Comments on: The Long Tail of Casual Games: You’re Doing It Wrong http://gbgames.com/blog/2008/08/the-long-tail-of-casual-games-youre-doing-it-wrong/ An Indie Game Developer's somewhat interesting thoughts Mon, 21 May 2012 10:33:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Poo Bear http://gbgames.com/blog/2008/08/the-long-tail-of-casual-games-youre-doing-it-wrong/comment-page-1/#comment-57278 Poo Bear Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:28:07 +0000 http://gbgames.com/blog/2008/08/the-long-tail-of-casual-games-youre-doing-it-wrong/#comment-57278 Current thinking is the long tail only makes sense for the portal not the developer. 70% of people go for the blockbuster hyped up WOW 10% of games. That leaves 30% picking through the long tail which contains 90% of the games. Considering there are many thousands of indie games released each year (plus all the old re-released bargain bin mainstream titles) then that is a lot of money for the portal (steam, direct2drive, gametap, stardock, reflexive, google adwords, etc) but a tiny pitance for the developer. The 30% off the top of everything going to the portal adds up nicely, but my 2 extra sales a month buy one pot noodle. If one developer could make 100 games then the long tail could be viable, but if you're making one game every 1-2 years then forget it. You need to focus on games that can generate hype and shift big numbers. Want to be a full time indie? Well, you'll need how much a year? $60k perhaps? The long tail won't give you anywhere near that. You need to generate huge media interest to power your own website - can you do that? Introversion can, but then they started with 1 programmer and 2 marketing people, now they employ 5 marketing types full time. I don't know any other indie with a sustainable growing business that isn't making console or portal games. There are casual and hard core PC portals (hard core ones are MUCH smaller) and they have vast oceans of web traffic that an indie can only dream of. Sad but true. Current thinking is the long tail only makes sense for the portal not the developer. 70% of people go for the blockbuster hyped up WOW 10% of games. That leaves 30% picking through the long tail which contains 90% of the games. Considering there are many thousands of indie games released each year (plus all the old re-released bargain bin mainstream titles) then that is a lot of money for the portal (steam, direct2drive, gametap, stardock, reflexive, google adwords, etc) but a tiny pitance for the developer. The 30% off the top of everything going to the portal adds up nicely, but my 2 extra sales a month buy one pot noodle.

If one developer could make 100 games then the long tail could be viable, but if you’re making one game every 1-2 years then forget it. You need to focus on games that can generate hype and shift big numbers. Want to be a full time indie? Well, you’ll need how much a year? $60k perhaps? The long tail won’t give you anywhere near that. You need to generate huge media interest to power your own website – can you do that? Introversion can, but then they started with 1 programmer and 2 marketing people, now they employ 5 marketing types full time. I don’t know any other indie with a sustainable growing business that isn’t making console or portal games. There are casual and hard core PC portals (hard core ones are MUCH smaller) and they have vast oceans of web traffic that an indie can only dream of. Sad but true.

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