If you’re an indie developer, and you’re not selling your game on the web, you might be doing it wrong.
The Success Story
In 2009, Minecraft was launched in alpha, available from the author's website, in which you could download and try for free. Alternatively, you could donate to the development of the game, in which case when it was release, you’d get it for free. The results were staggering. People realized early on that the game was fun, and quickly payed for it, and most importantly, told their friends because they were so passionate about it. The message was easy to spread; the early builds were in java, and I remember playing a version of it in my browser. A year later, Mojang was founded after the author's PayPal account was temporarily suspended for suspicious activity when $700k appeared in the account almost overnight. That was entirely without any digital distribution ecosystem, or social sharing middle ware. It was just a great game being sold on a website.
Today, Minecraft has over 9 million sales, and has builds for console, mobile, and desktop. And it all started by selling on the web to passionate users who were willing to carry the message.
Indies gone wild
Another great example is Positech games, makers of Gratuitous Space Battles. Cliff Harris, owner/founder/indie gave a great talk at a conference back in 2009 where he described about how important it is for him to sell his games on the web. In his goal to sell a game every 52 seconds, he overviews how using tools like Google Analytics allows him to reach and understand his users.
| “Advertising online is a real time strategy game that geeks like you are good at. … It’s a game that you’re playing with real money, and if you win, you make money.” |
Other indies are realizing that eyeballs = profits, and are starting to branch out to find new ways of creating success. For example, Desktop Dungeons, a yet-unreleased game is looking to model it’s early development states after Minecraft’s success, alongside the the recent Kickstarter boom, by allowing users to fund the development of the game by buying early build for different tiers of investment, including a level that includes a reference to you, somewhere in the game.
And let’s not forget the massively successful Humble Indie Bundle, which allows consumers to donate an amount of their choosing to charity, and in return, gets DRM Free versions of the games provided in the bundle. To date, they've made over $19 million dollars for charity, selling directly through their website.
The barriers that don’t exist.
Many game devs I talk to shy away from selling their content online. In their minds, it’s a cumbersome process to market and handle money exchange etc etc. The truth is, these barriers are no longer relevant in 2012, and we should re-visit some of the big issues.
“Taking money for purchases is difficult online”
Back in the day, it was a tough process to sell digital goods through the interwebs. Thankfully through the rise of merchandising on the web, you've got more options than you can shake a stick at. Take a look at the page from GSB :
Cliff is an indie developer, and he goes out of his way to make it as easy as possible for a potential customer to become a paying one, because that’s how he feeds his family. In Fact, he goes the extra mile to tell you why you should buy from his site directly:
| When you buy games from us, we get about 91% of the money. the 9% goes to our credit card payment provider. There is NO MIDDLEMAN. We do not have any RIAA or MPAA or other organisation that is profiting from our work. If you care about supporting people who make the kinds of games you want to play, here is your chance to ensure the money goes straight to them. |
“It’s too difficult to support multiple platforms.”
Selling your game on the web means users will be able to buy your game on various types of platforms, operating systems, and hardware. This can be a daunting operation, considering the amount of time and dedication that goes into solving platform fragmentation.
Thankfully, with the influx of indie game developers coming onto the scene since 2009, technology middleware vendors have been priding themselves on creating tool-chains for cross-platform development. After all, not every user is on every gaming platform, so making your game accessible across multiple platforms and services increases the number of users that can become customers. Unity, Unreal, Moai, Blitz and Game Maker are all examples of middle ware systems that pride themselves on going multi-platform first, most of which even allow a web-specific build so the user won’t have to install the game locally. Now that’s not saying that supporting multiple platforms is automatic. You still have to deal with issues of screen resolution, input, and performance differences, but that’s a different article ;)
With these technologies available, selling your game on the web is even easier, as you can ensure that your app supports all the platforms that the web can find you on.
“It’s too difficult to market online.”
For current game developers “Discoverability!” is the lamentation of the day. The largest feedback I get from developers is about how hard it is to be successful in the modern industry. It seems everyone is content to fight for 96x128 pixels worth of screen real estate on a mobile store, working to get more eyeballs on your content by opting in to networks that will cross-promote your digital swag.
However, a recent article has discovered a great data chain about how mobile users discover new content. Not surprisingly, the two dominant forms of finding out about new content was via social channels, where on-mobile stores came in 3rd.
Going ‘viral’ has always been touted as the power of the web, and allowing your users to link, share, comment and buy your content, right there in the web-browser is a powerful metric to allow your content to be shared and consumed virally, and selling your content online is a very well researched science at this point. There’s been entire college courses devoted to this ecosystem, and all of the results of this type of intense focus is available online for you to learn from.
The big picture
It’s quite easy to toss aside this device claiming Return on Investment; saying “it’s not worth my time to support that platform” and all that jazz. The truth is that as a developer, you have no idea how your content is going to be received. There’s been really no rhyme or reason to why some games suddenly become successful lately, other than users attaching themselves to content they love, and doing everything they can to tell their friends about it.
I caught up with Cliff Harris recently where he mentioned that even though GSB has a tablet build, alongside being available on STEAM, he can still make over ~$1,000 / month for GSB through direct sales on his website.
A game that’s over three years old.
~Main
You can find Colt McAnlis here:
No comments:
Post a Comment