In the tradition of this article I wrote for NotesOnGameDev.com, entitled, “Nine Things I Wish I Knew (Before Going Indie)”, here’s another thing I wish I had known before venturing into the indie wilderness.

Exit Strategy

Do I need one?

I didn’t.  While this may certainly change at some point, I really do plan and hope to continue making the games I want to make ad infinitum.  However, the more people that are financially invested in your company, the more likely it is that you’ll want to have one.

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It’s worth it for anyone trying to run a small business to understand this term, since you are likely to be on both sides of a work-for-hire contract at some point in the life of your business.

Work-for-hire essentially means that the rights to the work done by a contractor are ceded to the hiring company, as if the contractor were a full-time employee of that company.  In a work for hire situation, any code or art developed in the process of working on the contract is property of the hiring company.

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I’ve been working with a company called Liberum Donum to establish the look and feel of the next (mysterious) game.  Juan Cristobal Calle is the artist currently working on the illustrations.  He’s done some incredible work, ranging from scientific illustration to game art.  I was referred to him by a friend who used to work with him at Disney.  Juan and the rest of the shop at Liberum Donum are a dream to work with so far!

Thorbrian over on indiegamer.com just posted some extremely interesting aggregate sales data from Reflexive.

The thread

Hey all,
I’ve read various posts here and there about how well games sell over their lifetime (”casual games have a long tail”, “portals only care about new games”, etc) so I figured I’d throw some data into the ether on that topic.

The attached image is a normalized graph of the average sales per week of a single game over it’s lifetime in the Reflexive Arcade system (we have about 4 years of usable data for this purpose). I got it by grouping all the sales by the age of the game in weeks, then dividing by the number of games that were that old. Then I normalized the values so that 1 represents the sales rate that the graph seemed to flatten out at. I didn’t do anything to try and account for and remove growth of the affiliate network or hit games. So the graph incorporates a number of factors, and it gets noisy near the 4 year mark because we have many less games to average over.

So for us, games have sold about 10x when first released, but quickly dropped down to a stable rate, which it seems like they could sell at forever. My expectation is that other portals and direct sales systems would show similar behavior, but I am curious if anybody else has had a significantly different experience.

In particular, these two charts sum up his findings:
Average game sales over 4 years
Cumulative Sales data over 4 years, averaged across all titles

What this really shows is that building a successful and STABLE games studio is about volume of titles.  If you can get a bunch of titles out, these long tails start to overlap.  The release spike for any particular game is unpredictable, but once a games’ sales have leveled out, you can pretty easily predict how that game will continue to perform for the following 4-5 years.

I spoke today at the Switzer Learning Center (Torrance, CA, in LA) to high school juniors and seniors that were severely at-risk from their home life, gang life, or that were learning disabled.  These are kids that were mostly kicked out of public schools and ended up here as a last chance.  The chance they have is to learn what they need to to live in the post-academic world as a productive and stable citizen.

My friend Mike Eberhard teaches the “Job Training” class there once a week where he helps to prepare them to write applications, learn to get along with co-workers, and how to find a job.  He occassionally will have guest speakers come in to talk to the kids.  Apparently, the kids love it, but they asked if they could get someone a little younger next time.  A few of them also love games, so he thought of me.

The first half of the class I talked with them about my own career in the game industry and also what opportunities there were in the industry.  My thoughts were that some of these kids could probably land a job as a tester at some of the larger companies in LA.  They would probably improve their chances a lot if they participated in some of the focus groups run by the big pubs like EA or Activision.

The second half of the talk revolved around how to succeed (ie not get fired) in the workplace.  From my perspective, these kids need to have the ambition to succeed, and the calm to deal with situations they don’t like.  One of them talked about quitting his job after he had a cup thrown at him when he worked at a coffee shop.  I wouldn’t expect him not to be angry or act irrationally, but his instinct was wrong.  There was not need and no utility in standing up for himself.  He should have let the customer go.

So at any rate, I will probably go back to their job fair (not to hire, but to just talk with these kids again) in May.  The director of education at the school asked me to ask around in case anyone else might be interested in speaking as well.  If you are in the Southern California area, perhaps you might be interested in participating.

And lastly, I’d encourage others to get involved with students.  After having spoken with the very talented and driven kids of the San Diego Art Institute, and the very troubled kids of Switzer, I feel connected to these kids, and inspired by them as well.  If you work in games, you are a god to many of them.  They immediately open up and smile and want to talk.  That’s what many of these kids need.

I’ve learned a lot about the business of making and marketing games from following the independent game development community. Each are these are one of the many nuggests of insight some of the prominent indie game companies have given me. Feel free to contribute any nuggets of wisdom you’ve learned from specific other developers.

Puppy Games (Titan Attacks, Ultratron) – Develop a consistent art style to develop a fan base and make customers more comfortable with future purchases.

Amaranth Games (Aveyond) – The one-hour trial isn’t the law.

Positech (Democracy, Kudos) – Constraining distribution can work for some games. (Democracy supported the company despite not selling through the portals)

Last Day of Work (Fish Tycoon, Virtual Villagers) – Casual gamers love “pet” games

Introversion (Darwinia, Defcon) – There is a significant market niche for “fans of independent games”. It’s just hard to reach/please those people, as they tend to have a high crossover with core gamers.

Three Rings (Puzzle Pirates, Bang! Howdy) – The only way to build a truly stable game development company is through community and fan-base.

Raptisoft (Hamsterball, Chuzzle) – There’s huge value in R&D (Chuzzle was a hit due to months of research and testing), but be careful to protect and promote your IP, especially if you are in a crowded field.

Funpause, now BigFish Games Europe (Atlantis, Mystic Inn, Fairies) – The indie community calls it cloning, but really it’s just a form of line extension. Gamers see value in aesthetic modifications to familiar game designs. Bonus: it’s possible to complete a high-quality casual game in 4 months with a team of 2.5 people.

Reflexive (Ricochet, Big Kahuna Reef, Wik and the Fable of Souls) – The aging, ex-gamer, which is what Wik was aimed at, is a terrible market. Never try to target a group that you have defined as people that don’t buy games anymore.

Grubby Games (Professor Fizzwizzle, Fizzball) – It’s a good idea to keep an open mind about the description of your target market. Casual gamers are also moms and dads that have kids. (see the kid modes in both of these games)

Enkord (Clash ‘n Slash) – Indie games are still a hit driven business. One big hit can fuel mediocre sales on several other titles.

Monster Studios (Chain Reaction) – The first modern indie developer I ever met. Spent 4 years writing an engine and a game, when he was done, the Torque Game Engine was out. Build on existing technology, never write your own if you can avoid it.

Gibbage.co.uk (Gibbage) – There’s no end to the amount of shameless plugging you can get away with if you are entertaining writer. PR is very closely related to PI, Public Image.

Chronic Logic (Bridge Builder, Gish) – There’s a huge demand for educational entertainment. Bridge Builder outsells Gish.

Super X Studios (Wild Earth) – A quality product can be sold and resold and repackaged for years. (see the amusement park ride, the downloadable game, the retail game)