作者：David Galindo

一年前我开始在自己的网站以及GamersGate上销售我的第一款商业独立游戏《Oil Blue》。从那时以来我已经写过两篇描述自身经历以及游戏销售的文章，希望能够帮助其他独立游戏设计师更好地理解我们所面对的挑战。

然而在那之后又发生了许多有趣的事让我希望再次与你们进行分享，包括《250 Indie Games You Must Play》这本书的发布以及因为YouTube我首次发现游戏遭遇盗版的情况等等。同时我还要分享除了我的网站外游戏在其它分销网站上的销售情况，从而为你们呈现游戏到今天为止的整体销售。

oilbluebox(from gamasutra)

我们中止于哪里

在阅读本篇文章前请你先阅读我之前的两篇文章，如此你才能了解这系列文章的起源以及我为游戏所设定的目标等等内容。

因为“假期冬眠”我们中止了游戏—-即因为圣诞季，游戏的销量遭到了冻结，我不知道游戏销量是否会恢复或者将在12月份开始出现下滑。那时候我的目标是开始一个新项目，即正式宣布开始一个新项目并凭借着《Oil Blue》获得更多宣传。

P3vB(from gamasutra)

2011年1月至2011年6月的销售情况

似乎在一开始我便很害怕假期销量大幅度下滑，因为游戏在1月份的销售额是280美元而在12月的销售额仅为40美元。但是在2月份游戏销售额降到了100美元，在3月份甚至只有40美元了。如此看来《Oil Blue》算是完成了其销售运转。

在这一期间我计划着公开自己的下一款游戏，即基于美国司法体制的一款游戏。但在做出计划的同时，我逐步意识到自己需要投入更多时间于游戏中，更别提进一步发展游戏的昂贵费用了。当我凭借着少量的报酬尝试着置身于一款需要花费较长时间的项目时，我慢慢开始感到沮丧。与此同时我想要降低《Oil Blue》的价格去宣传新游戏，因为我的用户非常有限，所以我只能尽可能地利用更多宣传。但似乎一切都未能奏效。

然后我收到了来自Mike Rose的邮件。他正在写一本名为《250 Indie Games You Must Play》的书，并问我能否将《Oil Blue》加入其中，对此我非常高兴。不仅是对游戏成为书籍的一部分感到荣幸，而且这也能够成为我降低《Oil Blue》的价格的理由，并借此书籍更多地销售游戏。这一方法真的很有效，直至6月份游戏的销售额又增加了600美元。但这并不是最有趣的一部分。

每个人都喜欢捆绑销售

4月16日，《Oil Blue》的价格从14.95美元跌至8.95美元，并将持续到6月31日。而在我的网站上也仍有一些捆绑销售，即基于较低价格出售我的所有游戏（在第二部分文章中提到的3种捆绑销售）。我也削减了捆绑销售游戏的价格，即将5款游戏的捆绑价格从25美元降低到15美元，其它2款捆绑销售也降价25%至40%。

当《Oil Blue》凭借新价格继续促销时，我所看到的改变并不明显：在我的网站以及GamersGate上我只卖掉少量的游戏，这点让我很吃惊。但更让人吃惊的是出现许多人购买5款游戏组合包，并将其销售额从100美元带到了600美元。这就好像我再次以15美元在销售《Oil Blue》一样。如此看来，游戏销售的确取得了成功，即创造了上半年未创造的额外收益。

盗版和YouTube

让我们回到游戏最初发行的时候，我将游戏的预告片提交到GameTrailers并继续将其上传到我的YouTube账号上，如此我便很容易将其链接到其它网站上了。YouTube上的预告片是我在各种论坛，网站上呈现游戏时所提供的链接。但真正有帮助的还是YouTube所提供的所有视频的流量指示器，即能够告诉你哪个网站嵌入了你的预告片，你从每个网站中获得多少浏览等等。以下是我在YouTube上的一个视频的相关例子：

P3v2(from gamasutra)

在发行后一周左右，《Oil Blue》的预告片浏览量便超过1万，但在销量上却没有明显的变化。所以我便打开了流量页面。让人惊讶的是，有4个不同的盗版论坛链接了该预告片，这些链接让玩家能够在Rapidshare和其它网站上下载我的游戏。

