Are sales bad for games?

Wasn't Penumbra in the first Humble Indie Bundle? :D

Don't forget that aside from the Introversion games, and Blocks That Matter (which we had to specifically request) we haven't seen Desura keys since the Desura client launched. To an outsider, it certainly seems like there's not the level of synergy between the Humble Bundle guys and Desura that there was before IndieRoyale launched...

IMO, bundles/sales need to be seen as an investment in getting better market penetration/exposure. Developers who expect to have all their dreams fulfilled and be granted magical rainbow riding unicorns are going to be disappointed. It's about getting customers at the expense of revenue, which is not necessarily bad, and can be a great thing if a developer has other stuff that those new customers can spend money on if their interest is piqued. These sorts of things aren't a good match for every developer, and tend to turn out bad for those that don't quite understand the dynamics, but the same goes for anything that people can have unrealistic expectations for.

There's also the side effect of bitter customers who get cranky about paying a fair price for something they actually like when they could have got it cheaper by waiting, but I think people like that deserve to feel ripped off.

I meant that bit for Amnesia as they said about their sales numbers being good enough to keep them going. I shall edit the article to reflect what I meant.

It does make sense, people tend to expect cheap games as is written in that article. I also think one of Alex issue's besides that the cheap sales are bad in general was that games that got added "later" to the bundle did not get an even remotely fair chair.

Cheeseness is right, you can see the bundles as an investment in getting better marketing but that only works if you already got several games out there. Penumbra when it got into the HiB already had 2 sequels and they where working on Amnesia. So yes that could work out, but if your 1st ever game gets into the bundle and with the general attention span people have these days you will be long forgotten when your next game comes out a year or more later.

That all being said, to be honest I don't think it will change now the gates are open so to speak.

I think that the main purpose of the bundles is to show the games to a very large group of people, not to make money... And that works really well for some games - I don't think that Voxatron would get enough money to continue development without the Humble Voxatron Debut... I bought both the Penumbra collection and Amnesia, but i haven't won any other games than first Penumbra. And i plan on buying Trine 2 when it comes on Linux... I think bundles are a really good way to get medial attention about your games, even if the developers don't get that much money...

I also think one of Alex issue's besides that the cheap sales are bad in general was that games that got added "later" to the bundle did not get an even remotely fair chair.

I haven't talked to Alex, and I don't know him personally, but from what I read of the interview and other posts from him, it sounds like the real problem was that he signed a contract that he wasn't happy with, which sucks, but isn't really anybody's fault but his own. :(

I signed the contract because HIB told me that they will give he access to userbase afterward. So while I was very disappointed with HIB being capitalistic sharks and not passionate human beings, I was hoping to make it up with DLC sales, by letting _my clients_ (even though they got their copy through HIB, they are still my customers) know about DLC. Well, guess what, HIB not only didn't give me mailing list, but also refused to let people know about DLC.

I would not argue against HIB if there was Steel Storm bundle to fund the development of SS2 or ToM. But that was never in their plans. As I mentioned many times, they refused to include free SS:Ep1 to HIB2 and they refused to do anything with SS:BR until a week or two before HIB3. So when people keep on saying that SS:BR is a good game (many people say that), the game has gotten 7-10/10 scores across the Internet, it makes me wonder about underlying reasons why HIB did what they did.

Also, the media coverage is still a huge issue. If you google for Tomes of Mephistopheles, all of the sites that mentioned it are Linux gaming sites. Incredible. Basically a lot of indie media think that KiA and its games are not worthy of coverage. It's been an issue from the day 1 with SS:BR and it continues.

Back in the days I would save money to buy only 1 or 2 games I really wanted to play. And I played these games until I beat it. It was a good business model back in the days and it worked well. Doom 2 used to cost like $45 and no one complained. Many games did cost a lot of money back then. No one b..ched about it.

Now it's a shovelware days. People buy games and don't even play them. I still hear some people bought SS:BR and haven't played it yet (or haven't activated it on Steam/Desura yet). What good does it do for us, indies? We are forced to sell cheap. A lot of indies are after simple 2D games. Most of the times it's a gameplay with quickly put art on it.

