So if you've tried marketing a game these days you know just how hard it is to break through to people - especially with all the noise and advertisements - and yes even other great games competing for everyone's attention.
So I get lucky .. and a very kind person I don't even know shared my game on Facebook ; but Facebook scraped my webpage and picked the icon for one of my mobile games from 3 years ago instead of the correct one.
So now all this person's friends think The Rise of Dagon is a game about a chicken with an astronaut helmet!
And that pretty much summarizes exactly how good my first day of my Kickstarter campaign has gone also!
The actual icon is:
You can check the campaign out on Kickstarter here as well.
Four years ago I decided I was going to become an independent game developer. At the time, I didn't even know how to program.
"Sure sounds unrealistic!" , you say. And you'd be right.
The Rise of Dagon after 18 months of work.
I did have an ace in the hole though: I have a rich history in doing other things like art, design, and project management over the past twenty years to bolster me and as you will see I leveraged those fully.
So I was fortunate in that becoming an indie developer was really a matter of could I learn to program/develop the game myself. Again no small order; but perhaps a bit more realistic.
For more backstory to my history and how I learned to program I've covered each year of my Indie journey separately and you can read much more detail about those here in Year 1 Retro, Year 2 Retro, Year 3 Retro so I won't go too deeply on those at this time.
My first iOS / Android game Pirates Jewels
The first three years I shipped multiple games. I shipped and iOS title first, then quickly thereafter on Google Play Android.
Within the first year, I also shipped a title on Wildtangent for PC Desktop which has been my biggest success as of yet, but sadly Wildtangent just pulled it (probably fair the sales had gone down over the past 3 years).
Oddly enough Holiday Cheer was a game that I never intended to make but my wife told me in October that I should make a holiday themed game because it might sell well!
So I took her up on her advice and re-skinned Pirates Jewels (my first game) in just under 30 days and fired off emails to various websites like BigFish and Wildtangent. I sincerely expected to NOT hear back from them but my to my surprise they were excited and wanted to push to get it in the December update on their site.
Much to my surprise, they actually plan titles well in advance so I was actually late to the party when I emailed them in early November!
I went on to make a few other match-3 related games but over time I came to the conclusion that I was doing the wrong thing.
My first game accepted by a publisher was Holiday Cheer.
You see I was making Match 3 games for a couple of reasons - the first was because I was trying to make a 'simple' game that wouldn't undermine my chances of success.
In that goal I totally succeeded as you see I was able to make several games in the genre and even make a bit of money!
The other reason was because marketing research I had done told me it would be profitable to do so as its the one of the top 3 game types in the casual genre.
In the end, though I lacked many things needed to compete in the casual market nor was it personally satisfying to me either.
You see making a few thousand dollars is certainly nice - but it doesn't pay my rent and it doesn't even actually pay for all the time I invested in making these games either.
So I did what many game developers want to do .. I started on a passion project.
In my case, role-playing games are where it is at. I've loved RPG's since about 10 years old when I found out about pen and paper D&D. I moved on to classic computer RPG's like the AD&D Gold Box games and then games like Eye of the Beholder, Baldur's Gate series and on and on from there!
It really didn't take long to decide at that point - in fact, I had something (as most of us do) in my "games I want to make one day" list!
Eye of the Beholder a classic dungeon crawl RPG.
You may or may not have heard of Eye of The Beholder but if not you certainly will have heard of Legend of Grimrock.
These games represent the quintessential dungeon experience in my mind. They put you in the game in first person perspective and make you feel like you are really there.
So 18 months ago I began this project, having never made an RPG before, but determined that I was going to make a game that I really loved and cared about this time!
What many indie's who finished games know is that often when you ship a game - no one cares. As often as not you will ship a game to the sound of resounding silence.
Maybe your mom and dad care, "Good job son! I'm glad you finally stuck through and finished something. Now when are you going to get that job flipping burgers and pay for your own car insurance?"
But if when you're done no one actually cares then you have to question: what is it you are actually getting out of the game? Certainly not money or recognition?
Certainly one can argue then that you did not market your game properly - and maybe that is true. But a very valid counter argument is maybe you did market your game to the fullest of your current extent which includes lack of finances to push out paid-for marketing. You can send emails to Youtuber's and gaming websites and such - but if they just delete the email then the net effect is "you haven't done any marketing!".
