these points should be well planned out before you launch your game. Each of these are key strategies that will make your game continue to sell. Make sure that you announce all updates through Press Releases. You are more likely to reach your target audience if you get coverage from websites over the course of a year rather than the first week of launch.

Consumers are smarter than you think…

Well at least more so than I thought.

Today I went to the Mountain Dew & Xbox 360 Game Live, a College Campus Tour, at my school and it felt like a minature-E3 – games were buggy, there was a DJ, hot girls asking player’s if they wanted to enter in a contest, etc.

I went around asking students what they thought about the games they were playing – Splinter Cell 4, Eragon, Madden 07, Need for Speed Carbon, FlatOut 2, DOA 4 – are the ones that I remember being there. Players actually weren’t impressed with buggy games. Buggy as in buildings were flickering from textured to non-textured. Crap like that won’t sell a game so why in the world would any developer show this to the public?

It’s different in the case of showing the media a buggy game. They’ll understand that the game might only need a few tweaks to fix the broken parts, but do consumers understand this? Somehow I doubt it. Seriously does any consumer, other than geeks, understand how games are developed?

What’s really sad is that consumers are forced to put up with mediocrity. Have you entered a game store recently? 1,000s of games on the shelves – how are they supposed to know which one is better than the other?

Do they know the hundreds of developers and publishers behind those games? Obviously not! They may know the top 8 names – Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, UbiSoft, EA, Activision, Midway, Atari – but after that…

There’s a reason why so many game companies fold and that’s because consumers are confused. No matter the company or the franchise consumers are not safe from buggy and low quality games. So I ask what will make them buy $60 games that have not been unrestlessly assured in quality?