Holiday Bonus was a match-3 “reskin” with some new features and a meta game based on my earlier Wizard of Oz game (which I programmed for Injoy Games). So far I’ve logged 262 hours making that game (I keep a spreadsheet). That includes coding, graphics, testing etc + marketing, releasing to portals and stuff like that - basically everything. I did most of those hours in a super intense month, then spent a couple of weeks doing the marketing and contract signing with portals etc. It was all a bit last minute, but Christmas is a pretty non-negotiable deadline!

Marketing

I contacted portals well in advance of the release date and gave them some screenshots and talked about my previous game in order to “prime” them for the release.

When it was ready I sent it to them and we sorted out the contracts. I chose some big portals like BFG, Reflexive, Oberon and some smaller ones that didn’t perform as well. Real turned it down because it was seasonal.

I also put it on my own site, mentioned it on two forums and added it to my forum sig, then did a shareware submission and a download.com submission.

Also did a small email shot. Even printed some little flyers for my son to take to school.

A year after it’s initial release I pretty much repeated the process (because it’s seasonal).

Research

Well I already made 3 match-3s and this was my 4th so pretty much all the research was done. Basically it just consisted of playing all the other match-3s and top casual games for ideas and to see what sort of polish level I’d need.

Money

2578 sales so far (it still sells like 30 a month even in the summer). It’s main two big peaks were Christmas 2006 and 2007. Almost all of the sales were via portals, my direct sales are crap, 22, woo. This is a testament to the power of the portals and the crapness of my marketing/site.

Gross revenue: £5262 (>$10,000). Expenses (art and music, software passport, marketing): £1155. Net Profit £4106.

Therefore I earned £15.67 per hour making that game, and it goes up every day. That’s not great but it’s pretty good, you could maybe live off that if you banged one game out after the other without gaps. I used to earn £30 an hour as an IT consultant so it was a step down in earnings but a step up in fun.

I don’t know if I can be bothered to push it again this Christmas or not (and if the portals will bother), although I will probably send the portals a Mac version which I now have ready, and which they have expressed a keen interest in. Don’t know how many sales that will bring, but it’s all profit.

My primary money goal was to make back my expenses, which I did, and then make at least £10 per hour, which I did.

Another motivation for the game was simply to make another nice polished portfolio piece which ended up getting me hired for BFG, so that worked too (well actually they hired me as a result of my Oz game, but Holiday Bonus added extra credence). I always get several job offers after releasing my games, which is nice

Target Audience

Casual gamers, although a reasonable number of hardcore gamers have confessed to liking it.

I aimed the game at this market, but I also enjoyed making it because I like making pretty much any game (I’m not up my own arse like the “making it for art’s sake” crowd) + I liked Bejwelled when I first played it.

Additional Info

Don’t forget that a lot of the work for this game was actually done a) in my game framework which took a couple of hundred hours (I sell that and it makes good money) and b) my Oz game which also took hundreds of hours. It wasn’t as if I started from scratch, otherwise it would have taken a LOT longer and my hourly salary would have been awful.

I’ve made hardly any money from my first two games btw, my hourly wage for those is a joke, like £3 per hour. But I look upon them as “training” (before that I made some free games as training when I had another job, and I’ve also been making games as a hobby since I was 8). I think it’s the same with most Indies, their first few games aren’t that successful, but they gradually learn the ropes and build up the business over a couple of years. Making one killer first game is very unlikely I would say - yet a lot of people hinge their hopes on this, which I would say is unwise.

I would say that my 5th game, Fairway Solitaire, could be called a “hit” due to very large sales numbers and revenue, and extremely high Conversion Rate. However, I’m hoping to eclipse that with my 6th game which is in progress now and is due for a late summer release.

I have plenty of obstacles that *could* get in the way of my project each day, but guess what? I simply don’t let them. If you let them stop you then you don’t want to succeed enough, it’s as simple as that. Martial artists and sports people (and millionaires) know this, but many people fail to apply it to various aspects of their own lives.

I’ve just had a “mastermind” meeting with some good friends where we all look at positive ways to leverage our businesses, and then I read a thread on BlitzBasic.com about reasons why people’s projects have stopped and I realised that some people may need help in changing their mindsets. So I’ve made this blog post about it. I hope you find it useful!

