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[Evan Balster]

Hey all.

I've just presented my game, Infinite Blank, at Sense of Wonder Night at the Tokyo Game Show.  I told them I would have it relaunched and publicly available in a week.  It's an online game I made this summer, completely free, somewhat community-based, and planned to be donation-funded.

Standing at the head of the gauntlet to keeping my promise, I'm wondering how things will go from here.  What I'm planning on launching and running is a non-business with much of the logistical challenge of a business, including community management, a little promotion and technical maintenance.


The game, so you know, is a creativity-based MMO where players draw most everything--the world which they jump and climb around in, their own characters, and what they say to other characters.  Since the appeal of the game lies in its creative freedom and the prospect of a large game-world arising which can be explored, it would naturally be crippled by charging for it.  That's fine by me!  I made this because I've wanted to make it for a long time and I found that I could.

My plan, to reiterate, is to try to support Infinite Blank with donations from the players.  I launched a Kickstarter after last night's speech, with a $1000 goal meant to help me buy my own server-box rather than use my friend's.


Long story short, assuming the game grows steadily, I'm fishing for advice on fostering a healthy player community (as in community between players, rather than a mass of players), funding it with donations (a faint dream is to live like Tarn Adams does) and otherwise ensuring the success of this crazy, awesome, horribly impractical idea to which I've grown attached.

[deathtotheweird]

Probably. I hope not, because it's a great idea.

I think pre-emptively planning it to be donation funded was very stupid. I don't think that's something you can just "plan" ahead. I'm not sure how it worked for Tarn, but I would guess that it just happened. I think you should reconsider not charging for it. If you want the game to live, you may need to do that. Charge a low price if it'll make you feel better.

Do you need the donation money to live, or just to fund the expenses of running the servers and maintaining the game/forum?

[bateleur]

I don't think you're doomed, but it sounds like a lot of work.

The thing with community is that if your game is fun people will want to talk about it. Forum software is free and a simple forum is all you need for a community to start. You can always post questions ("Which of the following would you most like to see added to the game?") and challenges ("Post a screenshot of the largest widget you've built!") if players starting their own threads isn't generating enough activity.

Like so many things surrounding game design, the problems mostly solve themselves if the game is good.

Q: How do I market my game? A: Make it good.

Q: How do I make money from my game? A: Make it good.

Q: How to I encourage a community for my game? A: Make it good.

You get the idea.

Incidentally, you can rent virtual servers (or even entire dedicated servers) quite cheaply per month these days without having to "buy" a machine yourself.

[Evan Balster]

Do you need the donation money to live, or just to fund the expenses of running the servers and maintaining the game/forum?

Just to keep things running.  So actually from where I am I can run the game for free until the current server gets overloaded.

The plan is (or was) to buy a nicer server using the kickstarter money under the assumption that I'll run out of processing power or some other machine resource before my 5-10mbps bandwidth.  Considering some changes I'm about to make to my server software that remove loads of resource usage, the opposite could be true.

I can think of technical fixes I could apply to reduce resource usage a lot (p2p relay, offloading world-cell downloads to a dreamhost webserver rather than my machine) but eventually it'll have to become impractical to just have a magic box...

So, then, who can tell me how these application hosting services work?  Surely I can't just give them my almost-single-threaded binary and expect it to work with cloud-based virtual server systems.


I've also by now gotten subtle offers regarding the game, but I can't imagine any kind of partnership occurring that wouldn't risk compromising Infinite Blank's purpose.

[deathtotheweird]

I've also by now gotten subtle offers regarding the game, but I can't imagine any kind of partnership occurring that wouldn't risk compromising Infinite Blank's purpose.

Could you elaborate a bit more, on what it's purpose is and how potential partnerships could compromise it?

If you like the game idea so much, would you rather see it die in obscurity or live on in a (maybe or maybe not) compromised form? Perhaps you may be too attached to the game to make that kind of decision. If faced with a similar dilemma, I would much prefer to have my game out in some form rather than none at all (this is a hypothetical based off the assumption that the game *is* doomed). I'm not talking about making money or 'selling out', I am talking about having a game released and the resources to maintain it versus not having enough resources and watching it die.

I can only think of a few things that could hamper the game's freedom and creativity and that would be in-game ads, subscriptions, or micro-transactions. I don't see how simply charging for the game would compromise it.

