Author Archives | RichHW

The Big List Of Indie Marketing And Business Tips

The Big List Of Indie Marketing And Business Tips

Posted on 07 September 2010. Tags: , ,

A collection of links related to indie marketing and business things. Enjoy!
If you should know more sites / articles that would fit here please mention them in the comments.

Navigation

MARKETING

PRESS RELEASE SITES

BUSINESS

INTERVIEWS

FLASH GAME INCOME

ADVERTISING

(place your game banners, buttons and squares on related sites for a little fee)

E-MAIL MARKETING FOR A SMALL BUDGET

JOBS

INDIE FUNDING

This list was created by PixelProspector.com © Copyright 2009-2010. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Posted in Marketing0 Comments

The Big List Of Game Development Resources

The Big List Of Game Development Resources

Posted on 07 September 2010. Tags:

Big resource for game development related things…
Enjoy :)

Game Programming

Game Design

Graphics

Music & Sound

Game Programming

GAME ENGINES

SOURCE CODE EDITORS

PROGRAMMING TUTORIALS

USEFUL TOOLS

Project Management Tools

GAME DESIGN

GAME DESIGN

GRAPHICS

IMAGE EDITORS (PIXEL)

IMAGE EDITORS (GENERAL)

ONLINE IMAGE EDITORS

PIXEL ART TUTORIALS

PIXEL ART FORUMS

PHOTOSHOP TUTORIALS

PAINT.NET TUTORIALS

GIMP TUTORIALS

MUSIC & SOUND

ROYALTY FREE MUSIC

(note: read licences before you use the music)

FREE SITES

COMMERCIAL SITES

ROYALTY FREE SOUNDS

(note: read licences before you use the sounds)

FREE SITES

COMMERCIAL SITES

INDIE MUSICIANS

CREATE YOUR OWN MUSIC & SFX

DIGITAL AUDIO WORKSTATIONS

This list was created by PixelProspector.com © Copyright 2009-2010. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Posted in Development0 Comments

Making Of ‘Solar Struggle’

Making Of ‘Solar Struggle’

Posted on 07 September 2010. Tags: ,

Rich talks to Andreas Heldt of Z-Software about the making of the XBLIG title Solar Struggle.

Background

Where did you get the concept

In 2008 we met Sasha Kemper, who had the original idea, at the games convention in Leipzig, Germany. He was one of the guys who could show their indie projects at the “newcomer@gc” area at the G.A.M.E. booth in the business area. The project looked very interesting and already made a lot of fun, so we decided to help Sasha and provide him with original artworks and technical support.

How long did it take to develop

From the first concepts until release it took roughly 2 years to finish.

How many people

The game was developed by a single person for about a year. As the complexity of the game increased over the years, it became too much work for one person to do alone. As a consequence, three people joined the project in 2009. One was responsible to create tools which aid in building the campaign and the other two did new artworks for the space ships.

In 2010 another two people started working full-time on the project. Of course there were countless other people who helped throughout the project lifetime who did small pieces of artwork, helped with technical questions or did something else the project benefitted from.

How many were full-timers, and how many freelancers

At the end of the project three people were working full-time on the project. Two were working as freelancers.

Did you go over your planned development time/financial budget

Actually, we wanted to finish the game in April 2010. But we weren’t satisfied with the result at that time so we decided to postpone the release until August 2010. That was the right decision as the result is a lot more polished and the campaign benefitted greatly from it.

Development

What challenges did you face

First of all, there were a lot of technical challenges when we started to port the game to the Xbox. The game was developed for a long time on the PC only without minding about the limitations the Xbox has. For example we had to parallelize a big part of the game code to run smoothly on the Xbox’ three cores so we can stage bigger battles with more enemies. Another challenge was to show the game at the gamescom this year.

Did you run into any problems that slowed development and/or release

Before any indie game is published at the Xbox 360 marketplace, the community has to review it and give their thumbs up for the release. There are some conditions which can make you fail the review, like crashes. Then you’ll have to wait another 7 days before you can retry to submit your game. Unfortunately, we missed a bug in the game and (gladly) someone found out during the review process that the game crashes if you sign-out with a local profile during the loading screen. As a consequence we were forced to wait a week. The bug itself was fixed within seconds but we took our time and spend the rest of the week polishing the game even more – for example, the ship engine trails or the booster blur effect were re-done within this week.

As we re-submitted the game, we already were very very late – it was the Sunday before the gamescom week and on Wednesday, the game had to be on the marketplace so we could show it at the redspotgames booth. As the complexity of the game is fairly big, it took some reviewers some time to play the whole game and we passed review on Tuesday evening. But as every game has to be in review for 48 hours and we submitted it more on early Monday then Sunday, we had to wait until Wednesday morning until the game was finally “Approved”. Some more hours passed but finally the game showed up inside the marketplace at lunch.

Marketing investment

How much have you budgeted for marketing

We can’t tell exactly as our partner, redspotgames, was responsible for the marketing. They showed it at the gamescom 2010, so we think the marketing budget couldn’t be that low. We also spend some time doing marketing on Facebook or twitter.

