Holiday Bonus resurgence

Just in case any of you are interested how a Christmas game can sell here's some info:

http://greyaliengames.com/blog/holiday-bonus-resurgence-on-portals/

My advice is actually to NOT make seasonal games. This is because some portals will not accept them, and non-seasonal games sell more units all year round (at least my OZ game sells more each month than Holiday Bonus, but Holiday Bonus sells more at Christmas, so maybe it evens out hmmm)

Bit of a oxymoron :p - but a good post to push your game for the 3rd Christmas running ;)

Good news! I've had a couple of emails from portals. Let's see what develops. ;)

Honestly I don't understand the mentality of buying a seasonal game from a consumer standpoint at all. Do they not realize that the holiday season is only about two months long? And why does it being the holiday season compel consumers to buy these games, just because it currently is the holiday season?

I'm talking solely from a consumer standpoint, both MGE and Grey Alien's games are of very high quality and I don't want to take away from the great work they did and the effort and time it took to make these games at all.

I think the mentality is simply that people like to do stuff that's `special`, that sets it apart from other things and adds meaning to it. That's how most people think and relate. There are very few people on the planet who are completely free of adding their own personal meaning to stuff in order to make it have special value. Whether it be christmas or birthdays or autumn or spring, people really like to turn stuff into specific labelled chunks of experience.

Of course logically it doesn't make any sense to buy something that seems only relevant for a few months in the year - and that's quite a sensible perspective on the insanity of it, but people are generally nuts. Making stuff special motivates them. They live for it. It's what all of our values are about.

I think you're more likely to get benefit from selling a christmas game at christmas than selling the same game at christmas with no christmas theme.

My game has pretty good atmostphere and it makes people feel nice and Christmassy (even me when I play it) and people want to continue that feeling so they buy it - maybe they buy it for their kids too - plus it's plain old addictive.

@MGE: That's good news about the portals (is that via Indiegamer or did you contact them?), but can they get it live in the next week or so???

Guess so :-) If you could see my sales chart (I'll post it in Feb or something) you'd see it going up and down every year whereas other games just fade away over time. Posting on this forum won't result in any sales, I just did it in case other developers were interested in the stats.

I guess it's a bit like christmas songs. Lots of people hate it and would never listen to it (voluntarily), some others don't mind it in certain contexts (ie. when with people they actually like), and others like it all the time (mostly kids I imagine).

I think most of you are overlooking the fact that Holiday Bonus is actually a great game in it's own right, regardless of its seasonal slant...

Well I acknowledged that they are great games. I'm just wondering what compels people to buy seasonal games. Grey said himself he sells way more during the holiday season, and since its very similar to the Wizard of Oz anyway, (I believe?) clearly it being seasonal has a huge impact.

Plus the portals stick it on the front page again at Christmas. But people do search for Holiday games for sure which is why I stuck Holiday in the name (Holiday is more commonly used, and non-religiously specific) than Christmas, or Xmas (like my first game).

Thx FlameDuck ;-) I'm sure that helps too why is why is still shifts good numbers all year even in June.