Archive for the ‘Business’ Category
Indie Sixy Times
Tuesday, July 15th, 2014
Last week was the sixth anniversary of the start of my journey into independent game development. Every year I like to write up a little recap of the past year, and this year is no different. And we’re off!
For me the past year has been quite different from previous years. Most of the year was spent not working on my own Streaming Colour projects, but instead working with Matt Rix on games for Milkbag Games, our new company.
I did manage to put out a few things by Streaming Colour: Finger Tied Jr. (July, 2013), and Baby’s Playful Hands (October, 2013). I was also lucky enough to have Apple ask me for a demo version of Finger Tied that they could put on iPads in actual, physical Apple stores. That was pretty exciting, and being able to see my game on iPads in Apple stores was extremely rewarding.
The rest of my year was spent working with Matt on games for Milkbag Games. At the start of my year six, Matt and I were in the middle of working on a game called Snow Siege. However, by the fall, we both needed a break from the game. We’d been working on it for a year and were still months away from it being finished. At that time I was working on a prototype for a bonus mini-game in Snow Siege. The game was a little scratch card where you tapped on squares to reveal shapes that rewarded you with prizes. The game was so much fun on its own that we started joking about taking the mini-game idea and making it about rescuing cute, pixelated animals. But the more we talked about it, the less it became a joke, and the more it became something we really wanted to make happen. This mini-game became the core of Disco Zoo.
Disco Zoo started as a three-week prototype to test the idea and see if it was fun. Once we were able to play the game, we were convinced that it was something worthwhile and we spent the next three months expanding the prototype into a finished game. We teamed up with our friends at NimbleBit to publish the game, and the game launched on iOS in late February, 2014 to an Editor’s Choice feature on the front page of the App Store. We brought the game to Google Play in April, and between the two platforms we’ve had nearly 3 million downloads so far.
Needless to say, we’ve been extremely pleased with the response to Disco Zoo. Matt and I had a great time making the game, and people seem to really enjoy playing it, so we couldn’t be happier. Some people buy things in the game, so that makes us happy too. 😉
On a personal note, Disco Zoo couldn’t have come at a better time for me, because if the game had flopped, I might have been at the point of having to decide between continuing with indie life or finding a full-time job again. I’m so lucky to be in a position where I can keep doing this. I have said this before, but none of us do this alone. I’m always aware of how much help and support I’ve received from family, friends, journalists, twitter acquaintances, players, and more. I’m extremely grateful to everyone who has supported me in a myriad of ways over the past six years. Because of you, I can continue to do what I love and keep making games for the future. And after all, that’s kind of the whole point.
Here’s to year seven!
Owen
P.S. The title of this post was blatantly borrowed from TOJam 6: “TOJam Sixy Times”. 🙂
5 Years Old
Monday, July 8th, 2013
I can hardly believe it myself, but Streaming Colour is five years old today! Five years ago today I arrived in Toronto after moving back from Vancouver, sat down at my computer, and started my indie career. When I started Streaming Colour I had no idea if I’d survive for five years. It was a gamble. I had a left a good job as a senior programmer in the console games industry and I was taking a big risk. My goal was to build the business to the point where I was making a livable income after five years. Not be rich, just making enough to keep doing what I wanted to do.
It has been a very long and very short five years filled with lows and highs, and everything in between. Being an independent game developer definitely hasn’t been easy. In fact, it has been a huge struggle at times. But it has also been incredibly rewarding on a personal, professional, and creative level. There are few things as creatively rewarding as taking an idea in your head and turning it into something that people can experience for themselves.
Over the past five years I have taken on some really interesting contract work. I’ve spoken at conferences in Guelph, Toronto, and San Jose. I wrote a chapter in a book on iPhone development. I moved to Guelph, Ontario with my amazing wife, and we’ve had two incredible children. Through it all, I somehow managed to release seven games/apps. I’m not releasing any numbers today, but these are those games ranked from most revenue to least, for those curious:
- Finger Tied (Oct, 2012)
- Baby’s Musical Hands (July, 2011)
- Dapple (Feb, 2009)
- LandFormer (June, 2010)
- Monkeys in Space (Nov, 2009)
- Dirty Diapers (Dec, 2010)
- Finger Tied Jr. (May, 2013)
Update: A couple of people on twitter were curious about relative revenue. Here’s a graph showing each game/app as a percentage of total revenue earned on the App Store:
I have learned some hard and important lessons about developing games on my own. I’ve learned some very hard lessons about marketing and PR. I feel like I’m getting better every day at what I do, and I intend to keep learning and improving with every game.
