April 1st marked my 1 year anniversary as a full time independent game developer. 1 year ago it was a very scary notion that I will be striking it out on my own as a independent game developer without the support of a full time job.  I had to do my own taxes, health care, dental, customer support, marketing, networking, development, art, sound (outsourced to 3rd parties), wash dishes, take care of a puppy, and clean the house. Yes being a independent game developer includes house chores and other things, especially when you are staying at home all day.

However I need to confess that being fully independent and at home is boring and dull. First of all, I am usually at home with no one else to talk to about work other than my girlfriend and my puppy. They are awesome at supporting me, but they are not co-workers that share the same passion. The puppy being more interested in treats and making a mess out of toilet paper. It is easy to lose your passion and direction in such a relaxed and unstructured environment where you are the master of your domain. This is my fault though, as I took the opportunity to actually relax and catch up on games, and just chill. Before this I really have had no big breaks between jobs since I started working for the tech industry in 2005. Sure, I had 2 week vacations here and there but it was not like a multi-month decompress and relax.

As a independent developer money was not guaranteed on a month to month basis because of the nature of ad networks. Money was good during the first few months but it began to slowly shrink as more competition popped up and more people started using the Microsoft ad network. Because of that I started doing WP7 development for other people. I worked on the Pizza Hut App on WP7 to help supplement my income. This was a boon for me two ways; it provided me extra capital to keep myself afloat during bad times, and secondly it allowed me to develop my Silverlight skills on WP7 which would prove to be a very valuable skill to have.

Which brings to me another confession, I have not been full time developing games all this year. I had to take a 40 hour a week contracting position at a startup in Seattle last November. Income from my games dwindled from an average of $4,000 to $2000. A big drop in my monthly income, which prevents me from supporting myself with just that (I have a mortgage to pay). The contract ended at the last week of march, so I come full circle as once again a full time independent game developer on my 1 year anniversary Sadly, the income from my games is still not enough and I am currently working on another 2 month Silverlight project on the side, while looking for a 40 hour a week “main job”.

So where does this bring me? Well, since I said before in a previous post that the WP7 gold rush has ended for me. I am on to bigger and hopefully more successful venture using HTML5 and Windows 8. Many of you have argued with me that HTML5 is still too young and currently hard to monetize. But this is a new frontier with a potential 400 million users having access to the Windows 8 app store. I intend to replicate my success with betting early with WP7 into a Windows 8 success

So in closing this mini rant/story of mine. I am truly happy that I have decided to take the plunge. Being able to call myself a independent game developer has opened so many doors that were previously unavailable to me. I have earned people’s trust and respect which has more value than all the money in the world combined.

When I moved to HTML5 to make my games, I decided to use the impactjs engine, which has a pretty nice game framework in place plus a fully functional level editor. Obviously the biggest change from me is moving from C# to Javascript. This is a big change because Javascript is a interpreted language which forgoes the compiler. So you don’t get nice compiler warnings and errors when using the language. Although this can be remedied by using a Javascript optimizer like closure which will check your javascript code and try to optimize it. Another big change I had to endure is the lack of object oriented-ness with Javascript Thankfully you can fake OOP behavior in impactjs and have something similar to c#. It also did not help that I was a total noob with Javascript when I first started HTML5, but that was not a big hindrance to me at all. It took 1 week for me to get comfy writing Javascript code.

It was easy to get up and running with ImpactJS and HTML5 thanks to Jesse Freeman and his book “Introducing HTML5 Game Development” (amazon link). Took me 1 weekend to go through the tutorial and become adept at using ImpactJS.

The ImpactJS framework is nice because it sets up HTML5 into something very useful with it’s game framework. To me it is very similar to XNA but with more useful modules like built in collision detection and physics. What also helps me out is that it has this very simple yet robust level editor called Weltmeister. You get to setup different layers with different zIndices, collision layers, and tile sizes. It does not have all the bells and whistles a level designer might expect from a level editor, but it is enough to make a cool game.

So where am I at in the game development process for my new HTML5 game? Currently I am fleshing out the game and it’s feature set in a document. While in tandem I am starting to prototype and test out the different game mechanics that I need in the game.  I am targeting the web and Windows 8 for releasing my new HTML5 based game.

I just got back from GDC, which is my annual “know what direction I should take and keep up with the game industry” kind of week. The biggest lesson learned this year from GDC is to be promiscuous with platforms. Don’t just lock yourself into 1 platform and lose all the benefits of the other platforms. What this means is that I will be using multi-platform strategies moving forward. I will be starting with HTML5 and depending on how that goes I might stay with it or switch to the Unity Game Engine. This is not saying that I am dropping Windows Phone Development, I am just including more platforms into my target audience. There are a variety of reasons I am doing this:

1. Multi platform is a no brainer in increasing the number of users playing your games. This is the clear and most effective path at achieving growth without resorting to spending huge amounts of money on advertising

2. The gold rush of Windows Phone is now over. With more and more apps flooding into the market the competition is getting harder. Money is not as good as it was, and the quick development method is less effective. Being stuck monetizing just on ad revenue alone sucks. Windows Phone needs IAP and it seems like it will be forever before it shows up.