这时候我所做的第一件事便是将我的流量页面设为私人可见，如此便没人能够看到盗版链接了。然后我打开了那些论坛并尝试着给它们发送电子邮件要求对方关闭下载链接。RapidShare，Megaupload等网站在几天内关闭了链接。但仍有一些不知名的下载网站隐藏于其中—-所以我不得不申请版权专属，并等待几周的审核。仔细检查了各种网站但却发现几个小时内其它网站上又出现了游戏链接，这真的让我很受挫。虽然关闭了大多数链接，但始终存在漏网之鱼。

不过在打击盗版这条路上YouTube的流量页面真的带给了我很大的帮助，所以在下一款游戏发行时我仍会使用这一工具。

关于付费解决方法

因为《Oil Blue》的销量逐渐下跌，我想尝试一些不同的方法去销售游戏，不一定是为了销售更多《Oil Blue》，而是想看看哪种方法能够有效地作用于自己的下一款游戏。以下便是其中的一些方法：

TrialPay

因为在几个月内未出现新的发行内容或消息，我的网站的流量一直处于下降状态，我很难尝试着基于TrialPay去使用全新的分销模式，即让用户从不同公司（如Netfix）间选择内容，完成它们并能够因此获得免费的《Oil Blue》。该模式非常可靠，我便遇到一些成功使用该模式的人，但对于我来说这却不是一直持久的付费解决方法。

不过对于在下一款游戏中使用TrialPay我仍具有一些不错的想法。也许我能够将其作为“预订”动机并在游戏发行时中止它。但我想要指出的是其背后真的有一群非常出色的创造者，如果任何独立游戏开发者想要尝试付费解决方法的话，我一定会将其推荐给他们。

发行商

我已经接触了一些想要在其网站上呈现《Oil Blue》的网站和发行商，并且我也同意与他们进行合作。但是在我将游戏带到他们平台上6个月后我却未收到他们的任何回复。有些发行商甚至在自己的网站上将游戏价格提升到20美元。

从中我学到的是不能轻易接受那些发邮件希望将你的游戏放在他们平台上出售的人。不过我也不认为他们就因此赚到了许多钱（游戏邦注：毕竟与Steam相比较他们仍然是一些初出茅庐的网站）。

不管怎样我也很庆幸能够与他们合作，因为正是因为这样我才清楚今后不能再与他们合作了。

Game Giveaway of the Day

GGotD是一个能够快速提供现金和大量访客的网站。我不认为将一款新游戏带到该平台是一种明智的做法，但对于资金流动缓慢的“老游戏”来说，获取流量和报酬却很重要。他们也会在你的游戏出现当天在其游戏页面上刊登你的游戏广告，就像去年当我的一些旧游戏使用其服务时便带动了《Oil Blue》的额外销量。尽管其付费不是很准时（我总是需要发邮件去催他们），但是至少我没遇到过赊账的行为，所以我计划着明年继续与他们合作。

GamersGate

虽然在过去我一直与GG保持合作，《Oil Blue》发行后也一直待在该网站，但我仍想借此机会夸夸他们的服务。我会极力向所有准备进入商业领域的独立开发者推荐他们。他们每个月都会准时将收入报表发给我，这是大多数其它公司所做不到的。我从未在此遇到付费问题，他们总是能够第一时间回复我的邮件。对于独立开发者来说他们无疑是最佳门户网站。而对于Steam我自是没有发言权的，毕竟他们拒绝了我的游戏。

最后的销售统计

在销售了1年的游戏后情况是怎样的？包括我的网站外部的所有销售（这是我到目前为止未曾分享过的）以及捆绑销售，我共赚到了4480.87美元的收益。但我不禁问自己：如果考虑到我所投入的时间，这些钱是否足够？

如果说要以此谋生的话，这些钱远远不够。但如果是为了获得游戏创造的经验和乐趣，并且将其作为我的补充收入（真正工作是作为一名开费时），我认为这便足够了。我的目标并不是赚足1万美观，不过对于我的下一款游戏却可以尝试看看。

《Oil Blue》改变了我对于目前所创造的下一款游戏的计划。这一次，我提供给美术师和编曲者版税和前期报酬，如此他们便会更加用心地投入于项目中。我同样也并不打算将游戏定价为14.95美元，而是可能在8.95美元至12.95美元之间，因为这更适合我们现在的用户。同时我正在创造游戏较早前状态的预览，并将于6月29日在我的博客上刊登新游戏的相关信息（下图是我在上周所发布的预告片截图）。

但我真正希望的是这系列文章能够帮助那些正在计划自己下一款独立游戏的人跨越即将面对的财政和商业障碍。希望你们有好运。

原文发表于2011年6月27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? (Part III)

by David Galindo on 06/27/11

It was just one year ago that I started selling my first major commercial indie game, the Oil Blue, on my own website and GamersGate. Since then I’ve written two articles (Part 1) (Part 2) detailing my experiences and sales in the hopes of helping fellow indie game designers understand the challenges facing us, with the intention of my last article six months ago being the final “conclusion” of my written experiences.

