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“These days on the App Store, is so crowded, and you have no chance of self-promoting a paid game in any kind of substantial way.” “ is the biggest thing you have to have,” he said. He also stressed the importance of having a contact at Apple who helped him get “Card Crawl” featured on the App Store during its first week on sale. Rauers attributes a good deal of the success of “Card Crawl” to his promotional strategy, which was comprised of maintaining a development blog and regularly posting about the game on social media. In this hyper-competitive environment, where even a high-quality game like “Card Crawl” may go unnoticed, “Card Crawl” has managed to succeed Rauers estimates that “Card Crawl” has made roughly $75,000 to date across both the App Store and Google Play. “A lot of reports about 10 to 15 games that make about 60 to 70 percent of all the money that is generated … There are a few games like “Clash of Clans” that make millions a day, and on the other hand, there are millions of games that make nothing a day.”
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“The mobile market is super skewed towards the top, ,” Rauers said. Many players are only interested in offerings by large companies with the promotional muscle to publicize their games, he said. “Card Crawl” was first released in March of 2015 on Apple’s App Store, which Rauers described as a challenging marketplace to break into. As Rauers pointed out, “if the game had bombed it would have been a very bad deal for them”.
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Initially, both Fiedler and Salkic worked for free in exchange for a share of the eventual revenues from “Card Crawl.” Because “Card Crawl” was a hit, this arrangement turned out to be, in Rauers’ words, “a very good deal” for both Fiedler and Salkic, but was not without risks. He also enlisted the help of artist (and Rauers’ former university professor) Max Fiedler and sound designer Oliver Salkic. Rauers used savings he accumulated during his three years of working for large game companies to support himself during the seven-month-long development of “Card Crawl,” as he had quit his job to work on the project. Rauers said that before beginning to develop “Card Crawl” in August 2014, he released eight independently developed titles that never quite took off. Once I discovered, it was pretty clear to me that I had to start my own , and since then, I have worked to save up money to pursue this goal.” “I always had the desire to create my own stuff, but I was blocked by my inability to program. “ I discovered the tool in 2012, I think, and from then on, it totally took over my mind,” he said. Rauers said that Stencyl’s accessibility appealed to him. After getting started in the industry, Rauers soon realized that it was feasible for him to make his own games after he discovered the game creation tool Stencyl, which, according to its website, allows developers with no coding knowledge to create games. “I started working in games in 2011, but as of 2014, I’m independent,” he said.īefore becoming an independent developer, Rauers worked at larger game companies as an interface designer for mobile games, most notably on the free-to-play title “Pearl’s Peril” (2013 – present). One such developer who has managed to carve out a niche for himself is Berlin-based game designer Arnold Rauers of Tinytouchtales - the company behind “Card Crawl” (2015), a solitaire-inspired dungeon crawler. On mobile platforms, “Flappy Bird” (2013), a mechanically simple game by Vietnamese developer Dong Nguyen, became a sensation in early 2014 and was reportedly generating $50,000 per day at the peak of its popularity before it was abruptly removed from Apple’s App Store.įor every story of outrageous indie success however, there are thousands of independent developers who toil in obscurity but still produce interesting, innovative titles. “Minecraft”(2009) for instance, an independently developed title originally created by Swedish game developer Markus “Notch” Persson, is one of the bestselling video games of all time and was purchased by Microsoft for $2.5 billion in 2014.
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The rise of digital distribution on the traditional PC and console markets, as well as the proliferation of smartphones and their accompanying app stores, have allowed smaller developers to sell directly to consumers and have largely negated the need to produce a physical product.Īs a consequence of these market changes, indie titles now compete with big publisher backed releases for gamers’ dollars - and often succeed. Independently developed or “indie” video games - games created by small teams or individuals without the financial support of a publisher - have become an integral part of the gaming landscape over the past decade.