独立游戏开发者该如何前向发展（二）

作者：David Galindo

大约6个月以前，我发行了自己的第一款独立PC游戏《Oil Blue》，虽然身处英国石油公司漏油事件的争议中，但却仍然获得了一些正面反馈。一个月后我在Gamasutra上分享了自己的销售经历，而今天我想要基于过去6个月与其它分销商一起销售《Oil Blue》的故事做出一些总结。

可能有人会嘲笑我在本文所呈现的这些销售额，因为这是《我的世界》在5分钟内便能够做到的事，但我却花费了将近1年时间，但之所以选择在此公开游戏的销售情况是希望能够给别人带去帮助。所以让我们开始讨论吧！

未知情况

首先，你应该看看我之前关于《Oil Blue》第一个月销售的文章，在那篇文章中我提供了许多关于游戏制作的细节，我所面对的挑战以及我在未来需要推动游戏达到的目标。

那时候的未知情况是：我是否能够前往Steam平台（那时候他们还未联系我）？我是否能够前往其它评论网站？当我进行夏季推广（游戏邦注：购买《Oil Blue》便能免费获得我的另一款独立PC游戏《greenTech Plus》）时游戏销量受到怎样的影响？在接下来几个月时间里我很快便能够获得这些问题的答案。

我同时应该注意的是，尽管我的游戏带着“Vertigo Games”的标签，它却真的只是我与两个外包员工所创造的。我并不是依赖于这些销售额去支付工资/维持生计，尽管可能有一天我会这么做。

到目前为止的销售情况

在游戏发行第一个月后，我在之前的文章中提到游戏的销售额达到了1645美元，这并不包含GamersGate等外部份销售的销售。基于同样的标准，现在我可以说在发行六个月后游戏的销售额为2766美元，在5个多月内增加了1100美元左右（再次不包含GamersGate或其它分销商，他们所创造的收入与我自己网站的销售情况差不多）。这只是表明游戏的第一个月销售非常重要，接下来提升销售额就变得更加缓慢了（直至下一次较大的推广/促销到来）。

着眼于这些数值并不能告诉我们完整的故事，我将进一步分解我是如何在未进行宣传/使用广告的情况下在特定时间内获得这些销售额。

gama12011(from gamasutra)

推广元素

《Oil Blue》是以14.95美元的定价发行，并且在我的网站上进行了“夏季推广”：购买《Oil Blue》便能够免费获得当时还买不到的《greenTech Plus》。

《greenTech》是几年前我为YoYo Games比赛而创造的一款简单的自由软件游戏。创造它只有一个简单的目的，就是将其移植到其它平台上试试水。《greenTech Plus》从根本上看来是一款简单的游戏，这也是我创造它的原因—-为了将其移植并在全新平台上（除了PC）上销售而将其递交给两个新人开发者。当完成《Oil Blue》的开发时，我意识到自己可以将《greenTech Plus》变成一款PC游戏并将其作为《Oil Blue》的推广帮手。

对于推广我所关心的只是它是否能够支撑我所获得的所有销售额，并且如果未与其它游戏捆绑销售的话《Oil Blue》会怎样。我是否该继续进行推广并延伸所提供的内容？我是否需要在推广结束时降低《Oil Blue》的价格？如果人们错过这次推广的话是否会生气而不买游戏，或者会等待下一次的推广？说实话思考所有的这些可能性是让人害怕的。

谢天谢地在推广的帮助下游戏卖得还不错。在8月（推广的最后一个月）间《Oil Blue》卖出了24份，并在9月份继续卖出17份，在整个推广期间共创造了530美元的销售额（需要注意的是卖出的这些游戏并不包含捆绑销售）。而接下来几个月的销售便不再这么乐观了，因为出现了许多全新的假期游戏。

