Hence my list further up Everyone mentioned there is well-respected and involved in the community, quality apps from that lot. I think seeing their names involved in the project would help to raise the interest among other devs.
Imangi Studios are already part of AppTreasure along with Streaming Colour, Snappy Touch and other teams I forgot their exact name. As for theFABRIK they are already working with RPNinteractive on an indie label. I will ask the guys from RPNinteractive to join this thread.
Just quoting myself as a reminder of ideas. 1. First off this Indie Label is solely for marketing. It's a way of pooling a budget together - one of the biggest problems with the App Store is to get noticed. 2. Each indie can keep their own identity. The only concession is that the first splash screen is the Indie Label one and the Itunes blurb mentions the label. 3. The marketing website is the main target for advertising. 4. This site will list the games available to the label (a really nice format design needed). 5. Up and coming games will also be highlighted. 6. A way for devs to share skills and work together on projects - if they are inclined. 7. This label is about quality and will be selective about it's members - this is the only way this will work and some people will get upset BUT maybe it might make people up their game to join. This is really a few rough points that need ironing out with more discussions.
Yeah I remember reading about that, I only added them 'cause I figured even if they're not a part of it they're still likely to be interested, maybe nattylux can throw in a few helpful pointers.
This is probably the most difficult part. Just like any other project, we can't leave things wide open and expect 'someone' to get something done. I'm not sure what skills would be necessary- for the most part we need marketing and promotion, which most developers aren't very good at. We can't really call it a 'label', unless there were publishing and membership fees. That certainly isn't going to happen. The standards will be difficult to establish. At that point the group is simply playing gatekeeper in a system that is already overruled with gatekeepers.
Just some more ideas on how this should work. This label is about generating a marketing budget and that is where the money it generates gets spent apart from the running costs. Any profit that this label generates gets split equally with the members. The only problem I see is devs are far too busy (I know I am), and would be need someone to oversee the website and do all the marketing - I quoted Quorlan because you would need someone with those skills to run the site.
You're saying the exact same things I've been thinking. This is not an easy thing to pull off. Especially since you're talking about getting a largish group of indie devs together to form a unified marketing platform. That takes money and time and skills that most indie devs don't have. And I'm guessing that most indie devs would be hesitant to actually contribute their hard earned cash into a large pool that is designed to market for everyone, not just themselves. I can already envision the arguments over whose game had more of the community marketing dollars spent than someone elses. The core idea is a good one. Planning for it is another story. Actual execution is a whole new world. All of that said, I'm still interested in seeing if it can be done. Silly me, I love a challenge. I'm happy to lend some of my time to it. I bring 10 years of marketing industry experience, 15 years of web development, and 20 years of IT management experience to the table. Perhaps I could throw some private forums together on our web site where those who are truly interested could come to start hashing out ideas and seeing if there is enough interest and agreement to actually pursue it? So is anyone interested in taking this conversation to a more private forum for all those who wish to contribute to maybe making something happen with this idea?
I'm really interested in joining such an indie label. Our company is Neptune Interactive Inc., and we are just a bunch of friends doing this stuff part-time, investing our own money and time. Also, we strive to bring quality to the platform, though might not execute it brilliantly as others in some cases. Anyway, let me know if you would want us in. We can help with whatever. I know its hard to get the process rolling, but since each of us have released a game already, we've already proven that we can do something . edit: we also have our own forums so if you want a private section for this, it should be simple to set it up.
If you guys all disappear into a private forum somewhere, don't forget to stop by occaisonally and let us mortals know how it's going
I'm totally serious about this Talking further in a private forum is a good idea. Of course there will be certain problems like agreeing on fees and % on sales. But if you are serious about developing games you are going to spend the money anyway on marketing. It's more about getting the best marketing per buck. Doing this as an individual is hard to get noticed but doing it as a group means more clout.
I can't imagine doing this without Tap-Fu. It is an extremely polished game with great controls. It is still among my favorites. I think you achieved your goal to bring quality to the platform. On another note, I am not in favor of making this a paid system. Who is going to manage the funds? Where will these be spent? There will always be some titles that benefit more. I think Knight has some experience with banners. We all have our own marketing budgets (some are nil), do we really need another middleman taking a percentage? Why don't we all just sign up with Chillingo? Initial discussions can take place anywhere, just to get things started. But the final result needs to be done in a neutral area, where no single developer has control over the site, discussion or decisions. I suggest that we start out cheap and simple. One tool that is used in marketing is branding. If we all carried the same splash screen, we would eventually establish a brand. With enough exposure, we might see people seeking that brand. With each new title that we produce, that brand will become more well known as it pops up in the splash screen of titles in the App Store 'New' category. The brand will be mentioned in reviews. Now I'll admit that I am just talking out my ass. But I'll be the first to say that I don't think a paid system is a good idea.
