Why "portalize" your own site?

[soniCron]

I'm increasingly perplexed by the number of indie developers who "portalize" their website. I will often click links in the signatures on the posts in these forums to learn more about their games, but 9 times out of 10 I don't know what game(s) that developer has made. On his site, there are always the same lists of games as every other indie developer who "portalized".

Frankly, I don't know who made what games, most of the time, without downloading, installing, and running each. And this is no good if I'm a fan of a particular developer. I go to their site to see what's new, and there is usualy no clear indication of what games are their own.

Are the profits from being an affiliate actually worth the confusion of your fans? I'm a pretty smart guy. I've been up and down the Internet and I'm quite capable of navigating the web, but it confuses me to no end when visiting most of your sites. Most of the time, there is no simple (or at least very apparent) method of filtering out affiliated games. The only exception (that comes to mind) would be Reflexive's site, which clearly has a "Reflexive" genre.

Now, forgive me, because I know a lot of you don't do this. But it seems that the majority do and I cannot understand why. From a consumer's standpoint, it's as if there were dozens of sites on the internet with the exact same content and a different design. I can't imagine this is a very good business model. (But, like I said, I have no idea how much you guys are making on affiliate sales.)

What are the values of contributing to such confusion? If they outweigh the disadvantages, then at least make it easy for me to discern which games are yours!

[ManuelFLara]

Are the profits from being an affiliate actually worth the confusion of your fans? I'm a pretty smart guy. I've been up and down the Internet and I'm quite capable of navigating the web, but it confuses me to no end when visiting most of your sites. Most of the time, there is no simple (or at least very apparent) method of filtering out affiliated games. The only exception (that comes to mind) would be Reflexive's site, which clearly has a "Reflexive" genre.
Well, in the first place I don't think adding a couple of games from other developers can be called "portalize", but I think you're dramatizing too much.

First, because most (which means almost none) indie developer has fans. At least in the casual market, which is where most affiliates seem to be targeted at, most people just want to play fun games, they don't mind who made them (actually I, as an experienced gamer, don't care a thing who made a game, only if it entertains me (with the honorous exception of Blizzard :) )).

On the other hand, most people who sell games from others add them to a "Try these other games" or "Games from other people" section at their sites, under their own.

Now we talk about this I'd like to ask Mike Boeh if adding others' games to Retro64 is working well, seems I've seen you did it again (BreakQuest first, now Clash 'n Slash too).

[Pyabo]

Answer: money.

But I agree with you 100%, soniCron... I think it's the wrong way to go. Manuel, you are right that very few indie developers have fans. But then it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem isn't it? You're definitely not going to generate a fan base if you don't stand out. Oh, you're selling the same games as RealArcade? OK then, I'll just wait for next month's GamePass credit...

[ggambett]

Come on. Actual users (not us) think RealArcade makes all the games they sell, for example.

[soniCron]

Come on. Actual users (not us) think RealArcade makes all the games they sell, for example.
That may be so, but I still don't understand why it's acceptable to obfuscate the origins of ones' own games.

[Red Marble Games]

That may be so, but I still don't understand why it's acceptable to obfuscate the origins of ones' own games.

It's not a question of acceptability, really, so much as a question of whether it's good for business.

I tried to raise this topic once before, though I asked more generally about whether it's better to offer a small selection of games or to throw everything under the sun onto your site. I didn't get much reaction either way. The few posters who responded basically said "the more games you list, the more money you can make," but I'm coming to think that's not true. Particularly as more and more people adopt (for example) the Reflexive Arcade, even calling their version the [Your Name Here] Arcade, and show the same games, I do think you lose any explanation to your visitors of why they should buy from you versus anyone else. You start to look like one more affiliate site among hundreds.

Think about this from the perspective of Seth Godin's new book (see http://www.allmarketersareliars.com/ for the blog) about marketing "the story." Why should anyone buy anything from you? Because there's something unusual about you or your products or your website or whatever it is, something that makes them want to associate themselves with you rather than someone else.

I don't really practice what I preach, yet. I've mostly resisted taking on many games that I didn't port to the Mac myself, and I've tried to identify in the description those I didn't have any porting involvement in. But it has been on my ever-long To Do list for a while to create a clearer separation between the games I had something to do with (in my case, the games I ported to the Mac) and those that I'm just an affiliate for. Increasingly I think calling visitors' attention to what makes my site unusual, even unique, is an important part of branding and marketing.

[Mike Boeh]

The answer, "Money" was the correct one...

