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!

[use Google Adwords]

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'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/) - will be hosting demo
• FastSpring (http://www.fastspring.com/) - will be hosting full version
• Get Games Go (http://getgamesgo.com/) - should be releasing here as well at or soon after launch
• Arcade Town (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).

This is my game The Trouble With Robots, which is out on Thursday:



Here's a (very positive) preview written by Indie-Love:
http://indie-love.com/2012/08/13/the-trouble-with-robots/

DevLog:
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=27113.0

Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/TheTroubleWithRobots

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

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.

Crazy ideas like this are one of the reasons I love indie games!

[send your game to journalists]

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.

Unfortunately turning mip mapping on gives some weird results:

Are you using a texture atlas / a grid of texture cells all on one surface?  This could be bleed caused by nearby samples from different cells being mixed together.  The solution for me was to add a 4 pixel padding region around each cell, filled with a similar colour to that texture cell.

Looks really nice.

One small criticism is that the grid lines alias quite badly.  Probably worth checking you've got MIP mapping enabled.

If you like the look of my game, please 'like' it on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/TheTroubleWithRobots

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:

Does anyone around here buy professional indemnity insurance (or anything like it) for their game development?  In other words, something that will protect you if you get sued by a customer, publisher or IP holder.

I've got a very rough estimate from an insurer who would do it, but it's quite a large figure from my point of view and I'm thinking of turning it down.  I'm also reluctant to set myself up as a limited company because of the paperwork.

What do you do?  Got any scare stories to share?

Promoting a game doesn't mean showing it to players. If we're talking an indie game here the best promotion you can do is show it to a lot of (more or less famous/networked) indie developers and get their support behind you.

I hadn't really thought about it like that.  In any case I clearly aren't going to enough of these kinds of things.

your 5% rule actually makes no sense because even if you sell it *on your own site* the e-commerce service providers are going to take about 10% (for handling the credit card transaction, etc.). even if you just use paypal, paypal itself takes around 5%. so asking portals like steam and desura to take 5% instead of 30-40% is asking for too much

i think 30% is fair. at least it's not 70%, like big fish games is rumored to take. at least it's not 80% to 90%, like traditional publishers take. compared to those, 30% is pretty fair

I agree that 30% is reasonably fair.  Remember that they do provide infrastructure such as the store, download, user accounts and the ability to re-download games later.  Having said that, e-commerce providers such as FastSpring actually do most of that as well.

Where is does get a bit more exploitative is the casual portals, which from what I can tell often take more than 50% of your money.

Interesting read, thanks.

You run along the sides of the screen endlessly, but with one tap on your iOS device or one tap of the x key on your computer, you can flip from one side of the screen to the other. Smash an alien on the opposite side, killing them and scoring one point. Run head-on into an alien and you lose!

Sounds simple but promising!  Do post a video as soon as you can.

Dude, you're near London/Cambridge which is Europe's PRIME hub for indie game devs. Checkout TigJam UK and the super friendship club, start attending all the meetups and jams in your area (that happen very frequently) and ask the plethora of experienced and helpful indies that are practically your NEIGHBORS for that advice instead of us

I appreciate your advice, but are game jams really the best place to be to promote an existing game?  They look like loads of fun and I'd love to go (in fact I entered the 7DRL contest a few years ago and made 'A Quest Too Far'), but right now I only have so much time.

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.

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.

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

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.

Can you say something about the gameplay?  What do you do in this game?

Reworked display of statistics as there were quite unreadable:

That's a big improvement.