The following blog is an opinion piece. It represents only the personal opinions of its writer. It doesn’t represent any businesses or other individuals.

A few articles are circulating at the moment about the state of the Australian games industry. Most of them well written and helping everyone get up to speed with what’s been happening. You can read a short but well written article here on the subject: http://au.xbox360.ign.com/articles/108/1088951p1.html

I want to personally talk about the smallest of the small. The Indies in Australia who are working in teams of 1-5 people to create some fun games. These start-ups are much like my own are working hard to understand the business and nature of this era of downloadable digital gaming.

Since the start of this year I’ve come to form a few opinions on subjects related to small Indies. Here are my thoughts on what small Indies can do right now and how they will fare in the next few years.

Small Indies should seek small business support

I’ve just completed a short small business course with NEIS and I couldn’t stress enough that anyone who’s thinking of or already just started an indie studio should look into this course. I found it well worth the 6 weeks of my time. It does require a number of conditions to apply though:

• Applicant needs to be on newstart allowance through Centrelink prior to applying.
• They must be over 18 years of age.
• The business can’t exist before taking on the course. So no prior ACN or registered business names for the business pitched.

It’s not easy to get into. But having the help to write out a consistent business plan and receive some fortnightly payment assistance can mean all the difference in the first year of your business. I know that if wasn’t going through NEIS had to continue relying on Centrelink payments that I would have to start dividing my efforts between my business and finding an alternative source of income. My NEIS payments allow me to focus 100% of my time to my business.

There is also talk of small business support through some of the local industry associations. Although we’ll have to wait to see that materialised before it can be explored further.

Business and Pleasure – Meet it half-way

By this title I don’t mean that a start-up should go straight to work-for-hire. I do believe that Indies of a small size should focus efforts on their own intellectual property projects. But these projects need to have a number of sensible business questions considered against them, such as:

• SWOT analysis. Is the project viable to produce by the studio to a reasonable time and quality?
• Target Market and marketing plan: Who are your audience? How will you tell them of your game? Why will they buy it?
• Profitability: Given the platform and genre of game your making, how many sales or transactions can be expected to be made? Will it cover the cost of development and advertising?
• Monetisation Plan: In what ways will the game make money? A one-off purchase? In-game cash shop? Subscription?

Speaking from experience over the last year of working on my own projects I admit that I’m guilty of not considering these important business questions before starting on a project. I know that it’s quite easy to get wrapped up in a project you really want to create without considering if it can even be made to sell.

My advice to other small Indies is taking a half-way point in deciding what your project should be. The project should be something the team is excited to develop. But it needs a proven audience and business plan as well.

Government funding just got harder

The government announced a week ago that it’s halving the funding given to Film Victoria for games related funding. This will last for 2 years.

In my opinion, what this will mean for small Indies is that funding will become even more competitive and harder to obtain. The funding committee will more than ever scrutinise every element of an application, from not only the proposed projects business plan but to the experience of the team and the studios prior history. My concern as a starting indie business is that this will effectively cut all applications from studios like my own that have yet to produce a highly commercially successful product.

I know if I was in-charge of funding with only $1,000,000 to distribute over 2 years amongst dozens of applications and tens of millions of dollars in funding requests, I would be investing my money into established studios with a proven level of reliability and not unproven start-ups.

From a start-up business perspective it means that we can’t count on external funding to pitch and develop projects that would otherwise be unviable under our own support. It means that as small Indies we may need to create a few smaller money-maker successes before we can focus on the type of projects that the studio may want to pursue as part of its original goals and ideals. There’s nothing wrong with this outcome but it does tighten the options available to us.

Funding is something we can never truly take for granted. I’m happy that it still exists and Film Victoria as an entity are nothing but supportive.

Overall though this opinion is formed from my pessimism and paranoia. It could well be the case that the dynamics that these funding bodies operate and judge projects will not change in the slightest.

Facebook and iPhone

Facebook and iPhone are huge markets with a small barrier of entry. It also means that these markets are extremely satiated and hit driven.

For small Indies the opportunities arise from the low financial barrier of entry. The threat of course is that everyone else is doing it. The game you create must take in all the most popular qualities of the most popular games of the genre and work with that to create a product that’s both unique enough to get media coverage but simple and familiar enough to be associated with other successful projects.

