Today it is getting easier than ever for the Independent developer to create great games, and get them into the app store ready to be played by the game players. As one of these Independents, we at Lucky Red Fish have had to learn what it takes to market our games in this self-publishing arena. There is a wealth of free information out there for the Independent developer on everything from programming to marketing and of course publishing.
Most of the articles come your way at a time that you are busy taking care of the other parts of the development cycle and remembering where you saw them is not an easy task, so as we developed out next game Monkey Mofo we started collecting a big list of useful articles.
This Page will be constantly updated with new articles, so please check back regularly
Beter test your games on Testflight
TestFlight services a great need of mobile developers everywhere. A Free web service for mobile developers, project managers, and app testers.
Diy marketing and pr for indie games
This is entirely wonderful. I’ve been banging on about marketing and supporting your game for years now. With what seems like little effect. So it was a real pleasure to find an excellent piece, written by the very smart Kristina Seznec, about helping the team at Lucky Frame with their press and marketing.
The Big list of games sales figures
Sales figures for some of the best and biggest indie games. It is extremely rare for game developers to release their complete revenue statistics like this. Not many people outside the industry realize that this secrecy that is usually around sales is actually quite problematic
Breaking Down Candy Crush’s Formula for Success
Candy Crush Saga has taken Facebook and mobile by storm, earning a permanent spot on smartphones, tablets and desktops around the world. But what really has the industry in a tizzy is that the game has only been out for about five months.
Making Entertaining and Engaging Video Game Trailers
Like most things in my life over the last year or so, this (extremely long) post came together because of a couple of very serendipitous events Way back in October of 2010, Nathan Vella of Cappybara games shot me a quick tweet saying “Hey, want to collaborate on a talk about Indie Game Trailers?” So, a few hours before the deadline, we collaborated over skype and google docs and threw together what we both felt was a pretty strong proposal. Nathan submitted it, and that was that.
Dustforce is just over a year old now. How well has it fared in the past year, and what does that mean for Hitbox Team? In this article, we discuss in great detail the financial performance of Dustforce, in the context of our own goals for the game. Come and learn about some of the financial issues of a tiny development team, such as how we funded Dustforce, and how much it costs to make a game.
Why Kickstarters Fail and How to Avoid It
As an introduction let me just say I've been working as a liaison between Nintendo and indie developers for the past few months and have succeeded in bringing over around 15-20 new indie games to Wii U and 3DS. I've emailed back and forth developers who were running Kickstarters and through this I started to get some insight as to why many promising Kickstarter campaigns fail. They may seem like simple common sense (and they are) but they still seem to be overlooked too often.
Transform Your Games into Profitable Businesses
Learn what unique user experiences AR will bring into your games, gain ideas on how AR will help you promote your content, and hear some thoughts on using AR for mobile couponing.
Legalities of copyright for Indie Games Developers
In this two-part series, we’ll discuss what I consider the top six legal mistakes app developers make when launching a new game in the digital marketplace.
Founded in 1999, Straker is a privately held company with offices in the USA, Europe and Australasia. who have developed world leading technology that is transforming the translation industry. We have a global client base and world leading multilingual and translation technology that gives us the ability to deliver low cost, high quality translations with the shortest turn around.
Suppose you’re an app developer who wants to ensure that your app is optimized to function well on 80% of the individual connected devices currently in use (e.g., my iPad, your Windows phone). How many different device models (e.g., Kindle Fire HD 8.9" Wi-Fi, Galaxy S III) do you think you need to support? 156. Maybe you’re okay with having your app optimized for only 60% of active devices.
Kickstarter has been an incredible ride. For us at Stoic, we set out to make a turn-based strategy game called The Banner Saga that we thought might be pretty niche. We hoped to raise $100,000 (a rather modest sum for game development) for some outsourcing needs.
Why I wont be Kickstarting anymore
In 2012, I backed a total of 18 game projects on Kickstarter, pledging more than $300 towards initiatives that took my fancy. And yet in 2013, I can't really see myself pledging anything at all via the crowd-funding platform. At a time when Kickstarting video games is a hugely common occurrence, there's a number of negative points that are beginning to seep in.
Over the last few years, a lot of tools and services have been created for app developers. We can try and compare some of them, but obviously not all. Here is a list of a lot of them (inspired by Steve Blank’s Startup Tools), that we will update as we learn about new ones.
Writing and the sense of story writing
This is the marketing story of games and storytelling that developers have told for decades. It’s an aspirational story, but look beyond the highlights to the substance underneath and it doesn’t really stack up. Many of the struggles that game writers face today have not changed since the early days.
How to Prototype a Game in Under 7 Days
Here's a crazy game idea: Drag trash-talkin' gobs of goo to build a giant tower higher and higher. They squirm and giggle and climb upward over the backs of their brothers, but be careful! A constant battle against gravity, if you build a tower that's too unstable, it will all fall down.
