Archive for July, 2008
Elusive Figures: The Difficulty of Market Research
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008
I’ve mentioned in previous posts the challenges of finding information on starting a small, casual games company. One of the most difficult things to find data on is sales figures for casual games. There are very few companies who are willing to share their financial results. Perhaps it’s because most indie casual games companies don’t make much money, perhaps some make a lot? It’s hard to say why.
At any rate, I’ve been collecting links to websites that do have glimpses of insight into the world of casual games sales. My first reaction was to contact NPD Group, because I’ve seen their reports on console sales. Let’s just say that unless I find some serious investors, their reports aren’t really within my budget for fiscal year ’08. However, I have been able to find some free information out there:
- VG Chartz (www.vgchartz.com) – This website provides free reports on weekly game sales numbers (number of units sold, not dollar figures). I’m not entirely sure how accurate their numbers are, but if they’re even close, it provides some useful information. Unfortunately, they don’t track casual PC/Mac games much. However, they have started producing reports on Xbox Live Arcade game sales. You’ll find these reports in the “News” section of the website each week. Here’s the report for the week ending July 26th, 2008.
- GameProducer.net (www.gameproducer.net) – Juuso Hietalahti, a game producer, runs this blog. Unfortunately the sales-statistics page hasn’t been updated since October 2007, but it’s still an amazing resource. You can see that indie games tend to sell anywhere between $2,000 and $100,000 worth of copies. This is perhaps why so many companies are unwilling to share sales numbers. Not many companies would be willing to admit that their game sold $2000 worth of copies.
- Casual Charts (www.casualcharts.com) – This site lists the Top 10 games at most of the major casual games portals on the web. It doesn’t list sales numbers at all, but it does show you what’s currently the “hot” genre of casual game, if you want to track trends.
While we’re on the subject of number, here are some important numbers I’ve been rolling around in my head while starting this company:
- 1.0-1.5% – This is the typical “conversion rate” for a web-distributed game. Conversion rate is the percentage of people who try the demo who then purchase the game. So if you manage to get 100,000 people to download your demo, expect 1,000 of them to actually buy the game. Great odds, huh? I’ve heard that some really huge games, like “Peggle” had slightly higher conversion rates, but those are just rumours.
- 6 months – This is how long I’m projecting it will take me to build my first game. I’ve chosen a game with a scope that I know I can complete. I need to schedule it out once I’m done my prototyping, but I’m targeting 6 months until release.
- $200,000 – Minimum budget required to build a game for Xbox Live Arcade (this is just a number I’ve heard a few times, it’s not necessarily guaranteed “fact”). This is why I’m not doing XBLA games yet. This, of course, wouldn’t apply the same way to Microsoft’s new Community Games initiative, but the profit margins on those games still needs to be proved out.
So given all of this, why on earth would anyone want to do this? Why would I want to do this? Because I love making games. I can’t imagine doing any other job anymore. In this role, not only do I get to build the game, but I get to create it. I get to take an idea and turn it into something that is (hopefully) wonderful and fun, not only for myself, but for other people as well. I can’t imagine a better job than that!
Owen
Emotion Engineering
Tuesday, July 29th, 2008
I wasn’t planning on posting anything today, but I just finished reading through a fascinating article on Gamasutra on “Emotion Engineering”:
The article is a fairly long and somewhat “academic” read, but I really enjoyed it. The author (Stéphane Bura) is trying to create a set of rules for generating an emotional response in players through a game.
I’ve been talking for some time with my peers about the need for more rigorously defined language for speaking about video games. In order for us to be able to think critically about games we need a common language with which to speak. Bura is attempting to provide one such language for looking at emotion in games. Even if it’s not perfect, I think it’s a great starting point.
Owen
1) Prototype 2) … 3) Profit!
Monday, July 28th, 2008
My last two posts have been mostly related to getting the business up and running. I still have a couple more of those, but today I thought I’d post about how I’m approaching the process of starting my first game.
Building a game isn’t easy; I know this. I’ve been doing this long enough now that I know how much work it takes to make a game, let alone a good one. So where does one begin? Well, with an idea. I started with a very abstract idea that I had. It’s a concept I’ve been kicking around in my head since I first started wanting to make video games, back in university. I’m not going to explain what it is just yet, you’ll have to wait a while before I’m ready to talk about specifics.
So, like I said, I had this idea. It was more of a concept, than a game idea, but I started keeping a journal. Every time I thought of some cool (or even mundane) idea that related to my original concept I would write it down. I’d also write down any idea for a game, or gameplay concept that occurred to me. My journal now contains sketches, diagrams, written ideas, gameplay concepts, and lots of terrible ideas for games that should never be made.
While I’ve been going through the process of doing all the company start-up, business stuff, I’ve been trying to collect my thoughts and ideas into something concrete. At the same time, I’ve been looking at various 2D games engines that are available for free, or on the cheap. Put these two tasks together and it’s prototype time!
“But, Owen,” you ask. “Why make a prototype?” My answer is simple: because I’ll be able to make a better game. Prototyping allows me to try game concepts and see if they work. It allows me to test my assumptions about what I think will be fun. It allows me to play with the game before I’ve invested so much time into it that I can’t afford to throw work away. The more prototyping I do up-front, the more time I can spend making I game I know will work later on. The idea is to spend no more than a week on the first prototype. I want a working game that I can play in that time so that I can start mucking around with ideas and gameplay choices. Once I have something I’m happy with, I’ll start over and start building the game “for real”. I may even have to go through several different prototypes before I’m happy, but in the end it will be worth it.
