Great Permutator - the experience of participating in bundles and not only
Hello! In this article I will share my experience in promoting a computer game and participating in bundles on the example of my project Great Permutator, which I have been very slowly drank for almost a year and a half. Perhaps this experience will seem interesting to someone, and even someone will be useful. The overall tone of the article is somewhat negative, telling “where there were mistakes” and “how not to do it better” than “how everything is cool and good in our country”.
But first things first.
')
Great Permutator is a challenging puzzle game. More precisely, the genre can be described as engineering puzzle. Examples of games of this genre are LightBot, Manufactoria and, of course, SpaceChem. Impressed by the latter, in fact, this game appeared.
The goal of the game is to build a complex system of pipelines and distribution blocks so that the correct sequence of colored blocks can be redistributed. The complexity is rather high and the process of solving puzzles is in some way similar to programming a multi-threaded program.
A couple of screenshots for heating interest:
More details about the rules of the game and the history of its development can be found in this article .
The following are important events in the history of the Great Permutator in chronological order. At the end of the article summarized general statistics of income and conclusions.
So, the game came out on Desura , it would seem - you can relax and reap the fruits of your labor. As it turned out - this was just the beginning! Very few copies were sold (about 50) and the head began to think hard about what the problem was. A logical assumption - probably potential buyers simply do not know about the existence of such a cool game, and I began to engage in "marketing". Well, in an amicable way, they had to be engaged before the release, but I’m not a programmer, I’m a programmer, I didn’t even think about marketing.
Well, okay, I quickly sent out a few letters to the websites of the game reviewers, posted information in some forums, knocked on some let-players. Pretty exhausting occupation, I must say. Especially when doing this for the first time.
This panicky marketing did not lead to anything special. Nobody really answered the sent letters (well, it seems that journalists are quite busy people and they are already spammed with hundreds of letters a day). However, I received a couple of articles and letspleyev - from those journalists and reviewers who themselves became interested in my game and offered to write an article themselves in exchange for a key. Well, one reviewer responded to my letter already and made a small letplay. You can read them here , as well as look here and here .
I also wrote an article about the game for Habr (it was already mentioned in the introduction), because I believe that the target audience of the game is here. However, posting to the wrong hubs (because a bit of karma was not enough for the “I am promoting” hub) naturally and fairly led to a ban. And then I was ashamed for half a year. This nonsense of me probably cut off quite a lot of potential players (I’m not going to get accurate statistics), so the moral is to read the rules carefully and take them seriously. I will duplicate the link to the slightly revised version, and the version for Habr will always remain in the drafts as a memory of that event.
The way to promote the game in the style of "panic marketing" I discarded as ineffective in terms of the ratio of income to the number of spent nerves.
Here I made a big mistake. I started the page on the Greenlight after the reviews and flyplays were published. I regret it very much, because there was a chance to get an extra couple of hundred votes, and maybe more. Therefore, the advice is to create a page on Greenlight before you bring the game to release and before reviews and flyouts are released. (However, it is rumored that Greenlight will soon be abolished, so this advice may no longer be relevant.)
Initially, access to the Greenlight brought quite a few votes "for" (relative to the total number of visitors). Probably, they were scared away by the graphics and the misunderstanding of the essence of the gameplay a la “kazualochka for iPhone”. Looking ahead, I will say that after participating in the bundles, content messages began to appear “first bypassed, because I misunderstood the genre / scared away the graphics, and now I bought it in a bundle - and this is awesome.” Therefore, the advice is to explain the essence of the gameplay in the trailers and in the screenshots as clearly as possible.
My first bundle in which I managed to participate. This bundle was very sluggish and not profitable. Its essence: 3 games of similar genre for $ 5, or 4 games for $ 7. And this whole mess lasts a month and a half.
In addition, after its completion there were problems with the transfer of money. The fact is that they preferred to transfer money through PayPal, but, due to the peculiarities of this system in the territory of our country, I agreed to a bank transfer. And ... they tried to make this transfer for two months, sometimes not responding to emails. And only when PayPal officially came to Russia - they transferred money through it. On the one hand - they can be understood, but on the other - an unpleasant aftertaste has remained.
Link to the bundle page .
Pretty cool site, every month sells several thousand bundles. These guys are tightly integrated with Desura, so I didn’t even have to generate keys - they were automatically taken from Desura. A little later, this unity of IndieRoyale and Desura gave another bonus: the fact is that they have a common payment withdrawal system. This made it possible, together with the income from the bundle, to withdraw the income from the sale of those 50+ copies of the game that I mentioned just above. The thing is the following withdrawal limit with Desura: they automatically send money as soon as they have accumulated at least $ 500. If it were not for this interaction, the income from 50+ copies sold would still be on the account of Desura.
