TIGSource Forums

Hi,

My name's Geoffrey White, I'm an independent developer working on a PC virtual card game called The Trouble With Robots (http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/).  A couple of friends have suggested I post a devlog here but, since my game is 99% complete at this time there isn't a lot left to report.  Instead I'll be making a 'marketing log'.  I'll report my successes and failures as honestly as I can, and hopefully we can all learn from my mistakes in trying to find an audience.

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/screens/forest1_thumb.jpg) (http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/screens/forest1.png)	(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/screens/mountain3_thumb.jpg) (http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/screens/mountain3.png)
(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/screens/mountain5_thumb.jpg) (http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/screens/mountain5.png)	(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/screens/city3_thumb.jpg) (http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/screens/city3.png)

So lets get to it ... I already have:

• I have a web page which includes a nice gallery of screenshots from the game, but it doesn't have very much traffic yet:
     http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/ (http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/)
• facebook pages for the game and brand with 52 and 19 likes, respectively:
     http://www.facebook.com/TheTroubleWithRobots (http://www.facebook.com/TheTroubleWithRobots)
     http://www.facebook.com/DigitalChestnut (http://www.facebook.com/DigitalChestnut)
• a twitter account with 27 followers:
     @GeoffW0
     https://twitter.com/#!/GeoffW0 (https://twitter.com/#!/GeoffW0)

So basically a pretty modest start, I know that I haven't done nearly enough to get the word out.  But I have had great feedback about the game so I'm determined to change this!

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Update: for those of you who don't want to dig through the whole DevLog, the game was launched on the 23rd of August 2012 and you can download the demo here:

>>> Demo <<< (http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/demo.html)

However there's still plenty to discuss here as I market and maintain the game post-release.

---

Update 2: I've just released a free expansion and dropped the price to $9.99 / €8.50 / £6.99.  There's no better time to try the game, or skip to the end of this thread and discuss expansions, pricing, discoverability and future plans!

---

Update 3: I forgot to link to my Steam Greenlight page:

>>> Greenlight <<< (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=93293369)

By the way, since this is a rather non-standard Dev Log, please let me know what you think of the idea and what you want to hear more / less about.

I forgot to mention in my first post, I also joined Delicious and StumbleUpon, but as far as I can tell they're totally worthless for promoting a game.  Stick to Facebook and Twitter!
   http://delicious.com/geoffrey1 (http://delicious.com/geoffrey1)
   http://www.stumbleupon.com/stumbler/GeoffW2 (http://www.stumbleupon.com/stumbler/GeoffW2)

---

I've sent off a bunch of e-mails to game related web sites:

• IndieGames
• Giant Bomb
• Rock Paper Shotgun

Rock Paper Shotgun helpfully suggest (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/hey-prs-and-developers/ (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/hey-prs-and-developers/)):


So I tried to pitch it as a sort of interview about the state of virtual card games, which are kindof all the rage right now (take a look at Magic: Duels of the Planeswalkers and Scrolls for example).  Having done this I regret not thinking out my e-mails to IndieGames and Giant Bomb as carefully.  Still, perhaps the game will speak for itself?

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/portraits/robot1.png)

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/portraits/robot2.png)

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/portraits/robot3.png)

I also sent a preview build to Lee Dewhurst at videogamesnetwork.co.uk (http://videogamesnetwork.co.uk).  He answered a desperate plea I made on LinkedIn last week, and though I don't think he has a huge readership, he seems like a nice guy and maybe I can get some good quotes at least?

Finally, and somewhat self-referentially, I've also posted this on TIGForums.  Here's hoping all 17,868 of you buy my game.  ;)

I am certainly interest in how your marketeering goes, whether you have any ethical/moral dilemias, what level of "shilling" you think is acceptable, and what worked, and didn't for you.

Keep up the good work, and thanks for sharing.

Thanks for your comment.

I'd like to say that I would stoop to any level of shilling as long as I don't get caught.  That's the attitude of every successful psychopath and it will get you far (http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/sep/01/psychopath-workplace-jobs-study (http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/sep/01/psychopath-workplace-jobs-study)).  But in practice my ethics are pretty strong, I really hate both lying and being lied to and I want to live in a world where everyone's honest.  I find myself justifying everything I write.

So I'm trying to get used to speaking more confidently because that seems to be what people want and expect - but without crossing the line into dishonesty.

Do you have any ideas on pricing yet? I think the game looks quite good!

Thanks!

I haven't decided on pricing yet, if I'm accepted onto Steam I will probably do whatever they recommend (perhaps within the £7 / $10 category, but that's not a promise).  If I don't it's likely to be a bit more than that as I gather users are less numerous but less price sensitive.

Are you planning on releasing a demo for the game?

I honestly think that would be worth the time and effort for quite a few reasons. 1. You'll have something for potential customers to play. 2. The press will have something to link to and share if they do cover it at all. 3. For a card game, it is hard to know what to expect entirely, so a demo would definitely help.

My other suggestion would be to create a trailer or small series of trailers that give an overview of the game. Would love to see it in motion.

The style of the game is very interesting, and I think your website if sufficient.

Other things I would recommend: submitting your game/website to Reddit. There are a lot of users on Reddit, and you will most definitely get some feedback. I'd also say work on getting the game up on other places like Desura, Indievania, or your own site. I can only hope it does get on Steam and is successful, but it is good to have backups.

This makes an interesting change from a typical devlog and I look forward to seeing what lessons come out of this - I'm always terrible at actually promoting my games once I've made them so I'm hoping to pick up a few tips!

If I might make one critique of your approach so far: you don't seem to have actually said anywhere what the game plays like.  On your website you say 'there will be an awesome trailer coming soon', but that's frankly not a lot of use.  When I as a random bored internet person click through to your site, you have maybe ten seconds to hook me and make me interested in playing the game: telling me to come back later to even find out what the game is in the first place does not do that.  While you're still (presumably) working on the trailer it would be worth throwing up just a couple of bullet points as a placeholder to give some idea of what the game is and why I should be interested in it over all the other games I could be looking at instead.  Otherwise that hit is a wasted opportunity.

Good point, your critique is very welcome.  I've added a few more words about gameplay to the web site, perhaps it still isn't really enough but I plan to release the video very soon.  A demo is also in the works.


OK, I've joined reddit and posted here:

http://www.reddit.com/r/IndieGaming/comments/w6clc/i_love_collectible_card_games_games_so_im_making/ (http://www.reddit.com/r/IndieGaming/comments/w6clc/i_love_collectible_card_games_games_so_im_making/)

This seems to have been quite well received so far and I definitely plan to use reddit more now.

I'd suggest posting with some more proper grammar, so instead of "I love collectible card games games so I'm making this." make it "I love collectible card games, so I've been working on a collectible card game of my own."

That previous title is misleading and a bit confusing.

I'd also recommend always responding to people's comments and feedback.

