Armageddon Empires, developed and published by Cryptic Comet

It's been almost three weeks since we unveiled our plans to add a select group of columnists who would contribute monthly posts to Level Up. Today, we're pleased to introduce our third columnist: Bill Harris of the blog Dubious Quality. "Smart and caustic" is how we described Harris' writing when he made his Level Up debut last fall with a provocative post titled "How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding." The Austin, Texas-based analyst (who does not cover videogames in a professional capacity) will share his thoughtful, acerbic and often contrary observations with the Level Up faithful in a monthly series titled 180 Degrees. In his first column, which we're presenting to you in two parts, Harris speaks with designer and developer Vic Davis about the unusual path to success for his independently released turn-based strategy game Armageddon Empires, complete with charts derived from sales and site traffic data that Davis helpfully provided. For some excellent insights into how an indie developer can overcome the challenge of reaching an audience, read on.

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On July 18, 2007, Vic Davis and Cryptic Comet released Armageddon Empires, a turn-based strategy game in a post-apocalyptic setting.

There was very little pre-release publicity, which is not unusual for an indie game. And like most indie games, the initial interest in Armageddon Empires steadily dropped in the first three months following release.

At this point, Armageddon Empires was on a very traditional arc for an indie game. This arc would end, soon, in game death.

Then, a funny thing happened. It didn't.

Instead, Armageddon Empires became the surprise indie hit of 2007, and sales have continued to increase into 2008. What made this game different is an interesting case study for indie developers who are having difficulty getting traction with their own games. I interviewed designer and developer Vic Davis, who shared his insight on the process of getting an indie game noticed.

Part One: Pre-release

You're 39 years old and you're tired of working for someone else, so you decide to make a game. That really sounds quite insane.

After I got out of the military I had intended to go back and work in the intelligence community when I finished my graduate degree. After my first child was born, though, I started re-evaluating priorities. I wanted to control my own fate and make my own decisions. I also had to come to grips with the fact that I enjoyed work more as a craftsman (even if digital) than a leader.

What made you decide to get into gaming development?

I'd been a gamer since my wife paid a princely sum for a 286 in the late eighties so that she could write her papers when she was getting her Ph.D. at USC. I ended up using it more to play games. I got my start in the late 1980's with Gary Grigsby's War in Russia and the Gold Box D&D series from SSI.

My favorite game had to be Aces of the Pacific. I played it for 10 hours straight one time.

So you had a history as a gamer. What about your programming background?

I could program a good bit because I graduated college with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering along with a B.A. in German and Russian. When I started TravelBrains with my brother in 1999 it was my job to figure out how to make a computer CD-ROM that portrayed all the troop movements for the Battle of Gettysburg.

It was a seminal moment in my life because I was amazed that I actually could build the whole thing. I suddenly realized that if I put my mind to it, I really could accomplish something as complex as a game project. So when it came time to move on to new things, I decided to take a gamble and try my hand at making a computer game.

How did you arrive at the mash-up of genres for Armageddon Empires? Was it anything conscious in terms of commercial appeal, or was it just what you wanted to play?

I was originally going to make a strategy/RPG in a Darklands type setting where a lone Paladin fights his way down to the lowest level of hell. The more time I spent on the game, though, the more I realized that the whole concept just wasn't working. It wasn't fun.

So in January 2005 I went back to the original, original plan which was to build a classic turn based strategy game. The mixing of the cards into the game came about because I had built a whole deck editing system for skill cards that the Paladin would use during combat. I had been playing a bunch of board games at the time so a lot of those types of mechanics just fell into place whenever I needed to solve a design problem.

You mentioned Macromedia Director. I'm not sure if anyone has ever used Director to create this kind of game. What made you decide to use it?

I chose it for Armageddon Empires because I could program with it already and since the game was going to be 2-D, Director was good fit. Honestly, I think Director gets a bad rap and is really overlooked. I don't think I could have done the programming solo if I hadn't been using it. It is so easy to set up graphics, the map, menus etc that you can have a basic game running within a short period of time. It's a high level scripting language (Lingo) so it compiles instantly. The fact that I could pull off a goal-based AI says a lot about its capabilities.

Let's talk about your approach to marketing the game. Were you able to get any preview coverage with gaming websites, and if so, how did you approach them?

