Game Marketing Discussion

[WILL]

I made this thread to continue a conversation that was started in a previous thread. The discussion covers what those are willing to pay for marketing, productions quality and how you get your products sold.

From 'Commando Xenidis' thread:

Indeed it does look pretty good already!

If I may be so bold: your previous project tombclimber. I understand you are selling it. What are your impressions about this. Have you sold many copies yet? And did you recieve any customer feedback?

Also, I read on a different forum that tombclimber was cracked early in the release. How did you respond to that and do you have any plans for future games to prevent this from happening (if possible)?

Thanks

Hi!

@Will: Thanks, of course I keep you informed, I hope to have some nice screens running on the planet surface soon

@Traveler: I sold 14 copies until now I think. So there is no big money to make, it is just a hobby, and we are a 2 person team and meet once a week and spend the few money we got
Yes, TombClimber was cracked (every new version) and I am absolutely not happy about it. But I now know what I did wrong and next game it will be harder, I promise :twisted:
I plan to ask some developers here or in the Omega forum to try to hack and cheat it before it is out, so maybe I find some problems before publishing.

Thanks!
Firle

14 copies huh? Not bad for a first go I'd say. Especially considering you had minimal marketing scheme for the game. Perhaps some of your experiences from this could be shared to help others in their own commercial endevours.

I plan to ask some developers here or in the Omega forum to try to hack and cheat it before it is out, so maybe I find some problems before publishing.

Thats a really cool idea. A good way to make it more rock solid.

[quote="Firlefanz"]Hi Will,

TombClimber was the 2nd one, the first one was Xenidis, a 2D space shooter made with DelphiX & Powerdraw. Commando Xenidis will be a sequel to this one, only much better and more features.

We have a professional partner for selling the games called 'ShareIT', wo gets 15-20% and sells international the game via download-]

15-20 percent!?! I don't know whats normal in situations like these but that does sound like a lot to me.

Are there any productions costs involved (like burning cds, including a cdbox and shipping it) or is it a simple case of downloading the game and you get a serial upon payment?

I did btw checked ShareIT.com for the game but there was no mentioning of tombclimber

better choice is PayPal if Your country isn't in black list(germany isn't in black list), then You could have account and sell it there. Why it is Better?
1. they take only 2,5% (Max, it could be wrong becouse this isn't my range) and 0.3 ct.
2. Your game could be found in eBay

And other thing, no offence but Your web page is not like Proffesional's Game developer's. If you change the design, and default Language make English Your games could be sold better. Take Out all Your family photos (create another webpage for exaple www.your_site.com/family or sth.

Good luck,
Bogdan Kustan aka WiZz

The fact that you feel their web page isn;t professional goes to show how good it is for them to have a partner that sells their games. Making a game is probably about 30% of the effort required to sell a game. Advertising, presence and availablity are the other 70% and if you can find a good partner to do it for you its probably worth a lot more than 15-20% of the price of the game.

I'm trying to sell some games now and am letting 60% of the income go to the marketing team.

Cairns: Really? Can you say what company?

Firle & Cairns: Are you guys selling it as a download-only or will you be making up CDs, etc? What would that cost you guys and what price would it drag the game(s) up to?

[WiZz]

Marketing is not in my range, but I know something about this. Firstly I think the most important thing is rAcclame. Secondly is game design. Your game could be very cool, but if all graphics is made with MS Pain then it sucks (or You have profesional pixel artist). Burning CD's is too expensive for not profesional team, or You could try to find publisher, but if even they take Your game then they take the bigest part of profit (in Lithuania You got 15-20%), so the best chice is to sell through internet. The page where game is published MUST be nice designed and easy to browse. if You are not the professional web designer then better buy the template, or just buy whole site. The rAcclame could be banner exchange system, Demo version in Different companies (magazines) CD's, Forums and news groups. And the last and very important thig is price, I think better to sell 100 copies with price 5$ then 10 copies with price 20$. if Your game havn't greate name and You are just a begginer then price must be low, like 5-8$.
an example:
if Your page have 500 visitors a day and 1% is potencial customers (5 copies in day), Your games price is 5$ so Your dayly payment is:
5x5=25$
monthly:
25x30=750$
Not bad i said

[cairnswm]

I'm trying to sell a single shareware game through the internet. So far I havn't got a single sale in 3 months. But I know thats because I havn't tried to do any advertising - its not my interest. BMTMicro take 10% of each sale.

I'm doing a bulk market game through direct sales in South Africa. I have a two man marketing team busy trying to get sales and between them they will be sharing 60% on the income. My 40% should be enough for me to stop working once the sales happen. I want to write games, I do NOT want to do marketing and accounting etc. So by making my Sales people very much part of the company I know they will do the selling to make their own income.