避开假期

在一年的最后几个月，独立开发者应该做两件事：尽可能投入更多努力去发行一款全新游戏，或者避开大型游戏，甚至是独立游戏推广和促销。

我曾在12月的时候发行过2款游戏（游戏邦注：名为《The Sandbox of God: Remastered》和《Spirits of Metropolis》），结果都很糟糕。因为假期，你很难与任何有关预览或游戏推广的网站联系，并且大多数玩家都专注于其它更大型内容的发布。所以当我在2010年带着《Oil Blue》进入假期时，我知道自己只有2个选择：创造一次巨大的促销去吸引玩家给予游戏几天的关注，或者保持低调并在1月份进行重组。最终我选择低调而行，并且我也很高兴自己做出这个选择，因为在12月份许多其它独立游戏获得了巨大的销量，更别提Steam上的游戏。考虑到自己只拥有少量的用户，我是不可能与他们进行竞争的。

gama12011combo(from gamasutra)

组合和捆绑销售

尽管《Oil Blue》做得不错，但仍有一些游戏止步不前。它们就是我在几年前所创造的硬核益智游戏，并且我从未真正尝试着去推广它们：它们虽然是一些可靠的游戏，但是销售这些游戏的时间已经结束了。

而如果我在夏季推广结束后提供一些全新的捆绑销售会怎样？这并不是像Humble Indie Bundle那样的级别，再一次地，我没有能力与那样的游戏进行竞争，因为我所拥有的用户和资金不多，但我却能够基于一个有效的价格使用我所创造的游戏进行捆绑销售。

利用我在过去几年里所销售的5款游戏（《Oil Blue》，《Sandbox of God: Remastered》，《greenTech Plus》，《Spirits of Metropolis》和《Shellblast》），我创造了3个独特的捆绑销售或组合。一个名为益智组合（它们是《Shell》，《Spirits》和《SOG:R》），售价12.95美元，大约为玩家节省了6美元。然后是行动/模拟组合（《SOG:R》，《Oil Blue》和《greenTech》），售价19.95美元，节省了3美元。最后是所有游戏的组合包，售价25美元，节省了13美元。对玩家来说这真的会是不错的交易。

显然，如果《ShellBlast》和《Spirits》的销售像煎饼一样，那么组合销售对我来说就没有任何意义（在2010年这两款游戏都很难卖出去）。但我准备好将这些游戏推销出去了：2010年末，我共卖出31份捆绑销售游戏，基于《Oil Blue》以及其它游戏的常规销售外又赚取了485美元。对于不花任何成本而赚取利益来说，这真的是个不错的方法。5款游戏的捆绑销售最好卖，而行动/模拟组合则最不受欢迎。

Steam的回应

在上一篇文章中我很好奇Steam是否愿意在其平台上销售我的游戏，因为他们已经下载了游戏2次，但却未做出任何反馈。而在写完那篇文章1个月后，我收到了来自Steam的反馈。

gama12011steam(from gamasutra)

他们的反馈如上所示。我想知道的是，为什么他们觉得不适合？我可以做出改变。我回复了我的感谢并告诉他们我有多失望，但是我仍会在创造下一款游戏后联系他们。我觉得如果真的是因为《Oil Blue》的技术问题的话他们应该会告诉我的，原因应该只是他们不喜欢游戏内容而已。我后悔未进一步问明细节，但同时我也不想因为自己的愤怒或郁闷情绪而破坏了今后的游戏提交机会。考虑到他们花了3个月时间才回复我，我并不想破坏与Steam的直接交流机会。

我所知道的只是1）我所拥有的用户并不多，2）Steam拥有大量的用户，3）《Oil Blue》的演示版本的转换率很高，并且在像GamersGate等网站上表现很好。虽然未能与Steam合作让我有点遗憾，但是除此之外我还有很多事可以做。

打折与推广

我曾多次提到促销/打折和捆绑销售，并且有很多人告诉我10美元是他们愿意购买游戏的最有效点。到目前为止我一直很抵制卖空交易，因为这通常包含大量的时间投入与广告。

6月至9月期间是游戏刚刚发行没多久的几个月，我并不想进行任何打折，因为那时候游戏是凭借口碑进行出售。而在10月至12月，也就是频繁出现新游戏的这几个月，我决定降低游戏价格。

