作者：David Galindo

所以对于一家没有名气的独立开商来说，挤进PC游戏产业到底有多难呢？我们已经提过Xbox Live Indie Games服务，iPhone App Store以及其它独立开发者能够尝试的平台，那么在旧式的PC游戏领域中又是怎样的情况呢？

今天我将讲讲自己销售最近刚刚发行的独立游戏《Oil Blue》的故事，主要是因为我认为独立开发者之间的销售透明度很重要，因为现在创造一款成功的PC游戏越来越困难了。

oilblue(from gamasutra)

没有名气

尽管在过去10年间我已经创造过一些免费游戏，但是直到1，2年前我才开始真正考虑进入商业游戏产业。我的前两款商业游戏《ShellBlast》和《Spirits of Metropolis》都是硬核益智游戏。它们都未得到媒体的关注，因为我并未努力去这么做并且我也不大清楚自己该做些什么，所以发行1年半后每款游戏只赚了不到300美元的收益。所以对于《Oil Blue》这款管理/模拟游戏，我真的非常努力地向玩家和大众媒体进行推广（我自己的网站每天的访问量是300至400。）。

一开始只有3人参与《Oil Blue》的制作：我，美术师（Sara Gross》和编曲者（Jonathan Geer）。我们在5月份完成游戏，在6月初开始进行测试，并在6月22日发行游戏。游戏的预算非常低（大约是500至700美元），但是完成后的游戏规模却大于我们的预期，需要花费5至8个小时才能“完成”游戏，尽管游戏本身可以无限制地玩下去。以下是关于游戏的描述：

“《Oil Blue》是一款独立行动模拟游戏，你将在游戏世界中钻井采油，在市场上贩卖桶油，并在完成United Oil of Oceania公司的老板所设定的目标后开始探索新的岛屿。游戏背景是在不远的未来世界的海上，这个世界对于油的依赖性更高。所以它将依赖于你和工作人员到世界各地去寻找未被发现的探油岛屿，并宣称它们为United Oil of Oceana公司所有。

当你到达一座岛屿时，你将拥有几天的时间，并且你需要在规定时间内装满油桶。启动那些老旧的钻机并开始下水采油，观察油桶市场的变化并以最高价将其卖掉，修复机器—-你需要在规定时间内完成所有的这些事，否则UOO公司将命令你离开该岛屿并派遣新的工作人员前往。你应该销售更多油桶去创造更高的收益，升级你的机器并征服海洋！”

回到11月，那时候我们主要关心的是公众对于游戏一开始的钻井挖油并不了解。我并不是按照现实去创造游戏模式（实际上我并未做任何有关钻油的研究），但我知道游戏的侧重点可能会伤害到我。谁会真正在乎海洋中的石油呢？

当然了，我们都清楚历史上面对最严重石油泄漏的海湾是怎样的情况。如此所有人便清楚在海洋中采油的好坏了。

但这却是我不知道如何回答的主要问题：这一争论是否能够帮助我的游戏，或者它将阻碍它的发展？游戏本身并未涉及石油泄漏或其他任何问题，并且我们所设定的背景是在未来。但不管游戏是基于什么，我知道海洋钻油的游戏理念总是会遭到一些质疑。

我承认这对于我的伤害超过了一切。不只是因为我是个使用博客和网站推广自己游戏的不知名开发者，同时从理论上来看我的海洋钻油游戏可能会被认为是在利用海湾漏油的悲剧。还有另一款独立游戏业利用了海湾漏油新闻的力量，在我的邮件之后那款游戏得到了媒体的关注，并且有些博客想要报道另一款带有相似但却是完全不同主题的游戏。

我认为这便是我的游戏遭到门户网站的拒绝的原因，尽管我曾经基于他们的服务创造过游戏。但除了GamersGate外，几乎很少有平台回应我的邮件。

接受和反馈

给我带来巨大帮助并且是我真的很感谢的一件事是6月初出现在Indie Games上的独家预览，这也吸引了一些主流评论博客对于游戏做出评论，我也因此开始受到关注。我们的游戏所获得的评论都是正面且充满热情，并且还获得了Jay is Games，About.com以及Gamezebo等网站的评论。

