作者：Richard Hill-Whittall

让我们着眼于《像素人生》在过去10个月里于PC，Mac和Linux上的发行与销售情况。

我是因为受到David Galindo在Gamasutra上的系列博文的启发才想对我们的游戏《像素人生》自2014年5月在PC，Mac和Linux上的发行表现做出总结。

首先让我们快速介绍下我们自己（Super Icon）。我们是一家独立跨平台游戏开发工作室。我们的目标是创造出优秀的游戏。作为一支团队我们已经面向WiiWare，PSP，Vita和手机等平台发行了多款游戏。我们的三个领导人分别是Richard Hill Whittall，Claire Hill-Whittall以及Steve Howard。

那么他们分别负责什么呢？Richard是Super Icon的设计师，美术师和音频制作人。他非常热爱一切具有创造性的内容。Claire负责所有的业务以及市场营销方面。Steve则是编程方面的天才，他非常热爱代码，而代码也很爱他。

我们最新发型的游戏《像素人生》是我们面向PC/Mac发行的第一款游戏，所以整个过程对我们来说都是陌生的。我们是在去年5月16日发行的这款游戏，最初是在我们的网站通过Humble Widget发行。紧接着我们又在6月11日将游戏带到了Desura。

《像素人生》其实不是一款完全的新游戏；在几个月前我们便发行了游戏的PlayStation Mobile版本，并使用了PSM SDK进行创造。作为一款PSM游戏它卖得不错，并得到了玩家和媒体的认可。

而一开始我们就计划进行跨平台发行，所以紧跟着我们便面向PC，Mac和Linux发行了游戏，并伴随着WiiU，完整的PS Vita版本，同时还希望能够有Xbox One版本。

最初我们不得不将《像素人生》转移到Unity，这需要较大的工程量并花费了比我们预期更长的时间。但是我们之所以选择Unity是因为它能够提供给跨平台发行很好的支持，并且那时候我们也正计划着面向iOS，Android和Winodw的手机发行。

《像素人生》的发行

在《像素人生》发行之前，我们联系了媒体希望告诉他们这款让人惊艳的新游戏，并提供给他们一些先行版本进行尝试，希望能够以此获得一些曝光度。

这真的是一种很奇怪的经历—-那些曾经宣传过PSM版本的《像素人生》的媒体都不愿意再重新接触这款游戏，而像Rock Paper Shotgun等网站甚至不愿作出回应，我们花了几周时间尝试获得一些宣传—-谢天谢地有些较小的网站给予了回应，所以我们得到了一定的宣传，但是我们却不能出现在一些更大的宣传平台上。

关于如何改变这种情况我们进行了多次的内部交流，但在交流方式以及如何改进方面我们却遇到了问题。我猜想许多其它类似的独立体验也是如此，这是件复杂的工作，说实话我们从未成功克服过它。我们同样也通过GamesPress网站发布了《像素人生》的新闻稿，但再一次地我们遭遇了忽视。

如何得到媒体的注意？

如果你不能让媒体感兴趣的话你该怎么做？如果他们不予以回应并且看似不愿意推广你的游戏的话你便不能一直给对方发邮件。如果你们是小有名气的独立开发者，你便更有可能得到宣传。而如果你一点名气都没有的话，那么应对这种问题的最佳方法是什么呢？我们会考虑联系一些PR/市场营销公司，但事实证明我们很难找到合适的公司，并且大多数公司对于我们来说都太昂贵了。这就像“第二十二条军规”般的情况：除非你已经有了名气或者与一些媒体维持着不错的关系，或者要想得到大型媒体的宣传几乎是不可能的事。

让我们再次回首David Galindo关于销售宣传的第五部分内容，我们可以看到《Cook，Serve，Delicious!》得到Giant Bomb的宣传对于David来说是非常关键的时刻。一个晚上的时间游戏销量直线上升，而之前的他甚至还在怀疑自己作为独立开发者的未来。

根据我们的《像素人生》在PC上的经历，我们知道得到大型网站或YouTuber的宣传的重要性。如果没有这些顶级的宣传，你的游戏便很难得到关注。

发行以来的销售数据

所以让我们着眼于数据。

从去年5月16日发行以来到2015年2月，我们的网站共卖出160份游戏（都是通过Humble Widget）。而在2014年结束前Desura YTD共卖出18份游戏，并赚到75英镑的收益。

