Portal Comparison

Well without going into actual figures, I am pleased to say that Big Fish Games sold twice as many copies of Xmas Bonus that Reflexive Arcade, despite the fact that they were selling "hard" V1.0 instead of "easier" V1.2 or V1.3. Also they released it 2 days before Christmas which I thought was a bit dumb whereas Reflexive released it a full week before. Nevertheless they sure delivered in the end. But I can't help but think, what if they had v1.3 instead? Thing is it's totally impossible to get any replies from a portal around christmas as they are all on holiday of course.

A word of advice, if you can get you game beta tested and released on your own website for a few weeks, this will allow you to listen to feedback and tweak it to an optimum version before you send it to the portals. I didn't have this luxury due to the Christmas deadline! Also make your demo easy. You might think, "oh this is too easy, better make it harder" but chances are most people will find it hard anyway. Research shows that people like to feel "progress" so even if the demo levels are easy, the player still feels good about making progress and wants to continue this feeling, so hopefully they buy it! Remember some old 8 and 16-bit games, they were like sooo hard (e.g. Airwolf), yet they were aimed at kids who just never got very far. Maybe the programmers thought if they made it too easy it would get finished in no time. To be honest I would have prefered some games to be finishable rather that so hard you smash your joystick up in frustration.

Some good advice there. I remember Airwolf on the Speccy... man that was hard, I couldn't get beyond about the 3rd screen! If it was a demo, I wouldn't have bought the full game. At least I didn't buy it on it's own, it was part of "Now Games 2" by Virgin.

As to Xmas Bonus, I need to check if I have V1.3 when I get home. I thought I had V1.2. Did you sneak out an update whilst I wasn't looking? ;)

I did announce v1.3 on this forum. It's on cloverleaf games, just download and install and it'll keep your licence key and the level you got to unlocked plus all the highscores. It's the version which saves and resumes your game, and once you've seen the popup dialogs they won't appear again.

Thanks Grey. I was in the USA for a week over Christmas (with no internet access... gasp!), so may have missed it. I'll check when I get home.

"with no internet access"

must have been horrible, like a fish without water!

Another factoid. It appears that 32% of the Big Fish sales were part of "Megapacks" where your game is sold at half price along with others, thus you get a smaller commission. But at the end of the day a sale is a sale :-)

Interesting. And as you say, a sale is a sale. I hope Xmas Bonus has earned you a few bob, you certainly deserve it.

On a side note - I did download 1.3 when you released it, so ignore my earlier ramblings. :)

ramblings ignored :-) It has earned a few bob, I'm not rich but it's a start thanks. Keep an eye out for Easter Bonus now ...