There are a lot of indies who either have funding or came into the indie field with ton of cash from their previous work in AAA titles (and contacts in the media). I can tell you a fact - it takes a week or so to make good, next gen piece of art for 3D game. Could be done faster if it's a simpler piece, but it's a long haul for 1 artist (KiA has only 1 artist now). So that's kinda unfair when "indies" beat indies and then people say "oh well, these guys are successful. What stops you from being successful?! Don't blame media or bundles. It's your fault." without taking into the consideration years of experience, number of years in the industry and resources. Now that's unfair. I wish people think twice before they put indies down or compare them to the leading teams of the industry.

I have personally spoken with a few of the Linux commercial game dev's and they all say their sales are low. Most though, don't advertise that they have Linux versions, and the others only had it in HiB, and didn't upload it or put on the site that its on Linux now too. I don't blame HiB, I blame the various indie devs who don't try promoting themselves. I use desura, i browse indiedb, i constantly google linux games. But if it is just a copy of another game, eg Terraria and its numerous clones, I'm not going to get it, I'm going to get this game that looks awesome, epic, and original.

I am not sure you understand what it takes to promote a game.. AAA tiles spend millions of dollars for advertising. Indies can't afford that. Yes, Minecraft and Terraria are the best examples of indie games that took off without advertising. But even Notch said he got lucky.

You can have awesome game, but if no one knows about it, it won't sell well. Especially when your audience doesn't bother with writing small reviews and rating your game on MetaCritic.

Steel Storm has 8.5 out of 10 score on Desura. But guess what, for some reason people care for what score it has on MetaCritic. I pleaded to my users to rate the game on MetaCritic if they like it and they didn't do it.

Advertising and marketing is a huge part of success. And it's something that is out of indies' reach.

If Desura and HIB at least e-mail to the users who purchased games through HIB about new updates and new games, indies would do better. That's not the case obviously. I can't reach my users on Steam, Desura or HIB. I am blocked from that opportunity, chopped off so to speak.

I am disappointed with this post. I find it bizarre that [URL='https://encrypted.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=amnesioa%20dark%20desent&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CDQQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amnesiagame.com%2F&ei=dgkKT7uiEMrJhAeH-fS1CQ&usg=AFQjCNHoUz54-JUNdwxFxE2v_0bCGxKK-A&cad=rja']Amnesia: The Dark Descent, [/URL]Its also sadly why I bought Steel Storm BR at full price, and thank goodness I also got that through Humble Bundle because the delivery method by KOT was disgusting. I am concerned every time Steel Storm is brought up, as I think their poor negotiation is the problem; Not Indie Bundle. Other compnaies seem happier like Introvision.

The article itself is pretty poor. Lamenting that people expect to pay less than an artificial price of $25. The fact is that was always too high for an indie game...try $5, but you have to see More to make the same money. The argument relies on the same umber of users buying at a higher price. They never were. There are better posts on Puppy Games Blog.http://www.puppygames.net/blog/?p=834 and http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2011/09/amnesia-one-year-later.html that show raising prices, and the boost they get from sales, both Blogs make for Excelling reads.

The bottom line is developer wants users to pay more for their software. I want good value, preferably Open Source with a proper Licence. The sad fact is Cardinal Quest is poor value at anything more than a $1 or even less than that. Its cute, but needs a lot more work.

I am sorry, but what was wrong with KiA delivery method ?!

if they cared enough to keep up the players would. i've subscribed to every indie studio i've liked and plan on buying any DLC/games they release. (Well not EVERY game, but most)

if they cared enough to keep up the players would. i've subscribed to every indie studio i've liked and plan on buying any DLC/games they release. (Well not EVERY game, but most)

Who are you talking about?!

I signed the contract because HIB told me that they will give he access to userbase afterward. So while I was very disappointed with HIB being capitalistic sharks and not passionate human beings, I was hoping to make it up with DLC sales, by letting _my clients_ (even though they got their copy through HIB, they are still my customers) know about DLC. Well, guess what, HIB not only didn't give me mailing list, but also refused to let people know about DLC.