Again, the business viability of the project must be considered. Flukes rarely occur on these marketplaces anymore. Unless they where engineered beforehand to do so. If you make an iPhone or Facebook game without a solid marketing plan then you’re a fool!

Getting on Steam

Steam remains to be the target for a few indie developers including myself. Steam has most definitely opened itself up to Indies and smaller games over the first half of this year. But it’s my belief that you must have a product near completion and playable before you even approach steam for distribution.

It’s most definitely a case of the developer needing the product to reach a level of completeness and market awareness before steam is approached. Otherwise you’re simply wasting their time.

Steam based products are also larger in production values then your typical iPhone game. So some form of funding will be needed to make a typical steam game.

Indie progress for the next 2 years

We are seeing more indie start-ups than ever before due in most part to new low barriers of entry via the downloadable market.

Here’s my prediction on how these start-ups, including my own will probably fare:

Many small indie studios have and will continue to crop up. Out of them many will fail over the first 12-24 months due to lack of funding, lack of profit due to financially unsuccessful projects or a disbanding of the team.

However, a number of these studios will survive the first few years of operation. The games they will produce will be polished and have some business considerations attached to their conception.

Some studios will intentionally stay small while others will slowly grow to take on bigger and more sizable projects. Both will create reputations of being able to deliver original quality products.

If Indies continue to learn and evolve from each product they create and learn from their mistakes then success is a matter of persistence. Our small size and low cost of production allow us to survive the mistakes we make in ways larger companies can’t. If we continue to trade away an immediate stable job for a gamble on a fulfilling business then we just might give Australia a new set of indie studios able to employ staff. Taking on mid-sized projects like steam based multiplayer games and ultimately be a part in re-branding Australia’s reputation as a development house that focuses on small to medium sized quality games.

I think that’s worth working towards.

It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog on what I’ve been up to. Mostly because I’ve been quite busy with all sorts of work. Thankfully the outcome of which is that I now have quite a deal of things to write about.

First to talk about are my efforts to materialize an indie game studio and to shape it into being an entity that is considered professional and not in fact an unemployed designers idea to create a job for himself.

For the last 6 weeks I’ve been attending a small business program called NEIS. NEIS is an abbreviation for New Enterprise Initiative Scheme. It’s an initiative created by the Australian federal government to help people form all walks of life to start their own small business. Whether it’s fashion, a bakery or game development. At the core of this course is you, the business hopeful sitting down and writing a detailed business plan.

This has been a fantastic experience for myself. While upon reflection it was ludicrous to go into the indie game development space without a viable business plan, I nonetheless started work on Mole last year without considering the games platform feasibility and target market. With these considerations now in mind for my new projects I know that the games I produce from here on in will be scrutinized for their financial feasibility on top of their creative merits.

The other benefit of completing NEIS is that starting from June onwards I’ll be receiving payment assistance from the government for a period of 12 months. It’s intended that I use this money to live on a baseline while I develop the games and products required to make the business self-sufficient.

Overall I’m glad that I took on the NEIS training and look forward to spending the next 12 months utilizing it’s provided resources to the fullest.

I can also say that April has really turned out to be the month of paperwork. Additionally to NEIS I submitted a funding proposal to Film Victoria for a slice of the Downloadable Games Intuitive funding pie.

From talking to those who follow the funding closely I know that Film Victoria has received dozens of applications over this round of funding. I know that competition will be high but I do nonetheless feel a sense of accomplishment over my application as I spent the time to not only explain the proposed game project itself. But to also explain how and why it can be financially viable. While my business plan doesn’t include the funding money to make my business viable, getting that funding will most definitely help my start-up to get working on a solid social-game project.

It’s interesting that both the NEIS and Film Victoria funding application came about the same time. I’ve used both to feed into each other. I hope my many hours of hard work with all this documentation pays off. I’ll find out the result of that application in July.

The last piece of news that I wanted to cover is that Mole – Quest for the Terracore gem will be going through a big art and content update very soon.