Here are some examples of possible “project stoppers” and possible solutions:

I have a day job that takes up too much time and drains me

OK quit it, or see if you can work part time, or totally free up your evenings and weekends by not watching TV, going to the pub, or playing games. Warning: You’ll probably be tired in the evenings and feel like a break at the weekend, so quitting your job is actually the best option if you are committed.

I can’t quit my job because I need the money

So did I, but I did it anyway. I got loans, reduced my living expenses and gunned for success because I had no choice but to succeed. Also try to marry someone rich

My game needs art and I can’t find an artist

Artists will work for MONEY - funny that. Pay them and they will flock. There’s tons of artists on Indiegamer advertising and probably tons on the Blitz forum (and numerous other places) that will work for money and would love to work on your game if the price (and concept) is right.

I don’t have any money to pay an artist

For God’s sake! This is a lame excuse. Get a loan, juggle your finances, save up. You can even do stuff like get a loan and transfer it to a 0% deal on a credit card if you find the right sort (I did this, it’s called Stoozing, look it up). You can even ask relatives and friends if they are prepared to help you out (I didn’t do this, but I know that it works for some people). Not having the money never stopped plenty of millionaires who speculated to accumulate - don’t let it stop you.

I can’t get anyone to work for royalties.

Pay them then! But if I can’t convince you to spend any money then try this: make some simple free games to prove to artists that you can actually complete a game. Use free Internet graphics or make your own “programmer art”. Hopefully you may be able to attract a viable artist via this method. If your placeholder art is slightly better than plain squares, it may inspire artists who think “OK, I can make this look better and it would be fun!”.

Same goes for musicians. Put some free music in there that gives the general idea so that a musician can get inspired to improve it for you. Sound effects you can buy really cheaply (you can even record and try out lots of tester ones before honing it down to the actual ones you want to buy). If the musician can make the sounds for you, even better as they should be in tune with the music and more consistent theme-wise.

I don’t have enough time

Work out what consumes your time and make radical cuts. I’ve already talked about quitting your job, but look at other “pointless” activities you do and see which ones can be removed or trimmed down. Get into being an organised efficient person so that you can clear out daily non-game related tasks a lot quicker and then apply the same type of efficiency to your project so you don’t waste time on unnecessary time-consuming crap. How long do you spend in bed? Could you sleep an hour less without affecting your health? Are you prepared to find time at the weekend or on public holidays?

Warning: Make sure to devote enough time to exercise and eating healthily and even meditation or breathing exercises (these will give you more work energy and brain power!). Also be sure to make enough time for your partner and kids because if stuff goes wrong with your partner, it will seriously ruin your programming mood and also your kids will grow up before you know it!

My Engine is taking too long

Buy a framework or an engine for a head start! Don’t reinvent the wheel. Are you even using the right language? i.e. is it one you can make stuff happen in quickly? If you insist on making your own engine then KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). Start basic and then make a game and add to the engine as you make the game, this will ensure you a) have a finished game and b) an engine with realistic features that your games actually need and not some crazy features that you’ll never use. You might even be able to sell the framework/engine like I did!

My partner won’t let me

This is a tricky one but the best option is to talk to them, explain how you FEEL if your partner is a woman and what you are THINKING about if your partner is man. Explain that it’s a dream and you want to go for it, and that it WILL disrupt your finances for a while, but that you aim to make good money and have good security from this (perhaps back this up with a business plan/facts ‘n’ figures) and that worse case, you’ll pull out of it and get a “proper job”

Other options include a) do it anyway no matter what they say, when you are rich, they won’t complain any more and you can say “see I told you so” or b) get a new partner (or none for increased programming time). I’m pretty much kidding on “get a new partner or none” but seriously, if they are holding you back in this way and you feel trapped in your day job, MAKE A CHANGE in your life, it’s up to you, not anyone else - you only live once!

It’s worth finding out if your partner is doing what they really want in life too. What if you can support them in making a change of career or starting a new fulfilling hobby too? Then you can both move forwards together. Perhaps you can offer to have more days with the kids so they can do something they really want to do. Strive for win-win and fairness.

I’ve run out of motivation

Well perhaps game programming isn’t for you but some other aspect of game production is? But maybe you just need to re-motivate yourself! There’s plenty of stuff about this all over the Internet. Try doing something that inspired you to make games in the first place - perhaps you need to play some of your favourite games, or boot up an emulator and play some old classics, or read some stories about other people’s success, or make a little fun minigame, or listen to some Commodore 64 tunes or Euphoric Trance music. Whatever gets you back into that space where you really want to have fun making and selling a game! Be sure to REPEAT this process whenever you feel your motivation dip.