I can tell you right now that as a Humble Bundle customer, I would have been grossly offended if I had have received an email from you guys. That said, I liked Steel Storm and I'm excited to see what else you can put together. I'm totally happy to give you guys my money (I even said I wanted to pay more for my SS2 in the merchant instructions for my pre-order, but nobody has gotten back to me).

Given that the Humble Bundle Privacy Policy precludes the type of sharing you're talking about, I find it to be pretty unlikely that you were promised contact addresses. I still don't know the ins and outs of the entire situation, and Humble Bundle have never publicly spoken about their side of the story, but it seems more likely that there was a miscommunication somewhere along the line.

Also, the media coverage is still a huge issue. If you google for Tomes of Mephistopheles, all of the sites that mentioned it are Linux gaming sites. Incredible. Basically a lot of indie media think that KiA and its games are not worthy of coverage. It's been an issue from the day 1 with SS:BR and it continues.

Marketing is a huge challenge for independent developers. Are you doing anything aside from emailing media places and putting out press releases? The dev blog videos are nice, but they're not going to attract anybody who's not already interested.

I can tell you right now that as a Humble Bundle customer, I would have been grossly offended if I had have received an email from you guys. That said, I liked Steel Storm and I'm excited to see what else you can put together. I'm totally happy to give you guys my money (I even said I wanted to pay more for my SS2 in the merchant instructions for my pre-order, but nobody has gotten back to me).

Eeh, why would you get offended? This is total non-sense to me. It's not like we are peeping through your web cam or something. Why wouldn't you get offended by HIB sending you e-mails, but you would get offended by us sending you updates or what not?! Anyhow, that's fine. But what stops HIB to telling you: "Hey, KiA has 2 new games coming up. Check out their website/blog/twitter." ?

Marketing is a huge challenge for independent developers. Are you doing anything aside from emailing media places and putting out press releases? The dev blog videos are nice, but they're not going to attract anybody who's not already interested.

So far, it's YouTube, Twitter and GameTrailers. Once we have more footage, a website and description of the features, I will e-mail to whoever reviewed / previewed SS:BR (any Internet media). However, there are key websites who feels that what we do isn't interesting to the public (very subjective point of view). These key websites would direct a lot of attention to our new games. I guess they just don't take us seriously, or dislike us.. I don't know really. It's a big piece of the puzzle to me.

There is nothing else we can do. I do wish to have $20k budget for a week on RPS front page :D (yes, that's how much it costs for 1 week of advertising on RPS). Facebook was useless for SS:BR promotion, GoogleAds were useless too.

There are some websites/magazines with good userbase, but they are still very expensive to advertise on. Linux Format reviewed SS:Ep1, but I was unable to persuade them to review SS:BR. So, if you have any tips, please share :)

The worse thing is that we have 250k of people who owns SS:BR on Steam (most of those redeemed their copy on Steam from HIB3) and some people on Desura, however, there is absolutely no way to reach them. Desura is the same way as HIB. We can't have e-mails from them, and they are not willing to e-mail our users, not even if we do alpha funding through them.

So in a long run, staying away from Steam and Desura is very beneficial, because once the userbase is accumulated and satisfied, the developer can pretty much keep on making games for his users and strive. They are always within developer's reach as a result of direct sales.

Eeh, why would you get offended? This is total non-sense to me. It's not like we are peeping through your web cam or something. Why wouldn't you get offended by HIB sending you e-mails, but you would get offended by us sending you updates or what not?!

Mostly because it'd be a breach of the privacy policy, but also because I don't like organisations sharing my personal information. If I want to be on your mailing list, I'll sign up for it myself, thanks.

People who tick the "Notify me about future Humble Bundles" checkbox want to know about Humble Bundles. That doesn't indicate they want to know about other stuff.

Anyhow, that's fine. But what stops HIB to telling you: "Hey, KiA has 2 new games coming up. Check out their website/blog/twitter." ?

I agree, it'd be nice to for developers if they did that sort of thing, but I can't say it's explicitly bad that they're not (in fact, it has some positive aspects - a much nicer signal-to-noise ratio being one of them).