Negotiations were very long. In fact, they began even before the launch of the bundle on IndieBundle.org. The main point of the negotiations was as follows: they immediately proposed conditions as a “bonus item”, and I pushed them to take my game as an ordinary “item”. Let me explain the difference: as an ordinary “item”, the game is available directly from the start of the bundle and the profit of the author of the game depends on the number of copies sold; “Bonus item” means that the game will be suddenly added in the middle of the bundle “free of charge as a gift”, and the author receives exactly $ 1000 regardless of the number of copies sold. It is clear that the first option is potentially more profitable, but I managed to agree only on the “bonus item”. The argument of the bandl guys is too non-mainstream genre and people don’t shave. And, to some extent, they are even right.
After seemingly agreed on everything and signed a piece of paper - they were gone for 3 weeks, and after that, without warning, they squeezed my game into one of the bundles. Thus, the beginning of the sale of the game began a little unexpectedly for me. In general, they have their own marketing troubles.
The bundle ended well, brought a lot of votes to the Greenlight, the money also came pretty quickly to a bank account (and earlier than from the bundle from IndieBundle.org) - there were no problems here. In general, IndieBundle.org tightened everything at the very end, and IndieRoyale - at the very beginning.
Link to the mention of the bundle .
During the sale on IndieRoyale, on the bundle page hung erroneous information that the game is available for Linux and MacOS. In fact, during the correspondence, I indicated that I only plan to make such ports. A manager from IndieRoyale admitted his mistake, but then he wondered for a long time how things were going in terms of porting (he may have received several letters from disgruntled players and promised them that “everything will be soon”). This, in a way, prompted porting the game to these platforms.
Porting was quite simple, as it was originally incorporated into the architecture of the game. DirectX was smoothly replaced in the graphic part from Direct3D to OpenGL, to sound - from DirectMisuc + DirectSound to OpenAL + mpg123, and in terms of input - from DirectInput to input processing via FLTK. The longest dances with a tambourine were with sound - for a long time a suitable library for decoding mp3 was selected and a stream reading of music from a file was written. But pretty quickly everything worked (so far under Windows).
After the underlying system parts of the game were rewritten, everything quickly worked under Linux. I had to work a little with the timer. Still having some problems with full screen mode. Otherwise, everything is wonderful. Since I’ve barely sat on Linux before (and now I’ve been sitting under VirtualBox in it), I asked for testing help from knowledgeable people . After that, I compiled a version for Linux64.
Under MacOS, the lion’s share of time was spent on installing the system on a virtual machine, downloading and configuring Xcode. It took a week to download because of some incidents . And to the already downloaded Xcode (and to MacOS as a whole) I had to get used for a long time (I still sometimes press End on the machine, and then,loudly swearing, taking a deep breath and exhaling, humbly scrolling the file up). The port itself wound up pretty quickly and, after a small file processing, a version for MacOS was added to the store.
Finally got around to create a game site. Before that, I had been kicking a familiar website writer for a long time to make a simple website, but in the end the matter did not move. As usual, I had to do everything myself. For a week, I tasted what HTML, CSS, and PHP are, and built the official website, not without the help of the already mentioned familiar website writer. He then looked at the resulting code - and thanks for that. It turned out cheap and cheerful.
In general, the site had to be done, again, in advance. The official site adds solidity to the game.
Link to the site . Carefully, do not drop the habra effect - hosting there is the cheapest and everything can fall from the loads of moderate severity.
Participation in this "bundle" was planned for a long time. I put the word “bundle” in quotes, since on this website each action does not include several games, but only one. Based on this, an idea arose to prepare thoroughly for the action on this site: after all, in other bands the part of the audience’s interest is provided by other games, and now it is impossible to hope for other games.
Therefore, before the sale of the game on this site, I updated the game to version 1.1. The main innovation of this update: the presence of a full level editor. I must say, the levels for the original version of the game I created exclusively with the help of code. Now there is a tool that allows you to create levels not only for users, but also for me personally.
In addition, as a "bonus", as part of this sale was available an additional small pack of 15 levels.
The sale went pretty well, there was another video review and a few votes on the Greenlight. The money was promptly delivered via PayPal - by that time it had already settled in Russia.
After the sale, the game appeared in a local store , though sales there are close to 0. Also - a link to information about the sale .
From November to January, the work on the game temporarily stopped due to my problems with studies, therefore the game did not advance further in any bundles. But then suddenly at the end of December one of the bandles himself decided to promote my game. I received a letter from Lazy Guys Studio, who decided to file their own “Starting 2014 Like a Boss” bundle with computer games and bonuses.