Yesterday I went to the Steam indie meetup in London.  I haven't done anything quite like this before so it was very exciting, and interesting for two reasons:

• meeting and talking with lots of other UK indies (over 100!)
• Steam announced a new community driven submission process, Greenlight (http://steamcommunity.com/greenlight/)

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/portraits/human1.png)

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/portraits/dwarf1.png)

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/portraits/human2.png)

From my point of view Greenlight is actually quite helpful, because even though I've already submitted to Steam through the current process I'm still allowed to use Greenlight when it launches (30th of August), which means I have two chances to get on Steam.  But this is a temporary situation, it's long term effect is less clear.

Meeting all the other indies was great, we swapped stories, advice and e-mails.  It sounds like Rezzed (http://www.rezzed.com/) was really good and I should make an effort to go to things like that and EuroGamer Expo (http://www.eurogamer.net/expo/) in future.

So last Thursday I put out my first trailer video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDOGFix_qks (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDOGFix_qks)

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/press/troll_thumb.png)

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/press/centaur_thumb.png)

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/press/griffin_thumb.png)

I did a lot of research and sent a press release to over 100 industry news sites of all sizes (mostly via bulk BCC e-mails, a few were individually tailored).  I also put up a page of press resources (http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/press.html (http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/press.html)).

I uploaded the video onto facebook (http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10150901747277805 (http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10150901747277805)), and posted links to it on twitter, reddit (twice) and gamedev.net.  And I've embedded it prominently in the game's own web site: http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/index.html (http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/index.html)

Naturally I got a few e-mail bounces, some 'out of office' replies and one person demanding never to be e-mailed again (sorry!).  And I'm sure many of the rest have ignored me, journalists are busy people and have plenty of news stories to choose from.  Also, I get the impression a few would have like to see a publisher and release date in my press release!  Still, I've had considerable success:

• video on on the front page of PC Gamers World and Gamershell
• press release appeared in GamaSutra's press release feed and numerous others
• a modest game entry in GameSpot's database and various others
• a glowing report of my trailer on 'Armless Octopus' (http://www.armlessoctopus.com/ (http://www.armlessoctopus.com/))
• quite a few mentions on twitter

The posts on reddit didn't get any love this time - I suspect because they looked more 'commercial' than my previous post.  It's been fine on Facebook and GameDev though.

The video has been watched 176 times on youtube so far, and I believe many more times elsewhere as the video has been copied around and rehosted on other sites.  I wish there was a better estimate!

Finally, IndieDB got back to me and pointed out that their site is developer driven, so I could add the news about the game myself rather than e-mailing my press releases to them.  Oops!  I've done that now: http://www.indiedb.com/games/the-trouble-with-robots (http://www.indiedb.com/games/the-trouble-with-robots)

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Incidentally, I do still have a couple of people writing previews of the game, but that seems to be a much slower process than distributing trailers and press releases.

I applaud this idea! :gentleman:
I like card games very much! :eyebrows:

I got an e-mail from Facebook offering me $25 of free credit if I create a Facebook ad account.  Try as I might, I couldn't think of a good reason to turn this down so I've created an account and authorized an epic 7-day advertising campaign for The Trouble With Robots ... with a $25 limit.  Lets call this an experiment.

So far I've had one click, costing £0.08p, and I've got one new fan as a result (on Facebook).  That seems pretty good value actually, but we'll see what happens over the next 7 days.

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Incidentally, the youtube trailer's at 241 views and still growing.

The Facebook campaign's going well.  I've now spent £10.72, I have about 40 new fans on Facebook and probably a few more followers on twitter as well.  More importantly, these seem to be genuinely interested people who have already started a couple of discussions on the page and I feel some of them might well go on to buy the game.  This is probably because I targeted the ads very narrowly towards fans of similar games, and the ad is designed to describe the game to potential fans rather than to trick any old person into clicking.

I've also started to experiment with multiple ads and evolve a more effective strategy (by tuning the picture, text and target audience).

Incidentally, despite promising $25 it appears Facebook have given me £25 of free credit.  That's nearly £10 more!  Even so, I expect to put in some money of my own as I scale up my efforts near to release.

---

Does anybody have any experience with ads on other social networks, google, youtube etc?

Yesterday I picked a release date and price for The Trouble With Robots.  The plan, since I've initially not been accepted onto Steam, is to sell directly from my web site using FastSpring to handle payments.  I also hope to get on some of the other game portals / shops as a secondary strategy.

Choosing the release date was simply a matter of picking a date a few weeks in the future, giving me plenty of time to prepare, reviewers to write etc, and avoiding major games industry events like GDC, PAX and Christmas.  I also decided to release on a Thursday, to give news sites time to write about the game's launch before the weekend.

It wasn't too difficult to come up with Thursday 23rd of August 2012.

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/cards/stampede_card.png)

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/cards/heal_card.png)

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/cards/mob_card.png)

Pricing turned out to be rather more difficult as there are plenty of opinions on the matter (http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-big-list-of-pricing-resources/), but pretty much zero public data to back any of them up.  There is a general consensus that many indie's charge too little, forgetting that profit per unit is just as important as the number of units sold (iPhone may be an exception here due to the overwhelming importance of the top apps list; and Steam may be a partial exception due to a large customer base willing to impulse purchase cheap games).  Having said that I should also keep my price down because this is my first game and customers will perceive this as a risk (though strictly speaking I released a 7 day roguelike a couple of years ago - http://www.randomstuff.org.uk/~geoffrey/roguelikes/aquesttoofar.html).

Another issue with pricing is currencies.  FastSpring supports many different currencies, each of which can either have a set price or be calculated from the main price using current exchange rates.  I decided to set fixed prices in what I consider to be the three major currencies as this is friendlier and more predictable to the customer.  However it also means I had to look up exchange rates, try to work out the consequences of VAT and sales tax, and perform dubious rounding.

The price will be £12.99 / €16.50 / $18.99.  Let me know what you think!

Finally I announced the release date and price in a press release, which has already yielded a couple of people asking to do reviews.

I found this concept art among stacks of old playtesting notes!

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/misc/concepts.jpg)

Here are some frames of the finished unit:

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/misc/actual.png)

(more in the gallery http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/gallery.html (http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/gallery.html))

I'm still getting some success from the facebook ad campaign, but it's been mixed.  I set a low maximum bid (because I want value for money), which seems to mean that on some days I just don't win any impressions, whereas other days it's fine.  At least I'm not paying anything when I don't get any impressions!

Someone tipped me off yesterday about #screenshotsaturday, so I put three new screenshots of The Trouble With Robots up today on my web site and Facebook page.

http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/gallery.html (http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/gallery.html)
http://www.facebook.com/TheTroubleWithRobots (http://www.facebook.com/TheTroubleWithRobots)

I posted about one of them on twitter with the #screenshotsaturday tag, and it appeared on http://screenshotsaturday.com/ (http://screenshotsaturday.com/) as planned!  However the site seems a bit high traffic so I'm not holding my breath.

