Plan for Dan MacDonald
by Dan MacDonald · 11/12/2004 (4:16 pm) · 9 comments
Little Soldiers one Month Later
We released Little Soldiers on the 8th of October right before IGC. There were two versions, a web-based version using flash and a single downloadable version that could be unlocked with a key code. The initial version ran in a 400x400 window, had 36 levels and was priced at $14.95 US. The flash version of Little Soldiers (LS) went live on www.grab.com/indie/ during IGC. Sales started slowly one or two ever few days but have been steadily increasing.
The indie section of grab.com is interesting and a nice opportunity. Essentially they allow Indies to submit demos of their games for nothing. No contracts, no anything. The demo can link back to your own site and if you have a downloadable version people can purchase it from your site.
The little soldiers release went O.K. on Grab.com, maybe 4-6 simultaneous players at any given time. During this time I continually made little improvements to the game, making one of the difficult demo levels easier, a better nag screen etc. Then one day the developer of the flash version of the game said that the game was doing too much traffic on his site so he had to re-direct it to grab.com. What happened next caught us by surprise, LS quickly rose to become the #1 indie game...
At its peak I took a screenshot because I just couldn't believe how many people were playing it.
Soon after this screencap was taken we got a mail from grab.com asking us if we would like to publish LS on the commercial end of the Grab.com network. Things are moving forward there and we are excited about the potential.
Overall the sales of LS have exceeded my expectations, in it's first 30 days it averaged more then 1 sale a day which is just great. I was hoping to average at least one a day but to exceed that has been very exciting. Not only that, sales have almost doubled in the past week as LS continues to grow. LS is available for both Mac and Windows platforms, early on Mac sales exceed PC sales by nearly 7 to 1. Recently there has been a resurgence in Windows sales (most likely due to grab.com traffic) and Mac and PC sales are nearly equal.
I can't stress this enough, if you are going to make a game. Make it cross platform, it's not that much extra effort to be cross platform starting out. There are plenty of available cross platform technologies available to use. I used PTK for Little Soldiers, because it is an easy to use HW accelerated 2D engine. If you are doing 3D games, pick something like Torque or another cross platform technology so that you can capitalize on Mac sales. It's not that much extra effort to be cross platform when you are starting out, but trying to port to another platform later when you haven't planned ahead can be very time consuming. The Mac port of LS took one afternoon. While Mac's account for a puny 3% of the market its users are very familiar with having to turn to indie developers for software and games. They tend to be a little less spoiled then PC game customers and more willing to purchase something if they like it.
We've added a full screen option to LS and rounded out it's levels at an even 40. On Monday we will release with a few more levels and an updated nag screen. I'm confident that this will improve the conversion rate of the game even more.
The nice thing about Little Soldiers, it took about 4 months of part time work. I was working 10hr days in enterprise software development at the time. Total costs were about $300 for sound and music. The game has already made well over that much in its first month so it wont be long before it has paid for the time invested and then some.
We released Little Soldiers on the 8th of October right before IGC. There were two versions, a web-based version using flash and a single downloadable version that could be unlocked with a key code. The initial version ran in a 400x400 window, had 36 levels and was priced at $14.95 US. The flash version of Little Soldiers (LS) went live on www.grab.com/indie/ during IGC. Sales started slowly one or two ever few days but have been steadily increasing.
The indie section of grab.com is interesting and a nice opportunity. Essentially they allow Indies to submit demos of their games for nothing. No contracts, no anything. The demo can link back to your own site and if you have a downloadable version people can purchase it from your site.
The little soldiers release went O.K. on Grab.com, maybe 4-6 simultaneous players at any given time. During this time I continually made little improvements to the game, making one of the difficult demo levels easier, a better nag screen etc. Then one day the developer of the flash version of the game said that the game was doing too much traffic on his site so he had to re-direct it to grab.com. What happened next caught us by surprise, LS quickly rose to become the #1 indie game...
At its peak I took a screenshot because I just couldn't believe how many people were playing it.
Soon after this screencap was taken we got a mail from grab.com asking us if we would like to publish LS on the commercial end of the Grab.com network. Things are moving forward there and we are excited about the potential.
Overall the sales of LS have exceeded my expectations, in it's first 30 days it averaged more then 1 sale a day which is just great. I was hoping to average at least one a day but to exceed that has been very exciting. Not only that, sales have almost doubled in the past week as LS continues to grow. LS is available for both Mac and Windows platforms, early on Mac sales exceed PC sales by nearly 7 to 1. Recently there has been a resurgence in Windows sales (most likely due to grab.com traffic) and Mac and PC sales are nearly equal.
