Friday, September 05, 2008
Business Rule for Indies
I've been reading (well, listening to) the autobiography of Jack Welch, who was the phenomenally successful CEO and chairman of GE from 1981 to 2001. When talking about taking his company into the "dot-com" era, he makes the following statement:
"... I almost forgot a cardinal rule of business: Never let anyone come between you and your customers or your suppliers. Those relationships take too long to develop and are too valuable to lose."
He was talking about how they almost went with an aggregator (what we'd call a "portal") to handle their online plastics business for them.
Now, this probably isn't totally applicable when talking about companies that have no customers to begin with. But I wonder if this is a "rule" that many indie game developers are completely ignorant of. It is one thing to know a rule or guideline, and break it with good reason. Indies (and good writers) do that all the time. But it's another matter entirely to be ignorant of the rule and to not know when you might be making a mistake.
Labels: Biz
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:46 AM (Permalink)
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But say I don't have any customer base yet (as my only previous game was a free one that attracted all of 2 people). Would it then be a good thing, a bad thing, or a neutral thing to use a portal?
Your post got me thinking about The Casual Games Manifesto and how it applies to this rule. I wrote about it here: http://gbgames.com/blog/2008/09/indie-business-rules-relationships-and-service/
As you can see, Darkned Dreams Team, you can use your portal and have your own customer base, too!
As you can see, Darkned Dreams Team, you can use your portal and have your own customer base, too!
Exactly what GBGames said. If you have no customers, then working with a portal only has the potential of costing you future customers. No big deal. In fact, I don't have a problem with selling my game on portals AND my own site.
But leaving it all to the portal(s) is probably unwise. If you don't have an exclusive deal with the portal, then there's no reason you can't develop your own customers. And there are plenty of reasons why you should. Unless eating and paying the electricity bill isn't important to you.
A great trick employed by some developers is to have a (non-hotlinked, by order of the portal) note in their game to "go online for hints and new levels!" And then make sure that you are at the top of the searches for exactly that criteria. Yeah, people have to hunt you down to find you, but you've left a couple of breadcrumbs.
Suddenly, you may be able to turn some of that traffic into your own future customers.
But the big point is to remember WHERE THE MONEY COMES FROM. If you are working with a publisher, then really - they are your customer. The money comes from them. But if you are working with a portal - if they don't pay you for your game (and I don't know any that do), then the money is coming from the players. You want to maneuver to have as direct a relationship as you can with them.
But leaving it all to the portal(s) is probably unwise. If you don't have an exclusive deal with the portal, then there's no reason you can't develop your own customers. And there are plenty of reasons why you should. Unless eating and paying the electricity bill isn't important to you.
A great trick employed by some developers is to have a (non-hotlinked, by order of the portal) note in their game to "go online for hints and new levels!" And then make sure that you are at the top of the searches for exactly that criteria. Yeah, people have to hunt you down to find you, but you've left a couple of breadcrumbs.
Suddenly, you may be able to turn some of that traffic into your own future customers.
But the big point is to remember WHERE THE MONEY COMES FROM. If you are working with a publisher, then really - they are your customer. The money comes from them. But if you are working with a portal - if they don't pay you for your game (and I don't know any that do), then the money is coming from the players. You want to maneuver to have as direct a relationship as you can with them.
When you sell through an affiliate (like me), you get to keep the customers. When you sell through a portal, you do not. So if affiliate sales were any more RELIABLE, that'd be the way to go. :)
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