Having a plan really helps out as you can chart your progress and see clearly what you need to do next. Also if you feel unmotivated, just START something, anything on your project and 5-10 minutes later you’ll probably be really into it.

The competition is strong

True, so you’d better get started right away at making games for the experience. Each game you make refines your skills and knowledge more and more. Keep looking at the competition to see if you can do it better. Make sure you find out LOTS about marketing your game or get someone else to do it for you. Be prepared to spend money to get your game noticed (on artwork/music, and on advertising, press releases etc). It may take several games before you hit the big (or medium) time, so be prepared to be in it for the long haul.

I’m not very good at programming

OK, so the best way to improve is practice by making games! Besides you don’t need to be a genius at programming to make great games at all (I’m not). You can even work as part of a team - perhaps with another programmer (to exchange ideas and share workload) or maybe you just end up designing and financing the game and getting someone else to make it.

I’ve run out of ideas

Wow, OK well maybe you shouldn’t be making games then. I have so many ideas that I’d never have enough time to make them into games if I lived to be 1000. If it’s just creative block on your current project, then play some other similar games, talk to trusted people about the ideas and see what you can come up with - brainstorming with two heads is way more fun that on your own! Read some books, watch some movies, go for a walk, relax in a bath, listen to some music. Basically get in a creative space however best suits you.

I have other more important things I should be doing instead

OK, well just double check they are really more important. If they are, can you tweak the time spent on them to free up more for programming? Also, of course, check all your non-essential time consuming activities and cut them out so that you can do BOTH programming AND your important things (e.g. family, health, other interests, other businesses). Failing all of that, then it sounds like you simply don’t want success in making games enough, so drop the pressure from yourself. Just have fun making mini-games or simply playing games and enjoy that without the pressure to have to make a commercial game spoiling your fun. Get a job writing business software instead (that’ll soon make you wish you made games for a living ;-))

Conclusion

OK I could probably go on for ages but that’s a pretty comprehensive list. The long and short of it is: If you hear yourself complaining, then shut up and do something about it! You are in control of your life and your career, so if you encounter an obstacle, find a way round it or blast your way though it! Be bigger than your problems. Plan for success instead of failure.

As per usual if you have any new obstacles you’d like to mention or comments on the existing ones, then please post a reply! I look forward to hearing from you

OK, so you want to make Indie/Casual games and sell enough of them direct or via the portals to make a living - is it possible?

Well here’s my opinion (based on 3+ years in the industry, my own experiences of making and selling 5 games, talking to other established indie developers, facts and figures I’ve read and digested, and having some inside info about some of the big portals):

- Let’s say you spend 6 months designing/programming a game (working 7-8 hours a day). What do you feel is a reasonable salary for that? Let’s pick a number and say $5000 per month. So you need to get paid $30,000. Sure living costs are HIGHER in some places and way LESS in others, so adjust the figure according to what’s right for you.

- OK, if you ever plan to earn that much from your game, I hope you damn well paid for the graphics and music (or got someone on a good royalty deal). But for ease of calculations, let’s say that the art cost $15,000 and the music cost $5000 (total = $20000). If you can get it made for less, then good for you, but make sure it’s top notch quality or your game doesn’t stand a chance.

- So the total you are aiming to earn is $50,000.

- If you sell direct (on your own site) you’ll get about 90% of the gross revenue, so if you sell for $20 you’ll make $18 per sale.

- So you need to make 2777 direct sales to make $50,000.

- OR if you sell via portals, you’ll get MAX 40% of the net price (net is gross minus some minor transaction fees). So like $8 max per game. Therefore you need 6250 sales. However, many portals offer discounts on their games, and many don’t offer 40%, so you may have to make as many as DOUBLE or TRIPLE that number depending on which portals you use (frankly you should use all the big ones (because it’s all money) and consider if the smaller ones are worth the paperwork (some aren’t)).

- However, to get those sales you’ll need to do a heck of a lot of marketing. Some marketing is free, and some costs money (like shareware submissions, advertising, paid for press-releases etc). So there could be a big cost in marketing. Oh and you need a website of course, which you can either make yourself of hire out the work for a couple of thousand dollars (assuming it’s half decent).

