next »

[spidermonkey]

I saw that the Aquaria site was down on the release day. This is because the bandwidth limit was exceeded right? Why did this happen? I don't really know how it all works, but it seems like this is a problem. Aveyond 2 was just released and it's site was also down. And developers are always complaining about bandwidth costs. I don't get it. Can't you get like 3,000 GB of transfer volume for less than 30 bucks a month? Isn't that more than enough?

[Raisins]

Most of the time those kind of services are a rip off. Where your hosing is piped with a dozen others sites.

Basically, go to any static web page, save it to a folder. Look at the size of the folder. Now imagine for a second you get 3000 hits in a day. so multiply that by 3000. Wow, thats quite the number, but almost all pages are several pages deep and have more database intensive stuff on them. It adds up quickly and if your or your host isn't prepared for that kind of CPU/Bandwidth drain. It will lock the whole service up. Thus shutting down your site is the best thing they can do, but some places will just allow you to go over your allotted amount and charge you out the wazoo.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

3GB a month is actually not that much when you're talking about a 63mb demo. Think about it: 3000 MB divided by 63 MB is about 500 MB -- meaning if they were using a host that cost 30 bucks a month only 500 downloads of the game would be possible, and that's if there was NOTHING ELSE on the site except just a plain text link and the game. I suspect the game had several orders of magnitude more than 500 downloads on its first day, let alone its first month. I get about 100 downloads a day for my game and it's nowhere near as popular. So hosting costs *a lot* when you do the math.

EDIT: Oops, I didn't see that you wrote 3000 GB, not 3 GB. Is there really a host that gives you 3000 GB a month for 30$? I kind of doubt that.

In any case I think the best idea is to go with a pay-per-GB system like Amazon S3. They charge about 18 cents a GB used, which is still pretty expensive when you're talking hundreds of downloads of huge demos a day, but at least it's fast and you don't overpay for bandwidth you don't use.

[___]

As far as I know, Dreamhost offers 5 TB of bandwidth a month for 6 to 10 bucks a month, depending on how much you pay for (1 year, 2 years, etc.)

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

It's probably shared hosting, which probably isn't a good idea to use for demo downloads, when the files I host on my shared server max out at around 50kb/sec for download speeds (whereas I get about 1mb/sec from S3).

[spidermonkey]

Ok so is 1and1's web hosting shared? It's $19.99 a month for 3,000 GB. Are most popular indies paying $100-$200 a month in bandwidth?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

1and1 offers both shared and dedicated servers, the dedicated ones are much more expensive.

I don't know who are the most popular ones or what people are paying really. Most indie games are pretty small though -- only a few MB. The problem arises when the demo is much larger, like Aquaria's 63MB. But yes, I do suspect the more popular indies -- the ones with 100,000s of downloads -- pay upwards of a hundred a month in hosting.

[Derek]

We use Joyent, who have been good to us.  I'm not sure if it was bandwidth or memory or what, but we destroyed the shared server we were on.  We had to upgrade and buy one of their Accelerators for $150/month more, but it will be well worth it in the long run!

I don't think the outage hurt our sales too much, tbh.  Having a strong indie community really helps for that.

[spidermonkey]

Can I ask how many downloads you've had so far?

[Blueskied]

Why not put the demo on a file hosting server when the traffic peaks, like on the 1st day of release? This services are quite costly but should be reliable.
That's theoretical, haven't had such a rush to my website yet (unfortunately).
Edit: Oh, you already bought an extra package, so you already have a solution, i guess.

[Doncommie]

For actual files you want to stay alive try Amazon S3, $0.16 per gigabyte and good luck exhausting their bandwidth.

[Derek]

Can I ask how many downloads you've had so far?

I'm not sure how many demo downloads we've had, and I think it's a little early to release sales figures.

BUT, I will say that the $30 price point has worked well for us so far (since that seems to be a point of debate).  Obviously, there are some people that are unwilling to pay for the game at that price, but overall everyone who's purchased the game seems to be very happy with it.

Alternatively, you can look at Introversion, who started out charging $50 for Darwinia and then lowered the price to $30.  They are doing quite well as an indie game business.

My belief is that, if you feel your game is worth the extra $10 or however many dollars, charge at that price.  Some people may balk, of course (okay, they definitely will), but if you provide the experience you're advertising, you stand to do better to price your game a bit higher (I know there's some economic theory behind it, but I don't know the name).  Besides, you can always lower it!

And one thing that this whole experience definitely proved for me was that people do truly want to support indie developers.  It's extremely heart-warming and gratifying, and I can't express enough how happy I am about that!

[Chris Whitman]

From a devilish, capitalist perspective, keep in mind that, while some people may balk at a higher price, a higher price also increases perceived value.

People who might download a game for free would not buy it if you charged $1, but if you charged $10 or $20 they'd probably think about it.

So just because you've had a few complaints due to a $30 price does not mean that it has actually produced a real drop in sales, it may in fact motivate other people to buy it.

[Akhel]

it's a little early to release sales figures.

Infinite dollars.

[Golds]

I agree with Derek/Alec about the $30 price, for a lot of reasons.  In the old days of shareware games, it was common to charge $25-30 for a game made by one guy on a floppy (AmbrosiaSW still charges the full price for old Mac OS games that no longer even run on modern operating systems -- $30 for Ferazel's Wand).  Now, a lot of games are more complex, and people expect to pay less for them?

The problem is the cutthroat business model of the commercial game industry, where most games sell the most in the first six months, and are then sold at budget prices.  The other problem is that a lot of indie devs seriously undervalue their own worth, and charge too little for a game.

This second point is very important, because customers will actually pick up on this.  If you charge too little for your game, people will sense, possibly subconsciously, that you aren't confident about the quality of your game, and they're LESS likely to buy it.  So charging a reasonable price for the value you're offering is essential.

Another indie who sells at reasonable prices is the Lexoffle guy.  $20 for Chocolate Castle.  I've considered buying it .

[ravuya]

Have you guys bugged Valve about getting the game on Steam? Not that you absolutely have to, but you can send 'em an email and ask. They've run much worse stuff.

[thecreatrix]

I think it's great that Aquaria is $30. Charge what you're worth, not what convention dictates. $20 works for many games, but you're potentially missing out on 50% more money if you never try anything else.

Oh, hi. First post and all.