Working with Ben Britten, we want to basically reboot the release of Mole. Giving our customers and current users a free upgrade to further improve and impress reward customers.

There are a new slew of features coming to the 1.2 update of Mole. I’ll be writing up an official press release and announcement within the next couple of days. But to summarize what our customers will be receiving within he next few months:

• Rare collectables to be found.
• More medals to be earned.
• Power-ups!
• A brand new level.
• A completely redesigned menu and in-game GUI art style.
• Mole – Quest for the Terracore gem will be getting a name and icon change.

Stay turned for more information.

And that’s basically what’s been happening in the March and April period for me. With NEIS all but wrapped up and the funding application sent out I’ll be spending the next few months rolling out the update for Mole and some other upcoming stuff.

Until next time,

Chris Watts

Hi everyone!

Chris here, Game Designer at Roo Games.

I’m happy to announce a new promotion for our first title. Mole – Quest for the Terracore gem!

This promotion is called “Mole is free at GDC!”

The game developers’ conference in San Francisco is a huge event in the video game industry. For indie developers like me it’s probably the most important for the whole year.

Because of this; Roo Games, in association with the indie games portal Esc Factory will be attending GDC in full and awesome force! We want everyone we meet to play our games. and as such; Mole – Quest for the Terracore gem! will be turned from a paid app to free starting from Friday the 5th right and finishing up on Sunday the 14th of March. Anyone with an iPhone or iPod touch can get  get a copy of Mole!

Mole has gotten over half a dozen reviews and has been rated on an average of around 4 out of 5 stars. While it’s proven to be a fun, unique iPhone game, not many have had the chance to play or even know anything about Mole. I want to spread the word and let anyone give Mole a go!

We’ll also be making another exciting announcement after the GDC about some new game play content updates in the pipeline for Mole!

Even if you’re not attending the GDC. I hope you’ll give Mole a go and as always don’t forget to tell us what you think about it!

Thanks for your time,

Chris Watts
Game Designer
Roo Games

Mole – Quest for the Terracore gem!

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An Analysis of the first month in the app store.

I started a few months to individuals in my local industry that I would post up sales data for Mole, regardless of how good or bad it was. This article is me keeping that promise in the interests of exchanging information.

Using the same tech that posts player scores to Leaderboards from Mole to the Esc Factory website. We at Roo Games have been able to collect a series of daily metrics to help us analyse Mole on the app store.

We’ve recorded a number of statistics including:

• Number of total game launches per day.
• Number of total unique devices launching Mole per day.
• Total number of devices with Mole installed.

With these statistics I’ve made a number of tables and evaluations.

Sales:
The most important question for many people reading this post will probably be. “How much money did you make?” Which is a totally reasonable question. Especially to those looking into iPhone development in Australia.

As it stands right now: After one month of being on the app store:  Nothing.

I don’t have a graph for my sales data. That’s because the game hasn’t sold enough units for apple to produce monthly sales overview. [You need to earn at least $150USD in a region if that's any indication.]

Counting up the daily sales from itunes connect I would say we’ve made around 250 sales. The issue even with that number is that it’s dispersed over a dozen worldwide regions. Making any collective payment impossible until those regions individually earn the equivalent of $150USD.

This all being said: It’s sold better then a “complete failure” app. 250 sales while small, bodes much better then if we released the same and did nothing to support it.

The next few figures of data does get a bit interesting though.

Number of “Moles” out there:

The graph speaks for itself. As stated above we’ve made about 250 sales. As the start of March there are 1400 devices with some version of Mole installed.
To be clear and to define what a “device” is:

• iPhone or iPod Touch
• 1 Purchase can be propagated over multiple owned devices if the account holder owns them.

What this means is at the end of the day we made 250 sales and there’s now 1400 people who have installed Mole onto a apple mobile device. That’s is a piracy rate of about 560%. Or 5 1/2 games downloaded illegally for every 1 sold. This doesn’t factor multi device users though.
I wont waffle on piracy to much because pirates aren’t really potential customers to a game like Mole so if they do effect sales it’s an effect we can’t control directly. Still it’s disheartening to search my game on google and have a few of the first links be pirate download sites.

Although 1400 have played mole. Not to bad.

