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[Scotma]

I'm hoping this isn't considered "advertising" in the bad sense of the word, since it seems so relevant to a lot of the discussion here. I'm going to talk about a specific distribution platform as an employee of the company. If I'm off base for doing so, let me know. The goal is to lay out the features of a new distribution platform and open up the discussion so any questions can get answered. I'm an indie dev myself and love it when people are real with me, so I will do the same here.

As an introduction, Yawma is a fairly new digital distribution platform built specifically to share/discover independent games and music with friends via Facebook. It's a platform made for indies, by indies... and as such addresses a lot of problems we've all run into when trying to sell or market our stuff. Let me go over the key features.

Indies only!
DRM Free Content
Tie in with Social Networks (currently Facebook, but Twitter soon to follow)
Profit Sharing for those who introduce content to friends
Non-Exclusive Distribution
50% of Profits to Developers (25% to Profit Sharing - 25% to Yawma)
"Pay What You Want" Pricing Model Option
Support for Downloadable PC, Mac (and soon Linux) Games.

Most indies struggle to get noticed in the scary world of over saturation and massive marketing budgets, so taking advantage of viral social networking is one of the best tactics we have. It requires no money, and the word of mouth is such an effective marketing tool. That's what Yawma is built around. The discovery of really good content and the sharing of it with friends. When content is shared with friends and it results in another sale, then a percentage of the profits (8%) goes to the person who shared it as a way to say thank you for their efforts. More specifics on the profit sharing here.

Because all the content is made by independent developers, the barriers to put your content onto Yawma are pretty relaxed. Creating a developer profile is done by you when creating a Yawma account. We activate the account manually to make sure you're real and not trying to distribute anything weird, then we play through your game to make sure it's more than a prototype and not broken. That's pretty much it. Your game profile page is made by you, you upload the files, etc. We hold no exclusive rights to distributing your game, and encourage you to host it as many places as humanly possible to gain the exposure you deserve.

In addition to selling commercial indie games, we also have an option for "Pay What You Want" (PWYW), which is essentially a fancy donate button. Some of the best games ever made have been free or "experimental", and we want to make sure that those games get spread with the same amount of love as the ones that feed families. Our number one goal is to make sure that indie games continue to get made, and the ones responsible for making that happen get rewarded... developers and gamers alike.

What questions do you guys have? I'm almost certain there's something I didn't cover well enough. Check out Yawma for yourself and snoop around. We have a handful of games for download already, but the doors are wide open for any new games.

http://www.yawma.net/
http://apps.facebook.com/yawma_store/

[KM]

I'm certainly very interested in this as it could be a good platform for indie games & indie game music.

I had a few questions.

Will there be a genre on Yawma that is specifically for indie game music or just game music?
Are there future plans for an app like Steam or iTunes?
What credentials do you have to have to post content on Yawma?
 
I have more questions, but I think I'll ask them if I get an answer for these ones.

[Scotma]

Good questions.

A videogame music genre would be cool, but would entirely depend on how much need there is for it. It seems like a perfect fit to me. Basically, if we could get indie musicians to see that Yawma is a viable platform to host their music for purchase/download, then the genre would get made. Currently any chiptune stuff is being categorized in the experimental/electronic genre. For example: http://yawma.net/albums/273-the-massacre
That's not to say all game music is chiptunes, or that The Massacre is even game music... but you get my point? We'll be adding genres to the games section as they're needed as well.

We've talked about having an installed app for managing content, and we can all see the benefit of doing so. It would require hammering out the features before any serious plans came from the idea, and we haven't settled on what those would be. Any suggestions?

Credentials? Make sick music/games and have the legal right to post it wherever you want. Really, that's it. Our review process is really relaxed. With music, we make sure all your music is quality and a decent bit rate. With games, we play through it to make sure it's not broken and is what you say it is.

Did that answer your questions? What were your other questions?

[KM]

I don't really have any suggestions for an app besides things that apps like steam are doing. Functionality is not really my forte as I'm not really a programmer or app designer. I just like being able to have an app keep track of what I own, allow me to redownload at anytime for free, unlimited times after wiping a program from my computer and it all being conveniently on my desktop.

