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Original post by Rad76
Dexterity, how about a 3D Pong game? Like an actually 3d one, with different camera angles, replays, different skill levels, good physics and outstanding computer AI? Do you think that would sell good?

Thanks for your input!

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I can envision many different ways a 3D Pong game could be implemented, so I think this would depend on the execution. If it''s done in such a way that you''d get bored with the game after an hour, it won''t sell. But if there''s enough variety to keep people wanting more, it certainly has a chance.

It''s always tough for me to evaluate game ideas by themselves, even though I get many requests to do so. The reason is that it''s normally how well the idea is executed that makes the difference. For instance, the idea for Tetris would probably sound a bit dull if you''ve never seen the game. Sometimes great ideas have been poorly executed, and other times the simplest ideas (run around a maze and shoot) can be brilliantly executed.





Steve Pavlina
Dexterity Software
www.dexterity.com

For Dexterity Software:

In an earlier post you wrote:

"My original goal was to release just 4 new games this year as a publisher and 2 internally developed games (Arizona Smith and Olympus), but it''s looking more like we''ll be releasing 10-20 new games this year, since we''ve gotten a lot more high-quality indie submissions than expected. I think there are about 4 publishable games just from the last two weeks of submissions."

These comments caught my eye: the jump from 6 games published to possibly 20 seems like a big one. How would you respond to concerns from developers, who may worry that Dexterity, as a new publisher, might be spreading themselves too thin? And as a result not be able to give all published games the full "push" Dexterity is capable of?

I have come across several articals about your company recently; both on your official site and others. I have been intregued by what I have read and plan to add you to my short list of small publishers to stay abreast of.

Thanks

Steve just a quick response to what you said in your first post. You don''t really have unlimited shelf space in an online selling business. I think that if you had more products, not just a few, say you had 20 games selling, then it would be harder for each one invidually to do well as you can''t really promote 20 games as well as you can promote 2, like you are doing now. Have you thought about this and what ideas have you had to circumvent this from happening to you when shareware developers want to sell through you?
-Jason Starr-


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Freeze Software
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Original post by Anonymous Poster
These comments caught my eye: the jump from 6 games published to possibly 20 seems like a big one. How would you respond to concerns from developers, who may worry that Dexterity, as a new publisher, might be spreading themselves too thin? And as a result not be able to give all published games the full "push" Dexterity is capable of?

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Excellent question. Our New Game Launch Plan is something I''ve been systematizing and refining since 1999. It involves doing a series of promotional tasks in a specific order for each new game. The ongoing marketing after the initial launch is also fairly systematized, but we''re still doing some experimenting there (such as finding the most cost effective places to advertise).

Every new game we release starts with the same basic launch plan. This plan costs a few thousand dollars to execute for each game, and it does take a good number of man hours, but the plan is structured enough that in its present form, one person could manage to execute it for perhaps two dozen releases in a single year. And if we release more games than that, we''ll simply hire more people to do it.

Most of our advertising is of a direct-response nature. We don''t do image advertising. We won''t take out full page ads in gaming magazines that tell you to look for the game in your local retail store. When we place an ad, we want it to generate sales. Ads that perform get renewed indefinitely. Ads that don''t perform are terminated.

It''s in our best interest to continue to promote games as long as they keep selling. Some of the games on our site are five years old and were written for Windows 3.1 originally. But people keep buying them, so we keep promoting them. The same will be true for any new game we release -- if it keeps selling, we''ll continue to market it.

I''ve found that whenever we release a new game, it helps boost sales of all our games. I''m keeping an eye out for the first signs of cannibalization. Even if we put out 20 new games this year, I doubt we''re going to see any cannibalization though. In fact, I think that because of the opportunities for cross-promotion (such as our $39.95 Dweep Gold / Fitznik bundle), all our games will see their sales increase as we release new titles.

So in terms of giving each product an adequate push -- as soon as we complete the initial launch plan (which is virtually the same for every product), we''ll just keep feeding more money from the sales of that product back into additional marketing (as long as it continues to be effective). Thus, the product''s own success level determines how much it gets pushed. If a game fails to sell, the developer won''t make much money, and neither will we, so it makes sense for us to dump the poorest sellers and put extra effort into promoting the winners.

Also, we won''t be putting out 20 games all at once. They''ll be released one at a time. Since we can see how our sales are doing in real-time, there won''t be any long-term surprises.

Another thing to note is that I''m looking to hire several more people this year (we have five open positions right now). But even without all these people, we leverage technology quite a bit.

Steve Pavlina
Dexterity Software
www.dexterity.com

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Original post by Jason Starr
Steve just a quick response to what you said in your first post. You don''t really have unlimited shelf space in an online selling business. I think that if you had more products, not just a few, say you had 20 games selling, then it would be harder for each one invidually to do well as you can''t really promote 20 games as well as you can promote 2, like you are doing now. Have you thought about this and what ideas have you had to circumvent this from happening to you when shareware developers want to sell through you?

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Actually, I believe we can promote 20 games much more easily than we can promote 2. In the past whenever we released a new game, even if it was just an expansion pack, sales of all our products went up. Even though Dweep Gold and Fitznik, for instance, could be considered competitors that might cannibalize each other''s sales, they''re each helping to sell each other.

When we release a new game, it''s not just a matter of listing it on our web site along with the other games. The game''s demo is spread on hundreds of other sites, and this brings in a new stream of traffic to our site. Once there, a visitor will find all our games. It''s actually very common that a player will find one of our demos on a download site, visit our web site from a link in the demo, and end up buying one of our other games that they like even more. It''s also very common for people to buy multiple games at the same time.