After releasing Finger Tied last fall, one thing I realized was that I really missed working with other people. Working on one’s own gives you a lot of creative freedom and choice, but it’s also really difficult to see the big picture at times. Late last year, Matt Rix and I teamed up and started prototyping some game ideas. He and I had worked together a couple of times at TOJam in Toronto, and we decided we’d see if we could make a game together. Earlier this spring we founded a new company called Milkbag Games and we’re currently hard at work on our first game: Snow Siege. It has been a fantastic experience working with Matt so far and I think Snow Siege is going to be a really great game.
Finally, I wanted to extend a big thank you to everyone who has supported me and Streaming Colour over the last five years. If you bought my games, offered encouragement, talked with me about game design at GDC or 360iDev, or just sent a friendly message of twitter, thank you! Nobody can do this alone, not even those of us who work alone. I wouldn’t still be doing this if not for all of you. Here’s to the next five years!
Owen
Today only: FREE GAMES!
Friday, December 9th, 2011
Yes, you read that right: for today only, I’m reducing the price on four of my games to FREE. I have never dropped the price of any of my games to free before, and now you get four in one day!
Maybe it’s that the holidays are coming up, or maybe I was just in a good mood. Who cares?! You get free games! So what are you waiting for? Go to the App Store and download these games now!
Monkeys in Space (Reg. Price: $1.99)
LandFormer (Reg. Price of Premium Content: $1.99)
* LandFormer was always a free download. However, the Premium Content is available from the In-Game Shop for FREE today.
Dirty Diapers (Reg. Price: $0.99)
I hope you enjoy the games. And if you do, please feel free to throw a good review up on the App Store. 🙂 Happy Holidays!
Owen
Results: iOS Game Revenue Survey
Wednesday, September 28th, 2011
10 days ago I launched a survey in the iOS game developer community aimed at gathering revenue data from as many developers as possible. The goal was to get a more realistic view of what the iOS game marketplace actually looks like and share the results with the entire dev community. The reason I felt this was necessary is that we tend to see two kinds of articles written about iOS game revenue: “Developer makes millions on iOS games!” or “Game makes $0 on App Store”. I felt it was important that we get a more realistic look at what the market we’re developing for looks like.
With that in mind, the survey launched on Monday, September 19, 2011 and ran for seven days. 252 developers filled it out! Now, before I get to the actual data, there’s some important disclaimers I need to make, and I want to talk about methodology. Let’s begin…
Methodology
The survey was conducted entirely using the online service SurveyMonkey. The survey consisted of eight questions. Two questions gathered information about the type of developer and the number of people working on their games. The next three questions gathered data about lifetime game releases on the App Store, and revenue those games generated. Finally, the last three questions gathered data on games released within the last 12 months (more on this in the next section on errors and bias).
Requests to take the survey were distributed via the following social networks and web sites:
- Google+
- 148Apps.biz
- TouchArcade forums
- iPhoneDevSDK forums
- cocos2d forums
- Unity forums
The goal was to engage as many active iOS game developers as possible. More on this in the next section on errors and bias.
The survey was closed on Monday, September 26, 2011 at noon, EDT. Survey responses were downloaded at that point, and I’ve been using Numbers (from iWork ’09) for Mac to analyze the data.
It is also worth noting that when I launched the survey, I stated two things:
- The survey would collect no personal data
- The data would only be released in aggregate, no raw data would be released
This is why I’m not releasing the raw data.
Errors and Bias
Disclaimer: I make no claims as to the statistical validity of this data. There is a good chance that the sample population is not representative of all game developers on the App Store. There is a good chance that I introduced measurement bias/error into the data by the way I worded the survey questions. In short: I am not a professional statistician. Do not treat this data as 100% accurate. It is just interesting to look at.