Describe your marketing plan – i.e. which outlets are you hitting, what are you doing with each

A big part of the marketing was done by redspotgames, so we can’t tell you a lot about it. We made several videos and posted them to youtube and we also set up a blog for the game (http://www.solarstruggle.com/) and a Facebook fan page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/SolarStruggle/141640955866114/).

What social advertising have you planned

As I said before, we created a fan page for the game on Facebook. The Solar Struggle blog is also connected to Facebook. These were our first attempts at social advertising.

Are you doing any competitions

We don’t host competitions by ourselves (yet) but we support some community portals so they can raffle off free keys for Solar Struggle.

Who do you send freebie copies to

We send free copies mainly for reviews, so if you host a community portal, games blog or write reviews of Xbox 360 games and want to review the game, don’t hesitate to contact us!

Piracy

Do you have any plan in place to deal with piracy

The game is released on the Xbox LIVE marketplace, so we don’t expect any piracy of the game.

Sales figures

What are your sales forecasts

Our target is to sell about 5000 to 10000 units.

What is your breakeven point

Our breakeven point is pretty high, but we plan to release the game on the PC too and part of the technology used for Solar Struggle will be used in other games. The game is also kind of a “test” how high-quality games can perform on XBLIG and if it is a real alternative.

What difficulties do you expect with hitting decent sales figures

We think the price might scare some people of buying the game. 400 MS Points is the highest price for indie games. Still, we believe the game has the quality of an Arcade title   which sell for 800 MS Points or more.

Another point is the game demo. You really need some time to get used to the controls and the flight physics to experience real fun. XBLIG demo time is 8 minutes and it might not be enough to show people the potential of the game.

A big thanks to Andreas Heldt.

Posted in Interviews0 Comments

Xbox Live Arcade Sales Analysis, July 2010

Xbox Live Arcade Sales Analysis, July 2010

Posted on 07 September 2010. Tags: ,

[As Summer of Arcade kicked off with titles like Limbo, GamerBytes editor Ryan Langley offers charts and leaderboard data to get an idea of which titles are hits on the service this summer.]

In Xbox Live Arcade’s history, July 2009 was bolstered by the release of Battlefield 1943, Secret Of Monkey Island and the second coming of the Summer of Arcade promotion.

Conversely, July 2010 saw six new releases – Monkey Island 2: Special Edition from LucasArts, and Blacklight: Tango Down from Zombie Studios and Ignition Entertainment, Deadliest Warrior: The Game from Pipeworks and Spike TV, DeathSpank from Hothead, plus the first two new titles for Summer of Arcade in 2010, Playdead’s Limbo and Vector Unit’s Hydro Thunder Hurricane.

Make A Monkey Out Of Me

The first Monkey Island’s Special Edition was released on July 15th 2009 – and in its first three weeks, we saw 66,000 players added to the Leaderboard. Despite Monkey Island 2’s larger budget, and possibly larger fan base, the game only added 29,398 players in a similar time frame.

However, unlike the original, Monkey Island 2 was not a timed exclusive. The game was also released on PlayStation Network, iPhone and iPad in the same week, so it’s quite possible that consumers picked it up on another device. The PlayStation Network version only supports the top 1,000 players on the Leaderboards, so we’re unable to follow it.

Zombie’s Blacklight: Tango Down did remarkably well – nearly 50,000 players in the first week and almost 100,000 players by the end of the month. For a game that requires an online connection, it means 100,000 Xbox Live Gold subscribers were hungry for a new shooter. It might not be selling a million like Battlefield 1943 last year, but it’s still a strong performance, and the title will likely continue to trot along for a while – well, at least until Halo: Reach in September.

xblajulynewreleases.jpg

Deadliest Of All Spanks

The last two releases before the Summer of Arcade promotion were Deadliest Warrior, the first game published by Spike TV’s entertainment division, and DeathSpank, Ron Gilbert and Hothead Games’ action-RPG.

DeathSpank did quite well, with over 34,000 players in its first week on the Leaderboards, and a total of 62,638 players by the end of the month. This is already triple what the second episode of Penny Arcade Adventures sold, and nearly as many as the first – though the first was also 400 Microsoft Points more expensive. The game was also released worldwide on PlayStation Network in the same week.

The most surprising game this month was Deadliest Warrior – a 3D fighting game loosely based on the gonzo TV series. Despite some poor reviews and a Metacritic rating of 58, the game has sold remarkably well. It was still the third-best-selling title in its third week, and while we don’t have single-player Leaderboard statistics, we do know that at least 70,000 people have played at least one game online, which is an amazing feat and beyond expectations.

One major reason for this could be advertising – Spike are in the unique position of owning a television network, and are promoting the game through Deadliest Warrior and through advertisements – a first for an Xbox Live Arcade title.

