Why there’s no blog lately

So yeah, as you can see, I haven’t updated the blog since a few weeks now. And I probably won’t until Cinders‘ release, too.

The reason is as prosaic as it can get — simple lack of time. I used to write the blogs on Saturday mornings or Friday evenings, but it’s Summer now, and I prefer to take at least some advantage of the weekends whenever I can. And on the weekdays, I’m spending almost every waking minute working on the already delayed Cinders. If I would be up for writing something, it’d better be some in-game dialogue.

That said, I very much enjoyed writing the blog, and it felt great to see that it actually gets some readers. I look forward to getting back to it when everything calms down. I have some nice ideas for future articles, and I also plan a full Cinders post-mortem at some point. With sales numbers, production details, what went wrong/right and all that.

Sorry for the silence, and stay tuned.

Moa’s biggest traffic sources

Continuing on the trend from the last week, here’s some more MoaCube’s stats. This time: our biggest traffic sources, along with some notes on how we got there (thanks to Paul Eres of RPGcreations for the suggestion).

I filtered out direct visits and google searches (1st and 4th position respectively), and focused on the referrals. As you can see, we’re still pretty small, with overall traffic measured in thousands per month and hundreds per day. We were growing really fast during the first two months, but now we’ve hit the stage where each months visits are just a few percent higher than the last’s. I’m interested in how this will change after Cinders is out. I’ll be sure to blog about it, too. Now, onto notes:

1. deviantart.com

This is probably a surprise for many. Our biggest traffic source, and by far, is Gracjana’s profile on deviantart. It didn’t really require much work, too. She’s a popular artist with many followers, so anything by her picks interest. Some of her Cinders artwork was featured in Daily Top Favorites and Daily Deviations, leading to very nice traffic spikes. It’s not dead traffic too, we have some confirmed sales from this source. Seems that if you work with a good and popular artist, it’s a good idea to ask them to promote the game on their profile.

2. tigsource.com

We were only mentioned once on the front page, and it was enough for TIGS to become our 2nd best referral. Kinda depressing, knowing that if you are not making a retro-styled game, or don’t know the editors personally, your chances on being featured are very slim. I got there by pestering an online friend who writes for TIGS. I don’t think it will be possible again. We kinda sticked out as the only hi-resolution 2D game in a long time.

3. indiegames.com

We got noticed by one of indiegames editors after the TIGS feature. Since then, we’re in direct contact, got our trailer published, and it’s likely you’ll see Cinders and our future projects there.

4. twitter.com

Twitter is interesting. It’s currently our 4th best source, but it’s constantly creeping up, as my account gains followers. It’s especially effective for promoting my blog posts. They tend to be retweeted the most, getting many people to visit. It should be noted that only 35% of this are new visits, so it’s more suited for maintaining traffic than increasing it.

5. facebook.com

Facebook is very similar to twitter in that it mostly maintains traffic (only 23% new visits) and grows steadily. It seems weaker than my twitter, but I had it for much shorter, too.

6. rockpapershotgun.com

A very cool PC-centric gaming website, that doesn’t shun away from indie games. I knew one of the editors from my days at Codeminion, so it was easy to establish the contact again. To make them publish indie news, you need to at least have a video of your game.

7. forums.tigsource.com

I’m a relatively active member of TIGS forums. I have links to our website in my signature, and I have made threads about our games in DevLogs and Feedback section. It’s a passive traffic source of sort — I spend my time there anyway.

8. lemmasoft.renai.us

A visual novel centric forums I signed to when we started to promote Cinders. I was a bit afraid that people there wouldn’t like a non-anime visual novel, but the community seems to be very friendly and supportive. Got some nice feedback and several sales. Very valuable traffic.

9. forum.gmclan.org

A Polish GameMaker community. I’m relatively well-known there, so it brings some people to our website. Mostly dead traffic, unfortunately. Very few Polish gamers are interested in buying indie stuff online.