- Power of 2 Games (www.powerof2games.com) – The Power of 2 Games guys have a fantastic article on their site about their prototyping process.
Once I had decided what I wanted to do, I was able to come up with a list of requirements for the engine I would use to build my first prototype:
- The engine should be built for 2D and do it well, since I don’t need 3D for my first game
- I need to be able to tint textures
- I would like built-in support for animated textures
- Must have cross-platform support: at least Windows and Mac
- Free is best, but cheap is OK too
- Should have an active community of developers and developer forums
- Flexible enough that I can drop in other libraries (for things like audio, physics, or networking)
With all of this in mind, I looked at three engines as the most promising (there are lots of others out there, but these seem to be the three best that are designed around making 2D games):
- PopCap Framework (developer.popcap.com) – I’ve played around with the framework before. It’s free! I found it extremely easy to set up and use. It’s C++, which is a huge plus. It supports software rendering as well as hardware rendering. You get access to the source code, which is a huge plus. The big problem: Windows only. There are developers in the community who have ported it to Mac and will port your game for you (for a fee), but this was a big down-side for me.
- Torque Game Builder (www.garagegames.com) – I downloaded the trial of this and was able to build a simple falling blocks game in about 3 days (including the time it took me to learn how to use it). It’s extremely easy to use and very powerful. It’s cross-platform (Windows and Mac, but also supports Xbox 360 and WiiWare if you pay for the upgrades). However, it only supports hardware rendering, which is a problem for some casual games portal sites. It doesn’t support C++, they use their own scripting language. The script language is good, but it means it would be hard to port parts of your source code to another engine at a later date. The biggest problem is that an indie license is $250. This is still really cheap for an engine of this calibre, but it’s a consideration.
- Playfirst SDK (developer.playfirst.com) – This is a C++ based engine. It’s free! It supports Windows, Mac, and web Active-X control. No access to source code, which is a big downside. I still haven’t figured out if it supports software rendering, so I need to dig a bit deeper.
In the end, I’ve decided to build my prototype using the Playfirst SDK (called Playground) as it basically does everything I need right out of the box. I’m about two days into prototyping and the API is pretty decent to work with. They have a neat system for handling sprites and their asset classes have built-in reference counting, which is handy. The interface is a little different from what I’m used to working with, but I’m starting to get comfortable with how things work. It’s been surprisingly easy to get some sprites drawing on the screen, doing some simple animations.
As the prototyping process continues, I’ll post further updates. For now, I think that’s enough; I need to get some actual coding done!
Owen
The Great Accountant Search of ’08
Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008
In my last post, I ended things promising that I would talk about the challenges in setting up the business side of things. Today I’ve decided to briefly talk about the process I have gone through in finding an accountant for my small business.
The Goal:
Find an accountant with experience in dealing with small businesses and some experience working with video game companies.
Sounds simple, right? That’s what I thought two weeks ago when I started looking. The first thing I did was call the Ontario Government to see if the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade might have some insight into how to find an accountant in my area of business. The Ministry directed me to the CGA’s referral service:
- Certified General Accountants of Ontario (www.cga-ontario.org) – The CGA website has a referral service that allows you to search for a CGA in your area by business type. Unfortunately for me, “Video Games Company” isn’t one of their options. However, I was able to search for accountants who specialize in small business accounting.
From the CGA referral list I started calling accountants who were easily accessible to me via public transit. While CGA’s are highly qualified, I discovered that the qualification comes at an increase in rates. I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to afford any of these accountants at this point in my business’s life.
While all of this was happening I started contacting friends who run their own businesses to see if any of them had any recommendations. I also started posting on forums asking for advice. I have an account with the IGDA, so I posted to the Toronto Chapter’s forum to see if anyone on there had any suggestions.
- IGDA (www.igda.org) – The International Game Developers Association has chapters all over the world. Look for one in your area.
I also looked on the CanDevs website and found contact information for a lot of local video games companies and started sending out polite emails asking for referrals from other like-minded business people.
- CanDevs (www.candevs.ca) – CanDevs is a website for Canadian game developers. They have lists of local games companies for regions across the country.
The Results:
From the IGDA forum post I received a response from someone pointing me to a GameSpot article about tax credits in Ontario for game development companies. I didn’t get any accountant referrals from it, but I got some valuable resources for doing my own research into tax credits for my business.
I received a few responses from local game companies I emailed, but no solid leads yet. One thing I’d note here: if you are going to do this, make sure that your emails are short, to the point, and polite. I emailed the companies once, explained what I wanted, and was as polite as I could be about it. If companies haven’t responded to me, I’m not going to keep spamming them with email.
The most success I’ve had is through friends. I’ve had a couple of good referrals through friends who are in somewhat similar business lines. With these referrals I’m not finding accountants who have games experience, but I am finding people who my friends trust with their finances. I had come to the realization that I would probably end up having to do my own research on tax credits, etc, so I’m not too upset that I haven’t found an accountant with games experience. Besides, who knows, maybe my new accountant will become an expert in video games and will be able to help out other new games companies.
Owen