3. I have a library of successful games that are screaming to be ported over to other platforms. This makes the porting process easier for me because I already have all the assets and design done for me. So I can concentrate on building the infrastructure of my multi platform strategy. Once I have better understanding on  going multi platform, I can resume creating new games

Don’t worry folks, this is just part of growing up as a developer and keeping with the times. There is a hard road ahead, but it is those hard roads that are worth travelling

Paradox Exit is now out on Windows Phone Marketplace! This is my latest and greatest game, as well as being the most ambitious from me. Enjoy!

from zero to a million

1 million is such a magic number! A little more than a year ago I was very unsure how Windows phone would go especially with iPhone and Android had a unshakable grip on the market. I had little idea how much 1 year can do to someone who bets big on a new kid on the block. But looks like my bet is starting to payoff and the odds are getting better everyday. Let’s see the breakdown of game downloads since I launched till January 14, 2012

As you can see the success of my games are very polar, not every game is a success and not every game is a failure. Also my revenue is dependent on user stickiness not number of downloads, but having a large download number ultimately helps that. My most profitable game represents a good mix of content and infinite replayability. Also if you can see the disparity between Zombidemix, Scribble Defense, and Quadra’s paid and free downloads. The free games have astronomically more downloads that the paid versions.

I just started up a cafe press store with my popular games as shirts. If you like my games and want to support me directly, feel free to buy yourself a shirt or two! If more than enough people buy I will lower the price and include more products up for sale.

You can visit the store from the “store” link above or directly from http://www.occasionalgamer.com/store/

2011 is a special year for me because this is the year I gained independence and freedom. 2011 became the year that I was ultimately in charge of all my successes and failure. I learned many things from that year. Here is a quick run down of what they were

1. Better marketing is just as important as better game development. I already knew that marketing your game is important before 2011, but 2011 proved that you have to aggressively market your game using different kinds of techniques like cross promotions, running ad campaigns on the web and on the phone (using ad duplex), blogging, and twitter.
2. It is hard to predict if a game will be a hit on the marketplace. I have 6 out of 14 games that are under performing. Although I would say half of those were experiments to gauge how that particular genre fairs on the marketplace. I have Armored Drive and Air Dagger, which are content heavy games do really well with daily active users. I also have 6 highly repetitive and simple games that are doing well.
3. Having a cash cow that can sustain your other games so you can be free to experiment and fail without actually failing. For me the cash cow are my games with the most users playing and a high combination of ecpms (Armored Drive, Nom Nom worm, and Impossible Shoota). Being a indie game developer you need to make fun and truly worth while games to succeed.
   

   Revenue breakdown by game

4. Running your own business is a bitch. Being an employee I only had to worry about doing what I was told. Running a business I had to figure out everything that needed to be done and make sure to do it right if I don’t want to incur the wrath of the IRS or a depleted bank account.  I quickly had to learn about accounting, paying other people to do things for me, invoices, expenses, super complicated taxes, the list goes on and on… It is not like I did not prepare, but there is just so much work to do that does not directly relate to making games.
5. People are interested in what I have to say, Yay! This was one of my biggest worries, I wanted to be perceived as someone who was a subject matter expert. I think I have successfully branded myself as the guy to talk to if you want to know about doing ad supported games on WP7. This has opened so many opportunities for me.
6. Money is never consistent, and you can only do so much about it. The thing being ad supported is that my revenue is tightly coupled with ecpms, bids, fill rates,  algorithms, market share, economy, wp7 platform status, etc … So sometimes I have very happy months where I make a good amount of money and lots of months with crappy revenue. You have to either have low monthly expenses or a big enough savings to cushion against weak income. Here is a chart of what it was like for me in 2011.
7. I kept costs of production to a minimum. I did 95% of the work in making my games. Some games I collaborated with an artist to create the assets (Air Dagger, Scribble Defense), I spent some money on advertisements, and I outsource music and sound fx to www.soundrangers.com. Calculating from the top of my head, expenses directly related to creating the games would be around ~$3k
   

   Monthly revenue for 2011

   

   details of the month broken down into impressions, ecpms, and actual revenue

    

   2011 has been a good year for me with lots of ups and downs as you can see from the revenue chart above. But it was my breakout year and I hope to keep my momentum going forward into 2012 with better games and higher revenue!

   Keep gaming!

   Updated: I added a estimate on how much I spent on expenses on the game as well as a monthly breakdown of ecpms and number of impressions.

I’ve decided to slow down development of my games a little bit. I want to be known as a developer of great quality games and not some kinda okay games. So I’ve decided to make sure to give enough time on my next game which is a terraria/minecraft inspired game. Obviously this type of game is a bigger undertaking and I want to make sure it gets the time and attention it deserves. This is also due to me being a little bit drained from releasing game after game, after game. It takes a toll on my creative mind and my passion for making games. I’m sure the flame will regain back to what made my games so fun and addictive.

Also I wanted to show you guys the current status of the game I am working on at the moment. Right now I have 5 levels that are at 100×100 big with different tilesets per level. My goal is to have 10 different levels that the player can traverse to and explore.

On another note I have reached 900,000+ installs across all my games. I’m just a month or so away from the magic 1 million! woot

Download it now!