This is a pretty intriguing idea. How might Aurora Feint be able to help? We have a pretty big marketing presence and with the upcoming version of OpenFeint you'll get to have game specific forums and developer specific forums, favoriting/reviews, and cross promotion directly in your games. I'd be happy to do featured promotion on our website and across our network to help promote the indie label you guys put together. Anyway, if there's anything 'out of the box' you can think of that we might be able to help with -- let me know. I dig the brainstorming here ;-) - jason
The only way this can be effective is that it is a co-op and each member has equal shares. Each member contributes money into it with fees and maybe a small % to sales ratio (this bit will be the hardest to agree on). Sure, some games will make more than others but that is the risk in joining. It's more about building an Indie brand. As this label generates more money then why not place ads in some of the news stand magazines - this is what the big publishers do. The more people that become aware of the brand the more sales will go up. And if any profit does get made, then been a co-op means that the money gets shared back to the developers equally. Their are no middle men involved - all it is is a marketing tool that can compete with EA or Gameloft that is owned by a group of independents. To make money you need to spend money. If this actually gets pulled off as a viable working model, it will send shivers down EA and Gamelofts business plans. We can be more powerful than them as a collective, as individuals they will eat us up. In two years time they will have more games on the market. The new ones and the old ones on a permanent sale stopping any new independent games from getting into the top 100. If we don't act now then we will loose.
But when you do marketing as a large group aren't you diluting attention away from your own product? The larger the group becomes, and the more marketing 'clout' you get, but the more diluted each of the individual brands become. I do like the idea of a group created for the interests of indie developers, but not for marketing — more as a union. It could be open to every single indie developer, and could implement things like a unified pricing structures across all members, and become influential enough to enter negotiations with Apple on certain problems with the App store like piracy, rejections, and maybe even organizing 'strikes' in protest against certain situations, like where an developer will ask apple to remove a competitor's game. I imagine it could be funded through affiliate links, where all members agree to use the group's own linkshare link on their individual websites and in marketing materials. I personally would find this 'union' more useful, but I think your marketing group could work if you keep it small and exclusive enough.
At the moment we are still trying to iron this out... but as soon as something becomes more viable as a working model then we can talk to you guys
A union is a good thing too The marketing group will not be open to everyone - maybe a max of twenty members. If this model works, then there is no reason why other developers can form there own groups.
I tend to agree with TrueAxis on this. One of the core problems that indie devs have is visibility. I am of course going under the notion that the product itself is somewhat viable. People cannot consider to buy your product if they don't know it exists. If you watch the iPhone and iPod Touch Games section, you can see in many ways it is as over populated as the App Store. See how fast those threads move. It's scary. So in many cases, you can have completely cool looking product slip through the cracks. Trying to be realistic, I think the first role of an indie label would be serving as a marketing anchor point for the members. Obviously money can be pooled together to say, buy advertising. But the other thing that could be done is to create an aggregate portal. Think of it this way. The large publisher's websites are holding information for all their titles in one convenient place. We could do the same. One of the problems of forming something like this is no different in many ways than starting a business partnership (well it is one really). People instantly start mentally carving out their shares. Indirectly, people need to be a bit selfless and not think in the realm of "my app is bringing this", but how that app can help the collective. If the right partners are chosen, there will be times when one app is up and another is down and vice versa. More importantly, taking my blurb above about an aggregate portal ... if an app does well, it will help pull users towards the site where everyone else's app is. And for what it's worth because people really don't know who we are ... we've been in the biz for a while. We actually have developed for EA, Hasbro, and Namco Networks before this. I am not saying we are a big deal, because we are not. But we've been around the block.
It seems like there's lots of different ideas of what this might be floating around. It could be like a union, where we stick up for rights of indie iPhone game devs, to try to get a little more of the market share from Gameloft, EA, etc and maybe try to get Apple to feature us more. It could me more like a cross-promotion group, like AppTreasures, that's unified by a brand, and maybe a shared "Other Games" link. I think if this is what people have in mind, it would be important to make sure that games are pretty quality. It could even be on a game-by-game basis, rather than a dev-by-dev basis. So if you have a really nice polished game, you can submit that one to the group, rather than the one you threw together in an afternoon. And the group could try out your game and vote on it, or somehow come to consensus over the internet about it (voting is probably easier ). Something like that. It seems like that's best way of preventing us from promoting total crap. And then finally this could be more like a publisher, like Chillingo. The group could all put in marketing money, or maybe contribute a % of the sales. I think this will definitely be the hardest type of group to form, and the most likely to fail. And I don't think there will be many devs willing to put their trust and their money into something like this that doesn't already have a good plan, some money behind it, and at least one full-time employee . I'm way more into the cross-promotion idea, personally, for Insurgent Games. I agree with Flickitty about it not being a paid system too. Or if it's a paid system, then one that's ridiculously affordable (like, $20/year per developer maybe). And I like the idea of using it to promote indie devs. If it's a game-by-game basis, and all it takes is someone to submit their indie game to it, then it seems like there wouldn't need to be much of a limit to how many games get listed, as long as their all of good quality.
You know after reading this again... Isn't this kind of what OpenFeint is? When I think about the value we're trying to provide, it's the logical next step to what you're discussing. We're not a publisher and we're not a "pay-to-participate" club. You build a game. Integrate the SDK. You get cross promotion with other devs, big and small, for no monetary fee. We even do marketing on the intarwebs for the games that are cool. The amazing ones get mega-marketing and are branded as "OpenFeint Gold" If you don't think that OF is this... I wonder if there's a small piece of the puzzle that is missing or if I'm totally coming out from left field?