Read the full post Here…

Posted in Sales Figures0 Comments

Self-publishing on XBLIG

Self-publishing on XBLIG

Posted on 18 August 2010. Tags: , ,

Fritz from Triple B Games prepared this excellent guide to self-publishing on XBLIG. Triple B have just self-published the rather superb looking NLL Lacrosse 2010 on XBLIG, and prior to that Fitba, also on XBLIG…

XBLIG is an open channel on the Xbox 360 that allows indie developers to sell their games through the Xbox 360 dash without requiring any platform holder approval. Games developed for XBLIG must be developed in C# using the XNA libraries provided by Microsoft. In order to develop & release on Xbox 360 a Creators Club membership is required, priced at £65/$99 per year.

The Good Stuff

  • Open channel, no platform holder approval required.
  • Channel not flooded, currently just over 1000 games available on the channel.
  • Reliable sales tracking and payments from Microsoft, games can be priced at 400,240 or 80 Microsoft points, ($5/$3/$1) with Microsoft taking a 30% cut. Sales and trial download figures are available daily, a day after they have occurred.
  • No ESRB or PEGI ratings are required, although Indie Games cannot be purchased by child accounts.
  • Development is done on retail Xbox 360’s – no devkit costs.
  • Active and friendly community at http://forums.xna.com/forums/
  • Use of avatars in game, although there are restrictions as to what you can do with avatars, you can’t dismember them, dress them, have them talk etc.
  • You are issued with codes to distribute review copies for your game once it has passed peer review.
  • C#: Once you’re used to C# going back to C++ feels primitive.
  • Releasing games developed in XNA is possible on XBLA, there are extensions available for registered developers that add support for Leaderboards & Achievements.
  • Conversion ratios are good – over 30% for the best titles.

 

The Middling Stuff

  • XBLIG aren’t for sale in all territories, they are currently only available in the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Sweden, Singapore and Spain.
  • Localisation is supported, but it slows down the approval process as each language submitted has to be separately approved before the game can be released.
  • The Peer review process can be frustratingly slow, around 2 weeks per submission, with an enforced weeks delay before resubmitting if your submission doesn’t pass.

 

The Bad Stuff

  • XBLIG are treated a bit like the red-headed stepchild of the Xbox 360 family, shunted off into their own channel in the dash, they don’t show up if you search All Games. Potential players have to navigate to the indie games section of the dash to find your game.
  • No achievements.
  • No support for Live Leaderboards, although various peer to peer leaderboard methods have been developed to get round this.
  • In game advertising is prohibited.
  • C#: if you’re thinking of porting an existing game you’re going to have to convert to C# & XNA, if you’re writing a game specifically for XBLIG then you’ll most likely have to convert to C++ if you wish to target another platform.
  • Sales numbers don’t compare to AppStore numbers – the best selling game (I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1) has gone over 200k units @80MSP.

PC development using XNA is also possible, although you are not allowed to use avatars or the Live Networking functionality, and Windows Phone 7 game development is going to follow the XNA\C# route.

Sales figures are posted by developers in this thread http://forums.xna.com/forums/t/28044.aspx or if you don’t fancy wading through the 60 odd pages of that you can see how the top 20 games of 2009 did in this thread http://forums.xna.com/forums/p/45585/272243.aspx#272243

Posted in Self-publishing0 Comments

Drakkar Dev

Drakkar Dev

Posted on 18 August 2010. Tags:

Drakkar Dev S.r.l. is an independant game development company based in Italy. Founded in early 2010 by Daniele Cariola, Domenico Gallo and Manlio Greco, Drakkar Dev’s main goal is to create high quality videogames for multiple platforms, from main home consoles through handhelds.

To deliver our products on time with a small team, Drakkar Dev uses third party licensed technologies. The use of a commercial game engine gives us the opportunity to focus on the game content and design, also assuring stability and fast multiplatform portability.

CONTACT: info@drakkardev.com

WEBSITE: http://www.drakkardev.com/

LOCATION: Catania, Italy

Posted in Member Profiles0 Comments

ReplicaNet – Game Networking Middleware for Indies

ReplicaNet – Game Networking Middleware for Indies

Posted on 18 August 2010. Tags:

We are looking to start a series of articles from Middleware Companies & Contractors offering indie specific services at a realistic and affordable price point. So first off we have ReplicaNet and RNLobby, so over to Martin at ReplicaNet…

With online games becomming more complex the need for well behaved bandwidth saving technology increases. ReplicaNet and RNLobby are two network APIs designed to tackle two different areas of game networking, session management and lobby. 

ReplicaNet is a session management and object description API that enables C++ game objects to be described as a collection of class member functions and class member variables with network update filters. Each C++ class is treated as a potential network shareable object on the machine that allocates it. This machine has control over the C++ classes and can change variables or call member functions as normal. Once the object is ready to be shared to other machines the object is published on to the ReplicaNet network session. The underlying ReplicaNet software detects changes in the object and automatically updates the replicated classes on the machines connected to the network session. Any changes made to the member variables of the C++ classes can be extrapolated by ReplicaNet using several pre-defined filters to reduce the amount of network traffic when transmitting changes in the object. As network games tend to have increased in complexity a visual debugger (RNVisualDebugger) is included to aid the developer to spot network bandwidth spikes and drill down to which class members are causing the problem. Armed with this debugging information tweaking the class member’s filter parameters can help reduce the network bandwidth used by the session.