So you have to ask yourself what is it you actually want to get out of making your game?
It's happened to me more than once so I've had to ask myself and the answer I've come up with is: I want to make games I'm passionate about so when I'm done I'll have fulfilled my dreams and what I'll have is something I really care about that rewards my urge to create something I really love.
Ultimately I think many of us know this is the right answer; but it's incredibly difficult to reconcile with the advice we get in the indie game dev community which is "make something small, cut it in half, and then make it smaller yet!" or "don't make an RPG! first!".
Those pieces of advice are good; I have no beef with them. But they don't deal with the passion side of things very well. Those gems of indie advice ask us to invest ourselves in things that don't inspire and the truth is it takes a very dedicated hearty person to persist and create when they are not inspired.
For me the takeaway is: you should follow that advice to learn the basics, but at some point you're going to have to follow your muse when it calls!
If not you will end up going in circles making things just for the brief rush of saying "hey look I made this voxel clone prototype" or "hey look I made a sidescroller prototype" but you might find yourself with the lack of drive to actually finish because there's no vision of what this game really is in the end.
Very early on I considered changing to UE4 over Unity 3D
So I took off - I just started doing what I do: I made lists of things I needed to figure out!
My first list looked something like:
what kind of level format will I have?
what is the best way to implement a class system?
what is the best way to implement items?
how do I handle monster's? do they get their own classes?
what engine should I use?
what art level should I shoot for ?
There were many more questions but each one became a truly engaging and interesting topic to me and that drove me forward!
I'm not convinced that I know everything that I would like to know about all of those topics yet - but I at least have a solid understand of them and can implement them in my game now.
The Struggle is Real
I have struggled with producing this game in many ways such as creating 3D models is very time-consuming.
I'm very lucky to have a background of 20+ years of indie art production so I can make quality artwork like this Servant of Dagon model I did in Silo 3D and Mudbox:
Servant of Dagon model I worked on for The Rise of Dagon
But doing so takes a lot of time! Yes I know many people reading this are indie programmers with no artistic skills at all and this really sounds like a stupid complaint but the real fact of the matter is spending 3 weeks making one 3D model for your game is 3 weeks you are not coding your game!
It became painfully apparent over time that I was going to need help to make The Rise of Dagon so I decided to take it to Kickstarter.
I have spent almost the past 6 months researching Kickstarter and learning about what to do, and what not to do.
One really good resource was the Funding The Dream podcast series by Richard Bliss. He invites many experienced Kickstarter project's members on his show and goes over every topic imaginable.
I learned more about fulfillment of rewards, building a good campaign, video tips, and most importantly critical tips about Taxes that could completely derail your project if not handled correctly!
In short if you fund very late in the year you will have to pay taxes on that income in the year you earned it. So if you funded very late in 2015 such as December - you will need most of that money in 2016 !
But your taxes will be due in 2015 because the income was earned in 2015!
Some people's projects have been completely destroyed by risks like this that they never saw coming so I highly recommend you do proper research if you're going to do a Kickstarter.
So here I am 18 months into this project and finally ready to pitch out to the world and ask my family, my friends, and hopefully a gamer community who loves RPG's to back me and help make this project a reality.
I was lucky enough to be recognized by Highsight on Twitch as one of the top 10 indie games of 2015, which was a really amazing recognition and really inspiring to me! It does make me feel like I just have to get my game out in front of people and it gives me hope!
But still, I fear that I'll fall flat on my face. I've done blogging for almost two years on this project , but I still feel like I have no community.
They say you have to bring your audience to Kickstarter - do not expect Kickstarter to have one for you and the fact is before this game all my products have been on other people's portals for casual gamers.
I may have sold a few thousand games but I doubt even one of them could name my game studio or even cares.
So I have very little "crowd" to bring to my crowd funding campaign. its my biggest risk yet as an indie game dev.
Failing at this point will be big and hurt. But you have to put yourself out there if you are passionate and believe in your self and your project. And the thing is .. I really do believe. I'm making this game no matter what because I'm truly passionate about it!
I sincerely hope that I find a community and they back my game - but even if they don't I'll be here next year hopefully about to ship this game in my next post mortem.
Until then thanks for reading and good luck in your game developing!
Drop me a comment and let me know if you have any questions or feedback about my campaign as I really would love to hear from you!
