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[bateleur]

I'm currently pondering possible approaches to releasing my game (King Machine). It's still at least a couple of months from release, but I have that classic indie problem that there's lots and lots of stuff I still want to put into the game, but doing so is expensive in terms of time invested into the project.

So, like many other developers, I'm quite tempted by the idea of releasing a work-in-progress version for sale as a way to do two things:

1) Make sure there's some correlation between the amount of money the project's generating and the amount of additional work I'm putting in to non-core features and volume of content. I'm going to "finish" the game anyway, so this isn't funding for completion per-se.

2) Get way more feedback about which aspects of the game players value most in order to focus the gameplay correctly.

So the question is, does anyone have an experience of Alpha funding projects or links to examples of Alpha funding being tried. I'm particularly interested in examples than aren't in the top 1% most successful projects, which are the ones that tend to get all the press. (Minecraft and Cortex Command in particular I don't need more data on!)

(The game's actually a lot further advanced than an Alpha, but this tends to get called Alpha funding anyway.)

[Leroy Binks]

Not to highjack your thread, but...

Subquestion:
www.kickstarter.com 
www.indiegogo.com   
or
www.8bitfunding.com 

[Geti]

My experience with KAG has been good and is looking to get even better. If you've got something decent to show to people they'll play it, and if you ask for money so that they can play something fun then they'll pay the money, basically. Keep the price low (we've kept it on ten bucks as a pre-order price because we don't have paid content yet, it's jumping up to 12.50 or 15.00 once we add all the things for the next release as most of them are paid only) and be clear about what you're giving to people, and when (we need to work on the latter, so many "HOW TO PLAY ZOMBIES" posts <_<)

A free version/demo is also a good idea considering how many goddamn stingy people there are out there - they help spread the word even if they don't help bring in any bacon.

Getting some press coverage is needed though - if noone knows what you're up to (besides all the devs here) then no-one will be paying you for it. Once you've got something playable and payable together consider hitting up the TIGS staff for a feature or getting buddies to plug you.

Take it with a grain of salt as I'm working with Michal, but it's been just about enough to stay alive off for quite a while now

[bateleur]

Useful stuff, thanks!

I'm thinking of a $10 price point, and as you suggest would like to do a demo. Demos are a little tricky, though. Because of the way the game works a demo would still have a pretty hefty binary size (likely almost 50MB), so finding a way to offer a free download of it without costing us a fortune in bandwidth charges is going to be a challenge.

[ANtY]

Useful stuff, thanks!

I'm thinking of a $10 price point, and as you suggest would like to do a demo. Demos are a little tricky, though. Because of the way the game works a demo would still have a pretty hefty binary size (likely almost 50MB), so finding a way to offer a free download of it without costing us a fortune in bandwidth charges is going to be a challenge.

Mediafire.com? Other hosting websites?

[brog]

iirc some payment processors will also host demo for you.. checking.. BMT micro offers demo hosting in exchange for a larger %.  not sure about others.  but yeah there's some free stuff.. see what other people are doing?

[Geti]

Easier solution: put ads in the free game + around the free download link.

[bateleur]

You say "easier", but actually getting serious money out of ads is a bit of a black art from what I hear.

Both BMT and mediafire sound like possibilities, though. The former's probably a little more professional, so I think I'm more likely to go with that.

[Vino]

No Time To Explain is a great example. From what was essentially a tech demo on Newgrounds, their Kickstarter got a big bundle of money for them, probably enough to finish the game.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1296948465/no-time-to-explain-indie-game

You need enough of a game ready to show off to get people excited. Your game looks like it's a niche audience so I would be careful about how I approach it.

Also I'd recommend against letting people play until either the game is finished and released (a demo) or they've already paid for it. The amount of interest and coverage a game gets drops a lot after a game has been released.

As far as demo hosting, try IndieDB. Or just get yourself an Amazon AWS cloud server, those things are dirt cheap, we're talking $5/mo for a server with little traffic. (And if you have a lot of traffic, great! People buying the game will pay you for the extra expense.)

[Geti]

You say "easier", but actually getting serious money out of ads is a bit of a black art from what I hear.

You're not trying to make money off the ads, your trying to cover the cost of hosting the demo to people. -> Ads in the demo = people playing the demo give you a tiny bit of a cent each time, and considering I'm paying $0.502 per GB at the moment you'd probably be able to cover that even with crappy adsense ads.

BMT are excellent though, just toss up if it's worth the cut to your money.

[bateleur]

Also I'd recommend against letting people play until either the game is finished and released (a demo) or they've already paid for it. The amount of interest and coverage a game gets drops a lot after a game has been released.

Why is letting people play it bad?

As far as demo hosting, try IndieDB. Or just get yourself an Amazon AWS cloud server, those things are dirt cheap, we're talking $5/mo for a server with little traffic. (And if you have a lot of traffic, great! People buying the game will pay you for the extra expense.)

I already use AWS. It's roughly $0.10/GB, which is easily affordable if I get a decent conversion rate, but could be quite painful otherwise.

[CowBoyDan]

I'd setup a torrent, use vps/dedicated server with reasonable per gb bandwidth charges to keep at least 1 seek going (cap the to something reasonable).  Just make sure its cool with the service you use first.

[Vino]

Also I'd recommend against letting people play until either the game is finished and released (a demo) or they've already paid for it. The amount of interest and coverage a game gets drops a lot after a game has been released.

Why is letting people play it bad?

For PR reasons, largely. Interest in a video is an order of magnitude greater than interest in a demo. For some reason, being able to play the game takes a lot of the magic out of it. If they can't play it, it's mysterious and sparks the imagination more. People will talk about your game more. Once they can play the demo, the curtain draws back and the game isn't as much worth talking about anymore. I've seen this kind of thing at work with my own games. There was a talk about this phenomenon recently by a guy I forget his name at some Scottish game convention, but it all escapes my memory, sorry.

I'm talking strictly about singleplayer games, I think multiplayer games work differently in this aspect.

[ubik]

Your game is pretty sweet looking, it's kinda like a very old one called Spindizzy that some guy has recenetly remade.

I'm interested in the funding question myself, or rather more so the marketing question.  If I have what I believe is a good product, how do I get exposure for it?  I believe that it's something people will be very interested in.  I will probably go on Kickstarter for some pre-orders but it'll be as much for the buzz as for the money.

[Geti]

Essentially: tell people about your game. Start a devlog here, keep it updated, tell people on IRC, tell your IRL buddies, get your limited community to make videos and offer them free copies if the video gets >5k views or whatever. Eventually you get a plug somewhere and hopefully plugging you catches on.

Essentially hit up social media and make yourself heard.

[Virion]

I am going to try crowdfunding too but too bad in order to use kickstarter you need to have a US bank account and I am not US citizen. I probably will try http://www.rockethub.com