Puppytron: by way of explanation

[princec]

In my "cold harsh light of day" thread which has attracted so much attention there's been a few comments about Puppytron and how it ain't worth $5 and I could write it in 2 minutes in BASIC etc. etc. and the controls are impossibly hard blah blah and there's no content moan moan.

I must explain!

Puppytron was a cunning experiment. It was my "how little effort can I put into a product for how much gain?" It was to me what Brainwave is to Dexterity.

It took about 2 weeks to code, and a further 2 weeks to tune, although in reality it was less than that as it was a part-time job. So far, it's our best selling game, and people who buy it, appear to buy it just because they like it, black background and windowed mode and all. To date it's been our best selling game (over time).

It's strange how quick people are to point out all its flaws whilst ignoring the possibility it's actually a total success. We're going to try another experiment with it soon which is to put a background in it and another quick polish, and double the price - to the same as Brainwave no less - and see how that affects profit.

This minigame format is just excellent for this kind of indie experimentation and it's what makes me want to do what I do. We get creative freedom but we don't have to invest too much into the products. And it also... gasp!... seems to be a niche that is not filled!

We're some way through Puppy Invaders Deluxe too, which to date has taken about a week to code/paint and will probably take another 3 to finish. This time we're going straight for quality up front as most of the efforts in the first game don't need to be duplicated (shared codebase). If this weren't a hobby we'd have 10 of these games up by the end of the year.

Cas :)

[svero]

In one thread you say its impossible to meet Pavlina's goals, and in this one you say your game is a big success. I think at the end of the day, even if Puppytron sells relative to the effort you put into it, you're not making too much money there and there's probably not much in the way of a springboard to run a successful full time game business. I think in the experiment "how much can we get for how little" you're essentially dealing with "not that much" amounts. So you've proved to yourself that effort and sales are not necessarily directly tied. I could of told you that long ago. Thats about how you spend the effort. Misdirected effort wont lead to sales. But I think it's probably also fair to say that the minimal effort will, on average, be much less likely to achieve real substantial success, than greater effort. Really you want to get both vectors on the same course. Lots of effort in the best possible direction.

[alfie]

In my "cold harsh light of day" thread which has attracted so much attention there's been a few comments about Puppytron and how it ain't worth $5 and I could write it in 2 minutes in BASIC etc. etc. and the controls are impossibly hard blah blah and there's no content moan moan.
Cas :)

Even to this day you will come across people who say they culd do Tetris in a couple of hours, and they probably could...but the point is they didnt.

As for the pricing and the "percieved" value, if you are not getting a LOT of potential customers complaining that it's too expensive (assuming they are voicing their opinions) then I dont see how it's a justified comment.

[princec]

Nobody's ever complained about the price... in fact the most commonly heard comment is that it's a "steal" hence my plans to double the price ;) I fully expect it to have almost no effect on sales but quite a dramatic effect on profits!

Cas :)

[Raptisoft]

Add "move with arrows, fire toward mouse" option, please!

[princec]

LOL :) That game is called "Crimsonland" I believe ;)

Cas :)

[Raptisoft]

Yeah, only those of us who don't like ultraviolence or the way the character moves don't play Crimsonland. We WOULD however, enjoy playing Puppytron with those controls, since it's cartoony, arcade-y, and since we can't really come to grips with the double keyboard layout.

[Black Hydra]

When you ask for suggestions, people mention the flaws of your game.

Thats a fact.

People don't know what your conversion ratio's are, how many webhits your getting, ect.

So if you are saying that your not making enough money we criticize the only thing that we can actually see.

If you spent 4 weeks on it and it is your best seller then your doing great!

Just remember that if James had asked for advice on why Ricochet wasn't selling too well (lol) then we would probably make a bunch of comments about the game.

[princec]

Oh, I don't have any problem with it, I just thought people would like to know the story behind Puppytron and how it came to be, which puts it in a quite different context. It's been the most fun experiment I've done yet in gaming.

Actually here's some food for fact freaks:

Unique IPs hitting puppygames.net : circa 1,000 per day
Logs of successful new Puppytron installs : circa 15 a day
Sales of Puppytron : 6 this month

I accidentally broke the Mac version this month too. Whoops. It's fixed now.

Cas :)

[Pyabo]

Unique IPs hitting puppygames.net : circa 1,000 per day


How many of these visitors are downloading at least one game?

[princec]

A surprisingly small number of them; in total I get around 30-50 new succesful install logs a day for all my games combined at the moment.

Cas :)