New company direction, need input!
Community Forums/General Help/New company direction, need input!
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| Howdy folks! I've thought of a rather interesting direction that I might take WerdnaWorldGames in, and wanted your opinions. Instead of having my site how it is now, where people can download most of my games for free, and buy Ping Pong Battle for 6$ if they want to, I would make it more like a subscription game portal thing. People would pay 1$ a month, and then have access to every game on my site (Including Ping Pong Battle). That would allow me to mainly make small poky games like Holy Wary, and The Hand of Werdna, without having to worry too much about making graphics that could compete with other games out there, since these are just little mini games, and people will feel that only 1$ a month for 30+ downloads is a good deal. And they would be fun to play, even if the graphics aren't the best :) Then I could also do a 'Game of the Week' thing, where I come out with a new game download every week(Or a few games a week) so that people have a reason to keep paying 1$ every month, since new games are coming out all the time. What's your opinions? What do you think the possibility of this idea being successful is? |
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| The market is currently saturated with free mini-games that are fun to play, so I don't see why anyone would pay for something that can be found for free everywhere. Just check mindjolt games on facebook, which is one of hundreds of examples. Even if you had produced more than 100 mini-games, which you haven't, I doubt this could be succesful. I'm sorry to disappoint. |
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| How are sales of Ping Pong Battle coming along? |
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| Move away from windows. (thats not an anti MS rant, its just windows is saturated) |
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| Werdna, you are very creative the only thing you are lacking is art skills so stop beating around the bush and find yourself a graphics artist and start making games that are pleasant to look at. You won't get anywhere without a monetary sacrifice in the art department no matter what route you take. I can tell you that the only reason I tried your game was because I wanted to see what you were doing but If I would have seen your game for download somewhere else based on the pictures you posted, I would have never tried it not even for free. I don't know how many here can really be honest with you but that is as honest as I can be. |
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| Keep in mind that a subscription model is unlikely to work unless you also add new games at least every month, AND keep the quality level high enough for it to be worthwhile. Also, what's to stop someone from signing up, downloading everything that's there, and then canceling the same day? Finally, I'm afraid I'm going to have to agree with Jesse: you are very creative and have some good game ideas, but the graphics really aren't up to 'commercial' standards... Which means you're going to have a very hard time competing with other, more polished looking offerings. |
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| I rather pay $1 for a mini game than a monthly subscription. And if you make some new maps for the game, I would buy them for $1 too. |
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| Ok, so it looks like the subscription service is out the window ;) How are sales of Ping Pong Battle coming along? Well, it's been picked up by 3 portals. Only one of them has up for sale right now, the other 2 are still working on putting it up. As to my own site, I'm still investigating the best ways to advertise it, so there have not been many sales to date, but that should pick up soon enough! (thats not an anti MS rant, its just windows is saturated) But how well do games sell on other systems? Windows is the most used platform, so although I have more competition, I also have a higher customer base. Also, what's to stop someone from signing up, downloading everything that's there, and then canceling the same day? That's ok, I still get my 1$! And since new games would be coming out quite often, they might be inclined to stick with it. @Jesse\xlsior I think hiring an artist is what I'll do. I have the extra cash right now, so I just have to figure out what game I want to make and then I'll either post here looking for an artist, or look at www.freelancer.com and pick one up really cheap. @Lumooja New maps\content that costs a little cash seems to be the way to go. The initial game has to be popular to make it work though :) Cheers folks! |
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| You should make The Hand of Werdna modable. Everybody can put in his own hand :=) With $1 everybody can upload his own mod! by side.. WERDNA.. this is realy low budget :) |
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| A game company is just like any other company; you need to calculate your risks, make a strong investment, and then work your butt off to try to get in the black. There are no easy entries into an industry anywhere, and the games market is especially difficult lately. Make free games, enjoy it as a hobby. Release them open source, build a community. Work a day job. Write a formal business plan, and most importantly, do some market research. You need to be tracking downloads religiously, measuring page hits, determining who is playing your game and who isn't. What venues produce the most downloads? What games do the best where? Unless you're getting thousands of downloads on a free game, chances are a game won't sell. Free games and commercial games have a lot in common, like advertising, production, and distribution. Unless you hit it big freeware, the chances of hitting it big commercial are slim to none. My two cents. |