10. planet.renai.us

An RSS aggregator for lemmasoft forums. If you publish VN-related news on your website, you can request being added to its feed. It reposts my news and blog posts in whole, so exact traffic is hard to measure.

As a little extra, here’s a list of the most popular content on our website:

Nothing unexpected here. Main subpages and games are getting the most eyeballs. From more interesting stuff: Cinders wallpapers are pretty popular, and so is my blog post on our sales stats. People like stats, I guess.

I would be really interested to see a similar breakdown of traffic sources from other indies. In a way, it’s more useful than sales numbers. Shows where and how to promote your game and website, and what people like to read the most.

C’mon, don’t be shy.

Some MoaCube sales stats

The blog was meant to become a bi-weekly thing until Cinders‘ release, but this could be interesting for many, so there you go.

Today, we’re getting our first payment from BMT Micro. I thought I could share some stats and few quick observations.

• Magi is still selling, even after so many years.
• $5.95 Magi sells the best, but only slightly better than Cinders $19.95 pre-order.
• Not much interest in Magi Supporter Bundle (the one for $25).
• Judging from Cinders pre-orders, our Mac audience is very small. App Store to blame? Or just bad marketing?

• Magi $50 Investment Bundle was a big success. We may do something similar in the future.
• Magi for $5.95 didn’t get that much profit. So much for the “if your games would be cheaper, you would get more sales and profit” theory.
• Magi contributed much more to our profit than I thought it would.
• Cinders pre-orders at $19.95 both sell a lot and earn a lot. Vicinity of $20 still the sweet spot?

• No surprises here. More traffic = more money.
• The sales spike without a traffic spike (at around 25% in) is from Pig-Min’s feature on Magi. Shows that traffic can have different value.
• The largest sales spike is Cinders pre-orders launch. Much less of a traffic spike there. Shows that there were some fans waiting for it.

I’m not comfortable with disclosing our exact numbers just yet, but in general — if this was to continue — I could already make a modest living out of it. Gracjana — Cinders artist — not yet. She gets half of Cinders profits, but its Magi sales that contributed a lot this month. Shows the value of having an existing games for passive income. Of course, this is just for pre-orders. Actual sales should be much higher, especially with the affiliate deals we’ve secured.

I think we should start making some reasonable money, to let us make games, pay bills and eat food at the same time without taking an extra job, after our next release. Though, everything seems to point out that our next project is also going to be the hardest. With Cinders, we had some savings from our former job to kickstart us. But our next title will have to rely on whatever we’re able to get with Cinders. Which may be just a bit too little. We’ll see how that goes. In the worst case, it may make sense to borrow a small sum from friends to finish it up, as it should be much easier from the second game on.

When should I go indie?

When I got interested in making games for a living several years ago, I’ve read many opinions on when one should try going full-time indie. Most took form of warnings, like: “don’t leave your job to become indie”, “don’t start indie business before you finish your college” or “don’t try unless you have saved up money for at least two years”.

You know what? Looking back at my own experiences, I find these to be an utter piece of bovine excrement. Personally — if your ultimate goal is to become full-time indie developer — I think you should give it a try whenever you get the chance.

I can see the comments already. “Sure, Tom. Easy for you to say. We’ll see how you sing, when Cinders flops like it’s a sequel to Howard the Duck“.

Good point. Let’s say Cinders bombs. It’s quite possible after all. What then? Does my life end? Do I actually starve or become homeless? Will I never make a game again? Nope. I’ll just have to get a job. Damn, what a horrible fate…

But don’t forget that in the meantime, I:

• Finally managed to launch a proper website for my work.
• Made some valuable business and press contacts.
• Gained some more recognition for our studio.
• Have another game under my belt.

The game is what matters the most. It’s a source of passive income, and something I can put on a sale to raise funds. Just like we did with Magi. That’s why we haven’t collapsed yet, even though Cinders is late according to our original schedule. Having a sellable product is a huge help when attempting to go indie.