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/screens/city4.png)

Just found this and will be reading it closely from now on! Very interested to see what works and what doesn't. Speaking of which glad to see facebook advertising has been effective! I've always wondered.

Also have you seen this yet?
http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-big-list-of-indie-game-marketing/
It has been VERY helpful for me. You found the big pricing list so I can imagine you've seen this as well.

Anyways the game looks great. Hope it goes well for you!

Yes, many those lists are incredibly useful resources, and the marketing one in particular I've at least skimmed nearly all of the pages it links to!

One thing I've noticed though is that some of the older articles I've read on indie development are beginning to date - for example I've read suggestions that reviewers should be approached 1-2 months before your launch date due to the long turnaround time of print magazines.  Don't bother!  Most of the important stuff is online now and takes between 1 day and (at most) a week or two to get done.


Thanks!  I'm getting really good (as in positive) feedback from reviewers and others who play it, I just need to make sure enough people notice it actually exists.

I haven't done a huge amount of marketing work this week because I've been very busy setting stuff up for launch.  Also I've been approached by a casual portal (ArcadeTown) and I've approached a couple of game stores myself.  I feel that I'd be in the best position if The Trouble With Robots is available from at least one casual portal and one hardcore game shop in addition to my own site.  There are plenty of reasons the game might appeal to both crowds, and this way I'm more likely to succeed in at least one place (hopefully all of them).  I also get to learn how these businesses differ.

The main thing I did do for marketing was an attempt at viral humour the day after the Curiosity rover landed on mars.  Now this didn't exactly take the internet by storm, but I've had a few extra hits and likes as a result of it:

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/misc/curiosity.jpg)

Something strange happened this morning.  My game's Facebook page acquired 16 new likes overnight!  It was also doing pretty well last night, whereas ordinarily in the past I'd have been pretty happy with 1 or 2 new likes per day.

I check my Facebook ad campaign.  I've made some improvements to targeting, maybe the changes have paid off?  The statistics say yes, but no, they're not responsible for anywhere near 16 new likes in such a short period.  I check the page insights.  I search the internet...

Indie Love have written a preview of The Trouble With Robots!
http://indie-love.com/2012/08/13/the-trouble-with-robots/

If the lesson here isn't obvious, I'll spell it out for you: send your game to journalists when it's ready!  Indie Love is definitely not the largest site on the internet, yet they've already made a big difference.

Time for an update:

I'm still getting lots of new fans off of that first preview, and I've been contacted by another journalist as a direct result of it.  I've sent preview / review copies of the game to 18 different sites now (of various sizes; some requested, some a shot in the dark), and I still have more to do.  Hopefully I'll get a bunch of positive reviews on launch day as a result of this effort!

My latest Facebook ads are divided according to target audience and are slightly optimized towards each group.  My figures aren't particularly good yet, but this has proven to be informative - for example it appears that what I guess to be younger gamers (e.g. Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon) are more expensive to reach than, for example, Magic players and PC gamers.  There's a nice article about Facebook ads for games here:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/171895/using_facebook_ads_to_find_your_.php (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/171895/using_facebook_ads_to_find_your_.php)

Finally, a friend who works in advertising has offered to come round and show me how to use Google Adwords next week - sounds like a great opportunity!  I will of course share some of his tips here.

I've been madly busy setting up distribution this week.  That means registering with sites, signing contracts, preparing assets and setting up stores with:

• Amazon S3 (http://aws.amazon.com/s3/ (http://aws.amazon.com/s3/)) - will be hosting demo
• FastSpring (http://www.fastspring.com/ (http://www.fastspring.com/)) - will be hosting full version
• Get Games Go (http://getgamesgo.com/ (http://getgamesgo.com/)) - should be releasing here as well at or soon after launch
• Arcade Town (http://www.arcadetown.com/ (http://www.arcadetown.com/)) - planning to release a few weeks later
  

Also I've had to learn about and fill out American tax forms (W-8BEN), and try to make plans in case there are any problems on launch day.  All in all, there was much more to do than I had expected!

Please ask if you want to know more about any of these services (though I may be a bit slow to reply this weekend).

My friend Jason came round today and got me set up on Google Adwords.  He works at The Adword Adviser (http://adwordadviser.com/) so as you can imagine he had a lot of advice to give!  I'm still digesting it and I don't intend to really start on this until after launch, but here are some random bits:

• use Google Adwords.  It appears all over the place, not just on google searches but banner ads all over the internet (the 'display network'), and on youtube.
• use Google Analytics.  I've been avoiding this because I already get web stats from my web server, but Jason has convinced me that Google Analytics has far more to offer especially in combination with Adwords.  I should be able to find exactly where I'm getting customers from, where I'm not and follow when I'm losing them.
• make sure the target of each advert corresponds to what the advert is saying.  Not only is this good for customers, Google gives your adverts a 'quality rating' which affects their placement, and one of the important factors in this rating is how well it thinks the page and advert match.  If you don't have a page that's on topic, make a landing page specifically for this purpose.
• split campaigns according to geographical location so that you can bid different amounts according to what is required.  For example, users in London are likely to attract higher bids than users elsewhere in the UK.

note: all of this is in my words, any mistakes / misundersandings / gross simplifications are likely mine not Jason's.

I launch tomorrow.  Everything's in place except that I need to spend this evening writing a press release, e-mails and stuff like that ready for tomorrow.

Wish me luck!

I've not been able to access the TIG Forums for several days (I thought they were down, but others seem to have been posting).  In any case I have several catchup posts to make...

I launched The Trouble With Robots on the 23rd of August.  I was tempted to go live at midnight, but decided against that since I'd be asleep for the first few hours in case anything went wrong.  Instead I got up early and uploaded the game and a new version of the web site before 9am (UK time).  Once the game was up it was all hands to e-mail stations, sending a press release to over a hundred sites, announcing the game on various social media and so on.

You can download the demo of The Trouble With Robots here:
http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/demo.html (http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/demo.html)

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/cards/scout_thumb.png)

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/cards/defiant_guard_thumb.png)

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/cards/fireball_thumb.png)

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/cards/invigorate_thumb.png)

Facebook was a flurry of activity all day and according to my freshly set up Google Analytics account, twitter netted me the most traffic on day 1.