Yes, just like that - these guys had no experience of holding bundles and it looked a bit suspicious. They only had one mediocre game of their own production, which, however, they were able to push much further than me. I thought - and what am I losing, the cost of copying the game is 0, and in general it can be saved for a long time. Therefore, I agreed.
I must say, their first and so far the only bundle fired well. More than 3,000 copies were sold, and more than half a thousand advantages were added to Greenlight. In general, the guys from Lazy Guys Studio know how to marketing.
A small minus - since there were quite a lot of games in the bundle, the total income was quite modest. The money was transferred a day after the end of the bundle with PayPal.
Page bundle . The site design isawful, rather specific, so the hint: you need to scroll down the page.
First, I will give statistics on sales:
In addition, the Desura account is still $ 68, which is likely to stay there forever.
Considering that the project was being made and promoted in the time free from idleness, sometimes with long interruptions, the current income suits me. However, to be honest, I expected to get the same in much less time.
Now the statistics on Greenlight:
In principle, the number of votes now and how much is needed is of the same order. So, there are chances to get on Steam.
Interrelation of chronology of events and voices at Greenlight:
Summarizing all the above, we get the following items “how to do it in fact” (I had the opposite):
In general, despite all the disadvantages of bad marketing, there are still a couple of advantages: I got invaluable experience, because I did everything myself, and the total cash costs for all this turned out to be close to 0.
On the one hand, everything that was originally intended is already done. On the other hand, there is a desire to supplement the game to the full and squeeze out all the juice from the idea (as Comrade McMillen so bequeathed). And, in principle, the project has room to develop. There are 3 things that I would like to do:
The framework of development is more or less limited - this has its advantages: I, frankly, have already been fed up with sawing the same one and a half years. But, nevertheless, I really want to reach the end.
I would like to hear advice, wishes, words of support, constructive criticism from the community. I will not refuse to help in conveying information about the game to all those who may be interested in it.
I will also be very grateful to the votes “For” at Greenlight:
Thanks to everyone who read to the end!
But first things first.
')
Introduction
Great Permutator is a challenging puzzle game. More precisely, the genre can be described as engineering puzzle. Examples of games of this genre are LightBot, Manufactoria and, of course, SpaceChem. Impressed by the latter, in fact, this game appeared.
The goal of the game is to build a complex system of pipelines and distribution blocks so that the correct sequence of colored blocks can be redistributed. The complexity is rather high and the process of solving puzzles is in some way similar to programming a multi-threaded program.
A couple of screenshots for heating interest:
More details about the rules of the game and the history of its development can be found in this article .
The following are important events in the history of the Great Permutator in chronological order. At the end of the article summarized general statistics of income and conclusions.
Immediately after release
So, the game came out on Desura , it would seem - you can relax and reap the fruits of your labor. As it turned out - this was just the beginning! Very few copies were sold (about 50) and the head began to think hard about what the problem was. A logical assumption - probably potential buyers simply do not know about the existence of such a cool game, and I began to engage in "marketing". Well, in an amicable way, they had to be engaged before the release, but I’m not a programmer, I’m a programmer, I didn’t even think about marketing.
Well, okay, I quickly sent out a few letters to the websites of the game reviewers, posted information in some forums, knocked on some let-players. Pretty exhausting occupation, I must say. Especially when doing this for the first time.
This panicky marketing did not lead to anything special. Nobody really answered the sent letters (well, it seems that journalists are quite busy people and they are already spammed with hundreds of letters a day). However, I received a couple of articles and letspleyev - from those journalists and reviewers who themselves became interested in my game and offered to write an article themselves in exchange for a key. Well, one reviewer responded to my letter already and made a small letplay. You can read them here , as well as look here and here .
I also wrote an article about the game for Habr (it was already mentioned in the introduction), because I believe that the target audience of the game is here. However, posting to the wrong hubs (because a bit of karma was not enough for the “I am promoting” hub) naturally and fairly led to a ban. And then I was ashamed for half a year. This nonsense of me probably cut off quite a lot of potential players (I’m not going to get accurate statistics), so the moral is to read the rules carefully and take them seriously. I will duplicate the link to the slightly revised version, and the version for Habr will always remain in the drafts as a memory of that event.
The way to promote the game in the style of "panic marketing" I discarded as ineffective in terms of the ratio of income to the number of spent nerves.
