image by Justus Thane

Yes it’s a bold goal I know, but first let me clarify: by “game” I really mean SKU – so every time I ship a game on a different platform or localize it, that’s a different SKU.

Previous Years

Here’s how many SKUs I’ve made in previous years since I went indie in 2005:

2005: 4 mini-games and Xmas Bonus (PC) = 5
2006: Easter Bonus, Oz, Oz retail, Holiday Bonus, 3 framework minigames (all PC) = 7
2007: Fairway Solitaire (PC) = 1
2008: Fairway Solitaire (Mac + localized versions x 3), Oz (Mac), Holiday Bonus (Mac) = 6
2009: Unwell Mel (PC/Mac + localized versions x 4) = 6
2010: My Tribe (Facebook game – I was part of a team at BFG), Fairway/Mel retail, 3x mini games (PC/Mac) = 9

That’s a total of 34 over 6 years.

2011 So Far

So how can I hope to ship more games this year than in the last 6 years combined? Well, these days it’s a lot easier to ship games on different platforms, and I’ve teamed up with other people who are porting my IP to some other platforms for me. Plus I’m used to localizing games now, so that’s no longer a big challenge. So far this year I’ve already shipped 17 SKUs as follows:

– Holiday Bonus on XBLIG
– Attack of the Giant Planet Eating Bacteria From Outer Space (Flash game made with a team at the GGJ 2010)
– Holiday Bonus (Mac App Store buld)
– Oz (Mac App Store build)
– Berry Blast (Facebook minigame in My Tribe, made whilst still at BFG)
– Fruitola (My original match-3 prototype for PC)
– Spring Bonus (PC/Mac + Mac App Store build + 8 localized versions)

And there’s more…

When I was at GDC I bumped into Arthur Humphrey (Last Day of Work) who said that he believed a good business strategy for indies was to ship many SKUs on different platforms and see which were most profitable. This gave me more confidence in what I was planning to do.

So here’s how I plan to ship 50+ this year:

– Very soon Spring Bonus will be out on Windows Phone 7 and iPad and soon after hopefully on iPhone and XBLIG = 4 SKUs
– Also I’m getting Spring Bonus translated to Japanese = 1 SKU
– If Spring Bonus does well on those platforms, the engine will be reused to ship Oz on all iPad/iPhone/WP7/XBLIG, plus I’m planning to localize it to 8 or 9 languages = 12 SKUs
– Then at the end of the year Holiday Bonus will ship on iPad/iPhone/WP7, and will also be localized to 8+ languages = 11 SKUs
– I’m planning on converting my framework to Linux so that I can ship Oz, Holiday bonus and Spring Bonus on Linux = 3 SKUs
– I started a mini-game for the recent Ludum Dare, but failed to finish it due to nice weather 🙂 So I’ll ship that soon on PC/Mac = 2 SKUs
– I’m planning a Vancouver game jam in the summer, so that’ll be another mini-game on PC/Mac = 2 SKUs
– I’m working with a number of people as a design consultant/producer that will result in a bunch of shipped games on multiple platforms.
– I’d like to get some of my games ported to Flash, but that might not happen, we’ll see.
– I’ll definitely be making some brand new games and shipping on multiple platforms as well as localizing them.
– I’ll probably make some more mini-games 🙂

And that, my friends, is how I’ll do it! That’s another 35 planned SKUs plus some more in the pipeline.

I’ll keep reporting on my progress and will do a post-mortem at the end of the year, so stay tuned folks. Wish me luck!

This entry was posted on Friday, May 6th, 2011 at 2:42 am and is filed under Grey Alien Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.