I set up a website in March 2006, thinking that I was going to release the game in the fall of 2006. I was overly optimistic. I remember thinking that I should be putting more effort into marketing, but I already had my hands full with the development. It wasn't any one thing was overwhelming, but the totality of the endeavor was enormous for one person. So, in short, I just fell back on the single volley and charge strategy. I knew that it was going to be a long momentum-building campaign to get the game out in front of players, so I just concentrated on finishing it first before I spent any time on selling it.

Most indie developers who create a website in support of a game will also create forums, but you chose not to. What made you decide not to host forums on your website?

First, there's maintenance. You have to keep it updated for security, and if somebody has a problem with a password or something technical, then you have to solve it. I also was afraid of the empty forum effect (EFE). It's that ghost town feeling you get when you go to some indie's website and visit the forums and you see 5 posts and three of them are from the developer. Finally, I wanted people talking about the game out on the web and not at my website. Right now the Wargamer has been kind enough to host one for Cryptic Comet and it's worked very well.

So instead of creating your own forums, you posted in general gaming forums. Did you post pre-release, or did you wait until the game was available?

I was mostly a lurker at a lot of places. My three most frequent watering holes were Quarter To Three, Octopus Overlords and The Wargamer. I'd always love seeing a post titled "Any good turn based strategy games coming out?" The conversation on gaming forums was something that reinforced my decision to try and pull off making an indie TBS.

I was very wary of getting pegged as a viral marketer or an amateur. So my strategy was to always clearly identify myself, and I didn't really mention the game on any boards until I had something in hand to show. I called it "keeping my powder dry."

What was your distribution strategy?

What I implemented is similar what you find most indies doing. I have a demo that you can try and at the end it gives you a sell screen telling you what the full game offers and a button to go buy it. I hosted the demo on Amazon's S3 service and it's worked brilliantly. I chose BMT Micro as the digital distribution provider after hearing good things about them on the indie gamer forums. They've been great. So I have this trinity working of my own website, Amazon S3 and BMT Micro.

Summary: In terms of marketing, Vic made unique choices: no attempt to get preview coverage, no pre-sales, and no hype. He avoided getting anyone interested until he had something to keep them interested.

Part Two: Post-Release, First Three Months

Armageddon Empires was released on July 18.

Vic agreed to share weekly sales and web traffic data to better chart the course of the game's fortune. Page views are based on traffic at Cryptic Comet's website (http://www.crypticcomet.com/), and sales data is shown as a percentage of Vic's goal of total sales for the game.

As a guidepost, his initial goal was at least double what an unknown indie developer could be expected to sell. Actually, it was probably triple. The first time he told me the number, I thought it was so unrealistic that he was going to be hugely disappointed, even though AE was clearly an excellent game.

So how did you go about setting your sales goal, which I thought was crazy at the time?

It was based on a gut feeling and looking at what people like Cliff Harris of Positech and Jeff Vogel at Spiderweb had accomplished. It was also what I need to sell at a bare minimum to pay off the money I had borrowed to make the game in a reasonable time and probably just barely enough to keep going. The whole premise was that I was running a marathon and if I could build on that initial sales target then I could make a go of it at least for another project.

Was there any other kind of publicity for the game in the first month following release besides forum activity?

I started advertising with the search engines. I could spend hours complaining about this. I'm sure there are small companies out there where this type of advertising has worked but for me it was a huge bust. I can't see myself ever going back to it and I wish I could get my money back.

Did you track a number for how many demo downloads were converted into sales in terms of a percentage?

The demo is hosted at a bunch of different locations besides my website so it's tough to get a good number. When I process just my numbers I get a conversion rate of about 6 percent.

What was you reaction to the sales numbers in the first four weeks? Were you satisfied with hitting 15 percent of your overall goal?

Initial sales were a big surprise... in good way. I put out a press release and started a small banner ad on the Board Game Geek, another of my favorite websites, and within a couple of days I saw the game pop up on my favorite gaming forums. I put the shingle out on July 17th, 2007 and I got a big spike and then the long tail going into August. It's a pattern that I have seen repeated over and over whenever some type of opinion maker takes up the game and mentions it--good, bad or ugly. My next big spike was when Dubious Quality took up the gauntlet in late August. It was August 23rd to be exact.