[Harry Hunt]

A few tips:

1) If you have webspace that supports PHP/ASP/JSP/Perl/CF-scripting, use PayPal as your payment processor (http://www.paypal.com). They support all major credit cards and they don't charge an awful lot. Plus they support IPN (Instant Payment Notification) which means when somebody orders something from your website, he or she gets forwarded to PayPal and when the payment is completed a script on your website is executed allowing you to send out e-mails with download links or whatever you want... They won't advertise your stuff, but let's face it - neither do all those shareware sites (at least not properly).

2) If you want to sell your game on CD, try cafepress (http://www.cafepress.com). They don't have any set-up fees and they produce professional quality silk-screened CDs. They cost something around $8 per CD, anything you charge above that is your revenue.

3) If you want to advertise your stuff properly, you will have to pay for it. But good advertisement might make you a lot more money than you invest for advertisement.
I got some of my games on the cover-cds of a couple of German shareware magazines, one even with a screenshot on the front page. I managed to do this by contacting the editor in chief and telling him that he could publish the full version of one of my older games in his magazine if he'd write an article about one of my newer games...

4) Don't waste your time on inventing cool copy protection systems. People are always going to steal your stuff, with or without copy protection. If you absolutely want to have a copy protection system, use something simple like serial numbers.

5) Something a lot of people don't know: If you want to sell anything, even shareware, you will need a business license.

[Ultra]

[quote="Harry Hunt"]
1) If you have webspace that supports PHP/ASP/JSP/Perl/CF-scripting, use PayPal as your payment processor (http://www.paypal.com). They support all major credit cards and they don't charge an awful lot. Plus they support IPN (Instant Payment Notification) which means when somebody orders something from your website, he or she gets forwarded to PayPal and when the payment is completed a script on your website is executed allowing you to send out e-mails with download ]

I've heard from a couple of places that PayPal for whatever reason isn't very good (I guess the biggest issue is that customers don't trust it). That doesn't mean you shouldn't support it, it just means you might want to have alternatives.

I got some of my games on the cover-cds of a couple of German shareware magazines, one even with a screenshot on the front page. I managed to do this by contacting the editor in chief and telling him that he could publish the full version of one of my older games in his magazine if he'd write an article about one of my newer games...

Just out of curiosity, what was your experience with this, how did it affect you sales etc?

Yes, TombClimber was cracked (every new version) and I am absolutely not happy about it. But I now know what I did wrong and next game it will be harder, I promise

Any particular tips you want to share?

The developer section over at dexterity has some nice articles on selling shareware. Anyone have any thoughts on those?

Admittingly I don't have any experience with selling shareware but these were just my thoughts.

[noeska]

Firlefanz wrote:

Yes, TombClimber was cracked (every new version) and I am absolutely not happy about it. But I now know what I did wrong and next game it will be harder, I promise

So to make profit you have to think the worst of your endusers. So shareware programs must be made hacker proof.
How do you do that:
- Compact your executable: http://upx.sourceforge.net/
But that obviously is not enough soo we might have to use:
http://www.strongbit.com/execryptor.asp
Or maybe you should also add http://www.paypal.com/ and only offer the full version for download after payment. Give the full version a personal key also, as it otherwise gets copied. But event then there are people that do not care if they play a game that is registered to someone else.

or could http://www.softwrap.com/ be the all in one solution?

[Harry Hunt]

I've heard from a couple of places that PayPal for whatever reason isn't very good (I guess the biggest issue is that customers don't trust it). That doesn't mean you shouldn't support it, it just means you might want to have alternatives.

I never had any problems with it, but yeah, you might want to have alternatives.

Just out of curiosity, what was your experience with this, how did it affect you sales etc?

Sales about quadrupled only days after the release of the magazine. This lastet for about two weeks and then stagnated.

[cairnswm]

Paypal doesn't support South Africa so I cannot use it

I agree on the hacking - games will always be hacked and there isn;t much you can do about it. A simple game takes me about 180 hours to do - to put proper encryption into it would add another 100 hours to that time. (180 hours = 8 months work after hours)

Getting games into magazines is a great idea. At the moment I only have one game so that isn;t going to work so well. When I get a new game ready I'll certainly give it a try

[Momor]

Hey cairnswm,

Before advertising, please consider building a PAD file and submitting it to the most possible range of websites : http://www.asp-shareware.org/users/searchsites.asp

The ASP site gives some good tips and even links to a freeware PAD builder.

I'm currently trying to sell one game using this method. So far it appears that the number of sales is directly proportional to the number of downloads of the demo/light version (my ratio is 0.8% for now, which seems to be usual). So just get a lot of people download your game !

Also don't forget that the shareware scene is filled with tons of puzzle games, so the competition is though. I made this mistake for my first project, so I'm planning to try something less usual for my next project (perhaps an adventure or racing game).

[Eriken]

Here is a discussion about PayPal on the Indieforums if you're curious, it's abit better explained there I think

http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=837
_____
Eriken