Since release I've sent out many more review copies and I've had a bunch of reviews:

http://indie-love.com/2012/08/13/the-trouble-with-robots/ (http://indie-love.com/2012/08/13/the-trouble-with-robots/)
http://www.parablegames.net/site/reviews/the-trouble-with-robots/ (http://www.parablegames.net/site/reviews/the-trouble-with-robots/)
http://www.theleet.co.uk/review/the-trouble-with-robots/ (http://www.theleet.co.uk/review/the-trouble-with-robots/)
http://www.outofeight.info/2012/08/the-trouble-with-robots-review.html (http://www.outofeight.info/2012/08/the-trouble-with-robots-review.html)
http://pig-min.com/tt/4534 (http://pig-min.com/tt/4534) (in Korean!)
http://www.indiegamereviewer.com/review-the-trouble-with-robots-a-side-scrolling-customisable-card-game/ (http://www.indiegamereviewer.com/review-the-trouble-with-robots-a-side-scrolling-customisable-card-game/)
http://jayisgames.com/archives/2012/08/the_trouble_with_robots.php (http://jayisgames.com/archives/2012/08/the_trouble_with_robots.php)
http://beefjack.com/reviews/the-trouble-with-robots-review-pc/ (http://beefjack.com/reviews/the-trouble-with-robots-review-pc/)
http://indiegames.com/2012/08/demo_release_the_trouble_with_.html (http://indiegames.com/2012/08/demo_release_the_trouble_with_.html)
http://www.gamercast.net/the-trouble-with-robots-review (http://www.gamercast.net/the-trouble-with-robots-review)
http://www.gamezebo.com/games/trouble-robots/review (http://www.gamezebo.com/games/trouble-robots/review)

IndieGames.com and JayIsGames provided the most exposure (in terms of traffic to my site), but every little helps and more reviews are still coming.  It was definitely worth my time sending all those e-mails and review copies!

Most of the reviews have been positive about the game, saying things like:

'The Trouble With Robots is a side-scrolling, real time strategy game with cards. And trust me, that only seems like a strange combination of genres.' (http://beefjack.com/reviews/the-trouble-with-robots-review-pc/ (http://beefjack.com/reviews/the-trouble-with-robots-review-pc/))

'I was genuinely excited to complete each level just to see what I might unlock next and how I could incorporate it into my current deck.'
(http://indie-love.com/2012/08/13/the-trouble-with-robots/ (http://indie-love.com/2012/08/13/the-trouble-with-robots/))

'I couldn’t help but chuckle at some of the one-liners' (http://www.theleet.co.uk/review/the-trouble-with-robots/ (http://www.theleet.co.uk/review/the-trouble-with-robots/))

'The Trouble With Robots is a fine card-based strategy game.' (http://www.outofeight.info/2012/08/the-trouble-with-robots-review.html (http://www.outofeight.info/2012/08/the-trouble-with-robots-review.html))

'It's an actually great game.' (http://indiegames.com/2012/08/demo_release_the_trouble_with_.html (http://indiegames.com/2012/08/demo_release_the_trouble_with_.html))

And the negatives have been constructive:

'Surely it would fit in better on a handheld device alongside titles such as Plants vs. Zombies or Angry Birds?'
(http://www.parablegames.net/site/reviews/the-trouble-with-robots/ (http://www.parablegames.net/site/reviews/the-trouble-with-robots/))

'A skirmish mode with less scripted enemy encounters would be nice to extend replay value' (http://www.outofeight.info/2012/08/the-trouble-with-robots-review.html (http://www.outofeight.info/2012/08/the-trouble-with-robots-review.html))

I've also had great feedback from friends and strangers and just a couple of support issues so far.

Something I didn't think to expect is the number of sites who are mirroring my demo download.  But anything that increases the exposure of my demo is a good thing, and it saves me a bit of money on bandwidth!

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/press/rapid_response_thumb.png)

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/press/TA_thumb.png)

I set up an advert to run on reddit gaming (http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/ (http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/), 1.9m subscribers) on Saturday 25/08/2012.  It was quite pleased that the system allowed me to book a single day, making this a very affordable $30 experiment.  My advert displayed at the top of the page in a similar style to the normal reddit stories beneath it.

The weird thing about reddit advertising is that you share your ads with other people who buy that space on that day (each page view displays one ad at random), and you have no way of really knowing or controlling how many other people that will be.  So it's a bit of a gamble, but my impressions were pretty good:
 total impressions: 249,176
 effective CPM: $0.12

I was expecting a really good click through rate due to the targeting and the fact that the ad appears like a top story on the page.  I was a bit disappointed in this respect, though it's possible this was my fault in choosing the wording of the ad:
 total clicks: 96
 click-through: 0.038%
 effective CPC: $0.31

Another issue is that quite a lot of the impressions were repeat impressions, not unique views, though to some extent I don't mind my ads appearing to the same person multiple times.

So was this a success?  The cost per click was quite high, but a decent proportion of visitors to my site are downloading the demo and/or purchasing the game, so it's possible I've made a small profit out of it.  I will consider refining my strategy and trying this again.

On Saturday I created a page on Steam Greenlight.  This was a couple of days after they launched the service but before they introduced the $100 fee ... though it turns out my Steam account hadn't been 'activated' yet so I had to purchase SpaceChem (http://spacechemthegame.com/) before I could post and that cost £6.99 (plus a bazillion hours of spare time - that game is hard!).  Here is The Trouble With Robots on Greenlight:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=93293369 (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=93293369)

I created the page from text and screenshots I'd used elsewhere, with added review quotes at the bottom.  It doesn't seem to be possible to insert a link to my site on the Greenlight page, so I had to leave the URL as text.  Anyway, my experiences so far have been:

• lots of people are looking at my page
• lots of people are saying nice things
• but nowhere near enough to be greenlit any time soon!

As other people have observed, Greenlight commentors are a mixed bag (http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JeffMurray/20120902/176926/TOP_offensive_comments_from_Steam_Greenlight_contains_swearing.php) and I have had a couple of nasty comments.  Generally these come from people who are clearly looking for something quite different and you wonder why they even clicked on your game in the first place.  As an author you can actually delete comments now, but I don't want to make a habit of censorship and I've only deleted one so far (it was utterly incoherent).

Overall, I don't think I'm going to be Greenlit any time soon, which is a shame, but I've probably had enough new people discover my game to make it worth my time.

I forgot to mention here that The Trouble With Robots is now on Get Games:

http://getgamesgo.com/product/the-trouble-with-robots (http://getgamesgo.com/product/the-trouble-with-robots)

I hope to get much more exposure and legitimacy via Get Games and a couple of other distributors I'm still setting up with.  Unfortunately I don't have any sales figures from them just yet, and I think my contract forbids me from disclosing such things anyway.  Sorry.

Get Games wanted to go with a slightly lower price, so we agreed to 25% off.  Then it occurred to me that I should let customers buy from my site with 25% off as well, so I made a coupon code.  Actually I made several and posted them to different places (e.g. reddit GameDeals (http://www.reddit.com/r/GameDeals/)) so that I can track which ones get picked up.  Here is one for TIG:

TIGROBOT (https://sites.fastspring.com/digitalchestnut/instant/thetroublewithrobots?coupon=TIGROBOT)

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PS: I think this thread would be better with a bit more discussion.  So if you've got something to say, please don't feel you have to read everything I've posted before you can comment.  Even if it's been said before, there's bound to be something fresh to say by now.

