An approx. guide to selling Indie games

[Grey Alien]

As requested by a few people, I have put together an approximate guide of how to sell your game, it's on my blog here:

greyaliengames.wordpress.com/2006/11/09/an-approximate-guide-to-selling-indie-games/

I hope that you find it useful and interesting!

btw, I'm not professing to be an expert or have it all right, but I do have some experience and I thought I'd share it.

[joe]

nice. nothing really new but a very nice summary.

[ProgrammingFreak]

A good article, helps pin-points some of the promblems indie game developers have and how to fix them

[Grey Alien]

Thanks. Hopefully you found something usefull. Really you could write thousands of words about each point looking at the various different tactics, pros and cons, but I just wanted to make an overview to help beginners or anyone in fact (it helped me too).

[LilGames]

Loved the guide. As said, it's mostly "obvious", yet serves as a great reminder and checklist of what to do (because even the most obvious of things can be forgotten!)

[Grey Alien]

Thanks :-) Someone in Brazil just linked to and here is the babelfish translation of their summary (it's quite funny and cool that they did this):

"Searching my list of blogs on games, I found this post muitíssimo interesting of blog Grey Alien Games giving some tips of as to vender its game. 1 - It finishes its game! This exactly! She finishes it, therefore much people find that making all the phases and some effect the game is ready. She thinks about a menu with options for the player, full way janela/tela, options player to change the buttons to it of the commands, etc. Rules of the game, screens of aid, etc. It is certain of that everything is functioning and with good quality, its game will not make success none if the graphs or the sound will be bad same with the best jogabilidade of the world! 2 - Alpha Test This phase of tests consists of calling the amigos/familiares (players and not players) to test the game and the navigation through the menus. A good tip is to look at intently while they mechem in its game (without giving no tip) to see in that the people have difficulty for the use. In this phase also it is good for testing its game in many computers, to check the minimum specification for the use. 3 - Test Beta Here, when its game for one confides numbers limited of players to wait for its "feedback". Good things will also come, bad, personal, radical commentaries also! It sees for the numbers, it sees if equal claims exist, fix small bugs, have accepted certain segestões and improve its game! 4 - It publishes its game Which the advantage to publish its game? When the money ($$$) to entar, will be ALL its! You it will not need to divide with nobody! But for this you need some things as: - a site; - an installer of its game; - One licensa for acceptance of the user; - a service of payments; - and Security in this system! 5 - It finds a Publisher (investing) If you do not have saco/tempo/conhecimento to make all these things of item 4, then she finds somebody to publish its game. With certainty this pessoa/empresa that will make this well done work very but will have its price (it knows of this) 6 - It places its game in a vestibule Many vestibules exist to publish its games, really do not know if it is dificil to place its proper games there, but much people search these sites to search for games. She follows some here: Real Arcade, Big Fish Games, AOL, Yahoo, MSN, IWin, Reflexive Arcade, to remember the Brazilians superdownloads and Baixaki. 7 - It improves each time more It listens, it asks, it reads! Each time more to improve its game. Not only its game, also improves in all the development phases its next game, to try to make right the things in the first time!"

haha, I like "radical commentaries" and "When the money ($$$) to entar, will be ALL its! You it will not need to divide with nobody!" :-D Note how portal translated as vestibule!