As for other questions. Are the contracts or service agreements (generic versions) publically posted that the devs and composers can see before deciding to sign up to get their work distributed? Is there going to be an option to donate some proceeds to a charity? And are there any notable indie devs in the community that openly/publically support Yawma? (Like Derek Yu or Alec Holowka?)

[Scotma]

The Terms Of Service link can be found at the bottom the web page. Linked here for convenience.

The service has been in beta for about a year, in which time we have been privately contacting developers and musicians to add their content to Yawma. We just officially launched on the 9th of September. More time was spent during the beta contacting musicians due to the ease of adding music content versus adding game content. This is reflected in the amount of music versus the amount of games currently hosted on the site. That said, there are a few "more notable" developers that currently have their games for sale on Yawma. For example World Of Goo, Lugaru, Eufloria, and And Yet It Moves are all great quality games from notable studios.

I guess that's a round about way of saying that because the service is new there have not been any blog posts talking about the service yet, but there are movers and shakers that have their games for sale through Yawma in addition to their own sites or other distribution platforms. I'd love to hear what people like Derek Yu or Jonathan Blow think of the service. This week, I'm going to be asking the developers that do have their games on Yawma to write about their experiences.

Does that answer your questions? Anything else?

[Scotma]

Double posts for the win...

I saw that I missed the charity question. The answer is yes. To quote directly from the FAQ:
"Weʼre also very interesting in creating a mechanism for charitable donations within
YAWMA and will be announcing something about that very soon."

There's a lot of really good information here in the FAQ pdf, that can be viewed here.

[bateleur]

The Yawma site could really do with an "about" page. Glacing at it briefly, it just looks like a downloadable content shop. From what you've written here it sounds like it's supposed to be more than that, but I don't understand how it works. Is it just that the site offers a profit share to customers who generate new sales?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

could you provide some information on how popular yawma is -- e.g. how many sales it gets per month, and what % of that is game sales? because it looks like something interesting, but i'm not sure it'd be worth using if nobody has heard of it or uses it (i.e. is it worth going through all the trouble of setting up your game there if it's going to sell 3 copies a year or something).

[Red27]

I was interested in Yawma, but the stumbling block was being unable to make a call to my backend server upon a sale.

If Yawma offered DRM (like DRMConnect for Mac / SecuRom for PC) that would eliminate the need for these backend calls.  Any scope for this?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

also, is there an option for 'pay what you want, but with a minimum of $x.xx'? i feel that allowing a minimum of 0.00 rather than a nominal minimum may be a bad idea in some cases

[KM]

The idea sounds nice, but I'm just worried about the execution. The system allows for possible 75% back to community as a maximum from what I understand. But what's keeping people from just buying directly from the dev's themselves and giving them 100& of thr profit? The only things I can think of is profit sharing and if the app becomes wide spread enough that it would get sales that wouldn't occur if the app wasn't around.

I'll probably just end up giving the app and the affiliate a try and see how they work.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

km, you do realize that most portals take way more than 25%, right? reflexive and big fish games take 70% for instance. the trade-off is that nobody would find those games on the developer's site, they trade most of the profits for being seen by customers. so as far as portals go, 25% is the best i've heard of; even manifesto games, which was very indie/community-centric, started by greg costikyan, and so on, took 40%

so yes, the point seems to be sales that wouldn't occur if the app wasn't around (which would be most sales that happen through the app)

[KM]

I kind of figured that most places took a high amount. Never really had any concrete data except for someone mentioned that steam only gives the dev 30% of the profit. So if the app does take off it does sound like a good idea to me.

[Scotma]

Sorry for getting back late to this thread, I've been out of town for the past few days.

The Yawma site could really do with an "about" page.

I agree totally. It's on the to-do list.

could you provide some information on how popular yawma is.