Each released game also increases the studio’s recognition and fan base. Traffic decays with time, but there are people who would be happy to hear about the studio’s resurrection in the future. It also makes contacting the press easier. Indie developers who have already released something are treated more seriously.

Not to mention that finishing a game is a valuable experience. In game design, in marketing, in business development, feedback handling… well — everything. You can read hundreds of books on game development, but it’s nothing compared to releasing even a small game. It is why your first game almost always sucks (or at least could be much better). The sooner you have it out, the sooner you become a good developer.

Even if I fail with Cinders, these factors are going to make my next attempt much easier. All in all, I don’t think becoming a full-time indie is that hard. But it takes lots of time, persistence and frequent releases. The sooner you start, the better.

The notion that it’s a necessary to finish college first seems ridiculous to me, too. College is actually a great time to start your indie career. You have lots of time, few responsibilities, and you’re likely still being supported by your parents. At worst, it will help you land a job later.

I dropped out of University to be able to focus on my games. And while I don’t advise anyone to do that, I have never regretted my decision. By the time my friends started getting their degrees and were looking for their first jobs, I had enough experience to land a Lead Designer’s position in a studio I always wanted to work for. When my friends got their first serious jobs, I had five games under my belt, and was ready to give full-time indie a shot with some reasonable success expectancy. Life is short, if you want to do something specific, better get to it.

I recently met a promising starting game developer. The guy’s name is Uriel Griffin (yes, that’s his actual name!). He’s around 18, and he already started a small company that released several titles for the Mac App Store and iOS. His games may not be something to write home about just yet, but I predict a bright future ahead of this fellow. He has accomplished more as an indie than many people nearing their 30s! If he ever wishes to go full-time — boy, does he have some foundation!

As for having savings for at least few years ahead — I don’t know about you — but I’ve found that no matter how much you work, making such huge savings is nigh impossible. Between bills, rent, insurance, and trying to maintain a reasonable quality of life, it’s hard to save up for even few months ahead. Damn, many people can’t even afford a proper vacation after years of working for the man.

This varies from country to country, of course. I come from a relatively poor place, from a poor family, so my personal situation may be different from yours. But I think it’s safe to assume that majority of people don’t have incredibly well-paying jobs, allowing them to make big savings in short time. And time is of essence here. Spending five years in a office cubicle, thinking: “just a year more and I’m free”, may end up in family, mortgage, and far too much responsibility to be able to bite the bullet.

Having enough money to support yourself is certainly important. But if your first game requires few years of development and tens of thousands of dollars, then — pardon me — but it’s not your savings that are being the problem.

For me, the criteria on when you should try going indie should be:

• Do you have an idea for a game?
• Can you make that game?
• Do you have enough money to survive the development?

If the answer is “yes”,  just do it. Simple as that.

Even if the game fails or doesn’t earn enough to support you, you still made a big step towards realizing your dream. Your next attempt is going to be much, much easier. And if you wait for too long, you may end up having two lovely kids, and a mortgage that would make Rockefeller sleep badly at night. Good luck trying then.

Agreed? Or do you have different experiences, and I’m just a lucky smartass?

Making the games you want to play?

I was meaning to write about something else this week, but a recent conversation with a promising starting indie made me think a lot about what motivates me to make games.

He asked me if I’m making Cinders, because it’s a game I really would like to play, or just because I think I can do it well with the resources and time available. There’s this stereotype that it’s only fun to work on games you would like to play yourself. But when I look back at my own game-dev career, I find it to be completely untrue.

I obviously enjoyed developing Magi a lot. But I also had tons of fun working on Phantasmat, which is a hidden object adventure – a genre I’m hardly a fan of. Then there’s The Witcher – my first serious job. Even though I love hardcore RPGs, I think it’s the one I enjoyed working on the least. It was a wonderful new experience, but I thought it’s just not good enough. For me it lacked in design and quality, compared to games released around the same time, like Mass Effect or Bioshock.