[KM]

I guess it depends on the MMO game. If you're indie and trying to be the next WoW, then yeah, you're probably doomed. But if you try something different, you probably have a chance. It'll just be a lot of work like other people have said.

Also regarding bateleur's advice. It is good advice and also very bad advice at the exact same time (Sorry bateleur, I know you mean well. :/)

I absolutely agree that you should make a great game first and foremost, but anyone who figures that if people aren't playing a great game that the solution is to spend most of your time making it better is probably going to lose. It's like having a lemonade stand in the middle of the Sahara desert and figuring the reason you're not selling lemonade is because your lemonade is not good enough, so you spend all your time trying to perfect lemonade. You might make a damn fine lemonade, but you won't make anymore profit.

You can't expect to make a great product and it will automatically go viral. It might, but the chances of that are so slim I wouldn't hold my breath on it. You probably will have to spend mre time building a community than updating the game once it's released. Asking questions and posting challenges is a great way to get people involved, the more they get involved the more they believe the game is a part of their identity, and everyone wants to promote their identity.

As for forums, the hard part about them is getting social proof. Consider a game and website as a party. If there's no one at the party, why would you want to go? The more proof that you have that your work is popular, the more popular it will be. The tricky part is starting the social proof. (Friends, especialy well known friends are great for this.)

As for making money, making a game good won't automatically get you money. You have to 'ask' for money from the consumer. Either a donation button, or ads or whatever else. It depends on how you ask and why you're asking for money that'll depend on how much you get. And the more people who see your product that you're 'asking' for money for, the better.

So in the end, if you want to make money, you need to run things as a business. A game developing company is fine if you want to only make games. But if you want money too, then you're in the business of marketing, and your product is the game. If you don't market, there's a good chance you'll go broke. It sucks, but it's so rare that people will market for you without you doing anything at all.

Any comments?

[bateleur]

Any comments?

Can you provide an actual example of a game that's good but not successful?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

glum buster

[bateleur]

glum buster

Reading the comments on the TIGSource post about the game, that appears to be a controversial claim.

Let's put it this way: insofar as that game hasn't been a success, lack of marketing is not the problem.

(Hmm... maybe we should start a separate thread for the "name a good but unsuccessful game" challenge? Might be of wider interest.)

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

that's ridiculous, if you judge by frontpage comments whether *any* indie game is good is a controversial claim. you're always going to find people who don't think a game is good; that doesn't mean it isn't good.

i do 100% think glum buster's problem was marketing, not quality -- i've probably played thousands of indie games, and i think it's the best one, and much more unknown than it deserves to be. it's not perfect, but i don't think the ways in which it is not perfect are in any way responsible for its lack of success, its lack of success is largely due to players not trying it, or giving up too early before they figure out how the game works (thinking the game works like the intro area).

e.g. if you search for "glum buster" in google you'll find some forum posts and reviews about the game, most of which have no comments or one or two comments saying they loved the game. so it's not that people are trying the game and disliking it, it's that nobody has heard of it, and those that see it don't bother to try it, despite the few people who have played it telling them how great it is.

there are other examples i can think of too, but glum buster is definitely #1 on my 'unknown indie games that are better than any popular indie game' list.

[bateleur]

or giving up too early before they figure out how the game works

Well, to be honest that may well be the category I fall into. But still, that's not poor marketing, it's poor design.

despite the few people who have played it telling them how great it is.

That really, really isn't what comes across, though. It seems to be a game which some people get very excited about, but others find to be poorly presented, poorly executed or just downright not fun. Which is fine - games for niche audiences are a welcome thing - but I wouldn't expect such a game to do well.

[KM]

Well, to name one, I'd say Grim Fandango. Great game, financial bomb. It eventually got a cult following, but that was long after the fact that they shut the studio down.

One thing, how many great games are there out there that you don't know about because of poor marketing? Could be a lot. Also you could think a game is financially successful, but it actually wasn't because the company never released any financially info saying otherwise. I imagine all my favorite Quintet games were not very financially successful, but I ended up stumbling on them anyway and loving them.

Also, how many crappy games do you know about that you shouldn't know about but still had great marketing?

