If ya wanna miss my waffle - go to the end bit first!
My games suffer from not being visible. They may also suffer other problems but that is the one i will focus on for this post.
So to fix my issue of no revenue all i need to do is fix my visibility. As anyone who read this Blog knows, this has been my most covered subject. So if i have a game that is converting like 25% of the time i am doing great right? Unless i am only being seen by 4000 players. so all i need to do is bump that number to 100,000 players and i will be making some real money, maybe even enough to make a nusiness out of making these games. Cos, even if i have 100% conversion at 4000 players, i am still not doing well.
So as usual i need visibility. Now here comes the real point of this post.
If you have visibility, then you have power. Power = money, or the potential for money. Take the example of if i had 1 million twitter followers. Well that would give me a lot of suggestive power. I tweeted one day that everyone should buy a certain Candy, it seems reasonable that a lot of those followers would indeed do that next time they are at the store etc. Now i won't go into any phsycology here, but if they followed me, then they are paying me some attention, so will listen to a varying extent to my tweets and suggestions. So if i said this is an awesome game, i would absolutely expect the game to get downloaded a lot more. Now i don't have a million followers on Twitter, and i do not have that power. But how much could i sell it for if i Did ?
We already see this exact same system in play with web sites of course. You buy advertising on popular web sites and it costs more than less popular ones. So it seems very reasonable that If i had the numbers i would have the power, and it would be easier to make money not only of my Own stuff, but also other people using me to advertise with.
So to bring this round to the main point i am going to make.....
The Xblig community has a number of hits on it's hands. How big a deal would it be for those guys to advertise other games from within their Xblig game. Probably ones that they felt were worthy?
Da Voodoochief
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
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The idea is cool but unless you have a REALLY GOOD relationship with the other developer I don't see this happening.
ReplyDeleteUsually people tend to see everything from the "How could I benefit from that" pov, and your idea, while good, is risky because they could earn more downloads (by showing their title on your games) or lose downloads (by showing your title from their games and allowing players who where willing to spend MS points on the other developer game instead, a game which they wouldn't have seen if it wasn't for the ad.).
I repeated a lot of times the word "game", I really need to read more and gain better control of the languague (english is not my mother tongue) :P
You Sir do very well with your English, regardless of if it is your mother tongue or not (even your spelling s good!).
ReplyDeleteYou have some good points, and although i agree, i would also bring up the fact that i personally believe that people who buy a game on Xblig (presuming they are happy with that purchase) are going to buy more Xblig games. They will continue to do this becasue the value for money can be exceptional. So i do not believe them buying one game on the service will exclude them from buying more.
However if they get burnt with a bad purchase that might put them off. That is why i thought the idea of approval by the big named players would be nescessary.
Da Voodoochief
I have an "Other Games" section in each of my releases (besides my first) that list my other XBLIG releases. When releasing my new games, I have not seen any noticeable increase in downloads of old ones.
ReplyDeleteMy guess is that most don't look at the "Other Games" page. How do you remedy that? Making it more obvious or forcing the gamer to see it I suppose but at that point, it could turn into something annoying and obtrusive.
If you're going to cross promote with other developers, do it in a clever way. Have a billboard that advertises some other game in your background, insert a random character from another game as an enemy or friend, etc.
Yeah, i have cross promoted from my second one as well. I am not sure i have seen any real improvement in the promoted games. However if one of my games goes postal and sells like 100,000 copies, maybe then i will see a bump. That is really the kind of number the most popular games can push, and it is those games to try and get cross promotion from. Not our little 5000 downloaded games.
ReplyDeleteI also did a few items of cross promotion of characters from otehrs games, though i feel that kind of advertising is way too subtle.
I think the comment hat was made to me in Twitter from @stegergames was right though. With no clickable and broswse featuref rom within the Xblig game. It is a fail. Wp7 games have that working, which i love personally. Time will tell if that cross promotion might work.
Da Voodoochief