However, enough interesting things happened between now and then that I’d like to share once more with you all, including the first sale on the Oil Blue and being published in the book, “250 Indie Games You Must Play,” as well as going back to detail a few areas such as finding out when my game was first pirated thanks to YouTube. I’m also going to share my sales including distribution sites outside my own website for the first time, giving you the complete total of sales to date.

Where We Left Off

If you haven’t read my previous articles on my game sales (Part 1) (Part 2) please do so before diving into this one so you can get a sense of where I’m coming from, the goals I had for the game, and so on.

We left off with the game coming out of a “holiday hibernation” where sales had largely frozen over thanks to the Christmas season, and I had no idea if game sales would kick back into action or I had seen the final plateau of sales in December. At that time my goal was to start a new project, get far enough along to officially announce the new project and kick off a sale on the Oil Blue at the same time to gain more publicity.

Sales for January 2011-June 2011

It seemed at first that my fears of not being able to “shake off” the dip in sales for the holidays might have been unfounded, as the game sold about $280 in the month of January, a much better figure than the $40 I had made in the whole month of December. But then sales dipped to sub $100 in February and finally $40 in March. It seemed the Oil Blue had finished its sales run.

During this time I had planned to unveil my next game, which was going to be a game set in the justice system of the USA. The more I had planned it, the more I realized how much time I was going to need to put into the game, not to mention how expensive it was going to be, leaving the project going nowhere fast. I was getting aggravated at myself for trying to get involved in yet another year long project with little return, and I was slowly getting depressed. Meanwhile, I knew I wanted to drop the price of the Oil Blue in conjunction with announcing my latest game, simply because my audience was limited and I wanted to leverage as much publicity as possible. But nothing was coming together for the latest project.

Then, I received an email from Mike Rose. He was putting a book together called “250 Indie Games You Must Play” and asked if I would allow the Oil Blue to be a part of it, and I was ecstatic. Not only was it a great honor to be a part of something like this, but it would allow me to finally have an excuse to drop the price of the Oil Blue and sell some copies with the added attention it would get from the book. It paid off nicely, with the sales adding another $600 in sales up to June. But that’s not the most interesting part.

Everyone Loves Bundles

The Oil Blue dropped from $14.95 to $8.95 on April 16th, with the intention of running to June 31st. However I also have a few bundles of games on my site that include all of my games at a cheaper price, with three bundles in all (see Part 2). I went ahead and slashed the prices on the bundles as well, from $25 to $15 for my five game bundle pack and 25-40% off the other two bundles.

When the Oil Blue went on sale with its new price, the change was minimal: I sold a paltry amount of new copies on both my site and GamersGate, which was quite surprising to me. But what was even more surprising was the influx of purchases for the five game combo pack, bringing up sales from $100 to $600. It was in a sense like I was selling the Oil Blue back at $15 all over again. In that regard, the sale was a nice success in bringing a little extra revenue for a game that hasn’t done much in the first part of the year.

Piracy and Youtube

Back when the game was first launching, I had submitted a trailer to GameTrailers and went ahead and uploaded it to my YouTube account as well, since it’s very easy to embed on other sites. That main YouTube trailer was the one I linked to when posting the game on various forums, websites, and so on. But what was really helpful was the new traffic indicator that YouTube has for all their videos now, which tells you which websites embed your trailer, how much traffic you get from each one, etc. Here’s an example from one of my YouTube vids of a crazy Burnout 3 crash:

About a week after launch, my Oil Blue trailer view count spiked to over 10,000…but I couldn’t see any discernable difference in sales. So I loaded up the traffic page and, to my horror, found four different piracy forums linking to the trailer, all with up to five links apiece to download my game on Rapidshare and other sites of that nature.

