The 0.99 Problem

Jason,

Just curious. Our app has OF support now. I was on your new website and noticed your Feint5 seems particularly skewed only to a few products. You hit "Shuffle" and it pretty much repeats that same small subset.

I actually saw that someone we knew tweet to you guys asking why it seemed only some apps were listed. The reply was the database needed to be completely plugged in.

I checked back today, and it still seems a very small subset of apps are listed there.

Thanks.

 

If anyone has OF questions -- please shoot me a dm, tweet, or email. I don't want to derail the thread! The Feint 5 on our website is still a very small subset of all the OpenFeint games. We're doing weekly updates to the website, so you should see a huge number show up tomorrow! If you have setup iPurchase in the developer website then your game will be included.

Anyway, it sounds like idea of forming an indie union/label will probably require some back end tech for building a player community, collecting e-mails for direct marketing, selectively cross promoting games within the label, managing revenue, and organizing/voting on activity of the group. I'm not sure if it makes sense for OF to support all of this -- but definitely some of this would make sense. Hmm...

 

You are nearly there

The most important thing is that it's a tool that is used by devs to promote the game. For a dev this means more sales. The missing piece is that it has to be exclusive to quality devs to build a brand. These members will get increased sales and as a whole have a bigger voice.

The difference here is that an alliance is been formed from the start and this alliance helps promote each other by forming a brand. This brand will become valuable over time... So right from the go it is an exclusive thing for developers to form a brand together that has marketing clout behind it.

 

If something workable can be agreed on, then True Axis would be the first to come forward and be part of this alliance/Indie Label.

 

No, I don't think you are coming from left field.

I don't have OpenFeint enabled in Flickitty (yet), but I have used it in other games. I'm not familiar with how the cross promotion works, but with so many games using OpenFeint, it would seem that a lot of games would simply get lost in the noise (again).

Now about the 'quality'. Overall, I am not interested in becoming another gatekeeper in the Industry. Who am I to deem what is quality and what isn't? Isn't that the consumers job? Isn't that what reviewers do?

There are A LOT of Apps that are worse than Flickitty, and they sell more. I'm not going to tell them that their app is crap- that isn't my job.

Currently, I already promote other developers games. I do it for free, because I really do believe in the game and the developer behind it. I realize that I don't affect their sales, but then again no single person can do that (except the developer themselves).

 

At some point you're always going to be fighting against the "signal to noise" ratio in whatever venue you're promoting yourself. You have greater potential to impact the ecosystem when you're larger, but ultimately you are still at the mercy of the ratio. It's all about capturing enough of the customer mindshare such that you can move the needle for yourself by adjusting price and promoting directly to your own audience.

I would argue that it's incredibly difficult to build a brand that reaches that level. We are working on this every single day at Aurora Feint.

A potentially very interesting way of side-stepping this problem is with what I call "social cross promotion." I don't really want to turn this into a sales pitch for OF, but it can be a signifiant source of "signal" from the app store "noise." We've found that a significant percentage of players purchase a game they found in OF because their friend has played it. You'll see much more of this in the upcoming versions.

While I agree that consumers ultimately make the decision, you have to choose what options they are given to choose from. And as soon as you start aggregating multiple titles, you have to make decisions about how to spend marketing dollars, promotion slots, and your time & energy, to make customers even AWARE that your choice exists. So whether you like it or not, building an indie label will require that you spend time deciding what "quality" means for your players.

Either way -- I think this thread is on a good topic. Indie developers will have more power if they band together. It's just a matter of actually executing on that idea. I hope that what I spend my days doing at OpenFeint is able to help contribute in some way. At the end of the day, figuring out how to build a sustainable business is what it's all about.

 

I really don't how this would work in an Independent Label way... The proposal is that a few select developers get together and form a co-op marketing machine that promotes a collective brand. What you propose is like having a middle man (Open Feint), and loosing the control (the devs) of the brand.

Unless Open Feint want to become part of this co-op of course?

What needs to be considered is that every member is equal, and that all profit is shared equally. The whole lot will collapse if any member thinks someone is making more money than them.

I did a post earlier stating that money needs to be allocated to the running of this, but barring that all money generated goes to marketing, and any profit gets shared equally between the members. This is the only way this will work.

 

2n Productions is another company that would step forward as well if something could be agreed upon. We also agree that members essentially need to be collective-based minded. Which also means not worrying about if certain members are "making more" than others.

Perhaps the foundation can be creating as neutral of a marketing hub as possible that all people contribute equally into to develop. I say neutral in that no group truly "owns" that entity.

 

The problem with all profits getting shared equally is the only way you profit from iPhone games is number of sales, and the way it would be generated would be marketing. But there would be no way to tell if this indie marketing label really helped sales, or if being featured by Apple did it, or if it's just a wildly good idea that caused the sales.

It seems to make more sense to make it so all games get equal marketing invested into them, and then sales happen however sales happen.

 

the next version of Open Feint is going to have some sort of cross advertising scheme, and will let each developer set up a list of other games to advertise in their open feint games.

In order to advertise another developers game you need to ask them for their games openfeint id, and then set it up on their website in your openfeint account.

I'm not exactly sure where in the open feint dashboard the ads are going to appear though.

 

I think it's more about building a brand and been part of that brand. If quality is high from the word go then this brand will be known for high quality... which will drive sales to the games on the brand.

This brand will have power on the App Store... When the holidays come EA and Gameloft put on the sales, which drives the indies down the charts. This brand can combat this by doing the same thing as a collective.

Also, all the marketing goes into advertising the site and not individual games. If the site takes off and becomes popular then that will generate money.

 

I think each independent will want to keep their identity... The only thing really missing is the marketing side. We all know how to make games but it's very hard to get the game noticed. Been part of a brand will certainly make this job easier.

If you throw in the publishing equation it will get very messy, then this will go no where and nobody will agree on anything. I think the marketing side can be more viable to form an agreement on to get a brand up and running.

Nice link to the magazine advert If this Indie Label can build a brand using that type of marketing then it should build into a success.

 

We should stick to the idea of an Indie Label for branding and marketing, also you should have in mind that in the history of indie record labels they specialized in some segments (Rock, country, etc). Probably the games being branded should have something in common to appeal to niche consumers and fortify the label.

 

...what the hell.

 

There is just no way that a co-op like that will work. I don't want to take money from another developer that I didn't earn, and I don't want the reverse either. Smells like communism to me!

The concept of banding together for quality standards and marketing is something that I can definitely get behind though. Basically like App Treasures and AppStoreGems.

I think the group would have to be a non-profit group and members that contributed to marketing campaigns would be included in those campaigns. Members that did not contribute would not be included.

There would need to be "someone" responsible for creating all the promotional materials and for organizing and coordinating all marketing activities. Would this just be developers? I think it makes more sense for someone who "knows their stuff" to handle this part. Like a full-time employee basically. We would need to decide how that works and how that person, if any, gets paid.