Ok, let’s talk about that disclaimer in a bit more detail.
Sample Population
Because the survey was completely voluntary, and I have no information on the demographics that make up App Store developers, I have no way to determine how representative the data is. Further, because of the way in which I went about gathering the data, the developers who responded are all likely developers actively working on games, and who are actively involved in the development community. Because of this, I would be tempted to guess that the numbers we see here are actually higher than on the App Store over all. However, I have no data to be able to back up that guess.
12 Month Data
One of the things I really wanted data on was a snapshot of what the last 12 months have looked like for game developers on the App Store. However, the questions I created to gather this data clearly confused respondents. The intent was that devs enter only revenue from games released within the last 12 months, but many developers provided revenue from the last 12 months for all their games. This made the data I collected for these questions largely useless for the purposes I wanted. Further, most people didn’t understand the instructions and didn’t match the sales revenue to the non-sales revenue in the two questions, making drawing conclusions there impossible, also. You’ll see later on that I did manage to get some basic data from it, but couldn’t do the detailed analysis I had hoped for.
Other
There are, no doubt, other sources of error and bias in the data. The main thing to remember is that these numbers are not 100% accurate, but rather just provide a glimpse into the App Store market for games.
To the data!
Results
The survey was open for exactly seven days and had 252 respondents.
General Questions
The first two questions of the survey were there to get an idea of the kinds of developers responding.
You can see from the results in Figure 1 that only about 1/3 of respondents consider themselves full-time independent game developers. Over half the respondents are part-time indies, hobbyists, or students. (Note: Click the charts to see them full-sized).
When questioned about the number of people (from now on referred to as “developers”) working on their games, half the respondents were working by themselves. I was surprised by the number of respondents who were working for larger companies in the 10+ developers range. However, over 93% of respondents have 5 or fewer developers working on their games. See Figure 2.
Lifetime Game Releases and Revenue
The next three questions of the survey gathered information about lifetime revenue on the store. The three questions asked for data on:
- The number of games released on the App Store
- The number of months the developer had games on the App Store
- Lifetime revenue for all games on the App Store
Using this data, it’s possible to generate some very interesting results. First, let’s look at all the lifetime revenues reported (see Figure 3). One of the most interesting features of the graph is the clearly exponential curve associated with the revenues. The graph makes it very clear that most developers aren’t making a lot of money selling games on the App Store, while a few are making a lot of money.
I’ve made note of both the arithmetic mean average, and the median average on the chart. This is why the median is so important. The extremely high revenues reported by a small number of developer skew the arithmetic mean significantly. If you looked at that as an average, it would be easy to say “the average game developer has made about $165,000”. However, the median tells a very different story. The median splits the developers in half. This means that 50% of developers have made less than $3,000 lifetime revenue on the App Store, while 50% have made more. The reason that the mean and median are so different is that the computed sample standard deviation is 639,966. A standard deviation that high means that the mean average is not very representative of the data spread. Because of this, I have used median averages everywhere in these results, instead of mean averages.
What is also telling is that if you were in the 75th percentile, you would have made about $30,000 on the App Store. This means that only 25% of developers have made more than $30,000 lifetime total revenue selling games on the App Store. Conversely, we can see that 25% of developers have made less than $200.
I wanted to take that revenue data and plot a distribution curve from it. However, the range of data was so large that I couldn’t plot it on a linear scale. This was the case for many of the graphs you’ll see. Like Figure 4, I have made note whenever one of the axes is using a logarithmic scale instead of a linear scale. By breaking the revenue down into buckets (each one 10x greater than the last), I was able to get a better distribution graph (see Figure 4). From this, we can clearly see that nearly 25% of developers have made between $1,000 and $10,000 on the App Store. What is particularly impressive is that 4% of respondents (10 respondents)Â had made over $1,000,000 on the App Store!
Note on Figure 4: You’ll notice duplicate values between buckets (i.e. 1-10, 10-100, etc). This was done only for the labels so the chart was easier to read. The data is actually divided into (10n)-(10n+1 – 1) buckets (i.e. 1-9, 10-99, etc).
