Sign up to the Grey Alien Games NewsLetter!

Hi all,

I'm going to be sending out Grey Alien Games newsletters to all interested parties about my games, demos, upgrades and other exciting stuff as it develops. So if you'd like to subscribe to it, please visit:

http://www.greyaliengames.com/news.php

and enter your email address and click subscribe, easy!

You'll get an activation email at some point that you need to confirm with a simple click.

Please note that your email address is ONLY used by Grey Alien Games and is never divulged to any third party. Furthermore you can unsubscribe from the newsletter email, if you *really* want to.

I look forward to receiving your email address soon! :-D

Best Wishes

Jake

P.S. I'm now an affilate for Absolute Blue (the well-known horizontal shooter), so if anyone wants to download (and buy it) please do so from:

http://www.greyaliengames.com/games.php#absoluteblue

P.P.S. The newsletter is powered by http://www.IndieGameBusiness.com

That sounds really boring.

great, yep, thanks dude. Go and flame another thread...please (never let it be said I'm not polite)

why not rather put this info on your website ?

I have... just bringing people's attention to it :-)

What incentive is there to sign up to this newsletter? I don't see any, so do tell me what the common person would see in it.

no incentive for you maybe but for others, plenty; it's a proven technique.

But what is the incentive, Grey?

OT: I really like that logo of yours Grey.. :D

Sometime you guys are really obtuse for the sake of it!

Grey I think it is a great idea - :) I will be looking into this shortly, incentive? Haven't you played Easter Bonus yet???!!!!!

I may just come along and sign up in a minute - just gotta get this tank over there and....

IPete2.

No, it's a clone of his Xmas Bonus game, which I found to be extremely boring and repetitious.

hey, didn't I already say go and flame elsewhere? Please. Good job not everyone found it boring otherwise I wouldn't have made the sequal and nor would the portals have accepted it. But you aren't a casual puzzle game fan like a 40ish mum playing games on their home PC or at work are you?

Thanks LarsG! I don't mind pleasant still slightly related off topic. I do it myself all the time.

btw, a big incentive for people who've bought the games is that they'll receive news of updates and new games that I make. So they can get info that they really are interested in. Comptetitors will also be interested in my newsletter. Fellow developers may want to know what's going on because they are genuinely interested or they just want to see how I do things.

Later on there will be other benefits too, things are in the pipeline...

I think it's okay to pimp your games, but you must have posted 10 threads about your gamesite and your match-3 games in a short period of time on here and on indiegamer forums, so I can really see why Noel commented in such way... What I'm saying is, don't be suprised if you start to annoy some people eventually....

[Edit] And I really doubt there is much potential customers on these forums either...

It's scary when Bouncer understands me.

Hey, that scares me too..

Not to mention greatly over priced. $9.99 is just fine for the games, but $19.99 *shakes head*.

My daughter liked "Easter Bonus", but I said no because of the price. You can literally find many clones of the same thing in the stores for $9.99 with more levels and a bigger selection of graphic themes.

Or just on many of the game websites. I like Shockwave.com's stuff usually. They have a nice selection of free games.

I understand your viewpoint to Bouncer. I just genuinely thought some people might be interested that's all.

Kuron, thanks for the feedback, that's worth knowing. btw Xmas Bonus is $14.99 on www.cloverleafgames.com . $19.99 is the standard portal price, and a lot of work went into Easter Bonus making it professionaly quality so that it was portal material. If you sign up to the newsletter, perhaps there will be some special offers at some point ;-)

Okay Kuron - go and spend 2 months of your life making a game and sell it for $9.99. Grey is trying to 'carve' a living for himself and I say "More power to him". This is what he does, and very well he does too. I know people who have bought the Christmas game and loved it to pieces. The Easter game is more topical right now and as only '0.0001' % of the entire world bought it I think he has a good chance of selling his new game to guess who - new customers.

As for the $19.99 price I think that the market will not buy it if it is over priced. I guess we'll see if Grey makes any money.

I guess it is what you are used to - in the UK $9.99 is about £5. it wouldnt be worth Grey making a game selling at that price point unless he had a massive retail outlet deal.

Time will tell, but my money is on Grey - and I don't really like puzzle games, but I downloaded and played both the demos.

IPete2.

Thanks for your support IPete2.

Also worth considering, the portals only pay you 35%ish of the $19.99 and then your publisher takes a cut so you don't get much per game. Volume is more important.

Another thing, my games HAVE sold to quite a few people on these forums (thanks all) and thus I keep those people (and potential new customers) informed of stuff. So marketing on these forums HAS worked. I'm sorry if it's too many times for some people, but maybe others are not bothered. I'm not really interested in XP on Mac threads etc but I haven't gone into to them, flamethower at the ready... I also hope that I have helped others and perhaps even inpsired some others to know that it is possible to make good games that sell in Blitz.