RNLobby provides lobby functionality and the tools needed to maintain a persistent online space for online games. Features include binary difference file patching, CD/license key verfication, NAT detection and punch-through, advertising of game sessions, user account creation, persistent user data storage and statisics for game sessions.

The creator of ReplicaNet, Martin Piper, has spent a long time in the games industry since Argonaut Games was on the scene writing Star Fox and knows what it is like as an indie trying to get a project off the ground.

So for the indie developers if you mention Indievision when talking to Replica Software you can receive a discount on their libraries and other services. Martin also contracts out his services for helping with multiplayer game coding.

http://www.replicanet.com/

Posted in Development0 Comments

Intel and The Game Creators Team Up in Games

Intel and The Game Creators Team Up in Games

Posted on 18 August 2010. Tags:

Several Prizes Up For Grabs Including An All Expenses Paid Vacation

The Game Creators have teamed up with Intel to offer game developers the chance to win some amazing prizes for developing new games for netbooks. There are several fantastic prizes on offer with the top prize being an all expenses paid vacation worth up to US $5,000!

We’ve all been there, on the road on vacation with the family and our trusty old netbook is ready at the go to Facebook, Twitter and surf the web. But after all the chatty time, aren’t you really just itching to have a death race, zap alien ships, and kill zombies on your netbook too?

Well Intel wants your help, and has partnered with The Game Creators to seek out, recognize and reward excellent game development for netbook devices. So, if you’re on your summer holidays, on a break from work or just simply love to develop games, The Game Creators and Intel want you!

The Game Creators’ Financial Director, Rick Vanner, said “This competition is aimed at empowering the many talented amateur game makers that love to spend their spare time coding games and demos. The Intel AppUp store will give them a direct channel to market and sell their small game apps to millions of users worldwide. By using Dark Basic Professional or Dark GDK they can create games in a very short time scale. We have a very creative community and it will be very exciting to see what they develop.”

For this competition there is a deadline of 3rd October at 12PM GMT so those looking to enter need to get cracking now!

Further information on the Games for Netbooks competition can be found at:

http://www.thegamecreators.com/intelcompo/index.php

Further information on The Game Creators can be found at:

http://www.thegamecreators.com/

Posted in News0 Comments

Continuing Adventures on WiiWare, Now with Added PSP Minis

Continuing Adventures on WiiWare, Now with Added PSP Minis

Posted on 04 August 2010. Tags: , ,

This is a follow-on piece to WiiWare – Be Prepared!

We finally hit the US performance threshold on our first title (hooray), some 8 months after first release. We now have to wait until the end of Q3 to get our royalty statement, and 30 days after that we should finally see some money.

PAL region not so good, according to current weekly sales figures we have another 17 weeks to go if things stay as they are. So, in total, a little over a year to hit the target, plus the rest of Q1 2011 and the thirty day payment wait. So about 16 months from release to first royalties if my maths is correct. Sob!

We’ve also just released a second title now on WiiWare; sales are fairly slow so far, but I think the summer months are probably the worse time of all to release.

NTSC region is disappointing, if sales continue at the current rate it will be about a 42 week period (since release) until we hit the threshold. PAL is actually doing quite well at the moment, but it is too early to give any sort of time-frame as it is only a few days since release.

PSP Minis

Interestingly we also released our first PSP Mini. Now while US sales are fairly low and are certainly living up to the PSP Minis poor sales reputation, the PAL regions are doing quite good numbers so far. We hit our lifetime sales projections in just two weeks, although we were very conservative with our projections – 2,500 units.

What Next

So the big question – how can we boost sales, particularly on WiiWare. The reviews were not as good as we were hoping for our WiiWare titles, but then I keep reading that reviews are not supposed to have that much impact on sales of downloadable games. I suspect that this is not entirely true and they can have a big effect, but it is impossible to say for sure.

The other key issues is marketing, we had a fair bit of press coverage for our press releases and what-not leading up to release, but beyond that we haven’t done a great deal  – and to be honest I am slightly unsure how to approach the marketing of the WiiWare titles, especially given our zero budget.

Conclusions (So Far…)

Right now I would find it very hard to recommend WiiWare as a platform for self-publishing. Even once we hit the thresholds, we will not come close to re-cooping the development costs. We need to hit at least double the performance threshold sales to cover costs for each title (and add a little profit), but realistically that is never going to happen.

Our future plan for all our WiiWare titles is to work within the lower 16Meg size, rather than 40Meg size we have been so far. Although this is restrictive in size and what you can fit in, the thresholds are much less punishing so you will see money sooner.

