Utah Indie Developer Night, Summer 2007
Normally we have the Utah Indie Game Developer Meet later in the month. We decided to hold it earlier this month in order to have Russell Carroll - who was back in town this week - join us. Russell is the owner of GameTunnel.com - the indie game review site. He's also (more recently) the marketing director for Reflexive.com - a fairly major casual / indie game portal and developer.

As usual, I didn't see everything there was to see, or talk to everyone I wanted to talk to. I get into these big, long conversations with people that end up taking a quarter of the night. So I can only offer some snippets of conversations and the two games I saw out of the six (I think) that were showing.

Casual Versus Indie
Russell explained that his time with Reflexive has turned him from an energetic young indie game fan with no clue into an energetic young indie game fan with some actual experience now. He notes that he's really confused by the rift between "indie" games and "casual" games amongst developers (Joe Gamer often doesn't see a difference, from my perspective). There are a lot of indie developers out there who are full of ill will towards the casual game movement - and more specifically the role of the portals.

Russell told me that on his site, the indie game reviews and monthly indie game round-ups collectively only account for a small percentage of game downloads and sales from GameTunnel.com. Curiously enough, the "Free Game Downloads" button which takes you to the casual games section - which doesn't get pushed or mentioned on the site (it's just THERE) - accounts for 80% to 90% of the game downloads and sales on GameTunnel.com (and their returns have been DROPPING). I detected a hint of frustration there. When pressed, he suggested the following reasons (none definitive, just his ideas):

1. The spread of blogs has decreased the value of written-word reviews

2. Google rankings have been screwed up for a year - they tend to give the top spots to bigger sites which have tons of reviews ... but none for the specific game in question... pages ahead of an actual REVIEW for the game. They also tend to send the link to the main page of GameTunnel.com instead of the review itself.

3. The audience - which is still sizeable - may just not be the same audience that is looking for games to buy / play. A lot may be other game developers (like me) looking to see what's going on with the competition for the month.

Mistakes Indies Make With Portals
Russell also reiterated things that he said in his "Marketing For Indies" talk at the Independent Games Summit. Interestingly enough - both then and now - he's not saying things that necessarily serves PR for his own company (and I have to hand it to them - this isn't unique of Russell. Everyone I've heard from at Reflexive - in emails and forum posts - has been pretty straight-shooters).

One of the top mistakes indies make, according to Russell, was to jump in with a "publisher" for digital downloads. There are certainly times and places to go with a publisher. But Reflexive - and most other portals - often work directly with the developer, and the only difference the publisher makes from their perspective is who they make the check out to. (In his talk, Russell have some examples of where a publisher IS a good idea - such as taking a game into foreign markets, mobile devices, or of course retail).

One of the other big mistakes indies make is failing to follow up with inquiries and submissions. The squeaky wheel definitely gets the grease. Too often developers submit a game, and then just wait forever to hear back from the portal / publisher / whatever, and never bother to follow up with a second email or phone call, content to just sit back and wonder what's taking so long. True, some portals might not ever get back to you. But usually they are swamped with work and submissions, and it just takes the second (or third) contact to remind them to get back to people.

Another mistake indie developers often make is failing to take advantage of the portal... in all senses of the phrase. True, almost all major portals now demand that you remove your website URL and any direct links back to your site. They don't want you to steal their customers and traffic that easily. But you are still able to steal their traffic. The portals know this, and expect this. But indies don't take advantage of it. That's how Reflexive got THEIR traffic in the first place. All it takes is offering free levels or hints / tips "online" for the game... and make sure that your own site has the top ranking for searches for these things online. As he said in his talk - you are losing money by not abusing the portal.

One other thing we discussed was the commoditization of portals. One of the things indie developers complain about regularly is how they are being commoditized by the portals. But the truth of the matter - and Russell agrees - is that the portals can be commoditized by the developers just as well. In fact, one developer of a successful series of casual games has specifically done just that. He offering his game first to portals that treat the developer the most fairly. Specifically, he made the portals that offer the deeply discounted games in exchange for paid memberships (a practice that greatly favors the portal at the expense of the game developer - though arguments can go either way) wait a couple of months before selling his latest game.

The thing is... if you create good games that can sell... you are in the driver's seat maybe more than you realize. The portals are obviously going to push for their best advantage in making a deal with you. Your JOB as the developer and holder of the rights to your game is to make sure that it is to the greatest MUTUAL advantage.

Games Games Games!
One last bit from Russell - he stated no less than three times that he is committed to making an indie RPG himself. Hmmm.... I wonder who he will get to review it for him on his own site...? :)

I also had the chance to speak with Ron Lowe and Tom Jensen of Game Crafters. They had a successful graphic adventure game about... oh, fifteen years ago. They wanted to do a sequel back in the day, but their company imploded. Now that the legal issues have been sorted out, they are looking to get back into games and create the long-awaited sequel. In fact, they have the engine and design done for the sequel. They are mainly hunting for artists and some kind of idea of the "lay of the land" in the indie game development arena.

I spoke with Adam Peterson and Mike Rimer of Caravel Games (the creators of the very successful "Deadly Rooms of Death" series). After having left it on the back-burner for a year, they are back in active development of a Strategy / RPG spinoff of the Deadly Rooms of Death series. There is a lot more to say about this one (I interviewed them at some length, and played through several minutes of the game), so I'll save this for a later post. It'll be "Big Preview" time. I couldn't get them to commit to any kind of release date (like what indie really COULD be pinned down to a release date?), though they joked it'll be out on April 1st. What YEAR, they won't say (though they really, really hope it'll be out within the next 12 months).

Herb Flower and Paul Witte of Mythyn Interactive were there to show off the latest version of their Massively Multiplayer RPG, LinkRealms. I gotta say... this game is looking really awesome. Paul said they hope to go into closed beta in as little as 2 months. Herb and I chatted at length about the game. The big thing for LinkRealms is that it will emphasize user-created content (including lack of censorship) and actual *gameplay* in a medieval-fantasy environment. Sort of an Ultima Online cross-bred with Second Life thing.

I got the chance to speak briefly with some other folks, but unfortunately wasn't able to see everything. I'm especially disappointed that I didn't Victor's latest Flat Red Ball project... which apparently was the best of the lot so far. He's set a goal to bring a new game (using his Flat Red Ball engine) every single indie night... and I think he's only missed the goal once. So Victor - if you happen to be reading this - could you send me a copy of the demo pretty please? jayb at rampantgames dot com would work great :)

All in all - the night was loaded with awesomeness. It really felt way too short to me.


(Vaguely) related stuff with words and occasional punctuation:
* What Game Portals Want
* The Casual Game Industry Sucks, Too
* The Casual Game Industry Sucks, Two
* Utah Indie Developer Night, Fall 2006
* Utah Indie Night, Spring 2007
.

Labels: Biz, casual games, Indie Evangelism

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