Humble indie fumble: an XBLA horror story

http://www.next-gen.biz/features/humble-indie-fumble-xbla-horror-story

by seagaia • 15 years ago

25 19 15 years ago

snprbob86• 15 years ago

I played an early build of Shuggy nearly four years ago when some of my colleagues were reviewing Dream Build Play games. Even back then, it was surprisingly close to a finished game; carrying a coat of polish that was very rare among the other contest entries. It was far and away my favorite game of the competition, so it was hard to watch it from a (pretty far) distance while it struggled to find its way to XBLA. When it finally did land, it didn't make so much as a peep.

This is a sad story, but let it serve as a warning: Publishers, just like any party in a business relationship, have their own priorities and motives. You need to understand those of whoever you enter into business with. And furthermore, you need to demand final cut for the key parts of your business, and that includes marketing yourself and your product. If you're not good at something, don't assume that getting another party to do it for you is a panacea. You need to become enough of an expert to know when they are doing you a diservice.

decadentcactus• 15 years ago

Also adds weight to the "Just Ship" mantra. Imagine releasing it 2 years ago, and using the time since then to promote it, update it, polish it (if XBLA allows that sort of thing).

alanfalcon• 15 years ago

Or create a second game in that time frame, with lessons learned from the first.

pestaa2• 15 years ago

A story worth reading. I'm sad because I'm afraid of being in the same boat (although I'm just starting out basically). The takeaway from my perspective is this: pick the platform carefully as it may narrow your space of movement so much it might just screw things up for you; and secondly, do some marketing yourself if possible.

  [column inches, websites] may be easier than ever to do it
  yourself - but that doesn’t guarantee anyone will care.

Apparently, letting the relevant department do it didn't guarantee anyone would care. If you're too much into coding, you may forget other aspects of business. Oh, and things sometimes fall apart even if everything is done the right way.

itg2• 15 years ago

It was difficult reading that article since it had so many grammatical errors, but worth it.

timknauf5• 15 years ago

You must have a keener eye than me: where were these errors?

itg2• 15 years ago

I'm not the editor for that site so it's not my job. Not sure why I get downvoted for pointing out the horrible writing.

r0s• 15 years ago

I never understood the hope XBLA inspires. The ecosystem is limited and tightly controlled. Access to the market is entirely at the whim of Microsoft, who will also be your main competitor.

From the outside it looks like a huge trap for catching cheap IP as it develops.

prayag• 15 years ago

I read it as a Humble Indie Bundle: an XBLA horror story and thought it was a story about Humble Indie Bundle. It's not. The story has nothing to do with Humble Indie Bundle. In fact this story goes on to show the need for something like Humble Indie bundle for xbox.

jeff18• 15 years ago

My heart skipped a beat when I saw the headline!

timknauf5• 15 years ago

Edge Magazine tends to be keen on these at-first-glance-misleading pun headlines.

Hostile2• 15 years ago

I tried the game and passed on it when it was released. I can't speak for the general public, but it was not a failure of marketing for me. It just wasn't enough to get me to spend money on it. It was polished, and not bad, just... sort of forgettable and average. It would be a big assumption for me to assume that my experiences are more consistent with what happened to the game in reality, but the article doesn't tell us how many trial downloads went along with the poor sales either.

pestaa2• 15 years ago

There is a huge need for polished games under the radar. Even the forgettable part is forgivable. Polished is above average.

(I don't mean you should have bought the game. All I say is I don't understand why it didn't generate more sales in the indie community.)

Hostile2• 15 years ago

Polish is nice to have, sure, but if nobody wants to actually play the delivered experience, all the polish in the world won't save it. Nobody should buy a game just because it's polished. While I'd prefer polish on all my games, I'll take an unpolished dwarf fortress over a polished forgettable uncompelling game any day of the week).

As a side note, I'm not sure what rule I've broken to get downvoted. I pointed out that there could be more to this story, and that we don't have solid data on how many trial downloads there were (which is a MUCH better indicator than sales is regarding "marketing" in this case).

For those unfamiliar with XBLA, just about everyone downloads a trial first (every game on XBLA is required to have a free trial, so you'd have to be pretty impulsive to skip it completely), and then you can buy the game from within the trial version's interface.

If the point of the comments here on HN is to add to the discussion, I'm not really sure what I did to justify a downvote. I'm just getting started commenting here and don't really have karma to spare. I really try hard to be a positive member of the site, so If somebody sees this and can point out what I can avoid doing in the future, that'd be appreciated.

twidlit• 15 years ago

The story is not done, seems it will have a happy ending IF he ports it to Steam. Whats another 1-2 months doing that and getting some more multiple? But something tells me the contracts he's done restricts what he can do with the IP.

timknauf5• 15 years ago

Glasgow may have a self-deprecating culture similar to that here in New Zealand. We've had to learn the hard way to be -- by our local standards -- incredibly pushy. Hopefully my business partner won't mind me quoting an article he wrote for Ars Technica [1]:

Then come the cultural differences (or perhaps they're just personality differences.) Whether it’s a New Zealand-wide trait or not, we tend to talk ourselves, and our products, down. To boast about how great you think you are seems arrogant and obnoxious, but when you’re trying to get people excited about your games, underselling it (and yourself) can backfire horribly.

I’ve seen the same confused facial expression from many overseas visitors when I modestly described my game as “alright." If the creator doesn’t think his game is totally super awesome, they seem to be thinking, then why on earth should I check it out? We've had to learn to talk our games up. Even if it makes you cringe inside, developers have to show others why they're spending their life making these things!

[1] http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/01/sell-in-america-live-i...

zokier• 15 years ago

Isn't indie game development all about being self-publishing aka independent aka indie?

Humble indie fumble: an XBLA horror story

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