Basically, I have a bunch of users, just waiting for a new game to buy. But if I have nothing to sell them, they can't buy. When a newsletter is sent out, announcing a game, it increases sales ALL OF THE GAMES at retro64.com...

I would much rather just present the games I make, but I also want to give my customers a good reason to come back to the site. It just makes sense to do, and every high volume website tries to stay fresh for the very same reasons...

I am thinking about a way to differentiate the Retro64 developed games from the ones I didn't create- will come up with something... And I am not going to grab any game that comes a long, but I happened to like both ClashNSlash and BreakQuest...

[NuriumGames]

Most customers don't know and don't mind at all who developed the game. I think that if you reach a certain level of traffic (a level quite far from my current one) is a good idea to pick a few games targeted to a similar audience of yours.

By the way if I ever do that I'll differentiate my own games from the others. Our games vs Fellow developers games or something like that. The main reason is to avoid users confusion (although I think they do not mind).

Also I'm happy to be with Mike at Retro64 and others :)

[Nexic]

I think Mike has got it just right. If you list loads of games then you are certainly going to ruin your reputation - but finding a game you think your users will really like once in a while, to keep them interested has got to be worth it. Especially if it is a game thats not on the top 10 of every single portal. By using games that are good converters, but still arent highly advertised you can keep a sense of originality, as long as you try to keep the quantity down.

After my next release I am thinking of doing something similar - with me finding a new game each month and putting it on my site for a small amount of time (so at any one time you can only see one game that is not my own). This way I get the benefit from the traffic peak, without my own games losing out to excessive competition.

[svero]

It's like Mike said. We have these money making machines that we've built up over years with mailing lists of thousands of people and so on.. but we only ever release a game of our own once or twice a year, so a lot of the time the potential of the site is limited and there's no reason to bring people back to the site. I personally would like to try and get more games on my site that you don't see everywhere else. Games that I feel are very good but aren't currently in all the top 10 lists, but often it's hard to find games that I really like and also meet that criteria.

[arcadetown]

We started as freewebgames.com, click here to see our beginnings (http://web.archive.org/web/20000612020514/http://freewebgames.com/index.html) (archive.org missing a few assets). We saw we had visitors but little to offer so slowly started adding other developer's stuff. Users appeared to like it but caused some potential partners to see us as possible competition instead of as a simple author trying to promote his games, thus hurting or killing some deals we tried to make. So just be careful about what you're trying to accomplish is all.

[Coyote]

My reasons:

#1 - I need people coming to my site. If I could crank out a high-quality title every 2-3 months, then maybe I'd be content selling only my own products. But between times I can release new games, I will lose all the traffic I once had. You HAVE to keep giving people a reason to return to your site. New games are one of those situations.

#2 - I'm actually friends with people in other indie companies, and we've worked with each other on each other's products. I'd like to support THEM by selling their product for them.

#3 - Additional titles on your site, particularly those that speak to the same audience as your own titles, can help you bring in more potential customers for your own games.

I can agree with the issue of certain games appearing EVERYWHERE. I mean, can you even find a halfway-decent-sized portal out there that ISN'T selling Platypus? It's a great game that sells well, so it makes sense... but as a rather unusual customer who seeks out unique indie games, it's disheartening to see the same dozen or so games being sold EVERYWHERE. It reminds me of Wal*Mart. I think that as the market grows, you are going to see a bit more specialization.

[KNau]

I think that while the practice limits your downside, it may also limit your upside. Yes, you gain a handful of affiliate sales each month but your own game gets lost in the pile of non-exclusive titles that can be found anywhere.

The only reason for anyone to stumble across a low-traffic (<10,000 visitors) indie site is because they followed the trail of your own game marketing, not because they were looking for a place to download Chuzzle. I'm willing to bet that it may actually cost sales of your own game to muddy the waters trying to present yourself as some mini-me games portal. And since your game turnover can't compete with Big Fish or Real Arcade there's no reason for visitors to return to your site.

Last time I checked the popular idols of this board (goodsol and dexterity) didn't splat their homepages with affiliate links.

[svero]

Last time I checked the popular idols of this board (goodsol and dexterity) didn't splat their homepages with affiliate links.

And they might be losing a lot of money as a result. In my own experience, since I started offering a few titles by other developers I've seen an *increase* in the sales of my own titles. Not the other way around.

[soniCron]

In my own experience, since I started offering a few titles by other developers I've seen an *increase* in the sales of my own titles. Not the other way around.
But isn't it possible there are unrealized losses? Surely, selling other people's games isn't the only (nor the best) way to attract people to a developer's site. If there were other ways to generate the same traffic (such as a community initiative), it would be possible that sales would increase even more, since the unrealized losses of selling someone else's game would be eliminated. Or is this a farce?