去年8月我们同时也发行了一次免费更新内容，添加了许多全新的内容。不幸的是这次更新未能给游戏带来更多销量，尽管我们尽所能去推广它。再一次地我们遭遇了来自媒体的闭门羹，所有有关更新的宣传都落空了。这一次更新包含了如下内容：

来自16位体时代的3台新机子—-SNES，Amiga和Mega Drive。每台机子都包含了8个全新关卡。我们添加了游戏手柄支持和控制配置，重新编写的音乐以及重新设计的所有菜单。我们同时还添加了许多新的秘密区域，水果和特别的宝石让玩家去收集，并对一些原有的内容做出了调整与优化。

《像素人生》是在2014年10月发行于Humble Store，但是其销量却远低于我们的预期：到目前为止只卖出181份游戏。

而自2014年8月发行于Indie Game Stand以来，该平台也只卖出13份游戏并赚到90.87美元的收益。我们同样也希望将游戏带到GOG，但却被他们拒绝了，这让我们有点失望。

对于这些数据我能说些什么呢？至少可以说是令人失望的！有好几个月时间我们甚至难以维持生计。想想之前我们甚至期待在第一年能够卖出几千份游戏（并不包括在Steam上）。我期待能在上述平台上卖出至少2000份游戏，虽然根本没奢求超过4000份。

我们从未去计算《像素人生》所花费的开发成本—-大多数开发成本都是我们之前所赚取的收益，所以我们很难进行准确的计算。不过也包含了一些直接的成本，如音乐和额外的图像创造，这些便花费了大概5000美元。

作为一名独立开发者，我们总是很难去计算游戏的开发成本，特别是你还不能将自己的工资计算在内，因为如果你这么做的话，你便会失去热情！从经济上来看这是非常艰难的过程；因为交不起房租，我们只能离开2套租赁房屋。我和Claire还不得不卖掉我们所拥有的一切值钱的东西（游戏邦注：如汽车，KORG键盘，DVD之类的）去支付账单和拖欠的租金。

总之，这真的是一段艰难的时光。我热爱游戏开发，这也是我一直坚持做的事，但有时候你不得不去思考这是否真的是一项对的职业。

Goupees捆绑销售

在去年8月的时候，一位认识的音乐家问我们是否愿意加入他的Groupees捆绑销售。尽管并未听过Groupees，但那时候的我们还是同意了这一提议。Remute是个很好的人，我们并不想拒绝他，并且我们也认为这能够带给《像素人生》一定的帮助。

在此我需要提供一点建议—-尝试着去避免接触松散的捆绑合作！实际上这便等同于你签订了一份要求你投入更多想法和研究的协议。当捆绑被激活时，他们将向你索要Desura秘钥，我认同了，但是他们却说需要3000个。那时候我有点惊慌，担心着自己到底做了些什么。虽然卖出了几千份游戏，但是到目前为止我们却只赚到几英镑。

捆绑销售后，Desura上的游戏销量为12，收益为21.54英镑，然而还存在着好几百个被激活的秘钥。那时候我们觉得自己的游戏好像被盗版了似得！

那期间我们同时还将游戏带到了Steam Greenlight，尽管在Groupees捆绑销售运行期间只出现一些额外的票数。通过捆绑销售我们只赚到了150美元，虽然我们一开始也并未有太大的期待，但这一结果真的太让人伤心了。

Greenlight

2014年7月25日，我们在Steam上进行《像素人生》Greenlight，并且我们很高兴地看到10月2日我们获得了Greenlit，这真的是非常让人激动的时刻。那时候我们的游戏进入了前50名，不过我不记得最终排名是怎样的了。

这真的是很棒的经历，这绝对是我迄今为止开发生涯中的最大亮点。

当我们获得Greenlight时，我们花了几周的时间去添加一些Steam功能，如成就（多亏了Unity我们才能有效地添加这些内容）。在10月中期我们已经准备妥当了，所以我们将发行时间定位10月22日。我们并未真正去研究发行日期并比较那时候的其它发行内容。对我们来说这不会影响我们的发行，除非我们赶上了圣诞假期，这也是我们不想遇到的情况。

Steam上的发行

2014年10月22日，《像素人生》发行于Steam上。我们收到的社区反馈非常惊人，这是第一次有人在谈论PC版本的《像素人生》。这真的是一次很棒的经历；与那些真正喜欢游戏的人进行交谈，去感受人们对于游戏的喜欢。这让我们觉得一切付出都是值得的。