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| Well, it's been picked up by 3 portals. Only one of them has up for sale right now Another route you could take is by mass submission to software sites using something like:- http://www.develab.net/ I forgot all about that app above with Nags, but, it's definitely on my 'to-purchase' list! ;) Night night! :D Dabz |
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| What i meant was, say you have written a shootemup. -Platform A has 1,000,000 users that -might- be interested -if- they even ever find it out of the 10000 shootemup games on one of the millions of shareware sites, some better some worse than yours. -Platform B has 100,000 users that might be interested and has between 0 and 10 decent shootemups, all contained within a tighter search scope (eg an appstore type thing, or even searching "Platform B Games" in google). Sure there is money to be made on windows, but if you can release on more than one (including windows) then you are tapping more virgin territory. |
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| No matter which platform or hardware you target, you will never get the most profitable choice. You could just target Windows XP and high end hardware, and make more money than with some app which runs on all platforms and hardware. Your game will be different then also, as you can't just make a 100% scalable game anyway. You just choose whatever target audience you want, and you get the same money when you optimize your game for that scene. With some low end game you get like 100000x1$, and with medium end games you get 10000x10$, there's no difference in the end. Only with a high end game (like Crysis 2 or Duke Nukem Forever) you would get 1000000x50$, but you need also some investment then in the game, you can't do that alone. |
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| I don't think you have enough of a selection or enough quality in your games for people to want to commit to a subscription for playing them. You need to have a wide variety in order to justify needing a `door pass` to come in and use the games. It'd be like going to a casino where they only have 5 slot machines and 1 pinball table, which are all old and broken. People will subscribe to stuff of value but I don't think they're going to commit like that for your current games. A subscription is like even one step beyond a single purchase - it's like committing to multiple purchases, so you have to have a lot of quality content that people will keep on wanting more of. |
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| You should make The Hand of Werdna modable. Everybody can put in his own hand :=) That is my own hand in the game by the way, lol! Webcams are fun ;) @Sauer Good advice! I'm doing market research right now on Facebook, and have been for the last few days :) @Dabz I remember someone suggesting this to me awhile ago. I checked it out, but if I remember correctly the demo has serious limitations, and the full version is a tad pricey. I'll download the demo anyways and see what I can do with it. @D4NM4N A good point. I must check into making games for other systems with BlitzMax. @Lumooja Good advice! It'd be like going to a casino where they only have 5 slot machines and 1 pinball table, which are all old and broken. LOL! I shall remember that comparison between my games and a casino for a long time to come ;) I think you probably have a point that I just don't have enough, or high enough quality to justify a subscription. Cheers folks! |
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| People don't like monthly subscriptions. You'll kill off any sales based on impulse purchases, too. |
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| This is a "Do as I say, not as I do." bit of advice, but you really need to produce games with a high degree of polish before you will start to see any value from them. The polished state of the game will get people to test out your demo, and the fun and challenging gameplay of the demo will encourage them to buy the game. |
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| @Dabz I remember someone suggesting this to me awhile ago. I checked it out, but if I remember correctly the demo has serious limitations, and the full version is a tad pricey. I'll download the demo anyways and see what I can do with it. Well, thats the thing... I tried to submit to sites manually, which cost nothing, but, it's an excruciating task and when it comes to the boredom-o-meter, its off the scale! Anyway, the demo is lacking, but that's why its a demo isnt it! :p hehehe Still, good luck in your marketing efforts me auld fruit! ;) Dabz |
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| I read recently that there was a music site that sold tracks for an amount based on their popularity. That is, if a track has 0 sales it could cost $0.10 to download but if the track has had 1000 sales, it could cost $1 to download (dunno the exact figures). That struck me as a good way to help generate interest as well as reward those users who keep coming back for more and getting in early with their purchases. If I had the resources to do so, I'd love to release my games like this :) Then I could also do a 'Game of the Week' thing, where I come out with a new game download every week(Or a few games a week) so that people have a reason to keep paying 1$ every month, since new games are coming out all the time. I'm not sure if anyone else has touched on this, but this plan sounds like it cannot have a positive effect on the game quality in one way what so ever. |
