Principles of an Indie Game Bottom Feeder

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Written by Brother None on February 9th, 2012

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Last year, we released Avadon: The Black Fortress HD, our first game for the iPad. Old school, Western-style turn-based RPGs are almost unknown on the platform, so we were serving a classic underserved niche. However, the audience for such games on the iPad was, we guessed, not huge. We decided to sell our game for the princely sum of $9.99. That's a lot on the iPad. We then made what, for our tiny company, was a lot of money.

When the game had been out for a few months, it settled down to a very reliable average sale rate of 25 copies a day. These are pure Long Tail sales, from people just stumbling upon it in the store. Then we had a two-week half-off sale. This got a bunch of PR and attention, and sales shot up for a few days. Then they quickly settled back down to a constant rate: About 37 copies a day. Here is a screenshot of the sales chart:

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So, at $9.99, Avadon HD was averaging about $250 in sales a day. At $4.99, Avadon HD averaged about $185 a day. When I was preparing the game for release, I strongly considered giving in to peer pressure and selling it at $4.99. I'm desperately glad I didn't.

This is what is important to remember: If you are serving an underserved niche, the neglected gamers who want that sort of game will be thrilled to find you. They will be excited enough to pay a premium price. On the other hand, if you're selling a game in a genre that isn't hugely popular (like turn-based old school RPGs), a low price won't tempt many customers into a purchase, not when there are a million games with a broader appeal for sale on the same page at a lower price.

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