More on The Story of Gamer Zone

Well, I started posting episodes of The Story of Gamer Zone online, and it's already starting to get a small following. (For anyone who didn't see my last .plan - it's the story of a business I was involved in that crashed and burned after two years. Gives some interesting insight to things like how mistakes can slowly add up and burn down a company.) Some of the old indie game dev rules I had kept coming to mind:

I spend my time and effort on things that make money. So don't do long projects that don't make money.

Not everyone who's an indie game developer does it for money - often it's just for the love of doing it. Some get lucky, and do it for the love of it, AND make money on it. For me, while it's great fun, I do it for money and love. But the money is first - I wouldn't work on a game project that wasn't for money. A man's gotta eat.

I realized how much effort I was putting into the story. Sure, I type REALLY fast, but still it's probably going to end up being damned near the size of a novel (and here I used to make fun of my .plan files being a novel!) That's still a good sized effort. So, I sort of grudgingly put up a "donate" button on the page.

Give people a reason to spend money.

I hate donate buttons. I've donated to other people's causes before, but, I really think someone would like some sort of reward when giving someone else money. Maybe I'm just old fashoned in my thinking. But I wouldn't give my games away for donations, and I was pondering how to make a small amount of cash off of The Story of Gamer Zone.

I've mentioned on here and on the site that The Story was being published once a week (it's now twice), and I write installments well ahead of time and keep 'em in a queue to release. A friend emailed me and asked if he could have advance access to the other completed segments (he's mentioned in The Story as "The Plumber"). So I give him editor rights to take a look at the upcoming stuff.

Then a game developer I know from on here emailed me and asked if he had to wait for installments to be released like the rest of the unwashed masses, or if I'd give him access to the upcoming stuff.

Once is an anomaly. Twice is a potential business model.

So I set it up so that for $5 (for two years) they have advanced access to installments after I write them for the queue. I call it "Read Ahead" (yeah, real imaginative name ;-). It's cheap, but it gives people a chance to get more of the story ahead of every one else.

I threw all the written but unpublished stuff into a new category on the side of the site called (again, imaginative) "Read Ahead". Each segment shows about one paragraph of that segment as a teaser, then information about Read Ahead, what it costs, and how to sign up.

No idea if it will net more than $10 over it's entire lifespan, but hey - that's 2 1/2 gallons of gas in the car!

Show payment options often, but don't intrude on content. And keep it simple!

If you're trying to sell something, people have to know it's for sale. You have to present it to them in an understandable, easy way. Saying, for instance, Go to paypal, create a new account, then click on "send payment" and type in my email address is bad. Too many steps. As close to one step between "Hm, I ought to buy this" and "Cool, I just bought that" is important. People get frustrated easily, and give up (without complaining via comment or email. Only a few people actually take the time to email a game author to say the game crashed. Unless it's a hardcore gamer. Then they'll email 12 times, each time with a different set of colorful language to explain how you're incompetent.)

So the site mentions it multiple times - but not in big garish signs. Twice on the sidebar about "Read Ahead" and once for every article they try and read that's unpublished.

This is all experimental, of course. No idea how well The Story will be received in the long run, or how many people are interested enough to read ahead in the story. But, as you might guess, I'll write up a small .plan here or write an article on one of my sites about the long term success of failure of the experiment.

But it kinda does show something - when you get into the business of being an Indie Game Developer, that spirit never quite leaves you.

On a similar subject...

For quite a while I had been considering writing a real book. You know, one of those analog things that they cut down trees to put on shelves that very few people bother with anymore, but they still manage to sell in largish quantities.

I'll admit it: this was all about Ego. I know more than one author, and I've always had a little bit of jealousy about my co-speaker at IGC '02, '03, and & 04' - David "RM" Michael had The Indie Game Developers Survival Guide, then later Serious Games. Hrm. I want my name on a book too, damnit. (Ok, so I did trump him in one respect - I owned and co-hosted a TV show. Like, broadcast on actual TV sort of TV show.

So I came up with a cool concept (video games and business), write an outline, introduction, first chapter, etc.

And then it just sat there.

And sat there.

The problem boiled down to was it worth the effort? I started in on The Story of Gamer Zone, and got to thinking about self-publishing it online in a similar episodic format (though at the time I didn't see any sort of business model for it.)

I talked to David and asked a bit about what he got out of the experience, money wise. OK, it would definitely be about feeding my ego more than my pocket book - factored out, his hourly take for having done the book ends up being about 1/3rd of the rate I charge for contracting. Hrm,

I finally said "fuggit." I'm going to write another couple of chapters (damned good thing I'm a fast typist ;-) and start releasing them online episodically like I've done with The Story of Gamer Zone. And then, when it's done, I'll take pre-orders for book shelf versions for anyone who wants 'em, and print some copies of my "book". Or maybe approach a publisher with it if the online readership is high enough. Who knows - but the end result is I'll at very minimum print myself one copy for myself :-) I'm in no hurry - I'm enjoying writing The Story of Gamer Zone at the moment, and probably won't invest a whole lot of effort on the other project until I'm getting close to done with the first one.

Funny little thing - was helping a friend the other day, and he introduced me to one of his customers "This is my friend Davis - he's an author, game developer, web developer, and jack of all trades." I'm not an author - there's no book on the shelves.

Yet ;-)

Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr
Midnight Ryder Technologies