So far most of my marketing effort has been aimed at indie and indie friendly game review sites one way or another.  But I've noticed that The Trouble With Robots is going down really well with Magic: The Gathering players, so I wanted to do something specifically to reach that audience.

First I e-mailed out copies of the game to a few influential people in Magic circles who happen to regularly write reviews of CCG's or computer games or both.  That was pretty easy to do.

Then I donated to the popular Monday Night Magic (http://www.mtgcast.com/) podcast, who promise to read a 'shout out' for every donation.  The mention yielded a bump in 'direct' hits to my web site (hits that a user typed in directly to their browser rather than following a link, as you'd expect from a podcast).  Nothing huge but I reckon I got a few extra sales and hopefully it's got people talking.  Note that I don't recommend you go out and do exactly the same thing, but be on the look out for opportunities specific to your game and your particular audience!

I'm still looking for more ways to get attention in the Magic community, particularly amongst more 'casual' groups of players.

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/cards/apprentice_card.png)

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/cards/duplicate_card.png)

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/cards/spite_card.png)

In other news, I'm going to enter the IGF!  At $95 it's a bit of a gamble, but according to my calculations* it's worth it.

* - calculations may involve lots of made-up numbers being multiplied and/or added together.

I've had a busy week learning to use Google Adwords (http://adwords.google.com/), and also putting together packages for another online publisher.  Both of these tasks have been surprisingly time consuming!

Adwords is definitely a useful tool, I'm still dabbling but I've been able to get quite a few clicks and demo downloads for very little cost (strangely, this seems to be much cheaper than approaching web sites who manage their advertising directly).  The system is similar in many ways to Facebook ads but far more detailed - I'd actually recommend starting on something simpler like Facebook if you've never done this before (or hire a company like The Adword Adviser (http://adwordadviser.com/) to do it for you!)

Google Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics/) has been essential, for tracking demo downloads as a result of adverts and for examining details like countries of origin, pages viewed etc.  Having said this I'm also starting to see the weaknesses of Analytics, such as not showing much at a resolution finer than days.  Also for a couple of reasons I can't accurately track all the way from ads to actual sales right now.

A few posts ago I shared my friend Jason's advice to divide campaigns up into different regions according to the cost to reach / value to you of reaching people there.  Well, I forgot this advice at first and with effectively equal bids, ended up winning a bunch of impressions mostly from places like Vietnam and Iran - which resulted in plenty of demo downloads but no sales as far as I can tell.  I've now restructured my campaign into three different tiers focusing my highest bids on the most developed countries where people are, I presume, more likely to pay.

The plan is to spend a few more days or even weeks learning and then scale up my Adwords usage once I'm happy I'm doing it right.

I want to say something about posting on gamer forums - not gamedev forums like this one, but the ones where normal gamers hang out and talk about Call of Duty and Minecraft.  We all know that building up a community is important, but this could be a controversial topic because the difference between posting and spamming is somewhat subjective.  Before I start, I will say that if you think that simply spamming links on the biggest sites is going to get you tens of thousands of eyeballs ... you've got a lot to learn.

The reality is that the most popular forums are well moderated, so there's no point posting anywhere but the most appropriate place and there's no point posting on sites where you aren't going to be welcome.  Look for other indie game announcements and see what has gone down well.  You'll have to spend time writing something worthwhile and descriptive (this (http://www.videogamegeek.com/thread/856005/side-scrolling-ccg-the-trouble-with-robots-for-pc) was my best attempt) and format it nicely, because simple links are quickly ignored.  You'll probably find you get more interest on forums where you're already part of the community and it's much easier to write for sites you're familiar with.

To be honest though, don't make this a big part of your strategy.  I get far more and higher quality traffic from indie game review sites - this was probably not time well spent.

A pattern has emerged in all of the feedback I've had for The Trouble With Robots from customers, friends and reviewers alike.  Nearly everyone has enjoyed the game, finding it addictive and well designed.  That's great!  I'm also pleasantly surprised to find that so many have also enjoyed the humour, after discovering in development how difficult it is to get this right.  But two criticisms that have reared their ugly heads again and again, and if this isn't the place to discuss them I don't know where is:

• The price
• The length of the game

Notice that these are really two sides of the same problem, that is value for money.  I've already addressed the first point by lowering the price to £9.99 (in retrospect I do now think the initial price of £12.99 was a mistake).

To address the second point I've decided to make some extra content, which will be distributed via an updated game installer, and a free patch for existing customers (which will also come with a few minor bug fixes).  Obviously this is great if you've bought the game, but for me it's definitely an experiment - I don't know if directly addressing people's criticisms is going to increase my sales or if people have already made up their minds one way or the other.  We will see soon enough.

I haven't yet decided how much extra content I will make, so now would be an excellent time to post if you have any suggestions!

Just a quick note to say that The Trouble With Robots is now on GamersGate:

http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-TTWR/the-trouble-with-robots

All of my numbers suggest that GamersGate is the biggest digital shop I've worked with so far so obviously this is great news!  Also their site looks nice and I'm pretty sure Cynical Brit (https://www.youtube.com/user/totalhalibut?feature=results_main) recommended them at some point.

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Those of you who've been following this thread for a while may have noticed that I said TTWR would be on ArcadeTown and it isn't yet ... don't worry, this is still happening, the process has just taken a bit longer than I expected.  Though the game wasn't designed for casual portals I can see why they approached me (cute graphics, really easy to get into, addictive) and I'm really curious to see how it does there!

This week I've made a solid start on the expansion, codename 'Megamort', which will contain:

• 8 new story levels
• 2 new challenge levels
• possibly new music?
• a few small bug fixes
• some number of new cards

The last point has been a particular nuisance, as there are now enough cards to require a scroll bar on the deck builder screen.  This was quite fiddly to implement, it helped to think of the bar as being made up of four distinct components - up button, down button, track and thumb.  There are still quite a few dependencies between them though, and various types of mouse input to capture correctly (click, drag, wheel).  The scrollable area itself is clipped using Direct3D's 'SetScissorRect'.

Other than that it's been fun going back to do some actual development this week!

Thanks a lot for this GeoffW, We're heading into this phase of our game so it is great to hear about your personal experiences.
I think developing a game is the easy part, marketing and everything else... not so much.

Well I'm not sure I strictly agree with this given how much time and effort we put into our development skills, game design, code, tools, art and polish ... but yes, marketing is a world most of us aren't very familiar with and to begin with it can feel like learning to walk all over again.

Good luck with your release - and do share your experiences!

There's been some discussion elsewhere (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=28769.0) and I feel it's time I posted an update about my various forms of paid advertising.