Greenlight
Here I made a big mistake. I started the page on the Greenlight after the reviews and flyplays were published. I regret it very much, because there was a chance to get an extra couple of hundred votes, and maybe more. Therefore, the advice is to create a page on Greenlight before you bring the game to release and before reviews and flyouts are released. (However, it is rumored that Greenlight will soon be abolished, so this advice may no longer be relevant.)
Initially, access to the Greenlight brought quite a few votes "for" (relative to the total number of visitors). Probably, they were scared away by the graphics and the misunderstanding of the essence of the gameplay a la “kazualochka for iPhone”. Looking ahead, I will say that after participating in the bundles, content messages began to appear “first bypassed, because I misunderstood the genre / scared away the graphics, and now I bought it in a bundle - and this is awesome.” Therefore, the advice is to explain the essence of the gameplay in the trailers and in the screenshots as clearly as possible.
IndieBundle.org
My first bundle in which I managed to participate. This bundle was very sluggish and not profitable. Its essence: 3 games of similar genre for $ 5, or 4 games for $ 7. And this whole mess lasts a month and a half.
In addition, after its completion there were problems with the transfer of money. The fact is that they preferred to transfer money through PayPal, but, due to the peculiarities of this system in the territory of our country, I agreed to a bank transfer. And ... they tried to make this transfer for two months, sometimes not responding to emails. And only when PayPal officially came to Russia - they transferred money through it. On the one hand - they can be understood, but on the other - an unpleasant aftertaste has remained.
Link to the bundle page .
IndieRoyale
Pretty cool site, every month sells several thousand bundles. These guys are tightly integrated with Desura, so I didn’t even have to generate keys - they were automatically taken from Desura. A little later, this unity of IndieRoyale and Desura gave another bonus: the fact is that they have a common payment withdrawal system. This made it possible, together with the income from the bundle, to withdraw the income from the sale of those 50+ copies of the game that I mentioned just above. The thing is the following withdrawal limit with Desura: they automatically send money as soon as they have accumulated at least $ 500. If it were not for this interaction, the income from 50+ copies sold would still be on the account of Desura.
Negotiations were very long. In fact, they began even before the launch of the bundle on IndieBundle.org. The main point of the negotiations was as follows: they immediately proposed conditions as a “bonus item”, and I pushed them to take my game as an ordinary “item”. Let me explain the difference: as an ordinary “item”, the game is available directly from the start of the bundle and the profit of the author of the game depends on the number of copies sold; “Bonus item” means that the game will be suddenly added in the middle of the bundle “free of charge as a gift”, and the author receives exactly $ 1000 regardless of the number of copies sold. It is clear that the first option is potentially more profitable, but I managed to agree only on the “bonus item”. The argument of the bandl guys is too non-mainstream genre and people don’t shave. And, to some extent, they are even right.
After seemingly agreed on everything and signed a piece of paper - they were gone for 3 weeks, and after that, without warning, they squeezed my game into one of the bundles. Thus, the beginning of the sale of the game began a little unexpectedly for me. In general, they have their own marketing troubles.
The bundle ended well, brought a lot of votes to the Greenlight, the money also came pretty quickly to a bank account (and earlier than from the bundle from IndieBundle.org) - there were no problems here. In general, IndieBundle.org tightened everything at the very end, and IndieRoyale - at the very beginning.
Link to the mention of the bundle .
Porting under Linux and MacOS
During the sale on IndieRoyale, on the bundle page hung erroneous information that the game is available for Linux and MacOS. In fact, during the correspondence, I indicated that I only plan to make such ports. A manager from IndieRoyale admitted his mistake, but then he wondered for a long time how things were going in terms of porting (he may have received several letters from disgruntled players and promised them that “everything will be soon”). This, in a way, prompted porting the game to these platforms.
Porting was quite simple, as it was originally incorporated into the architecture of the game. DirectX was smoothly replaced in the graphic part from Direct3D to OpenGL, to sound - from DirectMisuc + DirectSound to OpenAL + mpg123, and in terms of input - from DirectInput to input processing via FLTK. The longest dances with a tambourine were with sound - for a long time a suitable library for decoding mp3 was selected and a stream reading of music from a file was written. But pretty quickly everything worked (so far under Windows).
After the underlying system parts of the game were rewritten, everything quickly worked under Linux. I had to work a little with the timer. Still having some problems with full screen mode. Otherwise, everything is wonderful. Since I’ve barely sat on Linux before (and now I’ve been sitting under VirtualBox in it), I asked for testing help from knowledgeable people . After that, I compiled a version for Linux64.
