Well, you know what they say about the best-laid plans of mice and men… I had intended to write about cross-platform graphics technology or something of the sort. But then E3 happened, and Game Studio was shown by TouchArcade, and suddenly people started taking notice, and hitting us up for more information. So, let’s talk Game Studio.
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I was going to do a tech blog this time…but honestly after the crazy week at E3 I just don’t have the energy to finish it in enough detail that people might learn so…we’ll be saving that for next time (sorry!) and instead talking a bit about this year’s E3 trip.
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Monetization…it’s a scary word isn’t it? It sounds all fancy and important. It’s a very “businessy” term, and as such I’m sure most of us try to ignore it, or avoid it out of fear of its inherit complexity. But well, it’s not hard, it’s rather simple. In the wise words of Paul Graham (taken from his fantastic essay, How to Start a Startup):

You just try to get people to pay you for stuff.

Really, that’s it. You’re just trying to find the best way to make money on whatever it is you’re doing. The problem is there are a LOT of ways to go about this…what’s best for you? Well first, you have two starting points: Is your game going to be free or paid. Think about this a lot at the design phase of your game. As we’ve (very depressingly, and completely obvious in hindsight) discovered, you can’t just take a paid game, release a free version with ads, and expect to make money.

So that being said, let’s look at what options are out there for monetizing your game, and let’s look at some of the dumb things we’ve done regarding those options, so you won’t do the same!

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It was 2006 when Muteki Corporation was first founded…based on the desire to make our own games and do what we’ve always loved doing. So why is it, 5 years later we still haven’t really succeeded in doing that?

Well partially because we weren’t playing to win…we weren’t risking anything…we played it all safe.

Years of engineering effort went in to building up products for other clients, such as Loopt, ngmoco, EA, Pogo, Tapulous and many more. In those 5 years we’ve released over a dozen products for various clients, and helped on at least a dozen more. We’ve had our games win awards, had games we’ve made hit the top spots on all of the charts and even been named on some magazines’ top-10 lists. And it still doesn’t feel like we’ve succeeded. Why?

Because while we’ve spent half a decade helping everyone else be successful, we’ve only set aside tiny scraps of time for our own products. We’ve released tiny games with minuscule budgets and short schedules because that’s all we could “afford” in between real (read: paid, external) projects. We’ve been succeeding, but we’ve only been succeeding on other people’s goals.

So, I decided to share a few lessons we’ve learned the hard way in the past 5 years…if you want to “succeed” as an indie developer.

Ship Your Game.

This is important, and needs to be said 3 times, each time emphasizing the next word.

• SHIP your game. It needs to ship. It needs to get out there. A half-finished project sitting on your laptop might as well not exist.
• Ship YOUR game. It’s about making the games you want to create. You’ll never feel your success if you’re successful making what everyone else wants to make.
• Ship your GAME. If you’re an indie game dev, make sure what you’re shipping is just that – a real game. Little demos and tiny throw-away wastes of time are cool and all, but you’re never going to achieve something great unless you really strive to make something great.

Embrace what you are.

Embrace what you are. We spent the first few years of business trying to appear bigger and more impressive than we are. This is great and all if you’re trying to build up a first-class consulting studio. It’s much less great when you’re isolating yourself from a huge, helpful community of like-minded people who just want to get to know each other, share tips, and make some awesome games. So be indie, be small. Be agile, be crazy. Be willing to say and do the things that the “big companies” never could, because they’re stuck dealing with things like investors or lawyers.

Have fun.

Seriously, this is important. This work requires that you pour passion into it. You need to be loving what you’re working on (at least for the first 90% of it…that last 10% ALWAYS sucks). You need to be excited to get to work on your game, and to be drifting into thoughts about your game and the next features or levels or whatever in your off time. You have to have fun with this, or it will crush you. Game development is hard, finishing a project is hard, and if it’s not fun…most of you never will.

I’ve been reading quite a number of blog posts from various indie developers (@karnakgames @rizergames both from #iDevBlogADay etc.) about their goals for this year, and there seem to be a lot of shared goals across the community.
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We’ve previously posted about the 1.2 update for Super Jetpack Dragon IV…some 6 (yes, SIX…as in half a year…as in FOREVER in indie-game-dev-land) months ago. And still the update never landed. And why is that? Because somewhere along the way we grew much bigger plans for our favorite little jetpack-wearing Dragon.

We have a series of updates being readied as the content is prepared…
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Super Jetpack Dragon IV: Village Burntopia has been live for just over two months and in that time we’ve released our first patch, enabling you, the player, to collect gold coins, and get a first glimpse at Jetpack Dragon’s arch-nemesis, Rocket Panda. Now it’s time to look at what those gold coins are used for: the new item shop in Super Jetpack Dragon IV: Village Burntopia v1.2, coming soon…
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