The Price is Right

In the picture above, an image of my dwarf rabbit Cleo who decided to travel to the rabbits paradise last week, after 9 years with us.

Why low pricing is wrong for niche games

I'm going to talk briefly about my own experience with low prices. I know that as customer, you'd want the games to be cheaper! who wouldn't want that? however, as I gather data from my little price experimentation, it's quite clear that if I was to sell my games for 4.99 I would be bankrupt in less than one year.

Check the pie-graph below:

On top there's the graph for the number of copies sold. Wow, during the promotional week sale, Heileen1 was almost 1/3 of my total games sold!

However, the enthusiasm quickly fades checking the other graph below, showing the net revenues for the same period: Heileen1 is at the 5th place, below other games.

This is even more "dramatic" if we consider that I sent the newsletter, posted in my twitter/facebook page and so on about the promotion. So in practice, the "regular sales" of my other games (the best selling titles though) were generating more revenues that a super-mega sale...!

I like to do sales, since I know that not everyone can afford to buy my games at full price. Obviously, I'm going to wait several months before I do sales of my recent games, but for games that were released 2-3 years ago (Heileen 1 was released in 2008 for example) it's fine.

But the fact is that unless you have a great exposure, a customer base of millions, like the portals have, undercutting your price is never going to work. You'll only lose money, and if you're not careful, forced to find another job! :D

Heileen 2: Hands Of Fate promotional sale

Speaking of promotions, this week I managed to update Heileen 2, which is on sale until next Sunday (included). Below you find a teasing image of Ebele with the new relationship bar added to that game as well. (Sadly Ebele is not dateable in the game, even if there are some spicy situations with her...)

Since I'm using online activation, I decided to offer two kind of downloads: the "standard" game, without voices, which is 45mb, or the fully voiced game that is 100mb. I'm particularly interested to check the statistics after some time, to see how many people prefer the voiced vs unvoiced version, since I'm considering if to make some more voiced games in future or not.

And the various games in progress? they're all still going fine! This week got some sketches for the Roommates game from a new artist, new finished CG scenes for Planet Stronghold: Warzone, new images/texts for Queen Of Thieves and new texts for Heileen3.

I really am not sure which game will be done first, since mostly depends on artists/writers speed, and what kind of gameplay will choose to implement in some of them (I have a few interesting ideas for Queen Of Thieves but must see if is something that I am able to code or not!).

Fantasy or reality?

In the image above, my dog Artù (italian name for Arthur) watching my dwarf rabbit Cleo in the garden.

As those who follows me on twitter might know, I'm currently writing the scenes for Heileen 3. Initially I did a lot of research, since it's based on the pirates of the Caribbean, however I quickly realized that trying to keep it historically accurate was too much pain. And not just that, but it would have also been less fun to play for the users! So, I am just going to use that as "setting/background" but everything will be pure fantasy (for example Morgan the pirate was definitely not a kind man, and cats don't talk!!).

There's a reason why I (and I suspect many other writers) prefer to write fantasy stories. Be it classic swords & sorcery, or science-fiction, with a fantasy world as long as you plan it out beforehand, there aren't problem of inaccuracies, mistakes, wrong dates, and so on. Let me tell you, it's really MUCH MUCH easier! :)

However, I also like stories with a historical background setting, and a simple solution is to mix the fantasy with reality. In Always Remember Me, the story is set in a "unnamed warm town", like could be San Francisco, but there's no reference at all to real names or real events. In Flower Shop all the story takes place on "Fairbrook", a fantasy town somewhere in California, and so on.

There was a game I wanted to release by Halloween, but of course I won't make it in time (I didn't even start it!), which is a horror/mystery/otome game but will take place mostly in a hospital. The town could be any town in USA, and the equipment is modern, but ... there will be definitely some fantasy elements! ;)

And now a quick summary of the work-in-progress... progresses!

Heileen 3: New Horizons

That's what I'm mainly working on right now, even if the game will be out next year because the artist Rebecca can only work starting from January (except a few days in November but surely won't be enough to finish all the art!).

However, I like how the story is coming out so far, the gameplay system seems fun too (similar to Spirited Heart but with some changes) and we're also planning to have some mini-animations for each of the 14 activities! Though this mainly depends how long will take to draw the 14 different job endings, and the  6 romance endings CG (4 heterosex and 2 homosex).

Planet Stronghold: Warzone

Artist resumed working after a summer break, and currently has finished 2 romance CG scenes out of 8! There's a new team member called Milo, and a new NPC called Lakadema which is an alien with incredible powers but also very shy and fragile. You can see the images below (Lakadema image is not yet final):

See the full gallery on Posterous

As always I don't have any estimate, but considering I haven't finished writing any scene yet, for sure the game won't be out this year. Yes, RPGs take A LOT of time to make!

Loren The Amazon Princess

The plot writing is going forward steadly, we're at beginning of chapter3, and the game consist of four chapter so the end is on sight. Of course, I'm only talking about the end of the main plot, there is still the expansion to write (which I think will be around 1/3 of the main game length).

The battle system is at good point too but still need more accurate testing and probably also balancing. And all the enemies needs still to be created (have the art, but didn't plan their skills yet).

Below you can see the commander of the Amazon army Breza and the infamous witch hunter Raven (available only in the expansion).

See the full gallery on Posterous

That's all for this week!