作为没有多少资金的开发者，我难以支付广告费用。推广促销能够拉动销量，如果我这么做，我便需要呈现出新游戏或其预览才能让人们记住Vertigo Games。基于这种方式我将在进行《Oil Blue》的促销的同时推广我们正在制作的全新游戏。但问题就在于我们还有好几个月才能完成新游戏。

促销可能在推广期间非常有帮助，但一旦回到最初价格，我们便很难保证是否能够再次恢复到原来的销售额—-如果继《Oil Blue》（游戏邦注：也就是我到目前为止所创造过的最畅销的游戏）之后我没有更多游戏推出的话这便会是个很危险的做法。考虑到我的其它游戏的表现以及它们所拥有的较低价格，我可能只有等到下一款新游戏的发行才可能挽回局面。

经验教训

自从《Oil Blue》发行以来我便吸取了许多经验教训。首先，Gamasutra上一篇优秀的文章突出了在游戏发行前花几个月时间（而不只是几周）宣传游戏的重要性。《Oil Blue》便是没有投入足够的时间去提升曝光度。其次我使用了门户网站去满足游戏的评论和分销需求，并且我通过使用图像和视频（而不是可游戏的架构）向他们推广游戏而获得一些早前的机会。不过更多教训还是来自于游戏创造的技术方面，而有些影响着《Oil Blue》的问题其实都很愚蠢。

最初我的计划是创造一款遵循我几年前所创造的饭店模拟游戏的商业游戏，然后继续创造《Oil Blue 2》。但在阅读了一些很不错的评论（感谢它并不是“另一款饭店游戏”）后，我决定选择一条全新的道路并基于美国的司法体制创造一款全新的游戏。我需要在从续集中获取收益前明确Vertigo Games是一个品牌，并且对于我们来说更有帮助的是创造一些《Oil Blue》一样独特但却完全不同的内容。这是一个让我非常兴奋的项目。

我同样也很高兴能够还清信用卡的账单。虽然大多数钱还是来自于我作为咖啡师的兼职工作，但还是让我开心。来自游戏销售的有限资金将不再阻碍我的发展，反而将成为帮助我未来游戏开发的资金来源。一想到这我就非常兴奋。

原文发表于2011年1月14日，所涉事件及数据均以当时为准。

（ 本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转功，如需转载请联系：游戏邦 ）

How much do indie PC devs make, anyways? (Part II)

by David Galindo on 01/14/11

About six months ago, I released my first major indie PC game, the Oil Blue, which went on to get some good positive feedback amid the BP oil spill controversy. A month afterwards I shared my sales experiences on Gamasutra, and today I’d like to follow up on that post with a final look at my six months in selling the Oil Blue on my own and with other distributors.

It’s easy to look at these sales I present in this article and scoff at them, given that Minecraft probably makes in five minutes what it took me nearly a year to make, but I maintain transparency on my game sales with the hope that it’ll help somebody out there. So, let’s get to discussin’!

Where We Left Off

First off, you should probably check out my previous post on the first month sales of the Oil Blue, which gives more detail into making the game, my challenges I faced up front, and the overall goals and plans I had to push the game in the future.

Among the unknowns at that time were: would I be able to get onto the Steam platform, who had not yet contacted me at that time? What about other review sites, or even a publisher/distributor for the game? And how would sales be affected once my summer promotion (buy the Oil Blue, get greenTech Plus, another indie PC game of mine, for free) ended on August 31st? I would soon know the answers to all of these questions in the months to come.

I should also note that while my games go under the label “Vertigo Games” it’s really just myself and two others that I contract out work to, as well as having a part time job. So I’m not depending on these sales to make payroll/make a living, thank goodness, though I’d certainly like to some day!

Sales So Far

After the first month, I reported in the previous blog entry that sales had reached $1,645, not counting outside distributors such as GamersGate. Using the same standards I can now say that after six months sales stand at $2,766, an increase of about $1,100 over five more months (again not counting GamersGate and other distributors, who have provided a nice amount of income similar to the sales on my site.) It just goes to show how absolutely important your first month of sales are to your game, before it gets locked into a slow trickle of sales for the remainder of it’s life (or until the next big promotion/highlight/sale).