尽管如此，我的眼前还是摆着一条崎岖的道路。我将带有标题的游戏预告片提交到Gametrailers.com，尽管根据经验我知道他们会重新编写预告片描述的标题。但是我还是很惊讶地看到：

oilblueGSpicGT(from gamasutra)

评论中出现了许多负面的反馈，整个周末我们的预告片一直都保持在头版中。我认为我们的预告片似乎得到比预期更多的浏览量，同时我也知道许多媒体网站/博客与Gametrailers的看法是一样的：这可能是快速赚钱的一种蹩脚尝试。在我发送评论副本的35个博客中，只有4到5个博客浏览了游戏，不过对于一家不知名的小型游戏来说差不多就是这样的结果了。我希望1up，Giantbomb，Destructoid或其它知名的独立游戏评论网站能够选中我的游戏，但似乎情况并不如意。

游戏销售

需要注意的是，我分享的只是我个人网站上的销售情况而不是来自其它门户网站的销售，但这些销售却真正代表着我现在所采取的做法。

游戏发行于6月22日，售价为14.95美元。到目前为止，《Oil Blue》已经发行30天了，我共卖出了122份游戏，并赚到1645.43美元（税后）。

oilblueGSsales(from gamasutra)

单单我的网站上的演示版本便获得1865次下载。如果未包含网站销售的话我们游戏的转换率大概是6%至7%。这个转换率让我非常惊喜，尽管我需要获得更多下载量才能明确这一数字是如何发展的。在购买《Oil Blue》的玩家中，85%的人是从未购买过我之前的商业游戏的新玩家。

oilblueGSsales2(from gamasutra)

上图是BMT Micro提供的销售图，最高值是出现在一些新评论发布后，尽管在上周我也迎来了零销量的几天。游戏已经不再出现于所有论坛的头版，并且在2周内未出现任何新评论了，所以我将开始根据这些数值判断自己是如何销售游戏的。结果似乎不是很好。

但我已经给更多网站发送了全新的评论副本，我认为这在接下来几周时间里能够带给我一些帮助。7月2日的时候游戏被翻版了（游戏邦注：这很简单，因为我的游戏并不受数字版权管理的保护），单靠这一事实，我也找不到任何理由去抱怨缓慢的销量增长。我讨厌游戏被外部强劲的洪流不断冲刷着。但是我唯一能做的便是耸耸肩继续努力。

真的让我感到沮丧的是愿意接受这类型游戏的网站数量不断减少。Reflexive不再销售游戏，RealArcade也是如此。我记得自己在几年前曾向RealArcade提交了我的第一款游戏并在几天内收到了回应，那不只是一封拒绝信，同时还清楚地说明了他们不能接受我的游戏的原因，接下来我该怎么做以及希望我能够获得好运等内容。

同时还存在一些我所谓的“Steam因素。”有一些人让我在游戏出现于Steam上时告知他们，如此他们便能够购买游戏，但很少有人清楚到出现在Steam平台上有多困难。尽管在月初Steam下载了我的游戏，但是我却还未收到任何反馈，这可能意味着他们对游戏并不感兴趣。

结论

我认为从整体看来，这款游戏对于我的团队来说都是一个好的开始。我计划在明天创造游戏的续集，并且我们将远离海湾新闻的争议，从而避免它再阻碍游戏的推广。此外我们还即将发行一些更传统且对更多用户更有吸引力的游戏。

我希望本文能够带给全新独立开发者关于第一款独立游戏发行的一些想法，或者至少能够带给那些好奇今天PC独立开发状况的人答案。当然了，还有许多比我成功得多的独立开发者存在，但到目前为止我们所面临的真的是个不错的开始。

原文发表于2010年7月24日，所涉事件及数据均以当时为准。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转发，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

How much do indie PC devs make, anyways?

by David Galindo on 07/24/10

So how hard is it for a relatively unknown indie dev to break into the PC gaming industry? Much has been said about the Xbox Live Indie Games service, the iPhone App store, and various other platforms indies can jump off into, but what about good ol’ fashioned PC gaming?