这也让我们再次振作起来，并继续致力于之后的更新内容。我们添加了带有完整控制支持的Steam功能，排行榜，更多成就，交易卡等，我们还执行了许多用户所提出的请求并修复了一些漏洞。Steam社区真的太棒了，我们真的非常感谢他们。

我很高兴地看到Steam上的销售数据远高于其它平台。比起Desura的销量，Steam上的数据真的太让人惊讶了！

在销售第一个月，也就是10月份，我们共卖出了243份游戏并赚到了1178美元的收益。在11月份我们又卖出了420份游戏，赚到了1236美元的收益。

我们参与了Steam的圣诞促销活动，不出所料，12月份是最畅销的一月，即创造了642份销量以及1602美元的收益。Linux上的销售情况也超过了我们的预期，到目前为止我们在Linux上共卖出了110份游戏。Linux社区也起到了很大的推动作用。

2015年发展趋势开始往下走，1月份的销量为160份游戏，收益为521美元。2月份甚至更低，只卖出56份游戏。

到目前为止Steam上的销售总额

自从在Steam上发行以来我们的表现如何？

在短短4个月时间里我们已经赚到了4500美元的收益。粗略算来，扣掉每个月300美元的开支，剩下的钱会平均分配到每个成员手上。

也就是扣掉1200美元的开支后我们的团队所赚取的收益是3300美元。

在所有平台上我们共卖出了1893份游戏。这远低于我们的预期，并且很难维持团队未来的开发。而对于我们来说Steam上的表现是最出色的。

《像素人生》是否具有市场？

“接受市场并不适合这款游戏的事实”

关于《像素人生》我曾多次听到上述这句话，同时失败的Kickstarter也能够支持这一观点。

在我们面向PC发行游戏前，我们对《像素人生》具有非常高的期望。我认为我们将会看到一些不错的评论，玩家将会被游戏所吸引，特别是那些来自复古社区的玩家。在一定程度上我们得到了一些支持，那些玩过游戏的人似乎也是喜欢游戏的（因为我们在Steam上的用户评级还是不错的）。但是不管出于何种原因，我们都从未得到媒体或社区的支持。

我现在的感受如何呢？我有点不确定了—-我是否做错的，这是否是没人感兴趣的无意义尝试？到底存不存在适合这样的游戏的市场？我知道玩家并未沉浸于Pixel这个角色—-他们都认为那只是一个无聊的绿色立方体。我能够理解这样的看法，尽管我兵不同意它。对于我来说，Pixel是一个有勇气的小伙子，是一个想要融入人群中的孤独之人。我喜欢游戏故事和概念，虽然它不能有效地吸引人们进行尝试。在故事背景下Pixel是具有完美的存在意义的。

iOS和Android发行

我最初便计划将《像素人生》带到iOS和Android平台上，实际上我们也努力创造了完整的手机版本，只是在发行前还需要进行一些测试。从根本上来看游戏已经准备好了。因为我们拥有有限的手机发行经验，并且我们所拥有的经验都不是很成功，所以我们决定应该与手机发行商合作去发行游戏。

我们认为发行伙伴将帮助我们获得我们难以触及的销售成绩。我们联系了一些发行商，如Chillingo和Thumbstar，但结果却都不如意。我们收到的反馈是，他们虽然很喜欢游戏，但是觉得它太小众了。最终我们决定不发行游戏，因为我们没有足够的时间或资源去测试并运行手机市场营销活动；我们也觉得游戏一不小心就有可能会陷阱手机深渊中。相反地，我们选择专注于创造WiiU版本—-这是一个很有趣的系统，现在的任天堂真的非常适合游戏创造。

结论

我们仍然有点困惑。

我们仍然相信自己拥有一款出色的游戏，一款值得任何人投入时间去体验并探索的游戏。但是为什么我们未能吸引媒体的兴趣并得到宣传呢？

说实话，我们尽了最大的力量去推广《像素人生》，我们也会继续这么做—-通常情况下如果你不能得到宣传的话便会深陷市场营销洞里而难以触及媒体。但不管怎样我们仍然会继续尝试下去。

我们该如何接近那些未给予回应并且看似不想了解游戏的媒体呢？我们发现这是最难回答的问题，我们也仍未找到解决方法。有些独立游戏的确获得了不错的宣传，但其实大多数独立游戏都和我们一样，虽然我们一开始认为的结果并不是这样。