On Facebook, I've had some more success tweaking the wording of my ads, and adding new targets (like Ireland which I had completely forgotten).  However, visitors from Facebook ads don't seem to convert into paying customers as often as they should and do from other sources.  Facebook advertising seemed to work much better when I was just using free credit to attract people to my page!  Anyway, my current strategy is to leave my bids low so that I can still expect a profit, but I only get a tiny trickle of traffic as a result.

The Google Adwords Display Network is working best for me at the moment.  There's a tricky game to be played setting bids right for different countries - depending on the going rate and my conversion statistics.  Reaching the US is particularly expensive but I've had better luck finding customers in various parts of Europe.  I've also begun to find favourite sites and create manual placements based on them.

On the other hand, I haven't had much luck with the Google Adwords Search Network.  I set up some ads and keywords but they aren't being shown in many searches, even after attempting to tune my landing pages and upping the bids a couple of times.  I wonder if I'm doing something wrong or if this type of ad just isn't suitable for what I'm trying to do (it probably works much better if your product is something functional people know they want, like clothes or computer parts).

I haven't tried Reddit ads again.  They worked out a bit too expensive the first time and I don't have a clear idea of what I would do differently.

I am thinking of trying Project Wonderful (http://www.projectwonderful.com/) at some point, possibly after releasing the expansion.  I'd love to hear your experiences with that!

A couple of early screenshots from the new levels:

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/misc/mm1_s.png) (http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/misc/mm1.png)

I'm trying to mix things up a bit in the new levels to keep experienced players interested.  For example the the following screen is from a level that's only three waves long, which is also quite difficult so you'll need to adapt your strategy:

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/misc/mm2_s.png) (http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/misc/mm2.png)

Also the new music is in, thanks to Matt Javanshir once again!  It looks like you can listen to it on his site (http://www.mattjavanshir.co.uk/robots.html) (the last track is the new one).

A couple more things that happened over the last few weeks:

Richard Garfield wrote about my game (http://www.threedonkeys.com/blog/archives/773)!  I don't know how well known he is to your average gamer, but in the Magic: The Gathering world he's pretty famous as the creator of, well, Magic: The Gathering.  It looks like he enjoyed The Trouble With Robots, I got a bit of traffic from his modest blog and a shiny new quote to put on my web site!

The Trouble With Robots was part of the Get Games (http://www.getgamesgo.com) Sci-Fi weekend sale.  This was very simple to do at my end, I got an e-mail about it on Friday and replied saying basically 'yep, go ahead'.  They sold the game at 50% off RRP, and along with 31 other games the sale was promoted on their front page and other places.  I don't have any sales figures yet but I noticed a recommendation for the game on reddit and on Sunday it hit #10 on their 'top 10 PC games' list!

Lessons learned:

• Don't be afraid to approach famous people like Richard Garfield (where appropriate)
• Weekend sales work

IGF submissions closed a few days ago with a whopping 589 submissions (http://www.igf.com/php-bin/entries2013.php).  Having seen my entry (http://www.igf.com/php-bin/entry2013.php?id=276) on their site I decided to revise a few details so that everything fits together a bit better.  I'm looking forward to taking a look at some of the other entries over the weekend!

On the development side I've added a new challenge level to the expansion where you face random waves of enemies each time you play.  It turns out this design keeps you on your toes and is really fun.

I've spent most of the week working on new levels for the expansion, along with new baddies, story and humour to fill them.  For pretty much all of these I take the approach of designing (and implementing, to a point) more than I really need, then cutting back to just the best stuff.  You never know what's going to work until you try it!

The surprising part is that this is especially important for humour.  There really is no substitute for writing more material than you need, coming back in a few days time, showing it to other people etc and mercilously removing or rewriting anything that doesn't make you smile (I would love to hear about other people's writing processes!)

Oh, here's an early screenshot I used for the Screenshot Saturday thread.  It's from one of the new challenge levels, 'VR Lab':

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/misc/vr1s.jpg) (http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/misc/vr1.png)

I'm very nearly content complete for the expansion now.  All of the new levels and cards are in and I'm pleased with them.  Almost all of the new art work is in.  It's probably going to take another week to polish and test it all of course, and after that I'll find out if my patch creation process really works!

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/misc/screenshot_s.jpg) (http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/misc/screenshot.png)

I'll have some card previews up soon.

Wow, this has been a great read and incredibly informative!  Thanks so much.  We are starting marketing, PR and the ilk for our game.  There are some great insights here and I suggest anyone who skips to the end to take the time when you have it and read through the entire thread.

I am going to start a devlog, when I do I will certainly link to this.  Good luck and congrats on the Richard Garfield write up. (Pretty sweet)

Thank you for sharing this wealth of information! Good luck!

Thanks, I'm glad you've found my DevLog useful.  Something I haven't really talked about much is how making and releasing an indie game is an absolute emotional roller coaster - Richard Garfield's write up was definitely one of the high points for me!

I definitely recommend you write a DevLog, it doesn't take much time and it may generate a little buzz, lead to some useful comments and perhaps help you to reflect on what you're doing as well.  Send me a message when you start it!

edit: I've found your DevLog (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=29587)!

We released our game on XBLIG back in May.  It is our first game and man has it been an emotional roller coaster for us as well!  I think getting praise from Richard Garfield is awesome!  Mark that on your "cool stuff achieved in life" list.


Yeah I was inspired :)

I looked at your Greenlight page a bit, I am going to check it out and your game more this evening.  Looking forward to it.

Just finished the demo.  It has a very polished feel about it. Very nice game! 

Woooow this game is my dream game :D Its amazing when it will be finished can't wait to play full version :D I am going to buy I copy I think :)

Thanks, the game is actually already available, click here for the demo (http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/demo.html)!  What I'm currently working on is an expansion that will add more cards and levels and will be free for everybody who's bought the game.

Speaking of new cards, here's the first card preview as promised:

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/cards/rockets_large.png)

I've previewed two more cards on the Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/TheTroubleWithRobots):

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/cards/droids_large.png)

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/cards/energize_large.png)

The expansion card previews have been quite well received, much better than the ones I did before launching the game itself.  That's probably because people understand the context now and are much more interested to see what the cards will do.

---

I had hoped the expansion would be ready to go nowish, but my beta testers (a couple of friends) found an evil crash bug and it took several days to narrow it down ... plus about 30 minutes to actually fix it.  It turns out it's not a good idea to pass uninitialized floats into std::sort as it (occasionally) gets into trouble with strange floating point values such as NaN.  Anyway the expansions still needs a few tweaks, a bit more testing and an installer so I hope to have it done this week.

The Megamort expansion is now finished, I actually have the installer and patch sitting on my hard disk ready to go.  However I'm delaying release until next Wednesday (the 28th of November) for a couple of reasons:

• I've got plans for the weekend, if I released now I wouldn't be able to properly support it
• I don't really want to compete for eyeballs with the Steam Autumn / Thanksgiving sale (which looks pretty awesome)

The upshot of this is that I get a little bit more time for some final testing and preparation.  I'd like to make a new video for example.