Looking at the numbers at face value don’t tell the whole story however, as I’ll break down just how exactly I got those sales in a period of little to no coverage/advertising.

The Promotion Factor

The Oil Blue launched at $14.95, with an added “summer promotion” on my site: buy the Oil Blue, and receive greenTech Plus, a game that was not available for purchase at the time, absolutely free. The promotion was set to end on August 31st.

greenTech Plus was a game I had created based off of a simple freeware game for a YoYo Games competition I did a few years back. It was created for the simple purpose of porting to other platforms…to test the waters a bit. greenTech Plus is fundamentally a simple game, which is why I made it- simply to give to two starting developers for porting and selling on new platforms other than the PC. Once the Oil Blue was wrapping up development, I realized I could make greenTech Plus as a PC game with little effort and use it to push the Oil Blue via a promotional giveaway of sorts.

My concern with the promotion was simply if it was a crutch for all the sales I had received, and how the Oil Blue would do without bundling it with another game. Should I keep the promotion going and extend the offer? Would I need to decrease the price of the Oil Blue once the promotion was over? Would people be angry that they missed this promotion a few weeks afterwards and not buy the game as a result, or wait for another promotion? It was quite honestly terrifying to think of all the possibilities.

Thankfully the game managed to sell OK sans promotion. The Oil Blue sold 24 copies during August (the last month of the promotion) and went on to sell 17 copies in September, creating about $530 worth of sales during that timeframe (note that these copies do not include bundle sales, which I’ll get to in a bit). The later months would not be quite as active, as the game fell out of notice with all the new holiday games and sales that were coming up.

Holiday Hibernation

There are two things an indie dev should do during the last few months of the year: either ramp up and throw as much effort as you possibly can towards a new game release, or get the hell out of the way for major game and even indie game promotions and sales.

I have previously released two games during the December timeframe (called The Sandbox of God: Remastered and Spirits of Metropolis) with disastrous results. You simply can’t get in touch with any sites about a preview or promoting the game due to the holiday break, and most gamers are too busy with other larger high profile releases. So going into the holidays with the Oil Blue in 2010, I knew I had two choices: either create a massive firesale and bring attention to the game for a few days, or stay low and regroup in January. I chose to just lay low, and I’m pretty happy with my decision as there were a large number of sales for indie games in December, not to mention the Steam sale and Humble Indie Bundle #2. There would simply be no way I could compete with some of the offers in those sales given my limited audience.

But that didn’t mean I could experiment a bit.

Combos and Bundles

While the Oil Blue was doing fairly well, there were some that simply weren’t moving at all. These were the hardcore puzzle games I had created some years ago, and never really attempted to push them for sales anymore as I had learned a lot since their development: they’re solid games, but their time to sell was pretty much up.

But what if I offered some new bundles once the summer promotion I had for the Oil Blue was over? Something not quite on the level of a Humble Indie Bundle, because again, there would be no way to compete with something like that given my limited audience and funds, but maybe offer a good bundle of the games I have made at a solid price point.

Using the five games I had now amassed for selling over the years (The Oil Blue, the Sandbox of God: Remastered, greenTech Plus, Spirits of Metropolis and Shellblast), I created three unique bundles, or Combos as I called them. One was called the Puzzle Combo (Shell, Spirits and SOG:R) for $12.95, a savings of about six dollars. Next was the Action/Sim Combo (SOG:R, Oil Blue and greenTech) for $19.95, a savings of about three dollars. Finally, there was the “5 for 25” pack of all five games for $25, a savings of about thirteen dollars, easily the best deal.

Obviously if ShellBlast/Spirits was selling like hotcakes, the combo wouldn’t make any sense for me (both games hardly sold anything in 2010). But I was ready to give those games away if it meant bringing in more sales, which it did nicely: by the end of 2010 I sold 31 bundles, making an extra $485 on top of the normal single sales of the Oil Blue and the other games. Not bad for something that cost zero dollars to make happen. The 5 for 25 bundle was the best seller, with the Action/Sim combo hardly selling anything at all.

Steam Responds!