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| Just keep in mind: If for whatever reason you aren't able to create and add a new game even a single month, you're going to tick off your subscribers which will lead to negative reviews and additional loss of sales down the road. You'd better have a couple of extra unreleased games lined up that you can upload if life prevents you from finding enough time to create a new one in a particular month... |
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| ImaginaryHuman wrote: I don't think you have enough of a selection or enough quality in your games for people to want to commit to a subscription for playing them. Now do remember what i had wrote, WERDNA: This one guy (and some others) has found his way: http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=87706#995081 coffeedotbean maked Santas Workshop. This game is simplistic. You can recreate the game, Werdna. Can you do it in the same quality as coffeedotbean? Or do you see only the graphical work? The answer you gave ... I'm always happy to receive feedback of any kind about both my site, and games :) ... does mean you does view only the feedback. Do you realy work based on _the gamers_ feedback? The feedback can based on a community or a little game portal wich has contact to good publishers etc. @Sauer Good advice! I'm doing market research right now on Facebook, and have been for the last few days :) Using facebook is not good @ desktop market (even for games). Do you think some friendslists are better than a gamer community? The Acknex-Game-Engine community is publisher-profed. Even the Darkbasic Community does know how publishers work. They are all going the publisher route. The blitzbasic community is on a good way to competete the others. You'd better have a couple of extra unreleased games lined up that you can upload if life prevents you from finding enough time to create a new one in a particular month... Yoo. This should be point of the year. |
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| I like your ambition man. Don't lose it! |
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| You should target mobile platforms like iPhone and Android. When I look how many sales one get for crappy iPhone apps then there's really money to be made. If you sell something for $0.99 a lot of people just might try it out - at least you would get more sells there as for Windows I guess. At least that's the way I aim for. Unfortunately you can't use Blitz then, but there are 2 real good SDKs: Airplay SDK : Using this one you can develop one game and distribute it to all platforms, just great Dragonfire SDK : Much easier to handle but only for iPhone 2D development |
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| Just keep in mind: If for whatever reason you aren't able to create and add a new game even a single month, you're going to tick off your subscribers which will lead to negative reviews and additional loss of sales down the road. I would make sure to have a few extra games on hand at all times, but I certainly can see that idea getting stressful as I try desperately to come out with a new good game every week\month. ... does mean you does view only the feedback. Do you realy work based on _the gamers_ feedback? The feedback can based on a community or a little game portal wich has contact to good publishers etc. Generally I look at the feedback I get on blitz and then make changes accordingly. I also have a few devoted playtesters who give me highly detailed feedback through e-mail or Skype. I did send Ping Pong Battle off to BigFishGames so I could get feedback from a large portal, but they never responded ;) @Xaron I'm checking out Airplay right now. Developing games for the iPhone certainly sounds interesting. @Everyone Else Thanks for the superb advice. |
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| Werdna, if you only want to develop for iPhone (and there 2d stuff) I'd prefer DragonFire SDK before AirplaySDK because it's much easier to handle. |
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| You should target mobile platforms like iPhone and Android. When I look how many sales one get for crappy iPhone apps then there's really money to be made. If you sell something for $0.99 a lot of people just might try it out - at least you would get more sells there as for Windows I guess. Fair warning: Apple's new TOS indicate that they will be operating much stricter guidelines on what gets into the App Store from now on. So balance that "sales for crappy iphone apps" against making a game and then not being allowed to sell it at all. |
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| I'm checking out DragonFire now. Airplay costs too much for my liking, lol. @Gabriel Thanks for the warning! I'll give it a shot anyways ;) |
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| Airplay doesn't cost anything as long as you stay below $100,000 with your sales per year. |
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| oh, lol. Guess I can do that pretty darn easily ;) Thanks Xaron! |
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| Werdna, have you considered finding a team mate who can do graphics? You obviously have the ability to program but you need to seriously consider somone who is skilled at graphics. There is nothing wrong with wanting to do everything, but if your trying to make this into something that is proffitable then you should be playing to your strengths. With a bit of polish your games would hit a larger audience and you would definitely find more interest from a larger number of portals as well. |
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| @skn3[ac] I am on the verge of posting on blitz in search of one ;) Not yet, though, since I can manage the graphics for my current game. But I will definitely need a partner in the near future, lol. Someone who can do some decent graphics! |
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