Indie game sales

#21 It's true.

Although some of GG's titles just keep on selling - MarbleBlast is a good example of this. It's a sort of pure game concept unfettered by platform or era. (I think it will be fun even twenty years from now when we're using hypervoxel display technologies and brain implants...)

Not saying it sells huge amounts, or that we're all rich, just that it seems to keep on going.

And I think that there's a pretty decent possibility to make a game like that, where it has steady sales for a long period. And if you're an indie, its the best kind. :)

#22 Due to a bunch of legal docs we have signed, we can't give out sales numbers.

Between ThinkTanks and a smattering of contract work, we are able to make a living being independent game developers.

I would also like to echo the sentiments of many of the people here and say that knowing what we have sold is not going to do you much good. Another game may sell ten times the units we have, or it may sell very few.. it really depends on the title and the audience you are trying to hit.

A few things that might be helpful though..

The smaller the download size the better. We found that decreasing the download size from 13MB to 8.8MB (demo) made a big difference in the number of downloads..

The demo, and how it sells the full version of the game, is very important. I would advise everyone to make it part of the game design process and design in into the game and not done as an afterthought.

Joe

#23 Following up on what Joe said, I'd recommend people check out this thread as it relates to download size.

I think developers of downloadable games could increase their sales by learning some from "demo" creators in terms of making downloads smaller without sacrificing art quality.

#24 I'm not convinced the 96kb FPS 'demo' is a good argument that downloads can be smaller without sacrificing art quality, because while it looks very nice, the game is absolute crap.

Which is the sort of thing that happens when you severely limit the freedom of designers and artists by doing everything procedurally.

Don't get me wrong, a lot of indies could get their downloads a lot smaller than they are without sacrificing quality, but the kkrieger demo is really not relevant to this topic.

#25 Sure, you make a good point, George. I didn't mean to come off like I was saying everyone should go out and examine that particular demo or it's source code in detail. However, it's certainly fair to say that many demo makers are skilled at producing great art at low kb cost.

The game in the kkrieger demo isn't fun, I agree, so obviously it shouldn't be mimicked in every way. But if nothing else it serves as a nice little inspiration.

Also, as was pointed out in the other thread, there's no doubt a point at which it actually becomes bad to make your game smaller. If it gets too small, people might pre-judge that there just isn't much to it. So, I'm not trying to recommend that downloadable game devs push things too far.

But I think you'll agree with the basic points that there are viable techniques to make downloadable games smaller without sacrificing art or gameplay quality, that doing so can help sales, and that certain demo makers are well-versed in some of those size-reducing techniques. Therefore, it can be worthwhile to study portions of their work. That's what I was claiming. :)

Anyway, don't want to hi-jack the thread.

edited: I'm a compulsive editor.

#26 Hey David "RM" Michael. I just read your book. Cool stuff.

If any one here needs answers to some of these questions pick up a copy of his book. After I read the book I called Jay Moore to hammer him on some sales figures. It didn't work ;) But that okay because now I get it.

I dont care how much any other indy has made because I believe strongly that my game WILL sell well to my target market. I will use many distribution channels, guerilla and otherwise to make it happen. The best bet is to actually publish something and see what happens. Then you can use those numbers to apply to more ambitious projects.

Keep in mind, the amount of levels, charachters and cool power ups does not have ANY relevance on how much people will pay for it. So keep the scale of your projects doable and doable quickly. As gamers we tend to want the stars, but as an indy game developer you need to find the heart of the game and trim out everything else.

#27

Quote:Keep in mind, the amount of levels, charachters and cool power ups does not have ANY relevance on how much people will pay for it.

How MUCH they'll pay for it, or how many will pay for it? :)

I would think it would make some difference in the former, maybe not so much of the latter.

Ah, well. I shouldn't have wasted so much time the last three weeks on cool power-ups for my game :)

#28 LOL Jay. You are a one man team right? So you already get my point. Void wars looks very cool (power ups or not) - Its just that a lot a indy game teams have these huge ideas and then the projects don't get finished because they set there expectations to high.

I am NEVER guilty of that ;)

eg. Quake III Arena - $30 online only. Socom on PS2 cost $55 for a single player game that not many people play. I think Q3A was a better deal for my money. I guess you just have to know your playas.

#29 Josh, yeah, I totally agree. My semi-rant was somewhat prompted by posts I've seen on other forums where people have been saying things like 'wow, if they can do this then why does Far Cry need to be a full DVD!', and things like that. And I know that isn't what you were saying, but hearing about the kkreiger demo being proof that all other games are bloated became a bit of a pet peeve of mine :)

I totally agree that a lot can be done to make downloads smaller. My current 2D game project uses vector graphics, mostly to allow for smaller downloads. (It uses Flash SWF format, actually, but doesn't use the Flash player. I'm using a modified version of Gameswf in my engine for SWF parsing and custom code to render to GDI+ (and hopefully Quartz at some point, but not yet)).

#30 Shay,

Charles Bloom has a bit on his game design rants page that I agree with, about how even established developers are now having problems with not being able to get games out in a timely manner. I think his main point also applies to many indies (not in terms of being the best technologically, but in terms of wanting to add too many features).