We're a start-up that leverages users sharing content in a viral fashion to increase exposure, and therefore sales. Without quality content, or initial interest, that can't happen. Just going for it and trying it out is the smartest thing that can happen for both parties. As for the trouble of setting your game up, it's simple and not tedious. It doesn't cost anything, and the chance that it could go viral is there. I don't think there's a downside at all. Letting your current fans know that it's on Yawma is a good way to get the ball rolling. Please don't forget the viral side that makes Yawma unique.

I was interested in Yawma, but the stumbling block was being unable to make a call to my backend server upon a sale. If Yawma offered DRM (like DRMConnect for Mac / SecuRom for PC) that would eliminate the need for these backend calls.  Any scope for this?

I'm really sorry about that! When did that happen? The site has been re-coded (front and back ends) within the past few weeks and hasn't had any problems as far as I know. We were waiting for our  stable site before going public, so if it happened before the 9th of Sept. I'd suggest trying again. We're not going to have any DRM (we'll be phasing out our current game DRM program within the next few months entirely).

The idea sounds nice, but I'm just worried about the execution. The system allows for possible 75% back to community as a maximum from what I understand. I'll probably just end up giving the app and the affiliate a try and see how they work.

Yawma is all about the discovery and viral sharing. We want your content to get noticed, so that's why fundamentally we don't want to have an exclusive right on your game and want to reward the folks that share it with other people. In that regard, allowing the community to share your game or music (even if just one track at a time) with the built in sharing features, in addition to your own sales from your personal blog or site is better than just your own site. We're talking about exposure more than raw income. I think you'll find that we're pretty easy to work with when you try us out. Thank you for trying the service!

[Evan Balster]

A few good points came up in the other thread, so I'll leave this here.

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=15423


It's an interesting system, again, though the 'entrepreneurship' angle strikes me a bit oddly.  As a developer of a nonprofit game, I might have a look, but I've never cared for facebook app messages.  Not to be harsh; I understand they're the bread and butter of social network businesses.

[baconman]

Seems cool in concept, and I was a little curious about how "indie team-ups" could be arranged for their 50% distribution.

But this makes me hesitate, and probably with good reason:

If you post User Content to the Site or otherwise through the Service, unless we indicate otherwise, you grant
YAWMA and its affiliates a nonexclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable and fully sublicensable right to
use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display
such User Content throughout the world in any media on or in connection with the Site and the Service. You
also grant YAWMA and its affiliates and sublicensees the right to use your name in connection with such
content and the Service.

Halfway through page 4. WHOOMP, there it is.

 

[moi]

Ow man, this is in every contract nowadays, it's just a standard clause.
Doesn't mean that they won't spoil you though....

[Noyb]

Odd... was that thread locked by the moderators for being too spammy or by the OP because I was being too argumentative? Or just accidentally?

I can't seem to edit posts in a locked topic, so I wanted to make some amendments to what I posted.

Looks like that explanation I found of their business model was old. You might want to take that down, since it's the second link that shows up in Google when searching for YAWMA.

I somehow missed this up-to-date link in the other thread. Couldn't find a link to it on the site proper. Answered most of my questions, which I couldn't find adequate answers for in the site proper.

So, yeah. Seems like there are recommended prices for pay-what-you-want titles, non-members just can't see them. A YAWMA is a personal social network made of people you invited to the site, and people they invited to the site recursively down. You get 8% of the profits of anything you buy that a member of your network buys, 8% of anything the first two levels of the network buys if you spend $5 in that month, and 8% of what the third level buys if you spend $10 in that month. So its basically rewarding people who drive the most customers to their site, and the people who referred those people. There's nothing about selling your YAWMA network, so they might have changed their model?

I'm still not sure if a user can opt-out of broadcasting their purchases to everyone, if they can choose to broadcast only to YAWMA users, and what YAWMA does with the personal and social information available when someone installs the app.

[KM]

If you post User Content to the Site or otherwise through the Service, unless we indicate otherwise, you grant
YAWMA and its affiliates a nonexclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable and fully sublicensable right to
use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display
such User Content throughout the world in any media on or in connection with the Site and the Service. You
also grant YAWMA and its affiliates and sublicensees the right to use your name in connection with such
content and the Service.

Holy f'ing blanket clause batman!  _