Today I’d like to share my experiences selling a recently released indie game called the Oil Blue, mainly because I think sales transparency among indie devs is so important right now given the increasing difficulty of building a successful PC game (more on that in a bit).

Relatively Unknown

While I’ve made freeware games over the past ten years or so, I haven’t actually gotten serious about breaking into the commercial game industry until a year or two ago. My first two commercial games, ShellBlast and Spirits of Metropolis, were hardcore puzzle games. The games got little to no press, mainly because I didn’t try very hard and didn’t quite know what I was doing, and made less than $300 apiece over a year and a half. So with The Oil Blue, a management/sim game, I was largely marketing my first major indie release to both players and the general media (my own website gets about 300-400 unique visits a day, usually off of the downloadable freeware games).

Production on the Oil Blue started back in November with just three people: myself, an artist (Sara Gross) and a music composer (Jonathan Geer). Work on the game was completed in May, went into beta testing in early June and released on June 22nd. The budget on the game was small (about $500-700) but the game itself ended up being a bit larger than I had anticipated, taking 5-8 hours to “complete,” though the game itself can be played for an indefinite amount of time. Here’s the general descriptor:

“The Oil Blue is an indie action-sim that has you drilling for oil in the world’s oceans, selling barrels of oil on the market, and exploring new islands once you completed objectives set by your employer, the United Oil of Oceania company. Set in the ocean in the near future, the world’s dependency on oil has grown to an even larger amount. It’s up to you and a crew of men to travel the ocean, find abandoned oil drilling islands, and reclaim them for the United Oil of Oceana company.

Once you land on an island, you have a set amount of days and oil barrels to make during your stay. Fire up those old drilling machines and start making oil underwater, watch the oil barrel market and sell at the highest price, repair machines and do it all within the time you’re given…or the UOO will boot you off the island for a better crew. Sell more barrels to achieve higher ranks and perks, upgrade your machines, and conquer the ocean!”

Back in November one of my primary concerns was that the general public had little to no knowledge of ocean oil drilling to begin with. I wasn’t modeling the game realistically (in fact, I did little to zero research on oil drilling at all) but I knew that the focus of the game might hurt me a bit. Who the heck would know, or care, anything about ocean oil anyways?

Oh.

Of course, we all know what happened in the Gulf with one of the largest oil spills in history. Suddenly everyone was going to have an idea of what ocean oil drilling was, for better or worse.

But that’s the main question that I wasn’t sure I had the answer to: would this controversy actually help my game at all, or hamper it from being taken seriously? The game itself has no oil spills or anything of the sort, and in fact was set in the future. But no matter what the game was actually based on, I knew the general idea- ocean oil drilling- was going to come across loud and clear no matter what I did.

Honestly, I think it hurt me more than anything else. Not only was I an unknown dev emailing blogs and sites about my game, but I had an ocean oil drilling game that, on paper, was probably capitalizing on the tragedy of the Gulf and really, how good can a game like that be? Certainly another indie game capitalized full force on the Gulf news, and with my emails coming after that game got press, few blogs took me seriously or wanted to report on another game with similar yet wildly different themes.

I have a good feeling that was the reason why my game was rejected on one portal, despite the fact that I already have a game set up on their service. GamersGate picked up the Oil Blue, but few others (the few that there are) responded to me at all.

Reception and Feedback

The one thing I’m really thankful for and in fact helped tremendously was the Indie Games exclusive preview that was posted in early June, which opened the door to game reviews on a few mainstream review blogs since I wasn’t a complete unknown now. The reviews were very positive and enthusiastic, with reviews from Jay is Games, About.com and Gamezebo.