Unless you are producing something that is a graphical showcase, such as Jett Rocket, the limitations are workable.

But all is not lost – we spread our bets with a few other titles, and for each we have a multi-platform release strategy. I really can’t recommend this enough – with each additional SKU so the costs drastically reduce, and you start to see the possibility of actually covering development costs and making a profit.

Add to that one or two publisher funded projects (3DS is very appealing there) and things can tick over very nicely.

Just don’t put all of your eggs in the WiiWare basket, or you may well come to a sticky end (sorry!).

Posted in Featured, Self-publishing2 Comments

Suisoft’s Gravity Core – Game Project Postmortem

Suisoft’s Gravity Core – Game Project Postmortem

Posted on 04 August 2010. Tags: , ,

Game Project Postmortem by Gary Marples

Gary Marples, the owner of Suisoft, a small development studio based in Wakefield, UK put together this excellent Post Mortem for his game Gravity Core. A very illuminating read about the development process and how things went after release.

Gravity Core

Game Information:

Released: November 2007
Publisher: Suisoft Limited
Website: www.suisoft.co.uk/gravitycore/
Genre: Retro Shoot-em-up / Inertia
Platform: Windows PC
Budget: Tuppence*
Project Duration: Too Long**
Team Size: One Developer
Software: Microsoft Visual C++, Cinema 4D, Goldwave, Jasc PaintShop Pro (prehistoric edition)

* Realistically if assuming a small salary and business setup costs, around 20,000 dollars (10,000 pounds). In reality, I didn’t pay myself anything during development.
** 12-15 months, although only around 10-12 months full time.

Background

Ikari Warriors The initial spark of Suisoft (and Gravity Core) stems back many years to an eight year old obsessed with computers and arcade games. The concept of being able to write code into a machine and make it do ’stuff’ by itself was a concept much too intriguing to ignore. The typical modus operandi for family holidays would be to spend too long in darkened arcades playing the latest games (Ikari Warriors and Tiger Heli spring to mind) then arriving home clutching scribbled game designs and constructing imitations of the games.

Many years later, following an IT Qualification and 15+ years in the Information Technology trenches, a corporate takeover (with associated disgruntlement and voluntary redundancy) provided a time to reassess direction and ultimately choose a new path. Gravity Core already existed as a multiplayer gameplay prototype. Playing the game was a regular lunchtime pursuit in which normally peaceable colleagues brutally gunned each other down and rammed each other into walls. The gameplay was inertia based, in the spirit of home computer favorites such as Thrust and Oids, albeit with a more combatative, violent nature.

After much soul searching and weighing of Pros and Cons, I decided to form a company and develop my prototype game into something to sell. My very supportive wife agreed (and indeed encouraged – more on this later) my lunatic plan to take out the best part of a year and try to launch my company and first game.

What Went Right

Iterative Development Process

A core principle I stuck with throughout the entire project was to maintain a working, playable game all of the time and add one feature at a time. This really paid off because code quality problems were kept to an absolute minimum and playing a working game is fun. I would have lost heart with the project very quickly if the game had been in a broken state for most of the time.

Procedural Level Generation and Artificial Intelligence

Blueprint From the very start, I set out to make the maps random. I’ve been fascinated by procedural generation of maps for many years. I created a dungeon game on the BBC during my school years. It was pretty flawed, as the map was generated as you moved around and corridors didn’t join back up. You reached the next level of the dungeon after travelling through a certain number of rooms. I love games that have random elements and emergent gameplay. My favorite game genre is FPS (first person shooter) but the majority of these games are scripted to a ridiculous degree, in that you can draw a bead on an enemy before he even walks around the corner. I could pretty much play the first few levels of Quake 2 blindfold.

With Gravity Core, I started out with a blue print generated from caverns (circles) with adjoining corridors and a mechanism to prevent overlaps. The map structure is then converted into a tilemap with contour tiles applied. Enemies can then be spawned into the rooms (caverns/tunnels). Some caverns are marked as special (for example Factories, Sphere etc) and are populated with more enemies. The number of enemies in a ‘room’ can be tracked to prevent them from clustering too much.

The blueprint is retained for enemy navigation. This allows the enemies to roam freely around the environment, rather than sitting and waiting for the player to turn up. The enemies randomly patrol around when they aren’t chasing the scent of the player.

Overall, I’ve been really pleased with the way the level generation turned out. I’m sure I will be able to take the concept much further in a future game.

Rendered Sprites

Ship Render My approach to sprites (ships, bullets, explosions etc) was to create them in a 3D package and render them using a ray tracing engine. You may ask “why, oh why didn’t you just make a 3D game?” This is a perfectly valid point… for me, making a 3D game is much more time consuming and complex. The skills required to make realistic looking models and maps that will be efficient enough to be usable in a realtime 3D are far too specialised. As a sole developer, building every aspect of the game, I didn’t want to bite off more than I could chew.

Creating the sprites using the 3D package, led to nicely shaded ships and spectacular explosions and particles that were complimented in some reviews. A fringe benefit, is the ability to resize the graphics very easily by adjusting the outputs and also render some of the graphics for use on the title screen.