I am just one guy, with a family to support and I love making games and want to do it as a living. So I'm always looking at the business side of it and that includes various marketing techniques. I can't afford to get all "arty" and just do it for the love of it, I did that when I was a teenager like you Noel, and great fun it was too. Then I got the house, mortgage, car, bills, kids, vices etc.

You should've thought about your actions then.

lose the google ads dude... cheapens the site and moves your customers to your competition.

The demo version was great and top notch. Definitely quality stuff, just overpriced for the type & style of game IMHO. FWIW, this is one of the very few types of games I enjoy playing and routinely buy.

If we are talking about ME, I am sorry, but if I spend two months of my life making a game, I am sure not going to have the nerve to sell if for $9.99. Something that took so little time, I would definitely release it as freeware.

There is a difference between trying to make a profit and trying to make that profit off of one sale. The type and style of game is what usually determines its price. Competing products on the market are usually good for determining a "fair" price.

We loved the demos of both games, this is one of the types of games I love the most. Unfortunately, he is not being published by EA or Eidos. He is an indie programmer. The going rate for this style of game, by an indie programmer in the stores around here is $9.99

Again this goes back to marketing. You should aim to make your profit in the volume of sales, not try to make it all off of one sale.

I didn't and I am in the target audience.

You didn't buy them? I guess you don't believe in putting your money where your mouth is?

If you want to make money stay away from the portals and the publishers. Unless your publisher is putting your game on store shelves, he is not doing anything you can't do for yourself.

As for having something "in store", your games are definitely the quality and style of what I see on the store shelves here for $9.99. Perhaps you should contact some of the more reputable publishers who specialize in budget titles and have deals with the retail chains?

Agree 100%

Hey Kuron, you should have signed up for the Cloverleaf Newsletter then you could have got 50% off any game. Yeah you could have got one for $9.99!!

And that's the point people, don't sign up to the newsletters, don't get to find out about the deals!

I signed ;c)

wow, great little flamerwar this thread's turned into...

lol, lessons in life from a teenager who live's with his mom (and kitten). OK in 15 years time, lets see if you have a house, car, wife, kids etc.

Kuron: thanks for your feedback, glad you liked the demos. Sorry the price isn't right for you now, $19.99 may not be a "store" price but it is the going rate for a downloadable game. Maybe things will change in the future. Actually it did take longer than 2 months to make Easter Bonus because I have to include the artists and musician's times, plus the time taken to write the original Xmas Bonus engine and to solve all the technical hurdles of releasing a progessional game, and of course the time training in writing free demos for a year! Then add one the years of playing and making games as a hobby (22 years).

I'm not sure I'm into the store route, perhaps I need more hard figures (from somewhere) to convince me.

As for the google ads, I worried too about cheapening the site etc, but actually I am making money off them! Also I notice that more and more sites have them, and whereas hard-nosed developers may find them anoying, I'm not sure if the average punter dislikes them. Also I did try to make them unintrusive by blending the colours and putting them in the footers only. If my company was big enough maybe I wouldn't need the ads or I go for sponsored ads, but ads are a fact of Internet life, wether I like them or not.

One month of google ads - is that more money than losing a customer to the competition for good? Isn't that kinda opposite to what a newsletter hopes to achieve? :)

One month or google ads will generate the same revenue as quite a few portal sales as I'm getting a lot of hits right now. Each portal sale needs over 100 downloads (customers), so I dunno about losing customers to the competition as a ratio thing, but you know I understand and take your point. But also, like I said, I figured programmers would slate the ads but the general public don't care as they are used to it. Another thing, is there such a thing as competion, yes if you regard one game as the same as another, but no if people want my games...no one else has them (except for the portals but I still make money from those sales). Maybe if I add my own shopping engine one day, I'll kill the ads. Thing is look at Pavlina's blog, or 1goodgame etc, they've all got ads and Pavlina is doing pretty darn well. I know they are blogs not game site so there is a difference.

Thats all it was, feedback, not flames ;c)

I have noticed "online games" getting more expensive than the equivalents in the stores.

Like everybody else, I have a family, mouths to feed, rent to pay and starting in a couple of weeks our rates for electricity are going up 72%. Heck, we don't even have a car anymore, sold it because of gas prices. Unfortunately, cost is always a factor in any purchasing decision, especially when you have a very low income.

ouch, regrettably it's happening to gas and electricity all over the place. I'm beginning to consider solar panels or a wind turbine, or maybe an excercise bike powered PC. I understand that price is an issue for lots of people, one thing to consider also is how may hours you'll get out of a game. For example FPS versus RPG etc. However, sometimes quality of experience counts for lots too... this topic needs a thread on its own! Seriously though, sign up for the newsletter and you never know ...

It's working by the way, had quite a few people sign up. Don't know who they are! But at least no emails along the lines of @#!*you@@... ... yet.