Quality. That seems to be what drives me. I just enjoy making something I believe is going to be good. A “game I want to play” equals “a game I think I can make well” for me. Sure, I can tell there are games I’m making for myself, and games I’m making for the others, but it’s secondary. Magi was made “for myself”. I wanted to play something like this, but it didn’t exist on the market. Cinders – on the other hand – is a game I’m making for others to enjoy. It’s a story I want to tell to people. I hardly see any reason to play through my own story once it’s finished for reasons other than testing.

There’s some difference between Magi and Cinders, but not in how much fun I’m having developing them or how driven I am. I just like making good games. When I started my game development career, I saw myself in the future as a casual or RPG game designer. These were the kind of games I liked to play the most after all. Now I realize I could work on any type of game, as long as I believe it’s going to be top notch.

It started with Phantasmat, I think. A game in a genre I thought I could never work with. Right now, I think this was the most fun and satisfying experience I had as a game developer so far. Taking a genre associated with low-quality clones, and trying to make it “how it should be done”. Spending hours trying to figure out a better way to do things or making sure the art and music production is above the competition. Even though I get no profit from it, I’m so damn proud when I see the game topping various charts.

It was also why the concept of making a visual novel was so appealing for me. I found most VNs to be full of potential, but relatively weak design-wise and with a strong “amateur” feel to them. The prospect of making a real high-quality game in this genre makes me really starry-eyed. I think I’m a competitive person. I just like to 1-up what’s already there. Or at least give it an honest try.

You know what I also love? Those little challenges that emerge when working on a new game. Those small things that – if done well – go unnoticed by the player, but contribute to superior experience.

For example: Phantasmat relies heavily on hidden object gameplay. You search for objects from a list. It looks like this:

Seems simple. But there’s actually quite a lot going on behind the scenes. Objects to find are chosen randomly from a big list of possible items. Each object has associated difficulty, and the list is made so that it always lists a very easy object in the top-left, and harder ones to the right. It improves the chance that you will quickly find the first item you’re looking for, preventing the “I can’t find anything” rut I noticed in many HO games.

There’s also always a certain amount of objects of each difficulty on the scene, and each object has hand-picked collision type and extra space, to prevent the “hey, I clicked that one, but it didn’t work” issue.

And when you re-visit the same spot in the future (each hidden object scene is played twice), the system picks a certain amount of objects that weren’t used in the last playthrough, and fills the rest with ones you already found, to give you that quick joy of “hey, I remember where this one was”. Also makes the second playthrough quicker.

I love small game design bits like this. Just love them! I’ve found that each game, even seemingly simplest one, features several little design challenges like this. How many colors of tokens works best in a match-3 game with a board that’s not 8×8? How many active elements should be on a single area of an adventure game? How to make it immediately visible which character is talking in a visual novel?

Every time I approach a new game, I always come upon those exciting little problems that need solving. In a way, I’m addicted to new design challenges. This is why you probably won’t ever see a straight sequel from me. Even though we want to continue making VN-ish fairytale adaptations, I want to introduce new gameplay elements with each one. I just need a challenge to stay motivated. Just replacing old content with new one won’t do.

I don’t know if this is a sign of my game design becoming more mature or just a trait of my personality. But I feel that I’m less and less interested in the archetypical indie motivations, like innovation or “making the games you want to play”. I just want to make good games in general.

Instead of trying to discover new gimmicks, I prefer picking things I think should be done better (or at all), and making them to the best of our abilities. I don’t see innovation as a value in itself. In fact, with Cinders we’ve made a conscious decision to try to keep the classic VN gameplay intact and focus on having a better story, art, interface and more choices. We believe that no gimmick is going to replace good writing and pretty art in a story-based genre like this.

Sure, if you want to make something better than what’s already there, you’ve frequently got to innovate, but I’m not interested in making things different just for the sake of difference anymore.

That’s why our mission statement is simply “We make games, we want them to be good”.