Sound Effects

Although some reviewers criticised the lack of in-game music in Gravity Core, the reception to the sound effects was good. This is amazing really, considering I created all of the sound effects from samples of sounds in my home environment. Cap guns, fireworks, thunder, electrical motors from vacuum cleaners, gas rings, blowing into the mic, you name it. Looking back, this was pretty bloody-minded. My mindset with Gravity Core was to keep expense to an absolute minimum, to the point of avoiding spending a few hundred dollars on some sound effect libraries. I’ve enjoyed messing with tape recorders and sampler software since I was a kid. I think I enjoyed it a bit too much…

I recall getting up in the middle of the night and recording rain and thunder. This came in very handy when adding depth to explosions and gunfire but didn’t greatly amuse my wife at the time. (By at the time, I mean at the time of recording, rather than ‘wife at the time’ – she hasn’t left me… yet).

Support and New Contacts

I had a huge amount of support from my wife, Rebbekah. She had a lot to put up with, as I endlessly rambled on about the game and later stressed out during business setup and first release, not to mention financially supporting me. Friends and family were also extremely supportive. My Mum and Dad had fuelled my computer obsession since I was seven years old and continued to support my crazy endeavour. Paul “Guffaw” Turner played Gravity Core until his eyes melted and his fingers curled into crippled claws. My inlaws in particular never lost faith in their wayward son-in-law.

I received plenty of support from online gaming review sites, download sites and blogs. Support also came from unexpected quarters, such as other Indie’s giving me suggestions and feedback and Micro Mart printing several snippets of news and ultimately a review – my only review in print, I believe. Hopefully I will be able to build on this support with my future games.

What Went Wrong

Market Misjudgement

Gravity Core My greatest failure with the game has been my complete misjudgement of the gaming market. Gravity Core (in particular the first release) requires a certain amount of effort to become comfortable with the controls. This has led to many players giving up very quickly and never reach the point of enjoying the game. The conversion rate (sales versus downloads) of Gravity Core has been very poor, though there are some hardcore fans out there.

My next game will be much more immediately gratifying. I intend to start with simple, easy gameplay and pile on the toughness further into the game and on higher difficulty levels.

Mainstream Coverage

With Gravity Core, I have really struggled to get any mainstream coverage (i.e. printed gaming press). I think this is due to the traditional retro style of the game (i.e. it is not a quirky or original game that stands out) and distinctly average production values. These elements coupled with the lack of immediacy has made for a very pale blip way under the radar.

I’ve had far more success with niche Indie review sites and somewhat bizarrely (but much appreciated) in the gaming section of Micro Mart.

I think even if Gravity Core had received a four page spread in PC Gamer, an interview and a run of full page ads, the game would still have been a slow seller.

Inability to Give Up

Once I had released Gravity Core and a couple of online reviews had been published, I acted on the feedback received and began a series of releases with selectable difficulty levels, alternative control schemes and significant work on balancing the difficulty. I spent months improving the game but without making fundamental changes to the style of play I never managed to make it accessible. I had gone way beyond tenacity and drifted into obsessive (something of an OCD computer programmer stereotype).

In retrospect I should have written off Gravity Core and started another game. Even now, more than two years after the first release, I am still tempted to create a sequel and tackle the shortcomings. That way lies madness…

Multiplayer Complexities

Because Gravity Core grew from a multiplayer game / engine experiment into a full game, I put an enormous amount of effort into coding and testing the multiplayer aspects of the game. Testing a multiplayer game is much more labour intensive, as the number of situations and glitches are much increased. Additionally, in order to carry out proper testing, you need to pull together a group of players. Throwing this into a test/fix cycle really drags out a release. Unfortunately, the majority of players never tried player versus player or co-op and the game received much criticism in reviews over the lack of matchmaking, internet and wireless performance. My efforts would have been much better redirected to content and variety.

Too Many Hats

Gravity Core Every bit of code, graphics and sound in Gravity Core was my own (with the exception of music – I love listening to it, but Rob Hubbard I aint). Additionally, I had a business to set up, website, marketing, support and anything else that goes with developing and releasing a piece of software. This lead to a lot of stress and 3am moments. On several occasions I laid awake in the middle of the night with my head refusing to switch off, wondering why I would want to do this to myself and not just crawl back into an office job.

Having battled through to the bitter end, I feel a sense of achievement having finished Gravity Core and booting it out of the door. The weakest area (aside from immediacy) is probably the art direction, both music and visuals. The ships and explosions look nice enough but the title graphics and backgrounds and pretty plain and underdeveloped. The maps were described as ‘lacking a sense of use’ in one review, which is pretty apt. I had piles of sketches and ideas for mining equipment, buildings, crystals and wall decorations that never made it into the 3D package or paintshop.

The Future…

In terms of commercial success, Gravity Core has been a misfire. On the plus side, there are a number of fans out there enjoying whizzing around the caverns and revelling in their skills and that’s something I really get a kick out of.