[Davaris]

I'm going to go the portal route eventually. I figure why bust your neck making a game when you're not even sure its going to sell? Instead you can find out which games are already selling and list them on your site and take a 30-50% cut with no risk. Sweet!

[Savant]

I'm going to go the portal route eventually. I figure why bust your neck making a game when you're not even sure its going to sell? Instead you can find out which games are already selling and list them on your site and take a 30-50% cut with no risk. Sweet!
If this really is your plan, you may not find a lot of developers willing to accept your affiliate requests. :)

[soniCron]

My whole problem with this "portalization" is that having so many portals is severely oversaturating the market and I don't believe it's healthy in the long run. Having so many of the same damn thing can't be good! I keep hearing developers saying, "Try to stay away from making yet another match-3 game," but everyone and their dog are jumping onto the portal bandwagon.

I was under the impression that word-of-mouth advertising is, by far the most valuable form of advertising, bar none. However, by "portalizing" a developer's site, I think there are a lot of missed opportunities to nurture your own community and build a following of users who are excited about your upcoming games.

I know I frequently check a couple developer's sites (Blizzard and Raptisoft come to mind) to see the progress of their next game. But a lot of developers confuse me with which projects are theirs and which aren't. There seems to be very little community support, and why should there be? They can get the same software from any other portal site on the Web! It's like everyone is turning into one giant WalMart (who's distrobution model and publisher inbreeding are causing severe longterm damage to the video game market, IMVHO).

I'd like to see more support for and from the community, and see developers try to excite their visitors to stay beyond just trying out the next game. Surely encouraging them to interact with one another, reaching your god-like hand into the conversation from time to time, and promoting/sponsoring community only events can invigorate an otherwise self-destructive industry. In the least, it can't hurt.

Newsletters, while an excellent way to keep fans abreast of current events, are very exclusive. Not only does the user have to locate the "Subscribe" form, but they have to feel comfortable giving their precious email address to a website that, in their eyes, may sell them out. (This is different from signing up to a forum or other community page, because while you are often given the opportunity to "opt out" of emails from forums, you are essentially "opting in," which is usually an invitiation for spam, IMO.) In addition, the newsletter is purely one-way, which usually prevents communities from developing because of the lack of intra-communication.

Now, while I've yet to release a game, I have run several websites in the past 10 years that survived and thrived mainly because of the fans. So I'd like to turn this discussion towards more productive and fruitful methods of developing and sustaining communities of fans than "just selling one more game". I think there is a place for promoting other developers' games on your own website, but the extent to which many developers do that is, in my opinion, unhealthy.

I challenge you: Do you have ideas for better methods of increasing customer awareness, while not only not alienating, but nurturing, communities of fans?

[svero]

But isn't it possible there are unrealized losses? Surely, selling other people's games isn't the only (nor the best) way to attract people to a developer's site.

Well look at it this way. Your customers came to you at first to buy a game. Now over a few years you release more games. The people you could consider your regular customers have seen those games and selected some of them to buy. The one's they liked. Now in the meantime you can present to them another game they may or may not want. You're not really competing with your own stuff unless you do something strange like release a whole bunch of games along with your own new release.

Now certain people will visit the site randomly from a search engine listing or some other link. Those people might in fact choose to buy one of the games you've affiliated instead of your own title. And in that case you'd lose a bit because, depending on the percentage you're receiving, you'd probably make less on that sale. However.. with regards to my site I know that this sort of random traffic makes up a very small percentage of my overall sales.

So if there are unrealized losses they haven't been made clear to me yet. The only thing I can think of is the danger of "sameness" and losing regular customers. If you give customers the impression that your site has the exact same games as every other site then there's a chance that they'll stop visiting your site or unsubscribe from your newsletter. Why not just get reflexive's newsletter and see the games there. You don't need several really. So I think I should probably strive to put up games that are not highly promoted elsewhere, but which are still good games. But even that kind of loss I haven't really seen in terms of my mailing list memberships declining or something of that nature.

- Steve

[Mike Boeh]

Let me put it this way:

What if BFG only sold the games they developed (Magic Vines and Mahjong Towers II) or Arcadetown only sold Realspace, Blox, and Black Knight? Do you think they would be Alexa top-3000 sites right now?

[Hamumu]

Something I've been thinking about doing, in a vague sense, is creating a separate portal site (or as I like to think of it, an online store). Then my site would be a developer site, and my portal would be the publisher of sorts. So when you click Buy on my site, it would take you to my store. I don't know if that really buys me anything, but it's just a random thought I've had.