That 4% of respondents got me wondering about the idea of where the revenue was going on the App Store. So next I took a look at what percentage of the total revenue reported was reported by what percentage of respondents (similar to a distribution of wealth chart you might see for a country’s population). See Figure 5. What is fascinating to me is that the top 20% of developers are earning 97% of the revenue on the App Store, with the top 1% earning over 1/3 of the revenue on the App Store. The bottom 80% of game developers are earning only 3% of the revenue.
Next, I wanted to start comparing lifetime revenue to the other data the respondents had provided. To start, I wanted to see how revenue compared to developer type. Figure 6 shows a graph of median lifetime revenue, divided by developer type. It is no surprise to me that full-time indies, and representatives for iOS game dev companies reported the highest revenue. Note that revenue in Figure 6 is charted on a logarithmic scale, so the median earnings of a full-time indie developer are reported to be 30x greater than those reported by part-time indies. This does not mean that going full-time indie will guarantee you 30x the revenue, these are just the numbers that have been reported.
Next I wanted to see if developers who worked with more people earned more revenue than those working alone. Figure 7 clearly shows this is the case. Note that the revenue for companies with 10+ employees may not accurately reflect a good median, because there were so few responses in these categories. However, it’s clear that individuals have earned the least lifetime revenue, on average.
But then I started to wonder if it was just because larger groups might be able to release more games, meaning their total revenue would be higher. So, I broke the revenue down, dividing it by the number of games released, and by the number of months the developer had had apps on the store. The result is a chart of median per-game, per-month, lifetime revenue by the number of developers who worked on the games. You’ll see in Figure 7b that the curve looks almost identical to Figure 7’s. The conclusion that I draw from this is that, in general, larger groups of developers are able to create games that earn more money. Wagering a guess, this is perhaps because they are able to create games that are larger in scope, more technically interesting, and more polished, because they have more people to work on the game and provide input into its improvement.
Finally, a friend was curious whether or not releasing more games meant that a developer ended up improving over time. To attempt to answer that question, I divided each respondent’s lifetime revenue by the number of games they had released on the App Store, then graphed the median distribution curve by the number of games released. The results can be seen in Figure 8. What is really interesting to me is that developers do seem to generate more revenue over time (on average). This should be encouraging if you really want to make games, but your first game was a flop. Fear not! 50% of developers who have only released one game made under $500 on that game. However, the more games developers had released, the more per-game average revenue they seem to generate. This seems to validate the old adage: practice makes better than doing something once. Wait…that’s not quite right…
12-Month Releases and Revenue
The final three questions of the survey were supposed to deal with revenue generated by apps released within the last 12 months. However, since many respondents provided the last 12 months of revenue from all their games, I can’t draw the same conclusions that I would have liked. However, what I have done is graph the revenue for each individual game reported.
Figure 9 shows the individual game revenues over the last 12 month period. It is a graph of 382 games that reported non-zero sales revenue (including IAP). You can see that the curve follows a very similar line to the lifetime revenue chart, in that it’s exponential. Again, we can see that the difference between mean and median is significant, telling us that the high earners on the right distort the mean average.
What’s important to note in Figure 9 is that the median game earned $1,100 in the last 12 months. This means 50% of the games earned less, and 50% earned more. 25% of games earned less than $140, while conversely, 25% earned more than $10,675.
And finally, Figure 10 shows the non-sales revenue generated by the 85 games that reported non-zero revenue. The non-sales revenue was to account for all revenue generated from a game aside from sales (e.g. ads, affiliate links, merchandise, etc). Figure 10 is graphed on the same y-axis as Figure 9. You can clearly see that the top end is much lower than for sales. However, in the middle of the graph, games that reported non-sales revenue, reported slightly higher earnings on the non-sales side of things.
What this means is that there is clearly some good revenue to be made through things like ads, affiliate links, and other non-sales sources of revenue, and there are clearly some games doing this very well.
