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[kronholm]

Thanks for a great read Fost.

[Anthony Flack]

With Gish, my interest level was so:

screenshots: low
gameplay video: high
actually playing the demo: low

[jack_norton]

Awesome post. I agree on everything, except the portals. You should use them only as last resort, if you can't really get direct sales anyhow.
I personally think is better to spend a lot on adwords but increase YOUR customer base, than giving out your content (your game) to portals so they can increase THEIR customer base.
Unless you plan to depend on someone else forever.

[Fost]

*bump*
Minor update:
*Moved aggregator stuff into it's own section
*Added point: include own name clause in aggegator contracts.

[Alex May]

Good stuff

[jeb]

Omg omg... We're in the situation where we may or may not sign retail deals. That thing about getting bundled sounded scary since it would make royalties meaningless. 

Thanks for the advice, a good read.

[Davaris]

I just don't want people to get crushed after making something good and give up is all. Getting an amazing review in several high profile gaming mags doesn't directly convert into sales like effort put into marketing does -

The term marketing has always confused me. I've seen Indies say that you have to put a lot of effort into marketing, but they never spell out what it entails exactly. I have also seen them say that advertising isn't cost effective. So what I want to know is what are these guys doing when they are engaged in the activity of marketing? Because they say they are spending 50% of their time doing it.

[Paul Eres]

I wouldn't say advertising always doesn't work. I've had some mixed experiences with it, both good and bad. But a lot of marketing work isn't related to advertising. Here are some examples:

Sending review copies of your games for review, writing and sending out press releases, submitting your games to contests, letting people know about your games on forums, dealing with customer service such as helping people with problems in the game and responding to comments and email that your players send you, submitting your demo to the hundreds of game download sites that exist, engaging in interviews with the gaming press, doing 'i'll link to you if you link to me' things with other developers, getting affiliates to sell your game on their site for a percent, for those who want games on portals there's a lot of work involved in doing that, doing search engine optimization, making trailers of your game and getting them viewed a lot on YouTube, making good screenshots of your game, building your website and maintaining it, dealing with e-commerce services, dealing with refunds and credit card fraud, maintaining your forum, writing regularly in your group's blog about new developments and future game projects, maintaining an email newsletter list, coming up with creative ways to market such as contests or temporary sales -- I could go on. There's tons of stuff that isn't advertising but which qualifies as marketing that eats up a lot of time.

And honestly it's really overwhelming if (like me) you were just used to making freeware games and posting them on a forum.

[Paul Eres]

Wrote something on advertising on Project Wonderful here:

http://studioeres.com/games/content/using-project-wonderful-advertise-indie-games

(note the sidebar ad!)

[agj]

Ad: Fuck The Sims, play Kudos 2. Terrible.

[Paul Eres]

haha, it's a great ad! it was created by jforce games!

[Alex May]

I am sure I've seen that ad somewhere else. Maybe it was just linked for me somewhere or something. It's really great :D

Interesting article, thanks.

[aeiowu]

I wrote up a blog post on what I learned about starting up a business. Some of the things to seek out and others to avoid. It might help those interested in starting a business to make games.

http://mile222.com/2009/04/i-remember-when-i-started-my-first-business/

[nitram_cero (2bam)]

Good pointers. They're greatly appreciated.

[bigbossSNK]

An interesting article from GameSetWatch, on indies and which markets (iPhone, xBox Live Indie, Pc) are easier to survive on.