[Miguel Tartaj]

If a developer offers games from other devs that's good news, a new stand is available for the rest of developers.

I can understand your concerns soniCron (regarding the differentation and ways of making interesting a site) and can see that you are looking for the overall good wealth of the whole indie move, but the main point; "portalize" of many sites is not against this, I believe is all opposite to that.

One more sale made any where, right now, in any portal is always good for us even if you don't get a cent out of that. Why? because we are competing with other ways of entertaiment and at least that sale was on our side. The bigger the community is the more chances of becoming succesful everybody on this boat has. This industry is not yet that big that the share is closed, everybody is excited about how much it can grow.

[soniCron]

I got on here expecting at least one constructive idea that could spark some further discussion. I guess my beef is simple: If you want to be a portal, be a portal. If you want to be a developer, be a developer. But do one or the other really well and all the way. I'm not saying you can't be a portal and develop games, but don't develop games and throw up a few more titles on there to draw a little more traffic to your site. It's a cheap gimmick, and not a replacement for actual community support.

Question: How many people who like or buy your games sign up for your newsletter? How many of those actually read your newsletter? How many of those will visit your site if you announce a new product? How many of those will even bother downloading it? And how many of those will bother installing the game? Playing it? Enjoying it? Come back for more?

If you're going to be a portal, make yourself unique! Give them a reason to come back to your site! Arrange with the developers you affiliate with to upload high scores to your server. Offer some web games. Do something to be unique! But most importantly, if you develop your own games, support and nurture your community beyond a newsletter! The DROD guys are an excellent example of this!

@Mike Boeh: BFG and Arcadetown are what I consider "full fledged portals" that develop their own titles. They offer huge libraries of games (200+), so I'm not speaking to them. BTW, I do appreciate your method of "portalization" more so than a lot of other developers. You're very picky about the games you select. (Anyone else who does this, kudos!) I'm not saying you're immune from improvement, as well. But you're definately on the right track, however!

@Hamumu: That is the sort of thing I'm talking about (separate sites). There are two distinct audiences to cater to: the portal crowd and the fans. They can't be mixed and jumbled together, or else you lose the advantages (and distinct differences) between the two.

[ErikH2000]

You have to consider that as indie devs, we are looking at our peer's websites quite a bit more than the average gamer. Other gamers don't get around so much and aren't going to see Platypus or whatever on half a dozen sites. The "same game everywhere" turn-off might not really be a problem.

-Erik

[Anthony Flack]

Still, there's only one place on the web where the only game available is Platypus! It's the worst of both worlds!

I would like to build up my site content (non-game), and I have plenty of ideas about how to do it, and have been meaning to do so for ages. But like so many other things, I just don't have time right now. I do think it's a good idea.

[ErikH2000]

I would like to build up my site content (non-game), and I have plenty of ideas about how to do it, and have been meaning to do so for ages. But like so many other things, I just don't have time right now. I do think it's a good idea.
Yes, that's how it always is. There's never any shortage of ideas for improvement--it's just finding the time.

There are 20 things wrong with my site right now (or 40 if you ask Joe Leiberman). Got my HTML editor open now and trying to knock a few off the list, but people keep chatting me and also I keep typing messages on indiegamer forums. Bye! Back to the fracking site...

-Erik

[KNau]

What if BFG only sold the games they developed (Magic Vines and Mahjong Towers II) or Arcadetown only sold Realspace, Blox, and Black Knight? Do you think they would be Alexa top-3000 sites right now?
The better question is how many mini-me portals actually see a noteworthy boost in traffic by adding those affiliate links? A genuine "publisher" and an affiliate hound are two way different things. Be honest, where do you buy your games from? For me, it's Big Fish and Real Arcade - I don't even visit the little players and neither does my girlfriend.

Even without the affiliate links there is a sickening same-ness to every game dev site out there lately. It's pastel colours, some nauseatingly cutesy name (and mascot to match) and a buttload of affiliate links. I just wish someone would do something different because I'm completely sick and tired of the "casual" scene.

[ErikH2000]

Be honest, where do you buy your games from?
I always try to find out the developer name and buy directly from their site. Not that I'm making a big moral stand or anything--it is just more interesting for me that way. And I don't think most people would or should care about that sort of thing.

-Erik

[papillon]

I try to track developer sites because I find so many of the released games SO BORING. (I don't really even visit Big Fish anymore, everything was too cheery and samey and dull the last many times I tried it.) So if something comes out that is interesting and different, I'm frantic to find out if the source has made anything else that might also be good. :)