未来

我们刚刚向任天堂Lotcheck提交了《像素人生》的WiiU版本。现在我们正致力于创造下一款游戏《Vektor Wars》。我们希望将《Vektor Wars》带到Steam上，但我们发现对于独立开发者的每一款游戏来说都需要经历Greenlight。我们原以为经过一次Greenlit，你便能够无需经历完整的Greenlight过程而在该平台发行全新游戏，所以我们正在进行相关研究。

我同时还投入了几个月时间致力于另一款游戏，即名为《Hell House》的恐怖游戏。此外我还和我那10岁的儿子Lucas一起创造了《Best Buds》这款游戏。它使用了《像素人生》的引擎并且是基于Lucas无尽的幻想而诞生的游戏。

现在的我们需要继续坚持下去，我也希望我们的命运能够得到大逆转。独立开发真的是只难以擒服的猛兽啊！

（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?

by Richard Hill-Whittall

A look at the release and sales of “Life of Pixel” on PC, Mac and Linux over the past ten months.

I was inspired by David Galindo’s blog post series over on Gamasutra to put together a full summary of how our game, Life of Pixel, has fared since launch on PC, Mac and Linux in May 2014.

First off, a quick intro, as there is a good chance that you have no idea who Super Icon is…

We are an independent multi-platform game development studio, and our aim is to make great games. As a team, we have self-published various titles on WiiWare, PSP, Vita & mobile.
Right now we are three strong – Richard Hill-Whittall, Claire Hill-Whittall and Steve Howard.

So, who does what? Richard is the designer, artist and audio at Super Icon. He basically loves anything and everything creative. Claire is responsible for all business and marketing aspects, all the day-to-day fun and games. Steve is the code genius, he loves code, he really does – and code loves him.

Our latest release is Life of Pixel, which is the first game we have launched on PC/Mac, so the process is fairly new to us. We launched Pixel on May 16th, initially via the Humble Widget off our own website. This was followed by a release on Desura on June 11th.

Life of Pixel wasn’t a completely new game; we had already released a version for PlayStation Mobile a few months before, created using the PSM SDK. For a PSM title it sold reasonably well, and was very well received by players and press alike.

From the offset, we planned for a multi-platform release; launching on PC, Mac and Linux with WiiU, a full PS Vita version, and hopefully (subject to Microsoft ID approval) an Xbox One version to follow.

Initially we had to convert the Life of Pixel project over to Unity, which was actually quite a large undertaking and took longer than expected. We had decided on Unity as it has such good support for cross-platform releases, and at the time we were also planning iOS, Android and Windows mobile releases.

The Launch of Life of Pixel

Prior to the Life of Pixel launch, we had contacted the press to let them know about our amazing new game, offering pre-release builds for them to try, and hopefully give it a little coverage.

This was an odd experience really – those places that had covered Life of Pixel on PSM were reluctant to revisit the game, and other sites, such as Rock Paper Shotgun would never respond. We tried for several weeks to get some coverage – thankfully several smaller sites did respond, so we did get a little coverage, but we couldn’t ever get the larger outlets to reply.

We had many internal conversations about how to change this, where we were going wrong with our communication, what to do to improve it, and so on. I suspect many other Indies experience a similar lack of response, it is a difficult one, and to be honest we never managed to overcome it. We also released each of our Life of Pixel press releases via the GamesPress site, but again there was no pick-up there.

How to get Press Interest?

So what do you do if you can’t get the press interested? You can’t keep emailing them if they don’t respond and seem unwilling to cover your game. It seems to be the case that if you are a known figure going Indie – you get coverage, pretty much guaranteed. If you are not known though, what is the best approach to tackle this problem? We considered contacting a couple of PR/marketing companies, but it proved to be difficult to find any, and the ones we did find were far too expensive for our budget (which was on the small side). It seems a bit of a Catch-22 situation; unless you are already known or have friendly press contacts already in place, getting coverage on the larger gaming press outlets is near impossible.

Looking back again to Part IV of David Galindo’s sales coverage, it was really interesting to see that David had a pivotal moment when Cook, Serve, Delicious was covered by Giant Bomb. Overnight his sales massively increased, yet before that point he was having doubts about his future as an independent developer.

From our experiences on PC with Life of Pixel, it certainly seems like it is essential to get that mention on a major site, or a Let’s Play with a popular YouTuber. Without this top tier coverage it is very difficult to get your game noticed.

Sales Figures since Launch

So let’s look at the figures…

From our own site, up until end of February 2015, we have sold 160 units since the launch on May 16th (all via the Humble Widget). Desura YTD up until the end of 2014 was a total of 18 units, with a revenue of ￡75.