The end result has been a huge (often brutal) learning experience for me, proof to myself and others that I can get a game out there and a stack of re-usable code and business bits.

I have lots of ideas (more ideas than time, like most game developers) and have a hybrid retro game coalescing in my brain. Something may well emerge next year.

In the meantime, you can try out Gravity Core here: www.suisoft.co.uk/gravitycore/

Posted in Development, Interviews0 Comments

XBLA takes in over $46 million in H1 2010, on pace for record year

XBLA takes in over $46 million in H1 2010, on pace for record year

Posted on 02 August 2010. Tags: , , ,

As per the Research & Analysis division of analyst firm Forecasting & Analyzing Digital Entertainment, LLC (FADE) gaming on Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) grew by double-digit numbers during the first half of the year, after a sluggish start in January and February which saw numbers down year over year. Overall, the XBLA market place grew 13% to $46.1 million USD by the end of June. June 2010 capped off the first half with an impressive 36% increase compared to last year’s June 2009.

FADE reports that the major turning point in 2010 for XBLA came during the heavily promoted ‘Block Party’ event, which started in March and featured four titles: ‘Toy Soldiers’, ‘Perfect Dark’, ‘Scrap Metal’ and ‘Game Room’. ‘Toy Soldiers’ and ‘Perfect Dark’ both took in over $2 million USD during the first half, placing each among the top five by revenue. The free-to-download classic title destination ‘Game Room’ also saw success, with over a million downloads shortly after release.

March started the positive trend, posting a strong 41% year-over-year increase in revenues, which began a consecutive 4-month run of double digit gains in revenue when compared to 2009. Starting in April, Microsoft began to aggressively promote price drops on dozens of titles, starting with the ‘Inventory Blowout’ sale which ran for one week in April, and included 10 titles. Throughout the second quarter, multiple sales were offered on titles, totaling over 40 titles offered on discount. These sales were seen as a success, as many titles saw revenue increases of between 50-200%. “We saw Microsoft take a very different approach to product deployment strategies this year,” said Benjamin Schlichter, Director of Research and Analysis for FADE. “The second quarter of the year has traditionally been their weakest, and they made great strides to improve the performance during the period, as revenue increased 24% compared to the year prior during a period when much of the rest of the industry is down.”

Sales Expected to Rise on Hardware, ‘Summer of Arcade’, and ‘Kinect’

FADE maintains that Xbox Live Arcade will realize an estimated $130 million to $140 million by the end of the year, following strong hardware sales due to a solid holiday lineup, the new Slim console, and marketing for the motion-sensing Kinect hardware. Most notably, Microsoft’s 3rd annual ‘Summer of Arcade’ is anticipated to be met with impressive sales, following the implementation of their new ‘Destination Arcade’ UI.

Kinect brings an air of unpredictability to the mix. FADE research believes that Kinect pricing may dampen sales for the hardware slightly, but the possibilities of the platform may yield impressive revenues for Arcade developers looking to leverage the new platform for mini-games and unique, affordable experiences.

FADE Top 10 Estimates for H1 2010, by Revenue

  • Toy Soldiers (Signal Studios) – $4.6 million (1200 Microsoft Points)
  • Trials HD (RedLynx) – $4.4 million (800 – 1200 Microsoft Points)
  • Castle Crashers (The Behemoth) – $2.9 million (800 – 1200 Microsoft Points)
  • Battlefield 1943 (EA DICE) – $2.5 million (800 – 1200 Microsoft Points)
  • Perfect Dark (4J Studios) – $2.4 million (800 Microsoft Points)
  • Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (Capcom) – $1.8 million (800 – 1200 Microsoft Points)
  • Family Game Night (EA Bright Light) – $1.7 million (400 – 800 Microsoft Points)
  • Shadow Complex (Chair Entertainment) – $1.2 million (800 – 1200 Microsoft Points)
  • Magic: The Gathering (Stainless Games) – $900,000 (800 Microsoft Points)
  • Call of Duty Classic (Infinity Ward) – $800,000 (1200 Microsoft Points)

About Forecasting and Analyzing Digital Entertainment, LLC

FADE is a strategic market research and consulting firm focused on electronic entertainment and the emerging download and mobile game markets. With very little information currently available in these markets, FADE allows smaller developers to investigate these new potential sources of revenue and make informed business decisions moving forward. Currently, FADE produces monthly and annual reports for Steam, Xbox Live Arcade, Playstation Network, WiiWare & Virtual Console, and mobile markets including iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry. For more information, please visit http://www.fadellc.com.