When will producers and game designers realize that "shipping quickly" is one of the features that will make a game successful, and do a better job of it? If Doom 3 and Half Life 2 (and Duke Nukem Forver) had come out when originally planned, all of them would have rocked the industry. Now, Doom 3 will still do ok, but its technology is actually old hat, and there will be many Doom 3 look-alikes coming out at the same time. I'm not saying they should have been released in the state they were in, I'm saying that the scheduling and planning from the beginning should have been more focused on quickly shipping rather than adding in a bunch of "wouldn't it be cool if...". Doom 3 could have shipped without physics or networking and blown people away, then you add them in for the Doom 3 : Unleashed or whatever and everyone's even happier, and you've sold two games instead of one.

#31 Yes and no. (Don't you love how I take a firm stand?)

There is definitely a point where quantity and quality of the experience has to match the price point in the mind of a consumer. This isn't too hard when you are talking about a sub-$20 product geared for adults with a reasonable amount of disposable income (or around the price of a CD when targeting younger players with allowances or summer jobs, I guess). You have to meet the expectation of the "value for the dollar." Levels, power-ups, whistles and bells, and characters all contribute to the perception of that value. Multiplayer increases this value in the minds of many gamers (whether or not they REALLY expect to play it that way), as does level-building tools (again - even if they know they won't really use it... maybe they figure they can download stuff from people who do).

Exceeding this minimum mark really only effects you as a competitive advantage. You have 10 levels - someone else with a game very similar to yours has 16 levels plus level-building tools... assuming all else is equal (it never is, of course), they'll choose the other guy's game. That's part of why you see the escalation in the mainstream retail area... everybody's cranking out effectively the same seven games, so they have to make sure they have all the features of the competition and THEN some. This vicious circle raises the expectation of the consumers for what they expect for their $50. Ugly little self-destructive cycle.

In the case of indie games... our price point is generally low enough that it falls into a zone where consumers don't think too hard about the purchase. It's like buying a 20-ounce soft drink at fast food restaurant - we tend not to think too hard about the fact that for the same price we're paying for a cup of what's often 2 parts ice to 1 part soda, we could buy a full 2-liter bottle and have change left over. So - assuming we're within that threshold, your point still stands.

Well, that's my story and I'm stickin' too it.

#32 So I should include more cool power ups Jay or buy less soda? ; )

The game rant is histarical (and possibly helpful). Its funny how we all have differnet opinions, know what would make better games because we are "gamers" and are all positively 100% correct! You gotta love it.

#33 Glad I found this thread again :P

I was wondering that maybe, instead of posting financials, perhaps a postmortem would be more helpful. Other than being nosey, I would like to know of the process some of you guys have went through...'what went right' and 'what went wrong', what you came away with and so on. I think this has the power to be more helpful in the long run that just getting the amount of sales.

Good idea?

#34 I think postmortems are great - but for Indies, you'd have to post more than one, or just keep updating it as time went on. For 'pro' developers, you develop the project, it goes to the publisher, and you move on. (Yes, it goes a bit deeper than THAT, but that's pretty close)

For an Indie, it doesn't stop when you finish the game development portion, and the life cycle can be many years long. Take a look at David "RM" Michael's Artifact - that's been running for years now. 21-6 did Orbz, and it did so-so. They did 2.0, and now it's going much better, including now going into arcades with Orbz. Even my Boulder Panic! game has been selling for years now, across three separate versions of the game (BP!, BP!2, BP!2 DX). The story doesn't end until you finally decide you aren't pushing the game anymore. I'd LOVE to see Indies make postmortems that are a 'living document' that continues to tell the story two years after the games original release.

#35 Wow, I never thought of it like that. It sounds like something that would work its way into a plan file at the very least, but I'd figure at least covering the game from the beginning of production to the point where its initially released, and then follow-ups on the levels of development afterwards would be cool.

When we actually get done, I may try it your way :)

#36 Hi,

I am going to weigh in here with my personal experience. I was contracted by a development studio to develop a puzzle type game, the game has been on sale at various online sites for about 6 months now and I receive 22.5% of their PROFIT on sales of that game, the profit is after paying the publisher and their marketing expenses. So far I have earned $33,283, not bad in my opinion for developing a simple game which took about 5 weeks, I developed the game on my own including GFX but did hire another coder to do some work in the final stage whom I paid just under $3000.

Obviously my next route is development and self publishing but I just wanted to let people know that you can make good money out of simple games published online.

Andy

#37 Can we play this game that you created andy

#38 Hi,

You can but I am contractually not allowed to tell you which one it is but... its a puzzle game on zone.com and yahoo games.

Andy

#39 I can tell you that my first game sold for $8,000 to a client. The second and 3rd games sold for between $20 and $30k. The first cost $1500 for a Director3D programmer and the others were developed in house in FlashMX. Before you laugh at Flash note that they both use collision detection and physics. All of the games took us about 6 weeks to develope including all of the marketing extras like microsites, banner ads, etc.

not bad for a "n00b" right : )

#40 Yup, FlashMX is great for developing 2D games in, MX 2004 now supports full OO programming and the graphics handling is great. Cross platform too :)

Andy