Bootstrapping as an Independent Game Developer (Requesting Feedback)

[Andrew Russell]

Hi Everyone,

About a week ago I posted about my Job-Free project - which is a meta-project about how I want to get from essentially zero to a healthy income without getting a job within two years (detailed version: Job-Free Goal). I'm hoping to get some feedback about my first business plan.

The project is called Sketchable. This is the blog post about the plan, but I will reiterate it here: The basic idea is to make a series of computer games, releasing one every two weeks. I haven't yet decided how long I'm going to do this for.

The games themselves will be free - I want to build up some practice and an audience. However I will be building into these games some things (I haven't talked about these on my blog yet) that will generate a little income and help the audience-building. Specifically:

- A "pay what you like" option that takes users to a PayPal donation page.
- A "sign up to my email list" button (mostly because I have a friend who's into "build a list" webtrepreneures; I'm not sure what to do with it yet, aside from announcing my own games)
- A "share with your friends" button - much like Digg This / Email This buttons on blogs.

As an extra incentive to do these things, I'll probably use some kind of nag screen ("if you enjoyed this game, please consider paying for it or sharing it with your friends...") and perhaps have a reward like an extra game level for each of those things that the user does. I'm not really trying for big results with this, it's just more practice for stage two:

Stage two is where I collect up statistics from stage one to see which games performed the best (downloads, donations, buzz, number of times played, etc). I will then take the best of the games and polish them up into "proper" shareware games - where the user downloads a free trial, and if they like it buys a full version.

There is also a stage 1.5, where I port the games to the Xbox 360 and sell them on the Xbox LIVE Community Games system for a couple of dollars each.

So - please ponder upon this, perhaps poke around my blog, and tell me what you think!

- Andrew

[saif]

Sounds like a fantastic idea. Though not a game developer but a software developer. I thought the days of one guy making a fully playable game by himself was well over. I've done something similar with software I wrote some time ago, a lot of people used it and it's all over the web and even though the donate button has been there since day one, I've received no donations. So I think you shouldn't count too much on donations. I think the second Idea of harvesting user interactions and making extra levels or features available for paid users would probably generate you more revenue.

Another option you could consider would be allowing users to sponsor the development of a feature or level. This works great for software but not entirely sure for games.

[Bleicke]

How do you get into the Xbox Live Service? I expect it to be a really difficult thing. All of the games follow certain standards, are synchronized in at least French, English and German and have very high quality standards.

Do you know where/how to apply?

Besides that: I think 2 weeks is too short an amount of time to produce a reasonable video game.

[Andrew Russell]

(Sorry for the late reply, I've been busy making games)

I don't plan to use the regular Live service but the Community Games system. It's quite easy to submit games. The main barrier at the moment is that I don't have either an Xbox console (I do have some 360 controllers for testing on the PC, though) or the required premium account. Total cost is approximately AU$550 (US$350), so I don't want to invest in it right away.

[Bleicke]

Well, I have an Xbox 360 and I don't know what "Community Games" are. Are you sure they can be bought on XBLA?

edit: just looked at your blog, it seems pretty interesting! I'm also a Software Engineer (6th Semester just finished) and looking forward to reading more. I love rapid development.

[Andrew Russell]

Originally Posted by Bleicke

Well, I have an Xbox 360 and I don't know what "Community Games" are. Are you sure they can be bought on XBLA?

Here is an example of a game that sells for 200 Microsoft Points (US$2.50)

XNA Creators Club Online - game details

Apparently you need to look at the "Xbox LIVE Community Games channel" - now owning a 360 I'm not sure how to go about doing this.

[Bleicke]

I thought about something today.

I wouldn't do too many free games in the beginning. Try to make them very playable demos. This way you'll learn how to make good demos and where to cut "off" the demo player to encourage them buying. Also, people don't get used to your services being free.

You can make the demos 80% playable in the beginning and reduce it to the usual 5%-10% of game content playable in the demo, learning as you go.

Your very first game could well be free, since there's not much to demo in Tetris, but think of the concept. Knowing how to demo is very important.

[TumbleN]

I love this idea and the 'pay what you like' model. This alone encourages me to try a product out and, if I like it, pay very well. I personally see it as a progressive, long-term thinking move and try to support it when I see it; I know others do as well. And the fact is, artists that approach their work this way tend to produce impressive results

You sound like you're pretty into this, so I have no doubt it will be a success and I am really interested to see what you do to pull it off.

I'm looking through your blog now and I will definitely be reading more; as someone in a roughly similar spot (taking some time off of school to slowly find a way to make a living on my own with design/programming), your posts seem particularly motivation/insightful.

Best of luck!