There are some websites/magazines with good userbase, but they are still very expensive to advertise on. Linux Format reviewed SS:Ep1, but I was unable to persuade them to review SS:BR. So, if you have any tips, please share :)

Of course :)
Here are some thoughts:
Print magazines are probably a good move (if you wanted to make it more attractive to them, you could look towards something like limited time demo exclusivity for their cover discs).
I've heard that attending conventions can have a huge impact (though there are pretty significant costs associated with that).
I'm assuming you're already planning some competitions/giveaways. If you are, I'd suggest going for stuff that encourages entrants to be creative rather than stuff that requires them to spam tweets and facebook shares (make your user community want to tell others about your stuff of their own volition, don't force them).
It's extra work, but you could look at offering some free content updates (not free DLC, since that doesn't automatically get rolled out to users) for SS:BR in the lead up to SS2's release. One possible clever approach could be to run a modding/mapping competition with the prize being to be included in an official update.

At the end of the day, it takes money/effort to get the word out, and balancing that can be really hard when you don't have the resources for a brute force marketing campaign.

Oh, and you've created a potential marketing nightmare by calling it "Steel Storm 2". Make sure you put a lot of effort into expectation management.

I even said I wanted to pay more for my SS2 in the merchant instructions for my pre-order, but nobody has gotten back to me

I'm curious about this. Do you guys get to see the merchant instructions? If so, do you pay attention to them? That's totally an opportunity there.

The worse thing is that we have 250k of people who owns SS:BR on Steam (most of those redeemed their copy on Steam from HIB3) and some people on Desura, however, there is absolutely no way to reach them. Desura is the same way as HIB. We can't have e-mails from them, and they are not willing to e-mail our users, not even if we do alpha funding through them.

IMO, you're doing a good enough job of contacting your customers via the in-game stuff you have in SS:BR. Steam and Desura both have news feeds for stuff related to the game (Steam's is probably more likely to catch people's eyes, but I suspect that Desura users are probably more likely to care).

There are people who are willing to pay for your games but don't want to ever hear from you directly. Steam and Desura are pretty good places to catch customers like that if you want them.

Moving back on topic a bit more, bundles and sales are a way to potentially reach people beyond those that have existing interest, and you have absolutely no idea whether they have positive or negative predispositions towards your game (which can be a double edged sword).

Do you really expect that all those 250k users want to pay $5+ for a sequel that (as far as we know) may never come out? We don't know how dedicated you are to this, or how long it will take. Your only one person, so how is throwing money at the problem gonna help YOU code faster? If I like a game I'll look into updates/sequels myself, I certainly wouldn't want you e-mailing me unless I signed up for it. If you really wanted to reach all your current users then you should have built in a news section in the menu of the game that updates over the internet, don't rely on a third party to inform these people. And finally, don't whine cause you can't fund shitty game with a shittier game.

If you really wanted to reach all your current users then you should have built in a news section in the menu of the game that updates over the internet, don't rely on a third party to inform these people.

Actually, the current "Message Of The Day" as seen from the main menu of the game does just that (it currently talks about the weapon pack DLC and Steel Storm 2 development).

Do you really expect that all those 250k users want to pay $5+ for a sequel that (as far as we know) may never come out? We don't know how dedicated you are to this, or how long it will take.

I am sorry, but apparently making 2 games and releasing them while working full time at non-game job is not a good indicator any more.

If you really wanted to reach all your current users then you should have built in a news section in the menu of the game that updates over the internet, don't rely on a third party to inform these people.

Our engine allows to download updates for the game data and game logic. However, it doesn't allow for updating the online. It's totally insecure. And what does this have to do with reaching them? If a person finished the game, (s)he won't launch it again. So how on Earth are they going to get an update? o_O

And finally, don't whine cause you can't fund shitty game with a shittier game.

Oh, is it you, Joe The Plumber, the Troll of the Trolls? Thank you for "supporting" hard work of a few indie teams striving to bring high quality games to the platform.

And finally, don't whine cause you can't fund shitty game with a shittier game.

so much for your post......