My last blog entry had me wondering what, if any, intentions Steam had towards selling my game on their service, given that they had downloaded the game twice using the login I provided but sending no feedback. But about a month after making that blog post, I finally received feedback from Steam.

Sadly, that was all the information provided. Part of me wanted to know, why wasn’t it a good fit? Could I change anything, or was it something technical? I thanked them and let them know how disappointed I was, but that I would be in contact for my next game. I felt that if there really was something technical about the Oil Blue that I could fix, they would have told me…no, it was simply that they didn’t like the content of the game for whatever reason. I regret not pressing the issue further and asking for further details, but at the same time I don’t ever want to come across as angry or annoying, sabotaging my future submission chances. Given that it took three months to get back to me, I didn’t want to damage the only form of direct contact I had with Steam and go through the submission process again. What a weird position to be in.

I’m not naive enough to think that a Steam distribution deal would equal an easy pile of cash. What I do know is that (a) I have a limited audience, (b) Steam has a massive audience, and (c) the demo conversion rate for the Oil Blue is quite strong, and does well on distribution sites like GamersGate. It’s a shame I won’t get that opportunity with Steam, but there’s not much else I can do.

On Discounts and Promotions

I’ve mentioned sales/discounts and bundles quite a bit, and have had a number of people tell me that $10 would be their sweet spot to buy the game. I’ve been resistant to a short sale so far, for reasons including timing and advertising.

During the June-Sept. months, the game was freshly released, and I didn’t want to create any discounts for it simply because it was selling on its own word of mouth/coverage. Oct-Dec. were the months where I decided to put the game on ice, so to speak, in an effort to lay low during the extremely busy time of game releases and discounts. Which brings us to today and asking myself, what should I do?

As someone who has very little funds, I can’t afford to advertise hardly at all. Promotional sales have the ability to drive in traffic, and if I’m going to do that, then I need to have a new game on display or a preview of it so that people will remember Vertigo Games. In that way I’ll be able to make a sale on the Oil Blue while at the same time promoting the newest game in the works. The problem with that is I’m still months away from revealing my newest game.

There’s always a tendency to slash prices on something that moves slower than it did a few months ago, but the last thing I want to do is dilute the value of the game. Sales might be fantastic for the duration of the promotion, but once the original price goes back on, it’s hard to say if it’ll ever recoup it’s sales frequency again…a dangerous position to be in if I don’t have any more games to fall back on aside from the Oil Blue, the bestselling game I’ve made so far. And given how well my other games have performed and the low prices they have, well, I really don’t have any other games to fall back on until the next new release.

Lessons Learned

There are many things I’m coming away with from the release and sales of the Oil Blue. One was the excellent article on Gamasutra highlighting the need to hype up games months, not weeks, before release. The Oil Blue didn’t have much time to be noticed- a strong preview from IndieGames and a release just weeks later dissolved any kind of hype buildup I could possibly have. Another was the way I approached portals and sites for review requests and distribution inquiries…I blew some of my earlier chances by promoting the game to them through pictures and video instead of a playable build. More lessons came from the technical side of making the game, and some of the issues affecting the Oil Blue- mainly the BP oil spill- was simply dumb, frustrating luck.

Originally my plan was to make a commercial follow up to a restaurant simulation game I made years ago, and then go right into the Oil Blue 2. After reading a good number of reviews, oddly enough thanking the skies that it wasn’t “another restaurant game,” I’ve decided to go a new route and create another original title based around the justice system of the United States. I need to define Vertigo Games more as a brand before I can benefit on sequels and games that have a tremendous amount of competition (the mentioned restaurant genre), and what better way to do that then creating something as unique as Oil Blue but completely different…something that hasn’t been done before, not quite like this. It’s a project I’m immensely excited about.

I’m also happy to report that the years of funding my games via a credit card are over, as I’ve paid off the accumulated eight thousand dollars in credit card debt as of today. True, most of that was through my new part time job as a barista, but it’s something I’m really happy about anyways. The limited funds that come from games sales are no longer plugging up holes, but rather funding my future games instead of relying on credit. It’s a great feeling to have.( source:gamasutra )