Still, I had a hard road ahead of me. I submitted a game trailer to Gametrailers.com with a general descriptor, though I knew from experience that they actually write their own captions on trailer descriptions. Still, I was a bit surprised to see this:

A ton of negative feedback was posted in the comments and the trailer itself stayed on the front page for the weekend. I thought it was kind of hilarious and probably got the trailer a lot more views than it ever could get on its own, but at the same time I knew that a lot of media sites/blogs thought the same thing Gametrailers did: this is probably some lame attempt at a quick cash in. Out of the thirty five blogs I emailed review copies to, only four or five checked out the game, which was a reasonable amount for a small unknown game like this one. I was hoping that 1up, Giantbomb, Destructoid or another website known for reviewing indie games would pick up the game, but no dice despite my emails.

Game Sales

It’s important to note that I’ll only be sharing my personal website sales and not sales from portals, but these sales are a really good indication on how I’m doing right now overall (I’m also giving away a small game with the purchase of the Oil Blue on my website only thru August 31st, which helped tip sales towards my website.)

The game was released June 22nd at $14.95. So far, in the thirty days that the Oil Blue has been released, I’ve sold 122 copies of the game, making $1,645.43 after royalty payments to BMT Micro.

The demo on my website alone has been downloaded 1,865 times, giving me a conversion rate of about 6-7% if I don’t include portal sales. That’s a very strong conversion rate that I’m really happy with, though obviously I need to get a lot more downloads to see how that number holds up. Out of the people who bought the Oil Blue, 85% of them were completely new customers who never bought my previous commercial games.

Above is the sales graph provided by BMT Micro with spikes coming at releases of new reviews, though now over the last week I’ve been having some zero sales days (which for some reason isn’t charted on the graph). All the forum threads I’ve started everywhere are now off the front pages, there hasn’t been a new review in two weeks, and I’m starting to see how I’m selling the game just off of my own traffic. The result is less than great.

But, I have been issuing new review copies to more websites, and I think that should help me a bit more in the weeks to come. The game was pirated on July 2nd (quite easily since the game is DRM free) but I don’t have any reason to blame slower sales on that fact alone. Certainly it doesn’t help, and I hate that it’s out there being torrented, but the game will sell when I get more traffic going. All I can do is shrug my shoulders and carry on.

Something that really depresses me is the decreasing number of portals that would carry a game like this. Reflexive have closed their doors to distributing games, and RealArcade has shut down as well. I remember submitting my first game a few years ago to RealArcade and having a response in a few days, but not just a rejection letter…a letter that outlined why they didn’t accept my game, what I should try to do in the future, and wishing me the best of luck. That’s a heck of a lot more than I can say for such distributors like Greenhouse who must have me on their ignore list (of course, they’re still in business and RealArcade is not, so what do I know?)

There’s also something I like to call the “Steam factor.” A good number of people have told me to let them know when my game is on Steam so they can purchase it, but very few people realize just how difficult it is for games to be accepted onto the Steam platform. And while Steam did download my game at the start of this month I haven’t received any feedback, which could really only mean that they’re not interested. And as far as portals/distributors go for indie devs, that’s pretty much all there is.

Final Thoughts

I think overall the game has been a good, solid start for my team. I plan to do a sequel to the game sometime next year, and I think I’ll be far enough away from the Gulf Spill controversy that it shouldn’t hamper the game’s promotion like I believe it did to the Oil Blue. Plus I have a number of games in the works that are a bit more traditional and should appeal a bit more to a larger audience in the months to come.

I hope that this post gives new indie devs some ideas on what to expect for their first major indie release, or at least be somewhat interesting to people wondering just how much PC indie devs can make these days. Certainly there are a lot more successful indie devs out there than myself, but so far it’s not a bad start to what I hope can be a career that pays the bills.(source:gamasutra)