I can't stress this enough, if you are going to make a game. Make it cross platform, it's not that much extra effort to be cross platform starting out. There are plenty of available cross platform technologies available to use. I used PTK for Little Soldiers, because it is an easy to use HW accelerated 2D engine. If you are doing 3D games, pick something like Torque or another cross platform technology so that you can capitalize on Mac sales. It's not that much extra effort to be cross platform when you are starting out, but trying to port to another platform later when you haven't planned ahead can be very time consuming. The Mac port of LS took one afternoon. While Mac's account for a puny 3% of the market its users are very familiar with having to turn to indie developers for software and games. They tend to be a little less spoiled then PC game customers and more willing to purchase something if they like it.
We've added a full screen option to LS and rounded out it's levels at an even 40. On Monday we will release with a few more levels and an updated nag screen. I'm confident that this will improve the conversion rate of the game even more.
The nice thing about Little Soldiers, it took about 4 months of part time work. I was working 10hr days in enterprise software development at the time. Total costs were about $300 for sound and music. The game has already made well over that much in its first month so it wont be long before it has paid for the time invested and then some.
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#2
Sounds like interesting approach.
Now, for the cryptic question - when is your other game going to be released? :))))))
11/12/2004 (4:44 pm)
Hey, Dan. Thats some nice numbers for the first month sales. Err...what exactly is the Grab.com`s interest in allowing indies publish demoes there for no cost? Customer luring? Or have they set it up as kind of "playground" where to test various releases and offer commercial opportunities as soon as they see significant numbers? (Your story seems to indicate this).Sounds like interesting approach.
Now, for the cryptic question - when is your other game going to be released? :))))))
#3
From what I herd they created the indie section to find little gaming gems that they might not know about othwise. Little Soldiers is the first game (according to the person I talked to) to actually make the jump from the Indie side to the commercial side of the operation. Also like most of these online "Game Stores" they recieve a certian portion of their income from ad revenue. New games in the indie section means more visitors stick around and play. So they do generate some income from it.
Katsu is on the way! I've been working on it between updates to Little Soldiers. It's mostly design work at this point (which is painful for me, I prefer to code). The plan has been slightly changed. I have 3 complete tilesets so now there will be 10 levels in each "world". All custom with scripted gameplay... :)
@Ron
Torque2D looks great and certianly a viable optoin for indies! However it was not available when I was developing LS.
11/12/2004 (5:18 pm)
@NaurisFrom what I herd they created the indie section to find little gaming gems that they might not know about othwise. Little Soldiers is the first game (according to the person I talked to) to actually make the jump from the Indie side to the commercial side of the operation. Also like most of these online "Game Stores" they recieve a certian portion of their income from ad revenue. New games in the indie section means more visitors stick around and play. So they do generate some income from it.
Katsu is on the way! I've been working on it between updates to Little Soldiers. It's mostly design work at this point (which is painful for me, I prefer to code). The plan has been slightly changed. I have 3 complete tilesets so now there will be 10 levels in each "world". All custom with scripted gameplay... :)
@Ron
Torque2D looks great and certianly a viable optoin for indies! However it was not available when I was developing LS.
#4
11/13/2004 (12:27 am)
Big Congrats Dan! Seems like you have quite a crew of addicted puzzlers. 107 users playing when I gave it a whirl at 1 AM... Now as of 2 AM, there are 113. And if I don't force myself to go to bed it'll soon be 114...
#5
11/13/2004 (1:10 am)
Good game :) 
#6
11/13/2004 (2:08 am)
Congrats again Dan, now we're waiting for the next game ;)
#7
11/14/2004 (9:27 am)
Congratulations, Dan! This is a game that definitely deserves its success. :) Great job!
#8
11/14/2004 (1:22 pm)
Thanks guys! I appreciate the nice comments. :)
#9
This is the valuable gem on the sandy beach of this resource. While the concept of appropriately scoping to reach the largest possible demographic is obvious, cross platform considerations are often neglected due to myopic or incompetent planning. Being able to relate this design practice to a successful case study adds credibility to the objective and helps establish a counter argument to those that might seek cost savings at the expense of market share.
There are uncountable examples of projects that discover this gem of wisdom beyond the point of practical return.
Cheers,
Rich Wermske
05/04/2007 (11:32 am)
"I can't stress this enough, if you are going to make a game. Make it cross platform, it's not that much extra effort to be cross platform starting out. There are plenty of available cross platform technologies available to use."This is the valuable gem on the sandy beach of this resource. While the concept of appropriately scoping to reach the largest possible demographic is obvious, cross platform considerations are often neglected due to myopic or incompetent planning. Being able to relate this design practice to a successful case study adds credibility to the objective and helps establish a counter argument to those that might seek cost savings at the expense of market share.
There are uncountable examples of projects that discover this gem of wisdom beyond the point of practical return.
Cheers,
Rich Wermske
Associate Ron Yacketta
I agree that an indie developer/team should start out thinking multiplatform, you mentioned PTK for the 2D side of things.. Just a small plug, Melv May will be releasing T2D (Torque 2D) some time soon. I have had a chance to play with T2D and can honestly say that it just kicks arse!
-Ron