In August we also released a major free update, which added a LOAD of new content. Unfortunately this didn’t make any noticeable difference to sales, even though we tried to promote it as much as we could. Again we encountered a bit of a wall from the press, so coverage for the update was limited. The update included the following new content:

Three new machines from the 16-bit era – SNES, Amiga and Mega Drive. Each machine included eight new levels. We added game pad support and control configuration, new and reworked music tracks and redesigned all of the menus.
We also added lots of new secret areas, fruits and special gems to collect and a fair few other tweaks and enhancements.

Life of Pixel launched on the Humble Store in October 2014, but the sales were much less than we had hoped; to-date we have only sold 181 units.

Indie Game Stand has seen 13 sales since launch in August 2014, with revenue of $90.87. We had also hoped to get Pixel onto GOG, but they turned us down – which was a little disappointing.

What can I say about those figures? Disappointing to say the least! None of us has been able to earn a living wage for several months now. Looking back, I think our expectations were to sell a few thousand units over the first year (not including Steam). If I recall I think we hoped to see at least 2,000 sales from the above outlets, but didn’t expect more than 4,000.

We have never attempted to work out what Pixel cost to develop – most of the development costs were wages we should have earned, so as such it is hard to quantify an amount. There were some direct costs involved, including music and additional artwork, and these came to about $5,000. I know that working out the development costs against the income received so far would make for grim reading, and it wouldn’t achieve a lot other than to highlight the commercial failure it has been so far.

As an indie developer it is really hard to cost the development of your game, especially when the ethos of many is that you shouldn’t factor in your personal wage costs, and that if you do – you have no passion! It has been horribly tough financially; we’ve had to leave 2 rental houses due to being behind with the rent – usually under very difficult and stressful circumstances. Claire and I have had to sell everything of value we owned to cover bills and rent arrears (which wasn’t much – our car, a KORG keyboard, DVDs, etc.).

All in all, it has been hard. I LOVE developing games, and that is what has kept things going, but at times you think that you are perhaps in the wrong career!

Groupees Bundle

Back in August we were asked by a musician we knew to be part of his Groupees bundle. At the time we agreed, although we’d never actually heard of Groupees. Remute is a nice guy and we didn’t want to let him down, also we thought that it could be useful to get a few more copies of Life of Pixel out into the wild.

A little bit of advice – really try to avoid approaching bundling in a similar lackadaisical way! You are in fact entering into an agreement that requires a whole lot more thought and research. So, the bundle went live – and they then asked for Desura keys, I said sure, how many and they said 3,000 should do. At this point I panicked and thought, damn, what have I done? I’ve just given away several thousand copies of a game that has taken months to make, and so far earned only a few quid.

After the bundle, the Desura sales were just 12 units, with earnings of ￡21.54, yet there were hundreds of active keys out there. At the time it felt like we had actually pirated our own game!

We also had Life of Pixel on Steam Greenlight during this time, although there were very few extra votes during the Groupees bundle run. We made just $150 from the bundle, and while we didn’t really have any expectations, that did seem pretty poor.

Greenlight

We launched a Life of Pixel Greenight over on Steam on the 25th July 2014, and I’m happy to say that on 2nd October we got Greenlit, which was a brilliant moment. By the time we were Greenlit, we were well into the Top 50, although I can’t remember the final position.

It was a wonderful experience, to finally get Greenlit, and definitely one of the highlights of my development career to date.

Once we got the Greenlight, it took us a couple of weeks to add some Steam specifics, such as achievements – thankfully adding these was fairly straightforward thanks to Unity. By mid-October we were ready, so we set a release date for the 22nd October. We didn’t really try to research the release date and compare to other releases at the time. It seemed to us that it wouldn’t make much difference when we released, unless perhaps we timed it to a Christmas launch, which we didn’t want to do – so we just went for it…

The Steam Launch

On October 22nd 2014, Life of Pixel launched on Steam. The community feedback was amazing, for the first time ever people were talking about PC Life of Pixel. It really was a wonderful experience; to talk to people who actually enjoy the game, to feel that there were players out they interested in Life of Pixel. It made everything seem worthwhile.

It also buoyed our spirits, and as such we got to work on a series of updates. We added additional Steam functionality with full controller support, Leaderboards, more Achievements, Trading Cards, and we implemented lots of user-reported requests and some bug fixes. The Steam Community were brilliant, so a huge thanks to them.

