Category: business

Games and game developers seem to be caught in a price war these days. I hear a lot of developers expressing despair over the fact that games are always on sale, or discounted, or sold in bundles, and that ‘big name publisher X’ has just released its new game for 10 dollars, or 1 dollar, or 99 cents, or free!

Understandably, indie devs sometimes worry about how they can possibly compete with this. They worry wrongly, because they are misunderstanding what it is they sell. You might think knowing what you sell is flipping obvious, but it’s not. My favourite quote from ‘what they never teach you at harvard business school’ is from the guy who ran rolex. He was asked about the watch business, and he replied “I have no idea about the watch business. I’m not in the watch business. I’m in the luxury business’. he is absolutely darned right.

Most people making indie games don’t get that. They think their games are commodities, competing against identical other ones, like a potato. But they aren’t. games aren’t potatoes, they are rock bands.
Check this out:

As a clue, the first one a potato. Unless you are some sort of potato fetishist, you don’t know the variety. It might be maris piper, but who the hell cares?  It’s a potato, and we buy them as cheap as we can find them. Now look at the next one. Your reaction is likely

“What a bunch of dorks” or…

“Behold the kings of metal! Real men play on ten!”

But your reaction will NOT be ‘well they are a rock band, and depending on the price of their music I may purchase it, or a Dire Straits / Killers / Police  / Whoever album instead”

In fact, it would seem weird to feel that way about music. And this is how people feel about GOOD, ORIGINAL games. Generic Match-3 games are potatoes, and they will inevitably get sold for the price of spuds. But decent games (look at the premium pricing for COD:MW 2) and original games can charge what they think they are truly worth. They are rock bands. The existence of other bands is irrelevant. There is only one Manowar and there is only one Little Big Planet.

Try to make less potato-like games.

I’m starting some very basic ads for GSB, in anticipation of actually releasing it soonish. As a result, I’m fiddling with ad settings a lot. I get quite into it. Modern web-advertising is far far better and different to the classic advertising on TV or billboards or magazines that have existed all these years. You can literally do this with web ads:

“Bid for $0.08 per click for ads of this size on this specific site if the viewers time-zone is currently 7.30Pm – 9.30PM, on a Wednesday, and increase that bid by 10% if they are under 35 years old and reduce by 25% if they are female, making sure they do not see this specific ad more than 4 times today on that specific site. Only show this ad to English speaking people in New Zealand.”

You might think that’s overkill, but the thing is 99% of your competitors are big companies (measured by ad budget) and they ALL have people dedicated to getting those settings right. Ever wondered how the hell you see EVONY ads everywhere? How can they afford it? They can’t, but if you are aged 18-40 and visit gaming sites on weekday evenings, that’s a much more affordable niche to bombard.

So we establish that ads are VERY targetable and configurable, but why scary? Because they work. Seriously. I know everyone thinks they don’t and that we are immune, but trust me, you are not. I used to think that people ‘like me’ were ‘above’ ads, and that because I knew so much about PR and marketing, that I saw through their tricks. Then I read this book.

Advertising works because it affects your brain just like any other input. You probably associate the sound of birdsong with calm and peace, because over many years, when you have heard birdsong, its been peaceful and calm, and so your brain lays down patterns of neuron connections that associate birdsong = calm. This is how you learn EVERYTHING. Including pleasure. The smell of muffins with strawberry jam is associated by me with pleasure because I tend to experience the visual appearance of them shortly before I experience the pleasure of the taste. Our whole brains work this way, and good luck re-wiring them.

This is why ads work. They show you a busty supermodel next to a sports car, and your ‘higher brain’ thinks ‘cheap trick’ but your subconscious brain thinks ‘cars are sexy‘. You can’t stop it. It’s literally impossible, if you have physically seen the ad.

This is where it gets scarier:

There is a part of your brain called the amygdala. It gets visual input before anything else, and passes it on afterwards. It takes actions before the higher level part of your brain kicks in, and it is the part that works on strong emotions. The strongest emotion is fear. This is why when you sometimes jump in shock when you watch a horror movie. There is no reason to do so. The TV cannot attack you, you are safe, its just TV, but all these thoughts come in long after the fear response. In short, the fear response will lay down strong neural connections before your higher brain even gets to point out how incorrect that is. This is why political ads rely on fear. Fear works.

GALACTIC WAR IS COMING! BE AFRAID! YOU MUST BUY GRATUITOUS SPACE BATTLES NOW!

WOMEN IN BIKINIS WILL LOVE YOU!!!11111

ahem.

I feel strongly that this:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/10/promiscuous-dispersal-of-your-email-address.html

is true.

If you search my forums, you will notice I occasionally ask people to email me at
cliff@positech.co.uk
. I don’t use a NOSPAM or an image or try and get you to do some algebra before you get to see the mailto link.

People email me for a few reasons:

1) They are in the business and want to sell my games/do a deal/review my games/interview me

2) They have technical support issues

3) They hate me and want to tell me

4) They like my games and want to tell me

Only a stupid businessperson would not want to read 1) and 2).

3) is easily laughed at and deleted.

4) makes me feel good.

oh and….

5) Spam.

99% of spam is filtered out by spam filters. the other 1% is trivially spotted and deleted. I don’t think the odd click of the delete button is a hard price to pay to enable the people who play my games to get to contact the developer when they have to. I don’t respond to EVERY email, but I do read them.

Why don’t big companies do this?

I’ve encountered some amazingly silly behavior from online advertising companies recently. The first one, which I’ve spent lots of money with over the years  (for anonymity, lets called them ‘schoozle’), lets me place new image adverts, and then sticks them in a queue where they ‘pend approval’. This goes on for 3 days (or more, they are still waiting). That means that I can’t actually spend any money with them, so I am forced in the meantime to spend it with their competitors.
Imagine going to a hi-fi store and selecting an ipod, you take it to the checkout, where they say “with you in a minute”. They then leave you waiting there with your wallet open for 3 days. Do you think such a business will last long?

The second (and this applies to about half a dozen ad agencies) will not actually show me their prices, or what sites they offer ads on. Presumably I get to know this after they force me to ‘register’. During registration, they want to know what site or product I’m advertising, and what my monthly budget is. Presumably, if they think I’m worthy of giving them money, they may email me.
Imagine the hi-fi store has windows but they are blacked out. You have no idea if they even sell ipods. A security guard at the door tells you how great the store is, but demands to see your bank balance and know your home address before you are allowed to come in and look at the products on sale. That won’t be today, but at a time when they decide to review your application to be their customer.
Do you think such a business will last long?

For those of you thinking “‘duh’, it’s to keep out the cheapskates and the riff raff”, you are missing a trick. The simple phrase “Regrettably we currently can only cater to customers with an ad budget of over $10k / month” would keep everyone happy. They don’t get registrations from people they don’t want, they don’t insult potential future clients whose ad budgets may shoot up, and they don’t get a reputation for being assholes.

Smart companies always want to know if and how and why and when they might lose business. If people ever email me to tell me why they did *not* buy or could not buy my games, I may not always reply, but I always read them, and I often act on them. I’m not sure you ever get rich by learning how to turn people away.