- Who’s going to do all that marketing? Well if you don’t hire a publisher, *you* are - and that may add easily a month onto your game development time (in fact it should be an ongoing process), so you need to earn another $5000 + marketing/website expenses. Of course if you hire a publisher, they’ll take a big % of the profit but hopefully will generate way more sales that you ever could (otherwise there would be no point, it’s the same with advertising)

- OK then, which do you think is easiest? Making 2770 direct sales or 6250 to 18000 portal sales? (or some combination of both). The answer is neither.

- Making 2770 direct sales is a major challenge. People have been known to do it but they have normally made several games before and have built up a fan-base and then they release their next game on their site ONLY for a few months before putting it on the portals. An example of such a developer is Positech and their specialist games like democracy. I happen to know that their direct sales are GREAT. But they’ve worked hard at building the customer base for YEARS (and they uses portals too).

- How about making say 10,000 sales on a portal? Well that is also extremely hard. You are competing against many other highly polished games (probably all Hidden Object games right now). If you game doesn’t reach the top 10 on at least a few portals, you’ll never make that many sales. Also if you do reach the top 10, there is a hell of a lot of difference between no.1 and no.10, the curve is seriously exponential. Then there’s how long you stay in the top 10, and after the top 10, how long you stay in the top 100. Games that hit no.1 will make 10,000 sales EASY btw. But how many games never even get in the top 10? … To be a top 10 hit, your game needs a proven mechanic (or a unique one which takes the market by storm - but how easy do you think that is?), addictive gameplay, a popular or original theme, bucket loads of polish, meta-games and mini-games etc. and then there is still no guarantee of success.

- One good thing about games is that they can have a long shelf life. We all know that you get a huge spike of sales when the game is first released on a portal (or when your initial batch of marketing for your website kicks off), and then it rapidly tails off. However, hopefully you’ll get a steady number of sales for a couple of years at least. You may not in fact make your $50000 until the second year after the game’s release! You need to factor this in when making a game i.e. you will not receive the money straight away, it may take a long time to recoup the money. The good thing is that once the $50000 is made, any extra sales are pure bonus!

The good old days

Making Indie/casual games may have been easier in the past because a) there was less competition b) games didn’t need as much content (meta games, unlockables, graphics etc) and c) games didn’t need as much polish. So it was possible to make a game in 3 months with a very low art/music budget. However, those days are GONE. Why? Because everyone jumped on the band wagon and upped the ante! Development times are longer due increased content and polish and art and sound budgets are much higher. It’s a fast moving business and to stay afloat you have to move with the times or get left behind. Having said that, in the past there was less awareness of downloadable games and there was less marketing done on them so it may have *still* been hard to earn a living from it. It took Steve Pavlina 5 years before he finally made a profit - then he quit and became a self help guru

What if you are starting today?

So what if you are just starting now? Is it possible to make living? Well have you practiced making really good free games first? Small ones that you can FINISH easily. These are “portfolio” items that you can use to get other parties interested, either to help you make the art and sound or to hire you to make a game for them. If you’ve never made a game before and you try to get some other team members on-board for royalties only (instead of paying them) then you’ll have a very hard time or you’ll most likely get sub-standard team members.

Another option exists - get a LOAN and INVEST some money in art and sound and make a quality game that has a chance of succeeding. You may LOSE some or all of the money, but you have to make mistakes to learn. Most millionaires claim they have made *way* more mistakes than most people because they kept on trying until they got it right. I invested money that I didn’t have in my Holiday Bonus game and made it back 5 times over (so far, the figure grows every day) - but it took nearly a year to make back the initial investment.

This is a long term game, there’s no get rich quick. It’s about building skills, contacts and a career in making games.

Are you committed?

So if all that sounds like hard work, you are correct, it is! Any many will not succeed. But if you don’t try, your chance of success is 0%.

I’m a black belt in Aikido and I’m going for my 2nd dan this year. Have you ever wondered what % of people who start a martial art get to black belt? Do you know what?…

It doesn’t matter, because if YOU want to be a black belt and you go for it, the chance of you getting one is 100%, whereas if you give in, the chance is 0% - it’s that simple folks! (Thanks to Steve Pavlina for the inspiration on that one).

One more thing…

As Columbo always says “just one more thing”… Notice that the title of this post is “making games”, not “selling games”. By making games I mean programming/designing and then selling. You could of course try to make money from Indie/Casual games by just selling other people’s games by starting up a portal, or becoming a publisher, or by joining an affiliate program. All of those are valid options, and done right could be big money too. But it’s a whole different topic that I’m less experienced in, so I’ll have to save that for another day…