Sales figures on Steam were, I am happy to say, much higher than anywhere else. Compared to sales on Desura, for example, Steam numbers were amazing!

In the first month on sale, October, we sold 243 units – with revenues of $1178. In November we made 420 sales, with revenues of $1236.

We participated in the Steam Christmas sale, and as expected, December was our best month with 642 sales and revenues of $1602. Sales on Linux have performed better than we expected, so far we have seen 110 sales on Linux. The Linux community has been very supportive too.

2015 has taken a downward turn, with sales in January hitting 160 units and revenues of $521. February so far is even lower, with just 56 sales.

Steam Totals So Far

How have we done since release on Steam?

We have made just over $4,500 in four months on Steam. Roughly speaking, we then have about $300 per month of expenses and payments to make, and the remainder is split between the team.

So that’s $4,500, less expenses and payments of $1,200 (4 X $300), which leaves about $3,300 earnings for the team.

The grand total of units sold across all platforms is 1893. This is far less than we hoped, and comes very far short of sustaining the team and funding future development. Steam is far and away the best performing storefront for us.

Is there a market for Life of Pixel?

“…accept the market just isn’t there for this game”

I have been told the above more than a few times now regarding Life of Pixel, and there is also the failed Kickstarter to back this opinion up.

Before we launched on PC, we had fairly high hopes for Life of Pixel. I thought we’d see some good reviews, and that players would get behind it, particularly those in the retro community. To a limited extent we did get some support, and those who have played the game seem to enjoy it (our user rating on Steam is Very Positive). We just never got that press support or community interest, for whatever reasons it didn’t push their buttons.

How do I feel now? I’m kind of unsure – did I get it wrong, is it pointless rose-tinted nostalgia that no one is actually interested in? Is there, honestly, no market for such a game? I know that players have not engaged with the Pixel character – the consensus is that he is just a boring green cube. I can understand that point of view, although I don’t agree with it. To me, Pixel is a plucky little fella, a lone Pixel who wanted more than just to be part of the crowd. I like the story and the concept, and it didn’t feel right to try and shoehorn in a human character, or even a cute animal. A pixel made perfect sense in the context of the story – which I’ve included below for those unfamiliar with the game…

iOS and Android Release

We had originally planned to release Life of Pixel on iOS and Android, and we actually went as far as creating a full mobile version, that just needed some testing before launch. Essentially the game was ready. We decided that we should try and release via a mobile publisher, as we had limited mobile experience, and what experience we did have was relatively unsuccessful.

Our thinking was that a publishing partner may help us to reach sales numbers we would otherwise be unable to achieve. We contacted a few publishers, such as Chillingo and Thumbstar, but ultimately it didn’t go anywhere. The feedback was that they loved the game, but felt that it may be a little too niche for mobile. We decided against publishing ourselves as we didn’t have the time or resources to properly test and run a mobile marketing campaign; we felt it likely the game would sink into the mobile abyss. Instead we focused on creating a version for the WiiU, which has been a joy – a great system to work with, and Nintendo are really indie friendly now.

Conclusion So Far

We are a little bemused…

We still have faith that we have a good game here, a game worth anyone’s time to play and explore. But why did we never get the coverage, why do other retro games – Shovel Knight being a prime example, massively eclipse Pixel in terms of press interest?

Hand on hearts – we all tried our best to get Life of Pixel noticed, and we continue to do so – often it is presumed that if you don’t get coverage that you suck at marketing and reaching out to the press. Perhaps we do, but we certainly tried and will continue to try.

How do you approach a gaming press that don’t reply and don’t seem to want to know about your game? We have found that the hardest question to answer, and we still don’t feel any closer to solving it. Some indie games get good coverage; most don’t, yet we honestly thought that we would get more interest in Life of Pixel than we did.

The Future

We have just submitted the WiiU version of Life of Pixel to Nintendo Lotcheck. Right now we are hard at work on our next game, Vektor Wars. We had hoped to get Vektor Wars out onto Steam by now, but we discovered that you have to Greenlight each game on Steam when you are an indie developer. We thought that once Greenlit, you could release new games without going through the whole Greenlight process, so we are looking into options.

I have also spent a few months working on another title (off and on), a horror game called Hell House. Then there is the Best Buds game, a game I am working on with my 10-year-old son, Lucas. It uses the Pixel engine and is a run and gun with a world of ideas fresh from Lucas’s limitless imagination!

We just need to hang on in there, and hopefully at some point soon our fortunes will improve. Indie development can be a tricky beast!(source:gamasutra)