I saw the game mentioned in the Quarter To Three forums, then Octopus Overlords and Gamers With Jobs. All the people I trust when it comes to games were talking about it, and the way they were talking about it was even more impressive. Plus, during this period, you were constantly improving the game, particularly the interface. You were up to v1.04 within three weeks, and most of those changes were based on forum feedback.

During this early post-release period, were you pursuing any specific strategies to get coverage from online/print media?

For a guy who poses as a strategy game maker, you would think that I would have had a strategy, wouldn't you? It was classic groping in the dark. I knew I didn't need a PR/media blitz on day one because my game wasn't paying $25,000 to be on somebody's shelves. I didn't have to move 100,000 units in the first couple of weeks.

My inchoate strategy was based on some simple assumptions. First, the game is niche and there is a small finite number of nerds, geeks, and grognards (NGG) that will ever even consider buying it. Second, I have years to find them, and then entice and persuade them and close the deal. Third, this target group of NGG is pretty wired in and approachable through the internet and specific print venues.

I set about doing what I had read on the indie gamer boards and started emailing leads/potential reviewers every couple of days. It's not very fun work, so it wasn't done very well. If I could do it over again, and hopefully I will be again soon, I would be more organized with this.

In October, you hit three months after release. Let's take a look at Cryptic Comet web traffic and sales for that period.

 

Also, let's look at weekly forum traffic from the dedicated Wargamer forum:

 

To me, it looked you were traveling a typical indie arc by mid-October. Page views were steadily trending downward after the release, and so were sales. At that point, you'd only sold about 30 percent of your target, and sales in the last six weeks of the period had been minimal. Forum activity had also trended down to almost nothing. Did you look at those numbers and think that the decline in interest was unstoppable, or were you trying additional things to promote the game?

The end of September 2007 was a dark time. The sales/visitation/demo downloads had really dropped off and I was beginning to think that my marathon was going to be a death march. I knew that I probably couldn't keep sales at the levels I had seen in July and August. If they were going to stay steady state at mid-September levels that would have been acceptable, but the trend at the end of the month was worrying.

How did the post-release experience compare to what you expected?

I was burned out. I had released the game thinking I could just sit back and heave a sigh of relief, but that didn't happen. I sensed that it had great long term potential, but really needed some polishing. My previous commercial software products were nowhere near this complex, so dealing with updates was not something with which I had a lot of experience.

Even during this period, though, you were still active daily on forums and making continuous, incremental improvements to the game's features and interface. In other words, instead of moving on to the next project, or even taking a break, you were still in there grinding. What was your original plan for how long you intended to support the game?

I guess the answer to the question is that I never thought that far ahead, as far as the ongoing support was concerned. An indie game has a natural competitive advantage in terms of support, though. It has a more personal flavor because the indie is usually identifiable as an individual or small group.

A continued presence on the gaming forums was just another thing that happened as well. I'm a gamer and these are places where I hang out. I've got my routine with my coffee in the morning or on breaks where I check out what's going on. I'm careful not to seem like a shill or viral marketer but if somebody has a question and I see it, and I can answer it then bumping the post up again is a nice side effect.

If sales had topped out at around 50 percent of your target, which is where it looked like the game might be headed, was that going to be enough to keep you in business? Would the second game still have gotten made?

Tenacity is probably my only redeeming character trait, so it's going to take a lot to stop me from making more games and testing out this Long Tail idea. 50 percent, though, would have been a body blow. At the end of the day there is a mortgage and a family to take care of, so you have to at least establish a positive trend after a reasonable amount of time. The investment for the art, music and graphic design wasn't trivial and my labor over the course of three years was significant.

It's all about risk versus reward so that you can try and accomplish a goal. I've had periods in my life where I absolutely hated my job. I can honestly say that despite the recent stress of actually having to sell something, and all the business work associated with it, I wake up and think "I can't wait to get the kids off to school and start working!"

Summary: It would have been easy to look at the numbers after three months and conclude that Armageddon Empires had flatlined. In spite of this, though, Vic continued to improve the game and maintained a daily presence in gaming forums.

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Next: Harris and Davis discuss what happened when Armageddon Empires became the darling of a handful of influential critics--including Penny Arcade. Plus, Harris provides some additional insights into the infection model of videogame promotion. Click here to read Part II.