Unique App launches:

This graph shows the number of unique app launches per day. This means when Mole is accessed but doesn’t cover the app being opened multiple times. [That number ranges from 3000 a day to 200 a day.]

At the highest point we where getting Mole played on 350 devices in one day. Low point rests around 50 unique devices in one day.

On an average day we’ll sell 4-6 copies of Mole over multiple regions. On a bad day we’ll probably sell 1 in england or the USA.

The big spike in the graph:
At this point you’re probably wondering what created the drastic spike of popularity on the 8th of February.

That was the day our game was reviewed on gamesuncovered.com There review alone pushed the game out of the category of complete failure. While to the time of this post we’ve had a total of 8 reviews. 5 of them being online English. 2 in different languages and 1 in a newspaper article, none of the other reviews have drastically boosted sales or popularity and have only contributed to a handful of sales and minor increase of unique device downloads.

Reviews and their impact:
We’ve gotten around 8 reviews on Mole so far. All of them positive and ranking the game from 4 out of 5 to 5 out of 5 stars. Safe to say anyone who plays Mole enjoys it.

Critically Mole has done well for itself. But taking the stats above onboard I would argue that critical success has only a minor part to do with sales and popularity. There’s much more going on to the apps consumer placement and promotion.

The most saddening thing for me is just how little in effect most review sites have to your game. Most iPhone game/review sites just don’t carry a big enough online traffic population to make that review transfer into sales. Not individually at any means. While every positive review helps to sell the product and the companies skill competence. It seems that unless your game has a review on the small handful very, very popular review sites like Touch-Arcade or Games Uncovered. Most reviews doesn’t transfer to money. Not in our case at least.

Why did we fail?
I think most importantly we failed to promote the game before it’s release. Review requests where sent out the day we got our promo codes and that was on the release date. Giving the promotional machine no time or warning for Mole. We have gotten requests for reviews from sites once the game was out. So the possible interest isn’t imaginary.

The game was also unplayable for the first 24 hours in store. We had to take if off market. Update and fix it. That took 5 days. I can’t determine what effect this had on our game.

The most important element: As in THE factor that makes or brakes a game on this platform is to get it featured by Apple in some capacity. Whether in the “What’s hot” or any other section on the itunes/app store.

Unfortunately there’s no proven step by step way to do that. Obviously Apple wont feature poor quality apps but your game needs to be just what they want advertised on the App store. There is a key to success to be found in that and I have a few ideas but nothing conclusive or quotable.

The game itself is a solid experience. Weaknesses include artwork that while good is not to the level of quality seen in publisher backed games. [We couldn't pay an artist though. So that's a losing battle.] Mole is also a short game coming in at 2 hours of average playtime.

What will we do now?
Mole isn’t a bad game. We stand by that the gameplay is solid and the game as a package is well worth it’s cost. [And reviewers both professional and on the app store agree.] What we now plan to do is improve upon it. Update and continue to promote it.

Over the next few months we plan to:

• “We <3 GDC” promotion. From March: Friday the 5th to Sunday the 14th we’ll be showing off Mole at the Unity Booth at GDC and more importantly be letting people download the game for free during that period.
• Reviews: We’ll continue to work to get some solid reviews for Mole.
• Lite version: After GDC we’ll be releasing a lite version. Letting the player experience the game up until a point.
• Update: After GDC we’ll be spending some time into updating Mole to give our existing and potential player base new features and more content to bring Mole up as a stronger game and more entertaining experience.
• Facebook: We’ll be releasing a free version of Mole on Facebook to promote the iPhone version.

My conclusion:

It’s always easy to blame the small sales of Mole on factors like market over-saturation and piracy. But the fact of the matter is that while we made a solid game for the iPhone it didn’t reach the expectation of those who guard the gates to mass promotion. That being Apple and popular review sites like Touch Arcade. Although the review at Games Uncovered was a fantastic buzz.

Fortunately. We’re an indie studio and our product is digital. Updating the game to bring it up to the expectations of those gatekeepers is a viable option. We’ve found that the public love playing Mole. It’s now a case of letting them know about it through promotion.

Thanks for reading.

Chris Watts
Roo Games