Posted in News, Sales Figures0 Comments

Full Analysis of iPhone Economics – it is bad news. And then it gets worse

Full Analysis of iPhone Economics – it is bad news. And then it gets worse

Posted on 02 August 2010. Tags: , ,

I promised to return with the full analysis of the iPhone App Store economics analysis, from every angle, with all data I have managed to find. This blog intends to paint the most accurate picture of the specifically Apple related iPhone App Store market economics – and lessons from here should apply to most other smartphone app stores as well. The one final piece of the puzzle that had been missing, that we desperately needed to ge the full, honest picture, was the Apple official revenue number, which we finally got a few days ago, at $1.43B total revenues generated over 2 years, and thus $1B paid to developer. Now we can do the full analysis. But first a few general comments.

ACTUALLY I LIKE APPS

There is nothing inherently wrong with making a smartphone app. I have warmly welcomed the apps opportunity to smartphones, years before we even had heard of an iPhone (my first book on mobile services, a global bestseller, has the word ‘apps’ in its subtitle). As most developers will instinctively underestand, if we compare mobile web services to smartphone apps, there are some obvious extremes where one is far superior and the other would be very clumsy as the solution. Take apps – if you want to deply Tetris as a stand-alone time-killer game for a phone, it can be done via a web app on the mobile data connection (seeking each next Tetris block from some server ‘in the cloud’ but that would be hideously tedious, overkill in a web solution. You want the app once downloaded onto the phone, and then never to connect and just offer us the Tetris entertainment whenever we have some minutes to kill – even in situations where a network connection is not available, say on an airplane or in the London Underground subway trains. For a single user (ie non-networked) game, in most cases by far the most elegant technical solution is an ‘app’.

Similarly there are cases where an app would be ridiculous. Take Google Search. We could theoretically attempt to install several times per day the full Google search environment with all web links onto a ’smartphone’ – but the hard drive storage ability (and the web data load to install it) would be somewhere approaching the capacity of a modern super computer. Yes, a web search ’solution’ could theoretically be deployed via a stand-alone app, but it would be the clumsiest dumbest way to deploy that, when a simple mobile web/WAP connection is all we need and a browser. So we understand, there are some extreme cases where a ‘pure’ app or a ‘pure’ web service is the natural solution, where the other is not a viable rival.

For most of our services the world is not so extreme, there is considerable overlap, and often hybrid solutions – say a multiplayer game would typically have an app part, and a real time online (mobile web) connected part. Doing both. So please do not think I somehow hate all apps. I understand there is valid need for apps and as the smartphones get smarter, with ever more inbuilt storage ability, it makes sense to deploy many of our ‘mobile utilities’ via apps – whether pre-loaded onto the phone upon delivery from the factory, or post-purchase installed by our employer IT department in the case of corporate/enterprise apps, or ourselves in the terms of ‘App Store’ apps.

Read Full Article Here…

Posted in Sales Figures, Self-publishing0 Comments

PlayStation Network Sales Analysis, June And First Half Of 2010

PlayStation Network Sales Analysis, June And First Half Of 2010

Posted on 02 August 2010. Tags: , ,

The past few months have seen quite a few new releases on the PlayStation Network — but due to unforseen circumstances, we’ve been unable to give an update on top downloads for each month.

We set to change that with June 2010’s analysis, as well as a look at the past 6 months of PlayStation Network activity.

We look at recent releases like Joe Danger, Planet Minigolf and Rocket Knight as well as the top downloaded PlayStation Minis — as the service hits a million downloads.
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The Top 10 for June, 2010

The month of June brought 9 new PSN titles to the PlayStation Network. However we could only follow two of them, thanks to the lack of Leaderboards on the others. The above Top 10 is for the North American PlayStation 3 Store only – and does not count European purchases.

Yet it wasn’t a PSN title that took top spot this month, but the newly released Final Fantasy IX for PSOne Classics. Now IX, VII and VIII have taken a spot on top of the downloadable games list, making it one of the very few PSOne Classics titles to do that.

Read Full Article Here…

Posted in Sales Figures0 Comments

Xbox Live Arcade Sales Analysis, First Half Of 2010

Xbox Live Arcade Sales Analysis, First Half Of 2010

Posted on 02 August 2010. Tags: , ,

At the end of 2009, we created a very large list of Leaderboard statistics with over 100 Xbox Live Arcade titles on it. Now that we’re half way through the year we’ve done it again – allowing us to see how both the old and new titles have done in the past six months, according to Xbox Live users who’ve played games and registered on their high score tables.

This sort of information is crucial for publishers and developers alike — determining the costs of what is still a very young marketplace is still very difficult, and we’ve attempted to make it easier for you for nearly two years.

Do note that this does not contain details for all games – titles like Battlefield 1943 and P.B Winterbottom have Leaderboards that we cannot follow, and aren’t included. We’ve done our best to check as many old and new titles as possible, in the hope that we can clear some of the dust off of the truths and myths about digital distribution.

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Sales For The First Half Of 2010

Those that are in red are new titles, and blue are those which have been on sale during this time.

Of the 24 new titles that we followed, only 13 of them gained more than 10,000 players on their Leaderboards – three of them, Voodoo Dice, Ben 10 and Fret Nice, were near or below 1,000 players total.

Read Full Article Here…

Posted in Sales Figures0 Comments

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