Other developers I know who have a dozen or more products have reported similar results. The opportunities for cross-promotion are incredible.

When we get to 20 products, we should also be able to afford to do much more promotion for our site itself (instead of just for the individual games). Each visitor to our site then has a lot more chance of finding a game they''ll want to own. And with more frequent releases, our existing customers are more likely to keep coming back to buy from us again and again.

Right now we have such a great demand for new games from our customers that there isn''t a need to worry about oversupplying them. But if that ever does become a problem, we can simply become more selective in the games we release.

Also note that we already are very selective. If we publish every game that''s submitted to us, we can quickly flood our web site with mediocre products, and each one isn''t going to sell very well. But if we keep the bar high and select only those products which people will want to own, I think we''ll avoid an oversupply problem.

Steve Pavlina
Dexterity Software
www.dexterity.com

Steve,

first of all, thanks for posting your info. It''s great to see some successful shareware authors not only give great advice, but also let the rest of us know how well you can do things.

One question I have is this: do you find that you have most of your traffic coming from a few sources (e.g. particular sites), or is it really spread into hundreds of little sites. I used to think that download.com was a big driver of traffic, but I also noticed that e.g. Fiznik doesn''t have that tremenously high downloads.

Thanks!
jq

Steve,

What I was wondering is that there are plenty of sites where the
internet user can get card and puzzle games.
There are many free of high quality. Also there are also shareware games, but there are so many of that kind of websites.
Thousands...of it. That I am afraid that the user got many choices to get what she/he wants. There is on the internet alot of competition. And the experience is that a title in retail get more sales volume then online sales. I think you are in that case an exception, with many luck. I appreciate you very much for your hard work.

Please repsond.

Regards

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Original post by Anonymous Poster
Steve,

first of all, thanks for posting your info. It''s great to see some successful shareware authors not only give great advice, but also let the rest of us know how well you can do things.

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No problem.

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One question I have is this: do you find that you have most of your traffic coming from a few sources (e.g. particular sites), or is it really spread into hundreds of little sites. I used to think that download.com was a big driver of traffic, but I also noticed that e.g. Fiznik doesn''t have that tremenously high downloads.

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Our traffic is extremely decentralized. Here''s some data: For the period from Jan 1, 2002, to today, 10.23% of our traffic came from the top 20 search engines, 7.81% came from bookmarks, and after that, no single source yields greater than 0.5% of our traffic. Sources that couldn''t be tracked are lumped in with the bookmarks figure. The top 100 domains referring traffic to our site accounted for only 21.75% of our traffic. There are literally hundreds of different sites referring us traffic every day.

Individual sites like download.com used to be a big portion of our traffic a few years ago, but now that our site gets about 11,000 page views per day, the traffic they drive just isn''t enough to make a dent.

Fitznik''s downloads on sites such as download.com have suffered because of its file size (4.5 megs vs. Dweep''s 1.3 megs). 4.5 megs might not seem like a lot, but to the ultra-casual gamer with a slow modem, it can make a big difference. This is one reason we emphasize keeping the demo size as small as possible. Fortunately, our own site seems to attract gamers who aren''t as picky about file size, so Fitznik''s downloads are actually doing just fine there (over 20,000 downloads per month and increasing).


Steve Pavlina
Dexterity Software
www.dexterity.com

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Original post by Anonymous Poster
What I was wondering is that there are plenty of sites where the
internet user can get card and puzzle games.
There are many free of high quality. Also there are also shareware games, but there are so many of that kind of websites.
Thousands...of it. That I am afraid that the user got many choices to get what she/he wants. There is on the internet alot of competition. And the experience is that a title in retail get more sales volume then online sales. I think you are in that case an exception, with many luck. I appreciate you very much for your hard work.

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This is why marketing is so important. There are plenty of good card games available online, but many users don''t know about them or where to find them. Also, many of our customers won''t walk into a retail store to look for a game because they find the experience intimidating. The try-before-you-buy model is much less stressful for them, since they can try out a game to see if they like it without risking their money.

Yes, there are thousands of web sites that host games, but there are also millions of gamers around the world, and many of them will buy multiple games in the same genre. Also, if you sell a card or puzzle game through retail stores, the developer might get $1-2 per copy for a $20 game, often less. And there''s a great deal of risk involved. We can afford to pay the developer $7 out of every $20 sale, so you don''t have to sell nearly as many copies to make the same amount of money.

I''m especially interested in creative, original games because this way, we can hit the competition where they aren''t. I''m not interested in releasing a card game that looks just like every other card game on the net, for instance.

Often, developers who are new to shareware will do little more than upload their demo to a few dozen download sites, sometimes a few hundred sites. Then they''ll wait. This approach will usually generate some sales, maybe a few hundred dollars a month. But if you want to make several thousand dollars a month, you need to do a lot more than this.


Steve Pavlina
Dexterity Software
www.dexterity.com

"So if you don''t get your game onto retail shelves you''re left with electronic distribution. Here''s the flat out numbers based on experience and talking to other publishers and developers. If you put your game on a download site, you can expect it to get about a 1% conversion rate -- downloads converted to an actual sale."

20,000 downloads of Fitznik each month. An experienced investigator saids that 1% from the generated downloads (demo''s) are being sold.

So that is about 0,01 * 20.000 = 200 copies * price unit = profit
200 * $19.95 = about $3990 total profit each month of Fitznik.

Then split this total profit between developer and publisher.
0,35 * $3990 = about $1396,50 for the developer of Fitznik.

So thats in case if the downloads are about 20.000 each month.

However it is a nice salary to start as a lone wolf.