Conclusions
Phew! Did you make it all the way through? Good. This is a lot of data to process, so thanks for following along. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to get more useful data out of the 12 month questions. I clearly needed to word the questions differently.
Hopefully these results have provided some insight into the games market on the App Store. I hope that it can be used to help set expectations for new and experienced developers alike. It is clear that there is a lot of money to be made in games on the App Store. However, as the data shows, it’s not easy, but the more games you make, the better you’ll get. Common sense, I suppose…but sometimes it’s nice to have the data to back it up.
Thank you so much to the 252 people who participated in the survey for sharing this data with the rest of the community. We all appreciate it greatly.
Now you’ve been reading this for much too long. Get back to work on your next game!
Owen
Finger Tied: A History
Thursday, December 13th, 2012
Yesterday I released a big update to Finger Tied (get it on the App Store) which enables the sharing of levels in the game. You can now share the levels you create, and download levels created by other players. I think it’s pretty cool, and I hope the players do too.
As I was working on the update, I started thinking back on the process of creating the game from start to finish. I like it when other people talk, in detail, about the process of creating their games, so I thought I’d do something to share the process of making Finger Tied. I wished I’d kept a diary or journal about the development of the game, but then I realized that I had the next best thing: my commit logs from my Git repo for the game. Every time I check in code or art, I add comments about what I accomplished.
With that in mind, I exported the logs and wrote a little PHP script to generate HTML code of all the commit comments. I’ve also gone back through my screenshots and pulled some that are relevant to given dates. I haven’t edited any of this, so you’ll see references to features that don’t appear in the finished game, because I decided to cut them.
The first commit comments are from Guelph Game Jam 3, in April, where I first prototyped the game. It was a game about planting flowers, called Trillium Fillium. From there you can see it involve into something more abstract and into the final game.
This post is long. I wouldn’t blame you if you don’t read it. I hope one or two of you find it interesting. 😉
Finger Tied: From Start to v1.1
Wed Apr 11
Sun Apr 15
Original Prototype created for Guelph Game Jam 3 (Apr 15, 2012).
Fri Apr 27
Mon Apr 30
Tue May 1
Wed May 2
Fri May 4
Sat May 5
Mon May 7
Tue May 8
Wed May 9
Sun May 27
Wed May 30
    Â
Fri Jun 1
Mon Jun 4
The style of the game is starting to come together.
Tue Jun 5
Wed Jun 6
Thu Jun 7
Fri Jun 8
Main Menu design is largely what shipped, though obviously with different colours.
Tue Jun 12
New colour palette is in the game.
Wed Jun 13
Fri Jun 15
Tue Jun 19
Wed Jun 20
Thu Jun 21
Fri Jun 22
Wed Jul 4
Mon Jul 16
Tue Jul 17
Wed Jul 18
Fri Jul 20
Mon Jul 23
Post Game screen. It’s becoming clear that lanscape orientation is becoming problematic.
Tue Jul 24
Wed Jul 25
Fri Jul 27
Game has been reworked to render in portrait orientation, making everything better.
Mon Jul 30
Tue Jul 31
Wed Aug 1
Fri Aug 31
Tue Sep 4
Thu Sep 6
Fri Sep 7
Mon Sep 10
Tue Sep 11
Final layout of the Level Select menus.
Wed Sep 12
Thu Sep 13
Fri Sep 14
Mon Sep 17
Tue Sep 18
Fri Sep 21
Sat Sep 22
Mon Sep 24
Tue Sep 25
Evolution of the icon design.
Fri Sep 28
Sat Sep 29
Sun Sep 30
Tue Oct 9
Fri Oct 19
Wed Oct 24
Fri Oct 26
Mon Oct 29
Tue Oct 30
Wed Oct 31
Fri Nov 2
Tue Nov 6
Fri Nov 9
Tue Nov 20
Mon Nov 26
Wed Nov 28
Fri Nov 30
Sat Dec 1
Sun Dec 2
Mon Dec 3
Tue Dec 4
Wed Dec 5
Fri Dec 7
Posted in Art, Business, Design, Finger Tied, ipad, Marketing, Misc, postmortem, Project Management, Technical | Comments Off on Finger Tied: A History