The first thing I did was make my traffic page for the trailer private, so that no one else could see the piracy links. The next thing was to go to each of those forums and try to shut down the download links at the source by emailing them. Rapidshare, Megaupload and some other sites took down the links within the day. Other less known download sites had incredibly difficult hoops to jump through- going as far as having to fax over a copy of a legal document of copyright ownership, and waiting a few weeks to be approved. The idea of going through all that trouble only to have another link posted within a few hours seemed ludicrous to me, and frustrating as hell. I took down most of the links, but there was only so much I was going to be able to do anyways.

Still, YouTube’s traffic page helped immensely in knocking a few holes into the pirate ships, and it’s something I’ll be using to my advantage in the next game I release.

Experiments with Payment Solutions

Because the Oil Blue was slowing down on sales, I wanted to try out some different ways of selling the game, not necessarily to help sell more copies of the Oil Blue, but to see what would work best for my next game. A few of those included:

-TrialPay

Because traffic to my website is down to a slow burn due to no new releases/news on new releases in months, it was hard to try out this new model of distribution with TrialPay, which allows a user to choose offers from different companies (such as Netfix), complete them, and receive the Oil Blue for free in return. The model they have implemented is very solid, and I had a few people take advantage of the offer, but not enough for me to offer it as a permanent payment solution.

Still, I have some good ideas on how to leverage TrialPay on my next game. Perhaps I could offer it as a “preorder” incentive and then discontinue it once the game is released. But I do want to point out that they’re a nice group of people over there that I would recommend to any indie game developer wanting to experiment with payment solutions.

-Publisher

I’ve been contacted by a few portals and a publisher asking about taking the Oil Blue to their sites, which I agreed to. I’ve yet to hear back from them six months later, despite having my game on their services. The publisher even raised the price to $20 on their site, though it doesn’t seem like they’re offering the game beyond their website.

What I’ve basically learned from this is to probably never accept offers from people emailing you about putting your game on their services. I don’t think they’re necessarily sitting on a pile of money and not sharing the dough (I would be very surprised if they sold any copies at all, since some of those were startup portals in the vein of Steam).

I’m thankful to have done business with them however, so that I know never to do business with them again.

-Game Giveaway of the Day

GGotD is a good site for some quick cash and visitor hits, no question. I don’t think it’s wise to put a new game on their service, but for older games that aren’t bringing in cash flow, it’s a great way to grab some traffic and compensation. They also allow your ads on their game page for the day your game is given away, which led to a few extra sales of the Oil Blue when I ran some older games on their service last year. While payment can be a bit erratic (I’ve always had to email them at least once to remind them of payment due), I’ve never not been paid, and plan to do business with them later this year.

-GamersGate

While I’ve done business with GG in the past and the Oil Blue was on their website just a week after release, I just wanted to take the opportunity to praise their services. I cannot recommend them enough for all indie devs ready to jump into the commercial space. They have monthly invoice statements sent to me on a good schedule, something that I’m learning is quite rare for most companies to do faithfully. I’ve never had any problems with payment or issues, and they’re quick to respond to my emails. They’re the best portal on the internet for indie devs, no question. Of course, I can’t speak for Steam because they’ve rejected my game, but hey.

The Final Sales Tally

So, after one year of sales, where do I stand? Well, including all sales outside of my website (which I haven’t shared before until now) and bundles, I’ve made $4,480.87. On a budget of about $800, that’s not too shabby at all. But I have to ask myself: given the time I put in to make that money, was it worth it?

For making a living off of, no, it wouldn’t be worth it. But for the experience and joy of making a game, and as supplemental income to my current real job as a barista, yeah, I think it definitely was worth it. I didn’t get to $10,000 as my own personal goal, but I think I can get there with my next game.

My experience with the Oil Blue has changed my plans for the next game I’m currently making. This time around, I’m giving my artist and composer freelancers royalties in the next game as well as up front compensation, so that they feel they have more invested in the project than they did before. I also don’t plan on hitting the $14.95 price point with this next game, but want to take it around $8.95-12.95, which better serves the audience I have now. I’m also kicking off previewing the game at an earlier state than before, with the first information of my new game being posted on my blog on June 29th (below is the teaser image we released last week).

But what I really hope is that these series of articles have helped someone out there planning their next indie game, and the hurdles they’ll be facing both financially and commercially. I wish yall good luck in your endeavors, and I’ll be back a month after my next game releases to tell you all about my sales experiences once more. Thanks and good luck out there!(source:gamasutra)