Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Effective advertising

So the end goal for any indie game developer is to make at least enough money to be able to continue making games.  I have been researching some of the options available for earning money from games and the tough part now is to decide on what to do.  I know that it may be a bit early to think about it when the game is so far from completion, but I like to have some idea what I may do in case it will effect the development.  So far I have heard of these options:
  • Virtual currency
  • Direct in-game purchases
  • Pay to play(subscription)
  • Charge for the game
  • Charge for expansions
  • Advertising
  • Donations
  • Sell to a publisher or game portal
  • Some variation of the above
The difficult thing is finding the right balance.  You don't want money to get in the way of the game and yet you need money to continue to improve the quality of games that you can provide.  Even if you go strictly with open source and free tools,  and do all the coding, design, art and sound yourself, you will still have to worry about somehow getting test devices, upkeep on your hardware, application fees for app stores, etc.  And let's face it, if you work alone there is a limit to the kinds of games you can produce in a reasonable amount of time.  For a simple game like Radioactive, I think I am leaning towards either pay up front or make it free and pay for expansions, but we'll see!

No comments:

Post a Comment