next »

[Rudolf Kremers]

Right, I am thinking about starting an e-shop for game related items, Dyson's art seems especially suitable so it may help us pay for some of our expenses. Thinking right now about: http://www.cafepress.com/but I am keen to hear other people's ideas and experiences first :-)

Anybody has any info/advice?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I think that is a pretty neat idea. A lot of freeware games have trouble monetizing themselves (a lot of shareware games even do), so a place where you can buy indie-related paraphernalia would be nice. I'm sure shirts with art from cactus games would sell well for instance.

I tried it once for Alphasix, but never actually sold anything (of course, I hid the link to it in the game's postmortem, which almost nobody read, so I didn't exactly promote it very well): http://www.cafepress.com/alphasix

[Rudolf Kremers]

Yeah I was thinking that we might as well give it a shot considering the crazy traffic we are getting at the moment, may give us some bonus revenue up to release :-)

[bateleur]

Trouble with stuff like CafePress is its markups are huge.

What's really needed is for someone in the indie gaming world to set up a Custom Drop Shipper VIP domain and then sell merchandise for all games with the agreement of the developers, giving them some pre-agreed cut of the profits.

Indeed, if enough reasonably well known developers were interested I'd do it myself.

[GregWS]

I think it's a great idea! 

But even better is the larger "indie games store" idea; I've actually considered making my own cactus shirt by grabbing some graphics from his site, or taking a screenshot during a game.

I think I'd rather an Everyday Shooter shirt though; who else would want a "Lush Look Killers" shirt? 

And my little sister wanted me to make her a Runman's Moster Fracas shirt after she got hooked on that a little while back; I'd even started ripping graphics to make it, but I never finished it.

Oh, and yeah, I think Dyson is awesome, and would probably buy a shirt/poster. 

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Trouble with stuff like CafePress is its markups are huge.

What's really needed is for someone in the indie gaming world to set up a Custom Drop Shipper VIP domain and then sell merchandise for all games with the agreement of the developers, giving them some pre-agreed cut of the profits.

Indeed, if enough reasonably well known developers were interested I'd do it myself.

I am interested but I'm not reasonably well known.

[Fuzz]

Trouble with stuff like CafePress is its markups are huge.

What's really needed is for someone in the indie gaming world to set up a Custom Drop Shipper VIP domain and then sell merchandise for all games with the agreement of the developers, giving them some pre-agreed cut of the profits.

Indeed, if enough reasonably well known developers were interested I'd do it myself.

I am interested but I'm not reasonably well known.

You're not? Does Immortal Defense not count for anything?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

No, I'm still pretty obscure. Although on the plus side, I was pleasantly surprised that madamluna (she does Let's Plays of cactus games and other games with diseasedcrab on YouTube) said my name was vaguely familiar after I emailed her about using one of her cactus fanart pics for a LJ avatar. She said she saw it on indiegames.com/blog or auntiepixelante something.

So I'd guess that I might be in the top 1000 of recognizable indie developers tops, but certainly not the top 100, and by recognizable I think he wanted the big names like cactus, nifflas, etc.

[Fuzz]

Heh. I would list you in the top 100.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Many thanks, but that's likely only cause you're a member of the forums here -- I'm more locally famous here since I've like 4000 posts.

Actually it'd be an interesting exercise to try to estimate my top 100 indie game developers. Off the top of my head, these would be in my top 100 or so right now, in no particular order and I don't know if it's 100 or not since I'm too lazy to count and just listed them as they came to me:

pixel
ZUN
nigoro
kenta cho
cactus
konjak
derek yu
alec holowka
haowan
phil fish
raigan & mare
ron carmel and kyle gabler
nifflas
yahtzee
edmund mcmillen
orisinal
jon blow
jason rohrer
increpare
jeff vogal
jonathan mak
amanda fitch
tarn & zach adams
david & jeff rosen
mdickie
dessgeega
auriea & micheal
dan dabar
cliffski
papillon
jenova chen
whoever is in pixeljam
whoever is in introversion
whoever is binary zoo
adam cadre
jeff minter
glaiel-gamer
whoever made warning forever
arthur lee
eyezmaze
oddbob
moonpod / fost
dave gilbert
clysm
darthlupi
chevyray
petri purho
jph
messhof
JTR
pug fugly
chubigans
virtanen
kairos
kikiyama
ultimortal
mr kubus
shawn noel
YMM
jesse venbrux
chefboyardee
zaratustra
mousechief
lexaloffle
chris crawford (he sort of counts)

[Farbs]

Haowan is doubly famous.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

hahaha, I listed him twice? I'll fix that

[GregWS]

Man, I'd say I haven't heard of at least 1/3 of those people; though maybe I know some of them by their games.

And there's no way Chevy's on that list and you're not.  I mean, SkullPogo was very popular, but popular enough to make him "known" and you still not?  (obviously no offense Chevy  )

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

He's made other games too I think! Plus that list wasn't necessarily the 'most famous' but my 'top 100' of who I think the best indie game developers are (though there's some overlap).

By the cold, objective standard of Google fame, we could probably measure the fame of that list by the number of times their names, nicknames, and games are mentioned in Google. For instance:

Results 1 - 10 of about 2,710 for chevyray
Results 1 - 10 of about 5,600 for "stephen lavelle"
Results 1 - 10 of about 5,970 for "dessgeega"

etc.

[GregWS]

Results 1 - 10 of about 5,600 for "stephen lavelle"

Results 1 - 10 of about 30,300 for increpare

Haha, you cheated to bring him down Paul!  :D :D :D

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

increpare is a latin word, so that's why I didn't use it -- it's not unique to him

it'd be like searching for "Paul Eres" -- it wouldn't work because eres is a Spanish word, so 'Paul eres' occurs naturally in Spanish

[agj]

Paul, eres sumamente reconocido en la escena independiente.

[GregWS]

Man, I really wish I'd kept learning Spanish right now...

[Rudolf Kremers]

I think I will give this a go as an experiment. We got 60k downloads from our website alone last month.(Not counting mirrors etc)
I think some of those people would be interested in a t-shirt :-)

[Rudolf Kremers]

Ok I have set this up as an experiment:
http://www.cafepress.com/Dyson_Game
They charge a lot, but do all the work really, so I just added a small markup. We won't make real money on this, and that is not the goal really, more to offer this stuff if people would want it. So if it seems pricy that is not us, but cafepress :-D