“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”
#2Sad as it may be, it's just such an obvious rookie mistake.
Just don't quit your job unless you have enough savings and good grasp on your finances.
It's so much easier to make things than to sell them, even more so from an unknown underdog on a crowded market.
Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”
#3There 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?
You can PM me for pro bono advice regarding digital marketing, it is far from too late.
Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”
#4That'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.
Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”
#5Hopefully you got a few more sales after posting this. =)
Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”
#6That'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?
Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”
#7There 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 am very sure that you don't need to setup a company before releasing a game.
Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”
#8I 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 trouble and should revise your idea. Once the game starts to look like something with mass appeal, start planning a real release. If you want a splashy go-live at this point then change the name of the game and do it as a clean new release, but this time you are releasing something that has been market tested and proven to have appeal.
Also, and this is encapsulated in the ideas above, don't freaking rely on family, friends, or acquaintances, to tell you what they think of the game. Not even other devs. Nobody wants to be the asshole that shoots down someone's dream. Again, if you can't even get actual players to try your game then you have big problems that you need to work on.
Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”
#9Yeah, 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 can deliver. I feel like he can develop minimum viable games even faster, just to prove the gameplay is addicting.
Re: “I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”
#10In your country do you have to register the business if your business does not make any money? In UK you can make money for 3 months before registering...
I feel for you, I can only give you an advice to try to turn your mind into anything positive. You are lucky you don't have kids to feed, or pregnant wife to look after.
Robert Kiyosaki has written in 'Rich dad poor dad' book, that it's good to default before 30 so you learn the lesson and can become millionaire. You started your venture and you learned your lesson, don't panic and you will be telling this story as good anecdote with big smile.