Game Publishing/Business

Re: Advertising your games.

Nick Gravelyn — Mon, 12 May 2008 15:27:55 GMT

jwatte:
If an XBLA game is $8-$10, and you were to create a tier below that, what would you charge for your community game? $1? And how would that cover the overhead of the payment system, customer service, dealing with refunds, etc?

Keep in mind that Microsoft doesn't technically charge for games (even on XBLA). They charge you for the points with which you can download things. So it makes no difference on their end what you spend them on; they've already made the money. And since the minimum you can buy is around $20 USD for 1600, it shouldn't matter whether you spend that on two XBLA or ten XBLCG games. That's how they can put things like gamer pictures for 50 or 100 points and not worry about credit card processing fees or anything like that.

Re: Advertising your games.

jwatte — Mon, 12 May 2008 15:09:22 GMT

I'm concerned about whether or not I should charge for my XBCC game when the time rolls around (assuming the developer gets money, not XBL points).

Personally, I think the chances are slim that the community portal will allow you to charge money. That's what XBLA is for. XBLA allows Microsoft to enforce certain quality minimums, and in return, they can charge money and people know what they're getting. If an XBLA game is $8-$10, and you were to create a tier below that, what would you charge for your community game? $1? And how would that cover the overhead of the payment system, customer service, dealing with refunds, etc?

Remember: YouTube does not charge for videos.

Then again, I could be totally wrong.

Re: Advertising your games.

CVO — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:45:13 GMT

Word. Be prepared to pay at least $1,000 for website unless you plan on just doing a straightforward blog. And then concept art is usually about $150 per finished/colored piece. (depending on your friends/connections of course)

For me personally (and hopefully my target audience) it was often the game's booklet and story that garnered my interest. Or if came with a cool world map, I could sit and stare at it for hours. If you think back to the old adventure/RPGs, graphics had to be supplemented with well designed concept art. A couple well thought-out pieces (i.e. Link holding the triforce), can really spark interest and imagination.

I am taking a similar approach, only my website will serve as an extended updatable game booklet. Good place to host your demos and direct people too of course.

Re: Advertising your games.

Nick Gravelyn — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:37:55 GMT

One thing I want to do is team up with other developers and teams to do a connected demo system. The goal would be to create a simple API so that my game can easily contain a demo for another game. This puts more strain on the peer review (since they essentially have to review two or more games), but the buyers of my game (or another game) can, without having a separate download, get a few demos for games that I want to help advertise. Then other developers could do the same for me. I have yet to really flesh out how this would work but I think it's a nice way to approach friendly developer ties to help each other out.

Re: Advertising your games.

JohnWestMinor — Mon, 12 May 2008 12:35:03 GMT

I'm hoping for a similar effect. I'm hoping that the trailer videos I'll be realeasing of my game will be compelling enough to interest people. The website I'll be making will hopefully garner enough attention. I'll need to hire someone to do the website, though.

I imagine that by the time the game is released I'll have spent well over $500 advertising, and rely on word of mouth from there. But if enough people see the game, w00!

Re: Advertising your games.

CVO — Mon, 12 May 2008 12:16:56 GMT

I am investing pretty heavily in to my website and concept art to gain attention. My approach is particular to my game though - as it's an original adventre/RPG that needs to establish some background/story/characters etc.

I am hoping people will enjoy the website and game concept enough to stick around and follow my progress.

Re: Advertising your games.

Nick Gravelyn — Sat, 10 May 2008 21:08:25 GMT

JohnWestMinor:
On the plus side, there's the benefit that if it's free, more people will download it, making it more likely to graduate to an XBLA status.

On the downside, if the game gets a lot of attention, but not enough to garner XBLA treatment, I've potentially lost quite a bit of money.

I don't know if those are correlating things. I don't think more downloads will give you a better chance at making it up to XBLA. It might help get your game noticed, but by no means does it necessarily help. I would definitely stray from the thought process that "more downloads = better chance at XBLA". I would instead say that the quality of your game and the innovation put in matter much more to Microsoft than a simple download counter.

I could offer a free demo of the game and a much larger version of the game for charge, but I don't want to split the downloads for someone searching.

Could Microsoft potentially set up the XBCC so that I can upload two versions of the same game at the same time? What I mean is, someone looks at the title of my game in the list, and he selects it. He sees the free demo version, and the complete version that costs money, each download of each going to the rating of both (with user feed back factored in, too).

Perhaps then you should head to connect.microsoft.com and make a suggestion that there be a way for a single download to have a demo mode and full mode on it. If you haven't been there before, here's a great how-to: http://forums.xna.com/thread/1864.aspx. Things that go to Connect get seen by Microsoft; Connect ties in with their internal system. For things in the forums it's hit or miss if they see it and then even more hit or miss that they add it to their internal task tracking system.

Re: Advertising your games.

JohnWestMinor — Sat, 10 May 2008 21:03:07 GMT

So here's somehting for people to ponder.

I'm concerned about whether or not I should charge for my XBCC game when the time rolls around (assuming the developer gets money, not XBL points).

On the plus side, there's the benefit that if it's free, more people will download it, making it more likely to graduate to an XBLA status.

On the downside, if the game gets a lot of attention, but not enough to garner XBLA treatment, I've potentially lost quite a bit of money.

I could offer a free demo of the game and a much larger version of the game for charge, but I don't want to split the downloads for someone searching.

Could Microsoft potentially set up the XBCC so that I can upload two versions of the same game at the same time? What I mean is, someone looks at the title of my game in the list, and he selects it. He sees the free demo version, and the complete version that costs money, each download of each going to the rating of both (with user feed back factored in, too).

Re: Advertising your games.

Bomjus — Sat, 10 May 2008 20:32:44 GMT

Thanks for the info. It was my assumption that xbox would ultimatly be the portal but each of the resources listed had something to offer. Its interesting to see all the projects. Thanks again for the info.

Re: Advertising your games.

The ZMan — Sat, 10 May 2008 12:34:28 GMT

There is no list... game quality varies greatly, most people want to host the games on their own site and for the 360 people need to have the whole of XNA Game Studio AND a paid Creators Club membership so there is not much of an incentie for a portal. Especially since Microsoft is about to jump into that space. Search through these forums or over on www.ziggyware.com

Re: Advertising your games.

Nick Gravelyn — Sat, 10 May 2008 12:33:21 GMT

You can publish .ccgames for both Windows and Xbox 360. There isn't a single list of the ones available, though, so you'll have to search around for them. I found these two sites for some XNA games:

http://www.xnapost.com/xna_games.html

http://xnaprojects.net/

Re: Advertising your games.

Bomjus — Sat, 10 May 2008 12:24:17 GMT

Currently, is there a list of published .ccgames to play on the Xbox or are most windows? Or is the capability not available yet?

Re: Advertising your games.

jwatte — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:35:26 GMT

I hear a spot at the Superbowl will reach a lot of people interested in some kind of games.

Re: Advertising your games.

JROliveri — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 12:31:11 GMT

Also you can use many sites like http://www.gametunnel.com/ to get the word around. Ad space can be purchased for a good price.

Re: Advertising your games.

The ZMan — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 19:44:12 GMT

I'm sure Ziggy will give you ad space for a small sum of money...

THough in general game developers is a very small subset of game players so advertising would need to be done in non developer forums. Hopefully xbox.com will have some forum space for community games though they may also be subject to the same no commercial use as this forum.

Magazines will be way outside the budget of most indies.

This is a great question to ask in the indie game forums - those folks have many years of experience in this sort of thing.