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“I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”

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Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”

#11

Post by dejv »

sindaccos wrote: post #3

There are few things come to mind: 1. Is it necessary to setup a company and accounting procedures before you even make your first sale? 2. I think this is a great game, however the failure to launch is rooted on marketing: not enough marketing research, tweeting and emailing publishers are not enough. Who is your ideal customer? Where do they spend their time at? What features distinguish you from other competitors?…

1. in most countries you have to do that before you start making any money. But that could be as simple as sole proprietorship which usually have minimum accounting burdens.

Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”

#12

Post by thisisit »

sindaccos wrote: post #3

There are few things come to mind: 1. Is it necessary to setup a company and accounting procedures before you even make your first sale? 2. I think this is a great game, however the failure to launch is rooted on marketing: not enough marketing research, tweeting and emailing publishers are not enough. Who is your ideal customer? Where do they spend their time at? What features distinguish you from other competitors?…

I think this post itself is a good marketing tactic.

Btw, any books/courses you recommend on digital marketing specially related to blogging?

Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”

#13

Post by FeepingCreature »

aedron wrote: post #8

I feel like relying on a big splash release is an intuitive, obvious, and wrong approach. It's like a kind of waterfall methodology, where we should be doing iterative: Release something early to a limited audience, gauge reactions, fix the obvious mistakes and implement the feedback from players. Then keep doing that. If you can't even get a small audience (like a small gamer forum) to play, then you're already in t…

Can confirm. Tried big splash release, didn't work, gave up. Don't do big splash releases.

Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”

#14

Post by zapperdapper »

Of course given you can crank out a game that quickly it may have been better to not quit your job and release the game on the side. If it had been a success then quit. Hindsight is a wonderful thing isn't it?

There are some strong positives here - you shipped a game! That alone is awesome. You built up a community. You were prepared to take a chance. All great things.

The harsh reality is the casual games market is brutal from a business perspective - that's not your fault.

Better luck next time!

Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”

#15

Post by ftlio »

sindaccos wrote: post #3

There are few things come to mind: 1. Is it necessary to setup a company and accounting procedures before you even make your first sale? 2. I think this is a great game, however the failure to launch is rooted on marketing: not enough marketing research, tweeting and emailing publishers are not enough. Who is your ideal customer? Where do they spend their time at? What features distinguish you from other competitors?…

> it is far from too late.

Even if it's too late for the game, which does seem unlikely for at least some kind of ROI, it doesn't seem too late for the author in any capacity. People go way further past the brink than the author has yet to and recovered just fine. Staring down the barrel of insolvency is like a right of passage for creative work. Some people are luckier than others for not even thinking of it that way ('stupid') or just crazy ('high risk tolerance'). Hell, plenty of people go multiple rounds. Don't let the fear stop you from making moves.

Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”

#16

Post by sdenton4 »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #9

Yeah, quitting the job with no savings is a mistake. The things he could have done better are mainly 1) Proof that people want to play this game. Post the gameplay video on /r/indiegaming, see what people say. I remember the early days of Minecraft, people went wild for it, even though it was very basic. 2) Marketing. Tweeting is not enough. Submitting to reviewers is not enough. On the positive side, he is fast and…

I think for small games like this, there's a lot to be said for building up a corral if releases. Once one makes a decent splash, you'll have a better audience for future releases, as well as people exploring your back catalog. It's a marathon, not a sprint.

Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”

#18

Post by patio11 »

tobyhinloopen wrote: post #6
golergka wrote: post #4

That's why you need a publisher in this saturated market. A love developer without any contacts won't get any reviews and probably won't every realize why people don't want to buy his product or review it.

How do you get a publisher?

It's structurally similar to getting an investor for other software companies: you find someone in the business of publishing and convince them that giving you money is a good idea.

Generally, this will be by pointing out "I was introduced to you by someone you trust, which is why you've read this far. I clearly have the capabilities required to ship a game which will sell a lot of copies. I have lined up a team which has done this before, professionally. We have produced some early artifacts which suggest that we're capable of executing on this in a more-or-less professional fashion. Give us a small amount of money now, plus more if we hit some milestones, in return for the lion's share of our profits from this venture."

The true answer for "How do you get a publisher given that you're an enthusiast who hasn't worked in a professional capacity in the gaming field before?" is "You don't, unless you already have a hit on your hands."

Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”

#19

Post by laksjd »

golergka wrote: post #4

That's why you need a publisher in this saturated market. A love developer without any contacts won't get any reviews and probably won't every realize why people don't want to buy his product or review it.

Even having a publisher doesn't address the underlying issue: There are simply too many 'indie' games. Relatively simple high-concept low-fidelity retro games don't have a huge audience and that audience is getting swamped with a torrent of games of varying quality.

Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”

#20

Post by bufferoverflow »

sdenton4 wrote: post #16
bufferoverflow wrote: post #9

Yeah, quitting the job with no savings is a mistake. The things he could have done better are mainly 1) Proof that people want to play this game. Post the gameplay video on /r/indiegaming, see what people say. I remember the early days of Minecraft, people went wild for it, even though it was very basic. 2) Marketing. Tweeting is not enough. Submitting to reviewers is not enough. On the positive side, he is fast and…

I think for small games like this, there's a lot to be said for building up a corral if releases. Once one makes a decent splash, you'll have a better audience for future releases, as well as people exploring your back catalog. It's a marathon, not a sprint.

It's fine to do marathons if you're sure you're going to win, or if you don't care if you win.
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