And success is subjective. Some people think breaking even is a success, some think making less than a million is a failure. But marketing will increase your chances of more success. Like Steve Pavlina's game. It was bombing pretty hard until he started marketing it, then it became a pretty big success is his eyes.

An unsuccessful but great game thread would be pretty good I think.

Also, I never heard of Glum Buster until Rinku just mentioned it in this thread.

[bateleur]

Well, to name one, I'd say Grim Fandango.

Games like Grim Fandango and Psychonauts are good examples, but they weren't short of marketing impact.

It eventually got a cult following

Indeed, but not enough of one to have made it successful even if the studio wasn't already dead. And Clover Studio died too, for similar reasons. You can't use AAA budgets to make games critics like.

One thing, how many great games are there out there that you don't know about because of poor marketing?

Fair point. But then, I mercilessly apply Occam's Razor to questions like that!

Also, how many crappy games do you know about that you shouldn't know about but still had great marketing?

Oh, absolutely. I've lost count. But that's a different issue - I certainly don't claim that's impossible or even infrequent. But you can't do that on purpose in the same way you can't win the lottery on purpose.

(Since you think it worthwhile, I'm going to make the other thread now... )

[KM]

The funny thing is, I don't remember ever seeing Grim Fandago marketed at all. I never found it any games stores, no bargain bins, and didn't hear about it until like 7 years later. Psychonauts I would actually see commercials of and I guess is still making money via places like steam, but maybe it had bad marketing too? It's really hard to tell what was good or bad marketing and how things really turned out unless you can see through the eyeys of the devs themselves.

Of course lots of marketing can't save a really bad game. Daikatana anyone? I think some of the marketing was pretty bad on that one, but at least a lot of people knew about it. The hardest step is to get people to actually play the game or consider playing the game.

Occam's razor pwns everyone's ass. :D

I'm not sure if I get what you said. But I think there are people who could take just about anything and market it successfulyy. Look at all the one hit wonder musicians out there. Macarena anyone?

I'll go check out the thread as soon as I can.

[Falmil]

How does the donation thing work? Because I wouldn't think as many people would do donations unless they're actually buying something for the game with them like in Maple Story or Kingdom of Loathing.

[KM]

How does the donation thing work? Because I wouldn't think as many people would do donations unless they're actually buying something for the game with them like in Maple Story or Kingdom of Loathing.

An example would be how wikipedia did it, donation drives. There's a lot of different ways of getting money via donations, some work better in certain situations than others.

[Evan Balster]

I'm back.  Long plane ride.  <_<

Anyway, I should make these points clear:

A) My goal isn't to make money.  All I really want is to be able to keep the world running.  If my player base never gets very big, that's a non-issue and I'll be content.  If it does, I'll be in a crisis for more server space, hence the donations.  My priorities are making the experiment work well--creating the colorful patchwork the game is designed around, fostering a community that undertakes collaborative projects, and overall providing a free creative outlet.

B) Donations right now are through kickstarter and have rewards related to the game.  (see here)  I was thinking selling T-shirts or posters of the player-made world could be really cool, and covered it under the game's EULA.  (Which I wrote myself, which might be a bad idea.)


Anyway, regarding offers and compromises, I don't want to charge for the game (Again, I'd like for everyone to be able to draw) and I don't want ads in it.  With the kickstarter, I'm already "selling" a few gameplay goodies like private and public worlds the donor controls, as well as access to a donor-only world.  Also, world posters.

I don't expect the running expenses of the game to be very much, especially with a marketing budget of zero and a staff comprised of "Evan's spare time".    I am willing to sink some of the latter into community management.

AFTERTHOUGHT: It would admittedly be a HUGE perk to be able to get enough capital from donations to fund me in starting a real indie business I've been dreaming of.

[KM]

I guess if you kep it small then you should able to make enoguh money to run it strictly off donations or game incentives. I guess it all depends on how much bandwidth costs or if people can run their own servers.

And I don't remember donating my spare time to working on the game!   

[Evan Balster]

Another Evan?  Really?  I'm up to, like, five now.  Shoot.


Anyway, if I can't get enough to keep my own server running I'll probably release the server and try to get people to run their own.  :/

[Evan Balster]

Well, I've launched it.  I have a topic over in Announcements now.  Wish me luck...