March 16, 2013
3/16/2013
As of March 11th, Short Circuit has sold a whopping 26 copies and had 474 copies of the demo downloaded. That means that the game currently is holding a trial to purchase ratio of 5.49%. From what I hear that’s a decent figure, but taking a second look at the game I think it could do better. The first problem that I see is that currently the demo only shows six levels for each classic and advanced levels. Anyone who downloads the demo would have no way of knowing that there are actually 35 levels per mode, adding up to 70 total levels of game play. Instead, the demo only shows them 12 total levels. I’m thinking that there are some gamers out there who are playing those 12 levels and thinking they have beaten the game. This needs to be fixed and quickly. This also brings us to discussing our future plans for the game. First, I want to fix the problems that I already know about. This means changing the demo to show the fact that there are actually 70 total levels. This also means that I need to completely remove the ability to use ANY controller. As much as I may think it’s so cliche, I don’t really have much of a choice but to include a “Press Start” screen and lock the controller for the rest of the game based on that. Finally, the last major fix is to adjust the screen drawing throughout the game to make full use of the “title safe area” of the screen because it’s been brought to my attention that a few screens do exceed that area of screenspace. At this moment, that’s all the changes that I really have planned for this game. I am tossing around the idea of recoding this game for the PC and trying to sell it on Steam, but that enters me into the arena where piracy is nearly rampant, the area of the video game market that I’ve been hoping to avoid. Don’t get me wrong, I’d much rather code my games for the PC because it’s just so much easier than coding for a console, but the console is a safer market for small indie developers like myself, even though we don’t get very many sales there. I know that some people are going to read the intro to this post and think that my sales figures are rather crappy. I’ll be honest, they do suck, but they are actually doing about what I expected them to. Short Circuit is a pure puzzle game, and not everyone likes those kinds of games. Short Circuit is catered to a very specific market, and unfortunately that market is very small in the Indie game arena. Official games from major companies that fit into this same category of games sell very well, but that’s because they have the funding for more advertising, or because thier games are sitting upon a store shelf somewhere where a puzzle gamer can find them. What I’m saying is that I don’t really expect every Xbox puzzle gamer to be checking the Indie game area for quality puzzle games. In fact, I suspect that only a very small percentage of all Xbox puzzle gamers will actually look in the Indie game section. My scepticism in the Xbox Indie game market is a driving force behind why I’ve been considering translating Short Ciruit to a PC game and selling it on Steam. What does this mean for the Xbox fans? Let me answer it this way, regardless of what system it is on, if it is selling well, I plan on continuing to maintain the game across all platforms that it was released upon. This means that if I create new content for the PC, then Xbox fans can expect to get it on the Xbox as well, just not at the same time. I refuse to hold up any one particular release for other releases. At this time 505 Games is holding up one console while waiting for another console to approve it’s software. I personally think this strategy totally sucks, so I refuse to follow in thier example. If my game gets approved for release on one system it will be released on that system and it will not wait until its approved for release on another system. Overall, I’m hoping that the larger user base that exists on Steam will make Short Circuit a better selling game than it is. I don’t expect to get rich off of this game, but I would like to actually earn more than 70 cents per day, which is approximately how much I’ve been earning on the Xbox.