Game Marketing Discussion

**Firlefanz** · 19-10-2004, 12:35 PM

Hi!

When we created Xendis over 2 years ago, we first tried to sell it on CD ourselves and we sold I don't know exatly but over a dozen copies for 10 Euro, because it was including all costs we only sold in Germany and the neighbour countries.

So we decided to sell our next game international. I found ShareIT and I still think this is a good partner, we sell Xenidis there with a download link for 6 Euro and TombClimber for 10 Euro. We sold 4 Xenidis and 14 Tombclimbers til then.

We make all reclame, advertising etc ourselves, we are on a lot of shareware-sites, and this could be better, but I don't know how to do it and I am willing to hear some ideas, but only if it does not cost anything. We earned let's say 200 Euro in 2,5 years with 2 games (we are mainly two people til now) and they only get us back the costs for buying some software we use.

And what I read here about selling CDs where the publisher gets 8 Euro or $ does make no sense because it is much to expensive then. I think for a shareware author like we are, selling CDs does not make much sense, it is too expensive to let somebody do it, and too much work (and expensive) to do it yourself.

Next game will be much better I promise and I hope to sell much more copies then and I hope some coders I know will help me making it harder to crack.

We will continue making games because we love it and have much fun doing it, but we will make no freeware because then I am sure we would start all few month a new project and won't finish anything or finish it too fast, now we ARE to make it better each time because we still dream about selling some more. I am still looking for better ideas how to do it but did not find any til now so please let me know.

We also tried to find a publisher to sell our games in a store, but did not find any. Too bad.

Firle

**WILL** · 20-10-2004, 12:45 AM

Hmm for shareware sites, have you guys considered tucows.com or c|net?

And I'm not sure, but the-underdogs.org had a store for selling indi-developers' games. http://www.the-underdogs.org/store/ Can't remember the criteria required for them.

**cairnswm** · 20-10-2004, 04:58 AM

My game is up on tucows. I remember looking at the under-dogs site but can;t quite remember why I didn;t use it....

**Firlefanz** · 20-10-2004, 06:36 AM

We are also on tucows, and a few dozen other sites. This helps making the game a bit more 'known'. I think you have to make a really great game every 1/50 player is buying, then you can make some serious money, our rate must be 1/350 or something. I would love to have a publisher that gives me a small money for each version or some more money for all and then sells the game in stores for 9 Euro/$, that would be great. I know these publishers exist but are hard to get.

Firle

**Traveler** · 20-10-2004, 07:43 PM

A very interesting topic! But to be honest with all the things said here, I'm begining to wonder whether its worth all the trouble for a few dosen sales. Is it really worth it?

To those who actually have sold games. Do you provide extra service to customers? I mean, when (or if) people write you about bugs or problems or perhaps even want money back for some reason, how do you respond to that?
For instance, cairnswm, your game was reviewed a while ago. Some of the reviewers mentioned a few (minor) problems, one of them about sound iirc. Did you make a patch for the problems mentioned in that review?

**WILL** · 23-10-2004, 04:53 PM

Well the idea is that with practice and time you develop better marketing methods and design games in a more... 'marketable' way. Not so much to be a animated Nike commercial, but little things that appeal to the general player based on ractions to certan things you've done in the past.

**cairnswm** · 26-10-2004, 05:25 AM

I must admit that I didn;t make any changes. Unfortunatly most of the problems were in the libraries I used (GLXtreem and OpenAL) over which I have very little control.

This also is why I havn't done anything new. I'm disappointed that the libraries cannot deliver on all computers. At the moment I dont really know what to do about it either - except switch to another set of libraries - and I dont want DeirectX 9.... so the choice is pretty limited. (At the moment I want to look at SDL but have had problems getting it up and ruinning).

**Kyle** · 23-02-2005, 07:16 PM

about paypal, there is a funny site http://www.paypalsucks.com . I wonder if any of their arguments are accurate. Check out the alternatives as well.

**marmin** · 17-12-2005, 01:06 AM

Well --
To charge money for a game, it has to be:
= totally bug free
= has good documentation
= really fun to play and has decent graphics.
= not too difficult, not boring after a few plays.

even then, I would not charge more than let's say 6 or 7 euro's.

I've seen lots of Indy games who charge $19.95 and are esssentially clones of old games. i have nothing against this, all games nowadays are clones of old games in essence. The buyer must get the feeling that is has taken a lot of work and is not a rip off.

Only if one is a genius in Advertising on ecna pull the trick and let people buy it.

How much would you pay for an indie game? discuss.

**WILL** · 17-12-2005, 04:16 AM

Personally, I think that the prices for most of the big commercial games are just way way too high! I mean 80-90 bucks? eew... not bloody likely.

I on the other hand am, admitedly quite picky about what games I like to play anyhow, but I feel that for me to fork out money for a game, I want it to have great replay value and enough features and aspects to it to keep me really interested in what I may want to buy.

I'd apply this to both the big money games and the indie ones. If the game has more of what I like in games, I might go higher. I generally would like to stay under $30-40[size=9px](CAD)[/size] though.