I have gone ahead and reduced the price from $14.99 / €12.50 / £9.99 to $9.99 / €8.50 / £6.99 today.  I didn't really want to sell this cheap, but more than a few reviewers have said that they like the game but aren't really sure it's great value for money.  One of my goals with this expansion is to utterly crush this idea by simultaneously adding more content and reducing the price.  By my calculations it will be 2.18 times better value for money, based on total levels / price!

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/screens/mountain6_thumb2.png) (http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/screens/mountain6.png)

Right, I'd better go and get this press release done before someone notices that I announced the release date on TIG first!

Phew!  It's been a busy couple of days with the Megamort expansion out, as I've been promoting it nearly as hard as the original game launch.  But I think it's been worth it - there's a renewed interest in the game and my direct sales (at least) are higher than they've been for months.

I also think the price drop was a good move.  In recent years indie gamers seem to have become quite price sensitive, so it's probably correct to set prices in line with consumer expectations in most cases.  That means it doesn't matter what you think your game is worth, and it certainly doesn't matter how much it cost to develop or how many copies you expect to sell.  What matters is that the price roughly matches competing games of a similar size and quality so that consumers don't have to think too hard about the money.  In my case that means Steam indie games at around £6.99 / $9.99.  But I suspect this rule works just as well if you're selling the latest Call of Duty.

Both gamers and the media are also quite conscious of what they're getting (i.e. expected hours of entertainment) for their money and they love getting something for nothing (like a free expansion).

That's nice I hope sales are quite higher than my commercial shoot'em up game (Clean'Em Up (http://www.cleanemup-game.com)) Hope sales go higher as its an amazing game :)

Hi - Clean'Em Up looks really nice, but I know there are a lot of other pretty 2D shooters.  I wonder if that's the main reason you're struggling?

It's about time I posted what I've been up to since the Megamort release.  I've had coverage from several sites especially indiegames.com (http://indiegames.com/2012/11/the_trouble_with_robots_update.html) (twice (http://indiegames.com/2012/12/best_of_indie_games_from_the_c_1.html)), plus I believe some reviews of the new content are in the works.  The game's selling much better but I'm still not exactly making a fortune (or indeed a living).  The thing now is to decide whether to do any ports (an iOS version has been requested many times) or get on with my next project.

Yup the main reason that people judge the game as another 2D shooter without even trying the demo (the game is different in lot of ways that traditional 2D shooters) but when they saw neon graphics and explosions they thought its just a rip off Geometry wars :(

This is a great devlog, probably because it is unusual. Thanks, GeoffW.

Time for another quick update:

• Sales have remained steady since the Megamort expansion release.  This is quite different to the initial release, where sales spiked but faded quite rapidly afterwards.
• I'm in Little Big Bunch 2 (http://www.littlebigbunch.com/)!  This has reminded me that I should get around to approaching some other indie bundles after Christmas.
• I've decided not to port to iOS, Android, Windows RT or Mac, or to localize the game.  All of these have been suggested to me at some point by someone, and there are good reasons why they might work out (especially the iOS port) but I'm not confident and I'd rather get on with my next project.

I'm planning to move house after Christmas (to Yorkshire) and sadly I probably won't have as much time to devote to indie game development for a while.  I should get around to concluding this thread next year though, with some graphs and numbers that I'm sure many of you will be interested in.

I just want to quickly mention, for the benefit of anyone following this thread, that I'm currently trying to organize a co-operative indie weekend sale over on the Business forum (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=30949.0).  If you're selling an indie game directly from your web site, you should get involved!

It's currently the last day of a half price weekend sale (http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/buy.html) I'm running (26th, 27th Jan).  This seems to have gone down well on reddit and a few other places around the web, I've got lots of extra traffic to my site and I've sold a bunch more copies of the game.

While I'm on the subject - I've had a noticeably higher baseline amount of traffic / customers ever since the IGF finalists (http://igf.com/2013/01/2013_independent_games_festiva_2.html) were announced (7th Jan), it's not direct traffic from the igf.com site but the correlation is clear.  This is despite not making it as a finalist or honorable mention in any category (unfortunately), so I guess the IGF must be doing it's job of stirring up interest / discussion about the games!

One last thing - I'm doing a reddit AMA (http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/17d6r8/iama_indie_game_developer_creator_of_the_trouble/) right now, not sure if this is really going to take off but feel free to head over and ask me some questions if you read this soon after I post it.  Or you can post questions on this thread any time.

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/press/baton_bot_thumb.png)

This week The Trouble With Robots has had something of a second wind on IndieGameStand (http://indiegamestand.com/).  For those of you who don't know, this is a 'pay what you want' site that offers a single game for sale (not a bundle) every four days.  They seem to put quite a bit of effort into attracting a good audience and I'm thrilled to have made over 900 sales, with 15 hours to go!

Naturally, because most people only pay $1.50 or so this isn't exactly going to reverse my fortunes.  But it was well worth the effort and it's great to see so many people enjoying the game for the first time.  I've also got a few new pieces of fan mail.

Anyway, if you're in a similar situation to me, I couldn't recommend it more!

The Trouble With Robots has been out for a while now, and whilst I've written plenty about it in this DevLog I feel I've been a little shy in the way of hard numbers.  And that's a shame - one of the things I love about the indie game development community is that we help each other out when we can, we share information, and we generally ignore the dog-eat-dog nonsense that seems to characterize the corporate world.

With that said, here is the first of my three part mini postmortem:

The Numbers

To date The Trouble With Robots has sold:

• 134 copies directly through the Digital Chestnut web site (http://www.digitalchestnut.com).
• 1,017 copies in the IndieGameStand deal (https://indiegamestand.com/?saleId=61).

The total takings were $1,686.47 directly (of which I get around 90%) and you can see on the IndieGameStand site that I made $1,472.28 there (the actual figure is slightly different due to the effects of the 3 game bundle option, and I get 70% of it).  I also sold through Get Games, including the Little Big Bunch 2 bundle, GamersGate and Arcade Town but I'm not at liberty to share those figures here.  I will say that Get Games were particularly helpful, but none of these places are likely to make you wealthy on their own.

Here is a rough graph to illustrate how it played out:

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/misc/sales_graph.png)

The blue line is visits to the web site, whereas the red line is direct sales over the nearly nine months it's been since launch.  Note that there was actually a massive sales spike during IndieGameStand which would easily go off the top of this graph if I'd included those figures as well as direct sales.

Later today I'll post part two, detailing a few of my development mistakes...