Game Developers Conference poll
In order to paint a picture of the games business as it looks right before GDC 2013, the Game Developers Conference has polled more than 2,500 North American game developers who attended the conference in 2012 or plan to attend GDC 2013 in March about their development practices, revealing several notable trends with regards to platforms, money, team sizes and more.
Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain Summit
In this presentation from the 2010 DICE Summit, Carnegie Mellon professor Jesse Schell analyses the success of unusual games and predicts how that same model can be applied to life to give people incentives to use certain products and accomplish tasks at work or elsewhere. its in 3 parts on youtube!
Defender's Quest: By the Numbers
Last January, we launched the initial version of our Tower Defense / RPG Hybrid Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten. We sold the game directly from our own website, using a browser-based demo distributed via flash portals to drive traffic and sales. It was a solid niche hit, receiving both critical acclaim and financial success
Successful Kickstarter campaign
The Coles recently funded a successful Kickstarter campaign for Hero-U with over $400,000 in support, and were generous enough to give us some specific feedback on our current Kickstarter for Var and the Vikings, a puzzle platformer game that teaches you Artificial Intelligence.
Learn about the most common methods for monetizing an app. Find out the advantages and disadvantages of different pay models. Develop your own personal strategy and monetization plan for your app.
Our FREE SDK is an unbeatable combination of cross-platform social features, in-app billing and enhanced distribution in one simple and powerful package, making Scoreloop the most complete and flexible mobile social gaming solution out there.
Which means that it exists in a capitalistic world. You know, a free market. A place where you're welcome to spend your money on whatever you please… or to refrain from spending that money. Those companies that put these products out? They're for profit businesses. They exist to produce, market, and ship great games ultimately for one purpose. First, for money, then, for acclaim.
Making it in Indie Games: Starter Guide
Every now and then someone will ask me for advice on making it as a professional indie game developer. First, it’s a huge honor to be asked that. So I want to say “Thank you!” Second… damn, if I really want to help out it’s a serious endeavor. Of course, I could always say “Give it your best! Work hard! Be true to yourself!” and it wouldn’t be a terrible reply… just not a terribly useful one, either.
Game Developers Move Toward Mobile Self-Publishing En Masse
About 38% of those 2,500 game developers responded to the survey saying their last gaming project was on mobile, but more than half — 58% — said they are planning their next project for mobile. iOS took the lion's share of interest, with almost 90% working on a game for the App Store.
A nice collection of “Non-English” Indie Game Sites from all over the world.
174 Sites For iPhone And iPad App Reviews
Welcome to another update to the iPhone and iPad app review sites listing in iOS development about three years ago, I made the first posting of the iPhone app review sites list, and it’s been over a year since the last update.
Back when the social game scene looked like it might be generationally, rather than merely technologically, disruptive, we game makers discovered Eric Ries. Ries (along with Steve Blank) is the key figure behind the lean startup movement, and at the time his message of fast iteration and customer validation rang true for us for two reasons.
This is a guide created with the aim of providing some help & information on marketing an iOS product. It is absolutely not trying to be a definitive guide, or anything like that – but I hope to keep it updated, and would really appreciate any additional pointers and advice to help cover any areas that are lacking.
Over the years, Slashdot has had many stories of non-technical entrepreneurs in need of programmers. Now I found myself in an almost opposite situation: I am a programmer with a fledgling mass-market product that needs marketing. I know Slashdot's general sentiment towards marketing.
Gamedev on Readit, but there are many forums on readit that can also be used to promote your stuff!
Indie games development forums
The big list of indie games development forums.
Tweet your screen shots and they will display them, if you have enough followers :(
Touch arcades is the place to get noticed, participate and get noticed!
Driving Facebook Fans to Your Website
5 Tips for Driving Facebook Fans to Your Website. While Facebook has become an increasingly significant communication medium, for many businesses and organizations, their website remains the primary consumer touch point. So what do you do if you want to get your Facebook audience to engage more on your brand site?
On this page you will find a collection of handpicked articles about indie game marketing. Moreover PixelProspector’s Marketing Guide For Indie Game Developers is still in heavy development…
How To Grow Your Twitter Audience
How To Grow Your Twitter Audience (ethically) One of the things we get asked the most is how to get Twitter followers. Over the years we’ve researched a number of ways to promote twitter accounts, and we want to share some of these ideas with you. Many users first start out by trying to buy Twitter followers, not realizing that this is against twitter’s rules. Buying followers is a zero sum game, as many of the operators that try and sell followers use.
We all have common goals with our website. To achieve that goal, we hire web design companies London and collude with custom web development experts to put up a website that increases our chances of making a sale. However, somewhere down the line, most of us discover that the website is not getting enough traffic to be significant to our cause.