Under MacOS, the lion’s share of time was spent on installing the system on a virtual machine, downloading and configuring Xcode. It took a week to download because of some incidents . And to the already downloaded Xcode (and to MacOS as a whole) I had to get used for a long time (I still sometimes press End on the machine, and then,
Official site
Finally got around to create a game site. Before that, I had been kicking a familiar website writer for a long time to make a simple website, but in the end the matter did not move. As usual, I had to do everything myself. For a week, I tasted what HTML, CSS, and PHP are, and built the official website, not without the help of the already mentioned familiar website writer. He then looked at the resulting code - and thanks for that. It turned out cheap and cheerful.
In general, the site had to be done, again, in advance. The official site adds solidity to the game.
Link to the site . Carefully, do not drop the habra effect - hosting there is the cheapest and everything can fall from the loads of moderate severity.
IndieGameStand
Participation in this "bundle" was planned for a long time. I put the word “bundle” in quotes, since on this website each action does not include several games, but only one. Based on this, an idea arose to prepare thoroughly for the action on this site: after all, in other bands the part of the audience’s interest is provided by other games, and now it is impossible to hope for other games.
Therefore, before the sale of the game on this site, I updated the game to version 1.1. The main innovation of this update: the presence of a full level editor. I must say, the levels for the original version of the game I created exclusively with the help of code. Now there is a tool that allows you to create levels not only for users, but also for me personally.
In addition, as a "bonus", as part of this sale was available an additional small pack of 15 levels.
The sale went pretty well, there was another video review and a few votes on the Greenlight. The money was promptly delivered via PayPal - by that time it had already settled in Russia.
After the sale, the game appeared in a local store , though sales there are close to 0. Also - a link to information about the sale .
Lazy guys bundle
From November to January, the work on the game temporarily stopped due to my problems with studies, therefore the game did not advance further in any bundles. But then suddenly at the end of December one of the bandles himself decided to promote my game. I received a letter from Lazy Guys Studio, who decided to file their own “Starting 2014 Like a Boss” bundle with computer games and bonuses.
Yes, just like that - these guys had no experience of holding bundles and it looked a bit suspicious. They only had one mediocre game of their own production, which, however, they were able to push much further than me. I thought - and what am I losing, the cost of copying the game is 0, and in general it can be saved for a long time. Therefore, I agreed.
I must say, their first and so far the only bundle fired well. More than 3,000 copies were sold, and more than half a thousand advantages were added to Greenlight. In general, the guys from Lazy Guys Studio know how to marketing.
A small minus - since there were quite a lot of games in the bundle, the total income was quite modest. The money was transferred a day after the end of the bundle with PayPal.
Page bundle . The site design is
Statistics
First, I will give statistics on sales:
- Sales at Desura - $ 241
- IndieBundle.org - $ 170
- IndieRoyale - $ 1000
- IndieGameStand - $ 852
- LazyGuysBundle - $ 470
- Total - $ 2733
In addition, the Desura account is still $ 68, which is likely to stay there forever.
Considering that the project was being made and promoted in the time free from idleness, sometimes with long interruptions, the current income suits me. However, to be honest, I expected to get the same in much less time.
Now the statistics on Greenlight:
In principle, the number of votes now and how much is needed is of the same order. So, there are chances to get on Steam.
Interrelation of chronology of events and voices at Greenlight:
findings
Summarizing all the above, we get the following items “how to do it in fact” (I had the opposite):
- Think of marketing in advance
- Read the rules of conduct on Internet resources and take them seriously
- Make the official website of the game as early as possible.
- Get off at Greenlight well before release.
- Make the trailer and screenshots so that the gameplay is clear
- Accept PayPal Money
In general, despite all the disadvantages of bad marketing, there are still a couple of advantages: I got invaluable experience, because I did everything myself, and the total cash costs for all this turned out to be close to 0.
What's next?
On the one hand, everything that was originally intended is already done. On the other hand, there is a desire to supplement the game to the full and squeeze out all the juice from the idea (as Comrade McMillen so bequeathed). And, in principle, the project has room to develop. There are 3 things that I would like to do:
- In terms of expanding the game mechanics - you can collect up to 1 addon the size of the current game with new levels and aggregates
- In terms of amenities - add buns like sharing levels between users
- In terms of conquering new platforms - porting the game to mobile platforms like Android and iOS
The framework of development is more or less limited - this has its advantages: I, frankly, have already been fed up with sawing the same one and a half years. But, nevertheless, I really want to reach the end.
I would like to hear advice, wishes, words of support, constructive criticism from the community. I will not refuse to help in conveying information about the game to all those who may be interested in it.
I will also be very grateful to the votes “For” at Greenlight:
Thanks to everyone who read to the end!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/210280/
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