Development

As you can see from my last post, the game hasn't been much of financial success especially considering it took ~1.5 years to finish.  This was way over my planned six months to a year, and looking back I've identified three main reasons why it took so long:

1. I took on a lot of tasks that could have been contracted out - for example sound effects and marketing.  Even engine development can be thought of as part of this category since I could have used a 3rd party engine instead of bringing my own tech up to scratch - though I don't think these things actually save as much time in the end as people like to assume.  The upside of all of this extra work is that I kept my costs down and I learned a bunch of new skills along the way - therefore I don't actually consider this strategy to have been a mistake.

The major exception was art, which I did contract out as I knew my own work wouldn't be to a high enough standard.

2. I made an original game.  I'd have spent far less time designing and iterating features and possibly had more success if I'd decided to do a clone or near-clone of an existing computer game.  I'm not sure whether to consider this a sad fact about the state of originality in the games industry, or the simple result of a disconnect between my own priorities and what gamers are really looking for (you can post your thoughts below).

3. I made a quality product.  The game is relatively well balanced.  The cards are diverse.  The graphics are varied.  The AI is solid.  It runs well on old machines.  It supports different resolutions and wide screen displays.  Load times were optimised.  The music loops seamlessly.  And so on... all of these things take time to do right.

(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/misc/unnecessary_code.png)
Was time spent improving load times and performance well spent?

In retrospect, despite trying to be realistic about the time it would take I still took on too much work.
 
(http://www.digitalchestnut.com/trouble/press/dwarf.png)

Lessons Learned

The biggest problem with The Trouble With Robots has been getting people to understand what it is in the first place.  It's quite a unique game, kind of hard to explain even to a gamer and that unfortunately made it difficult to sell.  I've already said that I think I'd have done better by making a game which is just like your favourite game of the genre plus killer feature X or clever twist Y.  Or alternatively a game that fulfills a desire players already have.  Even within indie games, popular sub-genres have emerged and I'd have been wise to entice their ready audiences.

People don't play demos as much as they used to.  I believe more people impulse bought The Trouble with Robots on IndieGameStand for a dollar or two than ever played the free demo.  This is amazing and it's a relatively new phenomenon.  I think the way people make sub $5 buying decisions is very different to what we as an industry are used to.

Graphics have been a difficulty - for an indie on a small budget like me, it's possible to make a game with appealing graphics by carefully designing the art style.  I regret not thinking about this more carefully.

Finally, I suspect, to be successful your story needs to go viral - I mean the story of your game, what it is and how it came to be.  Think about how to present yourself in an interesting way so that people might want to get behind you.  All the effort you put into courting reviewers, building Facebook pages and so forth doesn't mean squat compared to one good viral story.

Final Words

Despite my failure (financially speaking), I did manage to complete and release a game and I had a great time doing it.  I want to thank everybody who helped me along the way.  I'm back in full time employment right now, but I'm bursting with more ideas than ever before - you will hear from me again.

Wow amazing that was an amazing read. I am just beginning to crank up marketing on my CCG (with drawing). Your much better looking game and lack of financial success makes me a little nervous. On the otherhand our game is online, I dunno how much having to install and being on a desktop hurt you. In my mind the packaged software is a little old skool. Anyway. I'll keep all my numbers and we can have a compare!

I've had similar thoughts about download vs online, though mostly relating to (possible) future projects.  If you're online it should also be much easier to support different platforms (e.g. mobile) which could work out well for you.  Good luck!

Kind of new here...been lurking. Finally registered to thank you for making this thread! Very cool, man. Lots of great info.

Thank you, sir.

I just want to let anyone who's still following this thread know that Art Castle have been busy creating an iOS version of The Trouble With Robots.  It's due to be launched on the App Store this Thursday (27th of November).

Mobile version official web site: http://www.troublewithrobots.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ArtCastleHK
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ArtCastleHK

Please support them on Thursday if you've been waiting for an iOS release as I know many people have.

(http://www.troublewithrobots.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/csm_new_cards_33adf4dbdb-470x537.jpg)

From the point of view of this thread this is a very interesting time.  I've heard from many sources that competition on iOS is very tough, but Art Castle seem to be doing an excellent job and digital CCGs have been rising in popularity since the PC release (just look at Hearthstone...).  Let me know if you have any thoughts or questions and I will of course keep you updated.

Thanks a lot for this thread, it was a great read and will definitely help me with marketing my game if I ever finish it :)

This may have been the most interesting and useful blog I've read on here yet - thanks for all your words of wisdom!

Good luck on your future work!

It's out on the app store (https://itunes.apple.com/app/trouble-with-robots/id849799076?mt=8) now.

Early indications are promising, I gather play-asia.com sent an e-mail about the game to a large mailing list, which is something I never really had access to for the PC launch.  At least one person I know found out about the game this way before I had told them about it myself!

It also currently has a 5 star app store rating, though whether it manages to hold on to that after the free launch period is yet to be seen.

We launched on iOS with a high risk strategy - the first chapter's free, whereas the second and third are paid, and all chapters were free for the first two days as a launch promotion.  The game rose up the charts during these days and the free promotion seems to have generated a lot of good will - but we didn't hit the (crucial?) top 10 in any of the charts (we reached #46 in iPhone Card Games, for example).  Intuitively I feel this risky strategy probably did pay off, it just didn't pay off enough.  In the high noise iOS world we might've been dead in the water without it.

Since then our chart position has been in decline.  This is despite a nice review from Touch Arcade (http://toucharcade.com/2014/12/02/trouble-with-robots-review/), holding on to a 5 star rating on the App Store (https://itunes.apple.com/app/trouble-with-robots/id849799076), and praise from users everywhere I've looked.  It just doesn't seem to be enough.  Apparently we're a hidden gem (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI9ov5d401I&t=5m).

Hopefully the Art Castle team have some plans to rejuvenate awareness, and in case case there's the upcoming Android launch to look forward to.  I'm not really sure what to expect.  I don't know the Android app world at all.

Hi there! This is Mariela from the ArtCastle team. Just wanted to keep you updated about Trouble With Robots on mobile. Like GeoffW said, the feedback from the first days on iOS was very encouraging for us: we'll preparing more updates to keep the game fresh and alive. It'd be a great help if any of you guys play and say some nice words about us! :).

The Android version will be released very soon. Probably on the first week of February. I'll come here and tell you when we have a fixed date; I feel you deserve to know, given the support you gave to GeoffW in the past with The Trouble With Robots. I read the entire thread, and there are really interesting pieces of advice for anyone here to learn (including me!).

Please allow me a little spam now xD (just a little bit!): we've opened our social media profiles and I want to invite you to connect there, if you wish to follow our news:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/troublewithrobotsgame
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWR_game
And our website, of course: www.troublewithrobots.com

Thanks for the update Mariela.  I'm looking forward to seeing my game on Android!

Just a quick announcement that Trouble With Robots is out for Android, on the Google Play store:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.art.twr

I think the game is naturally well suited to a tablet and when I play this version I really notice the interface improvements, new graphics and background details.  I wish I had time to back-port some of these features to the PC!

The iPhone version has been updated with some bug fixes as well.